The relief when I open up Lemmy or Mastodon. It feels like coming home to an experience I didn't realise I was missing. Lemmy has grown enough now that I can look at my feed throughout the day and there will be interesting posts, all with engaging comments and conversations. It's like the internet I grew up on, only better: it's ran by the people, for the people.

Obviously, that doesn't mean the fedi isn't plagued with issues. But it feels fundamentally more culturally healthy than whatever the fuck is going on in big corpo social media.

Growing up as a guy traumatised the fuck out of me. Seeing how other cis men treated women has and forever will haunt me. Seeing what they felt comfortable saying and doing with women out of ear shot will never leave me. For this reason, from a very young age I became very closed off to giving or receiving physical affection to or from anyone: I didn't wanna make anyone feel violated or obligated or uncomfortable.

One of the experiences I've always yearned for is the casual affection that my girl friends (not partners!) had with each other growing up. But having grown up as a guy, this feels literally impossible to conceptualise being OK, even though I dont believe that touch is inherently romantic or sexual.

I see some of my trans friends around me that have been able to hug each other or be more physically affectionate with each other. But I so rarely get that from my friends. The few that do, I love it and I feel so comfortable, though have a very hard time initiating it incase I fuck it up or get it wrong or... I have no idea. I just feel like im doing something deeply wrong when I do it. Maybe I'm still unpacking that "trans predator" rhetoric I've grown up around.

Obviously, conversations can be had, obtaining consent etc. But, idk... Practically what does that even look like? How do people just do it so naturally? Its a mystery to me.

Does anyone else struggle with this or am I just weird?

The other day I was coming out the bathroom and felt something on me, so I kinda jiggled to get it off me.... In the process I felt my ass jiggle!!! That fat redistribution is INCREDIBLE. Oh my god the euphoria I get from this stuff :blobcat_hearteyes: .

Being trans can be so hard and upsetting at times, but its moments like this that make it all worth it.

Gals… having tits is objectively incredible. I love them so so much. I started HRT a few years ago, but sadly spent one year quite under dosed, and then extremely sick. But now I’m slowly recovering (but newly disabled from Long Covid. Mask up yall!), my boobs are finally taking shape and are visible.

Oh. My. God. Every time I look in the mirror I can’t help but smile. Boobs?!? On this feminine fat redistribution body?!? My body!!

The only thing I really don’t like? They H U R T!!! 😭😂

Just wanted to share in basking in the tiddy estrogen euphoria 🥰

I'm a butch transbian. I've been thinking a lot lately about my butch identity, and how my experiences with butchness overlaps and maybe differs in some areas to my non-transfemme butch siblings. For example:

• We've likely grown up with very different bodies and genitals, and that has impacted our relationship to our butchness
• Our struggle with presenting butch in a way that doesn't get us misgendered or give us dysphoria
• Dealing with the pressure from outside transfemme circles and inside to present more feminine
• Feeling like a fraud in lesbian spaces, because I feel like I'm dressing like a "man", despite knowing that butch identity is a whole separate thing.
• Fearing exclusion from cis lesbians, what if they think im a cis dude creeping around?
• The lack of representation for butchness in transfemmininty
• How do other butch transfemmes feel about femminine clothing?
• How do we feel about compliments? Beautiful vs handsome?
• Feeling tension between wanting to present more feminine in some ways to "escape" the masculinity I was imprisoned by growing up.

I would love to hear about any thoughts and experiences you've got.

I'm a butch transbian. I've been thinking a lot lately about my butch identity, and how my experiences with butchness overlaps and maybe differs in some areas to my non-transfemme butch siblings. For example:

• We've likely grown up with very different bodies and genitals, and that has impacted our relationship to our butchness
• Our struggle with presenting butch in a way that doesn't get us misgendered or give us dysphoria
• Dealing with the pressure from outside transfemme circles and inside to present more feminine
• Feeling like a fraud in lesbian spaces, because I feel like I'm dressing like a "man", despite knowing that butch identity is a whole separate thing.
• Fearing exclusion from cis lesbians, what if they think im a cis dude creeping around?
• The lack of representation for butchness in transfemmininty
• How do other butch transfemmes feel about femminine clothing?
• How do we feel about compliments? Beautiful vs handsome?
• Feeling tension between wanting to present more feminine in some ways to "escape" the masculinity I was imprisoned by growing up.

