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Toby @ Exchange Madness

@iodhadh.bsky.social

260 followers 130 following 4.8K posts

Fey creature of many names. A machine that makes stories. Relentlessly Songxuexiao. The god of poets has two hands: the dextrous, the sinister. they/them // 🔞 // ao3.org/users/iodhadh // 🪦🕊️ // tchy.ca // art: svetlacreates

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · Dec 6

✨ Jared, Adelaide, Ariel, Victor, October.
✨ I use a lot of names, don’t worry about it.
✨ Problematic bisexual, aggressively nonbinary.
✨ Enabler, menace, international dick curser.
✨ This is my pinned thread to keep promos and important links!

Selfie of bsky user iodhadh, a nonbinary white person with a short reddish beard and long bleached blond hair. They have facial piercings and visible tattoos, and are wearing large round glasses and earrings shaped like lemon slices. Their expression is slightly smug.

A photo of bsky user iodhadh standing on the very large knot at the base of a large tree. The knot is at least as tall as they are. They are wearing sandals, shorts, a teal crop top, and heart-shapes sunglasses.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1h

No plans but I still look killer today. ✌️

Mirror selfie of me wearing dark grey jeans, a tucked in black t-shirt with the sleeves cuffed, and a black leather wrist cuff, with my hair spilling over my shoulders. The shirt has text on it (mirrored) and a motorcycle design. I’m flashing a peace sign.

Portrait selfie of me, my head tipped to show I’m wearing earrings that look like bloody steak knives. A necklace with three swords is around my neck, with a second chain hanging out of frame.

Photo of my shirt with the text the right way round. In white it says “come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day” and in red beneath that it says “Macbeth.” A monochromatic motorcycle sits in the centre. The whole design has a distressed effect.

Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 14h

I'm obsessed with her.

Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 19h

Love seeing the early signups for the exchange come trickling in and especially love seeing familiar usernames back again for a second, third, fourth, fifth, even sixth time. 🥰

Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 22h

Wow!! Gay!! What did I do this time.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 23h

Don’t tell me I couldn’t have understood gender at age three. Don’t tell me I can’t remember being that age. I know who I am. I know who I was. I did, and I do. When kids tell you their gender, believe them.

Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 23h

I remember the first story I ever told myself on purpose, when my mom suggested I tell myself little stories in bed to help me fall asleep. In retrospect, that was also an early conscious sign of my lifelong sleep disorder. I can also trace the root of my love of writing back to that conversation.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 23h

I remember the day I learned to swim unaided, which I know must have been the summer before I turned five, because my brother was a baby then and my mom was holding him on the dock. She said later that she almost threw him to my aunt, thinking she’d have to jump in and rescue me, before I popped up.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 23h

I remember my grandparents’ cottage, and being in the bath while my dad told me about the religions of the world and their principles. My introduction to Islam came that day. My dad had read the Qur’an, along with all the world’s other major holy books, to “learn what it was he didn’t believe in.”

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 23h

I remember the bedroom I shared with my sister, who I adored beyond reason at that age. I remember sitting with her on her bed watching a thunderstorm out the window, and our dad with us telling us about lightning and thunder until we weren’t scared anymore. I’ve loved thunderstorms ever since.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 23h

I don’t cross-stitch myself but I FULLY endorse this concept.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

I remember turning five, and being upset about it, because five wasn’t nearly as good a number as four. That’s not my first memory of a synaesthetic experience, but it’s one of the clearest early ones.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

I remember making get-well cards for my injured uncle, and the venison we ate when another uncle hit a deer with his car (tough, grey—my grandparents often overcooked their meat). I remember the drive to the hospital when my brother was born. I knew what a “brother” was, as distinct from a “sister.”

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

I remember the house we lived in when I turned four, the friends in the attached duplex, and the little girl across the way who had leukaemia. I remember wandering in the woods behind the house, going further than I should have. I picked trilliums for my mom, and was told not to in the future.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

I had opinions about my brother’s potential “girl name”—my sister and I both thought Bronwyn was stupid, and preferred Tristan for the boy. I like it much more now as an adult, with my fine appreciation for Welsh.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

I remember my first day of kindergarten (I was also three then), and my insistence on wearing the sunflower dress my nana made. I know I knew what gender was: I remember the time before both my siblings were born, and understanding they would be given different names if they were a boy or a girl.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

I remember the great quiet aloneness that is being two years old and your dad being away for work and your baby sister not yet being born so it’s just you and your mom. I remember the solemnity with which I (age three) swore to a beloved and severely injured uncle to never get on a motorcycle.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

Girl that sounds like a you problem, don’t tell me what I can and can’t remember.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

In a different facebook thread I should really not be arguing in either, someone has now asserted that it’s not possible for me to state that I understood certain gendered concepts at age two or three because “adults cannot retrieve specific memories of their childhood from that age.”

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

“Kindly quit talking out thine ass” is possibly one of the best sentences I’ve ever said tbh.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

Predictably people on facebook are being stupid about singular they again.

A facebook comment from me in reply to someone else (name courteously blacked out even though they don’t deserve it). It reads “my friend singular they has been part of the English language for approximately 500 years longer than singular you. thou hast absolutely zero grounds to stand on here unless thou art also going around yelling about how “you” is exclusively plural and the only correct way to refer to a single person is as “thou.” since thou art demonstrably not doing that, being as thou hast referred to one individual as “you” in thine own post, kindly quit talking out thine ass and learn how grammar works.”

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

Omg please say hi to my beautiful girlfriend Toulouse for me!!! And if you need recommendations for restaurants or activities in the downtown area PLEASE ask, I have SO many.

Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

Shocking. Astonishing. Who could ever have foreseen.

Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

Call me crazy but I think you people just don't want any of us to be trans! 🤔

Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

If we come out as kids we're too young to know and are being "steered" by the trans-affirming adults in our lives, if we come out as teens it's "social contagion" and "rapid-onset gender dysphoria," and if we come out as adults we're lying because if we were really trans we'd have known as kids.

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Toby @ Exchange Madness @iodhadh.bsky.social · 1d

Don't u just love it when someone is like "I'm very pro-trans rights but—" and then goes on to say the most textbook "let kids be kids" bullshit you've ever heard.

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