Transgender Mom

Understanding Obama is understanding America

2009-07-26T14:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.openleft.com/diary/14354/blended-spacesmaking-sense-of-partial-perceptions-of-obama

You can always see how people are much more liberal on policy than what gets enacted.

One of my bigger realizations in life was the idea that leaders are generally average representatives of their constituents. People excuse corruption, immorality, and stupidity in their leaders because they feel they would do about the same job while in office. There is no point in trying to get someone better if you don't feel that that person exists.

Republicans like Sarah Palin pretty accurately reflect their voters.

Thus the liberal policy beliefs are beliefs in the best possible plan being enacted. However people don't believe that will happen. They believe that an about average policy will be enacted.

My view is that the mob almost always drives the leader. Read shooting an elephant by George Orwell for a summation of that.

Once you reject the idea of a noble oppressed populace repeatedly electing people who lie and oppress them you gain a greater understanding of the world and in this case Obama.

Now that is an argument that basically people elected the leader that they wanted. Any lying,pursuit of individual power,selfishness, etc are about what people expect of their leaders and they would not trust anyone who didn't show these traits.

Now Paul frequently makes the argument that Republicans are crazy. I think though he doesn't really understand why they are crazy.

The answer to that is rather simple. They are crazy because they were abused as children. When a conservative looks out on the world they see potential abusers. When a liberal looks out on the world they see potential helpers. Because they were helped as children.

Now the rather unusual nature of Obama is that he gets that. In his grandmother he both saw the person who raised him and helped him so much and also someone who was afraid of black men. He saw people as both potential abusers and helpers.

Now what does all of this say about Obama? It says that his primary goal has always been about spiritual healing rather than physical healing. He doesn't want to fight the oppressors. He wants to heal them.

If you look at things from a strictly policy perspective you will never understand Obama because his primary goal has never been a policy goal. It has been exactly what he was saying all along. He wants to bring people together.

I tend to be a quiet person

2009-07-12T17:52:00.001-07:00

I made a comment over at http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/07/11/ad-hominems-etc/ that made me understand some of my issues.

I think the part of most people's brains that deal with rules and norms of society for me is devoted to abstract thought.

I made a post that I thought was fairly innocent and it did not turn out to provide what I expected.

I simply don't have the emotional triggers that most people have. I don't get disgusted easily (it has to have smells or deal with eyes for the most part). I identify with this study http://www.livescience.com/culture/090604-conservative-disgust.html As a child that caused me a lot of issues because I had a harder time judging what other people would be disgusted by.

That's probably why I have such trouble with that blog. It makes an extra effort to be sensitive to all the things that I have trouble with.

But I also have trouble in fairly normal spaces. The office, or even places that don't take offense easily. That causes me to be really fearful of talking or interacting with other people. Likewise I have an extreme amount of trouble controlling my emotions and that also makes people feel uncomfortable.

I don't easily understand what is extremely offensive or what is not very offensive to most people.

Though I do have some emotional triggers. If someone implies that I am a man I have a similar reaction.

My wife I felt instantly comfortable around which is the exact opposite of how I feel around most people. Not because she is like me because she isn't. But she does appreciate my sense of humor.

Hopefully in the future this realization will make it easier for me to logically think in those situations where I tend to be overcome with fear. Then I can focus on being more bland an inoffensive and not being so fearful of bland conversations.

Edit: update Interestingly enough the next link I looked at on that site was http://actsoffaithinloveandlife.blogspot.com/2009/07/leaving-damaged-beyond-recognition.html which was about a similar issue. Which points to the fact that you have to make things bland enough for the entire community.

The different factions of the democratic party

2009-05-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.openleft.com/diary/13227/#166385

I don't think its a matter of the more liberal democrats seeing obama as a conservative though.

Its mainly a matter of priorities. EFCA is something Obama supports, but it isn't his priority. So those democrats that have EFCA as first priority are going to be unhappy with Obama.

Much like how the Republican party used to have the libertarians vs the social conservative the democrats have the unionists vs the professionals.

