*cough!* Look at all the DUST in this place!

Hello again, The Internet!  You, uh, may have noticed some changes around here.

First & foremost, I'm out now.  I wasn't for a while, and it was kind of a mess.  I had to be real cagey about keeping my online and real life identities separate, because... well, long story.  I'm sure you understand.

But that's (mostly) over now.  So!  Hit me up on them social medias!  You can find me on Twitter @Theremin_Dee (and this is the most-liked thing I've ever done there).  I'm also on the Faceborg, but email me for that - my profile is fully private, and if we're not already friends then we probably have no mutuals.  I'm also on reddit and Tumblr, but my presence there is almost entirely NSFW; I'm not that hard to find, but let me know if you wanna be sure, and we can get our wires crossed.

So.  The Obvious.  I'm trans, always have been, and this blog has been a part of that.  I came here from a Playskool blog, and after coming out over there I decided that I wanted a somewhat less personal and more journalism-ish kinda deal, so I made a fresh start on Blogger.  I wanted to see if, writing under a female persona and not mentioning my transness, I could "pass" with text only.  (Does that mean... back in the closet?  Or not?  Not sure.)  "Easy peasy," you may be thinking, if you're a guy.  "Hmm," you may be thinking, if you're a gal.  At any rate, it seems to have gone OK so far - I don't seem to have outed myself or engaged in any especially egregious misogyny.  I mean, there was that one little dust-up with Sarah Braasch, which I still feel pretty bad about, mostly because a former roommate basically press-ganged me into writing it.  (This is not to reduce my culpability, I take full responsibility for my words, but I feel it's OK to mention almost ten years later in case anybody still cares.)  But then, people make mistakes, so whatevs.  There was also that one guy who said that one thing that threw me into full-blown HE KNOWS mode, after which I pretty much immediately changed the whole look of the blog, but I seem to have been worried over nothin'.

I went back into the closet for grad school, and now that I'm all credentialed and in the workforce under my deadname (does it count as a deadname if I'm still legally and professionally known by it?  I feel new at this...), but out online and in my personal life, I figured it was time to dust off the ol' blog.  There have been a few things I've wanted to write about, most of which are now too old to be relevant, but it's an urge that doesn't really go away.  So here we are.

Hi, I'm Deirdre!  Nice to meet you.

Holy cats, does that feel good to say!  The Alert Reader may have noticed that, despite many obvious hints and patently transparent allusions, I never actually said I was a woman before.  That was partly internalized-transphobia-induced insecurity, and mostly plausible deniability in the event of some transphobe tryna fux wit me (which, I suppose, is also transphobia-induced insecurity).

This is kind of a big deal for me because, until recently, I was closeted in my other online identities but authentic here, so I had to maintain a bit of a crowbar separation (Eddie Izzard is also transgender squeeeeeeee I use so many of his* idioms this is like whoah) between this blog and the rest of my online presence for fear of aaaawwwwkward conversaaaaaaaations.  But now that I'm out in my personal online presence, I have work-maintained identities under my deadname for professional purposes ("You see, Boss, lots of my friends are just not work safe people, so of course I have a private Faceborg under a different name that I'll never connect to my work life!").  This means, by tying my blog together with the rest, it's now my deadname life that's hived off from the rest, and the bulk of my digital footprint is at last authentic.  Happy day!  Today shall forever be a special... ::checks date:: oh wait nevermind.

Moving on, this isn't going to be a transgender-themed blog.  I mean, there's the banner and the color scheme, but that's mainly an invitation for any transphobes to fight or GtFO - I'm flying my flag loud and proud because it just feels so damn good.  Also, I'm going to talk about trans stuff for a little bit, because I've been getting into some discussions in other places where I was like, "Huh, it would be really nice if I just had a central repository of all these arguments I'm frequently making, instead of digging through my old comments for copypasta."  But that's like six things and then it's back to - wait, who's president now?

Oh, dear sweet merciful carp.  I could make a full time job out of this guy alone**.

* - OK, so Eddie Izzard came out as transgender, and when my partner M told me about this, we just started using female pronouns to refer to him.  But then I was like, "Wait, did Eddie ever switch pronouns?"  And the best Five Minute Abs Google I could muster says No.  But I could be wrong!  So please correct me if you have better information, thanks!

** - I hereby claim latest possible timely "Trump is the president" joke.  Fite me.