The five laws of human stupidity

 

Humiliated

Humiliation sub-culture interests me because I am curious about how prevalent it is within gender variance and whether it exists even in small doses more frequently than we think.

For example some fiction often uses things like petticoat punishment stories as a baseline or some other form of plot where a male is forced into an embarrassing situation and is caught without an exit strategy. This often results in achieving a titillating experience for the person.

Here we must be careful to take note that fantasy exists everywhere and people outside the sphere of gender variance experience all types of fantasies. It can be the brain's healthy way of releasing tension and is humanly universal. For example, some natal females may fantasize about being dominated by a man but wouldn't necessarily opt for that in reality.

Without embarrassing the person, the other day I happened upon the video of a person who sought pleasure in being identified as male in women's changing rooms. There was nothing creepy or ominous going on other than seemingly being pleased to the point where selected expressions by knowing female merchants were suddenly freeze-framed to emphasize that the jig was up and he was discovered. I would estimate this person to be somewhere in their fifties.

One then questions whether childhood trauma could help explain the creation of this affinity.

I have in the past featured a video where a twenty-something transgender woman ruminates on whether her origins were somehow due to childhood trauma. She wasn't able to trace it but she said it warranted considering when examining one's childhood as she wanted to cover all her bases.

The value of patience

Yesterday I was on the 165 bus which runs on a very busy route. Suddenly at the next stop I see a summer camp group with maybe 30 pre-teens and their counselors waiting to board. I sighed for a second because it was so hot and humid but they climbed aboard and squeezed themselves into any available nook and cranny. A couple of them sat next to me and one of the counselors who was maybe 18 was standing to my left.

I offered to her that this was good practice for when she had her own kids and she laughed while flashing me a very gentle and good natured smile. She was so lovely.

It reminded me of the importance of patience and how I have improved mine with some constant work.

To hide

Youth today have absolutely no reason to hide. Most GenZ are comfortable in their own skin and have friends and relatives all over the orientation and gender spectrum. As a result leading a double life is entirely pointless since they are themselves from a young age. It will only improve for generation Alpha.

Jack Molay sent me a video of how they react to caustic theories regarding gender variance which they scoff at because they haven't had the pervasive indoctrination that anyone born in the 1950's, 60's or even 70's would have received.

My escape into becoming fully whole came with very deep introspection and research which took a heavy toll. But transgender youth have one less thing on their plate to handle even as things continue to be less than ideal for them. Something so intrinsic to their nature can be explored without the severe societal scolding the rest of us encountered.

Natal females of my generation were also programmed to reject gender variance and the idea of a spouse which didn't fit an archetype became anathema. However, today some younger females have more openness to explore their sexuality having been spared the indoctrination and the command to outright reject anyone existing outside of a prescribed box; making for much healthier couplings where neither partner sees their identity stiffled.

Lonely

"If you are lonely when you are alone then you are in bad company" - Jean Paul Sartre

Walz

Not only does Tim Walz have an excellent progressive record in his home state of Minnesota but damn the man burns the right when he opens his mouth.

Walz for VP should be a cinch.

Strange

Alain de Botton says that we should embrace our strangeness and if you think about it we are incredibly odd with our heads filled with strange ideas and obsessive thoughts. The trick is to embrace our strangeness with forgiving kindness while weeding out the aspects that decrease our quality of life.

At our core we are emotional creatures looking to impose rationality which is why we are so erratic. We try to restrict our suffering because without some imposition of mental discipline we would theoretically act on that natural strangeness which some indeed do.

My changing focus

This blog has many less readers than my previous one who either don't like what I have to say, no longer relate to where I am in life or are disinterested by the shift in focus and tonality. The change came naturally as I ended my exploration into what to do about my gender dysphoria and my appetite for exploring gender theory subsided a bit.

Instead of 1,000 people a day I might now get 300 but I am so much happier as a person and that clarity of mind is being reflected in my writing. I have always been much more than about my gender issues and my varied interests (especially philosophy and politics) for some time took more of a backseat as I struggled with the biggest challenge of my lifetime.

I know I am direct and not everyone likes that style but I have found that meandering thinking serves no purpose. It doesn't suit me and with my increased clarity and life experience I can see much more sharply through subjects. My intent is never to bruise anyone's feelings but to present things clearly and with a dispassionate tone which focuses on understanding what lies underneath the public mythology. The human condition is so exceedingly complex and varied plus I have never subscribed to group think.

In the end, labeling oneself yields little value if it does not reflect a mitigation plan. In other words, how do you live in harmony and without shame with your difference because without that we will always feel somehow less than. Therefore, maturing fully into who we are involves repatrating all aspects of ourselves especially if there is joy and peace to be found there.

When we find perspective everything becomes balanced.

Susceptible

Trumpism banked on the same tactics used by other authoritarian-inspired movements of the past and sold the idea that only one man could fix things. Not only was the country falling apart but the entire structural foundation was flawed and needed rebuilding. It historically worked before and was counted on to work again especially when many low information voters in an echo chamber era were considered easy pickings for their messaging.

I used to think it was incredibly difficult to be indoctrinated but I have spoken with people (including some in my own family) who rely on a few issues as their bedrock. They would vote for a blithering idiot like Trump or someone like him simply because he was on their side on the abortion issue. Never mind that Trump is a psychopathic opportunist who would do harm in other areas of their lives. Not all are uneducated people but they are so grounded in their dogma which often includes orthodox religious ideas. These are the same types of people who thought black people were inferior and women shouldn't vote and are hard to repair without major interventions.

There is a reason why religion and politics should not mix but there has always been an appetite for it especially among fearful conservatives who cling desperately to a resistance to evolve their societies. As soon as something is enacted which infringes on their religious ideas they cringe in opposition and push for that separating wall to be dismantled.

America will likely recover with a Harris victory but those people who crave despots will still be there cowering in fear and hate and waiting for their next messiah to save them from progress.

Bucket list

Life moves so incredibly fast and we realize it all the more when we get older. Suddenly we look back and wonder where our youth went and how it is mind numbing that our kids so quickly became adults.