The unionists already have good healthcare. And they don't see themselves as fitting into the culture of the new energy companies so Obama's main priorities are a wash for them. And Obama's transformational style doesn't really benefit them either.

Obama won because he united the minorities of the democratic party with the professionals. Obama both fits with some of the culture of minorities and some of the culture of the professionals. But he only supports the priorities of the unionists. He doesn't go out of his way to promote them.

So its perfectly reasonable for the unionists to be unhappy with Obama's priorities.

And that's not going to change. I think in the end they will be happy enough with how things turn out, but they will never be happy with Obama.

Response about fixing our view of ourselves

2009-04-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

link

I don’t know if it’s possible to reason it away.

It is possible to make it go away.

In my own case my hangups disappeared because my wife always saw me as a woman and I began to see myself how she saw me.

She never knew me before I transitioned and I think that was the most important thing.

The main thing that I learned from that is that how people see gender is incredibly sticky. Its in a part of our brain that is never designed to change.

The best way to describe it is that you see most daily things from a cache. Your eyes only see tiny pinpricks of light and the rest is reconstructed from memory. So when you see yourself you are seeing your memory of yourself.

Look up how mirror therapy can fix phantom limb pain http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/21/2206

The same applies to gender.

Thoughts on someone who didn't go through with transition

2009-04-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

link
It reminds me of how he has gone from identifying as straight to identifying as gay back to straight, and done this several times - I think that he simply doesn’t have a label that fits him

Before I went on horomones and met my current wife I went through a similar period. In my own case it was because I could not be emotionally involved with anyone who didn’t see me as female.

the money, our son, moving back into the town where his unsupportive parents are

I didn’t mention this before by the way but hormones don’t have to be expensive. Mine cost me about 20 dollars a month.

But for him it may seem like an unorganic decision, but I have to say that after having my first child I understand it a lot better. I know that if I thought I had to choose between having another child or two and being true to myself it would be a difficult decision to make.

also know that he seems to have truly thought that the hormones, the surgery, so on and so forth, were what made him trans, because they made him “pass,” and he places a great deal of value on female beauty (trust. me.).

Its easier to appreciate the value of something when you don’t have it.

post mortem on someone detransitioning

2009-04-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

A response to this

I think it is impossible to assign a label without an action like that being more common. You may have almost nothing in common with people who did things similarly. I do know of the one guy in australia who had a similar thing happened, but he was a lot unhappier as he had already went through with SRS.

But if I had to guess it has something to do with confusing masculine and feminine and male and female. A drag queen who thinks that they are a transsexual will end up generally only with unhappiness.

I haven’t had much communication with him about since shortly before he decided to revert back to his birth gender, so I am not sure what the exact reasoning was behind it, except that the hormones were expensive, and I think he was worried about what impact this may have on our son - which was never a concern for me;

I think this is more an issue with the idea that hormones and SRS are the end all be all behind transitioning.

Being transgendered is in my opinion fundamentally a matter of your instincts not matching up with your body and way society treats you.

Among older people transitioning isn’t nearly as easy, effective, or even as useful. Because instincts change as you get older and have children.

Everything on the table in cuba

2009-04-17T16:47:00.000-07:00

Cuba opening up

Its interesting to see cuba opening up. My guess is that the combination of the castros failing health and Obama getting elected were too much for them. They want to leave behind a legacy and Obama is the absolute perfect person for them to negotiate with.

About detransitioning

2009-04-17T05:24:00.000-07:00

A posting on detransitioning

The RLE aspect–the idea that there are tests to pass, results to collect–may have had negative rather than positive effects. While it may help people see and process their doubts and fallacies, it may also teach them to suppress them for fear that they will be unfairly delayed. If uncertainty means that you’re not really transsexual, well, maybe you just won’t be uncertain anymore.

I think this makes a fairly good point. We recognize the usefulness of a RLE, but what we don’t recognize is whether or not the current RLE is worth anything. The RLE shouldn’t currently be a binding authority. It should inform rather than decide.

Its important to remember that the RLE is currently only a hypothesis. As far as I know there are zero medical studies stating its effectiveness.

