Brey, I think saying anyone in the GOP is running on "fighting crime" and "public safety issues" is either a literal fucking nazi or the very living definition of the term useful idiot.

The Republican Party, very clearly, runs on locking marginalized people in cages. That is the purpose of their "anti-crime" programs - locking ppl in cages and giving money to donors who own cages.

Democrats are into this too, but the GOP is the party that straight up admits it. "Public safety" my ass.

Abbeydale brewery in Sheffield is something else. I adore them. If I had the energy to collect their beers like comic books or records, I totally would. All their beer is gluten free now, and they've recently become a worker-owned co-operative. Their artwork is universally fantastic too.

#indiebeer #WorkersRights #glutenfree

One of the really hard parts about being trans, at least for me, is just existing in the liminal spaces.

As humans, we often struggle to deal with the chaos and uncertainty in our world. Many people deal with that chaos by looking for patterns and making up rules by which they believe the world behaves. Then, by following those rules and expecting everyone else to do the same, they can make their world nice and predictable. The gender binary is one of those. There's lots of others, too, like moral rules about what makes a good person or psychological rules about how people behave.

But as a trans person, you're the exception to the rule. You're born one thing but you are the other. And often it's not just the gender rules to which we're the exception. A lot of us are neurospicy and break the behavioral expectations. Or maybe you left the town that nobody ever leaves.

Being an exception brings uncertainty. It brings uncertainty to the cis people because suddenly their precious rules on which they've built their view of the world don't work. When they freak about this, we call that transphobia.

But it also brings a lot of uncertainty to the individual person. Suddenly you realize you have needs that most people don't or even that other people think are crazy. The things that bring you joy are things you've been told your whole life only bring pain. The parts of your body you want to cut off and discard are things most people with those parts value above all others. And yet filling those needs brings joy and relief and contentment unlike anything else.

And as such, we have to carve our own paths. The world around us is neatly divided into counties and townships and has well-paved roads that millions of people take every day and yet we pick up our napsacks like hobbits and set out across the corn fields. The roads... Where we're going, the roads won't take us.

And that can be scary. It's hard not knowing where you're headed and what will happen next. The world is scary enough when you think it makes sense.

But there's also a beauty in embracing the chaos. We're more resilient than we think, more capable of adapting. Maybe we don't like that career but maybe that's a better one waiting for us. Maybe those family relationships aren't working but maybe there's a chosen family right there, ready to affirm and embrace us. Maybe some change to our body is scary but maybe there's a joy like we could never imagine on the other side of it.

Just as we break their rules for what one can or should do or be, we also break their rules for what can bring happiness. We find joy in so many places they'd never expect. At the end of the day, their rules simply don't apply to us and we have to learn toss them aside and seek joy whenever we find it. Because there's so much they're missing. So much their rules will never let them see.