Musings from my everyday life...

Americans are lovely people and some of the individuals I most admire are from that country. Yet there can be a tendency for navel gazing when you hold the levers of world power and I still bristle when I hear some Americans use the term “American exceptionalism” because I don’t think it is a correct vision.

Even the evening news tends to be America centric and, unless you watch BBC America, NPR or PBS you will get a very parochial vision of current events. This is not that surprising when you have grown up during an era where the United States has wielded so much power and holds so much political sway which can only encourage the kind of myopia that could tempt some to think America can do no wrong.

Much of the rest of the world sees The United States as a benevolent giant who can also at times be brash and arrogant. Some of its citizens are more apt to fall for the jingoistic slogan of “America love it or leave it” which has become the clarion call of conservatives who can support s…

How does the qualifier in the term “homosexual transsexual” help us understand transsexualism? The answer is that it doesn't. How can it if the root condition itself is not well understood.

Recently I featured Anne Vitale’s essay on the work of Ovesey and Person and how they classified transsexuals. Subsequent researchers then ended up reversing what they meant by Primary and Secondary transsexualism and then Blanchard came along and invented his own categories.

Even Harry Benjamin, whose work I greatly respect and whose 6 classifications were the first attempt at categorizing dysphoria, never arrived at an explanation and to his credit he never pretended to.

Therefore, until the nature of dysphoria is well understood, you can play with classifications until the cows come home and have gotten no further until we understand the fundamental nature of what constitutes gender identification and how it can diverge from birth sex.

Things are going fine in Toronto and I have made a new routine for myself.

For example, Simons has opened a store in Mississauga and this lovely young lady who works there named Rica is so nice to me when she sees me. She is also from Montreal and she asked me how I like it so far. She greets me with “so you’re back!” with such a warmth and friendliness.

It is not hard to establish a routine when you are accustomed to living a certain way and I don’t give presenting as Joanna a second thought anymore because I am not out there to test myself as much as to just be myself. Spending entire weekends as Joanna has also allowed me to see where my comfort zone lies.

Walking into places like Sephora I am not even noticed and then suddenly one of the young sales representatives will greet me and ask me how she can be of service. I am just another woman customer to them and no one even so much as furls a brow in my presence; something which I very much owe to knowing who I am on the inside.

Yes…

This horror show of a presidency is like a boat taking on water.

The latest attempt to divert attention from the latest round of scandals had Trump getting on Twitter and firing transgender soldiers who are perfectly able and ready to give up their life for their country.

Add to that his imbecilic and inappropriate ramblings this past week in front of a huge crowd of boy scouts and you can see how they had better get to bailing water.

Not surprisingly, transgender people as well as pundits and journalists are up in arms about this latest brain fart but hopefully it won’t be long before all the scandals converge, by virtue of Robert Mueller's probe, into legal proceedings which most assuredly will not go Trump’s way.....

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-cruelty-and-cynicism-of-trumps-transgender-military-ban

Your gender identity lies in your brain and not in your genitals but we just don’t understand how this process of fashioning a gender identity happens. How and why does someone identify as the opposite gender?

Yesterday I featured Felix Conrad’s very thought provoking blog post on what makes a transgender woman claim that she is a woman and have the world take her at face value. In the not too distant past this was addressed in part through stealth transitions but in today’s open and media savvy world that is almost impossible.

Felix makes the valid point that conservatives (who can usually think no further than their nose) focus on chromosomes, DNA and genitals while our arguments are more esoteric and philosophical. This reality is what permits attacks from radical feminism, pseudoscience and religious bigotry.

I am on the record here that I believe a transitioned woman has every right to be respected and treated as any other woman but to counteract the argumentation from these frin…

Felix Conrad has written a solid and thought provoking post which won't win him converts among some members of the transgender community but which is spot on in asking the right questions and wanting to find realistic answers for them.

If we want people to understand and accept us we need to look inside all of the nooks and crannies and examine ourselves realistically and critically which means not taking it for granted that you can say to the general public "I am a woman" and have them accept it without reservation.

No, being transgender is indeed a little more complex than being gay or lesbian...

http://transcendmovement.com/why-transgender-rights-are-much-more-problematic-than-gay-rights/

The United States' political system is in crisis.

Both parties are beholden to special interests which limit their ability to do the right thing for the population. So while the GOP rams through a cruel health care bill that only 17% of the population supports the Democrats provide timid opposition for fear of exposing the cracks in their own foundation.

A functioning and healthy democracy is not a guaranteed thing and we are now seeing the results of what happens under a system of oligarchy at its very worst. Hence if you are a poor or even middle class citizen you are stuck because your options are currently just about zero with the only way out being possibly an outright revolt against the industrial military complex, Wall Street and the rich benefactors which keep both parties doing their bidding.

Donald Trump may be a clown whose time may soon be up but he is not the real problem. His antics are just diversions which keep the population from seeing the true cruelty afoot. Mea…

Carly Mitchell is a gender transgressor.

Not fitting perfectly into either of the pre-approved and prescribed gender roles she has instead found her own way and in the process found the kind of peace and balance that only comes from embracing yourself exactly as you were created....

I sat there next to my newly 19 year old daughter and her boyfriend at the Cirque du Soleil "Volta" show for her birthday.

Time gets away from us and like a flowing river that won’t be diverted it takes the path of least resistance without allowing us pause. It is in these special events that we reflect a little more when the daily mundane gives way to ceremonial milestones where we can stop to say “how did this happen. How did time go so fast?”

She refused to just go alone with him as I offered and I think me meeting him was in her plan. Later when he went to the washroom during intermission she asked how I found him and I told her that I liked him which was my honest answer. He is a shy, bespectacled intellectual who reads philosophy and is studying bioethics and we had conversations over dinner later that belied his tender age reminding me that wisdom is not always the exclusive property of those who are older.

All I ever asked of my daughter is that she use her mind an…

Lifesite.com is the epitome of Phariseeism.

It uses its bedrock of supposed traditional Christian values to throw stones at anyone who doesn't abide by by them which necessarily includes any member of the LGBT community. It criticizes "movements" and "lifestyles" in its desperate attempt to make sure its readers understand it is a matter of choice that is being exercized in sinning and disobeying God's laws and, judging by the comments, its loyal readers are not terribly bright nor analytical. They don't dare probe too deeply for fear their black and white world comes crashing down on them.

I have said in this blog many times before that transgender people must exist through nothing more than simple deduction and this should be obvious to any thinking person who notes the lack of uniformity in nature. So why would gender identity be the only thing exempt?

And if it is a natural state for some people then it cannot be a chosen thing but don't bother…

I have been to Dr. Kelley Winters blog before and she is a lucid and helpful ally of the transgender community so when I was reading some comments on Amazon regarding her book "Gender Madness in American psychiatry" which is a critique of the highly conservative psychiatric profession and its tendency to discredit transgender people as mentally ill, I happened upon one which I found particularly spot on:

"Dr. Winters is the last person I know whom I would consider either narcissistic or rageful. Her book is well thought out, and flows in spite of being built from a number of blog posts (as if that would discredit the facts and analysis within). Her blog posts generated feedback which she used to create a more holistic work, one which puts the lie to the canards of the Toronto/Northwestern axis of transphobia.

Yes, Ms. Farmer, brain sex is important, even though Dr. Winters doesn't delve into that field. The medical profession, which five years ago scoffed at the conc…