CAKEFAERIE NEWS ARCHIVE

Party politics is the plutocrats' and oligarchs' internal use of 'divide and conquer'

The external version of 'divide and conquer' was used on other nations to create and maintain empire has been recognized as an unacceptable form of abuse for 50 to 100 years, at least.

It is time for the world's people to wake up to how a party politics system in which the same powerful interest groups lobby and fund all the parties, is a parallel use of 'divide and conquer' on one's own nation.

Or multinationals' means of forming more covert economical empires - that are not openly referred to as empires - by subjugating a string of host nations. Differences in personality between politicians, or in what lies are used by each party to excuse largely having the same policies, and the possibility to electorally remove a particularly hated leader or party every 5 years: these are all just a distraction to hide that all major political parties are fed by the same hands. Oligarchic and plutocratic hands.

An often insightful diagnostic for such groups is whom the people dare not criticize. Examples used to include slavemasters and colonian officials. In the past fifty years or so, however, such have come to include regional superpowers, multinationals with sizeable stakes in given countries, the banking industry, and elements of the military-industrial complex.

You think you have a monopoly on honour

The fairly well-known quote "the problem with your kind is that you think you have a monopoly on honour" rather begs the question what else normative and/or downright nasty groups of individuals wrongly presume to have monopolies on.

Some other examples we could think of are manners, reputations, aesthetics, coolness, fashion and etiquette.

As such, we have identified upleasant normativities that certain powerful groups form out of presuming to dictate such matters to others, and have abolished all such normativities from our own activities and the running thereof.

In particular, presuming that one's 'social class', 'popularity' or any other kind of power gives anyone a right to impose such things on other people, has been identified as an abuse of power. By which any intense, repeated or systematic attempts to impose such things on others have been identified as forms of bullying.

We here do not accept any kind of 'mainstream view' on any of these things, nor a need to form any kind of consensus on such matters. Each person is free to choose their own aesthetics. Each person is free to consider that fashion or coolness don't exist as far as they are concerned; others are free to belive in these things. Just have no right to attempt to impose such things on others. Or to marginalize anybody for not adhereing to these things or having a different sense of such things.

This news-item will be upgraded to a universal declaration of human rights within our safer spaces, with our rulesets following accordingly.

Some consequent Safer Space procedures

At ours, one does not have to say why one doesn't wish to be subjected to `teasing' or to the more subtle and elsewhere `socially excuseable' forms of probing personal boundaries. So if the answer to why `I don't want to have my boundaries pushed in this way' is `because I am a Survivor'. Or to `I don't want to be called that' is `because it's not OK to call any Woman that and I am actually a Closeted Trans* Woman'. Then at ours one does not have to choose between being repeatedly upset by others and Outing themselves. Let us refer to what is being avoided here as the Fork of Closetedness.

Actually, yes, this is precisely the reason that quite a lot of the part of the world around us' most vulnerable people repeatedly have to leave social groups and societies. Often until they give up even trying to find ones where this does not happen. Not least because, as well as random `teasing' that occasionally gets applied to people with invisible reasons why that is very hurtful, in places where random such is common and unchallenged, deliberate repetitive abuse is left free to hide under the cover of that random background.

On these grounds we believe there have to be at least a few places where these things never intentionally happen, and can always be safely pointed out if they accidentally occur. Ours is such a place. At ours, the principal objective is that people who are different from each other can tolerate each other and not be upset by each other, so that all people who don't deliberately upset others feel welcome there.

At ours, this takes complete priority over `being good at the activities involved', or any kind of competitivity. This is so because some people don't feel welcome anywhere else. At ours, there is no need whatsoever for people who are different from each other to `have to form consensus' or `persuade each other'. Rather, people who are different from each other respect and tolerate those differences.

Furthermore, at ours people do not `impose themselves over' others. One saying that how another person present is treating one is upsetting is not here a valid means of imposing oneself upon them. It is solely for each person to not be on the receiving end of upsetting or unwelcome behaviour. I.e. at ours, we have not replaced one form of oppression - unchallengeable `teasing' that is randomly hurtful or used as cover by deliberate abusers - by another: aggressive challenges misused by some to impose themselves over others. Rather, participation at ours entails no kind of abuse or oppression.

We have a safeword - SafeOut - the use of which entirely unambiguously means that the person using it is raising an issue about how they are not to be treated that is entirely serious.

With this in place, there is no need to argue why, so Closeted people aren't de facto excluded by the Fork.

Nor is there any need for such as `slick rhetoric', `being popular', or `only raising issues that already have public awareness, legal protection etc', in this means of pointing out that you're really not OK with how someone else is treating you. All such issues raised are immediately identifiable as such by saying SafeOut, and all uses of SafeOut are taken seriously. Regardless of what rhetoric one can (or dares to) offer. Regardless of `what standing' one has in any social group or society, ours or elsewhere. Now clearly in such a system, use of anger or threats to `defend oneself' from oppression is neither necessary nor acceptable.

Additionally, occasional mistakes are reversible at ours. Saying something that in retrospective was careless or upsetting, if one acknowledges it and does try not to do the same again during our activities, is forgiven here. We are for people benevolently disposed toward learning to be tolerant of others, including others in unusual, difficult situations without saying which. By this, none of us can be expected to already know how to do things right every single time. What we have is feedback, both in terms of people raising awarenesses of a range of invisible peoples and peoples in difficult situations. And via people being able to say, in a safe environment, that how they've just been treated there is upsetting toward them.

So at ours, saying one is upset is believed. Entirely non-aggressively done. Entirely independent of whether might can be provided to back up its supposed seriousness. It is solely used to help ensure one isn't upset again in similar ways during our activities. This is as opposed to being used to impose oneself over others.

For we are not in the business of

a) acquiring a consensus by internal conflicts and competitions.

b) Nor of demanding that people who do not belong to our societies to adopt what we think.

In other words, we firstly deny the normativity that absolutely all groups have to behave according to a). We secondly deny the normativity that absolutely all groups that think about making the world a better place have to, firstly, acquire a position a) by internal conflict. Then, secondly, to lay into any or all other groups around them by b). This second denial is an Anactivist position.

The available means of making the world a better place are not restricted to demanding change of any or all other groups. Others can do that elsewhere if they so wish, the point made here is that there actually are other ways too. Including for ones that remain suitable by those who's personal safety would be too jeopardized by participating in activism. And/or for ones who conscientiously object to activism as just another manifestation of `might is right'. And/or of trading one kind of oppressive system for another kind.

So how else can one do things in such cases? As one example, there can also be groups within which people are treated more perceptively and inclusively than in other places. And such groups can then serve as refuges - places where people downtrodden in most or all other places can go knowing that they will be safe for that couple of hours during which the place is open each week. Thus indeed, demanding change on others' turf is not the only way to improve living conditions for people in a wide range of difficult and/or unusual circumstances. Many of those in such situations, rather probably including a large majority of Closeted people, are unwilling to engage in political, activist, journalist type activities that more openly, loudly, visibly act, for that involves taking personal risks that many Closeted people, Survivors and so on are not willing to take. Or at least risks that such aren't willing to take now because they remain in major difficulty for reasons they're unwilling to disclose.

What at least some of these people want is refuges, better personal safety, not more abuse or conflicts, or at least for now. For abuse and conflicts can come with standing for or public office. Or unto journalists. Or unto those who offer testimonies to journalists or blogs that do not moderate publicly visible abusive replies being made alongside the supportive and understanding ones. Particularly in areas with major resistance to change, and serious power imbalances, making do with what is possible under the radar is also a good idea. Particularly as regards involvement of vulnerable people, and as regards longevity of the group in question. Via it not getting dismantled by those in authority through specifically avoiding any kind of conflict with those in authority.

In a nutshell, these safer spaces are not any kind of activist campaign. We complement what activists do, and this renders us approachable to many Closeted and/or hitherto little known Safer Space Peoples to contribute here. Ones who daren't approach the 'current system' or the current world's conception of activism.

We are not a campaign: we are a refuge.

These societies are not a campaign. These societies do not seek to impose their ways or views upon non-members.

On the other hand, these societies are a refuge. For such as Survivors, the currently abused elsewhere including specifically those excluded on grounds of age/occupation/what uni they are at and with what 'rank'. Or are Closeted people, or of other legal and consensual minorities which remain largely unknown to the public and unprotected by laws and authorities. So that such have somewhere they can go for a couple of hours a week, or something to do or just be part of where they know they won't receive abuse - deliberate or random or deliberate underhandedly 'disguised' as random.

Because other places don't know how to free themselves of such abuses, or don't want to, can't afford the time, thought and effort to not to, or prioritize other things like their society's activity rather than the service they offer to good people who are unfortunately stuck in difficult situations. Our societies serve as a guarantee that there exists a small corner of Cambridge where such people aren't also abused. Nor are afraid that it'll happen and be unchallengeable by one in their situation as has happened so far in all the social groups and soceties that they've ever tried to be in. This very much fits what safer space ought to mean! [Safe(r) space does not at all mean the same in each place it is used. See here, here and the block of text above the shields on our Rules for various types of safer space. Some previous CakeFaerie News articles also contained various classifications of types of Safer Space.

What we are, in outline, is a place of support and of entertainment (never extending to `fun' at other peoples' expense). The refuge aspect of support is as above, however we support not only people in difficult situations but also benevolent people who wish to help out, whether at ours or elsewhere. In this way, we are a seat of learning: of awarenesses of all the legal and consensual peoples' nature and what adversities we face. Of all the difficult situtions people can find ourselves in. Of ways of being kind and supportive toward people in such situations. Of ways of defending ourselves from harm. And of learning how to run societies well. What you can learn here can be so you can be part of running these Safer Space societies. Or, just as well, so that you are an effective and benevolent Ally toward people you know who have confided in you. Or because you've another society elsewhere that you are part of running, and wanted to be more efficient. (We record and hand down menus of past ideas and methods, and constantly classify, question, cross-fertilize and refine by application of the scientific method).

Some people running other societies wish for the other society to become safer in this or that way, and so take up to usually around 2 percent of our rules/mission statement. They are welcome to do so; we are not however in the business of attempting to make full or extensive copies of ourselves. That would be very hard, because our societies are not just based on activities, rules and websites. But also of longstanding trust between people who are n-sigma-unusual in a number of diverse yet relevant ways that complement each other. Nor would that be viewed as desirable by us.

For we believe in each person thinking for themselves. And in groups in which differences of thought are ironed out and people with different talents, motivations and likes are open to finding out benevolent and effective means of collaborating with each other. Ergo, other groups somewhat like ours would likely evolve practises rather different from ours.

Sometimes benevolent people who wish to help out become worn out, or hurt as they do so elsewhere. In this way, both people in need and people helping out can be in need of a refuge. Whether to hide in, to rest in or to be looked after until they are well enough to venture more widely once again.

A typical path at ours is that a person helps out at ours for a term or two, then looks to help out elsewhere. (Some other society or support group, sometimes set up by them for a specific purpose.) In most cases, they move on to the other place, or a sequence of such, sometimes retiring when they get a job, a job promotion, married, have a baby. In a few cases, however, they have doors slammed in their faces by other places' organizers, or are mistreated by some participant at the other place. In such cases they can come back to us, and not just on 'reunion vacation', but rather for support until they have healed/become strong enough again to restart such ventures elsewhere.

The high levels of rules, mission statement and security that we have are commeasurate with the people in difficulty we stand up for. With helpful people learning from us. And with helpful people coming back to ours when things elswhere have not gone well.

Other places that do not have these functions needn't expend anywhere nearly as heavily as we do on rules, mission statement and security. This is, of course, another reason why people coming to ours for ideas as to how other societies might be more helpful toward people in difficulty take on board 2 percent or less of the totality of what we do. Good choices of such a 2 percent already suffice to be a number of years ahead of other societies as regards a range of awarenesses, inclusivenesses and methods of implementation.

We do raise some awarenesses: toward those who wish to listen.

So those of you here who just wish for nice Surprise Cake are entirely welcome not to read this news-item and a few other ones that will follow.

We do believe in raising concerns at ours, as an entirely different mode of interaction to making complaints. I.e. a means of feedback by which awarenesses and methods can be improved. Which is entirely free from aggressions, threats or generally finding someone to `blame' or `take it out on'. We do occasionally export around two percent or less of our Safer Space way of being toward other societies and groups who wish to be somewhat more of a Safer Space. Or who wish to be more approachable by/accommodating some of the many benevolent peoples that ours encompasses.

We do not mind whether such other groups do end up becoming Safer Spaces, or expanding upon their Safer Space capacities. Nor whether, if they do do that, that they do it our kinds of ways. This is a direct extension of how we respect and tolerate internal differences.

Indeed, sometimes one of ours sets up a smaller-scope Safer Space somewhere else. This is based partly on their take on what we are, partly on who else is in it or running it. And partly on whichever subset of the very large and diverse population that like or need safer spaces that it is for.

We do not consider any of these services to bear any relation to activism. That we say since activists quite often use 'safe spaces' elements in their ventures. However, Safer Spaces are a mode of interaction in their own right; any activity can be done in a Safer Space form rather than solely activism or the meetings of specific all-Out groups. Also Safer Spaces can be run in many highly distinct ways. Ours is specifically equipped to deal with Survivors (no kind of abuse here - many Survivors are put off by any kind of abuse or potentially conflictive behaviour), and Closeted people (not having to say why).

It is specifically not a system for internal competitivity, forming consensuses, attempting to impose some peoples' wills upon others, whether internally to the safer space or externally upon other groups. We fully understand that other Safe(r) Space systems are different from ours in function and content and whet they regard as primary. Some others do focus on debate, on forming consensus and trying to achieve large-scale reforms of the world around them. At ours, well, the primary focus is our own safety itself: we are a refuge first and foremost before being a cake club, a baking group, or a place holding debates.

No doubt a university needs many debating clubs. It also does well, however, to have a few corners where not upsetting vulnerable people comes first. So that vulnerable people are not left with nothing, e.g. through not daring to say they're being mistreatred due to that being tied to Closeted aspects of themselves. Such places are good for people presently in great difficulty to start to recover. Sometimes that is necessary for a period of time before being able to return to a wider range of activities.

You think you have a monopoly on solidarity

This is is one Safer Space populaces' retort to 'you think you have a monopoly on honour'.

Except that we've never seen 'solidarity' used by anybody other than the Left, so we'd rather replace the word used for this concept altogether.

Fluidarity is henceforth to be the politically-neutral word.

Emphasizing that what fluidarity is to be felt about, and how people express it, are open to variation, both between groups of people and over time.

This is as opposed to being 'set in stone' by some self-appointed mouthpiece who ne'er knew of, or thought to, consult the majority of the oppressed anyway.

Ace Article VI

Is gender deriving from how one socializes some kind of manifestation of Ace/Aro, or of spectral versions thereof, such as Grey or Demi?

This is however not clear-cut.

Properties of Survivor can also in practice look and feel very similar to Ace/Aro/Grey/Demi. So people who are Survivors don't necessarily think in Ace/Aro/Grey/Demi terms.

Ace Article VII [From a more modern-era Ace than those who wrote our Ace Awareness page, which is shortly to be expanded with links to these Ace Articles.]

I also noticed that on the page about asexuality on the CakeFaerie website (which is amazing, it's lovely to see less-represented identities supported!), it says that aces have no desire or wish for sex, and aros have no desire or wish for romance.

From what I've seen though, usually asexuality and aromantic-ness are defined as a lack of sexual or romantic /attraction/ to other individuals, because some aces and aros do want to have romantic/sexual relationships and may still have a sex drive (and of course there are also aros/aces who are indifferent or repulsed by these things).

I just wanted to suggest this because I think in the aro/ace community we prefer to define it in terms of attraction, not the desire for a certain kind of relationship, and so that definition might be more inclusive to different types of aros/aces and more helpful to people trying to self identify :)

But it's so wonderful you have a page on aces/aros in the first place, thank you!!

Ace Article VIII

Among Aces, "Cuddlebuddy" is a common word and notion. This is the word many Aces use in the context of 'my partner'.

Aces can have 'crushes' too. Except that we tend to call them 'squishes', i.e. wishes to know someone considerably better, and spend time with them.

These words are used in particular by Ace-Aros: Aces who are also Aros, including by Total Aces: who are 'A-everything else' too.

Thought for the Term

Insistence in certain places that every space available be "well used" may be viewed as actually confusing spaces which some Socially Anxious people feel ok using for under-used spaces. Especially as Socially Anxious people are often unlikely to point out that they are in fact already using a space for this purpose, the aforementioned insistence often amounts to Socially Anxious people being left with no spaces at all on university property :|

Congratulations to the MW19 CakeFaerie Scavenger Hunt Winners, Draw Me A Sheep

We did this for our Survivor team-members, Survivor mentors and Survivor friends.

These are our flags of allegiance:

Congratulations to the L19 CakeFaerie Scavenger Hunt Winners, BlackRibbonners

.

Watch this space for Closet Mental Health Articles by Lady Margolotta and team!

Their declaration upon winning is "It's time the Students of Cambridge cottoned on to how "Remus Lupin" is the actual reality of attempting a teaching career while having Schizophrenia, being Bipolar, or various other conditions.

Why the lack of investigations into this, and of protests about this?"

Swanduct Unbecoming of the Arcanum , flying the Survivors of Bullying at Other GeekSocs flag as well, narrowly took second place.

For now, their sole declaration has been "Free Mr ASBO!"

With Veela Angels in third, stating "As Survivors, we fly the Survivors of Bullying at Other GeekSocs flag ABOVE the Survivors flag NONE THE LESS."

For now, what we have ready is a first series of five articles on Aces: Kink Aces versus Total Aces, out of a total of around 12 Ace Articles under construction...

ACE ARTICLES

I. Ace-Aros may be Total Aces or Kink people

AVEN's account of Aromanticness begins as follows.

"Romantic attraction is an emotional response, which most people experience at one point or another, that results in a desire for a romantic relationship with the recipient.

Many asexual people experience romantic attraction even though they do not feel sexual attraction."

We add the following commentary to define in outline Ace Kink people and Total Aces :)

"The opposite is also true.

Those wo experience neither are Ace-Aros.

Some such are non-normatively sexual and/or romantic, e.g. dominant, submissive, or, more generally, some kind of Kink person: an Ace-Aro Kink person.

Others are Total Aces: A-everything-else also.

It is clearly also possible to be Asexual, Alloromantic and a Kink person, or Allosexual, Aromantic and a Kink person. This series of five articles is motivated by recent demographic revelations that, among those few universities that have 'official' kink clubs, some contain a majority of Aces!

