good morning I’m off to get my neck pierced.  Calm down, it’s my quartily injections.     @awkward-yet-sweet I use small S snaps to attach my keys to the D rings on my purse and I separate  my work keys on one side and car and home keys on the other.  ‘try not to wear heavy stuff, but if I'm wearing pants with a belt I use the KeySafe clip.  My husband actually wears three!  One for home, one for vehicle, one for work.” Pretty much the same idea but I never wear a belt but if I did it would be some sort of fancy draped chain or something like that. Just for appearance.  I wear mostly tight fitting at the waist clothes.  Defiantly not concealed carry compatible.   @Ivy I had no idea.  You take care of yourself.  We will get through this patch of anti trans, we’ve been doing it for thousands of years already.  Some are worse than others and this is a rough one considering we were just on a high acceptance.   love    Willow

The LGB community has fortunately embraced us.  They did so years ago in gay bars, which was in many ways a blessing for me.  I often found some kindness there when it seemed impossible elsewhere.  Today i see some gays speaking about separating so we won't "bring them down."  They have seemed to be the "log cabin" type but i still find that worrisome. We are a small group and as such we are easily targeted.    Hugs,   Charlize

letters don't define me, happily individual

Thinking of you @Ivy. ❤️

My tears can be happy, sad, or painful depending on the occasion. I have no trouble crying. I’ve said this before but I think self-love can help unlock tears. 

Oh, hi there, @DawnD.   Clothes that fit...I know a whole bunch of guys who happen to have enough natural 'female' curves to absolutely justify their need to wear clothing bought from 'across the aisle' so to speak. It is a matter of physical comfort! Men's clothes don't fit them!   At the end of the day, it is only fabric. It doesn't matter if you need to buy certain clothing to suit your figure or to suit your brain. Things like men's tees are unisex anyway, but women's tees, or tops that look like them, are also usually unisex enough to get away with, while accentuating your natural figure if you have one. You should have absolutely no fear about wearing that sort of stuff in public.   As for leggings, well, that's not my cup of tea, but plenty of people of all genders wear them anyway. Go for it!

Tears won't come, no pain washing.

I was in a conference last Friday and we noted that there does seem to be an attempt to divide and conquer approach. The very same question came up as to why, and it is as AllieJ has rightly pointed out we are a very small minority. If we were to March on our own, under our own banner then we would be an easy target. 

Raindrops aren't teardrop-shaped, but more like flattened spheres or even hamburgers. The smell of rain is a unique scent, often attributed to bacteria released from the soil by raindrops. Not all rain reaches the ground; some evaporates or sublimes before it hits the ground. 

Also, @VickySGV is right, removing the t from lgbtqia+ is not gonna stop people thinking we have a fetish. They thought that way before lgbtqia+ was ever coined, and they’ll be thinking it decades hence.    Oh, and intersex is not a sexual orientation.

Cool musical poetry.  

I work at an lgbtqia+ youth support service with staff made up of folks from all over the rainbow. Since 90% of young people accessing the service are trans or gender-diverse many of us staff are too, but I’m super grateful, as I’m sure the young people are, to have the help of cis queer folks also. After all, it’s not so easy to find trans counsellors, let alone a trans CEO. To me it makes perfect sense to form an alliance with those who are sympathetic to our struggles. All of my cis colleagues seem to realise that the struggles we face as a community outweigh their own, but they can also relate to some degree because of their own experiences of marginalisation. They are all fierce allies.   I’d also like to say, as someone who considers myself generally the most heteronormative person in any queer space, that I’m still very conscious of my queerness in the eyes of straight society. So, while cis queer folks may not understand my struggles with gender, I think I understand their struggles with sexuality. After all, it was homophobic slurs that I was force fed as a teenager, not transphobic slurs. I was categorised as queer in the eyes of straight society from the age of six or seven. If I can’t build alliances with queer folks, I don’t know who I can build alliances with! I think we are stronger together.