The Burbs

 

Theocratic certainty

For proof that blind orthodoxy produces lapses in critical thinking look no further than American evangelical fialty to Donald Trump. The antithesis of the religious man, he somehow represents for them the flawed liberator of those long suffering souls who pray for theocracy to rescue them. Don't bother trying to reason with people who think the earth is 6,000 years old and humans shared the landscape with dinosaurs for there is little that can be done unless a major deprogramming is performed on them.

The Dominican priest Thomas Aquinas believed that the existence of God could be arrived at through natural law. Hence for him the marriage of faith and reason was possible but you couldn't contravene logic to get there. These people are not that.

I reflect often on how gullible people can be while also being so certain of their beliefs are correct. In those cases, trying to challenge their dogma just gets their backs up since it is so closely tied to an entire structure on which they have based their existence. Thus if you destroy any one of their fundamental beliefs, the whole thing comes down like a house of cards.

Where we should have been

The self acceptance process for a transgender person amounts to brain rewiring. After we have been pummeled from birth by our families and society regarding who we are, a process must be undertaken to undo that. The more pervasive and conservative the environment we were exposed to, the longer this journey will take.

Those who know me from my writing are aware how stubborn a person I am and proof was required for everything. But eventually trusting one's instincts is the best way to go particularly if we are the kind of person who doesn't fall prey to groupthink and is open and welcome to second guessing themselves. I believe this is pivotal to arrive at a solution.

Essentially we are using neuroplasticity of our brains to come back to where we should have been all along.

Evidence of Autumn

 

Leftovers

Sometimes we need to be broken so we can rebuild. By my early 40's my own life had to come a precipice where I had no choice but to acknowledge it was no longer workable. I was trained to take life as it came by two hardened parents who saw tough times while growing up. So you learn to model yourself after them and develop a stiff upper lip to the point where only a major event will disrupt your fidelity to your current life.

Today I still work on removing leftover frustration which was built up over decades. What helps is seeing young transgender people develop confidence in their identities early in life and thus avoid decades of pretense.

What surprised me over this past first year of retirement was just how much of that resentment I still harbored and needed to remove. The distraction of work lifted, I was able to go deeper into the psyche.

That work continues.

Before we feel comfort again

To say that we live in optimistic times would be exaggeration of the highest order. That some social issues are improved is being offset by increasing poverty, loneliness, and staggering wealth inequality. We are not building a new society as much as dismantling one which is in its late stages of decay.

Neoliberalism led us astray and people are struggling under the weight of the lost hope that we were headed in the right direction. Climate change and migration from countries with political strife are forcing first world nations to calm the fires of panic that are helping authoritarian aspirations.

I won't fall prey entirely to desperation but am aware that big bumps along the way lie ahead before we can feel comfortable again.

Reliable

Ideally the most dependable person you know should be yourself. Aside from when I was young and under the guidance of my parents, I have always been my own problem solver especially when I realized over time to what extent others were unreliable.

This is not to say that we shouldn't graciously accept help only that we should not count on it as an assured reality. Instead we become self reliant to the point where the assistance becomes an added bonus instead of the only solution.

I used to see lack of self-reliance as a sign of weakness but I no longer do. I now see people who might need help picking themselves up so they can embark on their own path towards their own problem solving. They can then help others to do the same.

Family

More often than not the most challenging hurdle for any openly living transgender person will be extended family. There will always be at least one person who isn't accepting and even if everyone tells you they are, there is often considerable lip service involved. The stories range from tolerance to outright rejection where the transgender person is basically disowned.

You need a big back and a stiff lip to live your life honestly and sometimes this will mean loosening some ties in order to keep self respect intact. For people just want the comfort of the person you felt you had to sell yourself as and perhaps we can't entirely blame them for that.

I am still trying to figure out this tightrope act of embracing a new life while keeping bridges standing except that those crossings these days seem more kept together with frazzled rope than solid steel. The pandemic allowed the absence of overlap to be weighed and assessed all the while I formulated a new road from which I am not turning back for to do so would be to undo years of work in building esteem for an identity I was taught from earliest memory to reject.

Others don't live in our heads and can't fully relate to our struggles which is why I don't overly blame but when things turn to apathy it's another matter altogether. Good thing then that family is something one inherits but doesn't freely choose and if need be we can seek a new and more supportive circle.

I already have.

Buckle up!

 

Understanding dysphoria

Gender dysphoria was sometimes  succinctly summarized with the phrase "born I the wrong body" which is a disservice to something considerably more complex. When patients were pleading their case before medical gatekeepers they learned to use certain language to get them to their goal and you certainly never mention sexuality.

The more I would read the literature plus the narratives of others I began to realize that there wasn't a simple way to describe what was a yearning to express and sometimes embody gender outside of birth sex. However understanding how expression and identity worked as a tandem made nailing things down very challenging. Some people felt comfortable with sporadic or regularly timed expression and yet others could not live one more day in a body they had come to completely disown.

Anne Vitale coined the wonderful phrase "gender expression deprivation anxiety" which I felt came closest to describing what dysphoria felt like and yet it wasn't predictive of outcome in that for some this could mean indulging in expression more frequently. We used to make a distinction between tranvestism and transsexualism which I believe still has merit but there seemed to be blurring in some patients which is what likely prompted Harry Benjamin to develop his scale.

To make things even more complex, some people do not experience dysphoria and simply begin to express variance in adulthood almost as sport. I tended to leave those people out of the definition of transgender which I always understood to begin at the point of where core identity is questioned.

Today it appears that all gender variance is being lumped in under the term "trans" which may be inclusive language but contributes nothing towards our understanding of gender dysphoria. Some people are even transitioning without it and then regretting it down the road. 

Next week I have that session to discuss the presentation in Paris on the topic of detransition.

Compliments

She was maybe early 20's and was preparing my coffee when she told me she loved my earrings. Compliments from women are nice because they are validating of identity.

We don't fish for them but when they come especially out of the blue, they seem to have more significance. The more certain I became in who I am, the less I cared if they came and yet they were still appreciated as they lingered for a while afterwards.

As we work towards becoming whole we want to feel that outside validation is unnecessary and have it simply become icing on a cake which serves as our basic sustenance.

Happy New Year :)