Aelin Lovelace

So, I happened upon my posts regarding my father raising me as male while looking for something entirely different. I re-read what I said at the time, years ago, and there is something that stuck out at me. I don't know if I didn't realize how bad it was at the time, or if I was simply in denial, or if I misunderstood the terminology, but here goes.

I said I did not experience body dysphoria. In fact, I do. I have severe PCOS; my diagnosing endocrinologist said I was one of the most severe cases she had seen in her 20+ years of practice and asked for my consent to have her student come in so she could describe what to look for. I agreed, because I know from having multiple medical folk in my family that you gain more information when the doctors are speaking to other doctors or medical students. It was enlightening, and I learned things about PCOS that I likely would not have come across otherwise.

( Lots of gender related thoughts and shit, also this is long as fuck, so be warned )

This entry was originally posted at http://nonny.dreamwidth.org/552266.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

C&P from FB because I wrote a post nearly as long as I would've here.

We're in a bad state right now. We had been getting $700/mo in rent assistance, and we abruptly found out that it was canceled. On Scott's income alone, we run $200 over budget, and that's only bills, and it doesn't count household necessities like shampoo, toilet paper, menstrual supplies... cat food and litter...
We are desperate. I don't know how to pay rent, and our housing is at risk, plus our other utilities. I am terrified, and I do not know how we are going to make it through the next few months until tax return hits and we can use that to pad things out a bit. I have made a lifelong habit of paying it forward, and if anyone is able to aid myself and my family in our time of need, I cannot put into words how grateful we would be. In addition, we have several rewards for those who might want to contribute and get a little something out of it. I've done Tarot readings for years, and I am offering multiple types. I am also offering the chance to have a minor or major Tuckerization (character named after you, or choice of name) for my forthcoming work. I am also offering personalized stories of 1k-10k words, including character names if desired, preferred tropes, and more; this will, of course, require discussion.

Scott, who has been doing chainmail for 20+ years, is offering several types of jewelry (and a wallet chain that could almost double as a weapon) in hypo-allergenic titanium. I will be posting an update with a photo of my chainmail bikini top as an example of his work. He is extremely good at what he does.
If you can help in any way, please, it would be very appreciated. Any little bit helps. If you are unable to help, please share this post; it's public, so it can be. There is also more information about our situation in the GoFundMe introduction itself.

Thank you for whatever you are able to do. We all appreciate it, no matter how small or how large. Please do not feel bad if you are unable to contribute financially; this is a tight time of year for many people financially due to holidays, and I understand that well. Signal boosts and sharing are just as important as financial contributions. Again, thank you all, and I love you. Yes, even those I don't know personally who may have seen this shared. I love you for reading this, and for whatever you may do. Blessed be.

GoFundMe link is here.

I posted about this before, but I'm still short on money for my medication. I at this point need about $150 by the end of October. The money that my ex is sending me for medication will HAVE to be used as rent money, because my current partner only gets paid once a month, on the 15th, and because he didn't get out of training until the end of Sept, we are going to be short on money for rent in November. Thus, my med money is going to need to go to... having a place to live.

So, I put out the hat again. My PayPal address is mistressnonny@gmail.com. Any little bit is appreciated, as are signal boost. Love you guys! <3

So, I have raised about $220. THANK YOU EVERYONE. It turns out Morgan will be able to pay the $600 this month that I am supposed to get for medication costs, so that will... almost cover rent.

What I need to raise at this point is probably about $200, because it's not quite rent, plus I have medications that will need refilled... at the beginning of the month, and they add up. This is a MUCH easier goal to reach than the full $850. Again, any little bit helps, even a $5 or $10. Seriously. It adds up.

If you're able to help, awesome; if you're not please signal boost? Here is the following altered text:

nonnycat is in a bit of a pickle. She now has (almost enough) money to cover rent, but not enough for medication that she needs to control a chronic pain disorder. These medications, even with insurance, come up to about $200. If anybody is able to help, her paypal address is mistressnonny@gmail.com, and it will be greatly appreciated. Signal boosts are also appreciated!

