And inevitably...

I felt this stop was coming.

Call it a sabbatical or a permanent halt, the blog will stay up regardless. For some reason, I am not someone who can write one post a month because I lose interest and move to other things. I am all in or I am not.

Jack Molay, who for me has one of the best (if not the best), most inquisitive and intelligent blogs on gender variance, will still be able to count on my continuing support, comments and whattsapp discussions. He asks all the right questions and is an invaluable resource for people questioning their gender identity and want to delve more deeply into the subject matter.

As for me, I started again in April 2023 after an extended absence from writing and realized I had changed so much. This blog was becoming less about gender variance as I went along and becoming more expansive which showed how much progress I had made over the years towards addressing the biggest challenge of my lifetime.

As the world plunges into increasing geopolitical chaos this platform risks becoming more about outrage regarding the sheer incompetence and massive stupidity to come particularly on the US front. I don't need to raise my blood pressure when my aim is to remain balanced and calm during an age which feels compelled to openly celebrate the extremes of human idiocy and ignorance. Trumpism and its cult followers are a near perfect incarnation of this.

My personal psych cleanup journey will continue indefinitely but with a sense of myself at my core which has never been this good. Things have coalesced so much that I know who I am to a point I had never imagined attaining. The combination of life experience and introspection have paid off. 

Those of you on your own journeys of discovery will note the changes are more drastic as you look back than as you move forward with what appears sometimes to be no progress at all. It's the little steps we take that eventually lead to the right mental state and the management of our dysphoria increasingly gets easier. We find a solution that works which, for some of us, necessitates we seek a medical route.

Letting go of fear of public scrutiny and opinion (including extended family) is mandatory particularly if we are old enough to know better. If you are scared of the public get over it or remain stuck unless of course your aim is to remain closeted. It's 2025 not 1985 and no one cares. If they do, it's their problem. Look to youth for inspiration as they very rightfully don't care what you think of them thanks to having largely escaped pervasive societal programming.

Every person is different and only you can know what is right for you. Towards that end, some understanding of our primary motivation and the amount of choice being exercised is of primordial importance towards the creation of an action plan. Call yourself what you like, but do the work without which a personal label risks being completely and utterly meaningless.

Answer this brutally honestly: who are you? If it's mostly about expression, good, enjoy it. If there's more, introspection is required. As you get on the right track you will feel increasingly better.

Lastly and very importantly, think for yourself before buying into a groupthink script for your life. There is no shortage of quacks, idiots, charlatans and vindictive types with dumb and deliberately malicious ideas. Here is where critical thinking will be an asset to you.

Blunt enough? I hope so. Live your life but just not scared all the time.

Be confident. Be happy. Be yourself.

'Nuff said.

(NB: I have left a contact form on the top right hand side of the web version of the blog for those who wish to communicate with me privately)

The compartmentalized life

One of the clues we might be transgender is that over time we increasingly have trouble with compartmentalizing our cross gender expression. It's no longer working and the dysphoric feelings persist or increase. 

In the past you have been busy enough to ignore things but now realize there is more than meets the eye and expressing yourself once every few weeks or months is not helping at all. 

The possibility that the feelings are much deeper is put on the table and they are examined. You realize that splitting yourself into two characters is becoming more cumbersome to the psyche and produces distress rather than encouraging a peaceful harmony of masculine and feminine energies. 

This is how I began to realize that I was gender dysphoric and not just a male enjoying sporadic expression. The signs that were there since very young were being ignored because downplaying them felt more convenient and less frightening than face the likelihood that there was much more.

The more I reflected, the more I realized that compartmentalization was a convenient dodge rather than a desired outcome because it meant I could stop at a point that didn't perturb my effort to lead the life I was then living. 

When compartmentalized behavior is used more as a coping mechanism or pressure relief valve than as an end goal, there is likely more happening than we are admitting; something which older transgender people were much more likely to fall prey to.

Sole Survivor

 

Not owed but offered

I consider Angela the perfect example of someone who doesn't need to know my gender history. 

She works at The Bay jewelry department and we have overlapped here and there over the years only to have become increasingly friendly. She is 58.

This morning we had coffee on Avenue Mont Royal and it went splendidly. I know for a fact based on our discussions that she doesn't know I am transgender which would have zero impact on our rapport. 

I always ask myself: how would them knowing change anything? If the answer is nothing I let sleeping dogs lie particularly if our seeing each other will be infrequent. Still, I don't think Angela would judge me if she knew because she is sweet and kind and if she asked the question I would admit it. I am fairly certain she never will.

We don't owe people the information but we are free to offer it. After all, it's not like we are apologizing for existing.

A telling statistic

85% of the stock market wealth is made by the top 10% of income earners and 50% of it is by the top 1%. 

So when someone wants to use it as a barometer for how well things are going, you can tell them to take a hike. 