This is why I like savoring every day so much because I realize how precious and fragile it all is. I could drop dead from an aneurysm tomorrow and yet I would have no items left on my bucket list worthy of pursuing because they do not matter. I have simplified my life to a degree where the smallest things bring me joy; an accomplishment which was greatly bolstered by understanding who I am at the core.

I don't search for anything outside of what I can provide for myself and by now know very well the degree of effort required of worthwhile pursuits. The difficulties I faced in my life were necessary because without them I wouldn't viscerally appreciate what being internally in a good place is.

I now understand the things my father taught me.

What is identity?

We like to talk about identity but what is it?  If I was born in Spain and emigrated to Canada very young does that make me primarily Spanish but culturally Canadian? Which aspect and influences dominate to make me who I am?

If we reflect on it, identity can be a messy combination of factors and influences which coalesce to help make us who we are.

Within the sphere of gender variance it can be equally nebulous. If I am a natal male who simply enjoys cross gender expression on occassion is that interest enough to form part of my identity? What if I begin to question birth sex? You can see how the concept of identity can have much fluidity.

If, as sexologist Judith Butler says, part of gender is steeped in performativity then we can choose what we present to the world but it is the depth of investment that we can argue helps determine identity. An actor who plays a female role on stage may have zero investment after the performance but were he to suddenly opt to live that way 24/7 we could argue that this represents identity because it has infiltrated every aspect of his/her life.

Therefore we could perhaps replace the word identity with investment and make them somewhat synonymous. But, regardless, it's never going to be perfectly clear because most of life is composed of a series of greys which is why much introspection about what to do is often required.

Connection

In our search to be connected we ended up disconnected through our dependence on technology. We forgot that it does not provide us with the human messiness needed to make genuine ties with others which requires considerably more effort.

Human psychology is predictable but varied and while some will use social media to trumpet their accomplishments and stature or post pure pablum, others will make attempts at real connection and realize how difficult it is without face to face interactions.

We have gained much with respect to social tolerance for diversity but in parallel our trust in others has withered and we are largely lonely. In fact it is an epidemic.

Home studio

Recently I recorded some short videos on my Yamaha digital piano but my true recording set up looks a little different.

At the bottom is my old Korg N1 serving as a midi controller for the Korg Krome above which has some faulty keys.

I use a Presonus 24 bit card to record along with my laptop which has Cakewalk Sonar installed....

Signs

Here are some positive signs you are headed in the right direction with your gender dysphoria:

- We see an increase in calm

- We become happier
- We decrease anxiety

- Our anger dissipates 
- We increase self-confidence
- We don't care what people think
- We stop looking for opinion
- We feel right in our skin, comfortable in public and don't get easily rattled

- We know who we are

It's a long slow process and your treatment method is your own, but we chip away at it day by day and get there :)

Half full

I am trying to see the glass as being half full when the world is experiencing so much social decay. This morning I saw Natalie who has Crohn's disease and is worried her rent will go up beyond her affordability. On the streets I frequent  there are people desperate for help and not enough resources or willingness to help them.

The old capitalism model is falling apart and because of it we are headed for massive change driven largely by the dissatisfaction at the lower rungs of society. As the top earners fiddle away in obtuseness, Rome burns around them.

As partial consolation I tell myself that upheaval is part of the human equation except that today we have the capacity to do much more damage to ourselves on a grand scale. We certainly aren't any smarter and when I see close elections featuring complete morons who are mistaken for messiahs, it does little to inspire my confidence.

Yes, there are more reasonable people out there than unreasonable ones, but regrettably only by razor thin margins.

Hot

Summers were already unbearable in the northeast and now they will only get worse as the planet continues to warm thanks to our own unmitigated idiocy.

Last week we had the hottest day on the planet since records began being kept in the 18th century (and likely well before since we didn't yet have the means to properly screw things up). Meanwhile we will allow more devastation to happen before pure panic sets in and the worst culprits begin to earnestly attempt damage control because the cause is undeniable even to thick-headed cultural conservatives who think science is a dirty word.

I fear less for myself than for my children who will suffer the consequences of our ignorance and greed far longer than I.

Our history

At this point in my life I can put together all the pieces of my history and make sense of it. I can sit down calmly and examine my actions, inactions and thoughts and come to a concensus about what makes me tick.

Understanding ourselves is not necessarily simple because we operate so much on auto pilot that we fail to stop to analyze the why with sufficient introspection.

We all make what we are certain are errors and dwell on them sometimes for years except we cannot for know what might have happened had we not made them. The mind leaps ahead to a romanticized result because it cannot predict what might have been.

Only we can make ourselves content and no person or thing will accomplish what we do with a positive attitude. 

Song of Bernadette

Composition and voice of exquisite quality and excellence. Headphones please...

RIP Leonard Cohen

Vote all Blue

 

Tailor made

This blog focuses a lot on gender dysphoria because it makes people suffer. it is why I make the distinction between dysphoric and non-dysphoric people which is not meant as a separator for any other reason than to avoid people suffering the way I did.

Today we catch it far earlier and can treat it with a variety of methods. Something we used to be term gender identity disorder (GID) has been softened to designate a disconnect between expected gender identity and birth sex that we don't entirely have an explanation for.

The sooner it is detected the better life will be for those who have it. A tailor made formula can then be found which could be something as simple as a name change and manner of dressing altered. Should surgical solutions be needed later they can be reflected upon and considered at a later date when the person is sufficiently mature.

We are in a bit of a mess right now as gender variance becomes more understood by the general public. In the meantime some people will make decisions they regret while they discover who they are but then that is the price of liberating people to live as they desire and need.

A little distance

I can be a hard person to get to know because I learned to be cautious growing up. I can be very social but I don't trust people easily and so my facade will not always tell you what I am thinking because I am a very analytical person. Having had two major relationships fail did not encourage my ability to let my guard down easily.

