Enough is enough

Big coffee chains and fast food restaurants are losing money. It's a sign of the times 

People can't afford $6 coffees and $17 burritos because groceries, gas, rent and utilities occupies the rest. Never mind the health care insurance payments which have largely become optional.

Times have changed and the affordability crisis is here to stay for the foreseeable future. 

There is a youtube channel I sometimes watch where the creator drives around small American towns hit by abandoned industries. The median income is around $30,000 as is the average value of a home. Poverty rates run around 50 to 60%. 

Middle America has been hollowed out. 

This is a global crisis but nowhere is it felt more than in a nation where the wealth disparity leaves you shaking your head. 

The current regime is so criminal that Pete Buttigeg recently filled a stadium in deep red Oklahoma where the people were seething mad. They know something is deeply wrong and they know where the blame lies. Trumpism only poured fuel on an existing blaze.

It proves to you that not everyone is so easily bamboozled.

Even in the redest of the red.

Pointless

Judith Butler says we perform gender and she isn't wrong. Back when gender behaviour was strictly enforced within the binary, people who didn't fit in hid their proclivities as much as they could. 

This was separate from stage productions where gender could be mocked, emulated or exhalted; something which was tolerated and even praised provided it remained there. 

Masculine and feminine behaviour has always extended well beyond the sex binary but outlaws risked ridicule or shunning. So an underground culture was created consisting of drag balls, married "crossdresser" clubs or stealth transitions by transsexuals longing to live authentically. 

We castigated divergences as if it were a crime. 

Today expression and identity in the west have been freed to a point where hiding has become unnecessary and many even consider dysfunctional because it's become pointless. It also hurts us more than it does others.

Most people just don't care.

No rush

In retirement your biorhythmic patterns change. After all, you have removed a large object in career which occupied much physical and mental space and now it needs replacing. 

Once the novelty of vacation mode wears off, you need to get on with a new life. 

Adapting will be even more challenging for older transgender people who may have put off authenticity due to life icebergs. 

It takes time to let the dust settle and so patience is required. With all that free time to think we make small mental changes which bring us closer to comfort and balance. 

It's like adapting to a new skin. 

There are no shortcuts required here because we are in no rush to get to any place special.

Forward guidance

 

Punching down

Punching down is easy. We assess that someone is weaker than us and we degrade them to make ourselves feel better somehow; no matter how briefly. 

Dave Chapelle has seen the writing on the wall and is trying to back away slowly from his right wing cheerleaders; the ones who rejoiced in the litany of transgender jokes he now says were meant differently. He sees MAGA disintegrating and the backlash coming and he wants off lest the stench remain attached to him. 

We're supposed to be sympathetic. 

His pronouncement that he is a proud member of team TERF wasn't intended how it sounded he tells us. It wasn't punching down as much as people thought. After all he had one transgender woman friend the way some whites say they have a black friend while letting their racism slip here and there. 

Bringing renowned transphobe Elon Musk on stage wasn't helpful either.

It's too late for Dave and many others who made a decision while the going was good. A brain dead Lauren Boebert gleefully wanting his autograph in large part because of his barrage of anti-trans humor will remain on the public record.

But also, people have memories.

Never over

A transition is never truly over. It is instead a constant process of becoming. We are moving fluidly through a series of mental changes which lead to a version of ourselves that radiates from the best of our lived experience. 

It encompasses much more than just gender and is overwhelmingly guided and governed by our psychology. 

Nothing matters more.

Pathways

Our original knowledge of self is based on our earliest neural pathways. In other words, what you were taught became reinforced through repetition until it became unquestioned orthodoxy. 

Any divergences from that were outliers to be rejected. 

Of course this is false but we don't know that in infancy and into adolescence and so we suppressed instincts which went elsewhere; all this reinforced through social pressure to conform. 

The more restrictive your family upbringing and social norms were the less likely you were to escape their grip. 

Look at film from the early 20th century for evidence of people being obedient sheep. From behaviour to manner of dress, everything was hermetically controlled. 

Reprogramming the brain requires building new neural pathways which then allows individuality and instinct to flourish. We analyze our early instruction and build new brain coding which reinforces an authentic and emboldened sense of self. 

The older we become the more imperative it becomes. 

Our bullshit detector is working at peak efficiency.

77 million

Trumpism is fracturing at the seams but even after it's demise the repair will take decades. It's perhaps the dose of cod liver oil that was needed to make Americans realize that something is fundamentally wrong with their system. 

77 million people thought that voting for a narcissist imbecile was a good idea and they are feeling the consequences daily. Farmers who are struggling to keep their farms are seen complaining on YouTube trying to make the mental connection and failing. 

It turns out that losing your farm workers to ICE plus paying tariffs was too complicated a calculation so they went with simple hate and strawman arguments. 

This level of stupidity isn't repairable in humans which is why it will keep happening again and again.

Help

Just as my life as an out transgender person was increasingly falling into place, society was crumbling around me. More people in economic need and higher rates of anxiety and depression than I've ever seen in my lifetime. 

This is when I need to turn outwards and be kind. I need to try and help in my own little ways.

Timebombs

Unresolved issues can create a lot of stress and turmoil for us. With me it got to a point that if you perturbed me I went straight for your jugular. 

It harmed me more than it did anyone else. 

When something remains unsettled it festers and colors us. We become ticking timebombs that we need to disarm. 

This week I met some of the ladies from work for dinner and much of the discussion centered around career. One unsavory office character came up during our discussion and I recalled how many incidents I had with him over my 20 years there (my third and last firm).

I had concluded over time that he had unresolved issues and slowly but surely changed my approach towards him. If nothing else, it lowered the temperature between us in parallel with my increasing sense of self. 

My getting a handle on my dysphoria over the years was helping to make me a less frustrated person. A dysphoria that my busy career was impeding me from adequately addressing.

This fellow's rap sheet with HR is very long and he continues to get away with his bad behavior. However, I know all too well that no amount of corporate stair climbing and fancy cars can substitute for internal peace. 

One of the ladies unabashedly said she hates him and I can understand her sentiment as he remains the single most difficult character of my entire career. 

However, by the end of time there, I no longer felt compelled to seek any discord with him.

Things have only steadily improved since then.

What is identity?

What do we mean when we talk about identity and how do we know what aspects are intrinsically tied to it? 

We can talk about physical traits, behavior, ideas, ethnicity, gender, experiences, career and social roles. Who a person is can encompass all of them and includes both a personal sense of self and how we are perceived by others. 

How much we are attached to each can vary. For example someone may feel a strong affinity for their Italian ancestry and celebrate its cultural heritage while another person with the same ethnicity may feel completely detached from it. 

We can think of a myriad of examples that measure what is ostensibly a sense of attachment or belonging along with their varying strengths. 

In this era where identity is so often discussed (we speak often of identity politics for example), people want to plant their stake using traits which feel like home to them. 

What people are drawn to is adopted as a key part of what defines them. 

Interestingly, conservatives have used this found sense of self as fodder for criticism because finding uniqueness and especially diversity is antithetical to them. They want to boil things down to a simpler set of possibilities. 

A black, feminist, lesbian professor who is a climate change advocate has too many unappetizing variables for them. It is too DEI and they want it whittled down to remove pride in identification with things they have distaste for.

Conservatives might prefer to simply call her a misguided soul and leave it at that.

God bless their simple little minds.