Leg Day, Arm Toning, 30 Day Abs Challenge, At Home Glutes Workout…….
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Leg Day, Arm Toning, 30 Day Abs Challenge, At Home Glutes Workout…….

You ever randomly decide at 3 am that you are gonna turn your life around so you decide to spend hours scrolling Pinterest and YouTube, looking for the fastest workouts to give you the best body possible? But you start to notice this weird trend where every workout towards women focuses on one specific part of the body. Becoming a blur of  “Get toned arms in 15 minutes” or “Build the butt of your dreams in 1 Week!” or “Perfectly Sculpted Abs in 30 days.” Instead of focusing on health, it seems like these fitness influencers and apps promote that our body is a collection of broken parts, needing to be fixed. This message is everywhere you look, constantly pointing out the flaws women need to fix.

I only remembered this trend when reading Young’s essay about throwing like a girl. But more specifically, she talks about a phenomenon called “discontinuous unity” that perfectly captures this feeling. Basically, it’s the idea that women are often taught to move their bodies in a disconnected way, not as one fluid, whole unit. Her example is throwing a ball. She points out that a girl often throws using just her arm, while the rest of her body stays pretty still. A boy, on the other hand, usually puts his whole body into it by twisting his torso, moving his feet, and using what Young calls his “total motorium” to get the job done. This creates a weird feeling where the part of your body doing the work feels totally separate from the parts that are just… hanging out. It’s like your arm is on a mission, but the rest of you isn’t even on the team.

Similar to this example, workout plans made for women that promote “abs challenges” or “leg day” basically train women to perform this mode of discontinuous unity. We are told we need to isolate parts of our body that just need a quick fix in order to get our perfect body. Young argues that this discontinuity comes from women being conditioned to experience their body as an object to be looked at, rather than a subject of action. These workouts focus on aesthetic goals of molding your butt, legs, arms, etc. to fit a certain beauty standard instead of improving the actual health and function of your body. It is just another way to push the idea that women must shape and decorate their bodies to visually please men. In contrast to workouts like dance or yoga, where the goal is to get your whole body moving in sync.

Looking back, this connection seems obvious, but it’s not something I could have noticed when I was 12 years old and hated the way I look. I gobbled up any of these workouts I could find, hoping that one could give me the perfect body that it promoted. Even though I stopped participating in them myself,  there are still many young girls doing the exact same thing. It makes me wonder if the cycle will always repeat itself with new, unaware girls who may never read Young’s essay in eight years to connect the dots.

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Binder Blues

My ribs hurt as I am typing this blog post. Don’t worry, I’m fine, my current binder is just a bit too small for me. I try to only wear it two times a week, generally, and for less than six hours or so at a time. It’s not ideal, but I’m making it work until I am able to get a new one.

Now, why haven’t I gotten a new one yet? Well, let me introduce you to what it is like buying a binder as a mid-to-plus-sized disabled person.

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The Thing They Don’t Tell You About College

Docile bodies are individuals who have been trained to be obedient an useful to common society. For most people, the act of attending school and reciting the pledge of allegiance puts us in this category; most of my life before college was consistent to a comfy routine of school, hanging out with friends, and enjoying the company of family. This is my second year of college, my freshman year was good! I was adjusting to college life pretty well, but I started noticing things, it had been a while since I had contact with any of my friends from before I left, I relied less and less on my family. I had been trained into the routine of seeing these people everyday for my first 18 years of life, and now I was forced out of that routine of what had became normality for me. It was weird and honestly uncomfortable for me. I know they say that its apart of growing up, but what if it doesn’t have to be? At least, I thought that way; for most of my life I felt like people would come into my life, and then some I had known for years just disappear. It didn’t feel like I had control over who I wanted to have in it; I think over the summer I had came to the realization that life is just like a revolving door, in order for some to enter a few have to leave… I think eventually most if not all of my closest friends from high school will all leave that revolving door, before I might’ve tried to stop it from revolving, but now I might be ready to let go of that. I mean I’ve met some really amazing people already in this new chapter of my life, and I can’t wait to meet more; I feel like most can relate to this, you have this routine for most of your early life and to see the people you remember fade away as you get older is a tough. Eventually we get out of the routine docile bodies puts us in, I mean I haven’t said the pledge of allegiance since high school!

