Connection

Fear of vulnerability is almost universal and if we have been wounded before, it will be even harder for us. 

However, having the capacity to be vulnerable is the only way to make deep and meaningful connections. 

Being your true self warts and all in front of another person requires courage. We expose our fragility and they do the same building a bond which transcends our sense of individuality 

It is a thing painfully rare to possess. 

I have understood this over my lifetime as I have reflected on the way I connected with people. I had not let them in completely but instead focused on fulfilling a designated role I didn't allow myself to fail at. 

That leaves less room for vulnerability. 

Many relationships function at a level that avoids people being genuine and true to themselves because that requires self-knowledge and more importantly love of self. 

We need to get to the core of the person that exists below the surface; under the hurts and the programming received during the formative years. 

No easy task.

The simple habit

 

Quiet

Retirement requires an entire remapping of our psyche. We have spent decades working under a familiar model which may have been far from perfect but became reliable. Suddenly that disappears and forces a reflection on meaning and purpose. 

I tell people it isn't about hobbies or keeping busy. Quite the opposite; it is about being able to live more deftly within the necessary quiet space and comprehend yourself more fully. 

If we cannot live with the quiet it is because we are escaping something. 

We are closer to our mortality and that should be enough incentive.

Hair today

At age 63 I am letting my hair grow out so I can, after decades, finally ditch the use of wigs. Right now it's an experiment because with age comes thinning and patchy areas but I am cautiously optimistic. 

I am not looking for long hair but rather a short feminine style that is low maintenance. 

By the end of this year I hope to have something that works and then decide whether to colour or leave it with its natural progression into increasing gray. 

Fingers crossed.

Wildcard

The wildcard on the identity and expression axis is expression. You can randomly choose 100 men and 100 women and each will dress, gesture and behave differently. 

However, the vast majority will be monolithic in their response regarding their gender identity. 

Therefore the first question to answer is "who you are you?" followed by "how do I express that identity?" 

Reversing that sequence makes much less sense since expression doesn't govern identity. In other words, identity is the fixed portion and expression is the variable. 

Thus identity must somehow be decided via the tandem of nature and nurture. These forces have a say in how a person develops an innate sense of self which will include gender identity and sexual orientation; in theory, both immune from attempts at conversion therapy. 

For this to happen both gender identity and sexual orientation must contain elements of biological predisposition which means that neither can entirely be a product of social construct. 

Only expression is the true social construct since people can wear or behave as they desire while their core identity remains unchangeable.

Copium

There are YouTube videos of local news stations for US border states featuring stories on the drastic drop in crossings into their region by Canadians. 

The segments cite political tensions, exchange rate (which is the same as during the Biden term) and generally rising costs as reasons for the decrease in visitors. The comment sections are full of statements from Canadians such as this one: 

"It's your idiot president threatening our sovereignty geniuses!" 

The frustration is palpable and I feel bad for US citizens and businesses I visited over the years who didn't ask for this. 

However, I think this is the necessary evil which will be required to reset things in the US. 

It will need to get worse before you can properly rebuild.

A full face

Gender variant youth don't require secret lives. This means that the spectrum which has always existed between expression and identity is for them an open book. 

Whether they transition or not simply depends on the existence and intensity of their dysphoria.

They avoid what could have been years of therapy down the road plus provide transparency to potential partners right from the outset. 

Self-acceptance doesnt need to be delayed and their variance matures along with them in a healthy way rather than remain stunted. Thus, gender variance now has a full face in society where its various shades are exhibited without people even bothering to notice. 

Two mornings ago on a busy metro platform I briefly locked eyes with a tall and serene GenZ who seemed to perfectly straddle the line between male and female.

Perhaps they were in the process of transition or not (their own long hair nicely framed their face) however it didn't matter. 

Either way, no one cared.

Looking around

Too much focus on the self can be unhealthy; just as much as not enough can be. 

We want to find a balance between being an asset to others while not abandoning our own psyche; probably one of the most difficult things to do in this life. 

Focusing too much on the self can lead to narcissism where that excess energy would be best served in being of service to others. When we have a personal riddle to solve we can turn it into an endless cyclone of energy which prevents us from looking outwards at the bigger picture. 

I feel that getting rid of much of our self-conciousness is a big part of the answer. We stop dissecting how people perceive us and are then more free to calmly look around.