I would love to hear about any thoughts and experiences you've got.

I'm a butch transbian. I've been thinking a lot lately about my butch identity, and how my experiences with butchness overlaps and maybe differs in some areas to my non-transfemme butch siblings. For example:

• We've likely grown up with very different bodies and genitals, and that has impacted our relationship to our butchness
• Our struggle with presenting butch in a way that doesn't get us misgendered or give us dysphoria
• Dealing with the pressure from outside transfemme circles and inside to present more feminine
• Feeling like a fraud in lesbian spaces, because I feel like I'm dressing like a "man", despite knowing that butch identity is a whole separate thing.
• Fearing exclusion from cis lesbians, what if they think im a cis dude creeping around?
• The lack of representation for butchness in transfemmininty
• How do other butch transfemmes feel about femminine clothing?
• How do we feel about compliments? Beautiful vs handsome?
• Feeling tension between wanting to present more feminine in some ways to "escape" the masculinity I was imprisoned by growing up.

I would love to hear about any thoughts and experiences you've got.

Oh my god I'm so excited about this . Price is $199, making it cheaper than the Pebble 2.

• They've eliminated the bezel
• Battery life has increased from 2 days on the Round 1 to 2 freakin weeks on the Round 2.
• Increased viewing angles
• Maintained the same thinnesss

Comes in 3 color options:

• Rose gold
• Matte black
• Silver

Fuck yes for FOSS smart watches!

My landlord was new to the game. I was her first tenant, it was my first time renting. On moving day in she said: “oh my god it’s an honor! I’ve been stressing out about your apartment with my husband, wanting to make it as if it were my own kids moving in”…

When I got in, the floors were covered with plaster dust, the windows were grimey and the bathroom window was jammed open… Worse yet? The bathroom door didn’t close because the door frame didn’t have the latch hole.

In the weeks following moving in? The flat (she owned the building) above had a shower leak above my only electric heater, so I emailed her, asking her to fix it. She said a workman would come the next day. He didn’t. In the end? I took 2 fucking weeks to get someone to fix it, despite all the electrical fire hazards.

The following month, the kitchen sink developed a leak over the electric hot water heater… Again, I alerted her to it, and a workman took 5 weeks to come over and fix it, after many many emails.

To top it all off? My neighbours flats living room backed onto my bedroom. He was also a selfish dickhead who had a gigantic sound system in his flat. It was so loud you could literally feel the bass through your feet at the opposite end of the apartment. My landlord did fuck all about it, and eventually he started doing it during the night too.

Her workmen would dump piles of discarded wood in the main stairwell, which I’m almost certain is illegal for fire safety reasons. This junk would be there for 4 weeks before being cleaned.

Just before I left… The stairways for the flat access were made out of metal. Think those fire escape stairs you see in the alleyways of those old buildings in New York. The bottom step was above the concrete stairs toward th cellar… one day I stepped on the bottom step and it fucking bounced. I realised that it was cut off at one end, it clearly broke. So I spent time making fliers and hanging them all throughout the stair well to warn everyone. Talking to all the other tenants if I could. I then rang my landlord. It took 5 days to fix, even though it could have killed someone.

When I left my apartment in immaculate condition (cleaner than when I moved in), she had the absolute fucking nerve to charge me £300 for “cleaning fees” (my deposit was 500). I asked her what it was for, and that I could find her cleaners far cheaper… but also what was such an awful mess, esp after the deep clean I gave it.

By this point, I had joined a tenant union. I spoke with them and they advised me to get back in touch with her, asking for an itemised bill of precisely what needed cleaning and restoring and why. And that I was talking to my tenant union. No response… 2 weeks later? I got my deposit back AND an extra £100. Take that, landlord scum.

Remember: there’s power in a union. Also? Don’t forget to try and keep all your communications with your landscum on record. Anything they say off the record? They can escape accountability from. Plus, if legal action occurs? You’ll have a nice long paper trail of evidence to fuck them over with.