The statistic speaks for itself just fine, only not the story they want to tell.

Manifesto

If we always need to be "on" and busy we should ask why. If we are listless when bored maybe it's because we aren't at peace alone with only our thoughts for company. 

Retiring can be a shock for those used to constant deadlines and distractions. When you have lost your primary function as employee and busy parent to children who are now adults, suddenly you have more time than you know what to do with. 

We need to learn how to be still and it can disorient. 

Activities will fill part of the void but it is the potential loss of identity which will hit hardest. If you have defined your purpose through career or being very involved in the lives of your children, you now need to redefine your mission statement or manifesto. 

Learning to be alone was something I had not imagined years ago and yet the perspective it has given me is immeasurable. I withdrew from a model that was sold as panacea for loneliness only to realize the model was deeply flawed. If you chose incorrectly your life was made much more complex and less fulfilling. 

You were at the risk of losing identity to please someone else who, unwittingly or not, was busy draining away your life energy while you tended to their own traumas and deficiencies as well as your own.

Authenticity

When the internal work is being done, people can detect it and so will you.

But because we are human, the work never stops.

Easy or hard life

"Easy choices, hard life; hard choices, easy life"

A quote that I can very much relate to. If our life is devoid of challenge, our easy shortcut choices make can yield hard lessons down the road. However, making the hard decisions by facing adversity can simplify life later on and reduce it to its essential elements of importance.

We've learned some basic truths by not avoiding some hardship.

Let's strawman

People can be manipulated. 

I keep seeing identity politics being raised as a red herring to blame for right wing gains worldwide but especially in the US. Why not blame DEI hiring and transgender people as distractions instead of addressing the core problems. 

At 1% of the population transgender people harm no one but, among other groups, they are low hanging fruit which makes us an easy target for cultural outrage. 

The average Joe voter knows something is wrong but can be manipulated. This is how Republicans began to win the southern states by picking up frustrated Dixiecrats not happy with lyndon Johnson giving black people civil rights they so rightfully deserved. 

Cultural issues can be red meat when you want to distract from your problems and it's how we got the "Woke agenda" moral panic people like Jordan Peterson love to trumpet as distraction.

As people fall behind economically, they need someone to blame and the Democrats weren't much help either when they went truly corporate in the early 90's and encouraged moving business offshore through globalization efforts. Now Americans could also buy cheap shit from China to feed their insatiable rampant consumerism.

All of those people who lost their livelihood to low cost countries are now the people most susceptible to strawman messaging which increases their hatred of a false enemy while ignoring their pain.

Wrong call

Are we responsible for our neighbor? Well yes and no. 

They are subject to their own life choices and must suffer the consequences or regale in their joy. What is hard to miss is that society is falling apart and more people are falling off the grid. 

It would be tempting to think that this is the result of increased laziness among the population which would be patently untrue. 

When I began my career we would work slower but more methodically. It took time to train people and we preached patience and quality. Contrast that to the frantic pace of today and the shoddy lack of preparation of young professionals and its obvious why the results are of mixed to poor quality with huge cost overruns. 

When we jumped at globalization we decided that efficiency and profit would dominate over a good work environment which encouraged team spirit. We didn't need to preach it as much before because we had it. 

Today we preach bullshit slogans to employees to make up for the fact that it eludes us. Work/life balance is extolled as we work overtime to correct more and more errors of judgment. We decided that a healthy society would take a back seat to a smaller amount of people owning more wealth. 

It was the wrong call.

Before liberals became corporatist they used to preach compassion for the downtrodden which eventually just became lip service. By the time of my retirement, the buzzwords just made me sick to my stomach.

You may have noticed...

You may have noticed that this isn't a transgender blog. It is instead a blog which happens to be written by a transgender person.

A subtle difference, but a difference nonetheless.

Salt of the earth

When you don't have the overall best interest of the population, things are bound to go wrong. This is the new GOP's problem which contains numerous factions within it of self-interested crazies with often divergent agendas. All are contained within a bizarre cult of personality which boggles the mind of most rational thinkers. That Trump is an imbecile plus a criminal makes it all the more galling.

What is sad is that some of the people most eager to vote for Trump are the ones who will be hit the hardest. Already getting by on lower wages and very minimal benefits, Elon Musk and his phony DOGE department will be looking for "waste" expenditure at the bottom rung as his own taxes continue to plunge. 

Oligarchy on steroids.

Many MAGA supporters were interviewed at rally lineups barely able to string coherent sentences together. If you got to know them, they might be salt of the earth types, however the knowledge they need to defend their own interests escapes them which is a shame. 

Nevertheless, regardless who is in charge, there are no quick fixes for late stage capitalism other than to let things crumble and start over with a new and improved philosophy.

Here's hoping it's not more painful than it needs to be.

Walking

I walk a lot and I feel the benefits...

Is this real?