What I like to do now is observe a little more from a distance and appreciate people for who they are without getting too close. I don't tell them I am transgender so there is always that line of concealment that exists keeping me safe from judgement and potential pain. I can be who I am without risking as much as I was once prepared to.

Thank goodness for my children who I consider my biggest gift. They have provided more meaning to my life and given me people to care about who love me unconditionally. They are both upstanding people and I am so very proud of them.

False equivalence

Love Betty Bowers and here she shows how Don Jr's idiocy has clear roots with papa...

Counterintuitive

Here is something very counterintuitive: the more one worries about "passing" (a rather regretable term) the less one succeeds. This is because the concern will cause insecurity in us which will be detected.

Everyday I see women of all shapes and sizes some of whom look quite masculine, but they aren't reflecting on their gender and seem perfectly relaxed in their own skin as well they should be because they know who they are.

The more one focuses on "passing" the worse the results will be because people look primarily for self-confidence and not perfection.

It took me a while to learn that one and eventually realize that our job is mainly to work on our psychology.

Invariably

Presuming you are over fifty, if I had asked you in your early twenties to predict what your life would be like, most of you would have likely gotten it wrong. The career you expected, the type of marriage you would have, etc would have been idealized portraits instead of what ended up being. Youth does not provide us the insight to realize that life has far too many variables within it that we cannot control.

Today it feels good to relinquish control because I have no need to force things any longer. I have learned where effort yields results and where it is wasted in futility. I think that living in the present involves a good deal of accepting things as they are while being open to organic change. We don't fight against a naturally occurring tide that simply needs to do what it must.

Accepting who I am was like this in that it involved stopping the urge to control things such that I could fit in. Finally I could drop much of the facade and let natural instinct guide me to where I needed to be to find both balance and calm.

Thus, whatever needed to happen, invariably did.

Two camps

There seems to be two camps within the group of people who feel comfortable using the term "crossdressing" for what they engage in. One group could be described more as a hobbyist who uses it as relief valve for their need for feminine expression. They want to "let the inner girl out" once in a while but  there is no serious questioning of core identity with the leading of a typical male existence being their desired baseline.

The second group are people who might have wanted to advance into another state were they not constrained by life circumstances in some way. They may have had some early childhood ambiguity about their gender but put it aside and got on with life only later settling for some arrangement that helped them deal with what could be mild dysphoria which was at least somewhat manageable through properly timed episodes of cross gender expression. Their arrangement is less than perfect but it would have to do if they were to avoid upsetting other aspects of their lives.

The reason I don't favor the term is because not only does it leave out female gender variance but it also does little to properly define someone. Plus it is saddled down with historical and often derogatory and derisive opinion regarding what life was like for some gender variant people at least a couple of decades ago. In other words, it is becoming an increasingly outdated label for what we now term gender non-conformance.

But how it differs from the gender variance I see with youth today is that it is largely done in secret with both camps wanting an immersive experience into womanhood (however temporary) and to regale in it until the desire is satiated for the moment. Everything is then put away again to return to a normal life which is, to varying degrees, deemed acceptable if imperfect.

12 signs

12 signs we are a mature adult.

"The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them he becomes an adult, the day he forgives himself he becomes wise" - Alden Nowlan

Agnostic

I have often said that if I can do it then anyone can which I still believe to be true. You couldn't find a person today more agnostic than I once was and yet I was finally convinced through meeting others, looking into every nook and cranny and reading everything I could get my hands on.

Therefore, no matter whether your impetus for gender variance is by choice or through no choice of your own (ie. dysphoria), it does not matter. Live your life proudly and out of the shadows like today's youth do because you only get one shot.

Dysphoria and sexuality

Gender dysphoria cannot be unglued entirely from sexuality because the latter forms an integral part of every human. If the brain does the thinking, then the genitals seem to channel a primordial sensuality through which joy can be expressed. 

Historically, when patients seeking transition were pleading their cases before gatekeepers they made sure to leave out any sexual overtones because they had been educated to think that sexuality somehow negated their feelings. Religious and societal prudence had left sexuality outside of boundary of heterosexual wedlock as perversion when the reality is that it can serve as an emotional release for many.

But the point wasn't whether some sexual energy was present but instead what was behind it. If the questioning of identity lay underneath it was worth exploring since the occassional sexual arousal could be seen as a manifestation of an underlying yearning which the brain was exploring and for which emotional release was sometimes required. Not all gender variant people need or want to medically transition but they all need to understand whether behind any sexual energy lies a much bigger portrait. Is it simply a pleasant reward which comes with playing gleefully with gender expression or is there much more? 

Blanchard got it wrong because he stopped at the surface after he found what he was looking for which was dysfunction, but today's clinicians dig below the surface to find that something more which ultimately only you know the answer to.

Waiting for the 58

I haven't made a video of myself in a very long time.. 

https://youtube.com/shorts/tq864R04h9o?si=MnooNtYF4ennasOZ

Reversal

With Kamala Harris now the presumptive Democratic nominee, things look very different for Trump. Suddenly he is the old candidate babbling uncontrollably about batteries, sharks and water pressure while she is the smart and well-spoken prosecutor who habitually put career criminals like him away. Certainly the woman's vote will only be more secured with the added urgency of protecting reproductive rights and a smart woman leading the charge.

The GOP now looks like the tired and bitter party trying to take country backwards into fear and hatred and suddenly overnight their chances appear lessened. FOX News could only focus on Harris's laugh which shows what an embarrassment Murdoch's propaganda network is. Grasping at straws, they have now lost their leading argument for voting against Biden who they were selling as being senile and unfit for the job. Never mind that their preferred candidate is a slurring moron.

If the tide turns it is because Biden selflessly turned the reins to his VP just after a clown show of a GOP convention where the highlight may have been Hulk Hogan ripping off his T-shirt. If you had told me in my twenties that political theater would have sunk to this level I would not have believed you.

However, over the years, I was eventually cured of my illusions regarding the potential depths of human stupidity.

It's far from overnight

My view on transition is that the more you bought into the narrative you were sold as a child as to who you were, the more effort and time will be required to find your way back to your identity.

