Whose Boobs are Those Boobs?

Amazing cover art made by @antiv3nom

It’s July 23rd, 2025 and I’m on vacation in upstate New York. My cousins and my girlfriend and I are loitering in a little touristy spot, talking and relaxing after getting Italian for lunch. It’s been nearly a year since I’ve had a chance to see most of them, so we’re shooting the shit about all the drama that’s gone on in our lives. Broken bones and broken hearts and new jobs and new friends and all the silly stuff that takes up your day to day life. I’m in a relatively boy-ish t-shirt and shorts. Not exactly boymoding or anything, but I’m still visibility clocky. It’s very obvious I’m a girl, but it’s also obvious I wasn’t born one. Also, I have tits. 

2 years on estrogen will do that to you! My ass is fat, my hips are wide, and my chest is very noticeable. But I also have a bit of a stubble even if I shave. My cousin pulls me in and points out the man that just walked by me was staring at me. Specifically my chest. I initially thought he meant that they were staring at him because of his punk outfit in a place where that’s unusual. Suddenly I start feeling a bit more vigilant. Two different men who walked by holding hands with their wives had their eyes trained on my tits the whole way. It’s not like I’ve never been ogled, but I must admit I felt a bit of prejudice in this instance based on the amount of red hats and blue lines I saw walking around the town. Am I an object of desire or of disgust? I’m not sure which feels worse. I can handle that, though. It’s just looks. No slurs and no one swinging. 

That night, my cousins and I are all relaxing in the hotel room showing each other TikTok’s and referencing cringy viral sounds. It’s nice in the AC. Even after the sun went down, it was still really hot. I’d cooled off in the pool, my first time really swimming since 2019, but I’ve gotten a bit more sensitive to heat as of late. I really love to swim, and I’d been all flirty with my partners about how cute my new bathing suit was. 

I change into my pajamas once they all leave for the night, just to see at the top of my BlueSky feed that my game is deindexed on Itch. Not only that, but many of my friends had their games delisted and some even have their payments withheld. Any games with the adult or nsfw tag are inaccessible by search. I’m relatively new to putting my art out there, and so it was a sucker punch to the gut to see a project I was extremely proud of, that I made for a game jam celebrating openly queer and sexual games, hidden from public view. The Faggot Games Jam was hosted by Darling Demon Eclipse, who wrote the titular blog post “Faggot Games: An Urgent Warning”. Written shortly after the fascist was inaugurated, the manifesto argues that bowing to the puritanical and patriarchal will of assimilationist politics has accomplished nothing for us. The only path forward, for weirdos and queers everywhere, is to make louder, gayer, angrier, and sexier art than ever before. A faggot game diverges from mainstream aesthetic and game design conventions to challenge the players’ conceptions of themselves, of sex, of power, of gender. 

I am really proud of my faggot game: [SPLASH ELLA CINDER]. A game about a princess and a country girl who are both ace fighter pilots lost in a forest. Before a bomb embedded in them explodes in one week, they must find and kill the other, but they can’t help but feel that the other is just so damn cute too. It’s weird and it’s toxic and it involves physically dancing with a fellow player. It’s one of the first times I’ve really expressed my sexuality as an art form, after repressing my queerness and struggling with my identity since I was a kid. 

And so Itch’s punch to my gut hurt me in a deeply personal way. I’m proud of who I am. A whore and a faggot. It took me years to figure that out, and I made something that really felt like me. But it hurt even more knowing that just hours before, I was a zoo animal for conservative men walking by. So that’s how this works? I have to be sexualized and objectified as I live my normal life, but when I sit down to make my art, to express my own personhood through something sexual, to sexualize myself on my own terms, that’s worthy of censorship? Whose boobs are the ones attached to my body, then? Clearly they’re not mine. 

As a teen and young adult, I never thought I’d kiss anyone. I had so little romantic experience, felt uncomfortable in my own skin, and couldn’t even accept that I was bisexual. But now I know who I am. I still struggle to exist in my own mind and body, but damn does it look good. Why can’t I enjoy that? Why can’t I make stories about longing and intimacy and the ways those can interact with self inflicted and outward and systemic violence? I don’t personally even care if I make money off my art. I’ve given away my music for free for years, and [SPLASH ELLA CINDER] is similarly donation only. But whether it be my work in anthropology, my work as an artist, or just fucking pissing in a public restroom, I’m rapidly not allowed to do any of it. Mass layoffs in social sciences, my work being censored on self labeled “anti-prudish” platforms, my boobs being stared at. So what am I allowed to do then? 

I’m allowed to say fuck off. I’ll find a way then. You can chase me from public life on the back of guns and batons, but as Eclipse wrote: “I agree with the leading philosophy - death before detransition. They'll have to take my estradiol from my cold, dead hands, etcetera. But, more crucially, death before normalcy, before assimilation, before agreement.” You will not be able to make me normal. I will continue to make this stuff, continue to sleep with my hot partners, continue to have boobs. They’re mine, jackasses, hands off.