Muscle memory

If you are transitioning later in life you will at times find the process quite rocky. You may have been hiding for years and suddenly you are left exposed to the opinions of others plus your original instincts as a child have been quashed by decades of persistent indoctrination. 

In a sense you are dropping a mask and adopting what feels like a new identity which really isn't. It is instead the permission slip to be authentic in a way you were never allowed to be. 

This process can be arduous but ultimately prove rewarding provided we don't give up. The focus should be exclusively on our psychology instead of the more mundane aspects of presentation which are, by comparison, almost meaningless. 

In other words, what we think of ourselves should take priority over what others do which requires elevating self esteem particularly if you vigorously suppressed and fought your dysphoria.

You are in a kind of battle with the person you very earnestly tried to be which isn't easy. The muscle memory wants to take you back but you resist because are tired of playing that game.

Little by little and one day at a time, you win more battles until you ultimately begin to win the war.

Practice makes perfect

Wanting to slap some people is almost a daily occurrence for me but I need to balance that energy against what I feel is a requirement for each of us to have patience and kindness. 

This becomes harder with age because the shine has slowly come off the apple when it comes to human beings. Our idealism has been burned off one incident at a time over our lifetime and we often end up not suffering fools gladly. 

The trick is to protect oneself while having empathy for people who have less defenses than we do. It means identifying risk and benefit and making decisions sometimes on a split second basis. 

Living in a large city exposes you to all kinds of characters and today many of them have completely dropped all attempts at public civility. On the other hand there are pearls out there that make it up for the others. 

If we grew up thinking that everyone was nice, that myth went up in smoke with experience and time. However, the defenses we developed as a consequence need to be used judiciously and sparingly.

Adrenaline

Everyone has problems and Joanne said her 80 year old mother had fallen and was in hospital as I joined her and Lisa over early morning coffee. They both work at the university in the HR department and we met enough times to now frequent the same table on the days I am there. 

Both are several years my junior. 

Overlapping with new people during my retirement has been very uplifting and a reminder that life can be very difficult for so many. Some may have financial means but that doesn't spare them from reminders of the challenges that most often come unannounced. 

Being accepted by other women has continued to bolster my confidence even if, as in this case, they don't know I am trans. It relaxes me and soothes whatever impostor syndrome which may bubble up from time to time. Thus I am taken at face value which is made easier by me simply being myself. 

Life is hectic and unpredictable especially today which isn't lost on someone who lived on adrenaline for so long. 

What we should want to do now as mitigation is to help each other to make things a little more bearable.

Basic needs

Trumpism didn't make people more unpleasant or evil than they were before. Instead it shone a bright light on how society really is when permission is granted for pretense to be abandoned. 

Stupidity also flourished as people dropped their shame in voicing their strange and toxic opinions aloud. 

In essence, we simply got an eyeful of how people think and behave when their inhibitions fall at the behest of a leader. At the same time, we also saw the best of a minority of people who have moral courage and clarity in opposing the deliberate cruelty. 

Regretably this reality isn't changeable because we have seen it play out repeatedly over the course of human history. Periods of societal decline bring out an increase in fear which then encourages ignorance, malice, narcissism and stupidity to spread. It is only when times are good again that the people who are most prone to these qualities go back to being distracted and quiet. 

The inevitable conclusion we must reach is that it is a small percentage of society which is able to steady the ship but also derail it. The broadest faction of the population is busy living and making ends meet and end up reacting to both conflict and victory. 

The masses are able to be swayed through the penchant in people to want to be guided which is why cultish behaviour will never disappear. 

The only partial antidote for this is to create conditions where the worst instincts of a society are stifled through providing its citizens with the security that their basic needs can be met.

Bumps and bruises

As we grow older we reflect on our lives to try and make sense of the psychology that drove our previous decisions. We may try to understand why we were susceptible to certain ideas and ways of thinking. It is the separation process of what we were taught was true versus what actually is. 

This is not an easy thing to do. 

Not everyone undertakes this process and many people live at a more surface level. Keeping busy doing and consuming can deflect the obligation to enter this process until life brings unwelcome surprises which can then trigger it. 

The longer we have lived, the more victories and perceived failures have been amassed. We may have seen life plans go unrealized and then become obliged to settle for a different reality as consolation. 

I have had people tell me directly that they don't want to examine themselves too deeply and perhaps there is some value in that. It hurts less to dwell on the bumps and bruises and simply move on to the next milestone on a bucket list. 

"Just keep moving forward" they tell themselves.

Microscope

At almost 64, I've seen more than I care to of human nature. I can smell people coming at 500 paces and can detect their inauthenticity and behavioral problems in short order. I can equally detect loveliness.

My patience has thinned and I am working that back at least for nice people who deserve it. Idiots are another matter. 

It's rare that I run into people with logical and critical minds. Instead I encounter people with baked in narratives that haven't passed inspection. When challenged they readily fall apart and they become angry as a consequence. 

