The Ifesto

Hephaestus, also known as Ifestos apparently, was crippled for trying to save his mother from being raped by Zeus.  This is a bit similar, but i can't really talk about that.  Here's another myth for you all, or is it?

In honour of the dead baby whom i carry inside my body and the only surviving part of that potential person, a dead baby whose sex is unknown but which would presumably show up in a tissue sample, which however will probably never be taken, i present this ifesto:

On (13774) (decimal), i made this video:

This proved to be so popular that i decided to start a whole channel devoted to it, starting with this video:

This was when i started taking gynaecological herbs this time (i've done it before for various lengths of time) and i proceeded to experiment until i got to ones which didn't make me hurl, and were strongly phytoestrogenic.  I haven't done a pregnancy vlog in quite a while now, partly because the drive to doing them seems to be undermined by the herbs themselves, which is interesting.

Anyway, this is how it started.  Once i got onto Trifolium pratense, well, how shall i put it, it felt like i'd found the thing i never knew i was missing all my life.  I mean it.  It was like putting glasses on after not being able to see properly.  Clearly, it could be psychosomatic or placebo, or more like a drug addiction, such as to caffeine, than a vitamin, and it could all be in my head.  Hence this "ifesto".

It's not clear what's happening, but at that point something changed psychologically for me.  I would say that regardless of the reasons for this change, there has been one, for whatever reason, and i need to draw a line under my old personality, though i am of course the same person, and work out what the features of the new one are, or could be.  I am also saying that this is in no way how i think women generally feel or behave, just how i do, and it may change.  Also, it's probably a load of positives at the moment, but that's how i feel.

I seem to be more aware of dominance struggles, or rather i perceive them (maybe they're imaginary), and more profoundly affected by them, feeling a need to retreat.  Less obsessive, less compulsive, less driven, less depressive (!), less aggressive, more emotionally open, profoundly interested in people and their interactions, and "switched over" from the ostensible content of conflict to the dynamics of the content itself, more prepared to listen, calmer, more contented.  However, definitely still male.

Whereas all this may be in my imagination, or rather, the result of a merely symbolic ritual, at the same time that list of characteristics seems something worth encouraging in myself, so i decide to define myself in this way, along with all the other things i still am.

That's what i mean by the "ifesto", and yes, navel-gazing aplenty is rife here, but this is a second adolescence, and that's what adolescents do, isn't it?

I realise this isn't a massive long thing, but it needs to be quite open and vague to work.  Two things that surprised me:

• The dominance thing is definitely there and i never would've guessed that existed before, but i can feel it really strongly.  That suggests that this is a real pharmacodynamic psychological change of a somewhat disturbing nature.  It's a real eye-opener.
• The really powerful feeling that this stuff is what i've been missing all this time, and in spite of my scepticism and construction of gender dysphoria as being anti-feminist, there really does seem to be something there.  I have no idea what to make of that right now.

One more thing:  women don't just get oestrogen, and the imbalance that may have resulted from this means i'm constantly going in just one direction, whereas if there really are these influences on perception, emotion and cognition as i see them, they presumably get another side half of the time or something, and it might be a good idea to introduce Vitex (which i've also taken before, as an anaphrodisiac, and needs to be timed to the right point in a possibly non-existent menstrual cycle - i say "possibly" because i don't think it's totally inevitable that i haven't got some kind of cycle there.

So there you go, a blog entry with a difference, but presumably not one which is different enough to evoke anyone actually reading it.