A coming reversal

We may be slowly returning to an era where expertise begins to be important again. Platforms where people talk out of their rear ends are beginning to lose power as Trumpism begins to sunset. 

For years we have been subjected to a type of "confident stupidity" where things are said with enough chutzpah to convince people who aren't particularly adept at critical thinking. 

We have more information at our fingertips than at any point in human history which is regrettably not a cure for willful ignorance. 

When I was younger we looked things up in text books written by people who understood the subject matter but we somehow ended up collecting and trusting information from idiots on Facebook.

Stupid leaders weren't far behind.

Without a net

When we transition we are operating without a net; without training wheels if you will. 

The analogy is that we are left more free but also potentially more insecure. We have removed constraints which were at once both comforting and restricting 

If we are older this will feel even more uncomfortable for a time because we have been accustomed to abiding by gender rules since our birth; rules that we dare not contravene until we are older. 

Living part time is not at all the same because I lived it. I hadn't planned to get this far but once here it feels entirely correct. The problem is getting rid of gender muscle memory which was engrained to the point where nothing else is comparable other than perhaps having being in a cult for decades.

It can at times feel disorienting and scary while other times provide a sense of rightness that can be unparalleled.

It just proves that we are human and there is no perfect cure for self-doubt.

Target

Online progressive Hasan Piker is being targeted by the Trump regime because he went to Cuba to provide assistance and shine a light on the American sanctions and their impact on the locals. 

He is being made an example by focusing on the fact he may or may have stayed at a hotel which was off limits to US citizens. 

This is of course a ruse to intimidate him. 

Piker and other progressives have been a thorn in the side of a criminal administration hell bent on enriching themselves plus take a blow torch to American democratic norms. 

Nothing like a little harassment which will only end up backfiring spectacularly as the midterms approach. 

Piker has a very large mostly young audience which will only become increasingly hostile to what has become a crime syndicate in need of disbanding and prosecuting in what's left of the legal system.

Expectations

The more we become untethered from societal obligation, the more expectations for our lives should come from within ourselves. 

These demands should be ideally rooted in our moral values, public comportment, attachment style, etc ;things connected to our internals rather than the physical traits that the world sees. 

We draw strength and focus on what makes us better and healthier individuals rather than chasing the will of a fickle society. 

We see how the world operates in its chaos and confusion and choose instead to focus energy on the things we can control within ourselves.

Air out of a tire

Repressed anger in older transgender people is very common and is frequently a complex mix of gender dysphoria, the stress of being a minority, grief over lost time and inadequate levels of acceptance from friends and family. 

The lack of support and resources over decades can build to a crescendo and once major life distractions are removed there is no way to avoid fully facing it. 

I've had to distill my frustration very carefully over years especially as I entered retirement. It's like slowly letting air out of a tire. 

You get by for years taking the euphoria where you can get it and suppressing dysphoria through immersion into everyday life. 

However, one day you finally realize that there is nowhere to run or hide from it.

Licking our wounds

We are allowed to lick our wounds once in a while and even feel a little sorry for ourselves. It's a good way to relieve the pressure. 

We may even feel justified especially if we are someone who tends to be a problem solver for others. We may not feel we get much in return and thus pat our own shoulder as substitute. 

Life brings enough challenges and when they sometimes converge all at once, we can take solace in being our own friendly ear. 

This takes practice since our penchant for self-criticism is our natural baseline as humans. 

However, we are our own best resource and it makes sense that this include some tender loving care for a human being who isn't perfect but is trying to do their best.

Le fil conducteur

After some months of break and then starting to blog again, my traffic is currently at an all-time high. I haven't changed anything other than make my writing even more expansive than it's ever been. 

I write to understand and deconstruct things. I want to analyze concepts and ideas by removing the mythology around them to whittle them down to their essential core. 

I want to find "le fil conducteur" as we say in French; the basic wiring which provides the electricity. 

Human beings are often about simplying complicated topics so they can move on from them. Public policy is then often written without a full comprehension of the intricacies involved. 

Sadly, more often than not, people have agendas.

Transgender issues have been a perfect lightning rod for reductionist thinking from all sides. Battle lines were drawn with convenient memes and titles to match however the truth is always far more complex and nuanced than our world desires. 

This type of approach has been applied to every other subject matter which impacts human affairs. We can't be bothered with nuance and subtlety because it's far too pesky.

