A tried and true formula

People in power have understood for centuries that the key to success is manipulation of the populace. What is true is much less important than your ability to persuade. 

Therefore in the US, congressional hearings end up as YouTube clips where the tactic by the Trump officials has been to be aggressive and combatative. They know that the cult will see that as a win. 

What is unfortunate for America is that there is no way out of this loop without an implosion. One side is so rabidly convinced that they must destroy cultural and scientific progress that their zeal overrides everything else. 

The project 2025 authors will stop at nothing even if Ma and Pa in rural Georgia can't afford to live anymore. They know that the steady diet of FOX News for decades has them firmly hypnotized. 

The entire right wing echo system works in unison as a feckless Democratic party tries to untangle itself from AIPAC money and support for a criminal Israeli government now threatened by ultra orthodox pacifists. 

Things are headed for a flash point in America where once the population reaches full panic mode they will rebel in a manner far worse than the "No Kings" marches which only served as temporary panacea.

"I am me"

Yesterday on my way home I crossed paths with a young transgender person of, by my estimation, not more than 30.

It's hardly a novelty these days.

Dressed casually in sandals, T-shirt, hoop earrings and shorts you could see there was no attempt at pretense. She was tall and the voice was low with the body language all about comfort in one's skin as they greeted a friend with a hug as I walked past. 

If you were to walk up to them and ask "are you a man or a woman?" They might answer "I'm trans" with a casual quizzical look which might hint at what business is it of yours. 

This generation doesn't suffer from binary brain trauma of older generations or try to pretend they are someone else. 

They have cleansed their palette of that.

They aren't playing dress-up but simply being openly and brazenly themselves.

They might just say to you "I am me"

Once the dust settles

It's impossible to unsee serious lapses in judgement. Many people in the US are faced with the prospect of what to do about friends and families who did the unthinkable and turned pure MAGA. 

They are mulling over what to do about ties that have been seriously damaged by the actions of people they thought they knew well. 

When times are bad is when the weaknesses and strengths societies are most exposed. There are those whose altruism and principles shine forth and then those whose fragile grip on critical thinking and values disappoint beyond measure. 

The Germans who turned Jews over for capture to the Nazis could be the same types of people as your neighbors. You don't imagine they possess that type of cruelty until you witness it firsthand and are mortified by their callous nature. 

As we get older our innocence fades away and we must live with the knowledge that a significant portion of the world operates with faulty moral compasses. Their fear and willful ignorance keeps them from making moral choices. 

It remains to be seen whether families separated by today's exposed weaknesses can move past them once the dust settles on this difficult time period. 

My bet is that many if not most are beyond repair.

Pragmatism

My clothing choices require pragmatism. Skirts with pockets, shoes that don't hurt over long distances, etc. 

It's about everyday living and learning the hard way. Trial and error has been my constant companion. 

It's already very warm in the mornings here and thus T-shirts, casual skirt and ballet flats will be a typical order of the day. On comes my trusty backpack purse and I'm out the door. 

In the early years of public outings beginning in my late teens, pragmatism was the least of my worries. Instead it was about conquering fear while maximizing feminine expression through a little over dressing. 

You weren't exactly sure when the next opportunity would come and so you made the best of it.

Bedrock

We see people walking around society without knowing anything about their psychological baggage. We don't know what they are thinking, what perturbs them or what heavy weight they carry. 

We also mostly don't care because we are living inside our own heads. 

It bears reminding ourselves then that they see us in the same way. In other words, if you look like something is off then you have tipped your hand and let them know. 

People have all kinds of problems but at least they mostly know who they are. They aren't on the lookout to see who is questioning their identity. At worst they might be worried about being judged for how they dress or speak. 

There isn't a core identity issue dangling in the air. 

This is why it is important to answer the question of who we are and do so as convincingly as possible. Otherwise it will remain an existential boil on the skin that doesn't heal; an issue steeped in fear and uncertainty.

Once we can answer that question the body and the mind can relax into the self. We may not have gotten rid of all our baggage, but at least anchored our identity a little more into the bedrock.

Zizek

I saw a clip of Slavoj Zizek on Piers Morgan's program and as one would expect the philosopher was playing chess to Morgan's checkers. 

The British host pretends he probes deeply into topics but instead is a faux intellectual right wing dullard who says that woke is the new form of fascism. 

He is Joe Rogan with a nicer accent and better clothes. 

