When I was six I discovered what was involved in sex-change operations, and decided they weren’t really sex-change, but cosmetic surgeries designed to make you appear as the other sex, which wasn’t what I wanted at all.
I might not have been six, by the way, though I remember it as six. I was probably closer to ten. There was time involved between hearing these could be done and figuring out what all happened/could be done. You see, this was pre-history, we didn’t have the internet, we didn’t even have a library system where I grew up, and tracking down the right (or very wrong) books took time. I found information a bit at a time, in history books, in old medical manuals, and in the occasional throw away paragraph in a novel.
I very much doubt I could have tracked all that information down by six, particularly considering that at four or so I mostly read — haltingly and painfully — comic books.
Though my sources of information at the time were unreliable and hard to track down; though my knowledge of biology has increased exponentially, though medical science has advanced a lot since the middle of the last century (though not as much as we like to pretend, when it comes to hormones and such) I stand by the conclusion I reached when I first finished my research.
You are born into a body you can’t change. The best you can do is pretend to change it. For some people at some times that might be the best solution, but it’s bought at a very high price, or a series of them, not all of them obvious, particularly for the young. And — mostly for political reasons of divide and conquer — the whole issue has been weaponized so that the truth is obscured from the people making the decisions, so they have to make them in the dark and in confusion.
Because of my history, I’ve meant for a long time to talk about it. I haven’t done it, because it is a difficult, fraught — and yeah — weaponized subject.
So, let’s grapple with it anyway, shall we?
First, on the above, please note that the notion that I was all wrong and should have been a boy was not arrived at by contact with anyone who told me that. And that my parents were entirely unaware of my struggles. For all I know, they still are.
So while the trans thing — particularly the belief that you can somehow automagically change your body — is indeed a social contagion, saying “My son/daughter was a perfectly contented boy/girl“ is not proof of anything. When you feel something is that wrong, on that fundamental a level, you don’t tell your parents. Or at least some of us don’t. And that was before the weaponization. Mostly? I was terrified my parents would laugh at me. And even more terrified they wouldn’t. Because if they said they always thought I was wrong, that was worse.
For those wondering, yeah, I had the stigmata. Smart kid, very lonely, in a society that highly favored — and gave more freedom — to boys, (in a way Americans can’t even really process much less understand) and with mom having preferred me to be a boy. On top of which, I was convinced I was ugly, which was a problem for a girl, but not for a boy.
Having realized that there was no way to actually change didn’t completely quell the matter. I continued feeling wrong, like a terrible mistake had been made. It just meant it couldn’t be changed and therefore I must make the best of it. But up until about fourteen, while combing my hair in front of the mirror, I had wishful thoughts that I’d not be a half-bad looking boy. I also felt I looked wrong, walked wrong, couldn’t fit in with groups of girls/women, and was generally off in some indescribable way.
Realizing at about 16 or 17 that I very much liked boys and that it was stupid to be a boy while chasing boys (Not that I chased. What I did was more debate them into the ground in the hope they’d like that (it worked, once)) helped some, but let’s be bluntly honest, I still feel — often — divorced from my body. Not in terms of I should be a boy. Older and more experienced me realizes the problem is more basic that than, but in terms of I forget I have a body, or that the body has a sex. Honestly, its getting worse as I get older, can’t get pregnant, and the whole cyclic dance of womanhood is done. As the body malfunctions more, it’s easier to retreat into a life of the mind. This led to the famous panel in which I was a moderator, and faced with a panel of all women (on women in sf, I think?) I announced that everyone but me was female. I wasn’t thinking I was male. I’d forgotten I had a body at all.
You can add in there on my risk factors on the spectrum, maybe. I don’t read as being such and it’s hard to tell for sure. I grew up in an hyper-connected and social environment that masked the fact I was a raging introvert. Masking being on the spectrum is not out of the question, and I have a bunch of the secondary sensory issues.
Some degree of generalized discomfort with your body seems to contribute to the idea that you should change, and that will solve everything.
In fact, and again, from the beginning, it solves nothing. It just gifts you with a completely different set of problems.
So let me lay out those problems.
As it exists right now, the whole you can transition is a pretty lie. You can’t. And while medical professionals are very fond of saying that we will for sure solve that and make it possible to fully become the other in the next ten or twenty years, that’s not even a gross exaggeration, that’s a piece of insanity.
What we’re dealing with is not cosmetics, or hormones. It’s the basic components of the human genome, which dictate whether you are male or female. Or intersex, but that’s honestly more of a defect. That is woven into you at a level that cannot be altered or changed sort of regrowing you an entire other body. Consider we can’t even clone people in the normal way without running into issues with premature aging.
Might there be a way to change people at that level? Or to somehow defeat chromosomes and make them do different things? Maybe. There is one — note ONE — case of an xy developing as a normal woman and becoming a mother. IF the report wasn’t vitiated, which given the time and place it might have been. If that’s real, we might be able to change people, but even then it will probably have to be done before birth and we’re talking true science fiction. Look, guys, cold fusion is on the menu well before that. At best it can be done with a “genius breakthrough“ but that is left to chance and random reshuffling of genes and life experience. Which sure, could happen in the next… 50 years. Or 500. Or never.
Almost for sure, though, given the current state of science, it won’t happen before we’re all dust in the dust. And those people lying to the young and telling young men they’ll be fully functional women, able to bear live young should be hanged, cut down while still living and have their entrails burned before their eyes.
What we can do, better than in the mid-20th century which relied on crude surgery, is more sophisticated plastic surgery to make things appear to be other things. And we can pump you full of hormones for a — relatively — more credible transition.
It will surprise no one I’ve retained an interest in reading about the field. The problem is two-fold. One: You will never fully pass. To date, I’ve met exactly one person who passes, and even then my back brain kept trying to reset. I’ll get into why that happens, and why its a problem, later. Two: hormones have a price. Hormones have an horrific price. If you take the hormones necessary to change your appearance and behavior, you’re very likely to get cancer early. Like forties early. But atop of it, the dosage is hard, so you’re also likely to have a whole slew of issues of hormones too high and too low, including brittle bones and things malfunctioning in ways most women don’t experience till menopause — and that’s regardless of the way in which you change.
If you’re a young woman transitioning to male and there’s the slightest possibility you’ll ever want to have children — permit me to tell you that at even 20 you might not know. Heck, at 30 you might not know how much you want them — be aware transitioning hormones might make it impossible.
There are other prices, more subtle, and here we have to get into why transitioners rarely pass and almost never pass completely: the part of the human brain that tells male from female is very old, and not very easy to hack. You see, I figure in our long evolution as apes and hominins and hominids telling male from female was absolutely necessary to any child. Because males will kill you, females might not. I figure its coded in the part of our brain, way back, that infants to go through a phase they are scared of everyone but mom. And more or less for the same reasons.
This means no matter how good a job anyone does at passing, other people will see through it. And at best they’ll behave oddly. I think this is part of the reason so many trans people are convinced everyone hates them. Because there is oddness in every interaction and if you were Odd or on the spectrum or something to begin with, you already interpret awkwardness towards you as hatred.
This is also, and for real what is driving trans to supporting younger and younger transitions. Because if you transition as a child, you probably CAN pass as the other sex. While this is true, there is the problem of no one before puberty having any idea of the true costs and penalties of transitioning. And also of giving a disproportionate vote to parents, some of whom will be insane. But that is the main reason driving the child transitioning movement. It’s in a sense baked in.
