Me/introduction

Emo Stuff

I'm a survivor of family gaslighting, schoolyard bullying, and the suicide of my best friend and rescuer Jenny, as well as undiagnosed ADHD-PI, gender dysphoria, depression, and who knows what else. This has given me a keen interest in fighting authoritarian conformist BS and untying the tangles it often makes out of those who don't fit in.

Due to the aforementioned issues, I dropped out of high school and college (long story) and never graduated from either one, so I know what it feels like to fall through the cracks.

Jenny's death blew a huge hole in my life, and I almost killed myself because of it. As part of coming to terms with her absence, it became one of my primary missions in life to try to nurture (in myself and in others) that which I loved best in her – to be the Jenny I wish to see in the world, and to help the world be a more friendly place for other Jennys who might be out there.

There are two parts to this: working to change a system that is fundamentally unjust, and helping individuals escape from the mental traps society sets for them (traps society set for Jenny, for me, for other friends, and traps I haven't yet discovered).

I discovered I was transgender in 2000, after 3+ decades of clues, but was not able to begin transitioning until 2016.

I moved in with my friend (aka hypertwin) Harena in ~2003 and we've been together ever since, despite what we call "the Josh Explosion" and other severe stresses.

I feel that close friendship is a greatly underrated thing, and people should take it more seriously.

I also write music, partly as an escape and partly as a means of expressing feelings where direct words are sometimes inadequate. Examples of the latter include:

• All the Beautiful Girls: feeling terribly flawed, abandonment, gender dysphoria, death
• Sweet Dreams, Good Night: despair (Harena says she found this song cathartic during the Josh Explosion years)
• Spilling Time From a Bottle: tfw life seems to keep taking you further away from anything you ever wanted from it; suppressed self-loathing
• Anatomic Reaction: second-guessing yourself about something you deeply know you want and need
• Someday (unrecorded): tfw life moves too fast in the wrong direction (again) and you don't ever get to properly experience the (all too few) meaningful bits

Volunteer Work

Most recently, I assumed ownership of the Mastodon instance toot.cat in January 2018.

Before that, I started several wiki-based sites (see domains for more):

• Issuepedia (2005): rational analysis of political BS
  • CWRE, the Center for Wingnut Remedial Education
  • InstaGov, a plan for better decisionmaking software
• HTYP (2005): a practical directory of everything