One point is that even if one is sure one is Ace-Aro, one may not (yet) be sure one is a Kink person, not meast because Kinks are very large in scope and some parts of that scope may not be well-known.

Another is that some Kinks do not involve another person.

It is possible for instance for a Total Ace to have a Lycra fetish in a way that does not translate to a partner wearing Lycra.

Such a Total Ace might (if they pleasure themselves, which being even a Total Ace does not preclude) prefer, or even need, to do this on Lycra, or with Lycra or while themselves wearing Lycra.

A counter-point is that if a person is not a Total Ace, something like their partner wearing Lycra might exist. I.e. a way by which a partner can please the Ace. In some cases, this will co-please the partner (a term explained in the next article).

The particular significance of this to Ace-Aros is that Kink may be the only way of satisfying a partner and/or being satisfied by a partner.

Ace Article II. Co-pleasing versus 1-way fetishes

An example of co-pleasing from Kink more generally is that a person may have a boot fetish in the sense of liking kissing their partner's boots, while another may have a boot fetish in the sense of liking their boots being kissed. If someone of the first persuasion is a partner of someone with the second persuasion, then boot kissing concurrently pleases and co-pleases.

One can also imagine boot kissing between two people for whom it's a fetish for one, and consented to but not a fetish for the other.

In such cases (1-way fetishes), the partners may work out which of each other's fetishes they consent to, and trade entertaining some of these consensual acts that they like for ones that their partner likes.

This may occur in wider contexts like rewarding one's pet or one's mistress with one of their fetishes, or working one of their fetishes and/or one of one's own fetishes into punishment or discipline.

It is in particular often possible for two partners to concurrently entertain each others' fetishes.

For instance, a person with a fetish for being edged might do so while kissing the boots of a person with a fetish for having their boots kissed. While such an experience might be more intense if each of these things co-pleased both partners by itself, a certain amount of ingenuity can make up for such matters, as is already seen in pairing fetishes.

The fact is that two people with long lists of fetishes are vanishingly unlikely to have complementary fetishes. What happens then in practise is that each restricts the other's fetishes actualizable in the manner of hard limits, as well as identifying common fetishes, be those complementary or aligned. They can then find suitable combinations for scenes on this basis.

Ace Article III. Supporting Kink Lexicon

BDSM is but a subset of Kink, yet already brings out many new words and concepts.

Some of these are very relevant to BDSM as well, especially as regards identifying and removing some normativities.

BDSM is, more accurately, BDDSSM, or even BBDDDSSM. Only the 6-letter version starts to be accurate without overlap: Bondage, Discipline, Domination, Submission, Sadism and Masochism. The 8-letter version distinguishes further between being in Bondage and placing another in Bondage, and between receiving, and meting out, Discipline. In the 8 letter version, then, we have 4 complementary pairs:

(placing another in Bondage, being in Bondage)

(meting out Discipline, receiving Discipline)

(Domination, Submission)

(Sadism, Masochism)

Let us first emphasize that all of these are assumed to be consensual in this article. % (Though, for sure, an article on Non-Normative Survivors could cover how each of these, without consent, becomes a form of abuse and quite plausibly equivalent to rape even if no 'normative rape' accompanies it.)

So, Dominance means one partner consensually leading a given scene (or the entire relationship), whereas Submission means consenting to the other partner leading.

A Dominant is commonly, but not always, called one of Dom, Master, Lord, Prince, King, Emperor, God. A Female such's versions of these titles are Femdom or Domme Mistress, Lady, Princess, Queen, Empress, Goddess.

A Submissive is often called Pet, Servant or Slave, which are inequivalent terms. For instance, Slave might be reserved for long-term relationships or above a certain level of submission, with Servant applying elsewise. Both Pets and Slaves tend to be 'collared': a commonplace equivalent of being in a long-term relationship. Pet and Slave may however have substantially different statuses, e.g. Pets might be petted whereas Slaves might be punished. Though disobedient or untrained Pets might also be punished, and good slaves might be Rewarded. While a Dom(me) might well be proud of a Pet or of a Slave, the reasons for their pride might differ (e.g. how cute a Pet is versus how much a slave willingly endures). Obedience might well be a source of pride in each case though.

Gender-neutral terms include the phonetic "Dom", which can be a pronounciation of Dom or Domme, Princeling, Majesty, Imperial Majesty, and Divinity. Pet, Servant and Slave are already gender-neutral.

There is also a commonplace asymmetry in the sense that a Dominant is called by titles whereas a Slave or a Pet, in particular, may have a personalized name they are addressed by.

This makes it particularly straightforward for Submissives who aren't Gender-Normative to have names that fit this, including when, say, they are Closet-Trans*, so they don't have a name they're OK with elsewhere in life. Similar applies when a Submissive is GenderFluid; they may for instance give as a hard limit that their Dominant is to know the Submisive's gender at every point, and always use an accordingly suitable name (a binarily GenderFluid Pet might for instance have two names).

Let's finally note that capped pronouns like He/Him are used by some to indicate Dominance, whereas half-sized leading-letter pronouns are a less common convention among Submissives. Full caps like SHE/HER may be used by Hyperdominants, and full half-sized letters by hypersubmissives. See Article 5 for more about such "Hyper-X" notions and person-types.

Bondage means consensually restraining a partner. While this can include ropes, chains or handcuffs, bondage can be broader in scope than this. E.g. mental restraints could be used. The type and amount bondage used in a session may vary over the session, as both previously and ongoingly consented to. For instance, one partner may consent to not moving by will alone (mental restraint), and then to be physically restrained once this is no longer possible.

Discipline means consensually punishing a partner. This is quite often mutually consented to be a necessary prequel to other kinds of intimacy. It also quite often has a systematic component to it.

That a partner may not be able to cope with all of such a session is one thing covered by agreed-upon SafeWords, with a hard-limit and near-hard-limit SafeWord system like 'red' and 'yellow' being common.

SafeWords however apply to *all* parts of BBDDDSSM, and of Kink more generally. It may be less obvious that Bondage, Submission, or even Domination and meting out Discipline can result in the SafeWord being used, but that's no less important. E.g. a person could feel too Submissive or not OK with how Submissive their partner is (be that in state or in action).

Discipline may include training a consensual person to be able to deal with more Discipline. Discipline may also determine which other BBDDDSSM things can occur. This might for instance be based on the consensual agreement that the partner receiving discipline will only be indulged once the discipline reaches a mutually agreed threshold. This might for instance be the ability to take thirty paddle strokes, or to take thirty paddle strokes without shouting out. This may include components outside the immediate control of the participants. Such as a Disciplinarian being unwilling to cause bleeding, by which 30 paddle strokes cannot be completed. Or a Disciplinarian only being willing to paddle a Submissive who has no remaining soreness from the previous paddling. What happens in such cases is that both parties can adjust to what is realistic. Whether or not more endurance is attained. Or the implement or stroke motion are adjusted.

Aftercare is an important part of what Dominants provide. Ensuring that Discipline is at a suitable and attainable/sustainable level is part of that, as is caring for the soreness incurred. But, as for SafeWords, this also applies in general whenever there is a Dominant party. E.g. ensuring the Submissive returns to their usual state by the end of a scene, or that physical restraints do not chafe.

Consensual Sadists consensually exact pain on their partners (who consent to that, in detail). How is this different from Discipline? It now involves the Sadist taking pleasure. For instance, a consensual Sadist may not be able to orgasm without consensually hurting their partner at that point in time. This may not always fit the format of Discipline, particularly as that is systematic and may have a narrow upper limit.

This is another place where there's more than one way to be Consensually Sadistic: physical, mental or sexual. A Consensual Sadist may for instance have a verbal way of hurting that they know their partner can, and consents to, sustain. They may also for instance have a sexual way of imposing themselves, such as ensuring their partner can't orgasm before they do, for instance by requiring to orgasm from oral sex before seeing to their partner.

Consensual Masochists like, and consent to, some such things.

This is a case in which some overlap of kinks is likely necessary, particularly if one or both of the partners cannot experience pleasure without giving/receiving pain.

Ace Article IV. Kink Ace Lexicon

Much as some people are Asexual or Aromantic, many BDSM people are A-this or A-that :)

One case, perceived as normative given that we're talking about BDSM in the first place, is that people are Dominant, Place-in-Bondage, Disciplinarian and Sadistic, or that people are Submissive, in-Bondage, receive-Discipline and are Masochistic.

However, firstly, it is entirely possible for someone to be Dominant but Asadistic.

Indeed, each of Adominant, A-bondage-placing, Adisciplinarian, Asadistic, Asubmissive, A-in-Bondage, Adiscipline-receiving and Amasochistic are parallel concepts to Asexual and Aromantic.

One could argue that people who know what each of BDDDSSM are, and have thus informedly decided they are none of these things, are A-BDSM. One could futher extend this to people who've contemplated kinks in general and consider none of these to apply to them being Akinky: a strong realization of what is usually called "Vanilla" among Kink people. However, many people actually do have kinks, or don't yet know if they do out of not being aware of the full range of kinks. Or possibly normatively associate some subset of BDSM with gender roles. E.g. 'male is to me a default kind of dominance', or 'in modern Western society, female is a default kind of dominance via right to Not Consent'. Or 'I am the receiving partner in a Lesbian relationship'. Between these various things, then actually "Vanilla" or "overall Normative" sex and romance are not as highly prevalent as one might at first think. Maybe 1 adult in 3 has kinks they know about. And maybe 1 adult in 2 considers their gender to signify something as regards such matters as initiating sex, being the one who asks prospective partners out, being dominant in bed, or 'being the receiving partner'. This is counterbalanced to some extent by many of these people not identifying with being Dominant or Submissive or having kinks.

One reason many people don't identify with BDSM is because they think that a BDSM dominant 'is into bondage, discipline and sadism'. Once it is understood that a Dominant can be Asadistic etc, then more people may identify with Dominance, or with being 'partly-BDSM' or 'BDSM-spectrum'.

Another reason is the thought that BDSM people necessarily identify primarily as BDSM people, only have BDSM relationships, or socialize (primarily or otherwise) in BDSM related circles. None of these things, however, need be the case. Much as a Bi woman may for some years date a man, and a man alone, a person who has some kinks may for some years date somebody in a Vanilla way. Or elsewise in a way that only involves a subset of their kinks. E.g. a common-interest subset, or a negotiable rather than hard-limit subset. Some Kink people are socially Kink people, but others are not.

E.g. they might not be Out about being a Kink person. This parallels how the number of people going to LGBT events, ever, is much smaller than the number of LGBT students. With Closeted people particularly unlikely to attend events (unless part-Out, e.g. a person Out as Gay who is in fact Closet-Bi, Closet-Trans*, or Closet-Pan).

E.g. they might have other social priorities. This is tied to the idea that people can be socially-non-normative as a separate attribute to being sexually or romantically non-normative. But then also one can be sexually-non-normative and yet socially-normative, or socially non-normative but in a way unaligned with how they are sexually-non-normative. For instance, a Kink person might hang out with Cosplayers for Cosplaying reasons unrelated to their Kinks.

Another point to make concerns Switches: even within the picture of some of Dominant-Sadistic... and Submissive-Masochistic occurring as packages, one person could manifest both, whether at once or time-dependently (KinkFluidity). Some Switches may be in a long-term Mono relationship in which only one of their two sides is active. One could also agree for instance to some scenes in which one is Dominant and others in which one is Submissive, still Mono, if one's partner is also a Switch. Or possibly with 2 distinct partners, e.g. someone's Pet could additionally be somebody else's Mistress. The first of these has obvious parallels to a Bi person in a Mono relationship, whereas the third has parallels with Polyamory. The second is more lacking in parallels, being conceptually a 'Two-Fluid' or 'Two-X' situation; other cases, also uncommon, include between two Genderfluid people, or between two people each with multiple genders.

A point raised by someone reading this is as follows. Dominant-and-Submissive is a complementary pairing, like heterosexuality. Two genderfluid people, however, involves (at least in a binary-gender non-spectral approximation) all of M-F, F-F, F-M and M-M components. So, yes, this analogy is not exact. In fact, if both people are Pan as well, the relationship might just have one component... But the follow-up point is this 'I'm an Ace, and I'm Dominant. What if the person I'm interested in is themselves also Dominant?' I.e. a same-pairing, rather than a complementary pairing.

One point to make here is that, for instance, Dominants can interact with other Dominants. E.g. a new Dominant can learn what Dominance is about from a more experienced Dominant. Among allosexual Dominants, at least, it may be possible that they 'get off' on each other's Dominance even if nobody else is involved in a Submissive role. It is easier, at first, to envisage a Slave with two Masters. In such a setting, Domination is directly satisfied, and in more ways than a Mono relation could, including for instance one Dominant enjoying watching the other Dominant dominate the Submissive (assuming all three consent to this!) None the less, it is also possible for two Dominants to have a relation together with no Submissives present, and even so in the event of this Dominant relation being Mono. One way is, simply, an enjoyment of sharing dominance. Another way is that one Dominant might be more Dominant than the other.

At least in the circles of those writing this, more Dominant Dominants don't enslave less Dominant Dominants, but they might take one on as a Pet as well as an Apprentice. Or vice versa, when strength of Dominance runs in the other direction of experience. I.e. a powerful new Dominant might take on an experienced Dominant as both Pet and Instructor. These examples are all phrased in a way useful to Ace-Aros; if two Allo Dominants are dating each other, they might well have one or both of sex and romance as a common point. All in all, being Dominant doesn't mean exercising Dominance is a part of every close relationship one has. Dominance might not apply, or be the subject of comparison, exploration, or exchange of ideas.

On the one hand, some Aces are Kink people. In fact it's also been documented that at some universities, most Kink club members are Aces. Kink can provide ways of having partners, pleasing partners and being pleased by partners that some Aces, Aros and Ace-Aros may enjoy and/or have need of. The basic idea here is that the number of legal and consensual kinks is very large. So two people, including one-or-both being Ace-Aro, can get an entirely acceptable deal that is such as fulfilling or stabilizing of long-term relationships or closenesses.

Some Aces, Aros and especially Ace-Aros develop an early impression that Allosexuals and/or Alloromantics readily out-compete them for partners, including taking partners or close friends away from us in various ways. This can sometimes be countered by having a good knowledge of kink, including one's own kinks and which relatively-common kinks in others one is fine with. An Asexual can for instance be Mistress to a Slave, or a Dominant's Pet. This can moreover include blowing that partner's mind way more than anybody else has or will, as well as receiving arbitrarily large amounts of closeness of types the Ace-Aro wishes for and the partner is willing to give. So, in a parallel sense to 'love of my life', an Ace Mistress could be 'the mistress of someone's life', or an Ace Pet could be the most valued partner a Dominant has ever had. One way such things can occur follows from some Aces being reknown for paying attention to detail in matters that most others do not, and also some Aces being reknown at being understanding toward people who are Different in ways other than their own.

Being a partner to an Ace, Aro or Ace-Aro is something that many people would refuse, or would refuse as an exclusive arrangement. This is probably more likely to be encountered if the Ace-Aro 'asks somebody out in the Ace-Aro's own terms', e.g. 'be my cuddlebuddy' or 'be my best friend in knowledge I don't have partners, so best friend is the most important person in the world to me'. If an Allo and an Ace, Aro or Ace-Aro are mutually interested in each other in initially-acceptable or compromisable ways, then a deal may be more likely to be workable, and may or may not involve BDSM-type closeness or other mutually-agreeable kinks. Difficulties an Ace, Aro, or especially Ace-Aro may have are along the lines of 'I really like this person, but either don't have, or am unwilling to exercise, the means of attracting them, courting them, flirting with them, or seducing them.'

One thing to bear in mind here is this. Suppose the Ace is a Kink person, and they know the person they are interested in is as well. Then it may be that they're willing to kink-court them in the event of them not being willing to do so conventionally. The same kind of rules apply, morally, such as ceasing courtship if they say they're not interested. And moving forward in small steps. Also understanding that because Kink is much larger than Vanilla, Kink Courtship might not be perceived, or might just reveal kink incompatibility. There is now only sometimes a clear-cut analogue of 'first base' and so on. If an Ace is one of Dominant or Submissive and the prospective partner is definitely at least in good part the complement, then at least some courting conventions exist. Such as the Dominant looking down upon their potential partner, for instance from partly up a flight of stairs. The potential partner might then, if they like this attention, move further down the stairs, and various facial expressions might be exchanged to indicate this is not a happenstance postion to be in or to further exaggerate.

As to how one might know one's potential partner is Dominant or Submissive in the first place, they might have been Out about it (at least according to BDSM dress conventions in public) in a previous relationship. They might also have mentioned this to the Ace-Aro as part of friendly entrustment. They might also see each other at a Kink club or forum. One may also have ways of Kink-flirting which don't cause concern to people who don't feel that way. For instance, a Dominant seeking partners might always be at the front of the hall queue when this is at the top of a flight of stairs. They can then see if anyone they know and like responds in a meaningful way. For sure, looking at people down a flight of stairs is scarcely the only way of Dominant-flirting or for a Dominant to find likely- or definitely-Submissive people.

One idea then is that one can cross-correlate with a distinct signal, to see if the same person picks up on that too. Or whether they return with a Submissive signal at some point, the principle of 'returning courtship' being a healthy one, though not one that all ascribe to (some people who are interested don't court back). This is at a similar level to 'smiling' or 'greeting' in normative flirting.

On the other hand, Total Aces are Akinky, including Adominant, A-bondage-placing, Adisciplinarian, Asadistic, Asubmissive, A-in-Bondage, Adiscipline-receiving and Amasochistic. They may be sure there's no kink they are into. Or they may be sure that, while they don't know what all kinks consist of, they are not interested in finding out, and thus place as a Personal Boundary that they don't want to find out, and thus either are-for-all-practical-purposes a Total Ace. Or somebody who identifies as a Total Ace. Which they can do temporarily, or not, and if not, questioningly or not. These are freedoms each person has: a right to find out more about themselves if they so wish. A right to do so in their own time, and under their own initiative, if they so wish. And a right to be left alone by people looking for partners in ways a particular Ace-Aro cannot provide.

Ace Article V. Hyper concepts and people

One usually considers Allo to be the opposite of A. It is, in one sense, but that's not the only sense of opposite. Let's start then with the Hypersexual opposite of Asexual. By one definition, at least, a Hypersexual is a person who only bonds closely via sex, or one for whom everything is about sex. Such might e.g. have no close friends other than partners. This may not be an issue if they're single in a sexually-active manner. Or if they are Poly, from the point of view that they may then have a comparable number of friends to an Allo or an Ace.

"So", says an Ace, "these are people I can't be friends with".