At this point, I don't think there's anyone who hasn't heard about Robin Williams's death, ostensibly from suicide. Something that does bother me, perhaps more than the assholes that make comments about suicide being the coward's way out (and if this is something lurking in the back of your head, please read this essay, which is the most excellent I have read on the topic), is that the fact that Williams had bipolar disorder is all but forgotten.

I have bipolar disorder, type 2. This is generally considered the "less severe" type. I have no idea what type Robin Williams had, and it doesn't especially matter, since suicide is a risk factor for both types. I'm not entirely sure what I'm meaning to write here, but the rest is going to ( go under a cut with a general trigger warning for discussion of bipolar disorder, depression, suicide, coping mechanisms, related etc )

A perennial question amongst the writing community these days (particularly in post-Racefail SFF) is that of representation. It's heartening to see it as an active topic of discussion, but I think that something that gets lost sometimes is how important it is. I'm many things: pagan, polyamorous, (mostly) lesbian, mentally ill, on the Autism Spectrum, disabled, childfree, gender-questioning, among others. Let me tell you my story.

I grew up in a very Christian household, and a few years of my teen life were tarnished by my Dad getting into Christian Fundamentalism (of the "listening to rock music is signing an implicit contract with Satan for your soul" type, also "music in other languages is secretly witch spells being cast because you can't understand the language" -- let's just say my listening to Rammstein didn't go over well). I was pretty isolated as a child and teen because I was homeschooled and lucky to see another person my own age every six months. This background is important later.

( more behind the cut... tw for mentions of depression and suicidal feelings )

This entry was originally posted at http://nonny.dreamwidth.org/514044.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I posted a version of this on FB. I figured it probably deserved to be posted here, too, because I cannot be the only one having these issues. I'm revising it a bit because, well, Facebook isn't exactly meant for long posts... you can do them, but I doubt very many people click the "see more" link, if they even see it (at least, I've missed it more than once).

I think most folks know I have a Nook. I've, er, been a little evangelistic about it in the past. >_> Morgan and I were gifted with our first Nook Color back in 2008 when the rheumatoid arthritis that we both have hit Morgan's hands hard enough that they literally could not hold up a book to read anymore. I have similar problems with my hands, although I can read YA in print (... y'know, unless it's a doorstopper like some of the Harry Potter books), but any adult romance or SFF was right out. My own Nook Color followed suit, and I bought a Nook HD+ last year, which I'm starting to regret having purchased the 3yr warranty for.

However... for the past several months, I have been having issues when trying to purchase e-books. Often, BN.com will not let me log in (I'll put my username and password into the log-in, and it just... won't log me in). That's been happening since September or so, and I was able to get around that by going to the Nook-specific page on BN.com and logging in... but even that doesn't work half the time now. Something else that started in December is that clicking the "Buy Now" button will not bring up the pop up to purchase. I have confirmed this is not an error with my computer, as it has happened under multiple OSes and multiple browsers. I have run into about five unique types of errors, and I have friends who have been experiencing the same. BN support is useless; they have no idea and try to tell me it's my computer. DX

Some months ago, B&N updated so you can use the Google Play store (at least on the Nook HD+, I cannot say for the other devices) which includes the Kindle app. (ETA : I have just been informed this was a temporary glitch and you can no longer add the Kindle App on Nook unless it is rooted. Well, fuck me if I ever have to wipe and reinstall.) I have really avoided buying books from Amazon, because they are the elephant in the living room when it comes to digital book sales. I'll admit I also have an emotional attachment to B&N. My childhood was wretched in a lot of ways but all of my family are huge readers. Monthly trips to B&N or Borders were special, because while we normally made lists of books we wanted to check out and see if the library had (considering that we usually walked out with lists of 20+ books between the 4 of us... it was kinda necessary), but we also always got to pick out one book to take home. More if we chose to spend allowance money. So, I have happy fuzzy warm feelings with B&N.