It’s also in a sense futile. You can’t change completely even if you do it to toddlers. They will not be functional adults of the other sex, even if they pass better. Which means you’re robbing them of a fully functional future. But even without that they’ll never fully be the other. You are what you are due to hormone baths in utero, long before you were aware there was a you.
There are other costs, social ones, beyond the fact you’ll look odd to others.
Look, I changed my name at citizenship. First, middle and last. I hated my name pretty much since I was aware of having a name. Worse, my parents didn’t even like it, it was imposed on them through family circumstances. So I changed it to a name I’d often used as a pen name.
My parents still haven’t fully forgiven me. And it makes it awkward, not just for them but for me to tell stories of childhood, etc.
I do know people who have transitioned and who have good relationships with their parents. They’re very rare. Normally transitioning means severing relationships with all family: parents, children, extended family. And often with your entire group of friends up till them. Sure you can say it shouldn’t be that way. But it is. And as one of the friends in one of those cases, it happens even if you don’t mean to. There is a natural awkwardness of not knowing how to relate to someone who frankly is no longer your friend but is also not a stranger. The effort required to remain friends becomes very high. It’s easier to drift away.
Now, sure, if only everyone decided…. but never in the history of ever has that ever happened. In human history there is no such thing as everyone doing something all at once, without dissidents or protest. Even things easier than this.
So, true change is impossible. Does this mean people shouldn’t be allowed to live as the other sex, or even take hormones if they are full adults who so decide? (I honestly think that it should be held until the brain stops developing at 26 or whatever. Our legal age being 18 is ridiculously high for some things and biologically low for others.)
Meh. You do you. If you honestly think it makes you feel better to present a credible pretense of being the other sex, who am I to interfere? There are certainly worse hobbies. If you find peace and contentment in it, good for you.
If you were someone I cared for I’d strenuously and loudly plead that you not take hormones and not have surgery (except perhaps for softening the face and hair removal — that being honestly your choice. I think it might be weird if you decide to go back to male — if you’re a male hoping to pass as a female) for a good long while, if ever. There are no risks, other than social to being a male who passes as female or a female who passes as male. And while the passing won’t be as full as with hormones, etc, it will be far less risky for you.
Look, hormones affect everything including your thinking. Women transitioning to male are not equipped either by raising or by the rest of our — already hormone shaped — nervous system to cope with testosterone influx and its associated mental and emotional effects. There is a reason most of the trans-killers have been female to male transitioners.
Which brings us to the other thing: part of the reason I imagined I was really a male, as a young female, was that I imagined males as cool and collected. They didn’t have to go through the cyclical thing and have their moods affected. Would you believe I was in my thirties before a male told me otherwise? Being a male is to be at that point where you’d gladly shiv your best friend for looking at you funny that some of us women achieve on the first day of our period, but forever. And you have to learn to control it, if you hope to live a normal life.
I’m sure there are things. I don’t know. I’m not a male. No matter what I thought as a kid, I’m not even an unusual female. I’m an unusual human, mostly due to auto-immune, etc. oh, and to what I’m sure you too have been told is Thinking Too Much.
Am I a stereotypical woman?
Oh, please. No one is. I have friends who are all social oriented and like fashion and all the girly things (I tend to be friends with them in small doses, because we are so different) and even they aren’t stereotypical females. The stereotypes ARE social constructs.
Sex is real. It comes with certain inclinations and interests because our brains were shaped differently during gestation. But all statements made about men and women are made about the aggregate. I.e. statistically women are more people-oriented and men more thing-oriented. Some of us…. fail at that. And that’s okay. It doesn’t affect the aggregate if one or many individuals are different.
My most stereotypical female characteristic is an inability to reason spatially, but that seems to be a brain-damage thing, so it’s hard to tell. Oh, and I have an unclean love for pretty shoes. Though frankly, my hips have negated my wearing them, so that’s not immediately visible. Other than that… I’m passionately interested in economics, world affairs, space exploration, etc. etc.
It also turns out I like cats and infants (And some — usually very odd — children.)
Now that I’m on the other end of life from pre-teen and all the worry about being pretty…
No one is pretty as they age. Some people manage to do it with dignity to a point at least. Last time I saw dad, he looked like he’d not so much aged as hardened in place, turning into some material stronger than mere human flesh. But having seen others age…. the ugly will come. If you live long enough, or die of a bad enough disease, you too will be ugly at the end. Male, female or otherwise.
And as you age too, you stop caring if you’re acting male or female or if what you do will be thought of as x or y. For women, at least, there is a great empowering that comes over you at about forty, particularly if you have had kids. It seems to be when you decide you’re going to be yourself, no matter what.
That is the thing to aim for. So…. you’re weird, and you don’t feel as if your body fits. Big whoop. Welcome to the human race. Here is your accordion. Yes, I know you’d prefer a piano, but you have an accordion. Make the best of it you can.
My body has disappointed me in so many ways if I start to list them I’ll forget something. Take the tendency to gain weight because of autoimmune attacks. The autoimmune itself, and the sudden illnesses that trace to that and which rob me of months or years. And then there’s the things that seemed white-hot important as a kid, such as my inability to coordinate enough for most sports. (Who am I kidding, I tripped over my feet while standing still until 18.) Or the fact my fine motor coordination was enough of a disaster my handwriting was incomprehensible.
It turns out I didn’t want a career as a professional cyclist. Or if I did, I never even started, so who cares? In what I do every day, my issues don’t matter much. (And the fine motor coordination got better with time and practice.)
Turns out for what I wanted to do and be, my body was okay. I mean, I still would like another three or four kids. And I won’t lie to anyone and say being pregnant or nursing were my favorite things. Very Strange is the best I can say for them. But I got the boys. And the boys are totally worth it. And while I thought I was ugly and strange, my husband seems to like me, and that too is completely worth it.
Even if you could change your body to the other sex, for most people it is likely to be the least of the things you’d like to change about yourself.
At least at this point, if given the opportunity, I’d turn it down in exchange for a normal metabolism, or naturally curly hair, and I’d turn it down double quick in exchange for getting rid of the auto immune.
It’s not that I’m any less of an atypical woman. I’ve just learned that being typical male or female or whatever is a construct of mass media and narrative. No one is typical. And even if I’m more atypical than most, so what?
Now some people — I’m looking at you — will read this and say all this is my coping with being gender queer or whatever the current designation is.
Perhaps. I mean if gender queer means an extremely atypical woman, you’re probably right. But so what? Would my quality of life have been improved by pumping myself full of hormones that themselves altered my thinking? Having surgery to pass as the other? Or even by pasting a label on myself and marching up and down demanding that everyone respect mah identity? Why?
To satisfy a bunch of strangers who sneer at me for not being true to myself in the way they specify? Why would I care?
In everyday life what a bunch of strangers think about me makes not a whit of difference. And my family and friends are used to my weirdness such as it is. Plus, I’ve maximized the advantages of my unfeminine ability to get stuff done and not worry if it’s pretty and to ignore the opinions of the group, or the back-biting and gossip of women-associations. I’ve also back-engineered the advantages of being a woman, the same way most of us have had to back-engineer social interaction because it’s not there naturally. I’ve learned how to be cute little thing, or these days, hapless confused grandma, when it gets me immediate help from bystanders. (Yes, I know, terribly unfeminist of me. But you see, one of the many things I’ve learned is that I don’t owe anything to any cause anyone thinks I should enlist in simply by being born female, or Mediterranean, or whatever.) I can tell you men don’t get to do that (except in highly specialized situations.) They have their own advantages, and I enjoin them to use them to the full.
