~somasis/notesnotes and other short-form writings.Kylie McClainkylie@somas.ishttps://somas.is/2023-06-02T21:25:40Ztransgender ghostssometimes your history is just one life haunting anotherhttps://somas.is/note-tgirl-ghosts.html2021-11-22T00:00:00+00:002021-11-27T18:58:48+00:00
<section id="preamble" aria-label="Preamble"><div class="open-block lead"><div class="content"><p>Recently I studied an exerpt from <em>Dialectic of Enlightenment</em>, by Max Horkheimer and Theodor
Adorno in class, and recalled something from a past transgender history class. This is adapted
from a writing for that class that I feel particularly good about.</p></div></div>
<hr>
<p>I will draw some comparisons that may appear crude on the surface, because the comparison between
someone’s transition and their death has always been a violent one, but that’s the point I’m getting at.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I can’t at the moment find the exact sources which I first read about this, so I’ll
be using a source that is not where I actually first read this. I’ll also draw on my own anecdotal
experience.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_a_past_life_haunting_the_present">a past life haunting the present</h2><p>In "On The Theory of Ghosts", Sigmund Freud’s theory of the belief in ghosts is discussed:</p>
<div class="quote-block"><blockquote><p>At the stages of humanity’s development when death still appeared as a direct continuation of life,
the abandonment of the living in death seemed necessarily like a betrayal, and even in enlightened
times the old belief is not quite extinguished. […]</p>
<p>[…] It might almost be said that the concept of human life itself, as the unity of a person’s
history, has become invalid: the individual’s life […] has lost all continuity between conscious
remembrance and involuntary memory […] Individuals are reduced to a mere succession of
instantaneous presents, which leave behind no trace, or rather, the trace of […] something
irrational, superfluous, utterly obsolete.</p><footer>— <cite>On The Theory of Ghosts, Dialectic of Enlightenment</cite></footer></blockquote></div>
<p>The past is viewed with contempt and is liable to be suspect. As seen plenty with current online
toxic transphobic discussions, with transphobes insisting they can always tell if someone’s trans by
their appearance, their jawline, voice, what have you, this isn’t really something hard to draw
connection between. There’s plenty of things to point to as examples of this, and I’m not really
going to belabor an explanation of how people view trans people’s lives prior to transitioning with
contempt and a discomfort, if not for sake of post length then for my own emotional sanctity.</p>
<p>This shows through in how, until maybe just the past six years or so, often a point of advice among
cis people when it came to interacting with transgender people, there would often be advice to not
ask about someone’s backstory, or to see baby pictures, or anything like that. Obviously, this is
not something cis people think to ask often of other cis people, because they are questions which
are grounded in an expectation that a trans person’s history is something which conflicts with their
current appearance and current interpretation by the asker. The questions are marked with the
expectation of a contradiction and following, a revealing of someone’s visible history; the
expansion of the succession of presents with no trace into a contrast which demonstrates quite
clearly, a progression.</p>
<p>I had to show my mom a few timelines of the appearances of trans women who took hormones to convince
her I’d look "normal" at the "end" of all of her pain. The perceived gender of the past or the
current (pre/non)-medical transition is viewed with truth, as is the past perceptions; the true
gender of the present is liable to be suspect.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_forget_yourself_girl">forget yourself, girl</h2><p>The text continues…</p>
<div class="quote-block"><blockquote><p>The threateningly well-meaning advice given to emigrants that they should forget the past because
it cannot be transplanted, that they should write off their prehistory and start an entirely new
life, merely inflicts verbally on the spectral intruders the violence they have long learned to do
to themselves. They repress history in themselves and others, out of fear that it might remind
them of the disintegration of their own lives, a disintegration which itself consists largely in
the repression of history.</p></blockquote></div>
<p>Here I’ll be citing a book chapter, <a href="https://www.umass.edu/stonewall/sites/default/files/Infoforandabout/transpeople/genny_beemyn_transgender_history_in_the_united_states.pdf">Transgender History in the United States</a>,
by Genny Beemyn.</p>
<p>The fact that Adorno was writing this section during his time in California after escaping Nazi
Germany is obviously not something I desire to co-opt or appropriate by comparison, but this
"threateningly well-meaning advice" is not unique to people who have emigrated, which I don’t think
is controversial to point out.</p>
<p>I say this because not too long ago (the 1960s-1980s), transsexual people were explicitly encouraged
by physicians and medical professionals to hide and lie about their past. They were told to invent a
childhood matching their post-transition gender, sever ties with old friends and make new friends
with people who didn’t know them prior to transition, change jobs, even move to another city to
avoid the possibility of being outed.</p>
<div class="quote-block"><blockquote><p>Given the extreme social stigma against transsexual people, many did not need much encouragement to
'disappear' if they could.</p><footer>— <cite>"The Post-Christine Era", page 18, Transgender History in the United States, Genny Beemyn</cite></footer></blockquote></div>
<p>And I say not too long ago, but this is not a long ago thing. I will go back to the baby pictures
and the questions about childhood: the way transphobia from the cis inquirer is avoided in lieu of
their actual understanding and acceptance of a transgender person’s history, is through the trans
person’s forgetting and a repression of their prehistory.</p>
<p>The comparison between the dead and the transgender person here is not simply that, because we also
see it in terms like "deadname" (a transgender person’s former name, if they changed it), or in the
way <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/opinion/sunday/gender-transition-death-grief.html">it’s not at all uncommon</a>
<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/07/i-love-my-trans-daughter-but-im-still-struggling/613786/">for parents to react</a>
<a href="https://www.justplainbeth.com/you-can-grieve-and-support-your-child/">to their child’s real gender identity</a>
<a href="https://www.sciendo.com/article/10.2478/genst-2020-0011">with a sense their actual child is dying</a>. Of course, even a term like deadname isn’t
meant literally–one can easily reject the idea that because they’ve come out, the old them is dead,
yet can still use the word "deadname" without having a problem with it.</p>
<p>I still get this sentiment on rare occasion in part because my own coming out coincided with moving
off to college, and because I changed my name after moving up here; if your mom thinks you became
much more argumentative when you moved away, imagine how curious it must be to be accused of being
more argumentative because you’re no longer pretending to identify to her or anyone else as a man.</p>
<p>Even recounting that, I can see that I myself even did this: move to another city to avoid the
possibility of being outed, developing new friendships, and so on, though no one told me to do that.
