Simon Tseko Nkoli

Wow! Here’s something incredibly personal.

This is Good Bi Gender. A comic I made to express some feelings I have about my gender. I don’t really have that much else to say about it. Here it is.

Hi! Gentile here, I've been reading your blog and find it very interesting + informative, thank you for being such a good source of information and explaining things so clearly and calmly despite all the nonsense you have to deal with.

I hope it's okay to ask this, since I understand it's a very solemn / sensitive subject. In a few of your posts that mention / discuss the Tetragrammaton, you mention that the knowledge of how to say or pronounce the name has been lost. As far as I understand, Hebrew has a phonemic orthography (ie each grapheme / letter corresponds to a phoneme / elementary sound unit). If that's the case, could one theoretically know how to pronounce the Tetragrammaton from combining the sounds those four letters make according to normal grammar / pronunciation rules, or is it the case that the knowledge of how to pronounce the Tetragrammaton exists independently of the knowledge of how to pronounce the constituent letters? Or is it something to do with how Hebrew orthography / phonology has changed over time, and modern Hebrew phonology wouldn't be accurate to the pronunciation as it would have existed before the fall of the second temple? Or is there a nuance in Hebrew orthography / phonology I'm missing?

I understand of course you wouldn't *want* to say it out loud anyway given how sacred and taboo it is, I suppose I'm just curious at the semantic properties of the knowledge of the pronunciation. (If this ask is inappropriate or offensive, I sincerely apologise and please do not feel obliged to post it / reply to it.)

Hi there, thanks so much for your kind words and happy Friday!

So there’s a few things at play here, because you are right, generally speaking, the Hebrew alphabet is a phonemic orthography which would generally lend itself to being pronounceable even in the absence of unbroken oral teaching (leaving aside theological and cultural boundaries on doing so, for the moment). But there are a few confounding factors:

1) Hebrew, both ancient and modern, doesn’t have vowels in its alphabet. To indicate vowels typically it uses nekudot, but that’s not done in texts meant to be read by fluent adult speakers/readers and Jewish holy texts don’t contain them. So we don’t have hard evidence of what vowels go with the Tetragrammaton’s consonants.

2) Some of the consonants in the Tetragrammaton can be used to indicate the presence of certain vowels, but they don’t always get used that way. So there’s no way to know of their presence specifically indicates those vowels or they’re being used purely as consonants and it’s coincidence.

3) Pronunciation of some vowels and consonants, although it does not seem to have been a substantial shift, has changed over time (and not in uniform ways, because of the diaspora).

So certainly scholars fluent in the various ancient forms of Hebrew can make educated hypotheses, but there are confounding factors. And, of course, because of the theological and cultural restrictions on the speaking/writing of the Tetragrammaton there is no unbroken tradition we can look at to confirm any of those educated guesses. And that’s before we even get to the limited number of Jewish scholars who are even willing to try to discern pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton for religious reasons.

More concepts for Doctor Who companions who aren’t modern day humans.

Listen, I think I’m a genius.

people need to realize that dissolving the lines between gender also means dissolving the lines between sexuality. you cannot say gender is fake and then say sexuality is strict and rigid.

there are multigender/genderfluid people who are lesbians and gay men at the same time. there are mspec lesbians/gays/straights who have a complex relationship with gender and their sexuality. there are gay men who are women and lesbians who are men because male isn't the opposite of female.

"conflicting" labels are a part of many people's queer experience, because the human experience isnt simple enough to be put into neat perfect categories. if you truly support trans/genderqueer people, you need to accept the fact that gender and sexuality is complex and there will be people whose identities you don't understand

te/rfs and transphobes on tik tok are currently losing their mind over an older trans man saying “hey the laws you wanna pass that would put trans women in the men’s bathroom would also put me in the women’s bathroom” and all their responses have basically been that he’s a predator and that if they saw him there they would physically assault him. so yeah i don’t ever wanna hear ppl say “oh these laws won’t affect trans men” or “trans men only have to deal with infantilization, not actual violence” bc there is at least one example out there of the above actually happening.

Honestly be pretentious as fuck about the stuff you create. Do a press release for your fanfic updates. Do a Q&A about your webcomic. Make fake merch designs for your OCs. Commission "official" book covers. Very few of us will ever get to a stage where something we've created Makes It Big but even if you have an audience of 5 people plus a shoelace fucking indulge yourself and pretend!! It's the only way to live!!

you're only 21 so i feel terrible potentially giving you this responsibility but you have a platform so please help. tumblr user cunt/boy/supremacy reblogged a reblog wherein i (0 followers, only blocked and reported bots) discuss sexual abuse that i underwent that i shared knowing my following is 0 just to add context in case he misunderstood, specifically to mock it after i clarified the type of situation that was being discussed in an example of the kinds of abuse that transmascs can undergo in my initial post. the initial post has a lot of problems and i directly admit that; my biggest worry was people assuming that it means we should advocate for more control over hrt, which I further clarify we should not do in the tags; short bullet point paragraphs aren't enough for complexity and I get that now. but, i directly asked him to delete it bc I didn't want him to share that and I kind of expect better from other trans people but he's since started going off about transmasc rights activists and it's been over a day. idk how much attention and following he has but i directly asked him to not share that in case he does have an actual following, because i was actually intending on deleting it after finally getting his attention in dms - not new to tumblr but it's been a good decade, but he's just been reblogging and posting direct antitransmasculine takes since. i hate callouts and he's really just showing how much of a douche he is on his own blog by responding the way he has even just publicly without my "please remove this" statement which is in dms, but please help. please help

I'm genuinely sorry that you had to go through that. It's absolutely cruel - especially coming from another trans person. You have all my support, including if you ever want a safe place to discuss about your issues. You might have already done this, but I suggest to block the person who is harassing you (I'll block him too), and not continue to engage.

Good luck, I wish you the best.

Do you have any stance on syscorse (specifically regarding non traumagenic systems)?

Endogenic systems are dope and anyone who says/thinks otherwise can fuck off until they're willing to understand.

Love bombing is not a euphemism for "too much affection too soon," or "high desire for contact."

"Love bombing" is a term originally used in the context of cults to describe a deliberate and coordinated recruitment method that involved feigning friendship and interest in a potential recruit, via flattery, flirtation, physical affection, and very directed positive attention to everything the recruit says in order to lure them into the cult.

Since cults and abusive relationships operate in similar ways and use similar tactics, love bombing in an interpersonal relationship looks like manufacturing closeness in order to trap someone into a relationship in which the abuser has all the control.

And I know these days there's a million bullshit junky articles out there that make you think this is a symptom of cluster b personality disorders, but there is no way for you to be love bombing somebody without realizing it.

If you are an affectionate person and the level of affection and attention you give makes someone uncomfortable, you are not "accidentally" abusing them.

If you are uncomfortable with the level of affection and attention someone is paying you, they are not de facto abusing you.

Love bombing is about using someone's desire for human connection to fast track them into a situation you control and will feel disinclined to leave.