California is just Fucked-Up

[Ninurta]

@Ninurta
What an excellent response and an attitude I have much respect for. Others could learn from you.

I won’t go into a tit-for-tat reply but did want to expand a bit on one or two of your thoughts. Firstly on the old dog/new tricks thing. I am sixty-six. Are you that much older than me?

Gender and sex have traditionally been used interchangeably until more recently because 99.3% of the time, they meant the same thing and were in alignment but once the whole trans thing entered the discourse, the need for some differentiation became crucial because the very definition of trans is a misalignment between the two. It’s not really that hard.

Secondly, on your concept of “major”… Yes, I am who I am and have always been and there’s no debate about that but I have been through some extraordinary things that for most of my life I more or less disassociated and distanced myself from up until about when I was sixty and realized there were others like me and that I was not alone in my uniqueness.

This also more or less coincides with the “trans tipping point”, Laverne Cox on the cover of Time Magazine and the trans discourse entering my awareness. It became all a bit much to ignore and I honestly did not know what transgender even was and had to look up the meaning of the word and how it was used and who these transgender people were and what they were about. I was actually pretty alarmed.

Part of my history might explain my ignorance? As a child, I had no concept of why I was a girl born with a penis and had no words to describe things and thought I was some kind of a freak or an anomaly with a birth defect and that there was no one else like me in the whole world. That feeling of being the “only one” isolated me and the deep-seated need to express myself so that others would understand me the same way I understood myself created nothing but havoc in my young life not only for me but for my parents as well. Nevertheless I persisted without having any idea of why I was in the predicament I was in or how to communicate the problem other than just to be what I knew myself to be.

Consequently, I was never seen as a normal boy, was never accepted as one and never fit in as one all the while not understanding what any of this really meant. I never really went through some sort of boy to girl transition like we think of in today’s terms so when I started living more fully and openly as a girl at fifteen and my family referred to me with she/her pronouns and called me by a different name, it was just a natural and organic progression of what I’d just grown up to be but I still didn’t understand it – it just was.

Segue to next 50+ years of my life.

It wasn’t until I was seventeen that I learned there was a name for people like me and that something could be done about it but the early 1970s weren’t exactly enlightened times so the approach was to blend in, be nothing less than binary and perfectly feminine, attracted to the opposite gender (i.e. same sex) and to keep your head down and keep your mouth shut. In other words, be normal and quietly fit into the cisgender heterosexual paradigm without making waves and keeping things on the down low.

Since all this came naturally to me and it was impossible and always had been for me to blend in or fit into the world as a boy, that’s what I did and have done for the remainder of my life. I am neither proud nor ashamed of being transsexual but it is kind of embarrassing or maybe complicated is a better word and it is not something I wish to have known about me in the real world because it invariably changes other’s perception and in most cases, not in a good way so if you will, I’ve remained hidden and in the closet about my history or to use a trans term, been stealth.

That is until six or so years ago on ATS where I met a young member there that helped me more or less become better accepting of the things I dealt with and went through as a child because she had grown up the same way and been through the same things. Having never met someone of such similar circumstance, it was an epiphany and revolutionary.

As she was countering the prevalent anti-trans bias and hate endemic to that community, she encouraged me to join her in her quest to spread some actual knowledge and information straight from the horse’s mouth as it were and I begrudgingly began to do so. With so much misinformation, hearsay, rumor and myth which causes the fear, prejudice and hate surrounding the whole trans topic, I found value in helping others have a better understanding of the issues involved feeling that education and knowledge about the lives and experiences of “true” transsexuals better served to improve the understanding of others more than spouting transgender ideology, rhetoric and activism ever could. I received many private messages from people thanking me for helping them see things from a better perspective.

Yes, I am who I am but that also includes what I’ve been through in life that has undeniably shaped my views, opinions, perspectives and experiences. I’m not out to change people’s minds or shove anything down people’s throats. I realize that many if not most people aren’t receptive to things that upset their apple cart but there are those willing to learn given the right information that might reevaluate or reconsider their position in these matters and come to a better understanding of them.

I have been very fortunate and privileged and perhaps because of my successes and invisibility, also maybe a little guilty for not doing more to help others of my tribe and the least I can do is speak up when things get out of hand or go sideways when I can do so online anonymously. You have no idea what it’s like to sit through a hate and ignorance filled anti-trans conversation in a redneck dive bar without saying anything or the kind of fear and apprehension of repercussions I might be subject to if I was out and open about being one of those fucking tranny faggots. Let me assure you it is not pleasant or a comfortable situation to be in and I feel like a traitor and a coward but having been assaulted several times and nearly beaten to death as a teenager for being different, I have to be pretty cautious about my surroundings.

Online, that is not the case and why I even bring it up here. If I were indeed an activist, I could have started a dozen threads on this topic but I have only gotten involved when someone else brings it up. I got involved in this thread because right off the bat, I could see where it was going to go. No more boys and girls? What were those crazy tranners and radical gender abolitionists going to come up with next was inferred along with the downfall of traditional society and by some leap, Marxists and Commies and I wanted to maybe distance myself from the madness or set the record straight that just because someone happens to be trans that they are the ones pushing for this sort of thing.