We want to simplify what defies simplification so we can move on.

Femininity, masculinity and dysphoria

I am increasingly of the opinion that gender dysphoria acts and should be considered, if not entirely, then mostly independent from the degree of masculinity or femininity that people exhibit. 

This would help to explain why most masculine women and feminine men can feel entirely comfortable with birth sex and operate in the world without the dissonance of dysphoria. 

Some gender variant people even blend in much better than some transitioners and yet have no problem sticking to expression. The latter however, must act in some form to deal with an incongruence to quiet a storm in their heads. 

Some transitioners even end up living in jeans, T-shirts and sneakers (like many genetic women) proving that increasing their outward feminine expression is not their primary goal. 

Instead it is about achieving harmony between mind and body giving credence to the concept of dysphoria as innate birth condition which, as Harry Benjamin found over his career, tends to operate on a spectrum. 

Feminine and masculine energy can and should be much more relegated to the sphere of expression.

One more arrow

 

Diagnosis

Sometimes people diagnose themselves with ADHD, autism or some other issue. They recognize patterns after watching online content from others and sell themselves a schema which may or may not be true. 

Once that is set in the brain it can influence much about self-perception. 

My friend Sylvie told me about someone who is convinced of her problem without a diagnosis. She now realizes she wasted years without understanding the self and suffered the consequences. 

Never mind that she surmounted them somehow. 

The problem with scripts is that they can become enshrined in unavoidable fate going forward. We have determined that this revelation dictates a path forward or conversely constitutes a crutch. 

"Poor me I have a disorder" well, maybe.

This is where comparison and labeling can fail us because each person is unique. There isn't one solution, one drug, one magic bullet which can save the day. 

Our diagnosis can become a trap instead of something we compensate for and which doesn't entirely define us.

Failed premise

The only tool we humans possess to understand and process our universe and everything in it, is our mind. That's a pity because it's a pretty primitive tool. 

Our coordinate system is an organ the size of a melon which tries to comprehend time and space and why we would do well to acknowledge we are stuck. 

Perspective is everything and if our starting point is to use hubris to draw conclusions we have a problem. The best approach is to understand our limitations and live comfortably with an uncertainty which will always remain because we aren't fully equipped for the task. 

We are, for the most part, worker ants busying ourselves with trivial matters.

To make matters worse conservatives pontificate within their black and white views. They fail to understand the basic premise that they are starting with a flawed tool which is providing them with a false sense of security.

If nothing else, at least the rest of us know better.

Remedy

The last bit of work for me is to almost fully disarm. I can have a wicked temper and I will cut you down if you perturb me. 

The lowering of the temperature began years before retirement and continues to this day but I still have an axe to grind which needs dulling down. 

If you are afraid of people you are done for because society of full of deeply stupid and disturbed individuals. If you let them get to you they will destroy your internal peace. 

However there is a balance between self-protection and being kind that isn't always obvious. You need to have a peaceful baseline with a weapon at the ready.

If you were different in my generation you shut up and tolerated until you became a potential explosion. My venom built over time until there was plenty to spare which is why I work on my kindness towards strangers as remedy. 

Thus I walk softly and carry a big stick just in case.

Pretty much mandatory for an out transgender person.

A tried and true formula

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am me"

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

It's hardly a novelty these days.

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

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

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

They have cleansed their palette of that.

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

They might just say to you "I am me so run along".

Good for them.

Once the dust settles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pragmatism

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

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

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

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

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

Bedrock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zizek

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

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

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

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

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

Kudos to Zizek's patience I suppose?

It will have to do

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

"Yes I like that" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I guess it will have to do.

Dysphoria and attraction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exposed

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

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

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

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

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

Life's a long song

 

Truscum vs Tucute

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

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

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

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

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

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

A label isn't a way forward and in this instance its a rather fluid one at that.

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

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

Sign of the times

I took the photo below in my quiet residential neighborhood and it is a sign of the times. The plastered flyer simply says in French:

"revolution against the billionaires" 

It is concise and to the point and features Luigi Mangione as symbolic patron saint of a cause of little man against the system. 

Yes, he murdered someone which is not the right way. 

We are without doubt headed for that critical moment in history where the injustice must be dealt with before we can make a new world; a new era. 

It's coming.

Movie plot

When I watch content from older transgender people it's as if they are telling my life story; it is so thematically linked as to be eery. 