A clean slate. The person who the past gender used to inhabit is viewed as a ghost, because society
wishes not to interact with or give an accepted continuity to their life through a time of
transition–they repress history in themselves in fear that disintegration will cause a new
disintegration.</p></section>
music library maintenanceI have lots of music and I am a cheapskate who will never buy a new hard drivehttps://somas.is/note-beets-lossless-and-lossy.html2021-05-21T00:00:00+00:002021-05-31T15:10:57+00:00
<section id="preamble" aria-label="Preamble"><p>I was talking with a friend a few days ago because they posted about how much space storing music
takes up, when I decided that I ought to write down how I do my music library’s organization.</p>
<p>Now, ideally this might not be that interesting, but I don’t have much storage space, and I don’t
wish to store lossless music on everything. I just don’t have the storage space across all my
devices.</p>
<div class="literal-block"><pre>somasis ~ ● ssh fort beet stats
Tracks: 11983
Total time: 4.9 weeks
Approximate total size: 329.7 GiB
Artists: 1964
Albums: 984
Album artists: 337</pre></div>
<p>What I can do, is store lossless in one place, and then store compressed copies everywhere else,
though. Here’s how I do that.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_first_you_take_up_a_lot_of_space_on_a_server">first you take up a lot of space on a server</h2><p>When I get my music, I store it in a directory on a server in my home. This directory is the
<code>source</code>, "/mnt/raid/library/audio/source".</p>
<div class="literal-block"><pre>somasis ~ ● ssh fort tree /mnt/raid/library/audio/source --dirsfirst -d -L 1
/mnt/raid/library/audio/source
|-- rips
| |-- Various Artists - Hot Wheels Turbo Racing (1999)
| |-- Various Artists - Inner City Sounds
| `-- Various Artists - Little Darla has a Treat for You, Volume 30 - Summer 2020
|-- stores-bandcamp
| |-- ATW - A Small Horse
| |-- ATW - Mares EP
| |-- Andrew Lang - Burnt Shades
| |-- Andrew Lang - From Before
| |-- Andrew Lang - Momentary Senses
| |-- Andrew Lang - Strangers EP
| |-- Karnaboy - Feathers Falling in Slow Motion
| `-- Men I Trust - Oncle Jazz
[...]</pre></div>
<p>And so on.</p>
<p>It is where all the things in the library originate from, in terms of import location.
Additionally, tracking details like if I ripped it from my CD collection/vinyl collection, or if
it was from Bandcamp, helps me to retrace my steps if I notice issues on a
<a href="https://musicbrainz.org">MusicBrainz</a> release I committed. Mainly, this allows for an incremental
import, using the
<a href="https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/v1.4.9/reference/config.html#incremental">corresponding
configuration options</a> in beets, meaning that it won’t import from any directories it has already
imported from in the past.</p>
<p>I have a simple <code>Makefile</code> for importing, which simply runs…</p>
<div class="listing-block"><pre class="highlight"><code class="language-makefile" data-lang="makefile">beet-import:
find /mnt/raid/library/audio/source \
-mindepth 2 \
-maxdepth 2 \
-type d \
-exec beet import -tc {} +</code></pre></div>
<p>Again, it’s using the <code>-{min,max}depth</code> so as to catch all the categorizing directories
("stores-*", "rips"), but nothing under them.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_actually_importing_the_music">actually importing the music</h2><p>When I get a new music release, I put it in the corresponding source directory, and run <code>make
beet-import</code>.</p>
<p>I run the interactive tagger, rather than let it do anything here automatic, and I run <code>beet
import -t</code>; so, using "timid" mode, to be even more pedantic. My goal is for beets to be the
source of truth when it comes to what my music library contains. If a single thing is linked to a
release other than what it actually is, it invalidates my trust in the accuracy of my entire
library’s tagging. Accuracy is important for me, as someone who has a lot of music and uses much
of it when <em>producing</em> more music. So, I run it in timid mode and validate the results myself.</p>
<p>The music is imported to "/mnt/raid/library/audio/lossless". I like to keep the directory mounted
over <code>sshfs</code>, so I can access it from "~/audio/lossless" on my laptop.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_converting_the_music">converting the music</h2><p>The relevant beets <code>config.yml</code> snippet:</p>
<div class="listing-block"><pre class="highlight"><code class="language-yaml" data-lang="yaml">convert:
copy_album_art: yes
album_art_maxwidth: 800
embed: no
never_convert_lossy_files: yes
formats:
opus:
command: ffmpeg -i $source -y -vn -acodec libopus -ab 96k -ar 48000 $dest
extension: opus</code></pre></div>
<p>Which is to say…</p>
<div class="ulist"><ul><li><code>embed:no, copy_album_art: yes</code>: No embedding the artwork, it takes up more space since it
duplicates the art for <em>every single track you store</em>. Copy it instead, to "cover.jpg".<ul><li><code>album_art_maxwidth: 800</code>: The cover art for Minecraft, Volume Alpha, is 2676x2676. I assure
you my phone doesn’t need that resolution.</li></ul></li><li><code>never_convert_lossy_files: yes</code>: No converting files that are already a lossy format (which
for me tends to be mp3s, because pony music is always released in a bespoke fashion).</li><li>Lastly, define how we want to convert our library to <code>opus</code>. I use 96k Opus, and the <code>-ar
48000</code> <em>looks</em> unnecessary, but actually is not: it’s to make sure I don’t have a 96kHz rip of
something converted to Opus, with the codec happily supporting a sample rate that large. So just
homogenize everything down to 48k, Opus’s default sample rate.</li></ul></div>
<p>Which brings us to the second <code>Makefile</code> target:</p>
<div class="listing-block"><pre class="highlight"><code class="language-makefile" data-lang="makefile">beet-convert:
beet convert -a -f opus -y</code></pre></div>
<p>I wish I could just stop there and say that’s how I maintain the two copies of my library, but
alas. We have arrived upon the first problem with <code>beet convert</code>.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_duplicates_and_workarounds_or_the_important_headache_youll_eventally_get">duplicates and workarounds, or, the important headache you’ll eventally get</h2><p>Though <a href="https://beets.io/">beets’s homepage</a> proudly displays the <a href="https://beets.readthedocs.io/en/v1.4.9/plugins/convert.html"><code>beet convert</code></a> plugin
for transcoding audio to any format desired, it does not do the upkeep of maintaining a library’s
<em>structure</em> in the process as well.</p>
<p>The problem lies in removing and renaming tracks. beets will shift files in your library
directory (which in my case is the lossless directory) without issue most of the time, but it is
not smart enough to replicate those changes on the libraries maintained with <code>beet convert</code></p>
<p>Really, the main problem is that <code>beet convert</code> (and <code>beet alternatives</code>) only do the work of
creating the structure-- once folders change, filenames change, the problem is then that you have
duplicates, and you’ll have the converted library structure fall out of sync over time if you
want to keep the same directory structure.{fn-structure}</p>
<p>As of now, I fix this problem with a little script named <a href="https://git.mutiny.red/somasis/me/tree/bin/beet-rmdupes?id=13e74a56a636c691d03b9edc1adce275bb28afd5"><code>beet-rmdupes</code></a>; it also
requires the <a href="https://git.mutiny.red/somasis/me/tree/bin/mimefilter?id=810387ef63a19c509411733b98f19e2eb61c40b1"><code>mimefilter</code></a> script in my "~/bin" as well.
It’s a little wonky in terms of false positives when it comes to beets' asciification,
for reasons I have not yet figured out.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_so_yeah">so yeah</h2><p>This is essentially the hard parts. The rest is pretty standard beets configuration, and the
documentation is <em>otherwise</em> excellent, except for these particularly irritating pitfalls.</p>
<p>beets does… a <em>staggering</em> amount, and without choking as hard as it could. I’ve really
considered writing my own music managing utility as of late but I just haven’t had the motivation
to uproot my library again.</p>
<p>However, there’s <a href="https://git.mutiny.red/somasis/me/tree/bin/envtag?id=4989c360786a7eb522a9d83d1aa0848e4cef7a24">bits</a> and <a href="https://git.mutiny.red/somasis/me/tree/bin/envtag-format?id=4989c360786a7eb522a9d83d1aa0848e4cef7a24">pieces</a> laying around… someday.</p></section>
therapy sessions in assigned reading responsesa compilation of responses I gave in gender studies classeshttps://somas.is/note-2021-04-06.html2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:002021-11-03T08:57:42+00:00
<section id="preamble" aria-label="Preamble"><p>I seem to keep allowing my gender studies professors to become part-time therapists. probably not
a great thing; however, in my defense, reflection is therapy and they’re asking for reflection.
sometimes I feel a little proud of what I wrote, perhaps because the things I read helped me to
work through some of the things troubling me. so, I figure it could be worth sharing.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_androgyny_as_a_solution">androgyny as a solution</h2><div class="quote-block"><blockquote><p>So what does androgyny have to do with transgenderism? Any person, mainstream and not
particularly gender-conflicted, can opt for androgyny. Yet those of us who don’t fit that
description, who may still yearn to cross over, if only to return to a balanced state, need to
examine our options. Crossdressing may be a bold beginning (perhaps an end in itself), but
nonetheless offers the potential for integration and wholeness. Transsexualism, while perfectly
appropriate for some, may often be more of an overstated resolution-indeed, a form of escape.