"Not necessarily." we answer "for that depends on whether you and they are normatively sexual... Also, this still fits our Safer Space's philosophy: they are entitled to consider everything to be about sex for them. This is very far from the same as them requiring anyone else, Aces say, from ascribing to that view. Plus, of course, we're thinking diagonally here. We're trying to get though to the concept of HyperDominance..."

A Hyperromantic person, first, is one who views everything in their own life as romance, who forms no closenesses but romances. This has similar caveats as to how they might be Poly, can't push their personal views onto Aros, could be non-normatively romantic etc etc...

This series of articles being about Ace-Aros and Kink, however, what's central to our discussion is HyperDominants. A HyperDominant views everything in their own life as being about Dominance. A HyperDominant may also only form closenesses based on their Dominance.

Notice first the distinction between 'their Dominance' and 'exercising their Dominance'; a HyperDominant may for instance nurture new Dominants. A Hyperdominant might be Mono, though this might well require finding a roughly equal-strength HyperSubmissive partner. A HyperDominant might alternatively be Poly, and this might include an uncommonly large number of partners. This is from the point of view that SHE is a veritable Empress, with multiple Realms of subjects. SHE may find it impossible to contain her Dominance to one partner, possibly having enough of it to Dominate no known upper limit of people concurrently.

A lot of points can be made about such people, starting with how they do not fit into the more traditional rubrics of BDSM. Go back far enough in time and the only way to become a Dominant, at least in 'the' community is to be a Submissive first. But such as SHE would have Never submitted to anybody. If SHE'd 'been made to', it would have often been a comparatively negative experience to rape, whether or not SHE in some sense consented.

Let us assume then, that SHE is modern. That Dominants, even HyperDominants, can be hurt is in fact a big issue for some HyperDominants. It is in fact something that THEY can do something about, in that HyperDominants are known to Protect, and on occasion even succeed in Healing, Wounded Dominants (a type of Non-Normative Survivor)

If SHE has many adherents, it may be that SHE is the most important person in the world to many people simultaneously. SHE can, in her own way, handle that. If PolyDominant, SHE may require that nobody involved covet HER exclusively, or with any kind of jealousy. SHE might train each of HER adherents in profound compersion (the opposite feeling of jealously).

SHE might of course be a HE, or have gender-nonstandard or time-dependent pronouns.

SHE might well be a social group's leader, possibly of a large social group or of multiple social groups. Many such will of course not be PolyDominant in a conventional sense, e.g. having a sphere of influence far larger than HER actual partner or partners. This is because 'acting Dominantly' is not the same thing as 'having consensual relationships as a Dominant'.

There are various reasons then why SHE interacts Asexually with part of HER group. There are some things SHE can confer that nobody else can, such as protection, reassurance, cooperation, mediation, resolution. For at least internally, all parties respect HER, and the protection can easily be with reference to external problems as well. We are talking, for instance, about dozens of Survivors hiding behind a single HyperDominant, or possibly even just behind some of HER Knights, Ladies-in-Waiting or Fief Queens.

This points to quite a common rule: a true leader such as HER knows how to deputize. In a setting with actual judgement of character - something SHE has - and actual trust: something she instils and maintains. As such, SHE can find a reliable Fief Queen to deal with Survivors 'on everyday occasions'. SHE can do more through a such in terms of hours and location than she could directly. SHE even has some people elsewhere who devise what Fief Queen training should consist of and how to compatibilize each Fief's Subjects with others. SHE will appear HERSELF if there is need: a life in danger, a worn-down Fief Queen. SHE is a SafetyNet. SHE has open-court hours for brief requests and to forge inter-Fief bridges when one is short of something another has aplenty. SHE is a cooperator rather than a competitor; just as well, locally, for competing with HER would be as holding a candle to the Sun. [This is one reason SHE is more likely to be a SHE: cooperation is much more widespread among Ladies, for all that not all Ladies ascribe to such. But SHE does and that's the kind of culture that SHE foments.]

SHE is invaluable to the group, quite possibly irreplaceable. If SHE goes, the group between very largely and down-to-the-last-person leaves with HER even if it is to an entirely different set of activities. On rare occasions, there is an Imperial Princess waiting in the wings. Of some relevance to Universities, where 'life span' is either 3-4 or 7-8 years, so a great leader (HyperDominant or otherwise) is not around forever. The point being that even if staying on for a PhD, SHE is not particularly likely to find a similiar and similarly-benevolent replacement within that timespan. Replace HER nominally ('a new president') quite simply doesn't cut it. where exactly in description of 'President' is the guarantee that dozens of Survivors, say, will continue to feel safe at the society SHE had previously sheltered them at?

MICHAELMAS 2018 CAKEFAERIE SCAVENGER HUNT

Final scores are in. Winterfell have won. Congratulations, and thanks to all participants :)

What Winterfell have won is that the unit of scavenging-activity - points per day - shall henceforth here be the milliwinterfell.

1 milliwinterfell = 7 points per day, for scoring at this rate in the endgame weekend :)

[On the one hand, over the entire term, Winterfell scored at a rate of around 90 milliwinterfells to 70 milliwinterfells being the fastest average rate by a mayweek team; the fastest endgame rate for a mayweek team so far has been 170 milliwinterfells. On the other hand, some of you here will recall the slight upgrade from a millipembroke to a millinewhall as a unit of activity elsewhere...]

Winterfell are the senior Avoidant Survivor team.

"We consider what We have done this term to be adequate recompense for not having felt safe enough with any Scavenger Hunts' format to participate before 2018."

They declare. % [No Scavenger Hunt having been a Safer Space or at all widely amenable to indirect participation prior to MW18, which Winterfell elected to provide list items and safety-and-conduct rules for, rather than participate in.]

"Our sympathies are with The Many who have been displaced from what would have been their activities of choice over the past year".

"And We will continue to look after Smaller People Like Us here; there is ALWAYS HOPE."

MICHAELMAS 2018 CAKEFAERIE NEWS

Week 1 To The Many new CakeFaeries, Welcome to Cambridge!

Anyone can be a CakeFaerie for the cake or other fun :) Some are CakeFaeries out of needing a safer space, moreover, and some are so as to help out. All these kinds of CakeFaeries are welcome, and, as you'll eventually find out, necessary :)

With thanks to our Societies Fair Stall Crew for a great effort.

And to our Battle-Swan-Riding Scouty CakeFaeries, who have caked 7 Colleges on the first day after the Societies Fair... :)

Week 2 We have currently begun our Start of Term Scavenger Hunt

After 2 team mergers, this is a 20-horse race, between team of up to 5 people :)

Note that we are *not* a soc that have to join in week 1 of michaelmas, you can join whenever.

Our activities are IceBreakers, and done all year round, for plenty of people 'don't integrate on the official timescale of 2 weeks, ie freshers' week and squash week'.

So if for whatever reason (and one needn't say) you are short of societal activities which you enjoy and are appreciated at, you are welcome to try our own ones, or others we recommend here

We have by now either caked almost every college or have plans in motion to do so in the near future :)

Week 3 Our Scavenger Hunt

:) is currently going strong, having shifted into mostly email judged chainwriting, sketch drawing and listeny awareness point compilation...

We have another group-article about bullying:

BULLYING, AND THE WIDER SCOPE OF INTERSECTIONALITIES

Many people have said that some of those discriminated against in today's universities are the closeted, survivors, the shy, those who think for themselves, people with Aspergers, people with OCD, the suicidal, the bullied, geeks, subculture people, 'unpopular' people, and people perceived as unattractive, as well as the usual list of legally protected minorities and those with social anxiety. Some people don't view any of these things as the same in relation to themself, whereas others eg view their shyness as anxiety. They'd like these matters to be taken seriously as things that reps and tutors are trained to deal with, and as matters of intersectionality that can substantially aggravate other kinds of discrimination and hardship. They believe that such views should statable without facing abuse or threats.

[That partly responds to the videos, in the sense of what else to link alongside such videos.]

Some say that existing 'policies' on bullying has not taken into account the forms that bullying actually takes. For instance, concerning student journalists writing articles about people or societies who do not consent to feature in the student press. Or what to do so as to quite simply be left alone by other students unsolicitedly bothering them about activism or attempted religious conversion. [Further bullying scenarios were mentioned by other people, but we won't repeat them here.] We could easily add another small set of questions on where the bullying is happening and whether students have any faith in the current system's 'procedure for dealing with bullying'.

We consider that bona fide feedback forms about whether bullying has been experienced would contain the following points (among others, no doubt).

Have you been...

1) Bullied in or around classes?

2) Bullied in hall of residence or around college: with some options as to who's doing it as this is more diverse. Neighbours, drinkers, 'popular' individuals, politicians, men, women (tick as many boxes as needs be, plus large blank box to name further).

3) If you are a graduate student, have you been bullied around your department? (By students, by junior staff, by your own supervisor, by bureaucrats, by senior departmental figures, other.)

4) Bullied at society meetings?

5) Bullied in committees, hustings or councils? (society, jcr, departmental, student union based or affiliated)

6) Bullied by people whom one would hope are there to help? (Porters, tutors, counsellors, student reps, other)

7) Bullied by other kinds of college staff? (people who teach you, senior college officials, bureaucrats, other: blank box)

8) Bullied online, by individuals who are (blank box) or you suspect are (blank box), other members of the university? On university, college, departmental or university society websites? (Including the student press, blogs, forums, IRC channels and similar.) On their, or your, or friends' social media?

9) Is any aspect of the bullying you have experienced a hate crime? (blank box for which)

10) Has any aspect of this left you

a) unable to study or work

b) with no friends at or in Cambridge

c) with a mental breakdown

d) with diagnosed mental injuries

e) contemplating suicide.

11) Do you have any faith in the university's procedure for dealing with bullying? (In general, between students, between students and staff.)

Very importantly, such feedback is only credible if one way it can be handed in in person in an area with no CCTV or CCTV leading to it, and where handed-in forms cannot be tampered with by further people (pretending to) hand in forms there.

This is because a large proportion of those who've been bullied are unwilling to hand in feedback about it which is attached to an IP address by being handed in online.

To readers with little background in personal security, a handing-in point of the type described above might look something like an out-of-hours library book return point. Though its internal workings might be different, eg including a 1-way rotary drum to prevent anyone from 'going fishing' in there. It would be expected that many users would send a trusted Ally in their stead with their feedback form.

This general type of method for feedback has also been widely, if entirely privately, stated to increase Survivor and Closeted confidence in feedback procedures.

That feedback on serious enough matters depends strongly on the information security of the feedback channel is something that the world at large prefers not to acknowledge. But it is both highly true by observation in actually operating variable security level feedback procedures, and rings highly true to anyone aware of difficult situations people can find themselves in. Let us end by predicting that this point will still not be acknowledged by 'official' bodies in 2030. Though we won't object if some activistic folks reading this do a great deal to ensure something is done about this well before then. Just kindly don't point to our website in so doing, because we neither wish, nor indeed Consent, to take any credit on any such matter.

MAYWEEK 2018 SCAVENGER HUNT

This has been won for the first time by a team of not-in-person Safer Space people.

Congratulations to "I am Spartacus and so is my College Cat" for this momentous feat :) :) :)

Spartacus's Team Banner:

BULLYING AWARENESS

This and the previous term, there was much discussion of bullying.

In particular, of bullying of four not particularly well known kinds.

a) Past bullying of X-Fluid people , including by non-Fluid X's.

The most well-known setting for this was Trans people bullying Genderfluid people in the 1990's, 2000's and 2010's (those being dates that we know about). We are grateful that by now GenderFluid people have received recognition by activist groups, even if not yet by representatives, political groups or the law.

But we ask benevolent readers to gain awareness that there are many other cases of Fluidness, which have led to similar bullying. One example of this is Switches being bullied by just-Dominant and just-Submissive Kinksters. Another is of Questioning people who have been bullied for 'remaining questioning', now not so unlike how some LG people have in the past bullied Bi people.

A somewhat different case is that of AceFluid people, who may go through some years of living asexually and other years of living sexually. The Ace communities, as far as we know, did *not* bully such people, and were relatively early in recognizing some such as Grey and Demi.

There is one extant issue, however. Some Aces consider Aceness to be innate, whereas some AceFluid people are Traumatic AceFluid. In essence, it is quite common for a Survivor who was sexual before their ordeal to become asexual for a number of years afterward. In some cases, the change may be permanent. In other cases, the person may eventually revert to their pre-ordeal sexuality (or possibly to some other sexuality). While these things conform to many wider descriptions of 'Grey' and 'Demi', some such people did not feel accepted even in the notably accepting Ace communities. As such, AceFluid is not the same as Grey or Demi, and it includes specifically Traumatic AceFluid as a subcase, one, moreover which may not be innate. For sure, one should never assume Aces are Survivors, or that Survivors will necessarily act asexually for a long time after their ordeal. None the less, some people do find themselves on the Ace spectrum (whether permanently or not) as the result of becoming Survivors. These deserve our sympathy, respect and awareness, much as everyone else does :)

Our concept of a Survivor in Transit is a related Fluid notion. Let us start with our well-known position that 85% of Survivors react Avoidantly to 15% reacting Confrontationally, the 85% being largely the same as those who are known to not go to the police about it (but whom we know additionally not to go to doctors, counsellors, tutors... about it either). What we now say is that 2, 5, 10... years down the line, some Survivors transit from Avoidant to Confrontational or vice versa. Some 'become ready' to confront. Others 'cease to be able or willing' to confront. As such, 'historical abuse' dismissals for being 'too long ago' or 'before the law or regulation or H.R. procedure was designed' are inherently unfair. For some Survivors need to wait many years before they can say what happened. This is quite aside from how most Survivors never feel that is a viable way forward for us. By which 'how to support Survivors' in the 'official sector' needs to be rethought entirely since it does not serve 85% of Survivors. (Or slightly less, if a few of these do Transit to becoming Confrontational some years down the line.)

SaxFluid is on a totally different timescale. SAx is Social Anxiety, by the way, dear readers. A SAxFluid person is socially anxious in some settings but not in others. As such, they may be Socially Anxious, then not, then again... within the space of an afternoon. This conects to item d) below in some cases, for some people are only not Socially Anxious in GeekSocs, Alternative Subcultures or some subset thereof. Some cases of SAx are moreover underlied by Closetedness, being a Survivor, being bullied, or having Dysphoria. Others are not. Yet others are underlied by diagnosable mental ilnesses, whereas others are not. SAx can be SAx, or a sign of something else. It is generally polite to not enquire into whether there is a why, but some people may tell those they trust some of what may be their whys.

SAxFluid is within the remit of what the Aspergers' communication badge scheme can be generalized to cover. People can e.g. wear red sashes to indicate they are not to be spoken to at all, orange for nobody to initiate conversation with them, or green for accepting conversation. A *SAx* person might say wear the orange sash all day at the Convention like 9 Worlds that wisely and kindly sets things up this way. But a SAxFluid person might keep on changing their sash, as they pass from group to group and activity to activity. Some LARPers, say, are gregarious in character or with the safe weaponry in hand, while would much rather not be spoken to when not in character or thus armed... The large corollary to this, bullying-wise, is that if say a LARP group picks up a bully, that bully's presence may cut off *the only* place another participant isn't totally shut off from the rest of the world by SAx. As such, toy weapons clubs in particular should be aware that welcoming what turn out to be bullies in their midst may quite literally ruin the only thing in life that some other members have. Similar applies to subcultures such as Goths or Cosplayers. It is particularly unaccepable for any such group or subculture to try to monopolize its activity in a city, say, in the event of it containing bully members. This applies both to actively trying to impose monopoly and to turning a blind eye to bullied-out fledgling societies being left with massively unfairly small resources compared to what the bullies are hogging.

It is quite generally suggested that, in the event of such a society or subculture having a local schism, that all resultant parties have a Fundamental Right to copies of the email lists and webpages involved, so that each lot run their own slightly renamed version henceforth. That members of such communities be receptive to some eras having one club, and others two or more, so as to accommodate all would-be participants, in the event of individuals or groups therein developing irreconcileable differences.

It is a positive feature of the activities and subcultures above that they are largely independent of 'official funding' which is pretty legendary at turning a blind eye to why suddenly there have to be two similar clubs rather than one. When the true 'because', say, is that the president of the existing club raped the person whose Allies are trying to form the fledgling club... Thank goodness, therefore, that one can start many altrnative or lighter-hearted clubs with no money, or the kind of money one has spare, or which one can get with a few days of waiting at tables or a few hours of a graduate offering to supervise an extra course... That way, funding does not KO the fledgling. Having no email lists often does, at least until the societies fair, since that's the only place most such societies get a significant membership from. It would also be kind of great if those running societies fairs *did not* say put their two goth clubs side by side for 'being similar', when in fact one is the society of people bullied out of the other club by some highly unpleasant bully member (or clique).

b) So we are now in full flow of our second 'unusual' case of bullying: people bullied out of other GeekSocs (or Subcultures, or Lighter-Hearted Societies). Some people are only not anxious there, so cutting them off from that is highly nasty (sometimes life-threateningly so). Some people were in fact already bullied in mainstream places, and so took refuge in a GeekSoc, say, only for some bully to come along there to set up court, or some exclusive aesthetically driven clique to take over and cast out the 'undesirables'. In some unis, conventions, careers... there can be enough Geeks that some of them consider some of the other Geeks in a similar manner that Jock-bullies consider Geeks: fair game to harm until they go away and don't come back.

So, even if a community contains a lot of people that have been bullied elsewhere, it may still develop its own bullying epidemic. This is because bullying occurs in all walks of life. Communities that are too immediately accepting of all who wear black eyeliner, or carry a latex sword into battle in a field, can be vulnerable to bullies setting up court there. While some bullies might not consider it worth their time to bully there, sticking to conventionally prestigious settings such as politics, the media, activism, debating or contact sports, other bullies may still aim for a GeekSoc (or settle for one). This may be because they are a Geek or a Goth, or because they like hurting Geeks or Goths to the extent that they are willing to pose as one to get accepted and then become 'untouchable'. It is sometimes also because the person they bullied or raped became a Goth, so the abuser Gothed up to continue to menace her in her new community, so as to drive her away from there too :|

As such, wiser Geek and Alternative communities, and no, not just us, the much larger 9 Worlds UK convention as well, have pubically declared that Geeks are indeed on occasion known to harass and bully other Geeks. This issue admitted, such clubs and conventions can select management that is vouched not to be bullies. And train staff and event organizers to recognize how bullies act. And to exercise the right, when necessary, to firmly require some participant to leave the convention or meeting, so that all others be free of that individual's bullying behaviour.

c) Bullying of people who are particularly badly affected by it on account of what the bullies are targetting being some version of Dysphoria. We covere this elsewhere.

d) Bullying of Closet-Trans* people.

