No, really, according to comments I recently read the GQ community oppresses the cisgendered world (aka, most of us-people whose sex and gender are congruent by birth). Why? Because they get to choose what they are day by day, they’re more special than the rest of us!

As a sexual health specialist (in training, of course), I can’t help but find the very core of all this debate ridiculous. People are born with a sex (mostly binary being a case of X and Y chromosomes), gender (a spectrum, not a binary) develops over time. It doesn’t even settle in as something that’s permanent for most people before five or six. Plenty of little boys will say they’re going to be mommies, little girls daddies, and change their minds later. And for some people it doesn’t ever become a solid thing. That’s not a choice someone makes, it’s who they are. Gender is a fluid concept that stems from inside the individual. The reason for that we can debate infinitely, but at the end of the day it’s internal and it’s something that isn’t chosen, it just is what it is.

Most people are cis, and good for them, they’ll have a much easier time of it. Some people aren’t, and those people get the short end of the stick societally – especially if their sex doesn’t fit their apparent gender. Intersexuality and gender dysphoria are not readily accepted by most, especially from the cisgender world. In no way does being genderqueer oppress someone cis because they get to “make a choice” on their gender, they don’t have that kind of power. The cisgender world does have that kind of power, and it uses it violently. Just as people have been assaulted for sexual orientation they’ve been assaulted for their gender orientation – even the medical community has been guilty of many a malpractice related to intersexuality, “correcting” genitals that had no actual problems besides being atypical under the guise of mortal danger.

Nobody was ever murdered for being cisgender. That’s not true for everyone else, and to say the former is oppressed by the latter is an exercise in painful ignorance at the absolute best, silent compliance with the oppression that DOES go on now.

Reframe the argument as “bisexuals are oppressing straights because by being bisexual they get to make a choice” and it’s obvious just how ridiculous it is to everyone who wasn’t enraged/frightened by Dragon Age II’s universal love interest system. But because of social ignorance toward gender some people actually think this is an okay argument to make. They still call transgendered folks liars, still attack people who don’t fit into their binary mold, or even claim to be under attack.

They’re wrong, and I pray society finally begins to move on. There are cultures who’ve had third genders for a thousand years now, and yet we can’t manage to find our way there. But we’ll be better people for it once we do.

But I have posted every day for a year, no matter what else happened, and it’s time for a little break. Also, I’m probably done dailyposting. It’s been an interesting experiment, and I think some good has come out of it. And also some crap!

What I’ve learned is that quality definitely means more than quantity, even on the internet, but quality also requires quantity. Most of it just shouldn’t be used in public.

In the process of getting my physical, I came to realize just how much of a worrier I am. I’m pretty sure this is the same thing that happens to everyone, though. You go in, you get poked and prodded, and suddenly your brain goes into overdrive.

“Oh god, I’m scared of the test results!”

Whether or not there’s any reason to be, and more importantly, as if the test results have anything to do with things. They’re only and indicator of what’s already happening! But the human mind wants to  assign blame for what hasn’t happened and may not ever happen. “Oh god I MUST HAVE THE AIDS!” it says for absolutely no reason. “My cholesterol is going to be sky high! I’m a walking heart attack!” follows. “Cancer! I have testicular cancer!”

It never goes to simple things, like “I could lose a little weight” or “Well, my cholesterol is a touch high, but I’ve been changing how I eat so that’s going down anyway.” It’s always a worst case scenario, thinking about that tiny, tiny lump that you know biologically belongs there anyway, or that one questionable encounter with that one questionable girl. Odds be damned, it’s always something terrible that you never thought of before that you MUST have now.

It’s a three day wait for “Oh god. The doctor calls with results thursday, but it’s not going to be the “You’re fine!”, it’s going to be the “I need you to come down to my office” because Arizona law mandates positive AIDS test results be delivered in person!”

Intellectually I’m entirely aware that ANY results are a benefit to me. I’m sure most people are when they get their tests. If against all odds I was a walking heart attack with AIDS and testicular cancer I’d be better off knowing so I could treat it. Instead, my primate brain says “ook ook you’ll live forever if you don’t know ook ook!”, not “Hey, that’s good, your heart won’t explode and shower HIV on everyone around you since you can treat the problem!”

Stupid primate brain.

Plum sake is wonderful, at least when you buy a good one that’s made with good extract, and doesn’t say “serve warm.” (In case you didn’t know, if a sake says to serve it warm, the odds are it’s crap.)

Hana-Kohaku plum sake makes me happy today.

Setting up a MUSH in this day and age is hard. Especially for someone who’s codetarded like me. Once in a while I can modify variables, I can even tweak PHP well enough, but creating new code, especially on a base I’m unfamiliar with…PennMUSH is kicking my ass. My usual “learn as I go” techniques may not apply here.

