Musings from my everyday life...

The human mind has an interesting way to deal with things which are left unresolved: we dream. We will go back to events and reprocess them sometimes reinventing the outcome while introducing new participants to the story; all in the aim of coming to some state of resolution.

We may not come to a perfect answer, but our brain requires we arrive at one we can live with. Hence, we might convince ourselves that some narrative fits and leave it at that. Lived history is like this in that we pass it through the filter of our own subjectivity. After all, there is no other way to look at the world save through our own lens.

It would be nice to move outside of this box sometimes and see our history via another angle; one which would force us outside of our comfort zone. But then, that might be too harsh a punishment.

I am not on Twitter but I happened to notice while over at Zagria's site a Twitter post from Jack Molay stating that Ray Blanchard had blocked him on that particular platform. Apparently, Blanchard is so much of a snowflake he won't be challenged and thus prefers to block people rather than engage them in intelligent discourse. It's one thing to block trolls but quite another to do so to a dissenter who is extremely well versed on the subject and willing to discuss it politely.

For me, this move speaks volumes about Blanchard's intellectual dishonesty.

It must be so great to come up with theories that are un-falsifiable and be unwilling to face a critique of them.

This story appears in LGBTQ Nation and it made me laugh. Hope it does the same for you:

"A lot of people wonder what makes people transgender, the same way we ask what makes people gay, or what causes autism.

The consensus scientific answer on all three is unsatisfyingly vague; there is no single reason, and what we can see appears to be a combination of multiple factors involving genetics, epigenetics, oligogenetics, and potentially some environmental factors.

There is broad consensus that it’s not caused by bad parenting, or what your mom ate when she was pregnant, or not going to church enough.

However, this isn’t enough for random (and not so random) cranks to propose absolutely bonkers reasons for why people are transgender. Because the public and the media knows so little about transgender people in general, some of these are getting more play than they deserve.

So, in no particular order, here are 15 of the nuttiest suggested reasons for why people are transgender, and why…

We are seeing a rise in global right wing populism. The right leaning government of Italy is making noise in Europe about admiring Brexit and Brazil has recently elected a "Trumpian" character in president-elect Bolsonaro who will be clear cutting more of the Amazon to make way for industrial development.

It's a fragile period in our history because much of this backlash is a revolt against the false promises of globalism; the idea that we could open our borders entirely to expand economic markets without seeing dire consequences for some of the population. The concept that greed is good and that the crumbs that fall from its table will feed the rest, is a false ideology. This has helped breed a new animal in the form of false prophets; blowhards who take advantage of a disgruntled populace to instill fear while advancing toxic policies bred from their own hatred.

In order to fashion a more moderate and peaceful vision for our planet we will need leaders who are ready t…

I walk by the bookstore and see the biographies on sale. Some of them are of sports heroes of years past and some of musicians or actors who are now deceased. Their stories like so many others become unimportant as they blur into the lived history of humanity.

In the end our individual narratives are of less import than the greater meaning of what it is to be human. You could do a paste up with many of these stories and combine elements so that you have created a picture of a fictitious character; one which would still seem real to us because we feel it could be.

There is a little melancholy in seeing the life of another being contained in a discounted book bin and yet this is the way it is supposed to be. Our lives mirror each other and intertwine because across the ages we have not changed all that much. The same fears, illusions and aspirations fill the years of our lives and get us through in passing our knowledge to the next generation. We are forgotten in a way and yet there is …

My company of over 6,000 employees only has one person transitioning which means there are others still in hiding. Using the metric of 0.6% we should have about 36 employees who are transgender; some of whom undoubtedly do not intend to transition or even come out of hiding. The engineering business is not exactly the first place one thinks of as a hot bed for diversity.

I am known to HR in my local office but am not out to all employees and there are maybe others in that same position. What I would like to see is the day where none of us feel the need to hide.

With 4 years left to go as a full time employee in this company I have decided not to do anything even remotely resembling social transition, however that doesn't mean I might not work as Joanna elsewhere after that.

As Dr. Morris recently told me, I will feel even more free when I can have all the full options in front of me and decide based on my needs.

The Trump administration is a despicable affront to decency with, their latest attempt to turn to the Supreme court to bolster its ban on transgender people serving in the military, only one more example. The evangelical radicals (hello Mike Pence) in the administration are behind this move but as we head into January and Democrats take over the house there could be a different story.