Typical examples include the effect of telling a Closet Trans Woman to 'man up', 'stop mansplaining', or insulting their physical appearance in ways that nobody would dare unto a woman. It being agreed upon that insulting peoples' appearance is unwise, not least because possibly as much as 3% of the student populace is actually Closet-Trans* (broadly defined). And in these cases the amount of hurt caused can be much higher than one might naively think, i.e. life-threateningly dangerous. It also being agreed upon that gendered insults are unacceptable, even in more subtle contexts such as an oppressed group using them toward what they think is an oppressor but is actually a considerably further oppressed member of their own group: a Closet-Trans Lady.

As far as the 'official people go', to date they understand what 'cis-splaining' is... But one really also has to take into account that 'out-splaining' is a thing. Whereby Closet-Trans women, say, are exceedingly unlikely to be willing to defend themselves when subjected to misconceived accusations of 'unwanted manly behaviour'.

In particular, some of the worst abuses historically endured by women are now,at least in the West, mostly only endured by Closet-Trans women. Call them ugly in public to their face, and nobody deigns to defend them, when many would defend a cis woman or an out Trans woman subjected to such abuse. Or call a man 'mad' or 'bad' because he cries in the face of abuse, when in fact what's going on is that somebody is verbally abusing a woman. Who is reacting like many other women would, but who, through being Closet-Trans, is not perceived by abuser or witnesses as being a woman in distress. And is thus being silenced and dehumanized by the same slurs that abusers used to hide and incarcerate inconvenient women in the 1800's or earlier, by dragging them off to an asylum or a nunnery.

GENERAL FLUIDITY AWARENESS

* This term, we went through 2 decades' worth of feedback from Fluid Peoples, these people of ours now feeling safe enough for their points to be made anonymously in the public domain. Aside from the by now elsewise well-known GenderFluid people,

there is the general

and

is of this general nature as well

Welcome!

* A belated welcome to Cambridge; the below has kept us quite busy for the past few months. We thank our Stallcrew for, in the meanwhile, doing a great job with keeping our other activities running. And also our Waterfighters for doing the bulk of surprise cake delivery so far. We now hope the Silly Cakefaeries will take over that mantle for the rest of term :) Further volunteers welcome, by the way :)

Now anyone can be a CakeFaerie for the cake or other fun :) Some are CakeFaeries out of needing a safer space, moreover, and some are so as to help out. All these kinds of CakeFaeries are welcome, and necessary :) [People Closeted about why they need a safer space need there to be cake-only/fun-only participants so as to pose as themselves being such; that's the First Law of Accommodating Closeted People :)]

Consequently, we are *not* a soc that have to join in week 1 of michaelmas, you can join whenever. Our activities are icebreakers, and done all year round, for plenty of people 'don't integrate on the official timescale of 2 weeks, ie freshers' week and squash week'. So if for whatever reason (you needn't say) you are short of societal activities which you enjoy and are appreciated at, you are welcome to try our own ones, or, on our or Sheila-Silly-CakeFaeries or Cambridge Safer Space Waterfighting's front pages you can find a big button link to further societies we recommend. You can also find helplines there, and link buttons at the bottom of these pages to around 30 of the safer space peoples' things and nature and wishes and feelings expressed. If you're interested in the below, use said buttons to find out more about peoples mentioned in the current update. Noting also that as the below explains, there have not yet even been any Age Dysphoria or Species Dysphoria buttons there, not because we didn't know, but because such daren't yet say. So in essence this update we've been working on for some months that is below of here is the creation of what will be 2 further buttons there. Further contributions are welcome, though these may be in a queue for several months. All our current active Listeny participants writing this stuff are very accepting of taking turns at saying things and having items added. So that everyone gets their own turn and the Listeny CakeFaeries aren't overworked.

Listeny CakeFaeries' report on General Dysphoria feedback

I. Preliminary Briefing: General Dysphoria

This term, the main topic for Awareness articles on the CakeFaerie News is "General Dysphoria". Of course, people can contribute other stuff too, but there is a line-up forming which will make it likely that General Dysphoria will outnumber other new content.

Trans people will open the account, for far more of us will for now know Gender Dysphoria in such as the Trans* context than know anything about General Dysphoria. (Indeed, this lack of awareness is why we provide some here... We stand for all those consensual and legal peoples who have nobody else to stand, convey or host material.)

This will be followed by True Diversity of Trans*, including accounts of how "mainstream Trans used to bully Non-Binary people, GenderFluid people, Transvestites, Trans Conscientious Objectors to Surgery etc etc. (No doubt in some parts of the world this continues, much as in a lesser number of parts of the world no Trans people* of any kind are accepted. The contest of our "used to" is that this used to happen even in places like here, i.e. elsewise supposedly liberal western University Campuses.) This kind of phenomenon moreover has implications that are invariant of "what is currently accepted", namely that all those who aren't currently accepted are often bullied, ostracized or ignored even by communities that treat some other formerly left-out groups with respect and welcome. The point being that, while some individuals do as they please in harming whoever they can get away with harming, further groups will continue to be marginalized and mistreated, in an infinity of approximate copies of how Gay people were mistreated in the 1950's and previously, Trans People before around 2008... (these are UK specific dates, may vary from country to country).

II. Interlude, in which one of our Peoples Speak

Where is the line today? Currently in Cambridge, Polys have an undisguised group and Aces have a Rep. Three years ago, not even this was possible here, in the face of hostilities (and not just by "the obvious bullies"). Currently also Activists support Non-Binary people but little to no training in this regard is provided for "official welfare services", the police, the law, or institutions' ruling bureaucracies (so tutors, disciplinary staff, college staff, departments...) So at present, the "de facto line" in the Official sector and its somewht larger penumbra of Activst concerns covers these things. There are however a lot of further people and personal situations not covered by this.

On another front, people "discovered" large numbers of Survivors at Western univeristies several years ago. (Of course, plenty of people knew about this previously, but daren't speak out or even label themselves as Survivor groups, or groups accommodating Survivors. We here have been accommodating Survivors since the 1990's. A further matter with Survivors is that 85% of them don't go to the police. This is well-known by now as well. What is 'not yet known' by official groups (or at least not acknowledged) is that this 85% almost entirely also don't tell their doctor or any counsellor-type person, or any rep-type person, or any activist-type person, or any 'official group for survivors' (or essentially nobody else). So the situation is approximately this. 15% of Survivors are Confrontational, and tell the police and/or become an activist and/or... you've probably heard some of these peoples' opinions and that is a great thing. None the less, this population of Survivors is essentially disjoint from the 85% of Avoidant Survivors. Which means, chances are, unless you yourself are an Avoidant Survivor or already an Ally to a such, you've probably never heard anything at all about what Avoidant Survivors are like, what our wishes and needs are. These are not at all covered by any kind of existing "official group" labelled "for Survivors".

Many Avoidant Survivors view the threats and bullying aspect of their abuser as more significant than what others call without question "the primary abuse" (such as sexual assaults). This is why people like us have never said anything... Except, well, the past month or so has had "powerful abusers" going to great lengths to threaten and silence Survivors of their actions. So in that way the world has changed. Yet it still remains unaknowledged that essentially everything the world offers "for Survivors" is not thought out to be accessible by or useful to Avoidant Survivors. Nobody running such things would appear to have asked for feedback in a safe enough way to get any (or, if they did get some, they ignored it for being politically and/or activistically inconvenient). So, what do Avoidant Survivors think? In a nutshell, we are *not* interested in listeners. What we want is better personal safety and security for ourselves. So we never 'accidentally bump into' that abuser again. We daren't Confront that abuser, but we will do every damned thing possible to to see that abuser again, or be taken in by others of their ilk.

We think in red flag logic.

We avoid all professions with uncommonly large concentrations of people who abuse or make threats. We consider this to include many professions which "gatekeep", such as bureaucrat-type or medical-type professions, as well as all who "seek power" such as not only politicians but also disciplinarians, activists and journalists. These professions controlling almost all channels of widespread communication, we can't use those to talk about what we want to talk about (which is most definitely not ourselves). For describing one's experiences in public is not anonymous, even if it has no name attached. Most of all, the abusers have inside information about what they did to us. Any distinctive descriptions of unusual but horrible things we were subjected to could well be recognized by abusers, as could be our own writing styles. So we have others write *our ideas and concepts* in their own words; we then check it's faithful enough to our message and not endangering of our security and then release that info somewhere such as here. Listeners don't help one jot with dealing with such a need.

Some of us also value listeners none the less. In fact most of us only use listeners who have security in excess of the manipulating and hacking abilities of our abusers. And also only listeners who don't have de facto non-confidentiality clauses in their mode of practise. Ergo some of us feel compelled to *go abroad* to have our PTSD treated by some other country's counsellors that are not so-bound. This illustrates that there is hope to find what one needs, though one may have to go very far to find it.

The emblem of our Allies is therefore the Little Prince. We send our Allies afar to look for things we can use, much as he needs a very specific sheep to help look after his Rose by eating the Baobabs that might elsewise destroy his little planet, while not in any way risking to eat the Rose herself. So we need very specific welfare-with-security-and/or-stronger-than-here-available-confidentiality. And very specific outlets for our news, and very specific message carriers that are unhindered by obstacles and unremarked upon by onlookers as being there for that. These are our very specific sheep that our dear Princelings (gender neutral form of "Little Prince" seek. Who won't harm the Rose, whether deliberately or accidentally, while helping to keep out the Baobabs. (Be that secondary abusers looking for Survivors to hurt further :| Or bureaucracies that make no exception for those refusing to say why they have strong reasons to be an exception.) As it happens, such Princelings are also good at helping Closeted people with similar. (Most bureaucracies are not seen as helpful by Trans people, let alone by Closet-Trans People.)

We also require our Allies to not be personally aggressive. Many of us require Allies to not be personally aggressive not just with us, but with anyone at all, no matter the context. This is because those with capacity for personal aggressiveness unfortunately trigger us by reminding us of our abusers and/or are people we don't trust, or whom we don't Consent to represent our interests, our views, our persons.

Finally, red flag logic is like this. If a group contains a single personally aggressive individual, we can't trust the group. This is very different from false suppositions such as that "we'd then just approach a different member of that group". This is in part because we've observed that too many groups containing one or more personally aggressive people do as the personally aggressive people wish in any matter that tangibly concerns the personally aggressive individual(s). So, say complaining to a different committee member about one committee memeber being personally aggressive toward us is quite simply not deemed to work. The other committee member will just be their friend, or possibly afraid of the personally aggressive committee member, so bad things would far more likely come of us raising such an issue. The only societies we can be part of are those containing no personally aggressive people. These aren't impossible to find: we might send our Princelings out to see which societies currently have none. That a few societies have, say, rules saying no bullying is not by itself enough for us to feel safe being part of that activity. It is only if we observe the rule being credibly implemented that we'd think the society to be safe enough for us.

So, for some of us, the societies we're ok in attending may be as few as just 1 to 3 of the 1000+ in such a university (many through not having sent Allies there to see if bullying or hazing go on there). In some cases, we go to no societies at all; our Princelings then need to find "not in person" ways for us to interact. When one has nothing else, what many others would view as minor interactions can be the entirety of the social life of one such as us). Finally understand that it is common among us to *not* solely interact with our Princelings, nor to have these search solely for ourself. We overwhelmingly want Princelings and activities they find to be available to other Avoidant Survivors, Closet Trans people etc. This is why we do this in part societally through such as the CakeFaeries. This is why we support the CakeFaeries in not-in-person ways, and are so pleased by what CakeFaeries do :) This is also why we here support those with General Dysphoria (this term's main topic) and General Fluidity (next term).

III. Another interlude, in fact about interludes

Obviously we favour diversity of opinion over being particularly "organized". We are not a Consensus forming people. Summaries are No Good here therefore. If this page were brief, most of us wouldn't get a word in. So it isn't. That's what you get if you genuinely involve many diffeent kinds of people at once in a non-consensus forming place. This is an Anactivist Tenet. Most of our Princelings and other allies are Anactivists. Because Anactivists are not consensus forming, this is not a precisely defined notion; it is spectral, like gender is.

It helps to think of Conscientious Objectors to War at this point. War is violence. But, as some eg Feminists have argued, rhetoric is also violence. And politics is violence. It follows naturally that some people can Conscientiously Object to politics and/or rhetoric. The first of these might view themselves as Apolitical in some sense. An Anactivist then is a person who quite often is one or both of Conscientious Objector to politics or to rhetoric, who additionally Conscientiously Objects to between some or all of what Activists do. For instance, some Activist groups shout in public whereas others make demands of groups other than themselves to change their own ways of doing things, and on occasion such demands might take the form of threats. So some people Conscientiously Object to such as threats and/or some or all kinds of public shouting. They far from necessarily object to other people doing these things, but a) won't do it themselves and b) quite often don't Consent to be "represented" by anybody who does. Some Anactivists are also not ok with some Activist groups not offering tangible alternatives to "shouting with placards" or "writing menacing letters", from the point of view of this leaving them with nothing they're OK with doing there.

It also helps to know about Aces (Asexuals). AVEN (Asexual Visibility and Education Network) is a rather good example of "things other than shouting or threatening people" that a group might do, effectively, so as to be known about to them as choose to care. AVEN is very successful in this regard, to the extent that Aces now largely feel safe in this city and in other swathes of the world. But some of these Aces have *very* likeable spirits. Some groups, when they got their own officials and openly labelled socials and so on, left us CakeFaeries to run their own thing. Some took some of our customs with us, and we aren't mean about them leaving once things were better foer these people in a wider range of activities than just our own. Our Aces, though, very largely stayed in order to help others not yet so fortunate have similar.

And so, some of us Cambridge minds give you GIVEN (General-Purpose (In)Visibility and Education Network). This is another name for "The CakeFaeries" alias "Alternative Welcome" alias (in part) Sheila and her Dog alias (in part, another part) Cambridge Safer Space Waterfighting.

Now AVEN is quite far out on the Anactivistic spectrum; it has perhaps 70% of our basic rules similar. An AVEN educates those who wish to know, rather than imposing itself on others, as regards Ace matters. A GIVEN does so for *any* matters that are consensual and legal. Please note that legal is vastly larger that "legally protected". Every people on this webpage is legal, yet virtually none are "legally protected". There are currently no laws preventing Aces or Polys or Non-Binary people from being discriminated against or bullied in ways specifically harmful to them that those unaware of these people wouldn't even spot as bullying. Likewise for General Dysphoria that is not Gender Dysphoria, and for General Fluidity. Or Kink. Or Avoidant Survivors. Or Non-Normative Survivors.

So Aces showed the world that Anactivism works, and then various further groups of Anactivists, some representing traditions who had been in hiding for 20 or 30 years at least, ventured forward to join them. And so things such as this set of websites came to be written :)

IV. Hang on, what about the rest of the prelude?

OK, then. Our account of General Dysphoria starts with the premise of establishing that one kind of Dysphoria - Gender Dysphoria - is accepted and to some extent catered for by welfare services and so on.

Being a GIVEN and a General-Purpose Safer Space standing for those who currently have nowhere else standing for/by them, we don't stop there, we start there. In particular, we explain:

A) Age Dysphoria.

B) Species Dysphoria.

We show in this way that a lot of Trans* issues have wider counterparts. Doing so even in summary requires explaining Age and Species Dysphorias. (Nor are these in any way all of the rest of the Dysphorias that we know about, let alone that may exist.) So we postpone it to items VII and VIII.

Finally, on the longer run this large concentration of safer space people will turn to General Fluidity next term. A more sketchy outline of this is starting with Genderfluid and how such were oppressed in LGBT communities in the 80's, 90's and 00's. Followed by Switches giving a similar account of their oppression in BDSM communities, and Ace Spectrum people talking about Demi and Grey, and Survivors talking about PTSD-induced long-term temporary Aceness (and/or Aroness). We've also had some people start to mention SAx-Fluidity (Social Anxiety Fluidity), and some are talking of their Million-Labelness to Acategorical transition as a type of Fluidity.

V. A POINTER TO REFERENCES ABOUT TRANS* PEOPLE, INCLUDING CLOSET TRANS* PEOPLE

Diversity of Trans* People

Some people consider the body they were born with to not reflect the gender that they feel. Most commonly, this concerns someone assigned male at birth considering themself to be female or vice versa. Though gender is spectral, can have further "poles" than male and female, and a person can feel they are more than one gender, whether at once or time-dependently. These are some of the Trans* people, and in this stage, many (but not all) feel Gender Dysphoria. Our body just isn't us, has or doesn't have something it ought. Aside from that, they may not be OK with "some toys, sports, subjects, attitudes" being seen as "for boys" and others "for girls". Some will participate in a mixture of both sets, thank you very much, or in further activities, whether supposedly "neutral" or alternative. Some Trans people who *are* OK with the bodies we were born with may rather be (what is perceived as) socially female or intellectually male or vice versa or other-such. So in many cases Trans people will want to undergo hormonal and surgical treatment.

MTF means male to female transitioning

FTM means female to male transitioning.

But not all will, and even most of those who will are unlikely to be Out at present in a population of students. Further people are Out and/or Transitioning at a later age. Some daren't. And some have Trans* issues which are not resolvable by surgery. Some even conscientiously object to surgery. If one is, say, socially female, it does not necessarily follow that one wishes to Transition to deal with this. Genderfluid might oscillate between genders on the scale of a year, a week, even a few hours. So surgery at least as currently conceived, is not a great solution in these cases.

Now, we've had Genderfluid people here for 20 years before even the very word 'Genderfluid' was adopted by the rest of the world. If one's gender varies over time, or is one is neither male nor female, one might not view surgery as viable. So some Cross-Dress instead. Another reason for Cross-Dressing is having to spend holidays in a country which criminalizes LGBT people. Here one might cross dress where it is safe to do so and one wants to, while reverting to disguising oneself in the assigned-at-birth gender's clothes when at home. One might instead live in a country or city where being LGBT is not criminalized, but LGBT people are none the less regularly attacked by thugs or criminals. As such, one might be female asigned at birth, be Out as a man at Uni, dress accordingly at Uni but not be Out about this in one's home town, wearing female clothes whenever in public there.

In some cases, a Trans* person's parents would render them Homeless if they knew about it. Such might not even wear ladies' clothing in public in the safest uni, lest their parents catch word of it (say through prying on the person's friends' open social media). Such might still cross-dress in private places with their close friends however. So better not judge Cross-Dressing/Transvestite Trans* people differently from Transitioning or Transitioned Transsexuals. All kinds of circumstances could mean the former is every bit as Trans* inside as the latter.