On the other hand, it DOES function on a basic level, and once I start making some rooms, it’ll be playable. Kind of.

So…good start?

Yep, it’s over for me. I’m signing the FOREVER ALONE card.

I’m learning Linux or Rhost/PHP purely because it’ll ease the upcoming MUSH I’m planning to start. I’ll likely use a windows native codebase rather than muck about with a separate linux install seeing as I’ve got no money whatsoever, but later if I can’t find a convenient “run it from my main box” version of PennMUSH, it’s bound to happen.

Telnet roleplay and Linux alone speak volumes of ones hygienic habits. But to learn one purely for the other, that’s a full on resignation from humanity isn’t it? Then again, I’m still working on stand-up comedy and a writing career. Nothing about me says “intends to work closely with and spend company in the time of other human beings.”

Not that I knew it before I left. I just threw on the same thing I always wear, a t-shirt and jeans. Summer, winter, whatever. I walk across campus, thinking “It’s awfully chilly today. Must be down in the 60s or 50s with everyone so bundled up.” Hell, people here in Phoenix put on jackets in the 70s sometimes.

But I have a cup of harden the fuck up and walk across campus, taking care of my business on the other end. Back to class, once more across campus.

“Hey, what’s with the broken glass on the ground? So not cool! Wait…that’s ice.”

Out comes my phone, I refresh the weather.

39 degrees.

39 degrees and I’m sauntering about in my summer clothes complaining it’s chilly, while everyone else is huddled up, shivering like a caffeinated chihuahua.

I guess I really am Canadian when you get down to it.

Do you remember that warning about nightmares? This is what it was, and I fear that it’s inevitable. For your own sanity, don’t read this. I’m tempted to take a Dremel to my subconscious for it. I’m serious. It’s really “What the FUCK?” bad. Just think, as bad as it seems reading it, imagine having witnessed it in your brainspaces. I did. My occipital lobe was working overtime on this one.

I have seen the end of the world. It was brought about by the internet. Both the vision and the events. Well, maybe. The events bound to happen, the internet just facilitates.

Reborn dolls, newborn sized, play a factor, by the way. But you probably knew that. And the good folks at BME. Or maybe the unbirthing fetishists.

Oh, and so is synthetic oxytocin. Some of you already see where this is going. And for those of you that don’t, this (the reborn doll) is going into a uterus for some reason. I don’t quite know why, but I know what happens.

It will be someone who wants to be pregnant forever, possibly, as a body modification. Or just loved the feeling so much they’ll try to trick their body into thinking it is. They might just want to give birth to their reborn doll to make it more real or just carry it forever, particularly if it’s a replacement for a lost child, or a tragic case of infertility leading into full blown fucking madness. It could even be a man making an extreme mod who wants to look pregnant who finds a doctor willing to do it just so it doesn’t turn into a back alley thing. And maybe it’s one of the unbirthing fetish crowd, keeping a representation of their favorite character up there, or maybe a former lover, or even employer.

For nine months (maybe more, maybe less, of course, but let’s estimate the natural level) someone will have a saline pouch inserted into her uterus. Much like the ones used for skin grafting placed under the skin, this one will have be reasonably easy to access. The implanter (enabler?) will probably just leave the intake tubing hanging down through the os to make it really, really easy to access, though cervical dilators and a long syringe are possible I suppose. There might be hormone therapy, constant doses of progesterone, just to facilitate that “there’s a pregnancy going on!” response in the body.

On a regular enough basis, water will be added until the uterus is stretched enough for the doll, at which point the pouch will be drained, oxytocin administered, and birthing induced. This COULD be done by cesarean, certainly, but what doctor would do it? Well, I guess the same one willing to do this, if there even is one. With a not so gentle push, lubrication, and effort, the reborn doll, newborn or premie sized I can only presume, will be shoved up and in.

I’m assuming headfirst followed by external cephalic rotation. Feet first would be a shockingly painful reverse breech I imagine and could involve tremendous amounts of cervical tearing. And the other way just means a breach on the way out if there’s a return trip, though no risk of an umbilical cord prolapse at least. Just rippin’ and tearin’.

I don’t know how long the actual “pregnancy” will last. Someone may keep it in there forever, someone nine months, someone may push right back out, simulation complete, particularly if the implantation was done via c-section.

What I do know is this. It will happen. It could be Octomom who does it. And whatever comes out of that vagina, be it by induced labor or by clawing its way out of a corpse after this person falls dead is going to be the vessel of Y’golonac. That part wasn’t in the dream, but really, what else COULD happen? I’m sure some of you insist on Cthulhu, but really, and that’s not his style, he’s not into possessing avatars anyway.

Why, you ask? Because we turn smart into stupid. It’s the ability of a gifted student to make himself look stupid after doing something smart that’s the greatest curse.