People over history don't fundamentally change except that today we live lives under microscopes which means every wrinkle is exposed. It is what has fed our division. 

My cynicism is being worked on as I focus energy on people who need help in this world. Conversely those who perturb my peace risk getting a mouthful. You don't get to be this age without having developed weapons you want to be obliged to use less and less. 

When we are somehow born significantly different in this world the self-analysis and introspection become mandatory and once the human equation is understood, we must find our patience once again except now from a perspective of strength instead of fear.

Go do that

After starting to write again in 2023 it looks like I'm done here. There's been massive change since I first began blogging with my old blog at age 49. 

Now, almost 64 years old and well-immersed in retirement, its time to move on to focus more on the other things that interest me. 

My only advice to you is: figure out who you are and go do that because life is short and being constantly scared of everything doesn't get us anywhere.

Take very good care.

Asking questions

The rise of the useful idiot interviewer happened slowly and eventually gained a wide audience. You didn't need to do your homework but just be affable and entertaining. Joe Rogan became the poster boy for "I am just asking questions" while being constantly gobsmacked by everything your latest guest says. 

The problem with this is the interviewer doesn't hold anyone to account. There isn't the kind of pushback you need to have because the knowledge or the research isn't there to back you up. Some years ago, Rogan interviews Jordan Peterson who just proceeds as usual to word salad his way through the whole thing except with greater ease than usual. 

These podcasts are relatable to people who wouldn't normally watch dry interviewers like David Frost talk to Nixon. They ask goofy questions while playing their shtick persona for an audience who I suspect is more there for their folk hero than for the guest in question. 

Theo Von and Andrew Schultz did much the same thing and captured young impressionable males looking for role models to emulate. They helped feed into the bro culture that helped get Trump a second term most everyone now regrets.

Imprinted

I sometimes see comments like this: 

"How can I stop imagining myself as a woman" which signals distress and a lack of self-acceptance. 

It is also precisely what Ray Blanchard pounced upon in the 1980's with his scared patients when he basically renamed what was then known in the manuals as transvestic fetishism (which admittedly focused more on clothing than imagining oneself having a female body) . 

But here's the rub: human sexuality is very complex with many scenarios possible. One involves the imprinted child who crosses into puberty with the wish to be female since early childhood with the rest being variants of what my friend Jack Molay years ago coined as Crossdreaming. In other words, what might my life be like if I were the other sex. 

Some of these variants are only temporary exploration or escapism and aren't very deeply rooted in the psyche. However other cases are much more persistent and involved fighting uphill to be accepted within societies that reject them. 

Small wonder so many wanted to be healed or went underground into stealth. 

Gender criticals point to this trauma as signs of mental illness which most assuredly wouldn't exist had gender variant people not been taught this is what it indeed was from the outset. 

Even today gender conversion channels like The Metaphor of Gender preach a soft-pedalled and genteel gospel of gender variance as something to be healed and no, not everyone needs to or should medically transition.

The key for all these cases is to put their desire for gender variance into context and determine a landing point by repairing the underlying trauma around it. 

It isn't the gender variance that needs curing but the psychology which associates it with an illness thus fostering shame, guilt and, in older people in particular, a psychologically unhealthy secrecy. 

Ray Williams, as a current example, contorts himself into a pretzel by accepting he has a sexual illness that he now celebrates by trumpeting "hurray I have AGP!" 

It is precisely this type of outlook that I do not believe to be the healthiest of approaches.

Failsafe

I could not fail at anything in life. I simply didn't allow it. However life had other ideas. 

Surprises aren't always destined for failure, they are lessons that what we digested as mandatory isn't always correct. Things we were taught early on in life end up not aligning with our circuitry and yet we still adapt for fear of rejection. 

To do this we build a workable personna and make sure to not let our guard down. We then follow a plan handed down by others which we discover along the way isn't exactly right for us. 

This isn't just my life; this is the lives of many people who bought into scripts. 

What happens after a while is that we realize we must relax the body as well as the psyche and jettison the mask. We become authentic and finally begin to look properly after the self. 

We do this not just because we want to, but because after a while we absolutely must.

The power of stupidity

 

We bleed

Gender variant people represent a slice of the general population with the same types of personality traits we find elsewhere. In other words, we aren't special in any measured category and possess strengths and weaknesses as the unique individuals we are. 

You prick us and we bleed. 

This is the primary reason why I don't think of gender variant people as a block but as distinct individuals who fall within the mosaic of humanity. I have seen so much variation from person to person over the years to justify my saying this.

Interestingly, it would greatly benefit society to think this way rather than herding people into camps.

All this to say that I don't care about anything else more than whether you are a decent person with a moral compass.

Everything else pales by comparison.

What the world chases after

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche did not measure success by the conventional standards of the world. 