I've been socially transitioning for a while now and there is no magic button to push where you just change clothes and mannerisms overnight; far from it. Instead it is a slow and methodical psychological exercise which rewires the brain. In that sense it definitely can be a long journey with a less than certain end point.

Understanding this process involves living it day to day and discovering new facets of who you are with patience and an expectation that some days there will be little setbacks.

I promise you; what you wear each day will be the least of your concerns.

Unisex

As visited just today in the downtown Eaton center. We are progressing....:)

The accidental life

I really like the concept of the accidental life. In other words, we let life happen to us with a greater sense of wonder, flexibility and surprise instead of always climbing uphill or against the current because we were instructed to.

I learned this later in life because I was an apostle of duty but now in retirement I can see the great value in succumbing to the wonder of sometimes taking tangential roads which can yield to magical places. Of course I am permitting this now because I can but, anyway, my risk averse nature would have stopped me in the past. Adherence to discipline was good but not to the extent that I thought was balanced.

Maybe this is why I love the young generation in that they are forced into an uncertainty that, back then, might have helped cure me of my rigid ways. 

Elastic

I have many times reflected on why many masculine women and feminine men do not end up with any conflicts of gender identity. In other words, they are perfectly fine with who they are but simply embrace mannerisms and traits that run counter to expectation for their birth sex. Sometimes these people end up being homosexual and our hunch that we are dealing with a butch lesbian or an effeminate gay man is suddenly confirmed.

However many people who bend gender norms are heterosexual. Married men who enjoy dressing as women for pleasure have no conflict of identity (ie. they don't necessarily want to be the other sex) and many straight women enjoy the increased elasticity that society provided them to dress and behave as they please with much less stigma than men.

So clearly there is a broad mosaic of gender behaviour and sexual orientation that allows for an intermingling of results. Among this mosaic are also people who to varying degrees are uncomfortable with birth sex but we just don't know why.

So in essence we can think of gender as having some elasticity but has a breaking point beyond which the individual ends up with a significant societal conflict and cannot live comfortably as their birth sex dictates. But if you are able to live within the confines of that elasticity then you can function especially today where the tolerance for variance is broader than ever. People who might not have dared to express and dress differently are given more Carte Blanche to push the envelope.

The landscape today combines people who want broader expression with those who have issues of identity and many of them are trying to figure out what to do. Hopefully their experimentation and reflection will lead them over time to discover who they are and provide them with a comfortable resting point.

Get out there and live.

Occasionally

Occasionally I have been known to walk right behind a transgender person and not even realize it. The other day it was a twenty-something transgender woman who was very casually dressed on a hot day. Besides her summer dress, she wore hoop earrings, tennis shoes and no detectable hint of makeup.

Had I not paid attention to tiny details I would not have known as overall she hardly stood out; she was svelte and not particularly tall. Regardless, people today either don't care or don't know and she was so comfortable going about her business that she wasn't giving off any traces of fear which the public invariably picks up on. You could tell she knew who she was.

God love them.

Primetime

The way I knew I was ready for primetime every day in public was that I could be really nice and chatty with some people but be more than comfortable, if need be, with stabbing others in the heart with just a stern expression.

Trust me, it works.

In spades

There is an overabundance of content on YouTube on hypergamy which is the concept of trying to date upwards. In other words, women will go for the top 20% of men and ignore the rest which has helped feed the MGTOW movement (men go their own way).

It's fascinating to watch because there is a plethora of videos from each sex complaining about the other. Women gripe that they aren't being chased while men insist that women are too fickle and marriage isn't worth their while especially when they try so hard to only see divorce have them pay the lion share of the bill.

As someone who grew up under the old system we fared only slightly better due to women's economic needs serving as glue to keep together marriages that might have otherwise failed. Add to that religious and social pressure and you could see how divorce was seen as a character failing whereas today that stigma is largely gone.

This is not going to be easily fixable as it forms part of a current and massive cultural shift which will take time to sort out. In the meantime intelligent people will still manage ways to find each other organically while the rest fumble their way through dating apps that herald the worst instincts of human artificially and stupidity in spades.

I observe all this through a more dispassionate lens than ever because I understand the basic psychology behind it all even as it does not bring me any joy to see so many miss the mark.

Petite terrasse sur le plateau

 

Very meticulous fine tuning

How to mature into an older adult with gender dysphoria became more of a concern as I aged. After all, I wasn't playing dress up and did not want to. Instead I wanted to find a way to take my challenge seriously while simultaneously avoiding medical transition.

It took me a very long time to find this solution and as I always say psychology is paramount here especially for many older transgender people who undertook the idea that they were simply going to grin and bear it because being transgender was an abomination.

Simply dressing up does not really work for people more on the transsexual end of the spectrum. There is too much pain involved in going only part way and so most either get on with transition or don't dress as their target sex at all. This is why I found this process so challenging because it involved meticulous fine tuning while knowing that doing nothing about my dysphoria was going to be the end of me.

How to approach this very narrow balance point while knowing that even daily limited outings were increasingly not working, made my reflection process all the more harrowing and lengthy. However the patience finally paid off.

Still fine tuning.

Gifts

What I love about being this age is that I have eliminated desire from my life. Nothing is more important than internal peace, emotional maturity and balance while at the same time knowing who you are. Everything else becomes secondary.

When you have lived a while the mechanics of this life become quite familiar to you. People and their psychological tactics can be seen coming a mile away and we are painfully aware of the consequences of engaging with some of them. Good thing then that I am no wilting flower.

Living in the present moment with openness really has no price and I didn't realize how much I would appreciate it until I was able to experience it. There is no more void to fill and no obligatory mountain to climb because you don't need to only that perhaps you just want to.

Being good to ourselves while not caring about what others think are such important gifts.

More on voice

 

Cringe

 

What the cat dragged in

Trumpism and the MAGA movement are what happens when you group together the worst and most unsavory instincts of a society. You put together staggering amounts of human ignorance and stupidity and sprinkle liberally with greed, hate, misplaced cultish fervor and callousness. It's much worse than what the cat dragged in.