The early understanding that something was off, childhood raids of our mother's closet, years of repression and self-rejection followed finally by acceptance well into adulthood after having tried everything. 

The little details vary but the overarching plot is almost identical. 

The last one I saw was by someone of my age who only found authenticity once their spouse had regrettably died. It was far from a welcome occurrence which then became a doorway to, in this case, a medical transition beginning just after age 60. 

It's a similar movie plot.

First Day

 

Control

Life resists that we attempt to exert our control upon it. We can try to order things as much as possible only to be even more shocked and dismayed when we are regularly thrown curve balls. 

The serenity prayer of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr asks that we be endowed with the following gift: 

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference." 

This should be seen as the pinnacle of human wisdom and regretably I have never known of anyone who has achieved it. Some people I have known have come closer than others. 

Surrendering the ego is certainly part of the secret which allows humility to more take its place. It becomes easier to relate to the experience of someone else and we stop judging them. 

Envy also falls away since we come to understand that underneath the public personna of every human is someone suffering the same existential angst. 

This balance point isn't about lying on the ground and waiting for a building to fall on us. It is instead about moving forward in quiet and confident resolve knowing that our fate doesn't belong to us. We just trust that our impetus to do good will be its own reward. 

We count on there being a purpose to all things that we may not fully understand and find joy in the openness of being surprised. 

We can relinquish control with confidence and wait for the universe to find us in our serenity.

Baked in

Increasing our IQ points doesn't make us nicer or better people. If anything it can potentially make us more complicated and prone to over analysis. 

Analysis paralysis. 

Humans can create narratives for their lives and sometimes stop there which can be both good and bad. 

Some skip the headache of asking the deep questions but then potentially suffer more consequences through the lack of introspection. 

On the other you have people who delve into nook and crannies of issues. They think before they leap and often more readily avoid major missteps but then suffer through overthinking the possible outcomes. 

In other words, there is no perfect under any circumstance because our imperfection is naturally baked in. 

Perhaps the optimum is to exist somewhere in between and know when to stop just at the right spot every time.

Good luck with that.

"Let them eat cake"

Even if Marie Antoinette never actually said "let them eat cake", the message from the French aristocracy was still about the peasants making due for themselves somehow. 

Today we are facing our own global crisis where wealth inequality has become so grotesquely obscene that FIFA is selling a $33,000 top ticket for people who fly in to matches on their own plane. 

"Eat the rich" slogans are found plastered in various places and recently MET gala attendees were met with slurs by angry New York protesters telling them to f'ing pay their fair share. 

Globalization and Neoliberal policies got us here and the unbalance is going to go off like a bomb. As soon as the more ardent, dimwitted and illiterate voters wake up from Trumpism there will be a reckoning there which hasn't been seen since the great depression. 

We got rid of jobs by the millions due to automation and efficiency objectives that now have more people than ever panicking about how they can afford to live day to day. 

The repair for this should be obvious if the world ran on the common sense principles of fairness and intelligence. Instead it runs much more liberally on greed and stupidity than is good for our health. 

The US will pay the price first (inflation is outpacing wage increases) followed by nations who toy with excess just a little less.

Therapy

Whether or not you need gender therapy as a transgender person depends on many factors. 

How old you are when your egg cracks certainly plays a huge part. In addition there will be aspects regarding your personality and family history that could greatly impact your psychology and ultimately decision making. 

Not everyone undergoes a full medical transition which is the goal of a minority of transgender people. However there are other partial forms of transition such as social which may still benefit from psychotherapy. This is to remove mental road blocks or simply help to clarify the steps one needs to take and place them in an organized sequence.

Knowing the difference between need and want can often be the biggest hurdle since the reality of decisions made haven't always been weighed properly. We may come to a crossroad and then imagine the steps without considering their full impact. 

At its worst, gender dysohoria can be a beast with every transgender person suffering it at different levels of intensity as well as types. Therefore there won't be one blanket approach to grappling with it. The stronger it is, the more it will be a good idea to seek professional help. 

Even social transition can be a scary proposition when one considers all of the variables involved. 

In the end I think that therapy is recommended for transgender people at any age. Youth need the guidance because they lack maturity and older people need help with self-acceptance, trauma, internalized transphobia and planning issues related to the logistics of their lived history. 

