More like her

Clothilde called me last night which was a treat since we don't speak very often. We met close to 20 years ago when the idea of me coming out would have been far-fetched science fiction. 

She worked in the cosmetics department of The Bay department store and was beyond sweet to someone who was then painfully timid about exploring the world as myself. Her support and that of others became instrumental in me finally deciding to increasingly live authentically.

Things have changed for both of us since then but her jubilant energy remains unperturbed and her Caribbean warmth comes out in every phrase. An infectious laugh is never far behind. 

People like her are what the world needs but there aren't nearly enough of them. We agreed to meet next week after almost 2 years of not seeing each other face to face and it will be as pleasant as always.

It's a cult

 

"I've Had It"

Jennifer Welch has a mouthy and abrasive style I admire. She calls Trump voters Triple Trumpers and their god-king "Cankles McTaco Tits" in honor of his bloated body and circulation problems attributable to fast food. 

She lives in Oklahoma and so is intimately aware of what Christian nationalism does to the teeny brains of limited white people she grew up with. She worked years as an interior designer primarily with gay men and women who had to develop a tolerance and affinity for diversity. 

She is fearless which is an attitude sorely lacking among the tepid resistance of the Democratic party. A charisma-challenged Hakeem Jeffries talks about sending strongly worded letters and draws jeers from people fed up of weak knees in defense of democracy. The GOP has no such inhibitions. 

If you haven't yet watched the "I've Had It" podcast, you owe yourself the favor to get a taste of her ballsy behaviour.

Inner truth

I am very aware that I don't get many comments here. Not that it matters all that much but hope my bluntness isn't the culprit although I suspect it does not help. Also, my writing isn't entertainment but primarily consists of exploration. 

I address every topic in the same way. I look in the crevices and try to get to some fundamental truth which can sometimes go against personal narratives.

Any kind of personal dogma tends to see people recoil from being challenged. For example, orthodox religious people will follow their faith but cannot say that their strict adherence is attributable to the words of an deity they have never met. 

The ideas we formulate need to be passed through a sieve of critical thinking after which we may need to admit that we have hit a brick wall and cannot proceed beyond that point. 

Failure to examine the why of our thinking could lead to self delusion and prevent us from attaining some fundamental inner truth our personal blinders were blocking.

To be seen

As I was waiting for my bus to depart yesterday, I saw a young confident transgender person somewhere in their 20's walk towards the metro entrance I had recently exited. The overwhelming sense I always get with youth is that they don't care about anyone's opinion because they are free of concern; at least much more so than my generation was. 

I think many people could be able to tell that she was transgender but the body language said that she didn't care. She was living her truth with purse slung over her shoulder. For all I know maybe my assumption of pronouns is even incorrect. 

People my age were afraid to test the elasticity of the binary and for good reason. One thing would be a costume party or a theater performance but it would be quite another to live that way everyday lest you have a death wish or love to be insulted in public. 

To express what was inside of us meant switching polarity and "passing" as the other sex which could often be frought with dread and plagued with feelings of being an impostor. Even some people who transition medically can be racked with this feeling that they aren't fooling anyone. 

We have done ourselves a favor and dismantled the binary enough to allow people who don't fit into conventional models of masculinity and femininity to exist outside of them. No one stares or bothers them and are thus given more options to exist without switching sides. 

The hardest thing I had to do in my life is embrace authenticity by rewiring my brain circuitry. Existing in any form of secrecy produces revulsion after a while unless your cross gender expression is purposefully meant to be temporary. This means that a formula needs to be found which elevates self-respect and matures the aspects that were forced to be kept hidden. 

Everyone deserves to be seen.

Ramona

 

Fragile

The right wing uses blunt force trauma with no subtlety because they lack it. You won't find many intellectuals within its ranks because thinking things over to improve life quality for the most people doesn't form part of the game plan. 

Once they've applied a wrecking ball to everything the adults need to come into the room later and clean up their mess. History repeatedly bears this out.

Jefferson said that you get the government you deserve which doesn't sound very comforting but he wasn't wrong. Democracy as imperfect and messy as it is makes for a fragile thing. Even in its healthy state it is chock full of injustice. 

Sometimes you need to destroy what you once had (imperfect as it was) to finally learn your lesson.

Grounded

From the first time I saw Kimberly Reed being interviewed I was impressed. Here was this calm, matter of fact woman who used to be the captain of her high school football team in small town Montana. The problem was that she had a huge riddle to solve. 

Dysphoria was eating her alive and she knew she had to do something about it which she did. 

In the years since that Oprah interview she has remained that thoughtful person who is steadfastly herself. I realized then that this no-nonsense human being had her feet firmly on the ground and knew who she was. If people then had preconceptions about all transsexual women back in 2010 she helped to begin to dispell them. 

She's done nothing but elevate her profile since then as a film director.

The problem in a nutshell

 

Emily

 

Proportional

Fear tends to be proportional to the importance of something; or at least it should be. If we are giving a major presentation in front of an important client or jumping out of an airplane these things will increase our fear. 

It doesn't mean that we shouldn't do them. It just means that we take them seriously but still move forward. The presence of fear isn't the reason to back away.

The alternative? Paralysis which is considerably worse.

Close but no cigar

I used to end my periods of writing by saying that it was no longer as useful because I had arrived at a comfortable place. However we are always working on an asymptote and just hopefully keep getting closer to a better place internally. 

Even if my blogging serves a slightly different purpose these days, I want to emphasize that this tweaking towards more personal enlightenment never really stops. 

It keeps going until our time here is up. 