I personally didn’t have to go through any sort of RLE. I just had to show that I wasn’t crazy and was committed for six months.

That has its own issues because you get fakes who just want to convince you not to transition, but who wont tell you that until you have given them a bit of money.

It also creates a sort of ordeal-dynamic for the natural feelings of loss and gut-liquifying terror that accompany a change of this order. They become important, but perhaps not in the right way.

To me a future where I didn’t transition was a blank emptiness. There was no such future. So I had no reason to be afraid or to feel any loss because of it aside from normal worries like fitting in. It wasn’t really “transition or death”. Its more like “transition or something unthinkable”

Even now after transition though I still occasionally wonder if I made the right choice. When I think about it I can logically think about the health and other worries and compare. However the idea of living as a man is still something my mind can’t process on an emotional level.

So for me if I had to guess at an effective “nonbinding transgender evaluation” it would be on whether you have logical reasons for transition and emotional fears. Then you could follow up with the people who have been through it and if they are still content with their decision several years down the road you could say that it is worth something.

Transformative change vs incrementalism

2009-02-17T02:14:00.000-08:00

This is a comment on Nate silver's political disagreements with sirota

There is the logical leap from "no corporate power" to "state socialism" and the whole emphasis on it.

That being said what I think Nate was getting at is that there are reasons to despise transformative change beyond the whole soviet canard.

To make a programming comparison there is an essay out about the cathedral and the bazzar at The cathedral and the bazzar

The point it makes is that incremental solutions deal much better with bugs. And the same applies to policy as law is just software on humans.

Fundamentally I don't trust transformative change because it does not rigorously test every element of its plan for usability, efficiency, and so on before moving to the next step.

I think that incrementalism is the real populist position. Transformative change is much more likely to come from CEOs and dictators rather than a democracy.

To make a corporate comparison

If you look at google the reason why they can put out so many great and solid products is because they embrace the incrementalist mindset. They don't give their engineers direction and if something bubbles up and becomes popular more people can work on it and produce a better more solid product.

Whereas microsoft embraces the transformative mindset. The process is locked down and resistant to input so the leader of the team can execute their goals. The problems are that they generally release bug filled products that execute a singular vision by people who have little ability to change the product for the better.

A divide amongst the liberal blogs

2009-01-18T02:54:00.000-08:00

The Obama supporters have a view of the world where the people are basically good and failures come primarily from miscommunications, incompetence, and stupidity.

The obama criticizers have a much more good and evil religiously based view of the world. To them the first group are religious zealots who support people based on charisma or unthinking irrationality.

So the first group basically trusts Obama and assume that the request is primarily so that Obama can do it right. The second group basically doesn't and assumes that the request is so that Obama can be Bush 2.0

The request that the first group makes is not that you should support things that you don't like. It is a request for you to see the world in a less binary good and evil manner

Now to be fair that might not entirely be a good thing. I think the latter view is probably more effective at organizing and mobilizing because it is based on simpler principles. A wait and see attitude does not translate into hits on a blog after all.

And I think while we criticize you we do think that you provide a helpful counterbalance to the right. But we don't agree and we aren't going to act like we do agree. We think that you might be too apt to ignore the importance of things like experience and skill.

Suffering does not make you more moral

2009-01-08T02:05:00.000-08:00

I was reading http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/07/BA2N155CN1.DTL and thinking about Gaza and I had to post a thought that I had been thinking about for a while.

Suffering does not make you more moral. The rockets Gaza fires at Israel are wrong and riots are wrong.

They are an expression of rage.

When you suffer it is easy to justify making other people suffer too. But that makes hurting others no less immoral. And generally the targets of your reprisals are random or loved ones.

Such rage and hate is a natural response. But it is not a good response.

The importance of thinking about ones spouse

2008-12-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

There was a point at which the movie GWB struck me. It was when GWB at one point was seeking attention and approval from his father and yet his father was only paying attention to his brother.

In that case it was the emotional that mattered. The instant response that shows who you are thinking about.

I recently bought my spouse a glass rose. When I saw it I immediately thought of my wife and I went back and bought it for her later on. It was only a 20 dollar gift, but it had a very large emotional impact on us both and I think that it improved our relationship from a couple of issues we have had.