Trading one set of stereotypic gender restrictions for another is a denial of wholeness, unless
one simply feels more centered in the gender of choice (given this culture), hence more able to
strive for wholeness in that form. However, other transsexual people who may never realistically
"pass" in society might find greater solace through androgyny.</p><footer>— <cite>Holly Boswell, <a href="http://dallasdenny.com/Chrysalis/2013/12/14/cq-flashback-1991/">The Transgender Alternative (1991)</a></cite></footer></blockquote></div>
<p>[context: Holly Boswell is from Asheville, NC, she died a few years back. created the
transgender symbol ⚧️. this article in particular, is notable for being one of the most
notable early uses of the word "transgender", coining it, though the meaning has changed.]</p>
<p>I found myself disagreeing with this article’s characterization of "transgender", though I guess
that’s mostly a generational thing. [in short: the characterization is that "transgender" as a
concept intertwines with androgyny as a way to strike a middle ground between crossdressing and
transsexualism] For me prior to transitioning, I’d never considered crossdressing, I was actually
more content with being seen as a "tomboy" perhaps (or perhaps, crossdressing as a concept was
just too rife with eroticization that I just didn’t even want to consider it). And with
transsexualism’s medicalized description, I never really found myself in that either, in part
because surgeries in general tend to scare me a bit. For me, hormones were a big deal and that
was the thing I was most certain about, surgeries were too vague in terms of what they could do,
they seemed too instantaneous (at the time) compared to hormones bringing out features in me that
were already there, just not emphasized the same way.</p>
<p>I think to some extent, my disagreement of what these two poles are in relation to "transgender",
with "transgender" being a sort of androgynous alternative to the two is because of my own
discomfort with my own androgyny. For example, when I think about my own problems in this time in
my life as a 22 year old trans woman, my problems aren’t really about gender roles or feeling
restricted by them. In fact I’d say they tend to be more about my androgyny holding me back from
my ideal self. Not being raised with experience in things like fashion, makeup, "typical" girl
things, being passed down to me by my mom and the other girl friends I perhaps would have had, is
what tends to bother me more. While that lack of experience being given to me can easily (and
should) be attributed to gender roles, the point stands nonetheless that androgyny isn’t really
what I’m comfortable in, it’s just what has ended up being the deck I’ve been dealt that I feel I
need to work out of.</p>
<p>Back to the quote, that’s basically what bothers me about it. 'Other transsexuals who may never
realistically "pass" in society might find greater solace through androgyny' probably sounds
fine, but perhaps a chip on my shoulder is what keeps me from being content with it. I think the
usage of "realistically" there is a little misplaced, and I’d say that at least coming from an
opposing life experience, androgyny’s definitely not giving me solace. Just complacency.</p>
<section class="doc-section level-2"><h3 id="_response">response</h3><p>my professor had a nice response to this. I probably shouldn’t copy them verbatim just out of
respect to this being a private exchange between professor/student, but I’ll at least paraphrase.</p>
<p>essentially, when this is being responded to, 2021, a lot of the premises in this article (which
<em>is</em> definitely worth reading) have changed to some degree. passing nowadays is not <em>the</em> major
life goal of trans people, and this article really presupposes that a transsexual’s life is one
which is bound up mostly in the ordeal of passing.</p>
<p>my professor agrees that this should be a troubling thing to read as being centered even as it’s
being decentered, but these alternatives she brings up are essentially products of that era. it
is useful to recognize the real problem of the cis gaze that lies at the core of passing as a
trans person’s ultimate goal.</p></section></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_t4t_relationships_recognition_through_the_other">t4t relationships / recognition through the other</h2><div class="quote-block"><blockquote><p>The result is that for most men their biggest enemy is their own inner femininity because its
discovery would destroy them in the eyes of other men. It is well known that men do not develop
physically close relationships with other men as women do with other women. Men do not show
emotions such as hurt, grief, fear, or tenderness lest such manifestations shall be taken as a
sign of weakness–read femininity. Thus men always keep other men at a physical and psychological
distance just as a moat around a castle keeps the enemy out. This is done because should the
invader get inside the moat he might destroy the castle’s owner. Should another man manage to
penetrate a man’s psychological defenses he might, just might discover something about that man
which could be interpreted as not sufficiently masculine, which is to say, somewhat feminine.
That information in the hands of another man would about destroy the victim’s self esteem. You
all understand what I’m talking about because you have gone to great lengths to keep your
cross-dressing secret from brother, father, coach, boss, and friends lest they decide that you
were indeed too feminine and not a REAL MAN. Have you ever reflected on the fact that you can
hold hands, hug or give a hello or goodbye kiss to another CD if you were both dressed, whereas
you would not think of doing the same thing if you were both dressed in men’s clothes? That is
because you have escaped FROM those masculine expectations and requirements when you are dressed
as a woman. But unknowingly you behave that way when dressed because you CAN behave that way.
It’s a touch of freedom.</p><footer>— <cite>Dr. Virginia Prince, speech delivered at the IFGE "Coming Together Convention" in Chicago, March 7th, 1987; page 10, <em><a href="https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/j098zb17n">"Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow -or- Where We Were, Where We Are, Where We Might Go in the Future"</a></em>.</cite></footer></blockquote></div>
<p>I think this paragraph really foreshadows some people (including myself)'s experiences on
relationships between transgender people (which I’ll just call t4t from here on because I’ve
always thought that’s a cute term).</p>
<p>Often something that comes out in t4t relationships is a sense of openness and understanding that
isn’t always apparent with relationships between a trans person and a cis person, because there’s
that shared background that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Of course, there’s also some opportunity
for shared trauma and an inability to foil it when you are too affected by it, but overall,
there’s definitely a positive aspect that arises from that shared history.</p>
<p>I think some people get the impression that trans people only wish to seek out relationships with
cis people, but that’s certainly not the case. That perception also has a way of prioritizing cis
people at the top again, so that we can seem, to them, reliant on them for those basic social and
emotional needs. I feel that in my saying this, there’s tones of trans separatism here, but my
point is instead to show that trans people are strong, and while our communal bonds can have
their difficult points, they also have a beauty in our ability to rely one each other.</p>
<p>I think this is something that exists in every marginalized community really, there’s a
perception to the white/cis/straight majority that there’s some need for us to rely on them for
some need or another, so there’s not as much of a threat. "Well, you can’t live without us, so we
can be as uncaring and ignorant to your issues as we wish."</p>
<p>The paragraph really does foreshadow these lines of thought though, even if it’s not the point
that was trying to be made, it’s effectively the same: recognition through the other is a hugely
transformative experience, and that can be translated into point of liberation not just for you
and that person, not just for your community, but societal liberation as well. But it has to
start with that individual, shared, and then communal strength, I think.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_jokes_silence">jokes / silence</h2><div class="quote-block"><blockquote><p>Each joke levels us a little more, and we sit silently-- sometimes join in the laughter, as if
deep down, we, too, believe we are the lowest among the low. No one will redeem your name, your
love, your life, your manhood, but you. No one will save you, but you. Your silence is costing.