Being transgender is hard enough and the support of an experienced gender therapist can only have us answering highly pertinent questions before we embark on a particular path.

You don't need to go into all the crevices of the avaliable science, but at least understand the self more fully to determine how you need to live.

The Shadow

According to Carl Jung, the shadow represents the traits, impulses, and desires deemed socially unacceptable or even immoral. It is what lies suppressed underneath the ego. 

He proposes that we perceive our own shadow traits in others which can then lead to contempt towards them. It is not our evil side, but instead a receptacle for repressed creativity, desires or unfulfilled potential. 

Since our social conditioning can dictate which parts of the self are acceptable, the formation of shadow tends to have its origins there. This is when we first learn to suppress instinct.

Jung proposed that to become whole we must face and ultimately integrate the positive aspects contained within the shadow.

Ignoring it risks allowing it to grow larger and having exert its will via our unconscious mind.

My work on the shadow primarily involved dealing with vestiges of repressed rage after many years of living life in absence of full authenticity. It is my last piece of cleanup on the psyche.

Everyone has their own shadow.

They Come and Go

On the path of life we pick up people along the way and then we sometimes let them go. 

This is almost inevitable as we travel distances and take on new challenges. We grow apart not only geographically but in mindset such that the created bridge is no longer one we cross. 

I sometimes think about how those overlaps have helped forge who I am; how their input influenced me and how my own energy left a mark on others. 

Those people may have taken us outside our comfort zone and served as lesson for the future. We retain what we admire in them and reject the things we are no longer able to accept. Maybe we didn't like ourselves when we were with them. 

We mourn their loss sometimes and then release each other to the winds. 

No experience in life is wasted which is the moral of the story. Those people helped convince us that ultimately we are our own best resource. 

We confirmed that no one can help us more than ourselves.

God's sense of irony

The only other transgender person at my mother's birthday party was her 15 year old boyish-looking great grandchild Frannie (known to friends as Frankie). We eventually managed to chat through the cacophony of the cavernous restaurant during which he told me of his future plans to transition to male. 

He understands that he is young wanting to wisely do things through the guidance of an expert gender clinic like the McGill University hospital program which first saw me in 2007. 

His mother is not very accepting and later waved away my polite input as we disbanded for the night. Her child has been showing persistent gender non conformance since before puberty and his conviction as he spoke to me showed me he is not just playfully toying with expression. 

If my generation used denial, avoidance, coping mechanisms and compromise to get by, Frankie faces many less roadblocks despite the current backlash by certain governments which includes the one to the south of me. 

Thankfully, in Canada we are as accepting as they come particularly in Quebec where mavericks of every stripe have thrived under the bohemian influence of French European culture. (we won't talk about our mirror image opposite Alberta). 

How ironic then that the initially least accepting faction of my family (my brother's large clan) got the lion share of LGBTQ contingent. Two sons fully out as gay, one hesitant to come out and one transgender grandchild. 

If that isn't God's sense of humor and poetic justice, I don't know what is.

Trouble

America is currently in deep trouble. 

With the latest Supreme Court decision regarding redistricting of electoral maps, the GOP will now take a scythe to all the states they control and eliminate as many democratic seats as possible. 

This is because they have no interest in democracy but instead hold a drastically different vision of the country; one which involves pushing back the tide of what they see as an invasion of cultural progress they despise. 

This battle is for the soul of the country and not what is best for what is increasingly a marginalized electorate that is losing the affordability crisis. 

As the empire crumbles in on itself you will see more desperation from people who feel they have nothing to lose. The more affluent will consider leaving for safer places while those who cannot may begin to enact vengeance on a country they don't feel cares about them. 

The Trump crime family has enriched itself immeasurably during their hold on power which is a first in American history and a sign that things have devolved to a point the founders would have dreaded to their core.

Add to that the isolationist economic policies, and you have a situation where the US will be left out of global alliances which aim to stabilize economies and return some levels of prosperity to people struggling.

As the world remakes itself for the next global era, America risks disarray by falling prey to misguided cultural division and enriching an already fat cat upper class that doesn't believe in fair taxation.

In other words, they're in deep trouble.

Lacerations

Michel Courtemanche is 61 and a well known Quebecois comic. I watched his very frank interview during which he shared his personal battles with substance abuse, jealous rages and his eventual diagnosis with bipolar disorder. 