I couldn't stand to watch but caught just a snipet of the idiot slurring his way yet again through a reference to Hannibal Lecter much to amusement of his clapping seal crowd. It is hard to believe it is 2024 until we realize that human idiocy is the gift that keeps on giving.

I have faith in the majority of Americans but with an antiquated electoral college that serves as roulette wheel, it will be a nail biter that will test the nervous systems of many including my own.

How do you know where to stop?

As you can imagine I have thought about this question a great deal. What your battery limit for the management or elimination of your gender dysphoria is a unique thing for each person and I always imagined what a 19th century transsexual person with no recourse to address their dilemma medically would do. Today we have many more options and yet answering the question may be even harder because we have introduced the possibility of overshoot and thus potential error.

What you think you would do if unconstrained versus what you actually would could surprise you. Other than  medical concern regarding hormones I am completely unrestrained and yet have stuck to a progressive plateau approach based on need alone. Each stage has been evaluated by how my psychology responded over an extended period. All this to say that I never thought I would ever get this far and had no plan to.

So the short answer is that many of us won't really know until we have cleansed our mind of obstructions as well as the novelty of wishful thinking and faced what reality might look like. Daily living takes care of a good deal of that.

My litmus test was always how my sense of calm and harmony improved over time which then confirmed that I had not erred.

Advice

Older anglophone Montrealers share some of their wisdom and their loneliness (by the way most of the filming is in Westmount park)..

When you come to a dead end

I have gotten used to disappearing. People notice you less when they see you are relaxed in your skin and even my height is no longer so unusual as many women today are tall. As a result no one really pays me much mind which I love.

What I have experienced over my life is a slow process of immersion into a mindset that required that my extremely pervasive childhood programming when it came to gender be largely undone. The more successful you are at this, the more you relax into your authenticity and stop trying to dissect every thought regarding your inclination.

An analytical introvert like me always needed answers except after a while you run out of runway and reach a dead end. What you are left with is your own instinct which was hard for me to accept and it took me a while to realize that there was much validity in it.

Other transgender people (hello Deanna and Connie) would tell me they had stopped asking why and submitted themselves to feeling and, while I understood them, I couldn't viscerally partake in their confidence. The scientist in me wanted to know I wasn't deluded even if the rest of my life was full of restraint and an engineer's precision.

As I was walking home for lunch yesterday a lady from my neighborhood I had never met told me she had seen me walking and wanted to tell me how dignified she found me. She was so lovely; maybe mid-thirties she most importantly reminded me that I had largely stopped analyzing and just immersed myself in who I am.

Bela

Assassination sneakers

Nothing surprises me anymore and if this imbecile wins in November you can expect much worse than just incredibly poor taste...

We are always ourselves

Caryn transitioned in her twenties and if she did not tell you her history you wouldn't know she was transgender. Nevertheless she told me the other day day how much she deplores the term "passing". The simple reason is that she never stopped being herself and never went through a phase of pretending to be anything but.

Transgender people understandably may want to blend to be left alone. For that reason they may want to undergo treatments to better their chances to fly under the radar and bolster their authenticity and yet they are always themselves throughout.

There isn't any pretending.

Simply put...

 ...People will believe in who we know we are because when we know who we are, it will show.

The little things

I haven't given up on humanity just yet but it's hard at this age not to see everything that's clearly wrong with it. Now that I am living in era that greatly resembles the 1930's I can understand with more immediacy how the arc of history works. It just so happens that my 1962 birth coincided with a social and economic boom that lasted into the early part of the 21st century.

Today at 61 I see greed, myopia and idiocy everywhere but also kindness and humility in many. People do their best in a life full of challenges and they find solace in whatever little things bring them joy and comfort.

Cure for loneliness

I can attest that what she says is completely true. I talk to strangers all the time and it often makes my day :)

Blood pressure

If i want to avoid a surge of blood pressure I will avoid watching the GOP convention.

The concentration of sheer malice and mind-numbing stupidity in one place is too much for my nervous system to handle.

Only we can

No one can look after a transgender person better than themselves. After all, others don't know what it is like to be us and no matter how well meaning, they won't comprehend what we need.

In the not too distant past LGBTQ people largely lived on suppression. Gays and lesbians would enter conventional marriages and gender variant people would either live in the closet or transition in stealth.

For the first time in my life I am finally completely and fully looking after my needs as a transgender person which has no price and is something which can only be fully appreciated once we exit the bubble we used to exist in. So while I have always preached restraint and much reflection before entering any process, I also don't believe that suppression of identity is the answer as it will only lead to frustration with increasing age.

Those who already exist in a balanced situation are to be congratulated but for the rest who aren't, don't expect that your partner or extended family will provide you with what you require as only we can do that. If your identity is viewed as a parriah I am hard pressed to see a harmonious and positive outcome which benefits all concerned.

Thank goodness transgender youth already viscerally understand this and therefore who they are isn't up for negotiation. Plus they don't give a shit what anyone thinks of them.

Varia

Angele and I have really hit it off and I saw her again yesterday as I was thinking of leaving the café. She is down to earth and pragmatic in the way that intelligent and grounded women are when they reach a certain age. She looks younger than her 70 years and is so calming to talk to. I would be lying if I said that being seen as a woman by other women didn't help my dysphoria. In fact its been so pivotal that it formed part of my decision to forego a potential medical transition which would have posed some health risks for me.

Later in the afternoon I caught up with Caryn (a frequent commenter on my old blog) on Whattsapp. I had lost touch with her for some time and living in the US as a transgender woman she is justifiably scared of a Trump presidency. Even if she transitioned in her 20's (now 51) and flies under the radar, there is justifiable dread at the thought of gender variant people falling victim to right wing lunacy. She tells me is contemplating coming to Canada or going to New Zealand.

Also never had that coffee with Suzan because she wasn't feeling well that morning. She apologized (she needn't have) and we decided to raincheck.

Tomorrow call with Jack Molay.