But... the way they have handled e-books is truly abysmal. I mean, the site issues that mean I can't buy except from my device directly (and even that doesn't always work; I've gotten errors there, too, and if I want more than one book, finger typing the author name and title is annoying.), which is definitely a problem. Add to that, we had a BN membership for years, but they seem to offer less and less. There's I believe a discount on print books bought in stores, and there's free shipping for books bought online, but nothing for digital books. Unless I've missed it, there's nothing to incentivise readers to go into their stores and purchase digital books in store. Some of our favorite restaurants are up by our local B&N, and if they had something like that, we'd totally go in, use the store as a showroom, and buy online. We also almost always get stuff from the Starbucks in the B&N, too. We spent a not insignificant amount of time and money in the store, that they have completely lost. I mean, I understood why they didn't have anything like that when agency pricing was a thing, but now that it's gone, they're still sticking with the same old model. *headdesk*

(Edit for people who don't know what agency pricing is: this was a collusion between the Big 5 NY publishers and Apple to price fix books to prevent Amazon from discounting. If you really want some schadenfreude, look up the case, it's... look, I couldn't write fiction like this because nobody would believe people could be so stupid. All the pubs settled, and there have been many discounts, but Amazon still has an average lower price and more frequent discounts.)

The same old model is not going to work, and it doesn't seem like their stores are doing all that well, either, what with the plans for store closures, and that they are winnowing away books bit by bit. I don't go into a bookstore to buy kitschy knick-knacks, I go in to buy books. You know. These things.

Since I haven't been able to buy books on BN.com reliably for months, I've gone over to Amazon since I can read them with the Kindle app. I was shocked to find on a regular basis that books were $2-4 cheaper. I read a lot of YA, and BN would price them at $9.99-13.99 ... Amazon, $9.99 is the highest I've seen, with exceptions for niche stuff, and often they are lower. I see discounts a lot, and I don't mean necessarily the super-low 99c or $2.99, but $3 or so off the list price. $2-4 savings on a book is a really big deal when I often buy multiple books at a go.

What really struck me today though was Amazon's also-bought. I have heard good things about it from indie authors but I haven't really used it as a reader, not since I was a teen looking for new SFF. I went to pick up one book... and ended up picking up seven or eight, multiple by indie authors, because they popped up on the also-boughts (all steampunk, with the exception of a gothic romance set in Victorian England, which is close enough). BN's also-bought is... well. Flipping awful. I've had their also-bought pop up with books that aren't even in the same genre. (And I don't mean science fiction instead of fantasy, I mean stuff like religious non fiction when the book I was looking at was an urban fantasy demon hunter novel. WTF??)

I feel almost like I'm doing something "wrong" by "betraying" BN, but I know that's ridiculous. I've stuck with it a long way, probably longer than most people, and... well, WTF am I supposed to do if their site is so screwed up that I can't actually buy the book. I'm not going rah-rah Amazon, because I do have concerns about monopolies, but at the same time, their customer experience is a hell of a lot better than I can say for B&N right now. And I save money on books, which means I can buy... more books... wait, what is this "savings account" that you speak of? >_>

Much <3 to anyone who managed to read through this novel of a post... lol (and yeah, I know, I know, it took me this long to figure it out...)

This entry was originally posted at http://nonny.dreamwidth.org/513234.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

At this rate, I'm going to need a filter for this. Although I realized it technically falls under health issues since those are a contributing factor.

So between chatting at LJ, DW, and a trans/queer group on Fetlife I trust, I've gotten some interesting feedback. Some of this I want to copy, but for confidentiality, I'll only post my replies.