He states unequivocally that he now knows how to live and wants to be left alone. He has learned how to rely on the self and no longer seeks life company. 

This is something which today I comprehend viscerally. We get to a point where we understand ourselves too well and know how to meet our needs without compromise. 

Michel has been burned enough times by now to know what is good for him. 

Such admissions are rare because celebrity interviews can sometimes be superficial and bathe liberally in the saccharine. This hour-long discussion (en Francais) delved deep into the humanity of a comic we may have been tempted to think had it all. 

He had achieved fame and wealth at a young age but something inside was unsettled and needed mending. 

His life lessons resonated with me because no one fully escapes the lacerations that life provides. 

If we are lucky they can convert themselves into deep knowledge of the self.

Learning

When we get older we have already experienced many of the life ups and downs that are now permanently registered in the memory. We understand the consequences of decisions and can anticipate the pros and cons much in advance. 

It takes experience to learn how to live. 

As I watched my exuberant and large extended family last night, I thought about the victories and missteps some of them might make; the upcoming marriages, babies and newfound relationships that excite until they no longer do. 

My prize for the evening was that my son came which was a victory on his way back to a place he wants to be. We fall, we get back up and do it all over again because we must. 

It is the only way to learn.

Concensus

The reason that the dysphoria versus no dysphoria argument divides gender variant people is because the term "trans" is so elastic. It has become synonymous with gender variance as a whole which encompasses all manner of infringement on the old binary. 

Why does this matter? Well it shouldn't because it can become a rabbit hole which then risks you becoming obsessed with comparison. 

Only each person knows what they must do to live authentically and honestly except that authenticity doesn't come with pre-packaged instructions. When there are slightly varying definitions of what "trans" means it forces us into defending our territory and our legitimacy through some common concensus. 

The transmedicalism argument will never disappear as it appeals most to those with the most intense forms of gender dysphoria. They feel in their bones that their transition wasn't one of choice but instead one of absolute necessity. 

Conversely, others are less convinced about the concept of a "condition" and are more attracted to the idea of euphoria or "trans joy" if you will. The freedom to choose to express who one is.

There isn't right or wrong here but instead a viewpoint tethered to how influential this dilemma of identity has been for each of them. The child who knew early on that they were  different and never wavered is going to be more drawn to the idea that their identity wasn't nested in choice. 

I see much content on YouTube surrounding the question of "trans" legitimacy when instead there should be a concensus regarding simply letting people live as they choose.

Now there's a novel idea.

Oh well

I'm all bandaged up and healing on antibiotics, ready for my mother's 90th birthday dinner this evening. My sister is even flying in from Vancouver. 

Limited walking and open toe shoes for me for 2 to 3 weeks. 

Oh well :(

No lock

If we care what people think we've given away all our power. Suddenly their opinions govern how we live our lives which makes little sense. 

Life is short and as we progress within it we see patterns emerge which makes us want to escape. We are caught in a spider web and don't quite know how to detach.

Here is where being our worst enemy becomes our downfall until we finally realize that the door to our prison had no lock to begin with.

Strongman

The strong man formula is as old as civilization itself. Set up an infallible leader to control the narrative and hypnotize the population through a show of strength only to see the entire house of cards later collapse. 

True efficacy of the leader is much less important than the propaganda they spew.

The problem with this political tactic is that you create a cult of personality which surrounds the leader. It encourages a culture of fear where contradiction of the figure head brings potential violence to anyone who dares say a negative word. The hypnotized cult will come to your door in the middle of the night.

Dissent ostensibly then becomes a punishable offense. 

America ended up here by not addressing deep seated issues related to racism, economic inequality, foreign policy, etc. 

Most people in power surrounding Trump already realize they made a grave error but admitting it too loudly will only guarantee self destruction. Hence, they must defend the indefensible knowing they will likely go down with the ship. Better that than face the pitchforks of the populace I suppose. 

Rats like Tucker Carlson (an odious white nationalist grifter) have already smelled the trade winds and have disowned the emperor. The penalty for doing so isn't grave considering the poll numbers are in the basement and will only worsen. 

However, the ensuing damage will be generational which makes me feel bad for the victims who didn't ask or buy into it.

It's as old as time.

                           Idiot 

I hope she's happy

I wondered what became of Shania Twain's young drummer and so I did some research. 