If we are progressing at every stage it means that the introspection is paying off. We are being honest with ourselves and looking into the mirror with no fear of a blunt self-appraisal. 

We realize that working out our gender issues doesn't mean we've worked out everything else.

"I'm Your Venus"

Venus Xtraveganza (nee Pellagatti) was born in 1965 and strangled to death in 1988. She was featured in the film "Paris is Burning"

The documentary "I'm your Venus" is about her brothers trying to get her a legal name change posthumously and affirm her gender identity plus discover more details about the murder.

It's an emotional film which shows tough men who weren't raised to comprehend this issue come to terms with her murder and deal with the injustice in the only way they can so many years after the death of a free spirit who was ahead of her time.

On Netflix.

Lilywhite Lilith

 

Kindness and calm

These days I focus on being kind and being calm. I can't think of two better things.

Both are their own reward and they feed our essence in a way nothing else can.

Once we embrace authenticity fully, they tend to come on their own.

We never know

My youngest sister played golf until recently with someone who was found dead in his backyard hot tub by his son. He was only 50 years old. 

We never know when our time is up. 

At 62 I take nothing for granted and see everyday as a gift. I look ahead to nothing other than seeing where my life takes me in the moment. Yes, I have a routine which grounds me but also a lot of flexibility which sees me appreciate the little things in life more than ever. 

I overheard the barista this morning talk about the funeral he had just attended for a 58 year old which prompted me to write this post. 

As a transgender person I knew I needed to get to where I am now except that for the longest time I didn't know how. I just knew that losing my father to lung cancer was always there playing in the mind. He was only 60.

Its also why I retired at 60 because we just never know.

Power

We cannot change the world but we can change ourselves and in so doing we can impact others.

Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer is a must watch. 

As usual, Christopher Nolan performs his magic here and profiles a man who was conflicted about his role in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which ended World War II for Japan. 

The machinations and back stabbing of politics are here showing how the world always operates with the same power dynamics; the same envy, hate and stupidity which are incurable traits in humans of every era. 

The US obsession with communism is front and center here and is used as an attempted gallows for a scientist who was interested primarily in studying quantum mechanics.

On Netflix and very highly recommended.

Bias

When people are faced with a wide range of possibilities they tend to get more lost. You give them 10 multiple choice answers instead of 4 and you just spread the distribution of wrong answers and decrease the number of correct ones. 

When IQ tests were first developed in the early 20th century, they found that people who scored well in math for example also scored higher in other subjects (with some margin left open for variability in each person). This is how intelligence quotient was developed because some people routinely scored higher than others over the same range of subjects. 

IQ isn't everything because even if it predicts the likelihood of higher reasoning it doesn't guarantee the person will choose the wise and empathetic solution. You could be a narcissist ship's captain and let others die before you do because wisdom and altruism are more than just about critical thinking. 

There were test results shown in a survey regarding the efficacy of skin cream to treat rashes where failure to consider the sample size and thinking proportionately would have you give the wrong answer. Those who used no cream had a higher proportion of being cured than those who used the cream but the sample group who used it was considerably higher which fooled many people who only looked at the highest number on the results grid. 

When the survey took into account political leanings of those who took the test the results were similar regardless of affiliation. 

The test was then changed to be about the use of guns versus restriction on them and unsurpsingly those who leaned right politically gave different answers than those who leaned liberal. The reason is of course bias. 

Therefore when we deal with people who have pre-baked bias plus low critical thinking skills we are facing an uphill battle which is something we can anecdotally understand from our life experience.

An old joke

The old joke went something  like this: 

Q: What is the difference between a "crossdresser" and a transsexual? 

A: About 3 years. 

The subtext here was of course that some people were underplaying their situation to avoid upending their lives and succumbing to transition. This was particularly true for gynephilic transsexuals from my generation and older. 

But this certainly wasn't true for everyone and today's society bears it out with its expansive ways to openly express and identify under the full banner of gender variance. 

It's an old joke representative of a different time that we aren't returning to.

Homework

The Line is a call-in show that deals in secular humanism. The hosts are all atheists but they argue for compassion and dignity for all human beings from the perspective of rationality. 

Predictably they get more than their fair share of oddball callers who are ill prepared and with little to no critical thinking skills which makes the hosts' job easy if a bit frustrating. People will hang up or get boisterous when you have cornered them with rational arguments. 

The hottest topics are religion and (you guessed it) transgender issues where one particular host with a doctorate in biology surgically goes through the arguments for the validity of transgender people. He never successfully gains converts but if nothing else pins them down with a wrestling move where they can claim a tie even if they have lost the match. 

The problem is that people reach a desired conclusion and then look for evidence to substantiate it which never works. Yet it never stops them from trying. People don't like having their world view destroyed (no matter how unfounded) and it upsets them when you unravel it. 

While I am not an atheist and am indeed transgender I know well enough not to attack issues from completely the wrong angle and that you need to do your homework before making your claims.

Wearing confidence

I used to worry about my height and body shape until I started to play close attention to women who come in every shape under the sun. Some outweigh me and perhaps could put me in the hospital if I ticked them off (who knows). 

As I built up my confidence in who I am, concerns about clothing went away. What I wore was just a matter of preference and sense of style and nothing more. Self-conciouness disappears which is the worst form of confidence killer I have experienced by a long shot.

A sleeveless summer dress? It's on my radar but it has to speak to me. My neighbor and I are going dress shopping for her and good chance I pick one up too.

Get dressed to the nines but without confidence in who we are it's almost for naught.

Rich

Wealth doesn't automatically add blinders to people but it can help them along. Once they become comfortable they get used to living on a cloud and can become desensitized to the rest of the world. 