If you absolutely must change, I’m not judging you. Only wait till you’ve lived long enough to know yourself. And don’t mess yourself up more than you need to physically or physiologically. But you know, if you’re an adult, it’s your lookout and there are worse things you could do to yourself.
For me? In the end, I’ve come to believe Terry Pratchett was right. Success comes when you learn to be yourself as hard as you can.
And your SELF is both body and soul, and those weird quirks of personality that really annoy you.
Minimize your downsides. Lean into your advantages, and make the best of what you are and what you can be.
All those beautiful happy people who look like they were just born that way? Have you considered you only think that because you’re not them?
It never occurred to me, back when, but it turns out everyone of those effortlessly perfect people I met are so. And some are far bigger messes than I am even.
Being human is difficult. I think everyone struggles with it.
The good news is humans were born to struggle.
I wish you joy in the battle, even if the battle is against your own body. And I hope the solution you find allows you to be yourself as hard as you can.
I’m happy as I am. Mind and body.
According To Hoyt 
Yep. None of us can know how it feels to be in a body of the opposite sex, because all our feelings/body awareness are shaped by that lifelong bath of hormones and genetics.
I read a de-transitioner’s story on Twitter a while back (before the Nashville shooter but not long before) and the thing that finally convinced her she was not meant to be male was the constant, horrifying episodes of rage brought on by the testosterone she was taking.
Yeah, it does things to your mind . Part of learning to be a man “as opposed to a ‘male’) when a guy grows up is learning how to keep that all on a leash. Learning to understand when and how to release it, and how to always keep it under control when it’s not needed.
And it doesn’t just affect anger. It also affects sex drive, to the point where one happily married woman who had to take it as a supplement later wrote that she wanted to jump the bones of every last male she saw while she was taking it
Men spend years learning to control it.
“…the thing that finally convinced her she was not meant to be male was the constant, horrifying episodes of rage brought on by the testosterone she was taking.”
Oh, she means the unceasing, burning -need- to kill whatever idiot is in front of you, standing in your way? Yeah, that’s a guy thing.
We never grow out of it. Mostly we use it to get stuff done. Ever watch a guy chop wood, and he looks like he’s -murdering- that log? He is. ~:D
All things considered, most of us do pretty well.
Which I can’t figure out, because ‘roid rage was a cliche when I was in HS in the 70s.
Ancient history.
Also, the Left prides itself on how things are silo’ed to avoid cross-contamination. Many Leftists can’t recognize a counter-example because they literally do not recognize the principle they argue from when applied to another case.
Those stories are heartbreaking.
I don’t think the transgender thing is political. I think it’s religious. Prince of Lies and all that,
The present day flood of it, yes.
The rare occurrence that has been around for a long time, no. Gender dysphoria has been around forever, but rarely. People have dealt with it in various ways. Consider Wanderer in “The Boat of a Million Years” (Poul Anderson) which taught me the older term for that: “berdache”. There was Walter/Wendy Carlos, and I recently learned about famous chip design scientist Lynn Conway. Also a colleague in the computer industry, in the 1980s. All these long precede the current “trans craze”.
On cosmetics, I agree to a point. But as men know and women probably know better, what you look like affects your psychology. That doesn’t have to mean surgery, I suppose, though it can make things easier and also do a better job. Yes, it means you’re “trying to pass”. Depending on the body type you started with, it may well be possible to do an effective job at that. It may not; Arnold Schwartzenegger in drag won’t look like a woman no matter what. But slender small people might do well enough to be comfortable — which is what matters, because again the exercise is psychological — at least until someone looks so closely that they spot the Adam’s apple.
Whaddya mean? He pulled it off in Total Recall, at least until the A.I. mask glitched out. 😀
I remember a conversation on Baen’s Bar about a person who wanted to be a “dragon/lizard person”.
Plenty of Bar-Flies thought the person was crazy to go through all of the surgery to accomplish that.
One person wondered why we were so “closed minded” about that.
IIRC The person “shut up” when it was pointed out that if the person “changed his/her mind, he/she was basically out of luck when it came to changing back”.
I feel the same thing about “trans” as about that person who wanted to be a “lizard/dragon person”.
IE What happens when after the surgery, the person isn’t “happy”?
I believe that Insty has mentioned that the suicide rate among transitioners is considerably higher than the norm.
I’ve heard that as well.
Of course, as has been mentioned in this thread, the people pushing this nonsense already believe that there are too many people on Earth.
“Of course, as has been mentioned in this thread, the people pushing this nonsense already believe that there are too many people on Earth.
Well, actually, they mean too many of the wrong people.
Yeah. If they really believed that there are too many people on Earth the only ethical and logical action to take is to kill themselves before they reproduce. Since they don’t do that, they clearly aren’t committed to that belief.
“before they reproduce”.
While I’m in the “you first” group about those idiots, I’ll point out that many those assholes haven’t reproduced and apparently aren’t planning to.
Or more cynically: aren’t able to reproduce. After all, they invented the term “incel” for a reason — having looked in the mirror one too many times.
John Hopkins Hospital publisheda piece in the WSJ’s opinion page quite a while back discussing the study that the Hospital has conducted that found that transitioning didn’t help the mental health of the subject. Instead, in the vast majority of cases, the best option was to advise no transition. Usually, after a year or so, the feeling of being the wrong gender had passed, and the subject was free to live his or her life without being stuck with irreversible damage to the body.
The piece was republished periodically on the WSJ’s opinion page until the hospital came under pressure and disavowed it a few years ago.
Johns Hopkins actually stopped doing transition surgeries because of that study. And then, because of the pressure, they started doing it again a few years later. A co-worker went through the program there. Depressed and suicidal before surgery; depressed and suicidal after surgery. Nothing had changed but the loss of tissue and the acquisition of enormous medical bills.
The truth of the matter is that the issue is -political- and aimed at getting donor money. Votes come from money.
The side pushing it DOES NOT CARE how many people die of it. They’re getting what they want.
I’m ignoring the crushing that #LetsGoBrandon is getting on TV right now, because he’s a sock puppet of the evil cabal that is using those vulnerable people to get money.
I mean, they do it everywhere but the trans thing is particularly horrible. The greatest deliberate medical malfeasance in history.
You do have to factor in that many are co-morbid and have other conditions that elevate suicide risk.
I haven’t had up-close experience with this, but from what I’ve read at Insty and similar sites, gender-mutilation is getting pushed as “the
finalperfect solution” to those co-morbidities.My oldest niece’s daughter seems to be a happy teenager (don’t have really close contact), while youngest niece’s kids are 2 and 4 years old. We’re in clser contact with her, though they’re half the country away from us. Haven’t heard about schooling plans for them, though my niece decided to be a stay-at-home mom when the older was born. I hope that homeschooling* is in the cards, or that the school district in the smallish town where they live has competent people and not the idiot indoctrinators featured in too many news stories. (It’s a stretch goal, but we can hope…)
((*)) Niece was trad-schooled, but with a lot of tutoring from both parents. SIL and BIL are (retired) engineers, and $NIECE was engineering before motherhood.
You are right. Especially the reverse engineering. Here I was thinking I had it all figured out, and now I’m having to do it all over again.
I think it’s an Ugly Lie, not a pretty one. If one “fully transitions” you not only lose that which you really are, you also will never gain that which you wish you were. There be the reason so many who transition commit suicide. They really are finishing the job they started by transitioning.
This is being pushed by the same folks telling us there are too many humans.