Elijah had become Elia which I knew; a progression which took her from androgynous youth to clearly female presenting. Then suddenly she disappeared. 

I then came upon a GoFundMe page which was about collecting funds for her completion surgery and suddenly the mystery was solved. An anonymous benefactor had offered her the remaining needed funds and in 2022 she had the surgery at age 25. 

There were some entries from her about the relief and her lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria. She wrote about her battles with depression and anxiety and there was mention of a suicide attempt. 

I hope she's happy now.

Patient

Mark Carney wisely took his time and didn't panic. 

Now, as the US and Canada trade talks resume, that strategy will pay off because Americans are hopping mad about affordability. Not just the price of gas but the price of everything else. 

Turns out that having an economically illiterate idiot as your president isn't good for your country. Tariffs have been like tying an anvil to your neck and dropping anchor.

If Trump takes a hard line against Canada and increases tariffs on Canadian goods, that decision will be combed over with a microscope. Average Americans will blow a fuse and with good reason. 

The deals Carney made with other countries in the meantime bought him time and removed the pressure of needing a quick deal with the buffoonish American president. 

He's got a better hand because he played the patient game.

You've been warned

Mood control can be more challenging when we aren't as busy as we used to be. We have removed major life distractions and haven't fully replaced them. 

I warn people about retirement in that once the vacation mindset is over, there will be a period of instability where we seek to cement an identity outside of our previous existence. 

Of course this depends on what each person does for a living. However, regardless of whether it was passion or not, it likely occupied much space and distracted us away from full self discovery. 

For older transgender people this period risks being even more magnified as they may have left unresolved issues on the table because life got in the way. 

Thus for a time we will be more apt to oscillate emotionally until we reach a new baseline. 

Overthinkers, you've been warned.

The ego

Humility isn't about destroying the ego but about making it more subservient to our needs. 

Today more than ever, people will fight with a fervor fed by the courage of anonymity on social media platforms. This is because the ego cannot take a hit by admitting we might be wrong. We have liberalized knowledge with alternative facts to suit our needs. 

We say things with confidence as a substitute for understanding topics. 

Researching gender variance over the years taught me this very well. People will create scripts for themselves and lock them into place without too much questioning. This goes for some gender variant people as well as their haters. 

We can apply this phenomenon to almost any area of human affairs.

Truth becomes of less importance than carrying a simple narrative in our heads which serves our purpose. Either that or complete disinterest in digging further.

The earth is flat and that's all there is to it. Just make sure to say it with confidence.

Light

Being kind doesn't take much effort even if we assess that not everyone deserves it from us. 

Sometimes we see behaviour or body language that makes us recoil from someone but then we don't know what is going in inside their head. 

If we are in a good place there is no point in matching their energy and sometimes a smile will disarm what we have determined to be sourness. 

Life isn't easy but we can bring light into the dark crevices with our positive energy.

Tribal

We humans do things in reverse. We want to know who we are by checking off boxes to see if we belong. This is because we are social animals in search of a tribe. 

This is all well and good but there can be a dark side to this approach. If we seek identity through comparison we risk forcing ourselves into schemas that end up being antithetical to identity and individuality. 

In other words we could end up in a cult. 

At the highest levels, finding  commonality is obvious. We are humans with certain basic tenets which govern our existence. However the more we drill into the details the more difficult it becomes to shoehorn ourselves into neat tribal groupings. 

We do this not because it feels perfect but because not belonging feels infinitely more scary. It is the way humans have behaved for millennia 

As I have aged, the concept of being in a pack has appealed to me less and less. Therefore I stay at a higher level and remain in areas which unite us through our common humanity; the themes which elevate our best qualities.

After that, a personal identity can be found through our introspection rather than via seeing what someone else does.

Full maturity beckons.

Grievances

David Brooks says we live in an abnormal time and he is right.

The problem is that the structure we had built since the advent of the industrial revolution has crumbled. That world had spawned an entire ecosystem which had impacted every facet of life. 

You could argue that it peaked in the 1950's when a large middle class benefited from a system that ran like a well-oiled machine. Even people who worked in blue collar factories could raise families mainly on a single salary. 

There was a social order created which demanded expectation but also provided predictable safety. 

By the early 2000's the destruction was all but assured. The financial crisis of 2008 and COVID made sure to punctuate that the model we had known was over. Every aspect of life has been put into question and is being reimagined in a world of extreme wealth disparity. 

