New Recruits

The next most obvious target for the right wing is disenfranchised young men who are prime for being indoctrinated. They are impressionable enough and can be filled with propaganda about women usurping their place in society by people like Jordan Peterson whose rise to fame can partly be traced to appearances on Joe Rogan. The latter, who is the everyman bro just asking questions, has a habit of favoring right wing guests like Peterson, Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro who know they can spew their culture war grievance without much pushback. Rogan gives them a platform where they can spin their spin their web inside impressionable young minds.

This era of social media is perfect because everyone has their own megaphone and once you capture an audience you have them until they can be deprogramned which can take a while.

With the disgruntled white boomer aging rapidly, new recruits are required and these young men will do just fine.

Looney

This is the type of uninformed voter who has fallen victim to anti-trans rhetoric and she is far from being the only one. The world is full of these people with zero critical thinking skills....

Past half way

Life is short and we need to profit from it but this lesson only seems to become obvious once we are well past the half way mark. I wish if weren't so but it's the truth.

I laugh now at the idea that I would ever let other people's opinion affect me but it was such an overwhelming concern in my youth and even well into adulthood. Today I find society odd, contradictory and enigmatic.

The very idea that we would want to seek their approval should make us question why.

Fanfic

Toska is young and exploring her gender identity. One day she is given male clothes to change into because hers were soaked by the rain she had been in and something seems to click.

This Polish film touches on sexuality and gender and what it looks like for this young GenZ generation who has a more fluid perspective on both. Suddenly Toska is binding her breasts, cutting her hair and using male pronouns much to the chagrin of her single father whose Zoloft pills she steals to try to find balance. She also fancies a gay boy who likes her male energy.

It's not going to maybe win awards,  but the way the subject matter is handled here I think is an accurate reflection of how youth now lives this new landscape. 

Fanfic is on Netflix in Polish with English subtitles.

The wrong horse

As Fani Willis prepares to indict Trump this summer for election interference in Georgia, you get the impression that the GOP bet on the wrong horse. Now with their low information base completely bamboozled and unphased by the steady stream of Trump criminality, the party is likely realizing that they are stuck with him and that their brand is increasingly a losing one. No serious platform, endless culture wars and an electorate that increasungly does not support their policies and you can see how the wheels are starting to come off the bus.

You could say this is poetic justice and you'd be right because by playing with American democracy through gerrymandering and fear mongering, they must have realized that it was a losing battle when most of the population disagrees with you. When they had their chance to derail Trump they didn't take it because they were fearful of the monster they had created; oh well.

Trump is of course a liability in the long run, but then that's what happens when you bet everything on a loser. There are inevitable consequences down the road.

Maybe they can go after Hillary Clinton.

Traditional

Traditional religion has been displaced in our societies by other things: mindfulness spirituality, fringe beliefs and cults as well as self created dogmas which combine the spiritual with the secular. This has happened because human beings need some sort of belief system which even atheism and agnosticism also are since the very conviction that God does not or may not exist has consequences on the way we live.

Some think this loss of traditional belief system makes our society less orderly and it is true that when there are less commonly held ideas you scatter people to the wind. But these religions were also sometimes used to subjugate people into submission and shunned them when they didn't measure up. Divorced Catholics for example could be denied communion and never mind admitting you were homosexual. It was a mass belief system for those who could fit within its confines and comply and it was this aspect of religion warped by humanity which was developed for its other needs. Doubters need not apply although don't ever say that to C.S. Lewis.

I began to outgrow conventional religion because what had become of its original purity had been hidden underneath layers of convention which became a middleman I no longer required. Plus when you need to deliver to the masses, everything can become fashioned into the formulaic for easier digestion by all. Going to Sunday Mass became a formed habit made even less palatable by stale and uninspired homilists and my intellect grew to need more sustenance.

If we grow to think for ourselves we may realize that there is more to grasp when we do some of the work on our own.

Living authenticity

I don't think it's ever too late to start living authentically which can of course mean different things to different people; the aim being that you aren't concealing your true self from the world.

For some that may be regular cross gender expression while for others nothing short of a full transition will do. In either case, it benefits you to live in the open because hiding does not help the psyche in that you always feel uncomfortable with keeping something so intrinsic to you as a secret.

Today I live with a much healthier mindset because my children and my close friends and family know I am trans. True, I don't make a habit of announcing it when out in public, but that would be akin to pasting a sign on your forehead announcing something to people who don't know you and don't necessarily care.

If you are with a non-accepting or partly accepting spouse, I really feel for you because that can be very difficult and I lived it. However from my vantage point of today I can emphatically state that I would never go back to that way of living.

In the end, I have not lost one single person who matters to me after coming out which, at one time, I would have never believed could ever happen.

Bouree

 

Jubilance

Theatricality in the trans world isn't new and I point to Philosophy Tube and Abigail Thorne's emulation of Natalie Wynn (aka contrapoints) as example of how sometimes it can even get a bit saccharin. I also happen to vehemently disagree with Abigail that dysphoria is an invented concept as I am skeptical a transition based solely on euphoria is a well founded one.

Maybe it's me, because resisting accepting being trans for so long, sometimes has me outright reject overly euphoric presentations of what transitioning can mean for people who aren't already well off and don't have the means to produce expensive YouTube videos.

For the majority of trans people life is generally complicated with loss of family connections and jobs more the norm than the exception. So while I am happy for people these days discovering themselves earlier in life, I don't think painting an overly rosy picture is the way to go. Admittedly not everyone in the public eye is like this and thank God for it because we need accurate portrayals of important decisions like this.

Caryn, who used to frequently comment on my old blog and transitioned in her mid twenties, recently texted me back in response to my query by saying "I've noticed younger trans people don't have to put much thought into their transitions, and can kind of dive in head first with everything available to them through medical insurance". 

She is ten years my junior and has had her own share of struggles thus, even our little trepidation risks playing into the hands of transphobes, there is a lot to be said for ramping down the rhetoric and being less theatrical.

Because being trans definitely ain't no picnic.

No matter who you are...

...be happy with yourself.

We have weirdos here too