The copy editor in me says the word is betwixt (with a “t” at the end). Otherwise okay.
IF thats the only typo were all very lucky. My apostrophe isnt working again.
Thank you for sharing this part of your story, which can’t have been easy. You are speaking for a lot of us who were Odd tomboys growing up. Thank G-d I grew up then, when some sanity still reigned, and there were people who could say, “Hey, you don’t have to be Twiggy in a pink tutu to be a girl.” As it happens, I had cancer in my 30s, and part of the treatment was hormonal drugs that they now use to suppress puberty. The side effects nearly killed me. No one in their right mind would go on those drugs except to save their life. But then, that’s the problem…
It wasn t easy. I ve been putting it off for months. But I think it s needed perspective.
Thing is I loved being a mother. And raising boys made it very clear to me I was NOT a boy.
it’s no accident, as the marxists say, that so many of the lefties pushing this trans thing are childless. My wife can hardly tell a story about my sons, or me for that matter, without saying “boys are different.”
Yep. Men are profoundly different.
:grumbles: Fresh out of the tub, scrubbed pink, and the boys still smell like dirt!
It’s clean dirt, and I love it, but how do they still smell like dirt!??!
They do. They are noise with dirt on it. Or dirt with noise on it.
I loved Alma’s quote from Lelia: “When two or more boys are quiet? Loud is about to follow.”
Dirt smells of boy.
(Cue Mr. Nightlinger: “It smells of boy in here!” ~ The Cowboys)
In the computer/tech domain you may encounter or learn of some very smart, creative key figures that are male to female transitioners and you wonder if their accomplishments and talent are linked to whatever made them switch. I’ve worked with several and met more over the decades. They genuinely seemed to be wired different.
Nowadays it seems it’s more like a popular fad that has been made popular by the “culture”, much like the the acceptance of tattoos has become in the last generation. It’s hard to tell what is real and what is prompted by the Imp of Perverse. I’ve met many of these later people and they seem to be different from the first population and not as well adjusted. It’s more of a costume to flaunt than an body to live in. And their demand for more than acceptance is in your face.
That’s the same domain where you find a lot of Furries.
Wonder if that’s a similar hating your body thing going on.
That’s the same domain where you find a lot of Furries.
Wonder if that’s a similar hating your body thing going on.
You also find a lot of Furries in that domain.
May be a similar body-hating issue.
Cutting a million words of background….I knew only one post op….and she was definitely Spec.
Everyone I knew personally who said they were gay (or bi, lots of reluctance on that one) had either had bad encounters with men (both male and female gays), then for the women, an older woman (with a similar history) had seduced them.
I thunk based on their stories and how they behaved around me….they wanted protection and when it didnt come….they continued on damaging themselves one way or another. All but one I knew are dead….much younger than the norm.
I have also had several straight women who wanted the same thing from me. I didnt say normal beecause they were not.
I never felt the way Sarah or any of these people did. I have always been comfortable as myself. I can intellectually empathize but I do not viscerally grasp it.
It is a known but unspoken thing in the mental health industry that severe trauma and predation by adults changes children’s brain chemistry and their outlook. And then the brain does a reset around 23-25 years and things can change rapidly. So young boys predated by men or women often ‘grow up’ thinking they’re gay, but then the change happens. Same with girls predated upon by adults.
And it’s also known but unspoken that children who ‘declare’ themselves not of the right sex are often victims of a sexual version of Munchausen’s by Proxy.
The regrets hit hard when the brain and body reset at that magic moment in growth. And the more radical the changes done, the higher the probability of suicide.
I’ve recently been digging into attachment theory and so I’m very much in the shiny hammer phase, where in everything looks like a nail.
One of the interesting things is that there is a whole cocktail of hormones that mediate human bonding, up to, and including, repurposing into different receptors under different stresses.
One of the differences turns out that its not so much which hormones are being used, but how many receptors people have for them. Women apparently have many more receptors for oxytocin (family bonding) than men do, but men apparently have more receptors for vasospressin (group problem solving bonding) than women do.
Further if someone is oxytocin deprived, the receptors will start responding to dopamine instead. And cortisol (stress) will simply shut down the oxytocin receptors outright.
So if someone is under a ton of stress, they may not even be able to bond well at all: they’ll chase the dopamine highs which crash after seven months or so. But if someone is very lonely but otherwise not running at 7/10 stress, they may well family bond with someone over just a fun time.
Where it gets interesting is it means both that there are sex typical methods of bonding and that someone in an atypical situation can start bonding like a more typical member of the opposite sex. It all ends up depending on the context.
So why women may more commonly family bond, if they’re operating in an environment where they are constantly under high stress, they may start bonding in a more typically male way. And an extremely isolated male without other major stress factor may start bonding in a more classically female sort of way.
Except neither of them is really plumbed for it so neither side can really fill their role very well.
Now that I think about it, it also maps to the conquered societies the women becoming promiscuous (they’re running the dopamine / cortisol pathway) and the men becoming limp (they’re running the repurposed dopamine to oxytocin cycle, but don’t have enough receptors to really bond that way and are just getting bombed with mixed signals).
And I could see how people stuck in a different mode than everyone else like them could think if they switched, they could be ‘normal’. Except it can’t work because it’s not a wiring problem, rather an environment and context problem, and no amount of extra signal carriers is going to change the receptors they’ve got.
Definition of dysphoria – a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life. Gender dysphoria is just one of the manifestations, one centered on external gender characteristics.
All of them have a mental basis, by definition. It’s “all in the head.” Some of them have a physical cause, and can be treated (very carefully) with psychiatric pharmaceuticals to ameliorate the dissatisfaction. Most are (and should be) treatable with unbiased therapy by a good professional psychologist. Biological interventions are going to make the dysphoria worse in most cases.
(Above for severe, life disrupting cases. Everyone has some form of dysphoria, which are solvable simply by self care and honest contemplation of the cause and the possible solutions.)
The fact that therapists seem more willing to sign off on transitioning than on treating things like depression, various psychoses, and early-onset schizophrenia speaks volumes. Social contagion, plus government money, is a deadly combination, IMHO.
Yep. Obamacare made it absolutely fully covered. Suddenly it exploded.
Everything healthcare wise exploded once the gay kenyan got that passed. You can’t find any cheap insurance anymore. I go without because wife’s paycheck would not be able to cover all three of us, even with my SSA check. Decided to stay home after losing job from Fraudvid so kid wouldn’t be alone. Cost us a lot. There’s no money in treating the usual ailments, the exotic gets the money.
This is why Dan hasn t retired yet. INSURANCE.
Hubby was able to retire at 60 because of union retiree Family insurance (started out at $250/month, in 2012). Covered him, me, and son (until age 27). Son was able to decline work insurance until required at age 27. I was double covered, which was essentially being covered by hubby’s insurance because my work insurance sucked. (So did son’s once he was on it.) Mine didn’t have monthly co-pay (or I’d declined) but coverage was high deductible, and high annual out of pocket. EX: one co worker’s son broke his arm and the entire bill did not meet the deductible. Only time the insurance paid a thing was the toddler’s heart surgery. In addition, while the employee monthly insurance was paid for, the company only paid half the premiums for spouse, and each child, on the insurance through the company. Half was $700 (8 1/2 years ago). Spouse and 2 children: $2100/month. There was no family option.