Again Mr. Ninurta, I appreciate the dialog.

My apologies, because I have been drinking tonight, which makes some or your discourse difficult to follow. That's just the kinda guy I am - a drinking one. I'll re-read it tomorrow, next time for comprehension. A few things do immediately jump out, which I have no shame to respond to at the moment, however:

Firstly on the old dog/new tricks thing. I am sixty-six. Are you that much older than me?

No. I'm not that much older than you, a couple years younger in fact, I'm just more cantankerous and grouchy. I blame it on my culture and upbringings, but it's probably more likely in reality to fall to my ancestry. I come from a long line of horse thieves, cut-throats, and ne'er do wells. We are just a people that you can't do nothin' with, which has been the bane of many a wife in my life. It hasn't really been their fault, it's just the way I am.

This also more or less coincides with the “trans tipping point”, Laverne Cox on the cover of Time Magazine and the trans discourse entering my awareness. It became all a bit much to ignore and I honestly did not know what transgender even was and had to look up the meaning of the word and how it was used and who these transgender people were and what they were about. I was actually pretty alarmed. 

As you may have gathered, I tend to ignore "trans" gender. Folks are what they are, and there is no "trans" to it, in my mind. You've always been "female" from what I have gathered, and there never was a crossing or "trans-it" point, and I just accept that. Yes, you had your naughty-bits rearranged to agree with who you are, but that was not - in my mind - a "transit" so much as a realignment to conform to reality that already was... so,  no harm no foul. It just keeps my little world simpler and less contentious to think like that. I don't have to jump through hoops to figure out why a "he" became a "she" if I just accept that person always was a "she".

To be honest, I don't generally have any issues with guys who remain guys, and just chase after other guys, either. I've been around quite a number, and never had any real issues. Not my cup of tea, but they seem to already know that, and just accept that I am who I am, same as I do for them. Never had but one hit on me, I have no clue why he did because I ain't particularly pretty, but it got sorted out pretty quickly. Most have just taken me as I am, same as I do for them. I don't care who sticks what where if I ain't involved in the exchange. it ain't none of my business if they ain't blocking my walk way to do their thing.

That attitude goes all the way back to my high school days. There was a gay guy, or maybe just effeminate - I never asked -  in a program I was in that put me in college early during summers, and he was ostracized. I'd go sit in his dorm room and talk to him for hours, because to me he was just another guy, and one that was being treated unfairly. Folks would look at me sideways for that, but even at that age, I had no difficulty telling them they could kiss my ass if they didn't like how I was living. Not a damned one ever raised their hand to me, because they know that without a doubt I'd break it off and beat them with the bloody stub if they did.

People are people. The rest is just details.

I will say, however, that Grace seemed abnormally delighted when I once jokingly told her that i was "just a lesbian trapped in a man's body". I dunno why. Must be a chick thing.

Consequently, I was never seen as a normal boy

I wasn't a "normal" boy, either. I grew up with a mother and 3 younger sisters, no brothers present to fight with. The estrogen was thick. it was a fight to survive, but I learned. I like to think that having to sit through all those "girl talk" conversations had an effect on my understanding of things. Maybe not, but I like to think that all the same.

I have trouble comprehending people's innate need to label other folks, to pigeon hole them down to the minutest detail. I don't even know what I AM any more for all the labeling going on. I might be heterosexual, or I might be cisgender, or I might be some other term of the day that I am as yet unaware of. All I can say for sure is I am just me, just as you are you, and I don't see a need to fine tune it beyond that.

Likewise, I try to speak out when it appears to me that things are going pear-shaped. For example, I fought for same-sex marriage, with the caveat that no one had the right to force anyone else to do anything they didn't want to do - like, for instance, forcing a Christian to perform a wedding ceremony against their will. My take on that was again that people are people, and gay people ought to have the same rights as the rest of us, which includes the right to marry whom they will. I arrived at that conclusion after talking to some gay folks to find out WHY they were interested in marriage. I'm not interested in it, despite my history. I'd just as soon shack up as get married. I don't need governmental or religious permission. The upshot of those conversations was that it was a legal thing to them, next of kin, power of attorney, that sort of thing, and I saw no reason they should be denied what I had access to, since we were all citizens of the same damned government. Gay folks have the same legal rights as I do, or else none of us have them. BUT, just as I have no right to expect a Catholic priest to perform a Protestant marriage on my behalf, they don't have any MORE rights than me - i.e. they don't have the right to force a Christian priest or preacher to violate what he believes to be his conscience. There are other. legal, avenues of approach available, and the main thing for them was legal recognition and the legal privileges that come with it, it seems.

So, I came out in favor of gay marriage, much to the consternation of many a "Conservative". I put that in quotes because if they were truly Conservative, they would insist on other folks' rights being just as strong and inviolable as their own. That is what the nation was built upon, and they can't legitimately go back on that now and still call themselves "Conservative". They aren't conserving the foundations of the nation, equal rights for all  citizens under the law, which is what Conservatives are supposed to be all about.

I think I have drunkenly prattled on enough now. if I have anything else to add, I'll do it tomorrow, sober.

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