Your silence is suicide.</p><footer>— <cite><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongues_Untied">Tongues Untied</a> (1989)</cite></footer></blockquote></div>
<p>This was a simply amazing film. I wish I could point back at so many different parts of this
film, but it was just, amazing, and I must pick just one. The way that silence reprises
throughout Tongues Untied is amazing: silence infects every part of our lives when we use it. "I
cannot go home as who I am, and that hurts me deeply", silence in the way we live, silence in our
presence in the world, silence in expression. It is difficult to just pick one part of this film
that I felt and speak to that alone. Even though it is a film about the experiences of Black gay
men, it is hard to for me to not recognize the universalities.</p>
<p>I find myself confronting silence often, be it through the words I choose and do not choose to
describe the relationships I hold, through the people I tell and do not tell about my own
feelings. Part of the way it sticks with me is the everyday sacrifices I make-- which one of my
lovers do I describe as my girlfriend to this person, which relationship do I have to momentarily
hide so as to avoid the inquisition? When I speak on the phone while calling up someone for a new
apartment and I don’t try and put on a voice, and they ask if my other roommates, are they also
guys?, what silence am I accepting there with whatever response I give?</p>
<p>Often I find myself thinking, "I want to go home". I think this film, this part in particular,
really gives me something to point to; I can recall thinking this when I was younger, I can
recall thinking it a day ago. Home as a concept has the underrated aspect of being a place of
self, and a place of security in that expression of self. What one lacks in security with regard
to their expression at home, one lacks in the feeling of having home. I can be myself at home,
but can I be my complete self? Do I obscure things about myself for the sake of not causing
arguments? (of course I do)</p>
<p>I know plenty of older people who would take this a more simplistic way. Even if they do not
admit it, they too hide things from people in their lives. But it doesn’t feel good. Hiding one
thing or another is fine, hiding things because you’re a teenager and you’re exploring the world
and honing your conscience, sure. Hiding relationships from your family members feels less good.
But don’t equivocate the two, one is a thing of growth and the other can just kill your ability
to be real with people you care about. The point is made.</p>
<p>I found this film to be very enlightening and eyeopening for my own introspection and I am very
grateful for it being assigned.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_anxiety_from_wearing_clothes_that_look_fine_on_me">anxiety from wearing clothes that look fine on me</h2><div class="quote-block"><blockquote><p>But once AIDS has settled in the community and profoundly modified the way the gay male body is
viewed, it is easily understandable that what is at stake is fear. The object of this fear is
stigmatization, of course, but it goes beyond that, as Feinberg’s last remark shows: "Everyone
had a good ten pounds to spare, as if ten pounds could protect one from death". Fear is not
triggered by other people’s eyes, but by one’s own eyes on one’s own body.</p><footer>— <cite>Christelle Klein-Scholz, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.4153">From the "Homosexual Clone" to the "AIDS Clone" (2014)</a></cite></footer></blockquote></div>
<p>This was such an interesting moment to read in this article.</p>
<p>In particular, "fear is not triggered by other people’s eyes, but by one’s own eyes on one’s own
body". The way that bodies are viewed by others is often the first thing that comes to mind when
I think of my own anxieties in public, as a mostly out trans woman. I know, in reality, most
people probably don’t give me a second glance, there’s a good chance they mind their own business
and don’t care. But the fear and anxiety comes from my own eyes on my own body. It’s an anxiety
that comes from the idea, "what if someone else sees what I think I’m seeing about myself?"</p>
<p>If one doesn’t project confidence in the way they present themselves, perhaps that insecurity
could be seen by others, it becomes something to prey upon. I’d just never seen that experience
of anxiety from visibility, pieced apart and redirected like that sentence did it.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_role_inappropriateness_alienation_of_body_from_sexuality">role inappropriateness / alienation of body from sexuality</h2><div class="quote-block"><blockquote><p>Among them was the determination of the permissible range of expressions of physical sexuality.
This was a large gray area in the candidates' self-presentations, because Benjamin’s subjects did
not talk about any erotic sense of their own bodies. Consequently nobody else who came to the
clinics did either. By textual authority, physical men who lived as women and who identified
themselves as transsexuals, as opposed to male transvestites for whom erotic penile sensation was
permissible, could not experience penile pleasure. Into the 1980s there was not a single
preoperative male-to-female transsexual for whom data was available who experienced genital
sexual pleasure while living in the "gender of choice." The prohibition continued
postoperatively in interestingly transmuted form, and remained so absolute that no postoperative
transsexual would admit to experiencing sexual pleasure through masturbation either. Full
membership in the assigned gender was conferred by orgasm, real or faked, accomplished through
heterosexual penetration. "Wringing the turkey’s neck," the ritual of penile masturbation
just before surgery, was the most secret of secret traditions. To acknowledge so natural a desire
would be to risk "crash landing"; that is, "role inappropriateness" leading to
disqualification.</p><footer>— <cite>Sandy Stone, The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto</cite></footer></blockquote></div>
<p>I thought this section of the reading was so interesting. What was first something that just
seemed like a funny (if not somewhat uncomfortable) offhand remark mentioned earlier in the
essay, later becomes something that basically explodes the entire premise of it all. I think what
makes me wonder the most though, is the feeling that this concept gave me, actually. It does seem
like a pragmatic thing, because it’s like, that’s the last time you’d ever get a chance to do
that, but the mere idea just seems like such an odd idea I’m not sure I can really step in that
frame of mind. And, I’m gesturing around wringing the turkey’s neck myself because it even makes
me uncomfortable.</p>
<p>But in that uncomfortability, I almost wonder if that’s actually just me being conditioned to not
experience sexuality with regards to my body the way that this article describes. If someone’s
ever asked about my feelings about sex, I’ve basically maintained the same idea, that I’ve not
really had any sort of sexual connection to my body prior to transitioning, but it makes me
wonder if that’s actually how I feel and that it was an unhealthy and unenjoyable sexual
relationship to myself, or if it was just the sort of story I had to tell myself to make it
acceptable for me to exist as a trans woman, and as a trans girl, when I was younger and closeted.</p>
<p>I’d never brought up my sexuality to the few therapists and psychologists I’ve seen, because I
probably had that same implicit understanding that I needed to seem profoundly disconnected from
myself, and unhappy with that lack. These sorts of stories that we tell are reenforced over and
over again and eventually they can come to be a lie that becomes the truth, which is also what is
described in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2016.1155978">Lovelock reading</a> (at least, as I
understand it). I identified for a few years while closeted as asexual, even, because that sort
of connection, a sexual one, just seemed… alienating.</p>
<p>Nowadays things are different, and I think the relationship I have to my body, despite my
discomforts, is healthier. But, reevaluating those formative years for my trans identity, it’s
lead me to wonder how many of these discomforts are actually ones that I thought were ones I
needed to have, or if they were truly there. Or, does the distinction become blurred after so
long, and they’re all just discomforts I have regardless of if they were put upon me or not?</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_closing">closing</h2><p>not really sure if this post makes sense to share. but I think the content is interesting
perhaps. I have no clue if this qualifies as interesting stuff, nor do I want to write purely to
show off interesting stuff, but I don’t want to just post my diary necessarily either.</p></section>
music making toolsan overview of the software and hardware I use for making musichttps://somas.is/note-2020-12-05.html2020-12-05T00:00:00+00:002021-11-03T08:54:13+00:00
<section id="preamble" aria-label="Preamble"><p><a href="https://somasis.bandcamp.com/">I make music</a>. I think that even makes me a <em>musician™</em>. So, I
thought I’d make a post about the tools I use to make music. Occasionally I’m asked, and usually
it means I have to go retracing the steps I took to get a hold of the things I use, so it might
be worth it to write down these things for the future.</p>
<p>Just for the record: there’s obviously no sponsorship here, this is my genuine thoughts on the
things I use. I’m not trying to shill for any company, and if I were, there’d be a disclaimer.