The tonic we need according to Brooks is a return to kindness, fairness and moral clarity. We took an off ramp towards individualism and never found our way back to trying to help each other. 

Social media became a breeding ground for toxic stupidity that we are now trying to cleanse from our collective consciousness. It turns out that stupid people are baked in whether we like it or not and they're not afraid to use it.

As Trumpism and the culture of perennial grievance fades away, we will need to find our way back to each other because we have little choice.

No magic fix

The reason that transitions can sometimes feel dissatisfying is because life in general can feel that way. 

We hit speed bumps constantly and may think that treating our dysphoria was going to solve everything else. 

Far from it. 

Living authentically doesn't fix everything in your life. It just helps you with an unresolved and important piece which was left unattended.

Grace

Ben Sasse is a former republican senator who at age 54 is dying of pancreatic cancer. It started in the pancreas but has spread to his entire body and is now at stage 4. He is receiving hospice type care with possibly not more than a few months to live. 

I watched an interview with him lately conducted by The New York Times and what struck me was his demeanor and composure. This man had come to terms with his mortality in an impressive way. 

There was undeniable peace and acceptance there which cannot be faked.

Sasse had been a moderate who had faced attack from both sides of the aisle. No doubt this makes him even more impressive since it shows conviction carries more weight with him than partisan allegiance. 

Unsurprisingly he wasn't MAGA.

He sat there answering questions with sometimes self-effacing humor; the bloodied blotches on his face the result of the harsh medication he takes to reduce the size of his tumors. 

We are offered grace and dignity in our most challenging life moments and if we choose to accept it, it can radiate from our very pores; bloodied or otherwise.

Santa Rosa

 

Miscalculation

Empires crumble largely by their own hand. They overextend themselves with a hubris fed from the fumes of their own self-satisfaction; their own exceptionalism. 

The American right wing placed its bets on a man who would help them end wokeism and return the country to some mythical Valhalla where segregated drinking fountains were the order of the day. 

It was a massive miscalculation. 

The Trump crime family will be looting the treasury on their way out the door and even likely avoid prosecution for their crimes. In their wake will be left millions of disenfranchised Americans whose lives will have been made much worse in the process. 

For much of the rest of the world America is now a pariah nation full of stupid people which is difficult to argue with. 77 million voted for a malevolent moron and almost 90 million couldn't be bothered to vote at all.

George Carlin used to joke about thinking of the stupidest person you know and then realize that half of humanity is even stupider than that.

I earnestly wish he had been completely wrong.

Gutting

The overturning of the Civil rights voting act of 1965 which was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson is a victory for the extreme right. 

The proof is that any minority voting districts in the south will immediately be redrawn. Such is the level of giddiness in the deep red parts of the US. 

The 6 to 3 decision led by the extremists on the supreme court is another massive blow that Trumpism and project 2025 will have dealt to a country already deeply in trouble and deeply divided. 

The impact on the November elections could be significant and yet at the same time public frustration boils as the affordability crisis continues to take victims.

White rage over having lost political power over decades, will only make things worse than they already are.

Not easy by a long shot

Trans rage is real and it can be fed through many sources of frustration. 

First there is gender dysphoria itself, then social and family rejection, followed closely by discrimination and violence and health care inadequacy. 

Internalized transphobia then adds another layer which can lead some people to the tipping point of suicidality. 

Recently I watched a documentary on Tubi about the drag performers of the mid 20th century. Teri Noel who medically transitioned long ago was seen being interviewed and when the topic of her decision came up her expression became emotional, a bit sullen and more pensive. 

She had ended up married to a man who never knew her past but you could tell her life had been far from easy despite blending in perfectly as a woman. 

Those pre-transition glory shots of hers as Terry Noel clad in feathers and boas concealed an internal struggle. Yes, she eventually ended up living largely in stealth but it still occupied a very big chunk of her psychology to make it all work. 

Not even close to being easy but then whose life is?

Binary brain

Conservatives think in simple binary terms.

There is black and white, good and evil and the greys between them are willed into non-existence to facilitate their world view. 

I can use conjecture by saying that keeping things clean and neat clears their palette of ambiguity. It eliminates the possible guilt of having labeled something incorrectly. The lack of nuance makes it easier to dismiss and discriminate. 

No need to complicate further.