With help from a friend I bought a very cheap vehicle a few months back. It’s been sitting in my driveway since. Due to technicalities (the seller failed to register the vehicle himself before selling it to me and failed to pay state tax on the sale), I’ve been unable to register it properly after multiple tries. I’ve been problem solving the logistics of this puzzle, dealing with red tape, and not driving… I recently figured out one part of the plan forward, and I’ve met more and more complications the entire way there and back. The current ring of hell I’m in informs me it’s going to cost almost $3,000 to fix the body of this vehicle to pass inspection. I don’t really have that amount of money to spend without feeling incredibly unsafe financially. My choice is between having a vehicle or not having a vehicle though, and I need a vehicle so that I can work and make money more easily and more frequently. At this point to afford a vehicle I need to have a vehicle. I’m hoping that having a vehicle won’t cost me more than I’m able to gain from its use. It’s not yet clear that this is a winnable battle… I can’t help but feel dismayed (angered even) that if I had capitol to begin with I could have bought a less problematic vehicle and wouldn’t be struggling as hard with simply making it go, both literally and legally.
It’s very hard pulling oneself out of poverty—something I am not sure I believe can effectively be done by almost anyone, though success stories are inspirational if insincerely depictive of reasonable paths forward for most actual people living with complex daily realities within a system which thrives on oppression of the masses in order to keep itself buoyant and disproportionately rewarding to those who already struggle less.
Today I want to talk about the value we place on the work people do, and why there’s such an intense disparity in the types of labor we automatically value monetarily over those we expect to gain for free. I want to talk about the economy, especially on this day we’re waking up to news that one of the Koch brothers has died. I want to talk about the reality that it takes about 20 years without anything major going wrong in your life (divorce, accident, emergency healthcare expenses, family problems, work issues, housing issues, credit problems, and so on…) in order to build enough stability and wealth to escape poverty. I want to talk about how as a female, an artist, a visibly trans person, and someone with a background in art, sexuality education, and kink education I struggle to make meaningful income (even as a sex worker which should be my career path of ease), yet since the shitshow that is FOSTA/SESTA changed the landscape of P2P advertisement online, and made more vocal the sex industry’s workers, politicians (even the liberal ones) won’t discuss meaningful legislation concerning decriminalization of sex work. Sex work is women’s work, trans people’s work, people of color work, immigrant work, and poor people’s work. What’s not to get behind on all of that, so-called-liberals? Supporting the choices of people who suffer the most financial and social burdens in society is not the same thing as letting go of legislation that punishes perpetrators of violent crimes (ie: sex work and sex trafficking are not the same things and can be legislated separately with incredible ease and convenience).
Speaking of sex work, I want to talk about how I’m too masculine to find work with the vast majority of straight men, and I’m too feminine to find work with most gay men, and I want to talk about how those are the demographics of people with disposable income who are seeking out professional Dominance (and sex workers in general). I want to talk about how many men who “like my pics” want to hound me for attention and whatever else it is that they want until I mention that my time and attentions are available at a price, at which point they get feral and abusive, decrying sex work as an abomination and insult to their human needs. I’m pretty sure it’s an abomination and insult to treat me like a sex toy without my consent to begin with… but whatever, I’ve got a pussy and a beard (and also a sweet bearded pussy), am I right?
I want to talk about how the world of advertisement has brainwashed people, especially in this Western civilization of ours, to the extent that we have a hard time being attracted to anything actually natural or authentic, even though in the middle class white people’s market we sell the shit out of appropriated products and services touting how valuable holding onto authenticity and being true to oneself ultimately is…
I want to talk about how in many of my communities I’m valued for my knowledge, the support role I play with people going through identity crisis’ or working through shame, and for bringing an inclusive creative voice to the table, yet deriving actual dollars from the things people love to gain from me not only feels “wrong” socially, but is often pushed against (especially by white men, the largest demographic of people with disposable income who also benefit from reading this blog, learning from my thoughts and experiences, and who most readily seek me out for intellectual and emotional support, situational understanding, to bounce ideas off of, and educational tips). I find it interesting how many women and transpeople have commented to me that they read my blog and learn a lot from it and are happy to support my Patreon campaign (even at a low level) to help keep me going, vs. how many cis men tell me the same things and have never taken a step to directly support me in any meaningful way—other than telling me they personally directly profit off of my voice, struggles, and resultant skills. To me this typifies the ideas of privilege and entitlement, and directly reenacts and reinforces the devaluation of women and queers, especially non-cis people, which we accept as common practice within the patriarchy today.
At least my struggles are white ones. None of this holds a candle to what people of color, especially black and brown people struggle with in the USA—especially those who share a number of marginalized identities alongside their race or ethnicities.
I want to talk about how many of my “friends” have quickly fallen away when I haven’t been interested in fucking them or being romantic, or who have become distant or unwilling to converse about the state of our relationship since I started taking testosterone and passing less fem.