This is basic human nature. 

My friend Sylvie went recently to the lakefront cottage of her cousin where she noted how many of the people there were into possessions and the fruits of their wealth. Many of the conversations centered around what rich people do without much thought for how others live which stayed with her afterwards. 

Here is the argument for taxing the rich (which used to be basic policy in the US in the 1950's). If you don't do it their own natural instinct will be to avoid them once they have achieved a certain societal echelon. It's why trickle down economics is a fallacy and always was. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being rich provided your feet stay firmly planted on the ground and in reality. There is also the point that there is such a thing as having too much of it.

Happy

Once we've lived a while we realize that no new thing is going to make us happier. No new purchase, relationship, trip or promotion will add to our overall long term well being. The reason for this is that our sense of contentment comes from inside of us and we are the only ones who can influence it. 

This is something I learned the hard way as many of us do but there is a bright side in that once we understand this fact we can work on our sense of self and live more simply with less distractions. We don't need to chase things that the rest of the world seems to covet.

More powerful than you know

Be yourself, live your life says AOC...

Bouree

I only saw Tull in 1980 but here they are in '69....

You tell 'em Charlie

 

Inflation

To no one's surprise who has their thinking cap on.

Moral of the story? Don't let an imbecile set a country's economic policy...

From her generation

I was speaking with my mother yesterday who was born in 1936 and is pushing 90. Hence her knowledge of certain issues is limited even as she has come a very long way in her acceptance of diversity. 

She sometimes calls what I do "dressing" even as I live authentically because of her limited vocabulary but I correct her and say transgender. Yesterday I might have made a breakthrough when I explained that in a sense it's like being reversed in your brain. Then she says: 

"You are a woman in a man's body" to which I respond yes of sorts. I have always been this way adding that our clinical understanding of gender dysphoria is still very much incomplete.

"But you like women" she adds emphatically.

Then I use the example of my lesbian niece who loves women but is also feminine. I explain to her the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation. 

People from her generation eventually get it after things are explained to them. They had other issues even if everything aligned with societal norms because everyone has something.

It doesn't matter that she doesn't comprehend a subject matter I have been exploring for years due to its intimate impact on me. She just needs to accept which she very much does.

It's all that matters.

Fire with Fire

Gavin Newsom has started to play fire with fire and his tweets are now mocking Trump by writing them at a 3rd grade level in all caps just like the way the tangerine does. 

Newsom even ends them with: "THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER - GCN" 

If Texas redistricts then he has promised that California will do the same. Trump is shitting bricks knowing that the midterms look really bad and will likely lead to a massive GOP loss and almost certainly a 3rd impeachment for which there is plenty of just cause.

Maybe the dems have found their voice.

"You're a fake"

There is nothing more tenacious for older transgender people than impostor syndrome which keeps telling you that you are a fraud, you will be found out eventually and rejected. 

Others don't see it because they accept us at face value and believe who we tell them we are. Therefore we are the problem and not them. 

The origin of this syndrome is the hard coding of original programming received virtually since birth. It is so deeply pervasive that I don't think this syndrome is entirely curable. If you live full time it can even worsen for a time until you find a way to wrestle it down to a manageable level. The longer you lived in denial the more difficult it will be to view ourselves outside of this lens.

Transgender youth grew up in a world that was far more malleable and are much less prone to fall prey to feeling like impostors. 

The best way out of it is to rethink the binary in your mind and abandon the coordinate system you accepted as being correct. We fashion a new one which includes other diverse people who make up the human mosaic. This is of course easier said than done.

In spite of all the progress I have made over my life, the wedding and retirement party I attended were both subject beforehand to a voice inside the head warning of things that never transpired.

Wasted energy; all for naught.

Tide turning

It's surprising how quickly a country can fall prey to demagogues. After all, the Weimar Republic fell apart within a few short years and gave way to one of the most villainous regimes in history. 

In 7 short months the US is a shadow of its former self and will continue to get worse until the impulses of the current regime are stopped. The hypocrites with the crosses are making a mockery of what good governance is supposed to be and it's hard to stomach as they fawn over a drooling idiot who can't stay off social media.

The problem is that the composition of societies is roughly the same in each nation. You have the obtuse and disinterested, you have the hopelessly gullible, you have the nefarious and self interested and then you have intelligent people trying to do their best but are outnumbered by the rest. 

Therefore if a nation is taken over by the wrong crowd there isn't much one can do other than wait for the realization of the people that they are facing tyranny and must rise up against it. That terminal point is undoubtedly different for each country and each era has its particular set of criteria which hinders a public outcry. 

Nothing surprises me anymore but what interests me is watching for that moment when the lights come on in sufficient numbers and the tide finally turns.

Couple

I was walking right behind them and it took me two minutes to realize that they were a transgender couple. Both not yet thirty, I had first noticed the slight hint of facial hair on one of them which made me pay closer attention. 

Each was holding a young child and once they were down the escalator I knew I was dealing with a modern couple who have found each other beyond the old binary. 

The natal female had slightly purple hair and a nose ring which would have shocked the overly prudent and faint of heart in decades past. 

But then this is a new era and thank God for it.

Bread and Circuses

We live in an era where stupidity isn't a bug but a celebrated feature but how did we get here? 

People aren't any smarter or dumber than they were decades ago but the focus and priorities of societies shift such that certain traits are either celebrated or discouraged. 

Social media had a hand in destroying confidence in subject matter expertise and acted as unification vehicle for the simple minded who could now find each other more readily and build echo chambers. 