I love the Romano Report but he is going to drive himself crazy trying to understand why the population of the world contains so many ignorant people or those with malignant intent.

I couldn't agree with him more. Computer simulation indeed.

He might be forgetting that sometimes cruelty is the point then add lack of critical thinking skills for good measure and voila...

Our choice

I've written about choice a million times because it is crucially important. How much choice we are exercising and our ability to recognize it will make all the difference in our lives. 

For example, dysphoria isn't a choice however failure to address it can be, no matter how altruistic we believe our reasons to be. Some forms of gender variance are based entirely or primarily on choice. The point being that we strive towards balance, wellness and lack of distress. 

Exercising choice can have either benefit or consequence depending on our situation. As the correct choices are made, we can use the metric of increasing peace and stability as our guides.

Purpose

We can spend much of our lives in fruitless pursuits because we don't know any better or because we are afraid to face reality. Life is often difficult and anything which soothes the discomfort becomes a welcome escape. 

If there is deeper meaning to our existence it isn't immediately obvious and by the time we figure out how to properly navigate life,  our time is up. 

If I wasn't sure why I shouldn't complain I get daily reminders as I move about the city. Many people are lost and struggling to make ends meet devoid of sufficient basic necessities. 

I have more time than ever to reflect on the irrationality we espouse as panacea for what ails us which is steeped in the uncertainty of why we are here; our lack of confirmation of raison d'etre if you will.

Frustrated

Rather than get frustrated with extended family, the best thing for older transgender people is to work on our internal fortitude. We aren't going to convert everyone to the extent that we would like not to mention that the connection might not have been that strong to begin with and not worth being overly concerned with when it suffers even more. 

It's like you have lived two lives. One was the younger version of yourself they got to know and now you need to reintroduce the person you always were underneath but couldn't reveal. That process can be difficult because you have enough trouble dealing with your own psyche but must also navigate the opinions and judgement of others to boot.

Let it go Joanne

At this point it's obvious poor Joanne needs some trauma therapy and maybe we need some too for what she continues to do...

Not a blue rectangle

If I took a random sampling of 100 people and asked them what the term transgender meant I would get very varied answers but why? 

Well, besides the obvious lack of education among the general public which would invite and yield some ludicrous responses, even some gender variant people would find different ways to define it based on their own assessment of self. Some would say the term didn't fit them at all.

It's not like asking someone to describe an object. I have a blue rectangle in front of me which measures 4 X 6 inches which everyone would agree on without exception (unless they were color blind). 

My point is that definitions on matters which involve much subtlety are open to interpretation because they deal in greys. Therefore the definition doesn't mean as much as it could given that it also does not provide any guidelines about how to live. It is a descriptor which doesn't necessarily offer us an authenticity only we can provide. 

We first come up with our authenticity plan and then, if we like, come up with a label to match it.

Or not.

Unapologetic

Fair taxation will never return to the US which will be its downfall before the big reset happens which pays for the sins of globalization. Consider that in the 1950's you could be a millionaire but paid hefty taxes as a percentage of your earnings. Today the country does the reverse and money flows upwards while Rome burns. 

It is an unapologetic oligarchy. 

MAGA voters, who are largely ignorant, and thought the idiot Trump would lower the price of groceries are in for a very rude wakeup call.

I will take the routine

Going to Sephora yesterday was uneventful and yet it served as another point of comparison with my past history. I have been a customer for years primarily purchasing their in-house brand foundation which I use increasingly sparingly as I age. 

I went from being petrified of going inside to having it be a routine visit I now make about every 6 to 8 weeks. Yesterday was just more confirmation about how uneventful such stops have become and how devoid of anxiety they are. I am a customer like everyone else and look around to take in my surroundings than worry about who might be looking at the tall lady. 

I waited in line and took note of a young woman browsing who was my height; a sighting which has become increasingly commonplace as youth get taller. I was then signaled to come to the counter where I was greeted by a twenty-something with very subtle makeup on her face. 

"Joanna?" She says looking up at me after entering my number into the system. 

"Yes" I answer and then add that they shouldn't play with their color palette as it took me some trial and error to settle on it. 

"Oh I know, they have been making changes" she responds stopping short of an eye roll. 

Just then the young man who had helped me the last time to switch from the 27P to the 30P shade whizzes by and says "Hey!" while flashing me a friendly smile. 

"Happy with the change?" to which I say yes and then adds to the woman serving me "she has olive skin" 

There was no drama, no excitement but there was more importantly calm and serene confidence which contrasted sharply against my first ever visit years ago. 

I will take that feeling of routine any day of the week.

Potty mouth granny

Between Naughty Nana and the Romano Report I will have some good company in the outrage department over the next four disastrous years in US politics to come.

Yes, she has a potty mouth but she is 100% correct in calling out the lies and the hypocrisy.

