April Maria Ortiz

April Maria Ortiz

@aprilcicada.bsky.social

Trans Texan gadfly | math lady | UT Austin PhD | writer/artist | mutant/demon | wife/mother | she/her | ✊🏼🍾🔥🧱🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

134 Followers 81 Following 39 Posts Joined Jan 2025
1 year ago

I have complex feelings about my fantasy fiction because I used it as a way to cope with my suppressed transness and some things probably don't hold up too well.

Anyway, maybe a lore drop / bibliography is coming.

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1 year ago

Follows probably know about my recent trans & Uvalde essays. But I also used to write fantasy short stories for @bcsmagazine.bsky.social and other magazines. Under a pen name. I'm thinking about sharing about it because I'm thinking about writing stories again and I want to be mindful about it.

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1 year ago
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Despite Republican Attacks, Americans Are Queerer Than Ever In Latest Poll According to a Gallup Poll released on Thursday, more Americans identify as LGBTQ+ than ever before, despite heavy attacks from right-wing politicians.

1. Despite Republican attacks in recent years, America is queerer than ever before.

LGBTQ+ identification has risen to 9.3% in the last Gallup Poll, a huge jump from 7.6% last year.

I cover the latest numbers in my story.

Subscribe to support my journalism.

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1 year ago

Same. I've been doing a speedrun for that reason.

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1 year ago

This is me, lol. Because I'm built different, maybe it was actually an incentive. I couldn't sit back and watch trans people be attacked, knowing I was one.

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1 year ago
The bill tracker on TENT's website, showing 140 "harmful bills." Since it's organized by category, several bathroom related bills attacking trans people appear near the top of the list.

According to the Transgender Education Network of Texas, there have been 140 bills attacking the rights of #trans and #LGBTQ+ people introduced in this Texas legislative session.

Imagine if these legislators felt the same pressure to address... literally any real issue. billtracker.transtexas.org

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1 year ago

I wonder whether there isn't an issue of cultural competence in how we try and evaluate these arguments. The purpose of these statements is not to give a universally convincing rationale for policy. It's to offer justification that will be accepted by specific decisionmakers, w specific beliefs 🧵

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1 year ago

This site includes the "clear guidance" that Trump's EO 14168 mandated should be produced within 30 days to expand on the definition of sex in that order.

This is what the policies of the US Government will be based on. Let's take a walk through...

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1 year ago

Abolish ICE.

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1 year ago

Now, after years of this behavior, the Times has the audacity to issue OpEd's like, "Why is Trump being so mean to the transgenders?"

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1 year ago

I always feel good right after injecting and sometimes I'm like wow that E really does it but other times I wonder if it's maybe just an aftereffect of the unpleasantness & pain of jabbing myself. I always feel great right after laser / electro, too. The painfuller the better. Is that weird?

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1 year ago
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Oh! Here's my Valentine's Day fit! Pretty cute, no? I've been saving this top for the occasion.

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1 year ago

This is a post for a very niche audience, but sometimes my life feels like a drawn-out demythologized fictionmania story, but without the gross objectifying stuff, just kind of chill & nice & fulfilling. This was inspired by a specific experience, I won't say what, but anyway the robins have come. ❤️

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1 year ago

Jennifer Finney Boylan says that having tits is like having a nose, which is true, but it's like having a nose if you've never had one but your brain told you that you should and then one day a nose grows on your face after you start injecting yourself with magical nose juice.

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1 year ago

Got a text midway through therapy that a municipal court in a town where I got pulled over last year is issuing a warrant for my arrest but when I called afterward it turned out they had the wrong number is how my day is going.

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1 year ago
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My Happy, Normal, Trans Life in the Heart of Texas Trans people are a gift to the world. They show us how creative God can be, and they are the embodiment of a fundamental journey that every Christian must make.

Featured story: “Even in rural Texas the average person couldn’t care less about my gender. Most Texans who know me and hear my story are supportive, wherever they happen to lie on the political spectrum. They may not understand it, but they accept it and move on.”

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1 year ago

Cute picture of both of you.

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1 year ago
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I was getting read the way I try to be read.

* Something I can’t really share abt here but life is strange and sometimes I wish I cd tell 12yo me how things are turning out, she’d never believe me it’s so surprising, fitting, and good, like a beautiful story someone else wrote.

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1 year ago
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longer & longer, it started when I had to grow my stache out for electro but now they’re out of control, someone is going to have to do something about it.

* I went to 9yo’s bball game the morning after electro and I was more or less au naturel but someone said g’mornin’ in a way that told me

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1 year ago
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I think practically *all* the dark hairs are gone. The ones that remain are red & soft. My skin is so smooth. Fuck those little hairs, I hope they burn in hell.

* Coworkers complimented how my outfit, earrings, kerchief, and nails matched the other day.

* The wings on my eyeliner are getting

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1 year ago
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I feel so scared, sad, and alone right now. I’m crying, actually. Here’s my joy, though:

* The other night at DQ the workers called me ma’am before and *after* I ordered. My voice, it’s getting better every day.

* An HEB employees called me ma’am today.

* I had electrolysis on my upper lip and 👇🏼

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1 year ago
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1 year ago

God I’d love this. I spent so many hours on the first one, making little cartoons.

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1 year ago
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After I came out to myself as trans, my interior life changed so dramatically, practically overnight, that I wrote in my diary that, in my heart, I’d gone from Dennis Hopper to Laura Dern, and that the robins had come. ❤️

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1 year ago

I love Akira. I love the manga too — such amazing art.

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1 year ago

I’m so sorry. I was sucked into that world as a young adult. I was so close to throwing my whole life away. It took me years to get out and detox my brain. Others went the other way and there’s no point even being in a relationship with them. 🫂

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1 year ago

I’m so sorry, that’s awful. 🫂

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1 year ago
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My phone ☺️

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1 year ago
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1 year ago
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Downside to being trans: Everybody hates you and wants you to die.

Upside to being trans: You can sit literally anywhere and just vibe on the way you look, all day and forever. ✨

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