If the Renaissance preached virtue, intellectual pursuit and beauty our era is the bread and circuses phase of the Roman empire implosion where distraction from truth and intelligence  became the norm to soothe the masses and prevent them from paying attention. 

This phase too will pass only it will get considerably worse before things get better.

Living wisely

I think it was Schopenhauer who said that we cannot trust intellect alone; that wisdom is also nested in living in the moment and knowing when to stop analyzing to simply experience. We eventually understand that not everything comes with a ready solution which emerges after repeated reflection. Life comes with a fluid chaos naturally baked in.

Living one day at a time without future bias is difficult because existential angst sees us imagine some better scenario down the road which typically never comes. 

I think one of the reasons some have trouble with retirement is they imagined a state where everything would be resolved and the little hamster in the brain would stay quiet when, if anything else, the extra time only invites more ruminating.

Loulou

Loulou is much like other transgender films you might have seen. Youth knows they are different early in life but grows up in deeply devout religious family who doesn't understand at all and may never. 

Only a kind and loving nun gets it and they even find some sympathy from a tough who is more than likely gay but dare not have that kind of courage and come out. 

On Tubi and recommended.

When your children are right

My son gave me some good advice recently. He said that I should tone down my indignant attitude. 

For years I was like a ticking time bomb and now with no filter I can get abrasive with stupid and ignorant people which serves no purpose other than elevate my blood pressure. 

He is right of course and as I work my way increasingly into calm territory I need to put down the weapons I developed over my lifetime. I still need self defense, but I don't need to overdo it.

Rabia

Rabia was born in Algeria and is in her late 40's. She has a wonderful energy about her and we caught up over brunch yesterday in my neighborhood at one of the nicer spots I know; a cute French style bistro. She has taken the month of August off and feels free as a bird. 

She felt limited growing up in a Muslim country as a woman where she would very much be a second class citizen. Having gone through her phase with a head scarf and trying to be devout, it didn't take and she adapted to western culture with a natural flair which suits her bubbly personality. 

We used to work together and over our meal she tells me I'm brave which I dispell by saying that we simply get tired of feeling subjugated by the whims of a mostly irrational society. 

Afterwards we go thrifting and she quickly spots Michael Kors ballet flats in her size for 12 dollars. She cannot believe her luck after already having found two perfect dresses which was the result of both of us scouring the racks. 

People like her form part of my social circle of good people who knew me before but primarily focus on the character of the person in front of them.

Metheny and friends

 

Zappa

 

Lizard brain

The latest distraction from the Epstein files is about needing to bring the national guard into Washington DC because crime is, after all, at a 30 year low. 

However, Trump needs something to show he's being tough as his clown car regime continues to falter. There must be something new to fill the news cycle especially when your poll numbers are in the basement. 

America is unraveling and the tariffs haven't even really kicked in yet. Grandma has been shipped to alligator Alcatraz, soon Johnny will lose his health coverage and that new car the family needs will cost $20,000 more thanks to Trump economics 101. 

If Trump read "Governing for Dummies" he may have taken it too literally. 

I am waiting to see what happens when his already scrambled mind gets even worse and how his minions in Congress and the Senate deal with a president whose slurring and obsessions with water pressure worsen by the day. The people showing up at town halls are mad as hell and it will only grow much worse over time. 

Meanwhile Pete Hegseth is involved with a Christian Nationalist cult that preaches women shouldn't vote and be subservient to their husbands. These crazies are the ones leading prayer breakfasts and speaking in tongues at the back entrance of the White House. In case anyone forgot it's 2025 and not the Salem witch trials. 

There really is no hope for people other than to destroy everything and need to start over. I think it's called lizard brain.

I can't help but imagine Jefferson, Lincoln or Roosevelt coming back from the dead and witnessing the current occupant of the White House talk about windmills.

It would be priceless.

Dysphoria and sex

If you aren't yet sure where you sit with your identity, you might find this discussion useful.

Here Dr Z mentions AGP even as she doesn't align with Ray Blanchard's viewpoint. That being said, some people do associate with the profile like the recent detransitioner Ray Williams who says a fetish made him transition...

Assuaged

I'm not ever going back to the US if I can help it. No one cares about me and my absence won't be missed but my sense of morality will be assuaged. Roughly twice the population of my country twice voted for an idiot criminal and a rapist likely without much hesitation. 

Meanwhile television stations of states bordering Canada wonder aloud if Canadian tourists aren't coming because of the exchange rate with an obtuseness of missing the point that makes one's blood boil.

I have people in my own family who rationalize their strange political ideas. They will choose an issue like an abortion and ignore that the politician on their side of the issue is a heartless psychopath who doesn't care about disenfranchised people. I have come to terms with this kind of disconnect in some people.

This is hard for me to swallow but it completes a circle of understanding of human nature as I live the last third of my life. My illusions about people have been permanently dispelled as some triumphantly trumpet their stupidity on social media with no hint of shame or self-doubt. The Dunning-Kruger effect very much lives on. 

I have told my children that as they get older the amount of idiots they encounter will grow sharply. It's not that their numbers have increased only that their ability to recognize them will drastically improve.

There are some wonderful and glorious souls in this world but sadly they are outnumbered.

Wanna date?

Courtney Ryan has a youtube channel where she gives men dating advice. She is probably in her early thirties and her most recent video was titled "Why are so many intelligent men single?" 

The first comment on the list read "because they are intelligent" and it garnered a very healthy amount of likes. 

The relationship business is broken and there are many factors at play. It isn't just youth although young men between 20 and 30 are the most affected by the current famine (my son being right in the middle). People aren't connecting like they used to because society is drastically different than it used to be. 