Closet-Trans* People

There is now some evidence, moreover, that for each Out Trans person of uni age, 3 others are Closet-Trans. One consequence of this is that it is never acceptable to be Transphobic "because no Trans Person is there to hear". Maybe some of those present are Closet Trans, and such could badly hurt them. There is also a lot of eveidence that 40% of Out Trans* people go through periods of suicidal ideation. What isn't clear yet in the official world, but we know it well here (sample bias as that might have) that Closet Trans* people have the same proportion of suicidal ideation to Out Trans* people. And yet, a lot of resources re available to support Out Trans* people, without there being a single one that's thought out how to accommodate Closet-Trans* people. This is partly because institutions will "wash their hands" out of having no 'legal obligation' to cater for Closet Trans* people. Partly, because Closeted people consider almost no existing welfare or support to be safe for them to use, including its feedback component. By which even well-meaning providers don't actually know what Closet Trans* people's needs are. Closet-Trans* peoples' needs, unlike the proportion with suicidal ideation, is *wildly* different between Out and Closeted people...

Also, how Closet-Trans* people are badly affected by bullying is *wildly different* from how Out-Trans people are. And yet, there is no training available to free companies or universities of the kinds of bullying and needless low-level pestering that badly hurts Closet-Trans* people, about which we as Closet-Trans* people virtually never dare to speak up. So, for instance, contrast regarding a man as nasty or crazy because they are caught crying in public with offering assistance and sympathy to a woman found crying in public. Next consider that the 'man' found crying in public is actually a Closet Trans* woman. She's the only woman in the company that receives no sympathy, is excluded from women's lunch, is shut out from the "promotion specifically for a female candidate"... and the list goes on and on. Consider the effect of telling a Closet Trans woman to "man up, take it like a man, or stop mansplaining"... Clearly there are a few things that company training, counsellor training, rep training... could say that avoid badly upsetting an already heavily oppressed group, which at uni age, is about thrice the size of the Out-Trans* group. And has no means of helping each other as a group: Closet Trans* people seldom know who else is Closet-Trans*, and we obviously daren't march under placards for "Closet-Trans* rights, so perchance most of you will have never heard about us. How we're bullied because most our friends are supposedly not of 'our own gender'. Whereas in truth they are, bullied by nasty men jealous of all our female friends, who don't take into account that these are our our friends possibly because we too are female inside, rather than because we are some kind of "womanizer". Bullied by nasty people who insinuate others of us are sluts because almost all our friends are male, but, guess what, those are our friends because we are male too.

Accommodating Closet-Trans* People in Societies

Aside from some such not having committees which make sexist remarks when they think 'nobody of the other gender is listening'. And 'being believed when we say we're upset without having to say why'. These are ways you can help accommodate Closet-Trans* people in your own societies if anyone is interested. We as Closet-Trans* people don't want to have to be in what for us is the wrong sports team, the wrong drinking society, the wrong boat... While there's been some attention to Out Trans* people being eligible to play for college teams in gendered sport, rather less has been done for non-binary or genderfluid people in this context, and nothing at all for Closet-Trans* people. If you're in sport for the fun of it, our partial solution for now is that might consider Ultimate Frisbee, Quidditch, Live Action Roleplaying or Safer Space Waterfighting as better options than traditional sports as regards inclusiveness regardless of Gender, whether Out or not about it and whether Non-binary as well as or instead of Trans*. You might also look to set up ungendered non-contact football, at the level of having enough people for two teams, possibly of just 3, 4 or 5 on a smaller pitch. Among these, all but one are easy to explain: there is no "splitting by gender" in any of them.

Quidditch is special in requiring captains to confirm above a certain multiplicity of genders are represented in their team. This works for some Closet-Trans people: if they're OK with their captain knowing and stating that gender multiplicity is attained. Hint: If say a Closet Trans Man wants to play Quidditch. And would not be ok with the captain knowing or with the other team having a 1 in 7 chance of guessing in the event of there being no people expressing that gender present, then one way for (privately him, bublicly her) do so is to turn up with a Cis-Female Ally.

It would help further if it could be arranged that some people only play as a pair, along the lines of no-questions-asked.

Some other activities (not sports) specifically permit some people to participate in pairs, no questions asked. So, say both of them start or neither do, or the two of them are brought on in a double substitution. And if one twists an ankle, why, it's the other one who accompanies them to ER.

VI. Some points about Trans* people having been bullied by other Trans* people

At least until quite recently here (and no doubt this is still the case in some other parts of the west), one of the main adversities faced by Transvestite and Genderfluid people was bullying by Transitioning and/or Transitioned Trans* people.

Transitioning and/or Transitioned Trans* people have unfortunately on past occasions personally attacked or ostracized people whose gender and/or gender expression varies in a more complex pattern than the MTF or FTM sigmoid. This has affected some e.g. GenderFluid people, Cross-Dressers and Non-binary people.

But the previous article points out that there is a substantially wider variety of Trans* people. And whether they are Out or not and how they express themselves is a matter partly of personal choice and partly due to immense prejudices in other parts of their life that some so-judging them had no inkling of. So, for now, thankfully, some Trans* people excluding other Trans* people for being different in further ways from them has come to an end around this city, and were any of that to happen again in isolated incidents, it would be inexcusable.

Some context to this is that some Non-Binary, Cross-Dressers and Genderfluid people were called 'fakers' or 'not proper Trans People'- a common occurrence some years ago even in elsewise 'liberal' uni campuses. The big picture is to spot in this case is that this was just another iteration of erasure. Similar has happened many times before. (Gay communities not tolerating Lesbian people especially before the 90's. LG communities not accepting Trans* people to be present in some places prior to 2008, and calling Bi people similar erasive expletives up to a somewhat later date... And further parallels outside of LGBT, e.g. Leather BDSM people ostracizing Switches in the 80's. Grey-Ace erasure. Erasure of the possibility Survivors existed in large numbers at uni or in life in general...) So the big picture is that any kind of erasure is wrong.

So is any kind of monopolistic demand ('we are the only group of this kind allowed, *and* we don't permit *list of subsets of said people, more broadly interpreted*').

Perhaps the main points here should be that "erasure is bad". And that "an existing group might consider leaving itself open to further would-be members being allowed to contribute to the ongoingly defined scope of the group". For, indeed, while many of the above erasures have stopped :) and are widely acknowledged to be wrong, there is little evidence that erasure of hitherto less known groups of people has stopped :|

Our final point is that some of the above erasures (and others) were quite often conducted by activist groups which 'though this was right at the time'. This means that, at least traditionally, there are such things as 'bullied by activist groups on campus' and 'bullied out of activist groups on campus'. Some Anactivists, then, used to be Activists who were bullied out of Activist groups. And are consequently Conscientious Objectors to such as erasue - of any group, regardless of whether it is known yet, let alone 'legally protected'. Some of these, and further of those affected hitherto, have had a long time here, preparing for some future decade, even. In which it would actually be safe to write an internet article about GenderFluid people. Some of those who showed us how to do what we do here were themselves badly affected by erasive bullying for some, or even a significant portion of, of our lives. And today we thank them, for helping us compile these resources here. It ought to now go without saying that erasing people with *any* kind of Dysphoria is a terrible thing, and we here won't condone any such thing within our own safer space turf of CakeFaerie-ville. None the less, we end with a :) , and, for sure, at least those of us dealing with this document forgive they as who harmed us back when they somehow thought 'that was right'.

VII. Age Dysphoria

So a person with Age Dysphoria may for instance have an emotional age and/or an intellectual age that do not align with their biological age. For instance, a child prodigy might arrive at university with an intellectual age of 30. Or might arrive aged 16 in an environment not thought out for people under the age of 18 (E.g. alcohol based socials, and we also hear that 15-year old students, while very rare, were not allowed to even live in college.) They might arrive here emotionally and biologically 18 but with an intellectual age of 30.

As another example, some Survivors Freeze in emotional age as part of the trauma of their attack. So, say, if attacked when aged 18, they might still be emotionally 18 when they finish their PhD. Many of the insecurities of Freshers will be with them year after year. They'll lose friends as these grow up and cease to find this person fair company :| They may be laid into for "not adapting to departmental life" by individuals that have no idea they're actually badly hurting a Survivor with Traumatic Age Dysphoria. They *may well try to take their own lives* once they can no longer Pass as their emotional age, or when a society they used to love gets taken over by grad-bashing bullies who say "no grads here and/or no Ex-Cam people". This is particularly acute when only one society had ever accepted them in the first place; they can't just find another one to go to instead.

So. Like Trans*, Age Dysphoria has a notion of Passing. It also has a counterpart of a person having multiple genders: multiple ages. It also has an associated high rate of suicidal ideation, especially in the face of things one has no control over. Much as puberty can be devastating to Trans people, aging can be devastating to a person with Age Dysphoria. While one can have surgery to look younger, this is not freely available unlike gender reassignment surgery. It also moreover would have to be topped up: geneder reassignement is permanently maintainable, while surgery to look 25 and thus pass as being 20 patently is not. Unlike Trans*, essentially no people with Age Dysphoria are Out. Age Dysphoria implies that ageist bullying can be as devastating to an already suicidal group of people as gender-based bullying is unto Trans* people (whether Out or not). A person with Age Dysphoria can moreover both be rejected by their biological age peers for being "emotionally immature" or "intellectually advanced" while at the same time being rejected socially by peers of the same emotional age, and/or by peers of the same intellectual age.

As such, discrimination based on age or occupation (including whether one is at a uni and with what "rank") can be profoundly damaging.

There being at least one place this does not occur is a major part of the mission statement of the Sheila and her Dog Society. Subsequently, the rest of these Safer Spaces here (CakeFaeries, Waterfighting) adopted this measure as one of their own important rules and tenets in 2004. Aside from being another ugly kind of unncessary bullying, and in this case supported by monopolistic normativities. (Does "the committee must all be current students bar the senior treasurer who must be a fellow" ring any bells?). The existence of safer spaces not discriminating on grounds of age or occupation (including membership of whatever university with whatever rank) is crucial for the wellbeing of those with Age Dysphoria. So both have many other difficulites on their plate and are disproportionately affected by ageist bullying, much as Trans* people are by sexist bullying.

Thanks for reading.

VIII. Species Dysphoria

Some people identify as Cats, Dogs, Horses, Birds, Mice...

Some go into physical shock well known to Trans* people from prior to Transitioning. For Trans* people, such corresponds to 'being in the wrong body' at that point or having/not having such as breasts or the non-corresponding genitalia, or out of, say, seeing their unshaven face or their hairless chest, or out of some feelings being expressed in totally the wrong voice. Such can be the root cause of social anxiety, depression, an unwillingness to appear in person or be seen in person by people one has met online. Well, guess what. Some people have similar and likewise greatly debilitating shocks and anxieties out of not having a tail. Or whiskers. These people additionally have to contend with medical disbelief, and public ridicule if anyone unsavoury were to find out.

Indeed, much as LGBT people can be badly hurt by being Outed, some, say, Mouse People have had their lives ruined by being Outed as a Mouse :| If a bully knows they can hurt someone by using derogatory words for cat or dog of them say, then they can often do so in public with nobody being the wiser. Some people who have experienced both this and sexist bullying while Closet Trans have the following to say. "There wasn't much difference between the amount of hurt each caused. We were humiliated in public, made to run from rooms with tears in our eyes and weren't even able to say why to whatever sympathetic onlookers there may have sometimes been. My whole college became a no-go zone for me, and they started [redacted animal noises] at me in lectures."

A few such people do have surgery or body modification accordingly, but many don't or daren't. While anti-aging surgery isn't available on the NHS even if a person has Age Dysphoria, some body modification has the added feature of highly unregulated in a bad way (as in rogue tattoo artists or body piercing parlours as opposed to surgeons).

Many people with Species Dysphoria are content to use dress and accessories in place of surgery, or aren't content but make do in such a manner. Some use species-pronouns among sufficiently tolerant company. Cessation of Transexual people bullying Transvestite people therefore has some significance as regards the potential acceptance of such as Mouse, Cat or Bird persons :)

Moreover, not all who sometimes or even often bear the dress or accessories of an animal have Species Dysphoria. In Japan, for many decades, wearing animal ears regularly has been done as a manner of expressing one or both of Social Anxiety or Approachability by those with Social Anxiety. Some might, say, prefer to squeak or neigh or bleat to opening a conversation conventionally, or might default to mewling or quacking when they don't know what to answer, perhaps out of panicking or out of needing to buy time. The Dr Slump Cartoon character Pisuke, from the 1980's, always wears cat ears and this is attributed to Social Anxiety issues. While he's never been known to mewl (at least in TV versions), he is seen as a symbol of not complete invisibility to those who either have Species Dysphoria or use animal clothing or accessories as a means of helping to cope with Social Anxiety.

The End. Thanks for reading.

P.S. Some people who cross-dress in the context of conscientious objectors to surgery, wish to express support here to those who dress as a cat, say, acknowledging that this has comparable value to some people. "Identify as what you please" they say. "Don't let anyone tell you some characteristics have to be more important than others. How one rates one's own characteristics as regards important is personal, and you're welcome to apply it to yourself as you please."

P.P.S. The management says: identify as whatever you please, including what you in your own case regard as being subsets of other things or not. Just don't impose such considerations on others, who may have a different understanding of what is a subset of what.

Point of order: Aces who consider their own Aceness to be part of LGBT+(extended) live harmoniously here with those who consider their own Aceness to have nothing to do with any extended LGBT+ spectrum.

And how dressing up as a cat, say, has similar value to some people.

P.P.P.S. Another of us comments that some of how Transitioned and Transitioning people bullied Transvestites in the 2000's applies similiarly to people who present as a Cat by dressing up. To me, how one presents is a fundamental freedom, and any "class system" based on the permanence or stage of advancement of how one presents is just another variant on normative oppression. It may be that places which accepts Transvestities as equals rather than as 'second-class citizens, if at all' - a situation much more like 2016 than 2008, say - is one where Cat persons and people with Age Dysphoria will feel, and be, safer.

IX. Some useful general points in understanding this webpage

Our people learned long ago that the problems one hears about depend on the following.

A) Approachability: of which the persons with the big issues, and not groups or institutions claiming to be helpful to all people under whatever circumstances, are the sole judges.

B) On the actual and perceived safety and security standards of those institutions, most very specifically in relation to the following.

a) The insidious hacking, lying, infiltrating, threatening, and other harmfulness and underhanded 'resourcefulness' of these people's abusers (and of those abusers' facilitators). Which, when said abusers and/or facilitators have Cambridge or ex-Cambridge levels of 'intelligence and/or ambition and/or connections' are usually taken to be astronomically high :|

b) People whose lives would de facto be ruined by an accidental Outing.

Of course, A) and B) aren't independent. Many people in great difficulty don't find elsewise helpful services approachable because of their combination of mandatorily making records and not knowing anything like the full extent of how intelligent/ambitious/connected/ruthless abusers operate, by which those records aren't kept securely enough. And/or because their difficulties are the kinds of things which trigger certain organizations' non-confidentiality clauses.

A common model brought up at this point is that if a person is silent because their abuser is powerful, well, many such abusers also heavily outpower the company in question's HR. By which the HR is either left unable to do anything effective, or is recruited by the high-level bully CEO, say, tacitly to find out who's complaining about their bullying so as to know who to fire, 'legally' threaten etc. We leave it to your own devices to imagine how and where this might apply other than in the context of a toxic company's work environment ...

X. Another group's recommended basics

Think in bands:

I) what's widely known, respected, legally protected, reps are trained in and welfare services provide for.

II) what the uni's activists campaign for, such as Non-Binary.

III) The badges on the CakeFaeries' webpage not covered by I or II, e.g. Closeted versions, Avoidant Survivors, Non-Normative Survivors, the Bullied, discrimination on grounds of Age or Occupation.

(Also, some such as Kink, Poly, Genderfluid may get occasional mention in II's activities, just probably not as much as our 'General (In)Visibility and Education Network' (GIVEN) covers, since we deal with all those that don't have their own explicit stuff elsewhere.) And these methods, common to many Aces (but not just), have been known to us here for many years by a word that we only dared put on the internet after you were elected.

The CakeFaeries are a GIVEN: a General-purpose (In)Visibility and Education Network. Covering all consensual and legal peoples (a concept that is much broader than the 'legally protected' peoples).

IV) Our own feedback and surveys to date indicate that there are *three great directions* beyond what we currently provide badges and specific awareness pages for. i) The first is a stratification of Mental Health issues by practical stigmas of the life-crippling variety. So for instance, if one is Out about having Schizophrenia, Bipolar or Borderline Personality Disorder, then virtually no employer in the current world will ever hire you. In fact, it would appear that from Borderline upwards, virtually no medical profession individual in this country is even willing to pronounce a diagnostic of the condition. They may be viewing pronouncing that as a career risk and/or as the effective destruction of the patient's life.

On another axis of oppression, people who are Out about e.g. having OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive) are known to be subjected to vigilante attacks by thugs falsely claiming that the person is a paedophile. (Nor is it solely Mental Health people who are targetted in such a manner by thugs and ostracizers and 'social cleansers'. Some decades ago, such thugs felt they could get away with targetting LBGT people in the same manner. Those now being legally protected, some such thugs' attention has turned instead to people with OCD and to Pan people :|)

So some examples of people and/or adversities faced that you may not have seen or considered at all are Students Closeted about having, or thinking they have, such as Bipolar or Schizophrenia. Who aren't willing for this info to ever find its way into the hands of their college or (any prospective) employer.

ii) The second Great Axis of the Currently Unrecognized is General Dysphoria.

Gender Dysphoria is by now well-acknowledged, while essentially no understanding for, compassion for, or welfare resources for, other types of Dysphoria exist.

To the above discussion of Age Dysphoria, we add

- The Ratio Problem: it is very hard in some ways to be intellectually 40 and emotionally sixteen (whatever figure between these numbers one's biological age is).

- Other cases involve a different trauma or development. Some 'had to grow up' at the moment of being orphaned or of a dear parent becoming terminally ill, and this may have accelerated their age or split their age. These people have a lot of issues that, with all due respect, you're probably not aware of.

- As regards how ageist bullying is around as dangerous to people with Age Dysphoria as transphobic bullying is to Trans* people (for whom dangerous here quite explicitly includes that 40% are at some point suicidal). Let's consider what a person feels like in third year when all their third year friends have abandoned them for still 'acting like a Fresher'. Moreover some people with Age Dysphoria don't consent to being aged by such as featuring on Class Lists, or employment forms having date of birth as a compulsory box to fill in, under "certification that all info provided is correct".