The wrong side of history

Conservatives are naturally averse to change and there are studies showing that people can be born with a predisposition to be either more liberal or more conservative. I reject  conservatism more than ever which some might think counterintuitive as one ages except that my leanings have always involved questioning and being open to learning and growing as I examine topics.

When I began blogging I questioned all of the orthodoxy involving gender variance until I was able to separate myth from whatever science we had on the subject matter. There was little point in inventing my own opinions until I had combed through the information which existed especially since much of it was contradictory.

Conservatism has largely been associated with anti-intellectualism for good reason since a good portion of its disciples tend, from first instinct, to fear and reject things they know little about. They are more apt to hold rigid views with little basis in established research thus ending up at loggerheads with the scientific and medical communities. Unsurprisingly they find themselves repeatedly on the wrong side of history with views on the inferiority of women or certain racial groups as examples of their intransigence; one which sees them repeatedly dragged kicking and screaming into progress.

The current landscape which includes QAnon quackery, vaccine misinformation, climate change denialism, Christian nationalism, etc shows to what extent some people will go proving that humans don't really progress all that much; at least not in brain horsepower.

Nothing left to prove

What a great feeling to have nothing left to prove to anyone; not even to yourself.

Both

 

Why you will marry the wrong person

Roughly six months after her breakup my daughter just started to date a new person. He is the same age (a few months older) and she confided that this time she felt a more piercing arrow than with her previous boyfriend upon first meeting.

I am old enough to know that this selection is a crap shoot with more variables than you can count especially given how young we often are when we make it. Therefore I do not counsel her other than to use as broad a criteria process as possible knowing that the perfect soul mate does not exist and that one pours a liberal dose of water into their wine once the initial courtship pheromones are depleted.

Years ago I posted British author Alain de Botton's brilliant talk on why this process can be so frought with challenge and, then as I do now, consider it almost essential viewing for anyone with any delusions about the nature of couplehood.

Without giving away the ending, I will just say that the term "good enough" should never stray too far from our lips.

Establishing harmony

People who don't suffer from gender dysphoria don't spend much time thinking about their gender. After all, they already know who they are and go about their lives, but when you have dysphoria you spend more time than you should reflecting on it.

Therefore our ideal objective should be to deal with the dissonance such that we spend much less time reflecting on our gender identity. Even if some dysphoria remains we at least want to be able to push it into the background so it does not perturb as much.

Dysphoria and euphoria act on the same person but never simultaneously. Euphoria can come when everything aligns which of course isn't all the time. It is sporadic and fleeting wheras the baseline can be a low hum of dysphoria which itself ebbs and flows. The young transgender woman whose video I featured a couple of days ago had it right. If you only ever experience euphoria then what is your normal baseline and, presuming you have not transitioned, does it ever involve periods of seriously questioning core identity?

The way I live now has taken care of a big chunk of my dysphoria and in so doing tampered my euphoria which is exactly what I needed as the peaks and valleys were not good for me.

The essence of philosophy

 "Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy"

- Soren Kierkegaard 

Variations on a Bach prelude

 Eldar being amazing yet again...

Confirmation

Interesting chord structure and composition unlike a lot of the current music. Who says you have to use 2 chords and horrible melodies. My musician ears perk up...

Being liked

Being liked by everyone is hardly an objective. I don't aim to be liked but instead to have self-respect and be a good person. I am not interested in being liked by people who aren't upstanding, honest or well-meaning.

Being transgender does not make us better or more intelligent people than anyone else.

The other day I watched content from a transgender woman that I found to be positively cringe including the way she spoke about her ex-spouse. Needless to say we would have differences of opinion and might not like each other very much.

Are you a good person? That's what I look for.

Coffee with Suzan

Tomorrow at 9 am I meet Suzan for coffee. She texted me yesterday and we agreed to a local café we both like.

She is an andropholic transsexual who fully transitioned in her twenties wheras I am gynephilic and sought every possible solution which would avoid me going down the medical transition path. In that regard we do indeed contrast.

But I am not going to talk gender theory with her. Instead we are going to share life experiences and how we each got here knowing it wasn't easy for either of us. At 47 she is old enough to have been unable to escape the slings and arrows of what gender conflicts can bring to a life.

I expect it to be mutually beneficial and interesting.

Fragile

Sometimes my YouTube feed takes me to a channel where the person has suddenly been diagnosed with an illness. I recently watched one where the spouse of a 35 year old man explained how it all began with a horrific jaw tumor which led to succumbing to a spreading cancer; her tearful goodbye was incredibly impactful. His previous videos had shown an energetic and hope filled person and progressively the content became more dire once they had been diagnosed with their illness culminating in one where he stated the decision to stop treatment because it was causing too much pain.

By any measure life is hard and when it is not sufficiently so for some they will find ways to sabotage their own. I have lived long enough to know that it can appear to be completely so random in the way it administers the fate of some individuals.

At this junction in my life I have a very sober vision about and how it should be lived and simplicity more than ever appeals to me. We take in each day with an attitude that tomorrow is never guaranteed and we do our best to improve the lives of others in whatever ways we can. There is something very soothing to me about the sobriety that suffering may be just around the corner for us and we need to be braced for its possibility.

A life without any hardship does not build the necessary fortitude to handle what comes our way and those who have faced great struggles often appear to be endowed with a wonderful and serene gravitas regarding our fragility as humans.

It is wonderful maturity which installs itself in them where the sense of humor is never entirely lost because they have seen enough pain to know not to wallow in it.

Gender euphoria is enough?

Here is a young transgender woman talking about euphoria versus dysphoria with some very valid points....

The benefits of aging

As we get older we should become more self-assured and require less validation from others. After all, we've lived a few years and seen how the world truly functions. This should help to remove ourselves from the pomp and circumstance carousel which in society passes for necessity. If we hadn't done so earlier, we stop chasing the wrong things.

Caring about what others think should ideally fall by the wayside and we should be ourselves more than at any time in our lives.

In that regard aging has benefitted me greatly even as I still work towards improvements that have to do with internals and nothing to do with the outside world. Interacting with the public feels perfectly comfortable because I know who I am and don't doubt it. It is when we doubt identity that we worry about what others are thinking about us.