Marriage went from a business transaction involving money and children to a quaint and romanticized concept with more options for making a getaway than ever. 

Many men got taken to the cleaners after a nasty divorce and society took note. Women elevated themselves through schooling and decided that baby making wasn't their cup of tea. My 27 year old daughter wonders aloud if she is indeed meant for motherhood. 

All this will take a while to settle but we aren't going back to the old model since both sides have changed for good. The balance of power has shifted and more people than ever understand that being single isn't the societal failing some saw it as. 

In this environment, many see it increasingly as a blessing.

I lost my head

Gentle Giant in 2025...

Un dimanche a Montréal

 

Go Bernie

Bernie Sanders may yet see a return to fairness in his lifetime; at least let's hope so. His fight oligarchy tour is picking up steam and even deep red states are getting huge turnouts because people are tired of falling behind. 

The capitalist model of the US ran astray and over the last 50 years has been steadily spiraling into dangerous territory as the bulk of the population falls away from what used to be called the middle class. 

Late stage capitalism happens when you can no longer feed the furnace with prosperity and a constantly climbing GDP is impossible when the population trying to sustain it becomes increasingly impoverished. This is precisely what is happening and the result becomes implosion. 

Trumpism has been the disaster I suspected back in 2016 when the idiot was elected but since the democrats were too involved with their corporate ties to take the problem seriously, the GOP hate machine took over and fed cultural red meat to people looking for culprits to blame as distraction while they installed their toxic policies . 

Go Bernie go.

The holy grail

The reason that older people tend to have a problem with existing somewhere in-between the gender binary is due to their rigid programming. In the past the idea of "passing" was absolutely essential if you were to be left alone. This meant that both "crossdressers" and transsexuals aimed for the same thing which was the holy grail if you wanted peace of mind in public. Existing between the two monoliths was a definite no-no and certainly a safety issue.

Today young gender variant and transgender youth don't aim for "passing" (although they may attain it simply through starting hormone treatments early). Their aim is living their truth and being themselves thus much less perturbed by the idea of being singled out. 

Since the public is very aware of them they just confidently exist and don't care what you think of them.

Insight

In life every time we ramp up to a new stage there is level of work that must be done to come to a deeper understanding of self. When you are 40 you think you are there only to discover at 50 that you weren't. Then you come to 60 and realize that at 50 you still had things to repair and more things to discover. 

The entire journey is about unraveling the truth behind all the myths that the world adopts so it can carry on functioning. 

These days I am happy to take advice from my children who sometimes offer wise insight into the flaws we just accepted as part of what makes us who we are.

A moment

I have gone back to oil painting and my brushstrokes are now looser and more relaxed. I decided to paint my daughter's portrait on a small canvas and leave it looking like a study. At a certain point I just dropped the brushes and said enough. 

I admire impressionists like Sorolla and Sargeant who are still playing in realism but where you can clearly see the strokes sometimes raw which convey energy and remain signature accents. We don't want a photograph but instead capture a moment.

Gravity

 

Discipline

I grew up with rigid discipline and a sense of responsibility that I am now toning down because I can. It's a kind of reinvention of the self based on what my soul demands as remediation for what I was taught. It's the last remaining battle to be fought. 

I wasn't the kind of person who would ever let their guard down or give myself leniency. Instead I felt I had to perform to a standard which was in part rooted in avoiding being seen to fail in front of others. We are our own worst critics. 

I was successful but it takes a toll especially when you have a deep dark secret. 

Today I preach that everyone give themselves a break from the obligation to perform and it's when we get older that we realize much of it was absolutely for nothing. 

For we are allowed to be vulnerable.

Time and time again

 

A natural break

Retirement is a natural break between an old life and a new one. For a transgender person it can be the chance to live more authentically than ever before because options are open regarding what bridges to our old life we still want to be left standing. 

Some relationships whither away naturally because they are mostly anchored in career. Others are also situational based on whatever hobbies we used to practice and suddenly stop doing. We are offered the opportunity to weed through our previous connections and see who merits keeping close ties with because they value the real us; the person who is much more than just a gender. 

At 62 not much gets past me and BS doesn't work on me. I can almost read people like a book. 

I have decided to let this process be organic and allow whatever new people come in and old ones fall away to come completely naturally. 

All without great expectations and with openness to spare.

Gender fluidity

I don't know why I am so turned off by the concept of gender fluidity. Maybe because I don't understand it viscerally and cannot relate. 

I don't want to be two people, I want to be one and when someone talks about two personas I reject it outright.

I have always thought about my situation as someone coming to terms with who they are progressively over a lifetime but always being the same person. I don't have two people living in me and I behave the same way all the time. 

Young transgender people don't need to live for years in one presentation and then switch. They won't be forced to reconcile a previous life with a new one. They will just have one.

If I were young today knowing what I know I would simply medically transition and be done with it. My compromise solution as an older person, however, has worked.

A rare commodity

One of the weird advantages of excess is that it gets exposed very easily. Things are going so badly on a daily basis in the US that it's making it impossible for the Trump regime to cover up its incompetence, lies and sheer stupidity.

Their bravado has increased and with it the mistakes and the least educated among the public are finally starting to catch on. 

A Trump voting farmer bemoans that his cherries are rotting on the vines and realizes that ICE has helped decimate his workforce. 

Critical thinking is a rare commodity.

Contagion and predation

The most reliable hand that the gender critical movement plays is the idea that transgender people are trying to usurp the role of biological women and even prey on them. It is the replacement theory. 