That said… I’d always be down for free hardware and software in exchange for an honest review.
But this isn’t that.</p>
<p>First off, as of writing this I produce music on <a href="https://archlinux.org">Arch Linux</a>. People find
tend to find this surprising when I tell them I don’t produce on Windows or macOS, so I figure
it’s the first thing I should get out the way.</p>
<p>I don’t actually use Linux-specific tools, though it’d be nice if audio producing on Linux could
catch up to the standards of software that’s on Windows and macOS. I almost exclusively use tools
made for Windows, running under <a href="https://www.winehq.org/">WINE</a>. It works surprisingly well, though
sometimes tools can be a bit more unstable than they might be on Windows. Sometimes, things even
run faster than on Windows.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_digital_audio_workstations">digital audio workstations</h2><p>I exclusively use <a href="https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio/">FL Studio</a>. I’ve been producing with it
since 2013. I only really have felt proficient in it since 2018, though. Always learning
something new (this is a sign it does too much).</p>
<p>There’s probably more efficient software I could be using, or some DAW that matches up more with
the kind of music I make, but over the years I’ve grown to enjoy using FL quite a lot, and
despite how bloated it is, it gets the job done and doesn’t try to be too overbearing, or end up
confusing me.</p>
<p>Prior to FL Studio (so, 2012-2013), I played around <a href="https://www.renoise.com/">Renoise</a> some, as I
had heard some of my favorite breakcore artists at the time (namely Venetian Snares) were heavy
users of it and trackers like it. However, I found the interface too confusing and haven’t ever
bothered to go back and reevaluate it. Apparently it is quite good for music that can use a lot
of manual sequencing though, like breakcore.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_hardware">hardware</h2><p>I don’t use hardware unless it’s really necessary (no money). Most of the hardware I do have was
gifted to me.</p>
<div class="dlist"><dl><dt><a href="https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/ath-m40x">Audio Technica ATH-M40x Professional Monitor Headphones</a></dt><dd><p>I think these are seen as meme headphones or whatever nowadays by lots of people, but they’re
very popular for good reason. These are easily the most affordable, well-built, and just plain
good for the price headphones you could possibly get for music production. The frequency response
is tuned very flat, I listen to and mix all my music on these headphones, I’m very happy with
them.</p><p>I will say, and I think this is a technique issue of mine more than an issue with the headphones,
I think I have a tendency to mix my bass a bit too loud sometimes. I don’t do enough car tests,
don’t test on lower-quality/more common headphones enough, but perhaps the bass on these
headphones could be a bit louder. I genuinely can’t tell if it’s a technique issue or an issue
with the frequency response not being as flat as it sounds to me.</p>
<p>Bottom line: these are the best mixing and mastering headphones you’ll get for 99$ dollars.</p></dd><dt><a href="https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/at2020">Audio Technica AT2020 Cardioid Condenser Microphone</a></dt><dd><p>I use it for recording vocals. I also use it as a room microphone, for when I’m in calls with
people nowadays. It’s really just for vocals, but it’s a great general-purpose microphone.</p><p>The part that is worth cringing over though is that I don’t use any sort of pop filter, any sort
of windguard, anything like that. I mostly rely on the silence of my room, recording late into
the early morning.</p>
<p>I do a lot of editing to the things I record to clean up the raw audio, which is how I get by
being this sloppy. Don’t be like me.</p></dd><dt><a href="https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=P0ADV">Behringer XENYX 302USB</a></dt><dd><p>I use this with the aforementioned microphone for recording vocals. I also use it for digitally
recording in vinyl records that I have. It is old and not a great mixer. It is just what I have.</p>
<p>I think I’ve heard that Behringer’s been getting a lot of criticism lately, but I haven’t kept up.</p></dd><dt><a href="https://asia-latinamerica-mea.yamaha.com/en/products/musical_instruments/keyboards/portable_keyboards/psr-e333/index.html">YAMAHA PSR-E333 Portable Keyboard</a></dt><dd>I don’t use it much, but if I ever feel like doing some MIDI keyboard stuff live, it’s there.
Please watch the introduction video on its product page. It’s adorable.</dd></dl></div>
<p>Lastly, and don’t get grossed out by this, but almost all of my songs as of the past two years
have used my phone’s sound recorder app for vocals in some way. Sometimes I have ideas when I’m
in the shower and I have to get them out or I’ll die.</p></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_software">software</h2><p>I use lots of software. For plugins, I tend to prefer ones that do one thing well, which is
usually how I like my software in general. One thing well, and not particularly heavy in resource
usage, which means that I can chain them pretty heavily and without much trouble. I enjoy
chaining plugins to get the sounds I want, rather than just plugins that have a magic knob on
them that makes the sound, as it allows for more fine-grained and particular control of what’s
actually done to the audio.</p>
<p>I have a tendency to call my music shoegaze at times; this workflow is part of why I call it
that. It somewhat resembles the way that shoegaze artists use lots and lots of guitar pedals.</p>
<p>Generally, I use lots of freeware plugins for getting the job done. There are a few tools which
are not free, but mainly because they’re so good that the free stuff doesn’t really compare, yet.</p>
<p>Assume everything is free unless I say otherwise.</p>
<section class="doc-section level-2"><h3 id="_general_purpose">general purpose</h3><div class="ulist"><ul><li>Default (non-free) FL Studio plugins. They do one thing well for the most part and they’re
relatively high quality.<dl><dt>Graham Yeadon’s <a href="https://www.gvst.co.uk/">GVST</a> plugins</dt><dd>They’re free, they’re a great selection of various effects. Chorus, delays, gates,
pitch correction (this was how I found it originally), just a really good set.</dd></dl></li><li><a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/mda-vst/">mda-vst</a> is a (probably somewhat well known) set of
open-source (formerly <a href="http://mda.smartelectronix.com/">closed source</a>) plugins.
They’re definitely getting a bit old, and I don’t use them as much as I used to,
but in a pinch I use SubSynth for adding some sub to vocals or drums that might need them.