People look to us to be comfortable in our own skin and growing in experience should go a long way towards helping us achieve that goal.

Village Ghettoland

Featuring the beautiful and very expensive Yamaha GX-1

From where I sit

The choice is a pretty clear one.

One is an experienced if imperfect seasoned politician who is getting on in years trying to do his best despite facing hand wringing from his own party.

The other is a sociopathic and imbecilic lying sack of shit who will take the country into a very dangerous and hopelessly backward darkness helped along by extremist lunatics.

Seems pretty simple from where I sit or at least it should be.

Just the ones I can spot

I briefly stopped at Sephora to get one of those mini eyeshadows from their house brand and, sure enough, there was a young gender variant male working there who made no bones about hiding his gender. Besides the immaculately-applied makeup, there was plenty of androgynous mixing going on which of course everyone today completely ignores. Years ago I recall two young transgender women working at this same downtown store both of which exuded plenty of "I don't care what you think" confidence to spare.

If I don't see at least a handful of gender variant youth every day I think there is something wrong and those are just the ones I can spot.

Miscalculation

I have a relatively high IQ but my EQ (emotional quotient) for the longest time wasn't the best which is our ability to manage our own emotions, empathize with others and diffuse conflict. When something is off with us, empathy and tolerance for others can sometimes fall by the wayside.

I think about this as I reflect on an ex-colleague's current challenge with one of most temperamental people I have ever worked with during my career. He is number 1 on my list of difficult characters over all that time and he is creating trouble yet again for her. Over the years I came to conclude that he suffers from unresolved emotional issues.

I was never mean but could be temperamental and control was my way of keeping things tidy and neat. This included trying to regulate my emotions while being unable to communicate the biggest secret of my life which took more of a toll than I had imagined.

The other day when Suzan (the transgender woman from my neighborhood) approached me she said that we are tough as nails because we need to deal with so much internal pressure. She is right because as I look back it's a wonder I was able to live that way so long. One of the impacts was losing touch with my ability to relate to the difficulties of others who I saw as weak because they weren't able to right the ship as well as I could.

It was a big miscalculation which I am well underway to remedying.

Before acting

I see videos and read comments from people figuring out what to do with their gender issues and it confirms what I already knew: its a mosaic of behaviour which very much contradicts the idea of a strict and perfect binary.

A GenZ non-binary female who contemplates top surgery but does not want to take hormones was the latest example of a video I watched and there are many others. Some people just want to feel right in their skin without adapting themselves to either of two rigid and unyielding choices.

Jack Molay sent me a link to an article the other day about difficulty in accessing care in Canada which took me back to the call of a few months ago. The same program I was associated with tends to resist people who want very boutique solutions for themselves because they are very much classical programs most accustomed to dealing with binary transsexuals. They are approached by people who sometimes want quick access to treatment without the necessary steps the program needs to ensure they won't come back with any regrets.

I can understand both sides of the coin while favoring the idea that caution and reflection is perhaps best prioritized before acting.

The loveliest people in the world

 

Abbreviated Rag

Some abbreviated Joplin on my Yamaha...

Bingo

I was looking for a very casual summer skirt but with no panic and then suddenly there it was at one of my regular thrifts stores for $5.

Can't beat that :)

Picking up the pieces

I find that the hardest thing for an older transgender person to do is to reconcile and make peace with their past. We may be perfectly happy where we are going forward but the connections we made and experiences we had do not just disappear. Some people will not understand the change we have made even if they don't fully reject us and so we must sometimes build little bridges to allow them to catch up should we desire it. My recent lunch with my sister was such an event.

The older you are when you transition, the more difficult this process may be.

Sometimes we may feel like avoiding family gatherings because they are awkward for you and for them. You have moved to a new plateau but they haven't yet caught up. Dressing up like the person they expect feels cheap and like you are denying your identity as a transgender person.

This is part of the mental cleanup I am in the middle of. I have moved on but I am still picking up trailing pieces of the puzzle and incorporating them somehow to complete a full and conciliatory image of who I am. Our lives are overwhelmingly about dealing with our own psychology.

Younger transgender folks have less lived history to consider and so are often fortunate to be able to bring others along on their journey; often before the age of 30.

It's an entirely different game today.

Moanin'

More from Eldar Djangirov....

Aftermath

If everyone voted intelligently Joe Biden's age and his gaffes would be less of an issue. However many people do not and the obvious choice of autocracy versus keeping an imperfect democracy escapes them.

A president is a figurehead for his party and it's platform; all the more so since 1980 when optics began to gain in importance and a mediocre actor with limited knowledge of geopolitics was elected to power. Since then the dumbing down has only worsened to the point where Trump is barely qualified to work in an office in any capacity. One can only imagine discussions over coffee and coming away dumbfounded at the sheer stupidity unless water pressure and sharks is your thing.

Whatever the Democrats decide it's going to be a squeaker which befuddles the majority of Americans along with the rest of the global citizenry. The age of the idiot has only shown how gullible and susceptible some people are. Facebook news anyone?

With the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 at the ready as manifesto for remaking the nation, things will turn remarkably ugly very quickly and one can only hope that people rise up as they did in the UK and France to rescue themselves from the cabal that is foaming at the mouth in anticipation of power...

What is gender dysphoria?

Explaining gender dysphoria to people who don't have it can be interesting. I put up with it all my life but didn't do much to alleviate it other than boiling point episodes of cross gender expression which served as panacea to get me through until the next flare up.

I don't want to pathologize it because that desire we feel was turned into a medical condition so that people could get access to care. You had to prove yourself to gatekeepers and had to have your narrative straight to get access to assistance which would alleviate your suffering. By the 1980's Ray Blanchard had very deliberately tried to turn help seekers into those suffering an illness of strictly sexual dysfunction.