Transgender people are far from stupid and most highly educated in a topic that has been the elephant in the room often since earliest memory. They are aware of chromosomes, gametes, and the science related to them. 

But if criticals run with only the criticism that transgender people shouldn't be left alone to live their lives, it doesn't play well with the portion of the public that is most afraid and thus prone to hate. 

Moral panics work best when the public they are trying to scare fears for their own safety and sees potential consequences. Hence contagion and predation must be preached.

Snow White

 

Fear and loathing

Anyone born during the 1960's or before would have had a much greater propensity towards self loathing and would have done their best to ignore their dysphoria particularly if they were misaligned with sexual orientation. 

Therefore woman-loving transgender people would have shown up to clinics as a last resort instead of as first instinct. This was less so the case for someone who was attracted to men (androphilics). 

Self loathing would have been encouraged through the messaging received even within one's own family where a father would have desired a son who didn't cry and didn't cross his legs after he sat down. 

The gender critical movement didn't need to try as hard in the 1980's and beyond and even had eager transitioners like Anne Lawrence agreeing with them. Fast forward to today and their targets are far less likely to put themselves down and surrender.

Mindset

I've noticed that when people happen to look at you they search for reassurance that you're calm and self-assured; in fact it's the only thing they look for. 

I can cross paths with a group of teenage girls and they will completely ignore me. If I happen to catch the eye of one them I will smile and they will smile back sweetly. 

It doesn't matter whether they doubt your gender identity or not because transgender people are no longer a rare sighting for anyone in 2025. 

I'm in public transit every day often during morning rush hour and the main thing that has progressed greatly over the last decade wasn't my makeup skills or clothing savvy (which have only slightly been tweaked); overwhelmingly it has been the mindset.

I am almost to the point where transgender youth is now.

Almost.

Google

YouTube now has plenty of content about the rising cost of groceries in the US. Tariffs are starting to hit and, people already struggling to keep up, are going to have to think about skipping a meal or changing their eating habits. This is so Trump can pay for the tax cuts for the richest Americans. 

Things in the country are upside down with the concept of the American dream officially over. 

If you like bananas, avocados, coffee and anything else not grown or produced on American soil, those prices are going up. With tariffs also on softwood lumber, steel and aluminum coming from Canada the cost of toilet paper and packaging (which uses aluminum for example) will also be going up. 

"I love that big beautiful word tariffs" said the buffoonish Trump during his campaign to adoring crowds in his rallies. Whether he understood the concept himself or was lying is at this juncture unimportant because his brain is toast. He also loves the word "groceries" as if he invented it himself.

I don't imagine too many in the crowd with the slightest doubt went home after the rallies and Googled "tariffs".

Who knows, maybe they have by now.

Anchor

The older we get the more mentally free we feel but the caveat is we need to find a new anchor point. Once unmoored from the previous position we held we can drift until that the new haven is found. 

From birth our lives were lived with rules we adhered to. Regardless of whether they served us positively or not at least there were predictable guardrails in place which, if nothing else, removed uncertainty. 

Feeling like sheep can be at once comforting and deeply depressing. You can be assuaged by the company or distressed by the lack of freedom to stray from the flock. 

Once you have analyzed your life and decided that many rules didn't suit you, there is a personal reinvention required which should be more reliant on your authenticity.

AI will get better

The video below is clearly AI but one day it won't be so obvious as this particular one is.

Recently Rachel Maddow herself talked about the amount of AI using her voice and image which MSNBC tracks and debunks as much as they can.

No going back now...

Going our own way

It took me a long time to figure myself out. 

"Crossdresser" subculture felt somehow immature and sometimes overtly sexual and secretive and so I didn't belong there. Similarly binary transsexuals had their own reality which meant I had to find myself on my own outside of these groupings. 

In doing my own homework I felt I needed to stick to trying to understand what my dysphoria was trying to tell me and where it was sourced. 

As far as I remember I have always had it so it wasn't a choice. When my son asked me recently about what would happen if tomorrow all gender norms disappeared suddenly (an excellent question) I told him that the gender variance community would split up roughly into choice versus no choice. In other words, people who embraced variance as rebellion or personal preference versus those born a set of criteria that forced them into finding a solution for their dysphoric feelings. 

Over my life I got to know the archetypes involved whether personally or through internet exploration and got to understand that it was more complex than putting people into sub-groupings. 

Existing outside of groups can sometimes feel awkward but for me became mandatory if I was going to try and maintain an objective viewpoint. Yes, you don't have "my people" to rely on as much so you focus on the idea of a global village and the variability of humans as a whole. 

One of the problems for older transgender people is that their programming was so severe that they couldn't find comfortable points of reference to grab onto and so climbing on to the same lifeboat as someone close enough to you was better than being alone. 

I held the opposite view as someone who for the longest time saw my situation as needing a cure. It wasn't until I started to see I didn't need repairing that I was able to find a comfort zone outside of a subgroup and find my own identity. 

I thus began to think more in terms of a global mosaic of people rather than transgender community even as I don't for a moment knock the need for the latter's existence.

Blockage

Hiding who we are and living in secrecy creates mental blockages. How do I know? I lived it from the age of 4.

Clear the brain palette and get on with life. If people don't accept you, the problem isn't yours.

Just another day

After making a deal with the EU (not yet on paper) suddenly Trump hits Switzerland with a 39% tariff announced via social media. The fact that this lunacy has been normalized is the problem. 

To get even with another country of 9 million people, Trump wants to charge his own population 39% more because this smaller country buys less from a larger country? This is how idiots deal with trade imbalances. 