Additionally, it has a good <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone">Shepard tone</a> generator,
a nice stereo splitter, and the degrade plugin is nice (though it has a really irritating issue of
possibly corrupting your DAW’s runtime memory if you start more than one instance of it, ouch).</li><li><a href="https://tal-software.com/">TAL software</a>'s free plugins are neat, though I notice they use a bit
more CPU than it really seems like they should be using.</li></ul></div></section>
<section class="doc-section level-2"><h3 id="_audio_editing">audio editing</h3><p>I use audio editing tools quite a lot, and there’s only really two things I use to do it.</p>
<div class="ulist"><ul><li>I use <a href="https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio/plugins/edison/">Edison</a>, a non-free FL Studio plugin
for most of my editing work. It integrates really nice with FL’s workflow, and I like it.</li><li>For audio restoration, I use <a href="https://www.izotope.com/en/products/rx.html">iZotope RX</a>. It is
paid, and it seems unlikely any free software solution is going to match it any time soon. I use
it sometimes for cleaning up poorly recorded vocals, for cleaning up vinyl recordings, and for
weirder types of audio manipulation in general. Hilariously overpriced.</li></ul></div></section>
<section class="doc-section level-2"><h3 id="_mixing_mastering">mixing, mastering</h3><p>The line between distortion and mixing can be pretty fuzzy at times, so these go for both.</p>
<div class="ulist"><ul><li>I use <a href="https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio/plugins/maximus/">Maximus</a>, a non-free default FL
Studio plugin on the master track of all my songs. Some people say not to use a master limiter, I
do because it actually makes clipping more obvious to my ears.</li><li>FL Studio versions 12.3.1 and up have a nice
<a href="https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio/plugins/transient-processor/">Transient Processor</a> plugin
that can be nice for making vocals and drums more snappy sometimes.</li><li>The Crosstalk2 plugin, by
<a href="https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2014/09/20/sleepy-time-dsp/">Sleepy-Time DSP</a>. It tries to
emulate the crosstalk effect that can happen with analog recordings. It’s probably snake oil–I
use it anyway because it makes the tracks sound <em>worse</em>. In more concrete analysis, it does seem
to add a nice high end to things, and I at least think that makes it sound a little better. It’s
definitely a subtle change, though.</li><li><a href="https://github.com/jatinchowdhury18/AnalogTapeModel">CHOW Tape Model</a> is a really excellent,
free software plugin based on a physical model of an analog tape machine, originally based on the
Sony TC-260. It’s really nice and underrated, I’ve been using it a lot as of late quite happily.
I used it on <a href="https://somasis.bandcamp.com/track/elk-knob-the-leaves-were-turning">elk knob, the
leaves were turning</a> and I think it really helped to give it a nice, analog sound.</li></ul></div></section>
<section class="doc-section level-2"><h3 id="_vocal_manipulation">vocal manipulation</h3><div class="ulist"><ul><li>I use <a href="https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio/plugins/NewTone/">NewTone</a>, another (non-free)
default FL plugin, for pitch tweaking. I use this on my vocals often, though mostly because I
haven’t gotten good enough at singing to hold all the notes I want to hold as stable as I would
like. It’s good though.</li><li>Graham Yeadon’s <a href="https://www.gvst.co.uk/gsnap.htm">GSnap</a> plugin. I started using this when I
first started doing vocals, but I don’t use it <em>that</em> much nowadays, mostly because my own
singing technique has improved enough that it’s not really necessary anymore.</li><li>Graham Yeadon’s <a href="https://www.gvst.co.uk/beta.htm">GForm</a> plugin. A cool vocal pitch and formant
shifter, I’ve used it quite a lot. If you use it lightly and don’t mix it to be the main output
on a vocal track, it can help to bring out some of the higher or lower qualities of your voice in
a way that is hard to emulate when actually singing.</li></ul></div></section>
<section class="doc-section level-2"><h3 id="_distortion_pitch_and_time_manipulation_glitching_degradation">distortion, pitch and time manipulation, glitching, degradation</h3><div class="ulist"><ul><li><a href="http://destroyfx.org/">Destroy FX’s plugins</a>. Scrubby is a nice plugin for time and pitch
manipulation, and just in general for creating glitchy sounds. Transverb is also pretty cool.
Actually, all of their plugins are pretty cool. Just check them all out.</li><li><a href="http://magnus.smartelectronix.com/">Magnus' plugins</a>. Ambience is a nice reverb plugin, I also
quite like the fact that it has a hold button, to actually hold the wet signal, and prevent the
reverb from decaying further until you deactivate the button. Really cool function, I wish more
reverb plugins had that.</li><li><a href="http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php">Bram’s plugins</a>. Bouncy is a pretty cool plugin,
but my favorites are <a href="http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=7">Crazy Ivan</a>, which is
another sort of pitch shifter/time manipulation/distortion plugin,
<a href="http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=6">SupaTrigga</a>, which is a sort of automatic beat
slicer.</li><li><a href="https://github.com/Iunusov/LameVST">LameVST</a> is an open-source plugin that does MP3 compression
as an effect. I don’t use it often, and it causes a significant delay on playback, both realtime
and on rendering tracks, but it can be cool to use sometimes.</li></ul></div></section>
<section class="doc-section level-2"><h3 id="_synthesizers">synthesizers</h3><div class="ulist"><ul><li>Lots of non-free default FL studio plugins. I don’t care. 3xOsc is <em>God’s synthesizer</em>. I also
really like using Fruity DX10.</li></ul></div></section></section>
<section class="doc-section level-1"><h2 id="_sampling">sampling</h2><p>My music is very sample-heavy. Manipulating samples is much more fun than synthesizing, to me.
Something that surprises some people is that I generally do not use sample packs. For the most
part, everything I sample is something that I got myself in some form.</p>
<hr>
<p>That’s basically everything I can think to mention right now. Hopefully, this provides some
insight into how I work on things without giving the secret sauce away… :)</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>edit 2020-12-07</strong>: Added the headphones I use and a note signifying that this isn’t a sponsorship
of any sort, just in case it comes off like that.</p></section>
agape lonelinessrelationships during a strange timehttps://somas.is/note-2020-12-01.html2020-12-01T00:00:00+00:002021-05-31T15:10:57+00:00
<p>it is the beginning of december, the worst month of the year</p>
<p>relationships take on an almost conciliatory role during quarantine, during late capital even.
its almost as if facing the world alone, scary as it is, can be hard to bear, even with one
partner.</p>
<p>there’s a certain perceived prevalence of polyamorous relationships among trans people, mostly
trans femmes I believe, and I think this can in part explain it. for some there can be a strange
disconnect to cisgender society, and even to a trans community, be it just a lack of relation to
one another or what. this too can explain to some extent, the prevalence. however, this isn’t to
say that polyamory would not exist in a post capitalist world (I in fact feel it’d be more
common), but that it’s just one of the many aspects that can influence people to seek things the
way they do.</p>
<p>all this said, it is a strange strange time to be have relationships. america continues to cope
with an uncaring and malicious government, our incoming president seems to intend to do too
little too late. universities collected money for classes no one learned from, workplaces are
sacrificing their employees. business as usual, but more obvious, and now we can’t see the people
we love. one can feel lonely in their own house without physical presence of a loved one nearby,
and one can feel lonely just at the world, a sort of more profound loneliness than just physical
or emotional loneliness perhaps. <em>agape loneliness</em>: loneliness at the state of the world?</p>
<p>I think it’s worth dissecting why we differ–a healthy analysis of tradition’s failures is often
more meaningful then keeping to it–and this year, there’s not much more to do than tread water
in thoughts, embrace or transcend the confusion, and assume it’ll all make sense later.</p>
<p>this, is the actual hard part of relationships: when you can’t see the people you love, when you
can’t even express that love familiarly and truthfully. for some relationships, text is just
another way to communicate. for others, it’s limiting medium reaching for something unattainable,
a thing in itself of love. for some, maybe even physicality never attains it; a professor of mine
once said, the object of desire is mysterious, and love is elusive. not all relationships feel
the same or express love the same. when options are gone, there’s nothing to look towards, a
plane ticket, a visit, a movie, some shared moment as a reprieve… how do we actually express
love, true as we feel it? how do we face life, refreshed again, sure as sure’s even been,
convicted our love is true, that life is worth it for the loves we share?</p>
<p>uncertainty strikes like all things, an ambient feeling this year. how do we really know if we’re
ready for a relationship in a time when there’s not really anything certain anymore, how do we
trust ourselves when we’re evolving apart, and together only through screens</p>
memory fades but our words are foreverin defense of plain text and chat logs.https://somas.is/note-2020-02-11.html2020-02-11T00:00:00+00:002021-05-31T15:10:57+00:00
<p>Talking with Violet tonight I realized how scary things are sometimes. I’ve spent the greater
portion of my life talking to people online. I’ve been on IRC since I was 10, younger than anyone
really should be, and I’ve been using Discord for a few years now. IRC is a plain text protocol,
you keep the logs and it isn’t really the responsibility of anyone else.</p>
<p>Had I been better with keeping archives and placing value on things like that, I might have logs
from long ago. There are friends who I only knew on IRC, and this being prior to the lack of
anonymity we’ve accepted in our social networks, I actually don’t know any of their names.