Oh my god, guys. The fediverse is changing my life. In an age of a profit driven, AI enshittified internet, fediverse platforms like Lemmy and PieFed are a fucking god send.

I swear to god, I feel my brain is being cooked alive by the overwhelming algorithm bullshit that Instagram and YouTube is driving down my throat. But since discovering PieFed? On top of using Mastodon, most of my social media takes place on the fedi now. What a fucking privilege. I can reach the end of my days without my brain feeling like jelly… I can use these platforms without feeling like I’m causing harm to myself.

Is it perfect? No. But it doesn’t need to be: it’s not infested with AI bullshit, and most my instances defederate Nazi bars.

This is the internet I’ve been yearning for the past couple years.

I’ll be contributing to PieFeds source code whenever I can. This shit is so fucking important for the internet.

I wanna preface this with: I’m learning and I want to learn. I have so many questions and I’d love to hear the perspectives of some seasoned anarchists on my thoughts and questions. I’m here to learn, and I greatly appreciate any input anyone can give.

I’m confused. I have so many anarchist friends, and I politically relate to them on a very very deep level. In a lot of ways I consider myself an anarchist, I sympathise with it for so many reasons:

• I’ve been let down by so many electoral movements the last 10 years, and there’s somethin so empowering about not asking or waiting for help
• Anarchist calisthenics has changed my life, not asking for permission to change things, to take charge
• I believe in the power of the grass roots, that ultimately, if enough of us got together, we can make the change we want
• Whenever a disaster occurs, look around: there’s anarchists everywhere. In natural disasters? Anarchist groups are found distributing food, water and shelter. In homeless crisis? They’re found in soup kitchens distributing food.
• It challenges systems of power by default that governments use to harm marginalised folk

Despite all of this? I’m still a member of my country’s Green Party. We have a very progressive leader and their policies could make a huge difference to my life and the people I care about, my community, everyone. While I’m not going to rely on them to win power, or even to hold onto their promises, I can’t help but feel like it’s still worth campaigning for them because I feel like it moves me closer to a country where more of us have the help we need.

Some of my anarchist friends shit on these electoral parties (even if they’re super progressive). And I understand why, and I feel it’s difficult to critique them for it, because electoral politics has rarely won us any consistent safety or justice.

But as a disabled trans person, I’ve been on the shit side of the state so often… that no matter who’s in power, I’ll always feel like an adversary to the state. Because at the end of the day: the state has power, and it’s difficult to invision a state that doesn’t abuse vulnerable groups (perhaps that’s a problem?).

On the other hand? I also feel like… The state is a central entity that can organise large amount of resources much easier than the people themselves can. And after centuries of capitalism, is it possible for enough of us to work with each other to build power, community, care and resources outside of the constraints the government and state give us?

I’m also well aware that anarchism isn’t the absence of hierarchy necessarily, it’s the conscious understanding and consent to hierarchy that we choose (if I’m understanding it correctly). Whether that’s through choosing people to lead certain things or groups to do it etc. but then I’m also like: is it human nature that problematic hierarchies occur, whether through governance or anarchism?

That’s my other question: the way I feel I’m an anarchist is as an activist. Which is to say: when I cover up fascist stickers and propaganda in my city? I’m not waiting for the government and I don’t care about the laws that prohibit me from doing it. But as far as changing things on a societal and cultural level? I feel this conflict: I feel the need to work within electoral politics to temper the rise of the far right parties in my country… but at the same time I recognise this system is a sinking ship, and therefore? I want to build resources, community and support on the ground irrespective of government.

I don’t know… I’m very confused and I don’t know what I’m thinking, saying or doing. I feel like these contradictions are incompatible with anarchism. But do my values and praxis make me an anarchist, even if I’m participating in electoral politics? Am I wrong for wanting to seek some electoral power to at least have a leader in my country that’s NOT a raging transphobe, or neo Nazi?

I know don’t necessarily have to choose between the two (though I guess it depends on who you ask), but I wonder: how do you reconcile the contradictions?

New to PieFed here. From my understanding: topics are a collection of communities, allowing you to see all their posts in one feed, right? In my instance, I can't create a topic, only if I'm already in one? It feels a little confusing. Any advice?