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Life After Diagnosis

Phenomenology is the study of first-person experiences and sensations that give life more meaning. When we were discussing this topic in class I immediately thought about how much my experience and perspective on my life shifted after my adult autism diagnosis. After the diagnosis I began to look back at my life and pick out moments and traits that, in hindsight made so much sense with me being autistic. But before the diagnosis, were just a confused, muddled mess. I remember thinking back on basically every interaction I had ever had and wondering if I would have reacted differently had I known. They say ignorance is bliss, but in all reality the not knowing led me to become a traumatized, jaded individual. The world isn’t built for autistic folk, and imagine going about your life wondering why you are facing barriers and roadblocks at every turn and not even knowing why. It messes with your sense of self and you begin to think something is deeply wrong with you. I am still having to unlearn that one. Yay for therapy!

Something that you do when you spend your whole life not knowing you’re autistic, is you get really good at masking. I was able to play the part semi-well and be sociable, friendly, and well-mannered. And when I got older I became even better. But when you learn that you are autistic, that mask begins to crack. It crumbles away and you are left with a messy, soupy, puddle of sensory issues, lack of social awareness, and fixations. It’s extremely common for adults who are diagnosed with autism to regress in a lot of their skills once they find out about their diagnosis. After holding themselves together by the seat of their pants their whole lives, their whole world is turned topsy turvy. This is what happened to me. It’s taken me years to reacclimate to my new way of perceiving the world, and myself. Slowly I’ve built myself back up and created a new, stronger identity. Diagnosis saved my life.

Truly Unruly Body (Medical Trauma)
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Truly Unruly Body (Medical Trauma)

Phenomenology this is the theory is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. In simple terms is each person can experience the same thing but due to their past have a completely different view of this experience. For me this help me better understand my own unruly body, I personally have been sick since birth I had rare disease that caused my main vein to my liver to fail as a baby in turn cause me to need a liver transplant at only 2 years old, due to this I was often sick and in and out of the hospital for many different things. With this being stated I have a lot of medical trauma that yes what they did was for the best but as a child you do not completely understand why they are doing the things to your body that hurt or our uncomfortable. This trauma I never really thought was there until I started to go to therapy and learn more about the body and mind through going back to school.

Sex a very common thing for most couples to engage in I personally have been with someone for many years but have never taken that step even though there is a desire to do so. Why? Well through this concept of Phenomenology and going to therapy it has helped me see that because of my medical trauma my body react to physical touch very negatively. I will tense up from head to toe and shut down internally this occurs suddenly and is completely out my control my body take control. I used to tense up if anyone tried to hug me as a child through teenage years due to this trauma I have been able to work through that but still struggle with physical touch outside of a hug. It is very frustrated has caused friction between me and my partner, but they have stayed by myside through this. I hope that in future we can take the next step in our relationship, and my body can learn to accept and trust physical touch again.

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Appalachian Redshift

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cosmic_Redshift_(noirlab2401d).tiff “Redshift is the term used to describe the stretching of wavelengths of the light from an object as a result of the expansion of the Universe; the greater the object’s distance, the greater the redshift.” – Cosmic redshift reminds me of political redshift, watching Appalachia drift further and further away.

My roommate watched Harlan County, USA for a class the other day and it reminded me of something I’ve thought about before – the rural working class of Appalachia is largely responsible for the labor movement and the progress it produced and has now almost entirely shifted heavily right-wing. Appalachia has almost universally shifted from a strong Democratic to a Republican stronghold.

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The Substance, Horror, and Ugliness Politics

Illustration by me of a vial of “Activator” from the film The Substance with small green hand prints.