Not your average mild-mannered grandma to be sure ;)....

Romano report

I very much share his sentiments. His passion makes me feel better about the coming clown show...

Risk

Were older not yet fully actualized transgender people necessarily a bad choice as a life partner? No. 

Might they sometimes have been a risky one? Yes.

Don't I know it.

I don't despair

Recently in New York, an undocumented Guatemalan man lit a homeless woman on fire and burned her beyond recognition as she quietly slept in her subway car. A few days later a young man was also pushed onto the tracks as an incoming train arrived by a 23 year old for no apparent reason as they did not know each other. This latter victim will live. 

It's a sign of the era we live in where desperation and isolation are helping to foster mental illness. Here in Montréal there is now a number to text in case of trouble inside the metro network. I have never seen so many people talking to themselves in my lifetime. 

At the same time I don't despair for the future because of the social inroads we have made where we have liberated many people from their chains. The problem is that besides the social progress we also need guardrails which must be founded on fairness and social justice which sees people regain hope for their future.

Self worth

Our self worth and confidence stem from authenticity. Once we know who we are we don't need to convince anyone of anything. Opinions are discarded unless they happen to be helpful to us. 

If we aren't sure of ourselves we will always be susceptible to being swayed by others. Their judgement might be enough to detail us. 

Confidence doesn't manifest in bravado. It can live in humility and kindness because we are happy at our core and have nothing to prove to anyone except to ourselves. We are therefore more open to others. 

We can be free to relax into the self.

Not easily fixed

The American experiment is on the brink of failing as late stage capitalism works to an inevitable conclusion. Once constant growth can no longer be sustained the model breaks down and we are seeing the results among the population. 

2024 saw the highest rare of homeless people ever in the country and with stagnant wages you can be employed but still be forced to live in your car and forego health insurance. It's nice to say that the stock market is healthy but those on the lower rung have enough trouble buying groceries never mind investing. 

Neither Trump or Harris could solve this problem easily and the GOP will only make things worse by pandering to those who already have the most wealth. 

The only good news is that MAGA imbecile infighting will intensify as ignorant voters discover what they actually bought and the different interests within the right collide against each other. It will be messy, embarrassing and unfortunately costly for those who can least afford it. 

Unbridled capitalism worked for a while as the country expanded but now it is past its peak and the cracks are showing. Canada too is experiencing similar but less grave impacts.

The conclusion? Humans aren't fixable. What a surprise.

Hidden

Over time it began to really irritate me that I was leading a dishonest life. Hiding who I was grated on the nerves as I got closer to my core identity. Granted, my generation didn't have many options in the way of societal support or solid information growing up, but as I became more educated in the subject matter and less concerned about public opinion, it became crucial to come out which I did slowly and progressively over the years. 

If your version of gender variance isn't deeply tied to identity maybe you can get by without any reveal. But for me it became absolutely mandatory because otherwise it signified that I was ashamed of who I was.

Others don't get to choose or judge who we are. They just need to get with the program.

Suzuki retires

Canadian environmentalist and television icon retires after over 40 years of hosting CBC's "The Nature of Things". Well deserved David ;)

Third spaces

Third spaces have largely disappeared. Whether that was church, clubs, associations or some other group, people are more keeping to themselves than ever and foregoing social structures that used to feed the social fabric. 

Technology is of course largely responsible and as more things were done online, it became easier to push a button than physically interact. Even the process of finding a life partner became about swiping left or right. 

At first this seemed to simplify our lives but over time the psychological impacts began to be felt. Anxiety and depression rates increased as people felt the effects of isolation which were greatly magnified during the pandemic. One of the largest studies ever conducted on happiness showed that health and friendships are the only important contributors to wellness once out basic needs of food and lodging are met. More money does absolutely nothing.

As a retired person who mostly lives alone (my 26 year old daughter constantly comes and goes) I work on making human contact through friendships, acquaintances and talking to strangers. It helps feed that primordial need we all have for connection. 

To reverse our current problems we will need to rebuild social networks which involve face to face interaction or continue to face the consequences.

Happy New Year

I saw the young transgender woman briefly all smiles and sunshine loudly wish the staff at the McDonald's counter a happy new year. It was the only place open and I needed my coffee fix. She was hard to miss as she whisked by me on her way out.  Without a doubt she was under 30.

She was tall and made no attempt to disguise a voice clearly in the male register. The confidence was very palpable and infectious. 

I always go back to the issue of avoiding trauma from early programming as being pivotal. The sooner it is addressed or avoided altogether, the greater the likelihood of leading a well-adjusted life in the open. That being said, it is never too late to become ourselves.

When I see transgender youth in the wild my viewpoint is constantly being confirmed and, should I sometimes feel tempted to get a little down and self-indulgent about my own long and very challenging history getting here, they pick me right up. God bless their little hearts.

Happy New Year.