Based on the many narratives I have read, dysphoria is experienced a little differently by each person but could reasonably be summarized as "there's something off with the way I am expected to live my gender which does not work for me". Being born in the wrong body has by now become a bit trite and overused but I greatly favor Anne Vitale's brilliant descriptor of "gender expression deprivation anxiety"

We can also play with gender and not have dysphoria and there are gender variant people who do just that. There is no disconnect other than a desire to express gender differently at times without doubting their core identity. Ie. "I am a man who simply enjoys women's clothes on occasion" and leave it at that. If that's all there is then there isn't a problem other than perhaps the social stigma they might feel.

However when there is some form of disconnect there is an internal voice asking for a remedy which can either be listened to or ignored. Making matters even more complicated is the fact that there isn't a "one size fits all" formula for dealing with this issue at a personal level.

When I have met and read about people over the years I began to see archetypes that would typically reappear. Some types would be more likely to be happy with the odd outing, the love of illusion, the experience euphoria and then go back to normal life but for others it wasn't that simple and their life constraints were keeping them from possibly something more. It made me realize that Harry Benjamin was right in thinking in terms of a scale as imperfect a concept as it might be. I realized I needed to take a less is more approach to my own situation and find my balance point which, after much agonizing, ultimately turned out to be social transition.

So if we say that gender dysphoria is a graded disconnect of gender identity from the expectation for one's birth sex, much of the cure first lies in removing the societal expectation which holds people back. The rest of the solution is how much more than that the individual might require to live in society without being shunned. In other words are hormones or FFS going to make things better so they can live in peace.

If gender were only a social construct then John Money's solution for David Reimer would have worked but it didn't. Therefore we can conclude that there is both socialization and genetics involved and it is how we get feminine men and masculine women who despite our best efforts seem immune to being socialized out of their natural inclinations. Creating a human is a messy biological affair which naturally produces variants and sometimes even extreme cases of psycho-sexual inversions (a la Benjamim type VI if you will) which happen simply because the process has sufficient off ramps which makes it possible.

The current situation with its backlash will sort itself out when society finally learns to adapt to gender variance in all its forms and we are slowly if awkwardly getting there. 

Goyo

Goyo is an autistic man who works as a museum guide supremely instructed in the subject matter. However, aspergers leaves him with noticeable social awkwardness which he more than makes up for with an affable character and impeccable manners. He comes from a good family and lives with his sister who is a concert pianist. His brother who is a chef is also a reliable companion and confidante.

One day in the pouring rain he sees Eva and imagines her like one of the museum works of art. Something stirs in him but he cannot describe it later to his family who try to make less of it than it is.

I won't say more about the plot.

What I really liked about this film is that it showcases how we are all damaged goods and do the best we can with the circumstances we are dealt. Goyo wants the same things everyone else does and those around him have their own foibles and crosses to bear. What he lacks that behavioral normalcy he more than compensates for in astuteness for analyzing people which would be easy to overlook by those who won't see it.

In Argentinean Spanish and highly recommended.

Meanwhile in France...

Sacre Bleu! Une crise averti!!

Reverse gender dysphoria

I know I have fallen victim to this for a time despite knowing I was different as a child and that I needed to do something. Older transgender folks are particularly prone....

Living more on instinct

There's a very nice lady who sometimes serves me at the Premiere Moisson and affectionately calls women girls. When I visited recently she said "Hey girl I love your dress". Then when the older manager asks for help at the cash register she jumps in and says "I gotcha girl". She is probably about 10 years younger than myself and has a nervous energy I like.

People are interesting and they will give you glimpses into their personality when you get them chatting. She tells me as I pay that her children are 20 and 17 and her son still keeps her busy with his sporting tournaments but she knows she will lose him soon to a detachment that has instilled itself in my increasingly mature 24 year old.

I am learning to be more genuinely inquisitive about people and have become less quickly dismissive of them with life experience. At the same time I am much quicker to defend myself against entitled behaviour of people who are adept and accustomed to being bullish.

Living as a female is relaxing me and made me more open. You become yourself, eliminate self-conciounness and just live. Gender becomes less important to you because you are no longer mired in trying to find a solution to what once was a dilemma. You can now rely on reflex tempered with a little caution. The science continues to interest me of course.

What I like is that I no longer need to analyze everything I do and can subsist on a well-placed, seasoned and calm instinct.

Not interested

GenZ invites you to stare at them and make a comment about how they dress, walk or laugh. This goes for gender variant or not.

They're just not interested in your opinion and were largely spared the sheep indoctrination.

Good for them.

Detour

Here is a lighter detour from my usual heavier fare.

I wear nail polish almost every day and I've noticed how some colors are more chip resistant even within the same brand. I often buy from Yves Rocher and have noticed this problem. Brand to brand there is of course also a noticeable difference.

For example, the red pictured below from Yves Rocher is more resistant than their paler red.

I don't always wear red but I admit to favoring it and when it chips it is of course more distinct than with lighter shades. I've learned to do quick fix ups but will invariably give up on certain colors as women tend to be very observant of these little details and sometimes mention it.

I pay more attention to detail today than ever before while at the same time having relaxed my wardrobe choices since I've never been much of a clothes horse. I think like many modern women in wanting fashion sense coupled with comfort and wearability.

That being said a few quality pieces that you can mix and match with are critical. It is the French woman way :)

Suzan

Normally we don't acknowledge each other but Suzan waved at me during my early morning walk and I thought "who is she?"

As she approached with her little dog in tow I said while squinting "do we know each other?" I did not yet know she was transgender.

"No but I have seen you before and you look amazing. I was shy to approach"

Turns out Suzan is 47, tall, beautiful and fully transitioned. She was so friendly and open and we chatted for a while before exchanging numbers. She had her surgery back in 2006 with the well known Dr. Brassard and ended up staying in Montréal where she now works looking after the elderly. We live in the same hood.

The subject of where each of us was on our journey came up and she wondered why I did not pursue full medical transition which I partly explained. Interestingly but not surprisingly she is not interested in trans politics and just wants a quiet life.

I am usually careful with people and giving out my number but I know my instincts are right here and, as we both agreed, there will be coffee together soon.

Talons