In the meantime, Trump hopes to ram through what he wants by taking advantage of a Republican bolstered court with the addition of frat boy Brent Kavanaugh.

If this ban is upheld it will be one more step towards converting the United States into a banana Republic where extremist intolerance becomes the norm instead of the exception. The only hope is that sanity comes back in 2020 and more moderate and intelligent forces return to governance. If people were unsure what a mess this idiot president could create they need to look no further. One can only imagine how much more damage could be done over anoth…

From a BBC concert in 1969, the pride of Fort McLeod Alberta at her angelic best...

Put this in your stovepipe and smoke it Drumpf....

Testing your comfort zone is a good thing and this is particularly true for us. I used to live inside a box from where I could not escape and doing certain things as Joanna were prohibited to me because I deemed them to be too daunting or terrifying. But then slowly but surely I began to push the envelope.

This need has much to do with self realization because if we don't try we won't find out who we really are. You need to be a little uncomfortable so you can eventually learn to be yourself.

Those first tentative steps out the door when we are young lead to bigger experiences which test our mettle and make us realize we can indeed fit into society as authentic transgender people who won't back down in fear. This was petrifying at first but as new muscles flexed and learned to operate, I found that, over time, I had become a different person.

Being yourself doesn't hurt anyone else but not being so hurts mostly you.

"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money" - Matthew 6:24

Just curious as to how so called Christian conservatives (most of whom vote GOP) would twist that particular passage of scripture to suit their own needs.

What I take from the passage is that one should not be attached to money and use it only as a tool. In other words, do not become a slave to it. But yet there is a whole school of people out there preaching a "prosperity gospel" which says that someone faithful to God will have monetary wealth given to them; a clear bastardization of the New Testament Jesus they purport to follow.

How convenient.

In spite of having to stop taking hormones at age 16 due to a medical condition, this young transgender woman found a way to be herself. She proved the skeptics wrong when she did not grow out of her gender variance...

As I grow older I grow more tolerant of others and of myself and it makes me wonder why people can’t leave each other alone. If someone leads their life in such a way that doesn’t affect you why must you weigh in on it?

The answer of course is fear.

Once someone does something that challenges a strong belief system, it puts some into murkier waters that they cannot abide to live in. They would rather eradicate that difference than face the reality that things are not quite as they believed.

Societies today face great pressures to accommodate racial, political and religious differences which were not as evident when countries were more monolithic in structure. With global movement of people and ideas, we are being forced to live next to people whose dogma may be anathema to us.

This brave new world has in turn created factions which are fighting back against what they deem to be an unwelcome intrusion into their previously comfortable lives. This infringement will be fought against at…

Gender is the equivalent of a loaded hand gun. It is such a fundamental building block of society that, for many, it is not to be trifled with.

A trans woman misrepresenting herself can get her killed as can a man who bends the boundaries and inadvertantly ends up on the wrong side of town. Gender is serious business because it is also tied to religious dogma which has traditionally placed very specific roles on each sex; in particular the dynamics centered around procreation.

Gender identity exploration can seem to some to be appropriation. TERFS, for example, will bemoan the intrusion of transwomen as "men entering women's spaces".

Transgender people know who they are but unfortunately they are outlaws in a world that craves strict definitions hinged on birth sex. It doesn't matter how much you protest; for some we will always be men in dresses even if that particular scenario would be entirely fine. Except that transgender people aren't just dressing up for fu…

"Lay down your guns I come in peace
No need to run my friend into the trees
We've been through this so much before
But still we get it wrong
Lay down your guns and feel no regret
Life is too short my friend, best we forget
No matter how we rise and fall
And how our love is torn
We'll stand up high above the storm.

And still our passion calls
And the juices fall like rain from the sky
We have to understand we're the flame
That feeds our desire
God knows we must survive

Lay down your guns and hold on tight
We'll prove the world is wrong and get it right
No need for you to worry now the best is yet to come
Lay down your guns and stand up strong

And though the cut is deep
We can heal it, trust me and keep
Your spirits high
It should be easy now that we've talked it over
And God knows we have to try

Lay down your guns just don't say goodnight
We'll prove the world is wrong, and get it right
And even in your darkest dreams
Some things you can't forsee
La…