I think the lesson is that you should never let problems with your spouse get to you. You both work off of a set of expectations towards the other. And if one person is doing badly and changing those expectations for the worse you probably will need to show your emotions and change things for the worse. Because that is honest and honesty is important in relationships.

But once that honesty is done you should do something to reset things and show that you still care and that you are still thinking about her.

Is a love of the oppressor a bad thing?

2008-12-18T02:10:00.000-08:00

A rare video by MLK

MLK may have often been criticized for his "Love of the oppressor" and his attempts to kindly reach out to those who disagreed with him.

But he was also very smart and very effective. And that is the way I want Obama to act as well.

I personally wish that I could be always surrounded and supported only by those who agree with me on everything too. But that is a wish of comfort. Not a wish of change.

The way forward on the free markets

2008-12-09T10:18:00.000-08:00

I think that the way we should be going is realizing that a blanket tariff is the best way to keep the market undistorted.

We have a blanket equal tax for people being paid incomes and it is a good idea to have the same for overseas products. Right now only having that tax on domestically produced goods creates a distorted market and a tax on foreign produced goods would equalize the field.

In addition to really equalize the field we would also need to institute real quality controls on such goods.

Ending the massive subsidies and lack of quality control to foreign produced goods is what is needed to bring back buying American.

The argument for those subsidies is that we get a lot of cheap goods, but we shouldn't be subsidizing china to give us cheap goods.

A particularly tone deaf attack during the election

2008-11-26T02:33:00.000-08:00

One thing I noticed from the election is how the attack for Obama saying that we should spread the wealth around went over.

Obama was talking about tax cuts for the middle class and Republicans called that socialism. It really says something that the current Republican party thinks that tax cuts for the middle class is socalism

Why civil unions are not marrage

2008-11-22T06:48:00.000-08:00

http://thisishistorictimes.com/2008/10/segregation-finds-a-new-home/

This is a visual metaphor, but it is also true. If I were to explain that I am really legally married to my wife it would also be revealing that I am transgendered because of the differences between civil unions and marrage.

The transgender day of rememberance

2008-11-20T16:09:00.000-08:00

Personally I disagree with the emphasis on the remembrance of violent deaths. I would much prefer to focus on the successes.

I can see the argument that you are ignoring the people worse off than you, but that is not generally why it is done. It is done because our minds form new ideas based on abstractions. Most people seen in society are the normative face. Thus if you present the normative face of transgendered people you get a better understanding from society. Instead of parents worried that their children will be brutally murdered you have parents knowing that their children can still do fine.

Likewise transgendered people themselves benefit too. Remembering only the bad things places an enormous burden on transgendered people. You are suggesting to them that if they transition they will be killed. Most will do so regardless, but it is still a heavy burden to bear.

I'd prefer to remember the successes.

Dance dance revolution

2008-11-16T15:50:00.000-08:00

I bought the wii specifically for this product and I gotta say its lots of fun.

I am what I think is on the last level of the second one (pinnacle) and I know it will be a long long time before I ever beat the last song.

I probably wont in fact :)

The effects of male horomones part 1

2008-11-15T06:31:00.000-08:00

On another website I read I read the comment

Doesn’t it bother men that they’re treated like lobotomized zombies by marketers? I think it would bother me.

Let me relate a story. One time I was in best buy looking at some games. And I noticed one that had goblins and fantasy and such that I liked. The thing is is that it looked like some second rate generic knockoff that wouldn't be fun to play. And yet I almost bought it based purely on the pretty half naked woman on the cover.

I resisted because I am cheap, but to answer that question from my perspective is that I don't think they do. They enjoy having pictures of naked women everywhere. To men sex is much more like hunger than it is to women. To make a comparison a woman having sex is like eating a chocolate. It is enjoyable and satisfying because it is enjoyable. A man having sex is like eating a big mac. It is enjoyable because it is satisfying a hunger for a few hours. Seeing a naked woman like that somewhat satiates that hunger.

