Mind blown

Someone in my old office sent me this today and my mind was duly blown. This is what 35 years of progress does...

I should heed the advice

A long time friend I spoke to recently told me I should not watch so much political content and I suspect he is right. The world isn't going to change and all I will do is become frustrated at the futility in fixing what ails us. What interests me most right now is the rise of right wing movements as backlash for the sins of a globalism movement that lined the pockets of the top 1% at the expense of the rest.

Besides, true democracies do not exist and what we instead have are systems of government which give just enough illusion that the population has a say to keep them from revolt. If people really saw all of the machinations at the top levels they would be shocked. 

Yet somehow we hobble along without blowing ourselves up; at least for now. So I will partly heed his advice and tone it down.

Determining where you lie

Does everyone who expresses gender variance think of themselves as transgender? The answer is of course no and there is plenty of proof of this all over the internet. It's also an irrelevant question because how one lives is far more important than their label for themselves. 

When core identity isn't questioned the expression can be joyful and free of distress because nothing needs to be done to perturb an existing life other than find a balance point. However, once dysphoria is present it is another matter altogether. 

Many older transgender people misdiagnosed themselves because they had made life decisions whereby further advancement was not possible. Hence they settled on a formula that worked (if imperfectly) to be able to keep marriages and careers intact. 

Over the last few years we have invented more categories to describe how people feel which ultimately changes little about how to proceed. The action plan is not developed via a definition. 

My own journey had to be extremely slow and planned out because, despite my marriage breaking up, I could not investigate where I stood on the spectrum without taking risks regarding the welfare of my children. As it turns out I fell just short of a medical transition I might have undertaken were I 25 today and starting over. Fortunately, I blend in well without alterations plus I have developed elephant skin.

What became paramount was taking something I mistook for dress up as a young child to the level of seriousness it deserved which was no easy task. As I met people over the years who did not fit my profile I realized I had much more work to do than I had first surmised after finding much more affinity with people who needed to transition. Only that my natural skepticism obliged that I do my own homework rather than pay attention to the orthodoxy of the day.

Draw

What draws me to certain people is their kindness, empathy, their depth of character and their social intelligence. I am drawn to people who make me think and reflect; people who want to share their vision of life with me.

Giant steps

 

On Seth Meyers

 

In isolation

Three references to AGP caught my attention lately. Two of them were people who didn't feel female but felt they suffered from it. The third was the girlfriend of the Twitch streamer F1NN5TER (who is transgender herself and calls herself Icky) reacting to a video by detransitioner Ray Williams who admits his transition was motivated by it. 

What is interesting once again is that the least affected person by the theory was Icky herself who must be all of 25 years old and no doubt spared childhood trauma such that caustic theories are more likely to bounce off instead of ingested by the psyche. It must be said that she is very feminine and thinks she is motivated by her understanding of her personal essence. 

AGP is just transvestic fetishism renamed and those previous references I mentioned confirmed to me once again how some forms of variance can exist in isolation without a person questioning their core identity and potentially  leading to trauma. Absence of distress is what you are after.

Doubts

Doubts about ourselves are entirely normal. Being human is complex and, beyond our physical needs, there is psychology which needs tending to since it experiences its invariable ups and downs. We are constantly analyzing our thoughts to make sure we are not fooling ourselves. The choices we make are weighed and evaluated for how well they contributed to our overall wellness. 

The human animal reflects on its purpose, what its existence means and why they are on this planet. We don't have answers and so personal narratives are created to convince ourselves that we are on the right track.

Depressing

I watched a young man in a video ask people on the street in Orlando who they were voting for in November and it confirmed everything I already know about people. Most are ill informed and have zero retention skills. You might as well interview lizards.

Of course Florida is a deep red state but it helps you understand when you see average people on the street respond and confirm to you they know nothing about history or politics. It's just gut feel.

Sigh.

Free speech zone

Free speech warriors often conceal their hate within their ideology of being able to say what they want by stating that the "woke left" has made everything taboo. Look at the cesspool that is X as proof that allowing Neo Nazis to say what they like does not make for a better platform. Musk, who grew up in a white supremacist culture, wonders why advertisers run away in droves.

I was thinking about this as I watched progressive pundit David Pakman appear on the Triggernometry podcast which hails itself as a free speech zone until one peruses the caustic and angry commenting of its fan base. For them free speech is something I do not recognize. 

The hosts took David to task for calling their program right wing except their talking points appeal to the same people that would be happy watching FOX News. David wasn't wrong and he defended himself admirably with his command of the issues and his patience. Some in the comments called him elitist which is code for knowing what you are talking about.

Nuff said.

Preparing the terrain

I feel very comfortable living authentically. All my patience has paid off and taking this journey one day at a time has gotten me to a point I never expected. Most older transgender people didn't have much wiggle room after making life commitments they later realized were antithetical or at least not conducive to uplifting their identity. 

At each step I gave others options and suppressed my instincts so I could make things work. In the end I discovered that one cannot be truly happy being someone you are not to please someone else. Who I am is no longer negotiable. 

There is no regret because I did the best I could given the information I had and the opportunities at my disposal at the time. All of the introspection and research into gender theory prepared the terrain for where I am today which is very solid ground.

I have lost no one and kept the love and respect of my children which was my priority.