- To the discussion that, say being a Mouse Person is a matter of coping with Social Anxiety for some, we add that "pressure to keep on saying 'funny', 'cool', 'smart'... things each time they wish to approve of something (or not)" is thus removed. So some people squeak, mewl, bark... instead.

- To Species Dysphoria, we add that The parallels with presenting gender cause further issues, such as who one is Out to as a Mouse. Some might eg only feel OK wearing a tail but only be Out to a small group of people. And so can only wear a tail when with just members of that group in a private place behind a locked door.

Species Dysphoria people have, amongst other big issues, the following.

- Many people erase them, or treat them as a joke, or presume it's 'a sexual perversion' when in fact it isn't. (Compare how a lot of people used to presume that being Trans was a 'public display of sexual perversion' :|).

They can be as badly affected by being Outed as a Trans person, say. And have no recourse to any rep or law or campaign to get people tormenting them with public revelations about their being, say, a Pony or a Tiger, to stop it. Though, obviously, if you recall our safer space rules, within our own groups "people are upset if they say they are and without having to say why, with apologies and non-repeats expected". So at ours, such individuals are safe from these things. But elsewhere, they are very largely not.

Our final point is that plenty of people don't Consent to their Dysphoria being classed as 'a Mental Health condition'. C.f. how homosexuality used to be 'classified' as a such, with some people even subjected to 'corrective therapy' for it against their will.

As to Dysphoria not being morally such a thing either in the opinion of plenty of people experiencing it, this quite clearly isn't just the feeling of some empowered Trans groups in the regard of Gender Dysphoria. It applies as well to those who experience other kinds of Dysphoria as well, such as the Age and Species Dysphorias mentioned above.

While Gender Dysphoria appears to be more common than other Dysphorias, there are many other Dysphorias (whether or not recognized by the gatekeeper medical profession). It remains plausible that some such's frequency is masked by the combination of being even more stigmatized and having no 'legally protected status'.

Some CakeFaeries' Safer Space Soc Group Webpages updated in Lent 2017

Some Safer Space Awareness Pages updated in Lent 2017

Other CakeFaerie News from Lent 2017

* Homerton has been caked. Some cake seen in Newnham, Trinity Hall, Caius and Sidney...

Cake in Queens' and Emma. Prizes in various random places: Silly book prizes, Duelly water-gnu prizes.

Some CakeFaeries now have further CakeFaerie Parents...

CakeFaeries duel.

* The Anacondas start to send in suggestions for further updates.

* CakeFaerie Teashop Crawl.

* Cake in Peterhouse, Pembroke, Caius. Fruit, for a change, in Trinity Hall. Apparently Golden Snitches are fruit these days :)

* Amateur poetry spotted... Almost un-bear-able puns made elsewhere...

* Silly CakeFaeries' Chainstory continuing at:

.

* Cake in Trinity, Selwyn, Robinson, Christs', Magdalene, Lucy and Clare Colony.

* This own term's chainstory topic confirmed. It is a new version of the 1939 classic `Wizard of Oz' film, now set in 2039.

By way of explanation of this topic, we provide Articles 1) and 2) below.

I) An Account of the 1939 classic `Wizard of Oz' film .

The 1939 film is widely taken to portray Gay men in the U.S. while this was still illegal, due to which they are Closeted.

The sepia 'reality' of Kansas is the film's depiction of the then-current 'reality' of Kansas. This features Dorothy's interactions with three farmhands (Hunk, Hickory and Zeke), a travelling fortune-teller, and a legal bully (Ms Gulch). Ms Gulch takes Dorothy's beloved dog Toto away to be destroyed, just because 'the law says she can do so'. At that point in time, 'the law' also criminalized homosexuality, and 'legal bullying' is well-known to be among the very nastiest forms bullying can take.

Dorothy copes with these things first by singing of a more utopian world away from such grim realities "Over the rainbow". More than a few LGBT* rights people have argued that this is the origin of the LGBT* Rainbow Symbol. Secondly, upon Toto escaping from Ms Gulch's bicycle hamper, she runs away from home with him to avoid his recapture. It is in doing so that she meets the travelling magician, who uses rather cheap and dishonest tricks but none the less appears to have her best interests in mind in convincing her to return home. But a tornado is coming and Dorothy's absense from home causes her to be caught just short of the house's shelter hatch. She is hit on the head, and then sees the house has been sent flying by the tornado. Ms Gulch on her bicycle is also airborne and transmutes into a broomstick-riding witch. The house lands with a thud.

Dorothy iconically opens the house door to reveal full colour filming outside (this was the point in history when filming in colour was starting to become possible). The world outside is very brightly coloured, and Dorothy thinks she is no longer in Kansas but on the other side of the Rainbow. The world outside is initially deserted, but once the Good Witch in the North Glinda has determined that Dorothy is also a Good Witch, the local inhabitants - Munchkins - emerge to celebrate. For it appears that Dorothy's house has landed on top of the Wicked Witch of the East, thus freeing the Munchkins from her. Unfortunately, her sister, the Wicked Witch in the West (Ms Gulch in livid-green facepaint) turns up and wants the spoils (the Ruby Slippers, which Glinda ensures stay with Dorothy) and revenge too for good measure: "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!" Bullies often target perceived weakness, in this case Dorothy's dear little Toto. Moreover, Dorothy still wishes to get back home. Glinda recommends she do so by 'following the Yellow Brick Road' to the Emerald City, where resides the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. He'll know how to get her home!

So Dorothy sets out. The road branches. She wonders which way to go. The Scarecrow by the crossroads says "pardon me, this way is a very nice way" He then points the other way: "it's pleasant down that way, too." Dorothy has by now noticed that it is the Scarecrow who is addressing her. He then says "Of course, some people do go both ways." Many of the more savvy viewers interpret this as meaning that Straight and Gay are both entirely fine and valid ways of being. Some might go further in suggesting that he goes both ways himself, i.e. that he is a very early film portrayal of a Bi person. The most important thing is that Dorothy accepts him for who he is, and is helpful toward him. His main concern is that in being stuffed and sewn together, he wasn't accorded a brain. Dorothy suggests that the Wizard of Oz might be able to sort this out too. And so off they march.

The eventually encounter the Tin Man. He has rusted to a standstill in the middle of chopping down a tree with his axe. They make use of the oilcan now beyond his reach to get him moving freely once again. Dorothy accepts him too. When he dances in his own way, Dorothy and the Scarecrow laugh with him and not at him. The Tin Man's main issue is that the Tinsmith had not given him a heart. Dorothy and the Scarecrow suggest that the Wizard will be able to fix this too. Some viewers consider the Tin Man's oilcan to refer to certain activities that require lubrication, and point out that he goes around brandishing a big chopper besides! He is also very insistant that the woods around them contain Bears as well as Lions and Tigers. Some viewers consider it likely he'd personally known Bears in those parts, Bears being argot for heavily-built, older, and thus hairier, Gay men.

It is however a Lion that they encounter. The Lion threatens the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, but when he tries to lay into Toto, Dorothy slaps him and he burst into tears. He is a Cowardly Lion. He symbolizes that some bullies are cowards who collapse if challenged. Unfortuantely, some other bullies set out destroy anyone who dares challenge them (Ms Gulch/Wicked Witch of the West), and it is very hard to tell these two types of bully apart beforehand. Having seen him break down in tears, Dorothy accepts him too. At first he doesn't want to be part of the group ('who'd want to be seen associating with a Cowardly Lion?', he asks, in pretty clear parallel to 'who'd want to be seen associating with an LGBT* person?' back in Kansas, where it was at that point 'illegal').

The Lion has since been argued to exhibit a number of Trans features. (This long pre-dates issues about declaring pronouns, so we'll keep on using 'he/him' for the Lion here, out of not knowing the Lion's preference in these matters...) He does call himself a 'dandy-lion' and a 'sissy', and gets his hair permed and done up in a red lace while in Emerald City. A few more recent viewers have even additionally viewed the Tin Man as proto-Aromantic, to the Scarecrow's proto-Non-neurotypicality. Though in both cases, they want to change these things about themselves, whereas many Aro and Non-Neurotypical people don't want these aspects of themselves to change. They just wish to be accepted as they are, which is what Dorothy provides. Dorothy is a great Ally to these three, and they in turn help her too. Moreover, the three of them are played by the same actors as the three farmhands: Hunk is the Scarecrow, Hickory the Tin Man and Zeke is the Lion. So in some sense, sepia Kansas is how these lived Closeted in a highly unsafe world, whereas they are their Out Selves in the land of Oz. Indeed, "a friend of Dorothy's" is US slang for an LGBT* person, and the actress Judy Garland herself was very well known as a friend and supporter of Gay men.

Continuing with the theme of bullies, the Wizard of Oz decides to pit the four of them against the Wicked Witch of the West. They will only get their wishes granted if they give him her broomstick, and this will very likely require them to kill her. So off they set, but their party is mobbed by the Wicked Witch's Army of Winged Monkeys. These have since become slang for forced or unwitted flunkies thrown by narcissistic bullies to mob anyone who dares oppose them. They capture Dorothy and Toto. The other three try to rescue her and are also captured. The Wicked Witch then sets the Scarecrow on fire - what he is most afraid of. This is also in accord with who the very nastiest bullies operate. But this is her undoing, since Dorthoty upends a bucket of water to save her friend, and the Wicked Witch is caught in the cross-water (cf cross-fire!) and this turns out to melt her.

So back to Oz they go, only to discover that the Wizard of Oz is a humbug who drifted there from the Omaha State Fair in an out of control balloon. He is indeed played by the same actor as the travelling magician. He knows know magic, but his entertainer/con-artist background nevertheless equips him with the right psychology to satisty the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion. (By use of, and the scriptwirters' mockery of, University Diplomas, Philanthropists' Testimonials and War Veterans' Medals.) He finally resolves to take Dorothy home himself in his Balloon. But Toto chases after a Cat and Oz doesn't know how the Balloon works, so Dorothy gets left behind. Then Glinda appears again, and reveals that the Ruby Slippers always had the power to take Dorothy home, though she'd have to see that for herself before she'd believe enough in them to use them. And so Dorothy returns home, i.e. wakes up from her head injury coma back in Kansas, surrounded by her Aunt, Uncle and the three farmhands, to the words "there's no place like home".

II. About our Chainstory.

- It's to be about current oppressions that are suffciently deep-seated that they'll probably still not have public awareness, sympathy, legally protected status... in 2039.

- It is to be made in the image of the number nine. It is Cloud Nine over the Rainbow: a tentative third member in the sequence "Cloud Atlas" and "Sense 8". Those have complex multiarc plots that connect between each other, and have the authenticity of a Trans directorship's take on many historical and current prejudices. This mention kind of invites some of us here to write introductions to Cloud Atlas and Sense 8 similar to the above one for the Wizard of Oz. We'll look to have that ready for the *next* edition of the CakeFaerie News...

- Sense 8 has 8 character arcs. Our Cloud Nine goes one further, literally :) We also have not three but *nine* characters Dorothy meets en route. And not four but nine Wizards/Witches as well. These are in each case still partly open for chainstory writers to contribute.

So far, our cast includes:

- The Tin Scots-Person. We'd long decided on a Tin Person rather than a Tin Man, on Gender Presentation grounds. But then the Silly chainstory writers came up with the further sillier Scots-Person idea. The other ancestry of this concept is from Monty Python having a Scotsman who claims he's made entirely from Tin.

- The Pansexual Scare-Drone. He is male. It's not quite clear how to scare drones, since this didn't become a problem until 2025... What we do know is he brandishes an Umbrella carrying the Million Labels patterning. Some of us suspect this is actually a drone disruptor, somewhere between a satellite dish and an ultrasound cannon. But, being an umbrella, he is quintessentially British (from Finsbury Park, apparently).

- The Cybernetic Dragon. A physically mighty cyborg partly in place of the lion; moreover, we do away with 'Cowardly'. This character is, rather, a Conscientious Objector. And not just to War, to Politics, Activism, Bureaucracy and Journalism as well. So this one stands for Apolitical, Anactivistic, Abureaucratic and Ajournalistic folks.

- The Lizard of Liz: the supposedly most powerful being in this Land of Liz. Rumoured to be both a Lesbian and an Anarcho-Pacifistic, Scion of the mighty Pacificosaurus Insurrex. One may find this character by marching down the Golden Scaled Anaconda (stand-in for the Yellow Brick Road), who is a gigantic Anactivistic Entity. There is still a dispute over whether Liz lives in Greeeeeeeen City, out of Apolitical love for this crocodilochromatic hue, or whether she lives in Mithpronounthed Thapphireth Thity. As anactivists outselves, we may resolve it by her residing in both at different times (summer and winter courts).

- We have a Wicked Wizard of the Wild West (who is apparantly bright orange, rather than luminous green).

- And a Wicked Witch of the West Coast as well as a Wicked Witch of the East Coast, and a Wicked Witch of Widdershins (who is presumably good at head-ology).

- We have the Great CakeFaerie in the Sky playing the part of Glinda.

- We have most of the Geek and Alternative Subculture Socs of Cambridge playing the Munchkins (and Winkies, and Widdershinskins).

- So we still have six places open for people Dorothy meets and accepts, and three places open for good/evil/indifferent/humbug Witch/Wizard/Wizpersons. By which we've got a half-full house.

- The Chain-story is also in nine chains firstly made separately, and then subject to minor interactions between them a la Cloud Atlas/Sense 8.

* Vegan Pear Cake makes an appearance in several places :)

The great online Ace Haven (AVEN: Asexual Visibility and Education Network) has a substantial number of Anactivistic features. This is a good place to begin discussing many of the features of Anactivism (quite a lot of Anactivists here are also Aces, so, at least to us, the below is very familiar and very clear).

Community guidelines at AVEN include:

"Personally insulting other users is unacceptable".

"Making judgments about other users, especially about the validity of their asexuality, is strongly discouraged. We are here to figure ourselves out, not to put each other in boxes."

[This one has a certain amount of Acategorical content as well. And corresponds to each person figuring ourself out in our own terms, rather than having others' worldview or ideology imposed upon us... More generally, Anactivists don't do, let alone push, consensuses.]

"Controversy is fine, getting frustrated and even angry is fine."

The first two parts of this remain part of a wider range of Anactivistic spaces.

It is however furtherly Anascivistic for anger not to be fine (Anactivism is spectral, so some guidelines can be more anactivistic than others.)

Spaces that listen to what many Survivors, Currently Bullied, Closeted... people need, where these people feel safe enough to dare raise this matter, is their need for No Anger spaces.

So, whereas we have all of AVEN's Anactivistic tenets in our owns spaces, we ourselves are No Anger spaces as well. This is to reflect that between some of us today and some of our founders 20 to 30 years ago are Survivors, Currently Bullied, Closeted, and as such we require No Anger spaces. There's a very large number of other spaces which condone or even encourage anger. So if you need to be angry, there's plenty of spaces for you elsewhere, so don't be angry here in the presence of Survivors and Currently Bullied people and Closeted people who really aren't OK in the same general area as any individuals being angry.

4) Anactivism: A Brief Glossary.

Apolitical: Has whichever of no interest or no belief in politics.

One subcase is no belief in politicians.

Another is no belief in the goodwill of politicians: a case of the Action-Agent Problem.

Yet another is no belief in political parties, e.g. that politics would be fine if politicians only represented their constituents rather than 'voting in parliament having to be in line with party dogma'.

A final one we mention here is no belief in political processes, or in their applicability to some or most walks of life. E.g. even if the politicians represented their constituents, didn't belong to any parties nor were there any parties to belong to, some hold that 'elected political class' has no business in our society. (Often literally, as in "this university society would function better with self representation from whoever cares enough to turn up rather than with some 'elected committee' of tin-pot student-society-politicians!)

Anactivistic: Whereas Activists believe in changing 'the system', Anactivists believe that " 'the system' plus the Activists and their notion of change" is but a very slightly larger version of 'the system'.

For instance, Anactivists may be Conscientious Objectors to any kind of group or institution that makes threats, by which they may refuse to belong to some, most or all Activistic groups as well as refusing to belong to 'the system'.

As useful background, some Activists say 'the system' is based on being a monopoly on violence. Meaning that the state doesn't oppose violence itself, but rather any non-state groups conducting any violence on that state's territory. Some anactivists then retort that 'the state is but an attempted monopoly on violence, that making threats is also a form of violence, one which the state is less effective at monopoloizing because activists and other individuals, companies and institutions als succeed in having a cut in the threatening that goes on in that state.' Some Anactivists moreover also consider Conscientious Objector to extend from the familiar 'to war' to other cases such as 'to politics', 'to activism' or 'to abuse' and 'to threat making' more specifically.

In saying 'some Anactivists', we are referring to Anactivism being spectral - so Anactivists differ among ourselves as to how Anactivistic we are. Indeed, Anactivism doesn't condone consensuses, 'making others agree with oneself' or 'imposing one's views on others'. By which Anactivistic opinions about almost anything vary. One of the very few which doesn't vary is that each person has the right to think for themselves.

A particularly Anactivistic position then is to be a Conscientious Objector to all forms of 'Might is Right', including thus not only war, but also abuse, threats, rhetoric, politics and activism. Not that all Anactivists are this Anactivistic :) Conscientious Objector to rhetoric is in fact not uncommon among Activists, as in "being a good debater gives you no right to argue that Trans people have no right to exist". This led some of the more modern Feminists to say "Rhetoric is Violence". And it's then only a small step to add "and I am a Conscientious Objector to Rhetoric"...

Abureaucratic : Person who has no interest in, or no faith in, bureaucracy.

Some will do the bare minimum in bureaucracy to get by.

Others may refuse to do any on principle. This is not uncommon among Homeless people. In some cases, they are Homeless in the first place out of 'the system' not recognizing that some people are badly triggered by any kind of bureaucracy. E.g. some Survivors consider themselves to have been silenced by bureaucratic procedures...

Ajournalistic : Person who has no interest in, or no faith in, journalism.

Some require No Contact from journalists. E.g. Survivors who've been mistreated or subjected to use as pawns by unscrupulous journalists 'looking for a story', 'not respecting source privacy', or who've written in part about 'what was said off the record'.

Some have no faith in journalism until it gains and credibly implement standards that prevent the previous from happening again.

Finally, some people who've been badly mistreated don't just refuse to go to the papers; they refuse to read anything from news outlets either.

Arhetorical: Of a group or society in which being good at debating can't be used to impose oneself or one's views upon others.

Alegal: Person who has no interest in, or no faith in, the legal system. E.g. many of the 85% of Survivors who don't report to the police have no faith in at least one of the police or the courts.

Amedical: Person who has no interest in, or no faith in, the medical-type professions or vocations. E.g. many of that 85% of Survivors also don't go to the doctor or counsellor.