Europe would do well to just leave deals with a madman behind and make arrangements with other nations while America learns its lesson for having elected him not once but twice.

Top 10

In no particular order, here are my top 10 must-have wardrobe staples I cannot live without: 

Comfortable black pumps

Ballet flats

Sneakers

Skinny jeans

Solid color T-shirts

Cardigan

Backpack purse

Sweater dress

Rain boots

Comfortable skirt with pockets

And so it goes

 

Cod liver oil

Trumpism is going to end up being like cod liver oil for American democracy. It has woken up most to the fact that their country is slipping away into an authoritarian empire where people are picked up off the streets and sent to gulags. 

I can sense that the public is fed up with neoliberal policies which have brought the country here. A corrupt supreme court (which needs term limits), right wing think tanks, fringe religion and FOX News have only amplified the problem. 

The hardest hit will be the poorest citizen as cuts to Medicare services plus tariffs shock them into the realization that they were duped. If the democratic party does not have a genuine conversion into true populism which helps those people, then all hope is lost. 

Mamdani winning New York city's mayoral race despite the Democratic party establishment pushback will be a key barometer. That and the effectiveness of Texas democrats in pushing back against GOP redistricting attempts.

Pencils down

After decades of keeping up appearances, aging can finally bring us the freedom to let our guard down. The filter we once employed is jettisoned in favor of a more honest approach which still needs to be tempered with polite restraint. 

We begin to say no to invitations without guilt because we no longer fear the judgement of others. Hopefully, the most authentic version of ourselves emerges and stays for the remainder of our lives. 

What other people believe or do concerns us less and fighting against ignorance becomes less necessary if it means perturbing our peace of mind which becomes a priority.

Retirement has brought me the best mindset of my life but it has taken time to adjust to it. The brain was used to running and delivering on obligation which is no longer required and having so much freedom can feel disorienting at first until it doesn't.

You learn to look after yourself properly because you are the only one who can.

Clocked

When I was younger, slimmer and prettier I'm fairly sure I got clocked quite a bit because I wasn't confident and I think it showed. Even if people didn't detect I was a young male in women's clothes they might have thought: 

"What's wrong with her?" 

Years later as I started making friends as Joanna I was very surprised that people didn't know and waited for the question so I could reveal my secret. It never came.

It took me a long time to realize that I was my biggest enemy and that people will believe who you show them you are. 

The caveat? You need to believe it yourself.

                            Age 40

FAFO

A lot of people still don't comprehend how tariffs work and find out the hard way when they realize even things manufactured in the US still use parts and raw materials subject to tariffs.

A Google search of how tariffs work would have woken them up a lot sooner. Not to mention that trusting a businessman who has had so many bankruptcies should have set off some basic alarm bells...

Capacity

While I am happy and calm like I have never been before, I also need to be careful. If need be I can have a hair trigger temper and a nasty mouth. 

If you bother me in public I will put you in your place in a heartbeat. 

I tell transgender people to develop a strong spine but overdoing it isn't good. Like everything else in life there is balance. 

I have no fear of death but it doesn't mean I am actively searching for it. That being said, people will not step on my toes and they can tell I have the capacity to defend my territory.

To most people however, I am like a pussycat :)

Umbrellas are for rain

If an umbrella becomes too wide you might as well say you are covering a slice of humanity and leave it at that. It seemed to make more sense as we were first letting go of gender binary restrictions, but as it got increasingly expansive the transgender umbrella just became gender variance as a whole which is multi-faceted and where motivations vary. 

Some people only cosplay at Comicon, some dress up like Lolitas, some only do photoshoots or go to fetish night events, some dress up at home or perhaps only do drag on stage. 

At the other end you have various states of transition from social to medical and so we are confused about where to draw the line on this umbrella and who fails to be covered by it. 

Imagine how much more the general public is confounded and I cannot count how many times I have had to do an abbreviated Coles Notes summary of gender variance as a whole for people unaware of the subtleties.

But if we are concerned about umbrellas we are missing the point because we just need to worry about ourselves and our quality of life. In other words, the less you focus on everyone else, the better. 

I watch transition and detransition content to get a pulse of where people are these days and while I greatly applaud the freedom I didn't have I also see much fear, confusion and trepidation regarding what to do. People want guidance, firm definitions and shopping lists where no solid concrete footings exist. Instead, it is our internal work which will provide unique solutions.

Harry Benjamin was first to rightly categorize male to female gender variance and recognize its spectrum like qualities but then this was during a time before we opened up the playing field and sex and gender were contained ostensibly within two solid monoliths.

Looseness

The interesting thing about authenticity is that the more we think we need to work on it, the further away we get. Authenticity tends to be more nested in looseness and spontaneity than rigorous planning and overworking. 

A painter and art teacher I sometimes watch on YouTube tells her students to make a copy of a John Singer Sargeant work which turns our fairly well but then when they paint their own originals they go back to a stiff and perfectionist style which chokes the finished work. They have lost Sargeant's loose brushstroke mastery which inspired them in the first place but which came from the artist's soul. 

Many of us use copying in the place of originality to make our way through the world when what our psyche needs are the inspiration which comes from within and feeds our uniqueness. It is why pack mentality suits but also limits and hinders us.

Yesterday I was speaking with my aunt in Madrid (my mother's younger sister) and she reminded me that when I was about four I would dance in a little dress and find joy in it but over the years it was taken away from me through a societal indoctrination which was also fed into unwittingly by my mother. 

My aunt is greatly accepting of me at age 79 (she calls me Joanna) and tells me Madrid is replete with gender variance which does not surprise me in the least.

