Elbow grease

The secret to life is not to chase anything too intensely but to let the universe come to you which went against the way my generation was raised. As the eldest, I was also taught to be dutiful, reliable and to fulfill a role. 

Later one realizes much of that chasing is unnecessary but while I lived within that model, it allowed me to thrive and have a career which met the needs of my then spouse and children. 

I have no regrets and yet understand much better how lowering expectations and existing more in the moment is the right way to live. We remove social irrationality and move inwards to find our core and honor it as best we can with more trust than we dared have.

No one teaches you this until you learn it for yourself through trial and error. You come to the realization that everyone else is also lost and scrambling; many much more than you. 

Somehow in the end with a lot of elbow grease and little luck, you end up being who you should have been all along.

Two perspectives

Most transsexuals in the past would tell you they suffered from a medical condition which we now term dysphoria (gender identity disorder before that). This was something they had felt from earliest memory and needed tending to. 

We would call this viewpoint transmedicalism which is the concept that some intervention needs to happen to make the individual feel whole. 

Others might speak about a way of being which isn't constrained by societal ideas of a gender binary but involves less internal struggle of identity and thus they may reject transmedicalism as a concept. 

However, I think that both things can be true at once. 

Those whose dysphoria was affecting their quality of life to the point where they would rather not continue living would have seen their suffering more from a medical stance. Conversely those who found a formula which worked within the existing framework of their lives would be less prone to see their situation as a condition. 

Some of Harry Benjamin's patients did see their tranvestism as a curse but I suspect this was mostly due to shame and social stigma rather than a need to have medical interventions. However, some blurred the lines between transvestism and transsexualism and ended up in the middle of his 6 typology scale.

For a very long time I have been convinced that gender dysphoria has a solid aspect rooted in biological predisposition but can also be affected by social factors. It is how those factors combine and their tenacity that will yield a very different and unique result in each person.

You're on your own

As tornados, flash floods and record heat hit the US, the Trump regime is busy defunding organizations like FEMA so they can help the wealthy with tax cuts. If you are hit by a weather event and you don't have insurance, you're plum out of luck. 

The States who vote red are always typically the hardest hit and it breaks my heart when I see interviews with people with the earnest but misguided belief that their president genuinely wants to help them. 

They're been spoon fed by regime media FOX news for years now that climate change is a hoax and not to worry since it will all blow over. Perhaps literally.

Falling in line

Most Republicans fell in line like MAGA sheep and voted for the awful Trump budget bill which will strip health care from millions of Americans so that the richest Americans can get a tax cut. If it passes the senate things are going to get uglier as people begin to feel the consequences. 

Pure evil. 

This will eventually come back to haunt the GOP as working Americans already struggling to keep up with the cost of living are impacted. For some, the passing this bill will mean a death sentence if they are relying on Medicare to keep them alive. 

Add to that deporting grandmothers and sick kids and possibly ending birthright citizenship, and you can see how the wheels are rapidly falling off the bus. The cruelty is part of the plan. It's not a bug but a feature. 

Your nation is only as healthy as the most vulnerable members of society are treated which means that it is going to be increasingly on life support.

Meanwhile in Hungary thousands defied Orban and marched for pride which then grew into a general government protest...

I am me

This morning on the metro platform a young man about my son's age walked by wearing a long dress, a purse and pearl earrings. He was sporting a beard a little sparser than my son's and moved about unassuming in front of an older couple in their 70's who I noticed didn't even bother to bat an eyelash. 

This type of gender variance is more common than ever and very likely free of dysphoria. The person doesn't feel like they suffered a mistake at birth but simply may have no interest in respecting an enforced binary. 

If I were to query him he might tell me he's non binary or gender fluid. His body language? I don't care what you think of me which the other passengers seemed to understand very well.

It also doesn't hurt that it's 2025.

Optics over substance

"Professor Dave Explains" is a youtube channel dealing with debunking science deniers and charlatans. It's fascinating stuff and this installment dealt with the appearance of Eric Weinstein and theoretical physicist Sean Carroll on Piers Morgan's right wing agenda program.