Aportal: Person who doesn't accept that any profession whatsoever has any right to gatekeep private individual matters.

E.g. a Trans* person who considers their gender to be what they say it is, without need for 'legal' or 'medical certificates', or any kind of 'medical diagnosis' or any 'medical procedures' such as 'surgery' or 'hormone replacement threapy'.

This example is quite a common source of deep-seated abureaucracy as well.

Aninstitutional : A person who believes that no institutions have any right to interfere with any aspect of their identity as a person.

Sometimes also a person who isn't OK with any institution 'wielding power' over them, or possibly even having any 'power to wield' in any other context. Aportal is clearly a subcase of this. Another is not being OK with institutions which involve massive power asymmetries. Such as between an Oxbridge College and a student thereat, or between the Armed Forces and a single Private e.g. being subjected to removal therefrom in the 1990's for 'being Gay'. Such point out e.g. that 'in other universities, halls of residence don't make it very hard indeed for a student to change from one such to another. By which in these other places it's rather easier to avoid one's rapist or bully by changing whereabout one lives'. Other topics often mentioned in aninstitutional discussions are the appalling treatment of Trans* people by pretty much every country's prison system, and how legal systems discriminate against Poly individuals and Poly families.

[Compare also Atheist, Asexual, Aromantic with this article]

[Other less common A's already documented on these websites include Acategorical people and Asadistic Dominants.]

* Off to an early start on the socfair days itself: Caius and Trinity Hall get the early cake from Lady Margaery.

Fitz is next, while the FruitFaerie does Medwards in parallel. Papayas inspire Daenerys to want to give out perfect avocadoes as well as just fruit. Warning: Fitz has narrow pigeonholes. Garibaldi-narrow. Shortbread narrow. A flapjack usual Fitz (groans).

Some of us got caked by nearby stallcrew at the socfair.

A chocolate cake offensive has been launched through the centre.

A raspberry cheesecake appears at the Deliverer and Duelly CakeFaeries' Squash. Two CakeFaeries leave from there with many cookies and lemon marmalade cake and granola flapjacks, resulting in three further colleges getting caked.

Several duels occur here.

Birgitte Silverbow fires her cake arrows all the way down Grange Road. A Newnham door, Wolfson (including a Mango), Selwyn, Robinson, Burrels Field...

2 kilos of heart-shaped CakeFaerie love ordinance is introduced into the CUSFS Squash (Sci Fi). It is a Boardgames themed Squash. A rare in-person Badging occurs there.

Medwards has cake again. Churchill has assorted industrially wrapped chocs.

Cakefaeries Duel on Parkers' Piece.

Kings' shares a cake. So does Johns'. Some of that makes its way to Magdalene also. Homerton shares out a cake too.

CakeFaerie Baking occurs. Big scale: five cakes are made: brownies and also spiced coconut cake with lemon icing.

This results in large amounts of cake appearing in Sidney, Emma, Pembroke, Corpus. A Bakey Faerie who couldn't make it gets measuring spoons instead of cake. There's another pass at Trinity Hall due to new signups.

Some of this cake is forwarded to Homerton in a daring cross-city move. Another batch goes to the Quidditch team, apparently.

There is another CSSW Battle, including three Duelly CakeFaeries. It is no longer raining conkers in the area, fortunately, unlike the previous Sunday...

The Silly CakeFaeries begin to receive welcome packs. Some CakeFaerie badges are being sent out also. The Silly CakeFaeries respond with lines for the

chain story about three Machiavellian Penguins all called Alan...

More cakes may have moved around, though we have no confirmation of this for now... One reason for reading this is to report unmentioned cakes received since it gives us a better idea who hasn't been caked yet...

CakeFaerie Parenting - the parallel of College Parenting by CakeFaeries - has now been called.

Cakefaeries are welcome to submit CakeFaerie news items :) We hope to embellish this term's proceedings soon...

[News much shortened by work starting on all those awareness pages listed at the start of the Lent 2017 News... Most of our creative output went into these in Mich 2016 and over Xmas...]

* So, we're off with a CakeFaerie Raid into the Hell Colleges...

First is New Hell, followed by Church-Hell...

Satan rules in these parts!

Satan bids you welcome to her rendition of Hell's Kitchen :)

Please Sign Up Again, o CakeFaeries of Mefitzopolis and Lucifer Cavendish! And starting a population in Witchfield would also be nice! And up the hill, Gorgon College.

* Next Order of Business, CakeFaeries' Teashop Crawl!

It's this Saturday,starting at [Redacted pm] at [Redacted locale] in [Redacted location] and eventually proceeding to the centre via various other teashops. Each stop involves fun and games as well as tea and cake :) This activity is also a pick-up point for slices of cake to give out if one is an Active CakeFaerie. Which bunch we are should be fairly clear from some of us carrying glittery wands, and so on :) Be welcome to reply if interested in turning up to that, though you're also welcome to turn up unannounced.

with thanks, The Great CakeFaeries

This included a Sheila Meeting on the first stop :) Jonathan Livingston Seagull is read.

This group visited e.g. Corpus Antichristi and Pithiushouse Broken; the CakeFaerie at Broken Pentagram wasn't in.

And so on to Antichrist's, Gone to the Devil and Caius, Trinity Hell and Demon's Claw College.

* Meanwhile, Cakes Appear at Homerton, by non-mephistoclean means. What do you want to call yourselves, Homerton fief?

* CUSFS has also now been chocolate-caked!

* The Centre Remains Hobbiton. Hobbiton is visited to extricate the Soc-equipment. This results in their chief being armed with cake and foil as well as chocolate.

* Woland vists -M-o-s-c-o-w- Cambridge, with her whole Camdemonium!

It's the Master and Margarita all over again!

Beware Behemoth the Devil in Giant Cat Form!

And here's some News for that event .

Unsurprisingly, we caked the end of that too, in the Genoan style, all Currents and Glace Cherries :)

* Speak of the Devil: reports of a separate raid unto Hell Wings College and Mamon-Real Court of Claw College... Parenting is the rumoured motive...

* Indeed, there's been some signups for Soc-Parenting, and plenty of offers to Cake Too...

* We've also a member in the Guild Police Force looking to recruit troops for that...

* Christ's and Pembroke Caked!

* Sheila Chainstory is continuing! It's a Choose Your Own Adventure Story about the Life Cycles of a Phoenix!

* One of the Phoenices Reborn is an Apple Strudel CakeFaerie Phoneix!

* Our Geeks and Kinksters have started to contribute side-chains, the latter using the Emblem of a Squid in a Levitating Steampunk Harness as the chain branching point!

* The Geeks, on the other hand, have resurrected the ghost of R0xx0r teh n00b Prince, and have introduced Richard Phoenixon's Good Double from Omicron Prime...

* As a guide, as well as the matter of Trans pronouns, Dominant pronouns are often to be written in capitalized form...

* Ace and Pan Phoenices have also appeared; we'll be looking to draw pictures of all Mythical Creatures mentioned, if not in the full finery of the titular picture herself:

* And now Anactivists have started to arrive.

Using dinosaur imagery.

Cue Jurassic Parkour!

* So these people have inducted Anarchosaurs such as Phoenixosaurus Anarchopacificus Insurrex, as well as an Anactivistic Phoenix of Future Awareness...

* It might do at this point to consult last Lent's CakeFaerie News...

* Our safer space soc-group is itself Phoenix-shaped because we adhere to the principle of 'do all good things which nobody else provides'... which is aeon-dependent.

We are currently in a newly-reconstituted Nixlet state, quierping amidst the ashes...

* The Sheila "Phoenix" Choose Your Own Adventure Chainstory is growing in leaps and bounds...

* We still lack a definitive noun for a collection of Phoenices...

* We are however going with the Anarchosaurus Pacificus Insurrex as the Mythical Creature of Anarcho-Pacifism...

* With the Anaconda of Anactivism...

* And with the Acategorical Cat, as follows...

* Elsewise, the cross-city Heros lauched two raids into the Centre and the South, from where the local helpers of Unholy Trinity, New Naamah and Pithiushouse were able to come out and join us :)

Wolf Colours and various Wands have been awarded for this venture.

And at term's end, Hobbiton distributes to the remaining places and to some of the places raided in the interim for a second time...

Some Lembas munitions have been noticed in the Hell region, from Church-Hell to Magnificent-Talons College.

* And Sheila and her Dog's 30th Anniversary Party has been caked!

* Someone really deserving has won the Good Person/Good Soc of the Term Award!

* Spare chocolatery from Sheila 30 also made it to the Guild End-of-Term Duel :) In which General Alcazar makes mincemeat of all the other opponents in turn, by taking a more direct mode of action... Las Dopicas is his again!

* And an End of Term Battle, with Cookies, many-on-one violence, Hunger Games played with initially empty Jolts and further rounds of Capture the Pride Flag...

Some new peoples' pride flags have been nominated; some of these people as yet have no pride flags, so we'll try out new designs.

It is determined that a Trivalent is a Switch who additionally considers Vanilla to possess nontrivial extent and thus oscillates between all three of Dominant, Submissive and Vanilla situations. This might be indicated with a visible white dot in the centre between the Switch arrows.

Others are suggesting that the Trivalent symbol include further arrows or be in the shape of a two petal flower with sizeable middle.

Asadistic BDSM people have also been noted. In principle, any of the six lobes of BDDSSM can be absent, and not just in combinations indicating dominance and submission.

Asadistic BDSM looks to be easier to render extremely safe than other versions.

* Closet Disabled matters and dealing with social anxiety have also been raised.

* The successor to the Phoenix Choose Your Own Adventure Story shall be Cloud Nine, taken as the third member of the series Cloud Atlas and Sense-8.

I.e. nine initially non-interacting chains, which are then finished off by adding small but very significant interactions between the nine chains.

To involve currently unrecgnized/invisible minorities, probably including some of those about which awareness is currently being raised in the Phoenix chain story :)

* Write in to volunteer to give out Cake in the upcoming exam term...

* And a welcome to people benevolently reading this from other countries... This is one of those months in which some country other than the UK is reading our webpages to a an even greater extent than the UK is. Our best wishes out there :)

* Here's a miror copy of the chainstory so far...

Here is our current, ongoing Choose Your Own Adventure Chain-Story:

page 1) She was an Older Phoenix, and knew it would soon be time, so she stored away all of her flammable possessions at her Unicorn Friend's.

* If you're a health and safety person, go one to page 2).

* If you're a pyromaniac, turn to page 15).

page 2) She also asked her friend to take all of her INflammable things, despite the fact that these by their very nature ought not to catch fire, because of something she'd heard at a college health and safety talk she had attended in her youth.

page 3) At the talk she had learned that at high enough temperatures atoms themselves began to dissociate and react in strange and interesting ways, which sparked an interest in fyzicks...

* If you're interested in consulting the Local Amphibious Authority on such matters, turn to page 4).

* If you feel self-sufficient in such matters, however, turn to page 10).

page 4) So the Phoenix decided to approach the chambers of one Sir Throatsac Toadon, so as to seek further enlightenment in such matters.

page 5) She entered humming a fanfare from Handel's Fireworks Music, only to find him immersed in contemplation, with the concentric rings of his kaleidoscopic eyes focused upon a 'Treatise on Opticks'.

* If you decide to wait patiently, turn to page 6).

* If, however, you decide to offer him an AurorBolt Dark Chocolate Coated Ginger Biscuit, turn to page 27).

page 6) He gargled rambunctionously, all the while directing light from his phosphorescent iris rings into a matching pair of prisms.

page 7) The Phoenix's tail-feathers began to smoulder, causing Toadon to sit bolt-upright. "My Alchemical Pursuits beckon..." he croaked, before noticing the presence of the Phoenix.

Page 8) "My dear, are you aware that your Tayle is on Fyre?" he asked.

She looked at him a little crossly, but not too much, for she simply couldn't find it in her to be in an unhappy mood in this most wonderful of moments.

"Yes, I am very much aware that my Tayle is on Fyre." she replied. "That's why I'm here."

page 9) "Oh, well in that case it is almost time for your ..." He paused, for a moment, a concerned expression forming upon his bulging face.

"Could you just come out here with me?" he urged. "You see, I have been studying the properties of Hydrogene, a most flammable gas. It would be a shame if your transformation were to blow this home apart."

* If you wish to partayke of ye Hydrogene, turn to page 71.

* If you trust rather in the Fire Troupe's wares, turn to page 86.

Page 10) "Ah well", she thought, "I shall have to go somewhere not just INflammable, but UNflammable."

So she flew to the very top branch of the Great Kookaburra Tree, whose bark was scorched but undamaged from the many flarings of the many Phoenices who had visited it over the years.

Page 11) At the top of the Great Kookaburra Tree, before settling down to the task of being reborn, the phoenix broke a Great Kookaburra Tree Nut off one of the branches, cracked it open and ate it.

Page 12) She would need the extra protein that the large nut provided for her transformation and Great Kookaburra Tree Nuts are also known to be incredibly delicious to Phoenices.

Page 13) The firm flesh inside the hard shell of the Nut tasted wonderfully rich and smoky and was even still slightly warm from the last blazing phoenix that had sat atop that Tree.

Page 14) And so she began to smoulder, whilst performing the Zaupitquiem on Voice, and Portable Synthiklavier. And mice joined in, with little Triangles and decidedly not mouse sized Trombones!

* If you'd like to be Reborn as Phoenixxor teh n00b Prince , turn to page 55.

* As Richard Phoenixon's Good Double from Omicron Prime , to page 76.

* As Phoenixosaurus Anarchopacificus Insurrex , to page 180.

* Or as The Anactivist Phoenix of the Far Future Awarenesses , then to page 190!

page 15) Next she lined up her fireworks, dominoes-fashion, such that her passing would ignite a chain reaction with rebirth as the finale.

page 16) And then she began to sing.

* If you are a Chilli Pepper Phoenix , so that yours is the Song of Spice and Fire, pass to page 35).

* If, on the other hand, you are a Phoenix Superstes Evitans , pass to page 47).

Page 17) The Story of Phoenix Generofluidiniensis

[Picture has been comissioned]

t.he + (1 - t).she was reborn from the ashes in a smouldering of pink and white and cyan downfeathers ...

page 18) "Good morning" said t.his) + (1 - t).her next door neighbour.

"My name is Nic the Nixlet, and my pronouns are he.sin(Tt) + she.cos(Tt) with an approximate period big-T of three months. At the moment, Nic is approximately 2/3 Nicholas and 1/3 Nicole. And who are you?"

page 27) 'Fiery', he Splutteraciously Ecroakulated whilst manipulating his prisms and rolling around the pupilocentric rings of his phosphoroiridescent occularia.

page 28) 'Yet I much prefer Handel's Water Music to thine overture' he gargled before diving off his lilypad studychair into the Greate Courte Ponde outside.

page 29) 'What are thine requestes of this Amphybicist who Squats Taller than All before, by Crouching on the Head of a Vertical Salamander?'

page 30) 'I would like to safely start a fire' the Phoenix Replied.

page 31) 'Ah, Kineticks, Thermodynamicks and Combustionne... I'm afraid you're in the wrong century for that', he replied.

page 32) 'But in the next ponde along, you can find a Venerable Squidde, named Ink-stained-board Kink-Dom Brunnel, who applies Thermodynamicks to Engynes of Tractione and to the Design of Steame-Punke Fetishe Outfittes'.

* If you would like to visit this Mythical Squidde of Steampunk Fame, go to page 75.

* If you'd rather make the Fire Troupe your next point of call, go to page 86).

page 35) 'O Nutmeg Sharp and Capsaicin Hot, I Re-enter the Melting Pot...'

* If you wish to be reborn so that when you moult the CakeFaeries can make an unforgettably delicious Apple Strudel from each of your feathers, pass to page 36).

* If, on the other hand, you wish to be reborn as an even hotter Devil's Bonnet Habanero Ice Pepper Phoenix , pass to page 41)

page 36) The CakeFaerie Phoenix

Xe dusted off the ashes from xer antennikins, as plumes of Cinnamon and Vanillessence rose from xyr icing pen shaped Nixlet's beakikin...

page 37) Next, xe unfolded and admired xer transluscent pastel winglets. Xe was now a Phoenix Fadacrustalam Strudelmalocinamomumvanilliensis! "I must now make and deliver cakes" xe said "so as to Receive a Wand to Call My Own..."

page 41) The Chilli Pepper Phoenix

She dusted off the ashes from her tiny horns, as plumes of smoke and pyrocapsaicinessence rose from her baby pepper shaped Nixlet's beakikin...

page 42)

page 47) Phoenix Superstes Evitans's Song

"In going up in flames,

I ask for a better world,

Where the Shy can do as they please,

page 48) Rather than just what they are told.

Where the Meek are Offered Cheese,

page 49) Freely rather than from baited traps,

And Differences of opinion are protected

page 50) Rather than sat upon till they collapse.

Where the Vulnerable are accepted,

page 51) without ever having to Say Why.

And boundaries are respected

page 52) and those Presenting as Men are Free to Cry."

And with that, the Phoenix Returned to the Ashes...

page 53) and a tiny beakikin peeked out from the ashes, quierpling .

page 54) With a ruffle and a puffle and a fluffle of feathers, the little Nixlet 'quierp'ed and shook off some of the ash, blinking at the bright and blurry world all around.

* If the Nixlet's pronouns are xe, turn to page 37).

* On the other hand, if these are t(he) + (1 - t)she, go to page 17)

* Finally, if these are She, jump ahead to page 130).

page 55) Phoenixxor teh n00b Prince

Phoenixxor teh n00b Prince had a TRuddeliously Gigantic Sword and a distaste for the cliquey orcs from the great underground holdfast of l33t...

page 62) "Will you lend me some Will, Magnificent Phoe?" wriggligarglejected The Squidde. "With will, I can rise out of this gravitational well I am elsewise well stuck in..."

page 63) "You know the chore", she replied. "I will will you some will if you Mention Everything that Begins with 'M' ... "

page 64) "Strictly speaking" They Ink-erjected "that applies only to Treacle Wells. However, I have Materialized a Massive and Magnificantabulous Suche, in Mine ante-Macassaribularium thither..." they said, pointing to the last door on the left with no less than five tentacles.

page 65) "My Mana is Mauvgenta, My Mantra Mandibulbousbeakocentric, My Mantle Macrolanoheptachomatispectrale, My Manner Matrianarchistic..."

page 66) "My Mathematical writings based on Matrices, Matroids, Modules, Manifolds, Measure Theory, Mappings, Monotone convergence, Metrizability, Minimal polynomials, Monads and Multiplication in Monoidal categories..."

page 67) They floated across to the door in question, and opened it. "And May I interest you in a Modicum of fresh Treacle?"