When hubby turned 65, we looked into him going on Medicare Advantage. But if he did that then we needed insurance for me (by then I was not working). Retiree Family Insurance $350/month. If changed: $0/month hubby $700/month, 2017. We did not switch. Oct 2021, we both went on Medicare Advantage, $0/month (actually the $145 SS deduction). Savings $350/month. Coverage? Well SIL says they haven’t seen a bill for all of BIL’s emergency transport (household has Firemed), emergency room, surgery, hospitalization, and subsequent multiple home visits, and prescriptions, for the staff infection. I say “yet”, but it has been 4 months now, so IDK. I don’t know which Medicare Advantage they have, but locally they are pretty much the same.
A full suite of gender transition drugs and surgeries is -much- more profitable to a medial provider than a course of psychological treatments and maybe some anti-depressants.
Pisses me off -so- bad. OMG.
Perhaps the most disturbing, and least talked about, aspect of the whole trans thing is something I encountered in the BDSM community. Apparently there are Dominatrices who specialize in “Guiding” self-hating males through transition, and then, once the man has physically destroyed himself, abandoning him.
Gah.
There are mental health professionals who enjoy getting their patients to transition.
Same kind of thing. It’s like it’s driven by a particularly vengeful and destructive mutation of Feminism.
Particularly menopausal women. Have seen that.
We _suspect_ that a freelance version of this may be involved in a situation I’m familiar with: autism spectrum brilliant roboticist male, just out of high school, working remote. Suddenly announces change of name/pronouns, quits job, moves across the state to live with a ‘friend from online’.
To me, the entire mess has been right out of a science fiction story. Bizarre surgical procedures, pandering to disorders, sociopath scientists and a government out of control. A less polite society would be rounding people up and insuring they never attempt their Frankenstein experiments again.
Sigh … growing up, I was pretty certain that I didn’t actually WANT to be a boy, but I sure and heck wanted to do all the cool boy stuff. Adventures, do interesting and daring things … but on the whole, I did like being a girl; having a uterus and breasts, being able to have children … I liked babies, too. Hoped to be married and have a couple of them. That would be everlastingly cool, especially if I could bag a handsome and interesting male for a mate, and have some adventures first …
Yeah, some of that got done.
The horrifying thing to me about the trans fad (and it IS a transient and awful fad, not a doubt in my mind about that!) is how it shoe-horns kids with eccentric tastes into a rigid lockbox of stereotyping. Be the least little bit ‘off’ from convention in tastes or interests – well, whammo! Yer a trans, kid, so start sucking down the hormones and have bits carved off your body!
The other thing is … my father was a research biologist. Did it for years, had a deep interest in all kinds of arcana. One of those things that he advised my sister and I about in the mid-1970s was “The Pill” when it first was widely available. That tampering with human hormones was a tricky business, and that medical science just did not know enough about how they really all worked. We ought not to go blundering about, messing in something which we did not fully understand. It’s been decades since Dad told us that – and I don’t think that scientists are very much closer to understanding how it all works. Certainly not well enough to go blundering about, trying this or that.
The one thing I’ve found that actually got folks to stop trying to get me to go on The Pill– as a not-even-interested 14 year old– was going into lecture mode about the horrors of hormones in milk, and tying that to directly injecting MYSELF with much stronger hormones that are actually made for human response.
I couldn’t take the pill. Lasted all of 3 months (?) on it (made migraines worse. Trust me, that was hard to do.) So when doctor mentioned hormones for menopause asked if was going to make a difference long term, still have to go through the early effects of menopause, when you quit hormone therapy. Short answer, no. The answer was no regardless, but I was curious.
c4c
You will always be lost until you accept what and who you are. No amount of drugs, surgery or any other means will change that. You are born the way you are, and nothing can change that. You either accept yourself or you fight yourself. These poor individuals should just be told the truth from the outset. But the lure of easy money has a very strong appeal. The powers that be don’t care about the children they mutilate any more than they care about anyone else. This is another assault on god and the church from the lefties that hate, the dirty secret is they hate themselves more than they hate everyone else. I hope the poor souls they damage don’t get their revenge on all who mutilated them as children and adults. In truth, I hope they are the ones whipping them in hell, for all eternity. They belong with Mengele, and Hitler in hell, burning forever.
There is immense power in accepting yourself.
As someone that was convinced when he was about your age that he might have been born wrong-gendered, I’m lucky as hell that I got therapy and the general cultural “meme” for even the San Francisco Bay Area at the time was “you’re having a phase due to the fact that you’re a teenager with the hormones going insane. Find a level of working equilibrium for now and it will pass.”
I also got lucky in that my therapist as well made it clear that he’d support me transitioning-when I was eighteen. And did my research and due diligence to his satisfaction, first.
Dear God the issues and the secondary effects…
Suicide rates alone, post-SRS, are something like nearly four to five times higher within the first year or two. You read about the side effects of the hormone cocktail, the secondary issues that are involved, and the fact that outside of a very narrow range of people there is no viable level of “passing” outside of the fetish communities. Sexual response is highly reduced in most circumstances. The minimum costs to just do a “bare bones” transition are scary, and there are a lot of secondary expenses (from facial surgery to permanant hair removal) that can easily double the costs. That at a certain point, you’re committed no matter what. And you’re going to be living the rest of your life spending a few thousand dollars a year, minimum, on medications. With these same medications having some very nasty long-term side effects.
(Understand this-I know that I write a lot of gender-change and gender-fluidity characters. I also point out that this is the exception, not the rule, and men and women are very different in a lot of ways besides the obvious. Most of my flippers are either uploading their minds to new bodies, it’s an external shell, and/or it’s a complete genetic change. With all the issues of hormones and brain structures involved as well.)
I’m convinced that transgender “therapy” will be considered in the same way as prefrontal lobotomies are today-an extremely narrow niche therapy that somehow became popular among therapists that wanted to show off just how “leet” they were and how they were rebelling against their teachers and the culture at large. Then the medical companies discovered how much money there was to be had in this kind of thing, with a client base that has to pay for medications. Then the third- and fourth-wave feminists found that they could really f(YAY!)k up men by helping boys and men desperate for female attention to “crack their eggshells” and get them to destroy themselves without even having to be there in person…
I’m very sorry for the people that have destroyed themselves.
I am not sorry for the people that enabled them, one way or another, to destroy themselves.
All of this.
The hatred they must harbor insides themselves to do this to others is truly Demonic, I pity them and the damage they are doing to their souls. Some who find no love for themselves after all the changes are going to flip out on them, one at a time. It only takes one nutbuger to kill the doctors and therapists who talked them into this. It is not call to arms, but warning of what is going to happen, not might, nut will. They will flip out, and they are not going to go out alone, especially those females with no aptitude for testosterone. You see it happening every day, soon, it will be almost as common as gang shootings in Chicago. They brought this retribution onto themselves, pray for their families, they can go to hell.
Apparently TSC has seen the light….
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2024/06/27/tractor-supply-co-ditches-everything-woke-declares-it-wont-ever-touch-dei-or-pride-celebrations-n2176074
Yeah I am so glad I grew up in an earlier time. With my unresolved depression and anxiety issues plus my tomboyish phase and my utter hatred of all the backstabbing cliquey mean girl crap I might have been easy prey for the groomer ghouls. Plus I got to play outside with other kids without anybody calling the cops.
Right?
Same.