The Substance is easily my favorite horror film to come out this year, and probably my favorite film regardless of genre to come out of 2024. It executes common horror tropes beautifully while offering a combination of fresh new ideas that haven’t felt explored in the specific way Coralie Fargeat, the director, addresses them. The film’s plot and general message are also incredibly relevant to politics of Desire and how physical attractiveness is measured among different groups of people.

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Transsexual Gender Euphoria

(image description: an illustration of a person with a teal, cactus-like spiky head between two islands on a black ocean against a pink sky. the border, framed in wavy spiked lines, says “GOD’S FAVORITE TRANSSEXUAL” in black bubbly text on a yellow background.
this art belongs to Leo Fox, from his trans comic series Boy Island! you can get this image as a sticker at https://store.silversprocket.net/products/gods-favorite-transexual-by-leo-fox :] )

Since before I started medical transition over a year and a half ago, gaining testosterone-linked physical traits through HRT has been a goal of mine. And recently having the ability to “pass” as cisgender has been such a wild ride in a very gender-affirming way (though I still haven’t gotten used to times when I am perceived and treated as cis male in a social context, such as getting pulled in for a strong dap up after finishing a group project). 

One thing that I have always been excited about was my “passability” opening up new avenues for me to explore queering my gender presentation. There was always something appealing to me about presenting physically masculine with more body hair and a deeper voice while having the freedom to wear whatever I wanted, like skirts with boots, and feeling confident wearing tight shirts without getting dysphoric about my chest. The physical traits I display are also helpful with decoding patterns of comportment and taking up space that I grew up socialized into as a “girl,” because now instead of fearing gender dysphoria from expressing emotions and being particular about the way my body moves, I feel like I am actively participating in throwing off binary norms, rather than taking up as much space as possible and acting closed off and invulnerable as embodied “masculine” stereotypes often go. 

I recognize of course that presenting my gender the queer way I do is something that I have a privilege to do, as I am able to safely be out as transmasculine; I believe not every single trans person should be required to revolutionize trans embodiment and destroy gender norms whenever they can possibly be perceived. No one should be held to that standard, and critiquing those who can find safety within the gender binary is unproductive to the goal of universally embracing trans embodiments.

I believe my medical transition and performed gender, and the euphoria I experience in my trans body, demonstrate Susan Stone’s theory on the transsexual body’s ability to “generate new and unpredictable dissonances which implicate entire spectra of desire” (“The ‘Empire’ Strikes Back”). Her and Judith Butler’s description of the erotic dissonance of the butch lesbian is something I find strong connection to, especially after coming back around to identifying as a lesbian in how inherently queer and “everyone-but-cis-masculinities” my sexuality has been throughout my 8 years of being out. Butch identity and my transmasculine body just feel like they go hand in hand now, and doing what I call “coming home to lesbianism” has been such a euphoric experience for me recently, one that I feel comfortable describing as transsexual gender euphoria.

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Embodiment in the Digital Age

A quick self-portrait doodle I did today that describes my feelings regarding the ever-increasing presence tech has in our lives.

A nih.gov article from 2013 states that an ideal amount of screen time for the average adult should be no more than 2 hours per day. That figure just 11 years later feels completely impossible to achieve, almost like a funny joke. I could hit those 2 hours, 4 times over just working on one school assignment. I have a much more robust and stable social circle online compared to any friendships I’ve managed to foster in real life. My new car’s speedometer and tacometer are both on a digital screen. I can’t even lower my daily screen time when I’m driving. Something about that is kind of terrifying to me.

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Trans and a (former) Dancer

I miss ballet. I miss Irish dance. I miss being comfortable moving my body. The best I felt was when I danced like no one was watching which is pretty silly, but true. I used to love the feeling of having a good practice. I was in such a comfortable environment and space I had grown up with. Now it’s all changed. There’s no way for me to go back to how it was completely but I still wish to experience the joy that dancing gave me. I feel like a light has gone out in my heart and I don’t know how to get it back. If I did kind of know, I am too scared to act on it. I wish there was a space to dance for people like me.