There’s a small selection of people who I’ve kept up in other ways, because as luck would have
it I’d run into them again somewhere and know for sure it was them. What about those who I do not
remember anymore, who no longer seem to coalesce where I did? The memory of them has become blurry
and obscured as I’ve gotten older and realized how many years depression, social ostracization,
and gender dysphoria took from me.</p>
<p>I was cleaning out my Dropbox account a few months ago when I found three screenshots of my desktop
from around 2011. They are the earliest pictures I have of things I did on the computer that I
remember taking. In one screenshot, there was an XChat window with me and a friend talking in a
channel we founded together, to work on fun stuff for the Nintendo DSi’s web browser. What
happened to the screenshots, and why am I not posting them here? Because past me deleted them. I
thought I should move on, and I didn’t have the IRC logs of the conversations I had with that
person anymore. That was a (looking back now, ironic) choice I made for myself.</p>
<p>I met Violet on Tumblr, I knew her there for years and years, and we started talking more after we
both were on a Discord server dedicated to a favorite music artist. Had I not chosen to talk more
to her, I would not have started hormone therapy and escaped the clutches of depression, I would
not have traveled out of the country for the first time in my life, and I would be a much lonelier
person. What does this have to do with anything else mentioned here?</p>
<p>At the time I’m writing this, we have sent 330,097 direct messages back and forth since January
13th, 2017. The first things said were "Hi" (from her), and then "🐱 cat" (from me). She had
a cat as her avatar at the time. (she told me this while reading this post, because I didn’t
remember this anymore, and only her current avatar on Discord shows for all of her messages, which
is no longer a cat) We talk just about every single day and if I had the message data myself I’d
be interested in finding the days in which we did not talk.</p>
<p>The me that sent that reply is an unrecognizably different person than who I am now; stays in her
room, lives with her parents, has a tenuous relationship with anyone at school and anyone her age.
I now live two and a half hours from my parents in the mountains of North Carolina with three other
roommates, one of which is my other girlfriend, Cassie; did I mention I’m polyamorous now? I talk
to my mom almost every day even if I have nothing to say, people at work seem to think I’m a
normal human being. I have changed.</p>
<p>I’m rambling again. When me and Violet are together, our chat goes quiet. If one were to look at
our chat history they might think something had happened for a month of my life, to cause me to not
really say much at all to her and vice versa. It scares me for a very irrational reason: a stunning
amount of my life has changed purely through a single chat window I’ve had on my computer for
multiple years. I have no logs of it; I am purely going on the grace of Discord, that they will not
suddenly disappear one day and take all of our words with it. Is Discord profitable? It won’t
stay profitable. No proprietary chat solution has ever stayed profitable. It too, will fall.</p>
<p>When GDPR came into effect, Discord suddenly started allowing people to download their data in a
huge, unmaintainable and irritating archive of data, that, if memory serves (it doesn’t!), only
even contains <em>your</em> side of all conversations. This makes sense from a legal standpoint, but they
are therefore the most useless conversation logs ever because of it. There are other archiving
mechanisms: <a href="https://github.com/tsudoko/pullcord"><code>pullcord</code></a>, and <a href="https://dht.chylex.com">Discord
History Tracker</a>. These solutions work to actually create logs of your chats, rather than just
giving you all your data and forgetting a conversation isn’t one-sided. Discord History Tracker
actually is just a script on top of the Discord client itself that uses the client’s own
mechanisms to download all the messages it can. It is a cumbersome and slow method, and it will
take a very long time to download everything, but it is the safest and least easily bannable method
of archiving your chats. It does not archive anything that is not a text message. Message
attachments are only left in as URLs to their location on <code>cdn.discordapp.com</code>. <code>pullcord</code>
downloads <em>everything</em>: custom emojis, all shared files/images, every server and channel and direct
message your account can access, it will download. It also comes with a disclaimer on the readme
that your account could get banned, because it’s using an unofficial Discord client to interface
with a standard Discord user account, rather than a bot account.</p>
<p><a href="https://discordapp.com/terms">Discord’s ToS</a> does not allow this. They instead include gems such as:</p>
<div class="quote-block"><blockquote><p>You agree not to (and not to attempt to) (i) use the Service for any use or purpose other than as
expressly permitted by these Terms; (ii) copy, adapt, modify, prepare derivative works based
upon, distribute, license, sell, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream,
broadcast, <em>attempt to discover any source code, reverse engineer</em>, decompile, disassemble, or
otherwise exploit the Service or any portion of the Service, except as expressly permitted in
these Terms; or (iii) <em>use data mining, robots, spiders, or similar data gathering and extraction
tools on the Service</em>. No licenses or rights are granted to you by implication or otherwise under
any intellectual property rights owned or controlled by the Company or its licensors, except for
the permissions and rights expressly granted in these Terms.</p></blockquote></div>
<p>Emphasis mine.</p>
<p>So when we are together, and our chat goes quiet, I feel a pit in stomach in an indescribable way
sometimes. I’m with her, I’m happy, but the entire method and medium with which we talk has
lost that relatively concrete property. The memories I have of our conversations in person will
fade, and whenever I finally start to live with her, the writing of this post will be such a
distant memory that I will likely not remember what exactly the conversation that prompted this was.</p>
<p>The years I have forgotten have left a hole that I can not entirely account for in my own history,
and I can only hope that as time goes on and I have other to fill in the gaps, it might gain more
clarity as years go by; but it could just as easily continue to disappear, and I sure have let it
do so. I can not index and search through the words I’ve said in the bed before falling asleep.</p>
<p>Where am I going with this? It is the responsibility of any communication protocol to not do this
shit. Be gentle with your users; be gentle with their conversations and value what they say. I
could almost excuse Discord’s "no data gathering and extraction tools" rule, if they provided a
local logging mechanism of some sort, but they do not. I am, additionally, learning that perhaps
this is simply a thing I will need to learn to become easy with. Normally I am a very easy going
person, willing to throw away the concrete and the permanent when it seems bothersome and
constricting. Do I need to let go of this concreteness, and accept that <em>all conversations are
ephemeral by their very nature</em>? Maybe I do, and perhaps I should also spend less time on the
computer.</p>
<p>With IRC, at least you knew what you were getting into. It is ephemeral in a way Snapchat can only
dream to be, because it only serves to repeat what was sent to it to anyone who happens to be
listening. So if you wanted to have history, you’d keep logs, and if you really valued it you’d
keep them for as long as you could. If you didn’t have them, maybe you could ask someone else in
the channel? Or perhaps your IRC bouncer has been keeping logs for years while you’ve been barely
checking a channel.</p>
<p>This is something that every chat service in existence today seems to throw to the wayside. Logs
become the responsibility of the service provider, and the service provider isn’t very