In the opposite of one of my grand eidetic memory moments, it took me two years to remember where I’d hidden something. In fact, I never remembered, I just happened to run across it. Two years after hiding something valuable to ensure the drunken sociopath roommate never found it and sold it, as he loved to do with SO many other things. Two years of relative certainty he had it, but frustration of being unable to find it.

In that two year span I could tell you my first memory in a reasonable detail, how I got a scar when I was four, learned that the sharper something is the less it hurts when I was three, and about how much I hated a grey shirt I had as a kid, because the sleeves were really tight and it was hard to get on.

But I couldn’t tell you where a single DVD went, because I hid that fucker for POSTERITY.

When I was 5, maybe six, I had the ENT works done. Tubes, adnoids, tonsils. I was in the hospital for what felt like a week. It actually was just a day, but my anesthesia addled brain sure didn’t know that (and I was never even TOLD until I was 25 and had my tonsils removed AGAIN that it was just a day).

I always wondered after other surgeries why I never had that one side effect that I just HATED from the first, a weird flavor stuck in my mouth. It was almost an aftertaste in how it persisted ethereally on my tongue. The flavor was kind of like strawberry, but chemically, and wrong, like a lollipop made from NutriSweet. Really awful, but I kept eating and drinking to keep the flavor away.

But with other surgeries after that and even into adulthood, it never happened again. I never really figured out why but always remembered. Sometimes if the air in the room is stale I’ll think back to it. But I never figured it out.

That is, until just this moment, as I sniffed my pizza; my tendency toward powerful, almost eidetic memory kicked in.

I sniffed the pizza I just made, thought about how it bugs me when people exhale on my food, or even sniff right over it versus wafting. Like when I was going in for surgery and they were putting a flavor-smell thing in the anesthetic gas. Or more specifically having me choose one. I didn’t want to pick or was indecisive, so they said “Okay, we’ll choose for you. They chose butterscotch and I said “ew no, butterscotch is gross” or something similar. “Well then you have to pick something yourself!”

“But I don’t wanna!”

“Well if you don’t it’s butterscotch.” The nurse picked up the little bottle and practically stuffed it in her nose, at least that’s how I saw it. “Nooo don’t sniff it!”

“She has to to make sure it hasn’t gone bad”, my mother says.

“But I don’t like people breathing on things. And butterscotch is gross.”

“Well if you don’t want butterscotch you have to pick”, the doctor tells me.

I huffed, I’m sure, but settled finally on a scent-flavor, one that I even had to endure the atrocity of a sniffing of by this strange woman, practically daring her boogers to leap to the bottle.

I picked strawberry.

Let us suppose that there is an omnipotent God. He has a plan. It’s enforced.

Full predestination.

If that’s true, why make people who aren’t the one true faith, who stay that way? It’s in his power to change, and he did it himself in the first place. Either his plan requires atheists and other people to help improve the world and they get the same ultimate treatment, or he’s just a dick. That would be the only reason to be all-powerful and create beings to do nothing but suffer (and cause suffering). Yes, you’re being a dick when you play The Sims.

But at the end of the day, I’m what God made me, even if that’s a voodoun.

Now let us predestination is not a factor. Let’s assume free will even. God is still omnipotent. God can make or unmake as he sees fit.

So why make or just not unmake everyone else, those that aren’t his flock? It gets back to the same issues. They’re needed and get equal treatment in the afterlife, or he’s a dick. Now the possibility is even raised that God is not omnipotent. He can’t do it.

Now personally, I prefer option one or three. Those are fair enough I figure, but they raise issues for the monotheistic faithful.

One means when you insult and attack people for their religion or lack thereof, you’re questioning God. Start leaving people to be who they are. It’s what God wants.

Three acknowledges that God is not all powerful, and shouldn’t be punishing people for other faiths. He may not even be the only one. Feel free to worship, but stop pushing, please, because clearly it shows there are other options.

Two just means God is a dick. A sadist torturing eternally for his own amusement. Not only a being not worth worshipping but worth rebelling against. One caring little more for followers than a Lovecraftian horror. Cthulhu or Y’golonac effectively. In that case, find a new deity I’d suggest. You worship not from love but fear, and I’m pretty sure that falls under lip service rules.

There’s always option four of God isn’t paying attention and has more to care about. So why should you? Afterall, he made the pagans, buddhists, hindi, atheists, and even satanists. Or doesn’t care enough to change them.

So what’s this all mean? Well, stop worrying about God for one. Enjoy your life, be a decent person because it’s just what you’d want other people to do.

Or go find one with less habits toward megalomania. But even then try to one or more relaxed deities, instead of a cosmic hardass. See above if you’re wondering why.

And of course, stop trying to convert me. See above for why.

But most importantly, don’t be an asshole in the name of God. He probably doesn’t want you you; if it turns out he does, it’s likely a case of option two anyway.