When I was 12 I was going from muddy jeans and boots to evening long formal dress, and shoes. By 16, when most girls are getting their first formal, I was on my 3rd. My adult examples were grandma, mom, and aunt. It is called Eastern Star. As a teen, for mom and aunt, it was Rainbow. For me it was Job’s Daughters. I was also the oldest of 3 girls of parents who fished and hunted. I was also horse crazy (which is about as girly as one can get). I was in Girl Scouts, at the time when Out in Scouts, even for GSA meant “Outdoors”. Wasn’t ever into sports, be it running around or gymnastics. Did like the outdoors though. Even when I was in School of Forestry in college, if it wasn’t lab day (off campus in the woods and fields), I often wore long dresses, that I’d made (warmer). Gotten out of that habit now. Mostly because switching careers to computers initially meant crawling around on floors (and weight). Never went back to dresses unless absolutely required.
Back when I was testing semiconductors I worked with a lady that always wore jeans, even when on days that the job didn’t require working under the raised floor or moving equipment. Always.
One day, after three years on the job, I came in and she was wearing a dress. So I asked her if she ran out of clean laundry. She laughed and said it was her anniversary and her husband was taking her out after work.
Boys are not girls.
Girls are not boys.
Those are facts. They can’t be changed by wishing at them.
Precisely.
The days of Betan body mods are far in the future. Our current state of the medical arts do not extend to making a man into a woman, or a woman into a man. At most it is possible, using surgery and prosthetic devices, to construct a semi-convincing fake. Those fakes then require drug and hormone ‘support therapies’ FOR LIFE. They can never become what they pretend to be, and they can never go back to what they were. It’s tragic.
None of them really pass, and it puts them permanently in the Uncanny Valley.
100%
I think what saved me (and even so my younger sister, who really did go through a stage where she wanted to be a boy) was having been a kid in the 70s “Free to be You and Me” period. You know, when Rosie Greer taught needlepoint and read “William’s Doll” and the pages of the Penney’s catalog were full of ‘his-n-hers’ matching pantsuits. Farm kid with a tomboy mom, it just never occurred to us that preferring male friends, rough-and-tumble, and falling in creeks had anything to do with what sex we were. We knew that.
Then I was teenager in the 80s, when all the manly men we adored doubled down on 70s androgyny and teased their hair and wore more eye makeup than I ever did. The cover of “Look What the Cat Dragged In” still epitomizes that era for me, but all those hair metal dudes were aggressively hetero, no matter how pretty they looked.
I think the thing I find most frustrating and actually angering about the current gender madness in how *expletive-ing* regressive it all is. I was raised that you should do anything you enjoyed and were capable of and stereotypes be dam*ed (by both my parents, my Dad was pretty determined that his girls should be able to fight as well as anybody and I think was always slightly disappointed that I opted for the Army instead of the Marine Corp, which he’d been grooming me for from about the age of 3).
Now we are looking to ideals of the (mostly imaginary) 1950s and telling kids that their “gender” is based on which stereotypical activities they enjoy. Like cooking and dolls? You are a ‘girl’. Kids like me who preferred Star Wars (and GI Joe, OK, I know it shows) and comic books and falling in creeks with to shopping and makeup? Obviously a boy all along. It’s so F-ing limiting and narrow minded in its prescriptiveness.
And no, I never had the slightest doubt I was a woman, am straight as a ruler, and always wanted marriage and kids just as much as I didn’t want to play mean girls or be a PTA mom or wear dresses and makeup.
I will say I was lucky to hit the don’t-care-what-anybody-says-or-thinks in my early 30s (about when I had my sons, coincidence?) but my life has been all the better all the sooner because of (as she says as she hits the menopause).
Yes, the same about trying to fit in with the ideals of the fifties, which were never that restrictive to being with. But it’s how they are in stories.
Granny Weatherwax was right about sometimes destructive nature of ‘stories’ and it is surely playing out right now.
Even working I never wanted anything to do with the mean girl clique. Was lucky enough to not work where that was a problem. Not always, but either very little interaction with other women, ever, or I was the only female employee. Last job only female employee at the firm, but interacted with female clients all the time. Which I was good at. But then I am the poster for “let me help by making sure you not understand what I’m telling you, but ultimately why I’m telling you what I am (so you don’t call back in *30 minutes)” whether you want the latter or not.
A little older than you. Grew up in the ’60s, into early ’70s. (HS graduate ’74.) Quote from dad “Nobody tells my girls what they can and can’t (legally) do.” He had no expectations beyond “get a degree and be happy”.
(* Selfish that way.)
I now like dresses. Young me is puzzled.
I like them for special occasions, or for church, but it always feels like I’m putting on a costume. It’s how I know that the occasion is, in fact, special.
My calves are larger than my neck (I have a 4 inch gap if I wrap both hands around one), so if I wear a skirt it’s going to be long, preferably floor length, and never tight. I can’t wear boots or shoes higher than my ankles, boot cut jeans are usually too small. So while I do wear pants in public (and prefer them) skirts are just easier.
Oh. It not only felt like a costume, I expected to be laughed at till like 10 years ago.
The main reason I’m defaulting to them now is that I’m getting old-lady body. I’ve lost my waist. Which means pants fall down. Dresses, by not doing that, are SUCH a relief. Dresses and skirts it is.
I suspect this is why I stuck with the military for so long, almost always in a majority male and male-oriented environment. I can navigate those ways of thinking and acting much more readily than I can the female ones, my brain isn’t wired right for it. Outside of the military I have usually worked remotely from management, where no one tried to manage me as long as the job got done and my patients were happy, which has saved me from girl boss office politics. Weirdly the worst exception to that was working for the DOD for a couple of years as a civilian. Very different mindset.
Unlike our hostess I also score off the charts in visuo-spacial reasoning and mechanical ability, which may be related to the whole “my brain works wierd for a girl. Then again, so does my mom and both of our husbands suck at it, so maybe it’s just that statistical curves are not destiny 🙂
Best thing about remote work is not dealing with the office drama.
Thanks Fauchi!
My entire post college careers, both of them, were all but 100% independent work even though I didn’t (as a rule) get to work from home. Log Scaler – kind of how they work. Programmer? Wide range. But I’ve never, ever, had a code review. Not in school. Not my professional work. I’ve had one woman supervisor. Her office was 100 miles away. We talked on the phone once a month, maybe. When PTP finally realized I should be under R&D not business, my supervisor was switched to the R&D manager/supervisor. His office was down the hall. We talked once a month, maybe. Difference? We didn’t use the phone. Even then I initiated the conversation as in: “Um. Ready to start the next big project. Engineering is screaming for …. and Nursery is screaming for …. Which gets priority for the next 6 to 8 months?”
Oh, I have mechanical ability. I do it the same way as art, without being able to see it in my head first. Don’t ask. As I said probably brain damage from extremely premature or other stuff. A tester classified me as a visual thinker with the visual side damaged. Which…. it’s fun.
And I always do better in male environments. I am interested in THE THING not the jockeying for advantage, you see?
^^ THIS ^^
I’m so fortunate that all of my coworkers at Day Job are focused on “do the job.” There’s no time or energy for politicking and Mean Girl 2.0 or Whiny Guy stuff.
“(it worked, once)”… that was Dan, right?
Because my approach was apparently to share my geeky hobbies with girls in the hope of finding one who appreciated them. It worked, once — and I married her. Had our ninth anniversary last month, looking forward to 40+ more.
Yes.
39 for us.
It is a journey.
We are past our 45th. Looking forward to another 45. 😇😇😇
Maternal grandparents made it past 75th.
Mom & dad past 53rd (dad died spring before 54th).
Maternal aunt and uncle have made it past 65th.
Paternal aunt and uncle are working on 65th.
Maternal uncle and aunt are working on their 55th (he’s only 10 years older than I am).