A few trans women on Fet suggested that what I am going through sounds a lot like trans issues. I am not comfortable using the trans label, because essentially what I am dealing with is being raised as male, punished for presenting female or showing any interests in coded female things, went through a sort of variant on the trans puberty issues because I had untreated PCOS from 13-22-ish. To bring numbers into it (not exact), cis women have testosterone levels around 80. Mine was close to 300. Cis male T numbers are in the 200-900 range (roughly). So, I was WAY WAY WAY above normal levels, and it has had permanent side effects. I mentioned previously about being misgendered; upon further thought, it happens more than I think. I have just learned to "pass", for lack of a better word, with clothing that shows off my cleavage. If I wear anything baggy? People assume I'm male. If I'm on the phone and don't use my "phone voice"? Same thing.

One trans person put it as, even though I was not assigned male as birth (AMAB), I was assigned male in childhood, and that has a massive effect. I'm just starting to realize how much so. She suggested that as terminology; another trans woman friend suggested "raised male against my will". I also like the suggestion of "genderfluid genderqueer woman", although that leaves out the childhood aspect. I think all fit, and I'm sorta weighing which is likely to be more acceptable. I am definitely not comfortable identifying as trans, although the umbrella term of trans* might be a possibility (since I believe it includes genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, agender, non-binary, gender neutral, gender non-conforming, etc, under that label). Thoughts? (Esp appreciated from trans friends.)

( TW: child abuse, transphobia, sexism/misogyny, gaslighting, my dad being a total sexist douchecanoe, mention of suicidal ideation -- let's hope the cut works this time )

It's kinda amazing, though, how so much stuff I had accepted as "normal" just sticks out now. Like, WTF Dad, seriously? I'm almost 30, and it's taken me this long to figure it out.

Something someone mentioned in the thread, too, was that my previous endo had wanted to put me on spironolactone, which is an anti-androgen. Since, at the time, my med schedule would have made that difficult (my endo said that the 2 pills needed to be taken strictly twice a day, and that did not work with all my other meds being 3x a day), I didn't go through with it. But what the trans woman mentioned was that it could be, in my case, be considered HRT -- and that sorta fits. Because even though PCOS is something that plenty of cis women deal with, that with the combination of my childhood... it feels like more than another med to take, it feels like reclaiming my gender. It feels important. And more than words can really say. I'm not sure it would be the same if I hadn't been raised male, but with that factor, it feels... different, and important, and an act of strength and reclaiming/rediscovering who I am.

So, I'm not quite sure where to define myself yet. That's still a work in progress. But I'm making a lot of headway in realizing the depth of abuse that was done to me, and I'm seriously thinking I need to find a trans-friendly, abuse-specialized therapist, because the two are intertwined so much.

That is the current update on Nonny and her explorations of gender. :P Any thoughts or comments much appreciated. :) (Also, as it has been brought up, if folks have resources for femme as gender, I would be curious to see those, as it has also been suggested to me by a few people. :)

Part of me, though, is still feeling like I'm just doing this to be attention seeking and looking for a Speshul Snoflayke label... with my anxiety, I suspect that's something I'll deal with for awhile. Logically, I know there will be people who will roll my eyes at me and consider me that way, but I think it is more important to work through these issues, to whatever conclusion I come to, than try to keep burying it. I've been trying that for nearly 30 years and it hasn't worked, so evidently, there is a problem there.

So, the local salon I go to had a 20% off sale for anything done as a celebration for the snowstorm from hell being over. Since I had been meaning to get my hair done anyway, I went ahead and did it. My hair was supposed to come out fire engine red, which it did not, but my hair does weird things with color, and I love this color anyway so it's not a huge deal.

THERE BE PHOTOS INCOMING.

Also: Bonus picture of husband-creature, who finally got around to dying his hair blue like he has been wanting for the past ten years or so. Woot!

Drake helped me out with the photos, which were taken on his Motorola Xoom tablet. I'm rather impressed, as they grabbed better pictures than my camera (which is admittedly ancient) and also, he managed to get the pictures at the exact angle I like. I've had very skilled photographers not be able to do this correctly. Also, I normally get 1-2 usable pictures out of a batch, and I have about a dozen here.

I don't think he has realized how dangerous this is, because now every time I want to do pictures, I will be yoinking him. >_>

( PHOTO SPAM )