"Would that help in safely lighting a fire?" asked the Phoenix "As it May be time for me to Move on one turn around this Mortal coil. For us Phoenices do not Moult, or expire and Moulder..."

page 68) "This Treacle Mine of Mine indeed produces Metastable Treacle. Let Me Mine you a Mine in this Mine of Mine...

O Multiuseable Memes!

Pyrotechnical Dreams!

Hurrah, horray! Let's put on a display!"

They Writhed Tentacularilevitating Hexumphantly in their Joy.

page 69) "This Mine from this Mine of Mine, is of a kind that projects stars and sparks." They continued, producing a treacleodorescent tubule. "Being a Squidde, I'll set it off with a Squib, and it will burn Safely, Spectacularly and with Ink-Redible Precision..."

page 70) And so the Phoenix placed the Magical Treacle Firework between her wingtips, and the Squidde remotely set off a Squib. Stars and Sparks began to emanate, and the Phoenix began to Sing...

* For rebirth as Phoenix Vanilliensis, turn to page 120.

* For rebirth as Phoenix Dominans, turn to page 130.

* For rebirth as Phoenix Submissibilis, turn to page 140.

* For rebirth as Phoenix Trivalens (oscillating between all three of the previous) turn to page 150.

page 75) When our Phoenix arrived, she found the Squiddle Ink-stained-board Kink-Dom Brunnel relaxing in Their pond sporting a most exciting harness fashioned out of ethically produced but very realistic artificial leather, titanium buckles and stainless steel cogs and wheels, which were all interlocking and intertwined in more intricate ways than the eye of imagination can comfortably conceive.

* If the Squidde's Zeppelin Harness is Steam-Powered, turn to page 95).

* If, au contraire, it is Will-Powered, turn to page 62).

page 76) Richard Phoenixon's Good Double from Omicron Prime

(Alias "FireGate" !!!)

page 86) And so the Phoenix came unto the domains of the Paraffyne-Godde, as ministrated by the Pyromantulaic Priesthoode of ye Barrelle-Bearynge-Trolleyes, all Bedeck'ed with Strippes of Flamynge Kevlarre mount'ed into Mephistophiloparaphenalia.

page 87) Fan of Horns, Devilstick, Dragonstaff, Flaming Trident...

page 88) The Phoenix, two Poi, a Devilstick and a Flaming Hat simultaneously lit up the night sky in intricate patterns, and the Phoenix sang...

* For rebirth as an Ace Phoenix, turn to page 89.

* For rebirth as a Phoneix Demisexualis, turn to page 110.

* For rebirth as a Phoenix Panromanticus, turn to page 160.

* For rebirth as a Phoenix Generofluidiniensis, turn to page 17.

And upon the ashes, the Acenixlet builte her Neste.

As a place to return to for a modicum of rest.

page 90) With enough space planned lest a cuddlebuddy visit

And a storage jar from which in the meanwhile to Biscuit.

Page 95) "HELLO THERE." boomed Squiddle Ink-stained-board Kink-Dom Brunnel's voice in a very booming way. "WELCOME TO THE-"... They frowned, then adjusted a dial or two on Their harness with a quiet hiss of escaping steam. "Welcome to the - oh, that's better. I had the volume up far too high. My apologies."

Page 96) "Welcome to The Socioindustrial Revolution" They offered. "It is simultaneously the 1860's and the 1960's here...

Page 97) "Let Maxwell keep his puny Electro-Magnetic Unification. Steame-Punke Unification rules here..."

Page 98) Much as the speed of light automatically appears from the oscillations in electric and magnetic fields propagating each other in his, in mine, Kinke Waves automatically propagate due to the oscillations in the Steame and Punke fields propagating each other..."

Page 99) And lo and behold, multicoloured hair sprouted from Their Calamarine Brow in contra-tempo to the bursts of steam keeping the Zeppelin Suit airborne! And They began to sing.

Page 100) The Airborne Squidde's Songe of Steame-Punke-Kinke Liberaytionne

"The Squidde's zeppelin suit was Fluorescente Pinke,

And prevented Them from too quickly releasing Inke.

For they were into that kinde of Kinke...

Page 101) Their Steam Engine Funnelle was kind of cute,

But with tentacoyles, one can easily dispute

Thine Wishe to weare a dazzly Rubber Boote...

Page 102 A Tentacoyle Corsette, on the other hande,

Remains as a concepte rather magnilogrande.

O Mighty Pink Lead Zeppeloyd Band!

Page 103) And the final thynge to consydere

Is the steame-dryvvern Kink-netic Theory's warme aire

Don't just behold, but gaspe and gawpe and glare!

Page 104) Will you keep my fires lit, O splendid Phoe,

So I can soar every higher and be forever free",

They exclaimed in Ink-arous-like over-glee...

Page 105)

Page 106)

Page 107)

Page 108)

Page 109)

page 110) The Story of Phoenix Demisexualis

page 120) The Story of Phoenix Vanilliensis

page 121) The Nixlet was reborn,

from the frozen ashes,

inside an Ice Cream Cone,

page 122)

upon an Ice Cream Counter,

in an Ice Cream Shop,

in an Ice Cream Street,

in an Ice Cream Town,

in an Ice Cream World,

in an Ice Cream Galaxy,

a long time ago, far far away...

page 123) (massive orchestral fanfare...)

page 124)

(cut to a picture of Vanilla Stormtroopers, forming up in a vast and incredibly regular square, to the sound of the Imperial Vanilonormative March...)

page 125) Han-flavoured popsicles don't feature in this story due to having been obtained nonconsensual...

page 126) This story is to involve, rather, ... Jenga Fetish.

page 127) Ah, the joy of -s-e-x- stacking little pieces of wood...

page 130) The Story of Phoenix Dominans

The fire-proof boots were holding out well.

page 131) Sensual flames rippled along Her outstretched wing as She looked down upon the face of Her adoring prey...

"Of course you can have more icecubes, My sweet..." She cooed "but in My own time..."

"Mmm, now you're begging for My warmth... I'll remove My Ice Queen Mask and don the Feather of Warm Sensuality in My headband... My sharp talons are now sheathed in My soft velvet worship-boots, though you'll first get a long wing-cuddle" She smiled.

page 140) The Story of Phoenix Submissibilis

"More Ice-Cubes, Ice-Queen-Mistress", she begged, all leashed and pinned upside-down onto the turn-table...

And, very eventually "I beg for the warmth of your gaze and of your feathers" ...

page 150) The Story of Phoenix Trivalens

page 160) The Story of Phoenix Panromanticus

page 170) The Story of Phoenix Demisexualis

[Picture has been commissioned]

page 180) The Story of Phoenixosaurus Anarchopacificus Insurrex

So you've heard of when Earth was ruled by the Mighty Archosaurs!

But what you may not have heard about is when Earth was freely roamed by the Anarchosaurs of Peace!

page 181) This occurred at some point between the Perestroika-iassic and the Jurisprudence-assic, in the Ancient Supercontinent of No-middleman's-land.

page 182) For here Actio-agento-problemitis, Sleazerruption and Ban-on-seeking-office-prior-to-two-decades-doing-a-real-job-itis had successively wiped out the minoritarian but ruthlessly plutocratic and grotesquely bloated local fauna of Politicosauruses...

page 183) and so the twin oppressive megalotheriums of archonormativity and cratonormativity were placed on the back foot, and each Anarchosaur did as they pleased...

page 184) Some began to Construct a Crocodilomorph out of Cardboard... (*image links please!*), and to paint said Contraptions in the Deepest and most Lurid Greens...

page 185) For it was Fetish Night over at Rocksoc, and some of the Anarchosaurs wished to make a Big Splash there... (To the music of 'The Final Countdown')

``Our Macroserrato-Maxillarodontic Jawdibles,

Alligatoroluminencent, Phosphorogharialessent

Crocodilochromatic, Fluorocaimanessent

hues of Greeeeeen, Greeeeeeeeeeen,

page 186)

O Swampostagnecent Omniverdessant Grreeeeen!

Crotalocamouflagescent Grammarlibertescent Greeeeen!

O Nilocentric Nihilauthoriesscent Greeeeeen!

page 187)

For some rockers wear pink as reaction to most wearing black,

And to us green is the new pink, so cut us some slack!

It's the Fi-nal Croc-Soc!

page 188) Emerald-grass-escent, Toothy-grin-crescent

Lacrimofalsificant, Turquoisemoshinant,

Yes we will rant, to us Greeeeeen is the new Pink and...

It's the Fi-nal Croc-Soc!

page 188) But meanwhile, elswhere, other Anarchosaurs fashioned the Raptor Queen's crown, and did examples sheets on subjects of their own choice, and manufactured Vegan Enchiladas Just Because :)

And Phoenixosaurus Anarchopacificus Insurrex lived happily forever after with her commune of original, unrestricted and pacifistic friends.

page 190) The Anactivist Phoenix of the Far Future Awarenesses

[The Anactivistic Anaconda has, at least temporarily, been temporarily adopted as a mascot. This Mythical Being wears a "Conscientious Objector: Gentle Hugs Here Only!" T-Shirt:]

the Nixlet hopped across the grassy floor,

for she had yet to relearn to fly on her now tiny wings.

page 192) As she stopped to survey her surroundings, a soft voice spoke from under her:

"Hello, little Phoeniksss. Are you losssst?

I don't sssee many of your feathery disssspossition here on the ground very often."

page 193) She squeaked and jumped and fluttered a bit before landing in a feathery heap a short distance away.

"Who's there?"

page 194) "Jussst me. No need to be afraid."

There was flash of sunlight on moving scales, and then two slitted eyes were staring at her thoughtfully.

"I am the Anactivissstic Anaconda of the Arbitrary Arboreal Area. Which isss to ssay, thisss place."

The Anaconda's tail, holding a wand, waved it about in a nonspecific motion.

"My pronounsss are 'he' and 'him'. I am currently sssunbathing while I await the arrival of other Ssssnakefaeriess with baking ssuppliess. And you?"

page 195) "I am... A Phoenix. I am a Phoenix who does Phoenician things. My pronouns are 'she' and 'her'."

"I sssee."

The Anactivistic Anaconda slithered about until he was once again curled up in the sunniest spot.

He wore a tiara, and the scail polish on his back made the words 'CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOP: GENTLF HUGS C NLY!' - some of the writing had worn away.

"If you are not in a hurry, would you care to join me in waiting?

The Ssnakefaeriesss do not dissscriminate on grounds of age, occupation or sspeciess - you would be most welcome at our sssociety."

page 196)

page 197)

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page 199)

* If you are reborn as a Million-Label Phoenix, turn to page 200.

* If you are reborn as an Acategorical Phoenix, turn to page 220.

* If you are reborn as the Acategorical limit as n goes to infinity of an n-label Phoenix, turn to page 210.

* If you are reborn as a Phoenix who Refuses to be categorized even as Acategorical, turn to page 230.

page 200) The million-label Phoenix

page 210) The Acategorical limit as n goes to infinity of an n-label Phoenix

page 220) The Acategorical Phoenix

For now, have a tentative sketch of the ACategorical Cat!

page 221) The sign read

"Meeting of the Acategorical Cats and their Anactivistic Anacondas Society."

"Lol" thought the Nixlet "A third or higher generation Sheila and her Dog Society" and entered.

page 230) The Phoenix who refuses to be categorized even as Acategorical

* And some reports are in as regards how this term's CakeFaerie duels have fared...

* The next chainstory shall be called Cloud Nine, and be a plausible thrid member of the series Cloud Atlas, Sense 8 ... This will run between around Mayweek and around Xmas.

Michaelmas 2015 CAKEFAERIE NEWS

* First -b-l-o-o-d- granola in Christs'! Brienne of Tarte had some unfinished business in there with -S-t-a-n-n-i-s- well, with someone, anyway, who hopefully now has a smile on their face from the raisiny treat :)

* The Scouts then forayed into Peterhouse with a caramel bake to split up ...

* Meanwhile, an address has been caked in John's.

* Cambridge Safer Spaces Waterfighting Squash got Vanilla Cheesecaked by Brienne of Tarte!

Soc crest pics, at least when the page has been fully written enough, are in fact also clickable links:

Capture the Flag was played there with pride.

The second mouse kept on getting the cheese!

The Fruit Faerie appears to favour bicoloured seedless grapes at this point in time :)

* Direwolves raid to Newnham addresses, to dispense the "with silliness" option.

It is determined that Ribena is Silly.

It is explained how Sheila is Silly

Sidekick fluffy toys are in evidence; they are not called Podrick.

Sorry we forgot to give one of you your badge; another will do so for us!

Sorry also that we haven't got the carrot cake ready yet. That'll be at the squash.

Address caked in Corpus. Chronophage mentioned despite it not being a Silly call.

Silly incursion into Sidney. Sidney Sussex is a fairly silly place :) You know it's fresher's week when the person letting you into the accommodation block is Queen Cleopatra!

Time to feed the crocodiles, then! Direcrocodiles, even! Lions and tamers is not at all the same as crocodiles and tamers (Just William feels that way about this matter).

* Jesus has been baking-trayed.

* Gratitude is expressed at Homerton's new-found ability to CakeFaerie itself :)

* The CakeFaerie Squash is upon us soon! An icing pen has been acquired to write -redacted- on an unspecified-bakery-product of indeterminate-size to give to society-name-postponed. Elsewise it would not be a surprise!

* Various scouts set out from the CakeFaerie Squash with cakey goods... The sticky heads game is played (icebreaker involving gueessing what animal's name is written on one's forehead. With Red Backed Spider and Japanese Spider Crab featuring, we were disappointed not to have time for a second round featuring Spider Pig... Nobody said the creatures had to be *real* :) Also, one of the actual spiders living under the Squash's tree is called Boris.

* We remain in need of an underlying theme for this news! Suggestions welcome. E.g. Michaelmas 2013 was "a Game of Cake". That explains some of the names used by caking veterans and scouts. One might even say Spirit Riders, or Haliene!

* Apparently if you're Cake with Silliness and ask for a CakeFaerie badge, you get something silly with it :)

* The large cake, with "chain" written upon it with an icing pen, appeared at the CUSFS Squash (Sci Fi).

We like CUSFS.

Aside from our own Safer Space sister societies of Sheila and her Dog and Cambridge Safer Spaces Waterfighting, they are now our closest cousin.

CUSFS are themselves a Safer Space of their own kind.

(Sheila and her Dog and Cambridge Safer Spaces Waterfighting are Safer Spaces of the same kind as the CakeFaeries. More on that later!)

* Cake spotted in Caius. Heavy calibre baking tray rotated into action in the Centre of Town ... Cake in Trinity.

* First duel challenges issued, in the Hill region.

* Comprehensive caking in Murray Edwards and Fitz.

* The Newnham fief has cookied itself!

* Homerton cakes itself. Twice, in fact :)

* Next up it's the Sheila and her Dog Society Squash, including for "CakeFaeries with Silliness" option :)

* Halloween Cake in Magdalene! Arwen Half-Elven, guilty as Charged!

* Cake in Pembroke, Emma and Corpus.

* Cake in Christs'

* Cake in Selwyn and Downing!

* More Cake in Christs! (Buckland part of The Shire) Someone's been awarded a Children's Book for that!

* "The Hill are Tolkien's Elven lands. From Rivendell -house of Arwen - by the fords of the river Bruinen (John's and Magdalene), to the Great Greenwood (Churchill and Wolfson Court Girton) where Legolas and Tauriel patrol. From the Heart of Elvendom on Middle Earth - the Lothlorien of Galadriel - (Murray Edwards), to the Grey Havens of Lindon (Fitz), and Doriath mysteriously shrouded behind the Girdle of Melian (Lucy Cavendish)". Clare Colony is the fortress city of Nargothrond. Gondolin is rumoured to be vaguely in this area too, though of course where it is is not to be spoken of"

* The Centre has been declared to be Hobbiton and the Shire more generally :) Four colleges in those parts have been chocolate baking trayed :)

* Homerton fief cakes itself again!

* More Duel Challenges issued...

* Jam tartes, cake and devil-cake at Cambridge Safer Spaces Waterfighting!

* Watchful eye cast in the direction of Queens' and Darwin :) Only Queens' gets caked.

* Cake in King's and Caius.

* Halloween CakeFaerie Group Raid 1 "Treat or Treat" does Lucy Cav through to Kings. This move includes a Sheila Meeting stop in unspecified-alleyland. Keeps on going through Pembroke, where torches are useful in the unlit Red Building, and Peterhouse, where two Faeries are in.

* Halloween CakeFaerie Group Raid 2 starts off with Murray Edwards and Fitz. Two Faeries are in, one Silly and one Duelly :)

Vegan Banana Cake wielding reinforcements appear, so we go back in there for another pigeonhole and a silly rhyme left on someone's door.

We then leave a Poem and some Pumpkin Cheesecake and an excuse for not leaving a song, in Churchill. The excuse is their already having a song: The Song of Ice and Fire :)

Another Cakefaerie is found in, and further acquainted with Alan the Penguin.

Wolfson Court Girton is next.

Nice person in kitchen letting us in is that block's Faerie herself :)

Further banana cake ordinance fired into Clare Colony, with a certain amount of silliness.

And then CUSFS's titular "A Feast For CUSFS" is delivered, in the form of the remaining banana cake, pumpkin cheesecake, salt-caramel cake and black forest gateau. There are various CakeFaeries in the audience, by which we've seen around 10 Faeries today :)

* Guy Fawkes Night: DireWolf Unit CakeFaeries raid Homerton! We find two CakeFaeries in! And two more eating Pizza on the tables by the entrance. Wands are awarded. Balloons are noted. Two silly rhymes are left behind. Those found in got Cookies. Those out got wrapped chocolates. Baking is solicited. The unit then goes back into town via Peterhouse. The local Royal CakeFaerie is sighted! Another has cookies left by their door.

* Further Cake in Caius. Calls for Soc-Parenting are open.

* Cambridge Safer Space Waterfighting's Suburban battle takes place; remaining chocolates are present.

* Cake in Robinson!

* Two of the newer people involved in the above group-raids are awarded Wands :)

* Trinity Hall and Mem Court Clare are Caked, by the Black Forest Gateau Faerie.

* The Direwolf pack moves fast, so that St Regis House is not far for us. Ahooooooooooooooo!

* There is a further Hill-Raid...

* In a show of force, Chesterton, Wolfson, Girton and Mill Road are taken out in succession in under 24 hours by Nymeria, Ghost and Grey Wind. AHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

* And Sheila with Cocoa...

* And three-way duelling to conclude the term's CakeFaerie Duelling...

After dark and eventually in woodland...