We have a lot of good examples to follow.
Going on 36 for us. Time flies.
Doesn’t it? I was a blushing bride yesterday, I swear.
Blushing bride, just yesterday. Bride who was 5’4″ and weighed 125#s. Still 5’4″, not 125#, not even close. Won’t see that weight ever again, no matter what I do. My hair is a lot lighter, er whiter/gray, now too.
Yeah. I was 128….
I have fun with the people who ask which stylist does my streaks.
Or as 2 nieces have put it, “You’re going blond!” Chortle.
In the correct light my hair shows white blond.
When I was still coloring (started at age 30, and could have started at age 25 to hide the white), I used non-permanent color. It faded out as it grew out. Still got the “line” but it blended in better. I got the same “which stylist does my streaks” too. I still have “streaks” but it is gray and black in the white. Yes. My stylist is that good. He streaks by individual hair.
38 in November, God willing.
My parents just celebrated 70. I can HOPE.
It only has to work once!
Works both ways. My biggest geekdom is B-Movies. I tell anyone who will listen that I married spousal unit because he didn’t kill me when I dragged him out of bed at 2 in the morning to watch “Plan 9 From Outer Space” on TV. He even liked it, so I decided I’d better keep this one. Will be 30 years this fall.
Dan let me talk Heinlein at him ENDLESSLY.
Me? I like the outdoors. Don’t care for sports. But willing to let hubby and son, and was there to “help” hubby’s coaching/games (a lot to do beyond actual coaching) during son’s participation. But outdoors, camping, hiking, shooting, fishing (just not from boats, please, jokes here aside, I chum). We don’t hunt only because we were out of state early years. Could never get time off during the season. Western Oregon hunting is not fun, these days, even if traditional hunting locations were still available (Poison Oak/Sheep Hill, is no joke, hasn’t been for decades. If we’d stayed with the USFS, would have.) Never even considered staying at home while the boys did scouting. Overheard a number of scouters saying their wives thought “roughing it” was the Hilton, they never went camping. Joked “That is an option?” (Answer: No) I know on crews, “doesn’t give up, doesn’t complain” is a complement. We were never on the same crew, different divisions (different districts until after we started dating, and hubby wasn’t the one who talked me into changing districts, that was a mutual friend), but hubby knew everyone on the crew.
I know hubby loves all the above. I know he adores me.
Find a girl that will get an Extra Class ham ticket and help you setup a Linux server for her media collection. Came with tools and the ability to shoot guns!
Don’t manspain me what a RAID array is…
Arguing over backups and storage allocation while planning parties for family is True Love.
I remember (sort of) a story of total social / political implosion in the US and in the story ‘good guy’ was looking to save/rescue another ‘good guy’ in enemy territory. To get the job done he joined up with a local gang – all of them had gone through “transition” – and they help him accomplish his goal. The interesting side story of the gang was their full time effort went to hunting down the doctors, administrators, supporters, etc. and their families that enabled the transition “stuff” to happen. Not a happy group but one with a burning purpose to destroy those who had harmed them.
I am afraid that once the whole ‘transition’ phase is ending there will be a rash of those damaged wanting to kill those whom they view were responsible for their pain and loss. I hope it won’t come to that but fear there will be cases where it does.
OT…My beloved is watching the debate. I’m skimming and reading commentary. Biden looks dreadful. Less than an hour and he’s already been angry, unfocused and full of false outrage. (He just pulled out the “Fine People,” hoax and his first attack was the, “drinking bleach,” thing).
The format is actually helping Trump. He’s looking truculent, but he’s staying on point and landing jabs. But it’s painful to watch. And somehow, it frightens me.
Probably not nearly as frightened as Biden’s handlers are watching his clear display of senility and unfitness for office.
I had to stop watching. #LetsGoBrandon is avocado toast. Green, funny looking and crispy. Done like dinner, baby. Stick a fork in him.
The after-show from CNN is friggin’ hilarrious. They’re -terrified-. They’re literally having a cow on live TV about how bad #Brandon looks, how utterly f-ed his delivery was, and how bad they’ve been lied to by the DemocRat Party and the White House.
The whole panel seems to be barely able to stay in their seats, they all want to run the hell away and get a plane ticket for Cuba.
The Reader suggests we start a GiveSendGo for their tickets.
I say we set up a siege engine on Miami Beach and give them a head-start on their swim to Cuba. Nothing like a nice trebuchet, I always say.
#teamtrebuchet!
The moderators are surprising. Was expecting more blatant Biden-boosting.
Trump said a few things that hit my “that was dumb, dude”. Biden…. “switch to decaf, dude.” That first two minutes will be an albatross. The word salad moments are painful.
Trump has a gift of pissing people off, and he got Biden pissed early. Downside, is that anger is working to focus Biden more than if he had stayed calm. Oops.
I would bet money Biden is wearing a receiver. That odd head down thing.
Biden is trying to needle Trump, and he isn’t taking the bait. A few hackleup-starts, then he redirects himself.
None of this is much going to change any voter minds, maybe a percent or two. Maybe.
But I expect bigly an effort by the Donkuloid machine to dump Biden.
Too late. That ship sailed. Too late to change ballots per various states. So the Donks are screwed. Watch for who they put in as veep. The price of not buggering-up the Donk convention is Biden has to pick a new Veep. HRC or Zer0, depending, or someone adjacent to those.
Trump could pick Kermit the Frog and it won’t matter much.
I need to buy about a hundred pounds of popcorn.
As to the debate, Biden “wins” if he doesn’t stroke out or lock up. But Trump was masterful in roping Biden into this charlie-foxugly.
Because the contrast is… ugly.
Biden just challenged Trump on -golf-. -stupid-
DJT:”Let’s not act like children ”
stick a fork in it. It’s done.
Biden’s concluding remarks…. squirrel riot.
Trump is clearly trying not to get angry in his. Bit too rambling. Should have just used a prepaired two minute drill of hit points.
Now various pundits will carve it all up for folks.
But Biden should have avoided this. Did better than I thought, managed not to totally glitchvout. But that summation was bad.
popcorn is done. Dig in.
Number two son and his buddies were watching it together in chat. Number two son said the moderators weren’t that bad and that Biden was “tweaking”. I had to look that up and it seems to be accurate, it being the last stage of a meth episode. he also remarked that what all the guys in the chat found most interesting was that Biden never blinked.
This is a bunch of politically apathetic guys in their mid twenties and even they noticed it.
The dems must be in panic mode.
If you think Democrats were freaking out last night, they must be in full insanity mode today: The Supreme Court outright overruled Chevron.. We know the Democrats are going to condemn the Supreme Court as illegitimate, after praising it for rejecting the Idaho abortion case and the government censorship cases on standing, and demanding that everyone respect the courts and judicial process after the NY kangaroo courts.
A two-fer to enrage Democrats. The Supreme Court 6-3 ruled the obstruction law used against J6 protestors does not apply and cannot be used to charge them criminally,.
The law they just said is inapplicable is also the core of the DC District kangaroo court case started by Jack Smith
DOJ also promised to jack up other charge sentencing if anyone actually appeals based on SCOTUS overturn of the Enron BS.
I hope not. That path leads to …. bad.
Also, it may have overlooked notice given Biden’s display of patent mental incompetence, but at one point after calling Trump a “convicted felon”, Biden promised that more lawfare against Trump was going to be launched.
The people who want to keep the puppet they control in place have no qualms about using “any means necessary” to ensure Trump does not win, even if means jailing him and outright murdering him.