As I go back to oil painting I am applying that same looseness and joy to everything I do. You dance as if no one is watching because they aren't but if they do who the fuck cares.

Song for shattered lovers

 

Lover girl

Who doesn't like bossa nova...

To begin anew

Democracies only work when political parties are prepared to lose. In other words, the principle of free and fair elections overrides the agenda and philosophy of each party. 

In the US this is broken beyond repair. 

You have a dogmatic GOP regime so hell bent to transform the country that it will lie and cheat to accomplish its goals. It is where the downfall will come. 

I don't believe that this is now fixable which is why the death spiral is firmly in place and will end only when rock bottom has been hit. 

When you see your opposition as a mortal enemy there is no way to allow them an inch and conceding points to them is akin to admitting you are wrong in your approach. 

The GOP doesn't have an altruistic agenda but instead want to force US society in a direction which isn't helping the common greater good. To accomplish this you need to confuse and obfuscate to get your way through cultural turmoil which distracts because your platform is toxic. Thus, authoritarianism is the only way.

The only question which remains for me is not whether the empire crumbles but when it will happen such that a rebuild can begin in earnest.

Shunned

I would argue that authenticity should be public. For if we are being genuine then we should be both proud and open about it. 

It does not matter where your authenticity is sourced or what form it takes but to liberate the psyche fully we must embrace it at the risk of being shunned. 

However, if we are shunned due to our authenticity, we should question what value those who shun us bring.

Ashley

Ashley is the fiancee of one of my nephews. They live in Toronto and I knew she was a nurse but wasn't aware that she worked in a gender affirming clinic where they perform cosmetic surgeries excluding genital procedures. This includes facial procedures, breast augmentation and breast removal for their patients. 

We spoke for a while between the wedding and reception and unsurprisingly she confirmed that transgender youth show up there with far less trauma than older people. Typically those under 40 come with less baggage. 

This is the kind of clinic that didn't exist when I was younger. Only hospital gender clinics with gatekeeping for transsexuals wanting to transition were the norm.

Worth it

Going to this wedding was absolutely the right call. Everyone was great with me including the person I was most concerned about. The entire time I didn't get so much as a second look and there must have been over 200 people there. 

Danielle the bride gave me a hug and with a very earnest expression said "im so glad you're here. You belong here and by coming you are saying this is who I am" 

I think that many people could not tell I am transgender but if they did it wouldn't matter as I am well past the point in my life of needing to worry about it.  The proof is that the interactions I had were wonderful. 

As I was leaving, my sister told me that my brother's wife had made a fuss about me coming as my authentic self. She is the kind of limited religious person who has trouble with subtle issues that don't fit her black and white world view. However my sister and brother in law's "what would Jesus do" intervention seemed to have worked as she sat next to me at the reception and we interacted very well. If she was pretending then so be it as people's opinions don't concern me. 

Others don't get to choose who we are. 

That's up to us.

Richie

I stopped at Sephora and Richie came up to help me. She was so sweet and my transgender radar went off but it took effort to detect that she indeed was. She is a pretty, petite and bubbly Philippina who I suspect has been on HRT for quite a while. Only the voice gave me a hint. 

I tell her I need a new lipstick as I am going to a wedding later and she's on the job. We chat and she tells me her mother is about my age and not yet retired. I ended up showing her my dress pic and got the thumbs up. I left with her lip color choice in hand.

She was so glad to have overlapped with me and I felt the same. I so love the confidence and the openness of transgender youth and I know they get tons of support at Sephora.

Undiagnosed

My generation didn't get diagnosed with much nor did we take medication. We mostly grinned and beared because our parents were made of sturdy stuff. They told us to play outside and come back for dinner. 

As a result there were cases of autism, chronic depression, anxiety, gender dysphoria, etc which went largely undiagnosed. We used coping mechanisms to get by instead. 

I met a friend recently who thought he was likely on the spectrum but at almost 63 he had never seen a doctor about it. He figured this was the way he was and went about his life by adjusting to it. 

My son was diagnosed at age 22 and was shown to be the classic high functioning autistic person. Higher intelligence but with some issues involving emotional demonstration and regulation leading to periods of excess anxiety. It is as if the brain takes from one area and gives to the other. In high school people just thought he was always chill. 

Everyone has something and at least today we tend to catch things earlier. The risk that a misdiagnosis leads to slightly wrong medication which is why my son is coming off his as per the latest recommendation. 

Autistic people need mostly exposure therapy instead of being drugged.

Un samedi matin

 

The dress

I wasn't going to post a picture of the dress I am wearing today at the wedding. The photo below was just a test for me to make sure the length and fit were right. Besides, my blog is about everything else besides clothes. 

What used to be a holy grail when I was a child no longer has the mythic proportions in my head. 

I want to always be understated and disappear into the crowd. So I think: how do I show a sense of celebration of the occasion without going overboard and since I am already tall I don't need to advertise my presence. The jewelery I add will also take on a decidedly subtle tone. 

The dress represents an idea and is not a thing on its own. It is a testament to how far I have come in owning my identity as a transgender person who needs to live honestly. The fact that it is purchased in a thrift store drives that message home even more.

Nothing more; nothing less.

Statistics

Trump just fired the labor statistics commissioner for the cardinal sin of showing actual numbers which reveal very low job gains.

You cannot make this stuff up and is the price of electing a complete imbecile as your president. A high school student would be a massive improvement at this point if for no other reason that they would take guidance from more informed advisors

Don't ask me to explain how people who vote can be such absolute morons as I have no answer for you.