sentimental about the first time you told her you loved her, or the long nights you stayed up
talking, or the fact that you called your chat’s pinned messages "the fridge" because you
thought it was cute. The purpose is to provide that service of history, it is not to create
ownership or identification with that history. Any chat service that provides archive downloading
might only provide the messages you sent, which is a thing that makes legal sense, but not human
sense.</p>
<p>The thought of running <code>pullcord</code> on a cronjob and having a consistent and up-to-date copy of all
the conversations I’ve had on Discord sounds so nice. I’m afraid though that the amount of data
I would download would get me noticed and banned though, and being banned is scary. I’d have the
archives, but they’re only facsimiles, they’re not the chat window where I had all these
memories in.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how to finish this but if anything, consider this a plea to all chat services to at
the very least provide local logging, or at least allow me to use a utility like <code>pullcord</code>
without issue. I have lost enough. I am confronted with the inevitability that my memories of the
good times I have had will fade away in a more secret and quiet way than the bad memories have, and
I want to at least put up a fight.</p>
a reflection on the role of philosophy as therapya discussion on the personal meaning of philosophy and gender studies being one.https://somas.is/note-2019-12-06.html2019-12-06T00:00:00+00:002021-05-31T15:10:57+00:00
<p>In my project to assert gender studies and philosophy and being one in the same, with the help of
my professor, we discovered a line of thought coursing through this concept that I myself didn’t
really pick up on until it was put into words by her. What I was aiming at was to try and reconcile
two different fields I had an interest in. In this reflection though, I want to explore that
therapeutic current more.</p>
<p>Through my own gender studies, I always felt like there was a deep connection into some of the same
major questions of philosophy: what is the nature of our existence, what is identity, what do we do
to live a good life, how do we make the world better. At the end, maybe I see gender studies as
being just a subset of philosophy- the philosophy of gender, philosophy of sexuality, philosophy
aiming to speak critically to the state of the world. That last conception is not a controversial
statement, Marx’s own goal was to change the world rather than merely interpret it.</p>
<p>Philosophy for me has always been a therapeutic endeavor, personally. My first ethics class at
Rowan-Cabarrus Community College was a pretty low-key affair, my teacher was, as far as I know, a
retired Presbyterian preacher, and I was the only person that consistently stayed awake in the
class (rare for, at the time, extremely depressed me). When he’d speak of the way that ethics
compels us to doing good, and he’d speak of the forms and how, at the end of it all, we have a
facsimile of what actually is as our only window into the world, it always spoke to a part of me I
knew was there but couldn’t express.</p>
<p>My therapy was philosophy, and though I’m a very irreligious person, hearing people waxing
philosophical gave me a comfort that got me through the dark times of my life. When you see people
reaching for that which they can’t fully express and a sort of universal truth, you are
witnessing a light inside the person that wonders; everyday life doesn’t give you access to that.
Everyday life gives you transactions and exchanges, often not willing to give you the messy and
unsure.</p>
<p>This might all be getting too touchy-feely, but that’s the point. Therapy is personal. I spent
all my life until about age thirteen not being sure why I always felt out of place, misunderstood,
and like I wasn’t playing my part right. I still don’t feel like I’ve got a grasp on the
world yet, but I’m better now. And in the dark night that social ostracization and an unsureness
of self causes, I ultimately still knew that there was a real me in there somewhere, that there was
a identity I just haven’t put together. Philosophy laid down the status of what a person without
self-description is. Gender studies has helped to give words for that self-description. Without
each other they nothing.</p>
transness and philosophy aren't exclusivesome thoughts about how philosophy and trans identities interact.https://somas.is/note-2019-11-14.html2019-11-14T00:00:00+00:002021-05-31T15:10:57+00:00
<p>In class this afternoon, I began to realize these thoughts and wrote them down frantically into my
notebook, because something was bothering me that I couldn’t quite grasp fully.
We were discussing Stoicism, but in particular,
<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2680">Marcus Aurelius' Meditations</a>.
Discussing the use of nature in it, my professor started to speak of Aurelius' ideas of nature.
Our class was taking issue with nature and naturalism’s current through Stoicism, which really
ended up being more a current through Greek and Roman philosophy anyway.</p>
<p>She was saying he may consider nature’s good as more of a "goal-oriented" good; that is, the tree
has a goal: to grow, flourish, reproduce, and so on. However, she then went on to say that that is
good. Our previous class was critical of the way that nature was utilized and taken as a good, and
that the universe is good intrinsically.</p>
<p>Nature as a goal-oriented thing tending towards good is a troubling prospect to me however, because
in my experience of what people assert as nature, people (transphobes, well meaning cis people, and
an unfortunately numerable amount of trans people) see the assigned sex at birth as being nature;
gender {identity,presentation,expression,conception} is put upon it by the self. That’s where the
refrain that trans existence is unnatural comes from.</p>
<p>There’s multiple ways to view this: gender as part of nature, identity as nature, identity as
social, gender as social, gender as choice, …, and many many other ways. My list is lacking
nuance and depth, but for the sake of simplicity I’ll say that it’s not something I think much
of currently and that I’m not firmly in any camp either. For me, gender is just something I have
and I think the nature/nurture dichotomy is bullshit. Nature and nurture are intrinsically linked
and I think dividing them is a mistake, much like Descartes divided the mind and body, leaving us
to pick up the pieces with phenomenology. I digress.</p>
<p>How do I reconcile putting my experiences onto ancient philosophy? They were so unprepared for
trans lives, but even I know that’s a lie. Trans people existed then, we always have, and
philosophers claiming to speak for the entire breadth of human experience never cared about what we
have to bring to the dialogue. Thus, I feel unwelcome to apply my experiences openly in class and
to these texts; though I know my identity is not a recent invention, I feel ignored and
underappreciated for what my experience with gender and sexuality have to add.</p>
<p>Part of my hesitancy could be the makeup of the class. An LGBTQ+ studies class of course, opens up
more opportunities for an atmospherically comforting way of speaking trans experiences (well, one
would hope at least). But that’s bullshit too isn’t it? I know a few trans people in ancient
philosophy, I’m the only trans feminine person in my LGBTQ+ studies class. Why does one present
more opportunity than the other, when I see all these opportunities slowly driving past me as I
listen to the class talk without speaking up once?</p>
<p>This is part of a greater narrative I have, but no one ever seems to agree when I say that gender
studies and philosophy are actually the same study.</p>
<p>I think it is incomplete, when one discusses identity, change, nature, and human experience when
one does not include the breadth of trans experience. These perspectives are valuable to an
enormous extent when studying this philosophy, and ancient, modern, recent, continental, all
philosophy can not and will never claim to speak to human experience if it leaves trans
perspectives of philosophy out in the cold. And, it is a mistake to not utilize that in critical,
truly analyzing discussions and lessons.</p>