This statement by Trump is the reason a lot of us admire him:
TRUMP: And I’ll tell you something. I wish he was a great president because I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be at one of my many places enjoying myself. I wouldn’t be under indictment because I wouldn’t have been his political opponent. He indicted me because I was his opponent. I wish he was a great president. I would rather have that. I wouldn’t be here. I don’t mind being here, but the only reason I’m here is that he’s so bad as a president that I’m going to make America great again. We’re going to make America great again. We’re a failing nation right now. We’re a seriously failing nation. And we’re a failing nation because of him. His policies are so bad.
Of course it does. If the Leftroids get their way, that zombie sock-puppet is going to be re-installed as president.
The Democrats have made our elections into a horse race with the final stretch and finish line concealed by a huge tent put up by the owners of one particular horse. Nobody can see the end of the race. The owners of that horse will tell us, when the race is over, that the oldest, lamest, most broken-down horse on the track won the race handily despite being 16 lengths behind the rest going into that tent.
Leave it to the Bee:
https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-indicted-for-murdering-elderly-man-on-cnn
The Bee is a joy.
Honestly surprised that Biden didn’t have a stoke on TV last night. Then Trump would have been charged with his murder. Although Biden called for the Debate. So is it then self defense?
@Imaginos1892 commented on “Doom, Doom, Doom” that Biden not falling down was one of the goals that he met.
A way I’ve heard that explained is that you’re telling them how to treat you. Like… there’s a whole deck of program cards. You’re picking one to put on the table, kind of like how you might smile and thank someone for the dance when you’ve just done the awkward “both dodge the same way repeatedly” thing when you’re walking. They can pick the card up, or avoid it, or play a card in response.
I’m not really good at noticing social cues, but I do notice when say I’m in a game store and the guy selling stuff is obviously trying to figure out if I’m Aunt Shopping For A Gift, a weird shoplifter, or what– at that point, asking a question even if you really don’t need the answer tells them how do I interact with this person, without making trouble?
Or even just a grin and “just looking really quick to see if we can do a family shopping trip in here, or if it’s something where my husband and I have to switch off with the kids, and didn’t want to get them all excited about getting to geek out with mom and dad if it’s just too dangerous.”
The guest of honor at LC this year was a MTF (No idea how far along, don’t care) and “She” twigged that same wrongness neuron that they all do.
Yep, The body/voice disconnect caught me at the start of her marketing panel, but I just shifted it aside and focused on content of material. The mannerisms were also a strong tell, later. *Shrug*
“Her” posture was very masculine, and she makes what appears to be a common mistake of picking breasts way too big and perky for “her” size and age.
I’d have an easier time believing the XYs who want to be XXs truly want to be normal women if they didn’t try to look like porn stars. Sort of like how I’m more inclined to believe people who have memories of past lives when they don’t think they were Napoleon or Anastasia.
Watched the debate. CNN did a good, evenhanded job, imo.
Biden got *shellacked*.
Just saw Biden at the post debate party rally. He’s standing in front of a backdrop that says “Let’s go Joe”.
The Republican operative that got that in place deserves a massive bonus! Or maybe it’s true that the left can’t meme…
Let’s go Brandon!
I can relate to struggling with your body; younger Evenstar hated the female physical maturation process *so* much. Breasts are annoying (bra shopping my nemesis), menstruation is painful, the hormone swings aren’t funny, and if bathing in the Jordan seven times would restore childlike skin I’d do it.
That said, while my parents definitely wouldn’t have transed me, I’m glad I’m not growing up an autistic female in today’s culture.
Never could figure out why “good racks” are a good thing for the women wearing them. I was perfectly happy with what god gave me pre-child, not quite flat, but not “full”. Now? They are in the dang way. (Maybe because they showed up when I was older and didn’t learn how to deal younger?)
Amen sister. Menopause isn’t a cake walk either and my symptoms are relatively light (night furnace I think has been mentioned). I don’t tend to suddenly turn on the water works anymore, yet my empathy is fully intact. Yes, my give a dang is fully broken, or gone, but I can still empathize.
The male attention received because of those “good racks”.
Not a hard question.
Guess it was the environment. Personally, I was happy to be ignored. Sure “good racks” got attention. But not the right type of attention. Just saying. FWIW. Knew a few with early “good racks” and they would echo this. Maybe I ran with the wrong crowd?
“Male attention” includes the eventual attention of one’s mate…….
Guess I attracted a different way. We were friends, hanging with the same group, for years before our first date. OTOH if I’d taken home the 22 year old I met at college Forestry Club meeting, as a *17 year old, he probably wouldn’t have survived.
(* Might have been 18. I turned 18 six weeks after first day on campus for freshman orientation. I had a dorm curfew until I turned 18.)
I “bloomed” (hah) early, and was wearing a 34C bra when I was twelve.
Today it’s 42DD.
They’re ALWAYS in the way, and don’t get me started on underb00b sweat, heat rash, and so forth. And I was always puzzled by women who blathered on about how great it was NOT to wear a bra. SOME support is more comfortable, dammit. (Backache is not fun.)
32 A/B
Now it is 44DD. I was 32 when I “bloomed”. All because of the baby. It is like my system went “Oh. Wait!” And then they didn’t do their job (had to supplement at 3 months). Well okay. Hubby appreciates them.
Don’t have problems with after “and”. Thank you. Yes, if I lost weight I would be “smaller”. I’ll never see A/B again. All the kid’s fault.
Not even when I was tiny.
Also I swear the older I get the more I need a bib. The shelf is in the way of ANYTHING that drops. Including fruit juice.
I thought I was the only one having that problem.
No. It’s so annoying.
The beach balls affixed to the front of my anatomy are annoying. BUT Dan likes them.
Understand.
Hubby likes the natural enlargement too. He laughs at artificial enhancements seen on TV.
Life is full of situations we don’t control, things we wish were different, situations at home, school, work, and play that “don’t taste good”.
I’ve been divorced after 15 years and, remarried, had our 25th this year. Had cancer and by the grace of God beat it twice. Spent over 36 months (roughly 9, 3, 9, 15) unemployed since 2009 because of economic perturbations but employed now. Yadda, yadda.
As Sam Elliot said in a movie, “Sometimes, you eat the bear. Sometimes the bear eats you.”
Bring BBQ gear. The world is not on our side.
You know, it’s not even the “something’s not physically right” disconnect that makes people bristle. One of the rock groups I like, or used to, dropped some new songs as singles before their album came out this month. I started watching one and hit a wall. The female lead, who is conventionally feminine and goth-adjacent, was doing the death growl vocals.
Now, I know that with training, if she has the right pipes, a woman can do that. And some women do shift from head voice (“operatic”) to rock to growls and back, sometimes in the same song. But to see it in a video, with a total mismatch between voice and form? Bugged the heck out of me. I think if I’d been expecting it, I’d have had less of a reaction, but bam! I hit a mental wall. Other singles from the album don’t have that effect, since the lead is singing in a normal female register.
Yeah.
Okay, I did not study those particular topics, not something that was a strong interest for me.
But, I was a weird, trusting, bookish kid.
And my relationship with my body? LOL.
I’m actually a little bit more body awareness these days than I had for large chunks of my life.
I’ve definitely been tempted a bit by the idea that if I just cut off enough of my body, then I will be able to stop hurting. (Surgical intervention for a particular intervention has improved a bit for my situation, compared to what the family history suggest. Or it probably has improved. Still might not actually fix anything for me, and could make things worse.)