Weinstein is a mathematician by education, is clearly very intelligent and yet is on the payroll of tech billionaire and JD Vance mentor Peter Thiel to act as a publicist for why academia is failing society. In other words, stop funding ivory tower "do nothings" which is very much a push from the political right.

Here Carroll sits patiently and humbly while Weinstein spins heads with advanced physics jargon which is supposed to substitute for his lack of credentials as a published scientist. When finally given his turn, Carroll undresses Weinstein with his expertise. 

This whole episode is a perfect illustration of the problem we face today with social media and its optics.

Weinstein is a favorite on Joe Rogan where he can cast spells but not so much on subject matter experts like Carroll.

Record high

Today my blog received over 3,600 views which is an all time high since I began writing back in 2012 with my old blog. 

I have no explanation for this surge but I suppose I will take it 

Far from a sure thing

When Ray Blanchard was first proposing his two type taxonomy of male to female transsexualism in the 1980's, the world was certainly a different place. For one thing, many gynephilics had married and were deep in hiding. They had suppressed their dysphoria and thought that marriage and children would cure them. I was among them. 

As a result some were presenting to clinics like the CAMH in midlife and in distress. The effects of testosterone had done their work and it was easier to typecast them as males suffering from a misdirected sex drive. 

Fast forward to today and the model looks atrocious. Not only are youth more open with their sexuality but all cases are presenting to clinicians far earlier than we did. The result is that transitions are far less easy to categorize into neat little packages within a theory where female gender dysphoria need not even be acknowledged.

If your science is good then social change won't impact it so significantly and while cross gender arousal is most certainly a thing, it is not so easily ascribed as a main motivator for gender transitions. Only the person themselves can understand their own experience and what means will make their dysphoria better. 

Some people have mistaken their sexual motivations as a sign that transition might be right only to discover that hormone treatments killed their desire for cross gender expression. Others have found relief in those treatments. 

Far right podcasts and channels still sell AGP as a sure thing because they need ammunition to discredit transgender people which is a shame when we should be only trying to offer helpful solutions to those who are searching for answers.

Company

When I was younger I could intellectually understand why older people once alone for a while were more hesitant to embark on a relationship but I didn't feel it viscerally as I do now. 

We get to a point where we know ourselves better than ever but also understand human nature. By now we may have already lived the ups and downs of couple life and understand the benefits as well as the risks. 

We get to like who we are and know what compromises we are willing to make which don't infringe on our core essence as individuals. In other words, what makes us tick isn't negotiable. 

If we have done our internal work honestly we recognize our strengths and weaknesses plus what we bring to the table for others. Also by now, the biochemical instinct which drives procreation is gone and we are more lucid about the reality of life as never before. 

It's not that we want to be alone, it's that we value our peace much more than the wrong type of company.

The coming reset

We currently live in a horrendous timeline. I love the catch phrase "it's the stupidest day until tomorrow" which is so fitting for what we are witnessing. 

The primary cause for what troubles the world is geopolitical instability driven by economic uncertainty. Less people control more wealth than ever before while the remaining  90% face increasing difficulties with basic needs which is unsustainable at this pace.

America is right now the most obvious example of what happens when you allow this excess to grow worse. As more people fall off the grid their frustration pits them against others facing the exact same struggles. At the same time, darker forces take advantage of their situation by unraveling the democratic institutions which used to keep the country more equitable with respect to trying to help the most people. 

All empires decline and they do so through implosion. They overreach and their own hubris does them in. Near the end chaos reigns as people there scramble for solutions to salvage the greatness they once had. 

People aren't smarter or stupider than they ever were but instability seeds panic which then impacts critical thinking, basic decency and empathy. You end up feeding a descending spiral which cannot be stopped. 

That decline must get to its inevitable bottom before you can rebuild something better. But it's not just the US as the whole world will need to be reset.

Descent continues

Hiding prejudice behind religious freedom. It's like saying "my faith permits me to devalue and discriminate against you".

This awful supreme court keeps taking the country backwards.

Next is birthright citizenship..