Photo by Andreas Filla, taken at the Berlin Pride Parade 1994. CC-BY-SA

Hi my trans siblings!

I’m late writing this mega this week, I had hoped to do more research but maybe I can add stuff and re-write this as the week goes on.

This time I’d like to share some information I stumbled across about 20th century trans icon Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. She was born in the Weimar Republic in 1928 and survived Nazi Germany to make it as the most prominent trans woman that I’m aware of in the DDR (GDR or East Germany). There she ran the Gründerzeit museum, dedicated to the founding period of the German Empire and the period of its industrialization. The museum ended up becoming a popular hotspot for the gay and I presume trans and queer scene in the DDR.

She was politically active, having been an unofficial informant of the Stasi which ideally I’d love more information on. Was she helping them identify Nazis? Surely being a trans woman would’ve lured a lot of reactionaries out from behind their masks in her presence. In fact, after the DDR was taken over by the BRD (West Germany) in 1990, it only took about one year before one of the parties she threw at the museum was the target of a neo-Nazi attack, at which point she announced she was considering leaving Germany. She eventually moved to Sweden in 1997, where I believe she lived the rest of her life.

She died of natural causes at the age of 74 during a visit to Berlin in 2002.

This has been more or less a summary of the Wikipedia article on her where I did check some sources, but I really want to learn more about her. I only learned of her in the past couple days, and there is a film about her from 1992 called I Am My Own Woman, by Rosa von Praunheim.

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As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.

Also, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It’s for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.

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  • gaystyleJoker [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    6 days ago

    HELLO THIS IS THE MEGA SIGN UP POST/LIST POST

    if you have a preferred week please tell me

    Disaster_of_Passion* (5/4 - 5/10)
    sodium_nitride* (5-11 - 5/17)
    peanutbuttercupola* (5/18 - 5/24)
    Shaleesh* (5/25 - 5/31)
    GayTuckerCarlson* (6/1 - 6/7)
    SwitchyandWitchy* (6/8 - 6/14)
    Alisu* (6/15 - 6/21)
    

    ​ * after name denotes someone who has posted before and will be skipped by first-time posters

  • SickSemper [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    went out w my girlfriend in the weird early stage of transness I’m currently rocking. Mostly boymode (jeans hoodie sneakers) w girl accents (bracelets, necklace, tight shirt, nails). I guess those accents helped because 1) men kept complimenting her in ways that never happened when we appeared “straight” visible-disgust and 2) a cashier called us ladies!!! i’m going to be riding that high for months

  • Florn [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    Earlier, I got pulled on stage to put manacles on a strongwoman so she could break out of them. On one hand, hyperflush, but on the other hand, I kinda dislike that she pulled me up because I look dommy because that’s not really how I want to be perceived.

  • BountifulEggnog [it/its, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago
    man

    life sucks. I don’t much care for this. Moving will be nice. Resetting all my social connections sucks. Going to get a job. Which is good, but also sucks. Just your average soul sucking corpo job. Which obviously could be worse and I shouldn’t complain. I am sick of everything being soul sucking though. That’s just life. Soul sucking and miserable and barely anything on the horizon.

    Its just disappointing as fuck. I remember as a child never wanting to grow up and its worse then I ever could have imagined.

    Fuck me for getting depressed as a teen. If only I hadn’t or had locked in or repped harder or whatever and then maybe I’d be able to at least do something I don’t hate with my life.

  • RION [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    in the waning hours of this mega I shall tell an embarrassing story from yesterday

    so before my brother came over i wanted to nuke all my body hair so that i could feel more properly “girly” as part of hyping myself up to come out to him. And I had tried Nair on my legs before and it worked great! So I slathered it on my arms, legs, chest and belly. Only problem was applying it took so long that by the time I was done I basically had to start immediately washing it off in the shower, to the point that it lingered too long on my chest and i got some on my fingertips.

    chemical burns on both areas! at least it was only the fingertips on one hand (my dominant hand though) and it wasn’t so bad, just need to be careful with them. Chest was a lot more painful at first and the little gland dudes on my nipples were made raw to the point of a little blood(?) but putting some white petrolatum on the area really helped soothe it. Probably gonna get some aloe at the store as well.

    But this shan’t put me (completely) off of Nair! I just need to pace it and be extra careful with areas like my chest

  • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago
    content warning
    depress, suicide

    I’m very good at coping so I don’t notice this often but the baseline level of thoughts I have are just really bad.

    Like we’re talking “puts down the phone due to boredom, what’s the first thing you think of” kinda baseline thoughts.

    I’ll paraphrase my inner voice:

    earlier this year your ‘suicide attempt’ was chickenshit and you weren’t serious. It doesn’t count. You should actually try and be serious.

    And it’s true no? I didn’t really try all that seriously. It was too easy to give up. Too much time to turn back.

    I'm tired.

    I’m so fucking tired. Being suicidal and dysphoric is an all consuming state of being. I just want to be freed. I want to kill myself so I stop thinking about killing myself. I don’t want to be overcome by fear anymore, but my brain keeps giving me daydreams of my death.

    It feels like the end of my life is already here and the reaper is just stuck in traffic. You see, the afterlife runs on american carbrain. It’s hell after all (where I’m going).

    Before you tell me to go see a psychologist, I’ve already gone. So many times. I don’t want to anymore. It just makes it worse. I have bad associations with that clinic now.

    :::

  • cw: genitals, sex and surgery

    I think I want to have a pussy now. Maybe I don’t even want to keep my penis. Getting SRS is so far away though, so I’ll just wait a little and see how I feel. I want to know how t-girls feel after surgery too, maybe it will help me decide. I liked being with this girl so much, and I feel like having a pussy would make it so much better