I want to talk about how complete strangers who I’m interacting with feel the need to repeatedly ask me for my “real” name, insisting that the one I’ve offered can’t be what my friends and family call me when I introduce myself as Creature—thank the gods most of my friends and family actually do call me by my preferred name (and I thank them too). I want to talk about how at one of my favorite cafes the staff refuses to call out my name when they’ve made my drink and it’s ready for pick-up, even though they call out everyone else’s name—even those names they stumble over, mispronounce, and otherwise butcher. Who would have thought that choosing a name which is appropriate to oneself yet slightly unconventional (though certainly not unheard of) would shake to the core and upset grownup people so completely?
Talk about fragility—I’m living this reality, y’all just have to pronounce my easy-to-say name every now and again.
Today I sent this message to a random stranger who hit me up a few days ago asking about my art on Fetlife, and who then proceeded to not share anything about himself with me while expecting a conversation with me to continue, hoping for visitation while he’s in town over the next couple weeks, and intent on intimate time including cuddles and smoking weed (none of which I offered him when I summed up which mediums in art I utilize regularly):
“Ok… well, I’m a pretty busy individual. If you’re interested in being my friend you’ll have to pique my interest. I know literally nothing about you except that a we’re both on Fetlife and you like my pictures and to craft. FL is full of people who want things from me, and usually it’s men who act the most entitled to my time, attentions, and other skills or offerings. If you want something from me you’ll have to offer something of yourself in order to gain my notice and have me take you seriously. If you don’t want to do that work, I am hirable for various types of session work.
It’s up to you. I’m not being rude, just letting you know what my perspective looks like.”
I wish I didn’t have to write things like this to people (usually men) exceedingly regularly…
Recently I was playing online with a man who primarily was flirting with me because his fiancé wanted to be cucked and he had finally decided he would go for it. He told me he liked me, and he was fun to connect with over text. He was also very directive about what “needed to happen” within our flirtations, most of which I didn’t understand as it seemed to have little to do with how a conversation usually unfolds between people getting to know one another. I generally went along with it, asking questions along the way, though also made mention that I was uninterested in following someone else’s script, and that while I was open to suggestions and of course his own desires being made clear, I needed things to unfold in an organic and honest way which felt good and interesting to me too. I explained the concept of couple’s privilege when unicorning, a concept he had never considered (and didn’t really move on to respect).
The closer we got to having a planned video date, the weirder he got—insisting that he was into me and our flirtations, but picking bizarre fights or defining my texts by his emotional insecurities rather than asking questions or accepting my reasoning for saying the things I was saying (and instead continued to insist I was doing something to him, which was completely a product of his projections and fears). When I asked if all of the friction from his end of the conversation was due to, perhaps, feeling disinterested in me or the dynamic we were engaged in, or maybe that he didn’t necessarily want to do the things he had been asking for during our video meeting (probably due to his fiancé’s fantasy narrative), his response was to get agro with me and all of a sudden cancel everything blaming his disinterest on the fact that I’m a professional Dom (something he’d known since the beginning of our interactions a couple weeks prior and had no issue with when we discussed it at the time). God forbid a guy take responsibility for his feelings and actions without making it about something completely “out of his control” and on someone else entirely… WHY ARE SO MANY MEN (people, I guess, though I come across it with masculine folk most frequently) LIKE THIS?!?!?!!!
95% of phone calls I receive are fraud, telemarketers, or from old phone services I can’t figure out how to get off of.
I don’t know where I’m going because I’m spending a lot of energy striving to survive being in this world right now. Am I bitter? No, not really, but it’s an effort not to be. Maybe I need to be a different person to excel? I don’t know that I can accomplish that. Maybe I just need to be effected less by the way the world works and what happens to me because of that—but try telling that to less-marginalized people as you try to take any form of stability away from them, and just see where it gets you… why should my situation be different simply because I will not buy what the man is trying to sell me? I am effected. That’s a fact. I’m trying to play along as well as I can with the pieces that I have, while not letting things I find violent to my sensibilities take me out.
Self advocacy is survival.
To carve out space in the world is a struggle, and it’s a lonely operation. It’s an endeavor which will grind you into dust. Dust is our final form anyhow, so why shouldn’t life be meant for the joy of creation instead of a struggle to survive systems which by and large aren’t holistically meaningful to the majority of actual people in community?
“What’s even the point”, I find myself asking more and more the older I get.
This system works for no one, it seems.
Certainly not for me or many of my friends.
I’m experiencing a complete loss as to how to function these days. I know I’m horrible at advertisement, at reaching out during my most adverse moments, that I struggle to connect with people when I fear I’m a burden, that my skills and insights aren’t the usual ones, that I can’t honestly say what value I have on most days—except the good ones where I feel on top of the world and proud of what I’ve fought for and can offer in this lifetime. I wish there were more good days.
I recently asked for joy in my life. I asked for this during an erotic hypnosis class. So far this week I’m feeling resilient in a way I haven’t in a while. I’m grateful, even though my list of frustrations and financial fears is long and unrelenting. I could use some help, Friends. Universe. I’m keeping it together, but I feel very uncertain about what’s in store.
Play On My Friends,
~ Creature
This writing takes time, research, and consideration. It is my art.
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