starless @starless@pixie.town

@june there's boats you can rent off the northern coast of Wisconsin that are good, big, live on 'em sail boats. You can sail around the apostle Islands. I've heard it's a lovely trip with a handful of friends, though you do need to pay.

You might want to look up the size limits on various lakes before hanging around their clubs. I think a lot of the lakes here are too small for boats that big, iirc.

@redlollie

You might use a system like this, assuming your site has the technology to support it?

https://www.pocketbeancrafts.com/collections/all/products/gifting-abandoned-carts

@klara@wandering.shop also, just a fit note-- I'm afab, and wear around a size 6-8 dress. I have wide shoulders and wide hips/thighs. I prefer things that don't put tension over my knees, so I look for pants that are a bit roomy.

Bra-wise, my girlfriend strongly recommends the b tempt'd line from Wacoal. She has a small frame, her dress size is around 2-4. There's a subreddit, r/abrathatfits , that may be able to give good advice.

@klara@wandering.shop yes! I boosted two old threads, but...

My current favorite is Noctex for clothing. They do dead stock fabrics and ethically made stuff.

Buddaful Boutique has some nice things, but may be problematic in some ways. Typical yoga place vibe issues, nothing bigger.

House of Aris is amazing and bold and perfect.

CrisisWear is nice but expensive and I haven't had perfect luck with their fits.

Son de Fleur (etsy) makes amazing but expensive wrap dresses.

CryoFlesh is owned by a few nice friends of mine as a hobby project thingie.

Pocket bean crafts occasionally makes incredible clothing.

Sock Dreams is the OG of thigh highs that are actually thigh high, but Thunder Thighs is a rising star.

Carmen Liu now has a US distributor, but their thongs are too small for folks not in hormones, just FYI.

My secret for comfy wrap shirts is to order from https://www.bellahatailors.com/ . They also make custom wrap dresses.

I have found one fast fashion place that I do like for pants because it's so hard to find ones that are comfy with good pockets. I can't speak to their ethics, but Soft Surroundings has comfy pants that have a lot of stretch in them. Make sure they say they have pockets, though, because some do not. They often have sales.

See also https://social.pixie.town/@starless/106145166566413416 and https://social.pixie.town/@starless/104532518135869399 .

The woman I was talking with recommended Black Tailor, which looked really neat.

@voidspace@mastodon.org.uk what kind of hearing loss?

I "short circuit" my loss using conductive headphones.

I'm sorry, I don't have good resources on super flat response headphones, but if you are interested in modifying the sound in your 'pipeline', and have about a week that you're willing to spend to figure it out, you can use a tympan sound processor to make your headphones adjust to your hearing loss prescription.

@library_squirrel@weirder.earth @MerlinJStar@weirder.earth 👋

@library_squirrel@weirder.earth @MerlinJStar@weirder.earth I'm not sure this aligns with what I've heard from folks who weren't raised in Western cultures. Additionally, I feel I did address those concerns in my initial reply.

Why are you so insistent that framing queerness as a western lens is wrong? My point was that there are behaviors that look like queerness in regions that people who live there might view differently, and that it's important for the queer community to listen to the people there and respect whether or not someone identifies with 'queer'. If someone does identify with queerness, that's fantastic, too.

I never intended for it to be exclusionary, but I do think it's reductive to paint homosexual love as queer in a culture that is actively opposed to western colonization. IMO, it would be like calling a tone poem music genre that evolved on its own 'jazz', despite the objections of the musicians.

To put it another way, what would the world be like if we didn't 'need' queerness to keep people safe and happy? What if that were the case in the culture you were raised in? Do you think it would affect your relationship with queerness?

I'm reminded most of two-spirit indigenous traditions, and a feeling of 'not needing' queerness to fight against homophobia and similar, as those themes weren't present pre-colonization. As individuals, many two-spirit people, especially younger ones, are queer, but not everyone is, and I think that's important to respect.

It's not the kind of thing that makes for interesting conversation, it's just a note to respect that not everyone identifies that way.

@MerlinJStar@weirder.earth yeah, that's fair. It's easy for me to forget that my mastodon experience is probably very different from yours. In hindsight, I should have started off my reply with a clear and resounding 'yes, I agree'.

I didn't see the recent queer discourse thing you're referring to, but I hear where you're coming from regarding the holes in the discourse there. They sound par for the course. Oof.

Thanks for the energy. :)

@MerlinJStar@weirder.earth

Not to nitpick terribly, but I see queerness as a somewhat modern lens, and as a western invention that arose out of imposed heteronormativity in that region starting around the mid to late 1800s.

Genders outside of a binary and love outside of western heteronormativity have been all over the world for a really long time, but I worry that calling them queer erases that local history and replaces it with western queer history. A kind of a whitewashing or maybe a rainbow-washing, as it were?

A case where this seems relevant might be some femme-centered trans, drag, or cross-dressing communities in Thailand insisting that their members are masculine, but western queer culture would likely say that they are binary women, and only that. Both groups are probably making the decisions they are because it helps them fit into their local cultures most smoothly and safely. It took me a bit before I was like "oh, right. I've never been to Thailand, who am I to call these people who are obviously doing cool things with gender transphobic?"

Anyways, if you're into gay history, you might like this video where Xiran Jay Zhao discusses bisexuality in ancient China: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tS2VXSroznY .