Text UN: 1stStrike CW: Comp Het/Internalized homophobia?

[strikefirster]

[Johnny Lawrence stares at his Omni briefly. Ever since the whole speed dating fiascothe month before there has been something nagging at him. Something that didn't quite feel right to him.

Which is what brings him to his Omni today. And after two or three times where he is accidentally posted on the network one would think he'd learn his lesson, right?]

How not to be gay.

Is doing karate with dudes gay now?

[Wrong.

The network is not google, Johnny.]

Comments

[slightlytaller]

Concerts are great but I'm not sure I can handle having boobs.

Great now I'm giving them ideas.

[hauntedsavior]

The boobs that I would give people, if the gods listened to me, would only ever go to people who want boobs.
My love of tits does not ever extend to giving people dysphoria.
#feminism

[slightlytaller]

In fear of sounding like Johnny, THAT is a new one.

[He was only aware of gender nonconformity because of his swap out with Alexandria, but the exact terms regarding transgender subjects weren't something he studied over much.

2004 was not an easy time to be anything other than a cisgender heterosexual either-- moreso than the 80s, but he didn't have the direct perspective of twenty years in the future.]

I mean, I get the basic idea, but it's not something I knew well on my Earth.

And now my head hurts because of Other Reasons.

[He needed to shift gears and directly search Alexandria's knowledge, and that level of switching wasn't simple for his brain. ]

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah, it was all new to me back in 2018 and if it weren't for this really cute twink I dated for a bit I wouldn't know shit either.
Oh shit, wait, you having a gender revelation?
You need some time to think about stuff?

[slightlytaller]

I've been having it since I got back to myself, but I didn't want to interrupt your breakdown with mine.

🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥

[hauntedsavior]

Ah fuck.

Well. I'm doing a little better. If you wanna trade breakdowns.

[slightlytaller]

Your's is infinitely more valid.

Mine is the result of a lot of encyclopedia-style knowledge without real world examples. I have a lot of words or a lot of concepts, but nothing to connect them with.

I'm just fine. 🙃


[The Lord Professor, however, was using emojis. He never used emojis. ]

==> private;

[hauntedsavior]

Bitch, you're using emoji.
Let me know what you need from me. I can put the concepts into practice for you if you want.

==> private;

[slightlytaller]

Bitch.

Why didn't you tell me that there were other options?

[hauntedsavior]

Because it's not very chill of me to diagnose other people with gender and we never really had it come up in any of our conversations.
What options are you looking at?

[slightlytaller]

I don't know enough of anything to know anything.

I know that everything I do in London is a very well thought out Act because my peers are dicks.

Not the teaching. The suits, the distance. I learned useful ways to incorporate the cigarettes, but it's not a habit I would have picked up.

And now I realize thanks to That Jackass that Gender =/= Anatomy and can be in many ways brought down to Playing A Role.

Acting.

Anna. I didn't know this was a game that could be opted out of.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah.

I didn't realize that either, really. Not until Astin.
But when I met them and realized that they were just being who they were and, like...
It didn't matter whether they fit neatly into the "girl" box or the "boy" box, and they were just happy the way they were, that's kind of when it started making sense to me.

And, like, I talked with Kainé about this a little last year, but I don't think I'm all the way a girl either? Or, like, I think I'm still a girl but it's more complicated than that.
It's hard, you know? I don't totally understand it. I don't understand myself. Not all the time.
But... yeah. Society says that there's only two choices, but there's as many choices as you want there to be.
Find something that works for you. There's probably a word for it, too, no matter how specific it is.

[slightlytaller]

Right now I feel like I'm on my Mac searching through the programs to uninstall 'Gender'.

I'm 31, this is so annoying.

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah. That's kind of the worst part of it.
Spending time recognizing that "no thanks" has been an option for years that you just had to, like, scroll down a little further to see.

But it's never too late to figure it out, yeah?
So what are you thinking? Girl? Somewhere in the middle? No gender at all?

[slightlytaller]

Can I just pick 'too tired to deal with this' for now?

This has been. A lot.

[hauntedsavior]

Honestly, yeah, I think that's valid.
You can put a snooze button on your gender until you're ready to look at it deeper.
God fucking knows I am.
Sorry I never clued you in sooner.

[slightlytaller]

It's not your fault. I didn't even know it was an option.

You can be Girl and Something Else. I'll be Boy but Not, and we can figure it out later.

Glad to know that snooze button is an option. Maybe I'll leave the house in sweat pants now.

[hauntedsavior]

Girl++ feels closer, but I've never even tried putting a name to it until right now and that's just a stupid programming joke anyway.
Boy but Not is nice. I've heard "demiboy" for stuff like that. Where you're, like, sort of a boy but only partly.

[slightlytaller]

I don't know programming language to that degree but it sounds a lot like New Game +

I'm not going to deal with categorizing for now. Gender is going on Sleep Mode for now, it takes up too much bandwidth.

[hauntedsavior]

It means "girl plus one", but I like the New Game+ idea.
Like I beat the final boss of gender and decided to come back for another go with all my experience and cool magic spells.

We'll figure it out later, when you take it off snooze.
Just hit me up. I'll come over with whatever you need from me. Soup or booze or whatever.

[slightlytaller]

You absolutely did beat the boss, thats how you can stand all the bullshit here.

I'll report back when there's another system update. In the meanwhile, I rather want to see how having that process on hold even works.

You have no idea how much I've been doing a grand stage play for the last decade. It'll be nice to go backstage.

[hauntedsavior]

I don't have any idea, no, but I'm really excited to see what comes of it.
Congratulations on getting closer to some kind of answer.

Just know that you're allowed to get it wrong, too. If you try something out and it doesn't feel right, that's okay.

[slightlytaller]

In fairnrss to you, I think only three people know and none of them are here.

...I feel like I can relax a little, for the first time in a long time. Thanks for the pep talk.