To his credit, Zizek was very agreeable by starting sentences with the word yes only to end up dismantling Morgan's rhetoric about Trump being much better than he is because he hasn't yet sent people to be executed. 

The old reliable greatest hit "men playing in women's sports" was trotted out of course as meat for his black and white thinking audience. Like most conservatives, Morgan doesn't do nuance with only the use of his reptilian brain as primary crutch. 

Kudos to Zizek's patience I suppose?

It will have to do

Trump's election says less about him than the people who voted for him. Millions looked at this man and said: 

"Yes I like that" 

The same obnoxious carnival barker I set my eyes on many years ago and dismissed as comic book villain was suddenly presidential material. 

It has been difficult for me to reconcile this without losing respect for a large segment of the population. There is just no way around it because at their core, stupid or not, people have a deep need for saviors who tell them what to do. 

The impetus which makes religious orthodoxy work is the same one which sees them vote for absolute idiots. 

At this point those who haven't snapped out of it never will and there is much evidence out there that tells us they will drink whatever poison their leader dispenses. The mind has gone all in and their profound cognitive dissonance doesn't allow for a deprogramming. 

Those who have woken up don't give me much solace because their realization was largely due to their own lives finally taking a significant hit. 

The price of gas became an issue whereas crimes committed and cruelty towards others were conveniently ignored. You don't score any brownie points for that.

By my estimation, 25% of the world is made up of people who redeem the rest of it. They are kind, intelligent, deeply empathetic and try to do the right thing for others to the best of their ability. 

I guess it will have to do.

Dysphoria and attraction

Gender dysphoria and sexual attraction are not mutually exclusive but they can be in direct competition. One can take predominance over the other and occupy much space in the brain. 

For example, some androphilic transsexuals go through a period where they attempt to be gay men only to realize that something is wrong. Their attraction moves in the right direction but their dysphoria is acting as a force of incongruence which blocks them. 

It can be the same for gynephilic transgender people who try to lead normal lives but the unresolved dysphoria acts as a deterrent. Their potential sexual psychology has been impacted likely before they even reached puberty when they may have detected something wasn't quite right. 

Attraction to being female (not just expressing as one) was confusing their circuitry. 

Blanchard in the 80's tried to sell this confusion as sexual deviance for both orientations through his two-type taxonomy model when in reality it was the gender dysphoria behaving as agent of chaos. 

Needless to say it can work the same for male to female transgender people who were conveniently ignored back then.

Here is where non-dysphoric gender variant people have an advantage and can more readily compartmentalize their cross gender expression since there isn't a roadblock to sexual functioning.

Exposed

After the pandemic was over we never came back to normal; whatever normal had been for us before. 

Our collective consciousness had changed but we couldn't put our finger exactly on how. It's as if we had lost confidence that we would be okay again. 

The hum of everyday life had been perturbed and suddenly we were forced to examine deeper questions about our fragility; about how tenuous our grip on peace and balance was. 

The gears behind the system had been exposed to show that much of our reliance on it had been ill-advised. The imbalances in the way we were living could no longer be hidden behind our distractions or our consumerism. 

Now we are faced with a complete rebuild but are somehow hard pressed to know where to begin.

Life's a long song

 

Truscum vs Tucute

Truscum and tucute (too cute to be cis) are slang terms for polar opposites. The former are strict transmedicalists while the latter see being transgender as something one can choose because gender is a social construct. 

You could almost say they are the opposite ends between expression and identity axis. One says dysphoria is mandatory for a transgender diagnosis while the other says it's not required. 

One embraces non-binary identities while the other is highly skeptical of them. 

They both exist within the global umbrella of gender variance and I have slight problems with both approaches. Yes, identity should be primarily rooted with the self but here there is too much rigidity in one aporoach versus too much looseness in the other. 

Truscum are highly exclusionist but Tucutes risk making errors with transitions that may later be rethought. They also sometimes deliberately or unwittingly help gender critical groups to delegitimize the necessary transitions of others once they themselves have detransitioned. 

In my view, self-identication as transgender is less important than understanding the self fully before a path is chosen. It is what can make definitions dangerous when they supercede deep self-analysis. 

A label isn't a way forward.

Once Ray Williams detransitioned he immediately became an advocate for gender critical groups including interviewing the infamous Ray Blanchard. His ultimate rejection of self-identification need not have included throwing others under the bus because he determined his own motivation was rooted in a fetish. 

People are entitled to live as they choose but before adopting a label they need to be careful with how they apply it whether to themselves or others.

Hence, I embrace neither of the poles.