Financial wealth or societal validation were not part of his reflection. Instead, he defined it as the overcoming of one's inner chaos which could be achieved through embracing adversity. This was a catalyst for personal growth which would accompany the creation of a unique sense of purpose as well as an incorruptible value system. 

The world often looks at success through a faulty prism and many of the characters we laud with having achieved it, are deeply flawed and perturbed individuals with narcissistic qualities. Their personal lives are also often in complete disarray.

In contrast, those people who reflect deeply and weigh the morality and consequences of their life decisions are less likely to succeed by the metrics of a world that values knee-jerk action. However they often tend to personify the best qualities of humanity which include empathy and charity. 

We want to seek internal balance and in so doing must necessarily abandon much of what the world values and chases after.

Typiquement Montréal

 

                                             Rue Laurier

From the wrong angle

Back when I was thinking about magic bullet theories regarding what factors (outside of deliberate choice) made people gender variant, I didn't fully realize that I was attacking the issue from the wrong angle. 

Instead I should have concentrated on what stops people from being that way. In other words, what are the fabricated rules that prevented a natural spectrum from being both visible and viable within societies. 

I was operating from the wrong coordinate system that I had been raised under which was tainted with bias and artificial structure. 

The human condition is naturally full of variants which if left alone surface and thrive naturally provided the person isn't traumatized. The problem is that society doesn't appreciate wild cards spoiling the models they want everyone to subscribe to. 

The ingredients which go into making a human being are so varied and complex at every level of development, that it is entirely expected that the process would produce great variability; one that we see replicated everywhere in organic systems. 

Instead of welcoming this entirely natural diversity of outcome, most societies (with the notable exception of many native cultures) simply rejected them. They forced people to comply and stigmatized and traumatized them for not obeying the rules. 

Therefore when conservatives talk about an epidemic of gayness or transness they are really referring to a loss of control of the rules they favour. They don't want the natural variants exposed and call them unnatural when the opposite is true. 

Regrettably until we educate ourselves the baseline of many if not most humans is inadvertent stupidity; one which emphasizes both a lack of critical thinking and unquestioning conformity as a baseline operating system. Today people openly trumpet their idiocy with gusto and even pride.

It is our own responsibility to fix our analytical thinking process.

Falling behind

The Trump regime is now only barely able to gaslight a decreasing part of its own population. Everyone else in the world has moved on. 

Europe, Mexico and Canada for example are making other arrangements but the tough talk is what the regime is going with as they bargain that it will look good at home.  This despite the horrid polling. The US is also gambling that the bond market won't crash as world confidence in their country declines by the day. 

This is massive hubris that is entirely unwarranted 

China for its part has seen astronomical progress over the last 40 years and is now seeing the fruits of investment in technology and its workforce. The country has lifted a huge chunk of its population out of poverty and threatens to show the world what looking after your people looks like. 

No the Chinese aren't perfect on human rights but then most countries have skeletons in their closets. 

As the western world figures out how to mitigate the consequences of Neoliberal policies, the selling of more socialist approaches is becoming more palatable even in the US with its DSA candidates. 

This is because people are getting fed up of falling behind.

Desire

My desire to want to slap people in public has waned dramatically which is very good news for me. 

However, it's not because society in general is getting better behaved, but because I am learning to, better than ever, tune them out and live internally in peace.

To belong

One of the challenges we have as human beings is to find our community. We need a clan to belong to which can bring security but also potentially present us with a trap. 

In order to belong we need to define ourselves as being members and sometimes shoehorn ourselves into a model that may not feel quite right. 

This is human nature in spades. 

My instinct has always told me to be wary of groupthink precisely because the draw to belong can potentially cloud our judgement. It's wonderful to feel part of something bigger than ourselves but that invariably comes with some warning stickers 

We love labels and categories so we can fit in with the flipside being that they can serve as criteria for exclusion and even banishment.

Life and fairness

No one can imagine my life perfectly and there are many other lives I cannot relate to. All we can do is empathize by virtue of our humanity. 

My empathy is very strong for people who suffer in quiet dignity. There is something very noble in that while knowing that life doesn’t appear to be entirely fair. 

The saying goes that "God gives us what we can handle" which I don't really subscribe to. I prefer to think of it as different experiences bring out different strengths and qualities in us.

Maybe next time

Sometimes I have to stop myself from approaching another transgender person. I am tempted and then think twice because they may not appreciate such a random approach. 

This afternoon it was at my closest thrift shop where I noted that one of the employees (she about the age of my kids) was clearly trans. I took note but then carried on browsing. 

She had grown out her hair which was neatly gathered inside a large adorned clip. A little rouge on the cheeks was all I saw in the way of makeup. 

What always stays with me is how people just mind their own business. Whether they noticed she was trans or not didn't matter but then the majority of the browsers there weren't much beyond 30. 

I resisted saying hello but who knows for the next time.