No matter how much pain this world brings me for my own choices, I wear the scars of my own self-assured mutilation.
An artwork with Sarfven because I've just been so hyperfocused on him as a character and the idea of being created with a body that you're so desperate to rebuild on your own. I wanted to express the feeling of guilt and shame that can come with medically transitioning, from being treated as though the pain and transphobia thrown at you is somehow your own fault and desire for daring to "mutilate" and "destroy" your own body. I believe that transition is a beautiful thing and anyone is free to design and change their flesh to what feels comforting and safe, no matter how much pain that the world may bring for it.
I think being treated like a weird genderfuck freak has its fun perks but honestly I am not treated well in public outside of queer spaces and my friendships, and it's been bringing me down lately. Whether it's offhand comments and coldness or outright harassment where I fear my safety, it always feels like it is my fault. Like I deserve it for presenting the way I just AM, because why can't I just be simple and appeasing to those around me? As though it was my choice to allow myself to be humiliated and disregarded. I want to be proud (and I mostly am!) but the world wears away at me sometimes and it can feel really helpless.
The biggest irony of it all, is that this art got flagged down by the AI moderation technology on Instagram, no matter how many times I appealed, it didn't matter. It was labelled sexually explicit, despite nothing in the artwork indicating as such, nor was it even my intention in the first place either. A couple other artworks of mine were flagged for takedown, all involving overt transgender themes, including drawn surgery scars and mentions of transition. It just makes me wonder what the technology has been trained on to view transgender bodies as something inherently fetishistic and sexually explicit. I feel like it kind of proved the source of that guilt and humiliation that lingers in my mind sometimes. In a way, it's kind of validating.
I don't know how to articulate the feeling exactly, but having bodies like mine viewed through this lens (even by AI technology), feels degrading. Or like an object, one that is so easy and deserving to cast judgement onto without a second thought about who that body might be attached to. I feel like it extends beyond transgender issues as well, with the perception of queer love and life as peverted and insidious, and the increasingly tightening rules and regulation on artisic nudity and freedoms as a whole.
I feel a bit crazy that I'm attaching this much thought into what is essentially a drawing of my own fictional character, but my body is represented through Sarfven. The emotions he goes through are my own, I feel a sense of catharsis when I can use him as a vehicle to get those emotions out of my brain. And I personally find no issue in being sensitive as long as I'm able to construct it into thoughtful ways.
Anyway, I'll have a tutorial up here soon for how to draw top surgery scars soon, so see you then. :P Take care and stay safe out there!