Keep in mind that before I transitioned and then met my wife I had no sex drive at all really. The hormones I was prescribed though recently went down a few years after I transitioned and thats what I based it on. So I can't tell you how men think. Only my guesses.

Resisting power struggles in relationships

2008-11-15T06:19:00.000-08:00

Relationships are difficult because they are quite different from any other relationships we have in society.

One thing in particular that I have to resist is getting into power struggles. I know I have the tendency to favor an equal burden in the relatonship, but at the same time I know that places an unfair burden on her as I am more healthy mentally and physically. It is much easier to resist such impulses when she is pregnant as pregnancy itself is a pretty big burden.

Creepy Touchers

2008-11-15T06:12:00.001-08:00

One thing I have had to adjust to since coming to the working world is dealing with the creepy older men.

The two places I have been there has been one I have met at each. The first one I was a bit too nice to and he ended up getting drunk and insulting my wife and coming on to me. Interestingly enough though after a few weeks we patched it up and still talked as friends. Unfortunately though I think I eventually drove him away as my humor can often tend towards the cruel with some people.

The other person at my new work place I just stopped talking to. I think he has gotten the hint.

I don't want to reveal too much of my personal life at work but I might just reveal that I am married so I don't have to deal with all that. Happily married men are much easier to deal with.

A non alliance

2008-11-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

I've noticed some voices in the African American community talking about how the gay community failed in its outreach to get prop 8 voted down.

I think thats true. I think the liberals in california wanted to believe that their state was really more liberal than it is and generally went with tone deaf arguments towards the people they were supposedly trying to convince. I don't try to convince conservatives because I have the same tendency.

But I think its missing the point. This isn't a failed alliance. This is open hostility more than any other racial group. African Americans just aren't a natural fit to ally with gay people. There will always be supporters who swim against the current such as Barack Obama, but they are the outliers. African American's have a strong church community and thats like trying to ally with mormons or catholics. Its trying to convince the hardliners rather than the moderates.

Probably a better solution from a racial perspective would be to outreach to asian people in my opinion as while they are traditionally conservative on the issue of sexuality and gender identity they are much more tolerant as they do not come from the western background and have a different view of conservatism.

Really though considering the slim margin probably enough old people will die and young people will become of voting age to pass it in two years so I don't think it should be too hard. I think the campaign was just poorly run and had no oxygen as electing Obama was just much more important. He is for national civil unions. That would help people outside of California.

I think the main thing to take away is that oppression does not breed sympathy for the other oppressed. Being an outsider in a group is what does that.

How do high amounts of sugar and vitamin D affect the brain?

2008-11-09T02:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been having problems with mental issues (I believe because of stress as I went through an unsustainable period of stress for about a year and a half due to starting my first job and taking on too many responsibilities in a strange city all at once). It caused various issues like occasional blurriness in vision, a lot of pain on the left side of the body, an inability to think sometimes (this took a long time to occur, but the first thing I noticed before everything else was that I started seeing lots of floaters)

However recently I upped my vitamin D intake significantly by sunning and suppliments and I also increased my sugar intake through candy and I was pretty surprised at just how large of an effect they had in improving my problems. they aren't all gone away (though I think that the numbness in my fingers is just too much typing), but they have improved significantly.

Happiness is the chemical composition of the brain

2008-11-06T05:26:00.000-08:00

Sounds fairly obvious, but what are the implications? Basically the implications are that events in your life really don't affect your happiness level unless they affect that chemical composition.

So instead of. "I feel bad because X was mean to me"

It is really "I feel bad because my brain is chemically imbalanced and that"s a convenient reason"

This is one thing I tell my spouse a lot because in my opinion she gets depressed from a lack of sunlight and feels better after I open up a window or two.

Getting the right person in charge is what matters

2008-11-06T04:58:00.001-08:00

Rules and procedures are only useful in the sense that they can get and keep the right people. Rules and procedures never actually replace people though and the only thing that works is getting the right people in charge.

A spelling mistake in the title

2008-11-05T03:53:00.001-08:00

http://transgedermom.blogspot.com/

A few posts there already :)

Obama wins!

2008-11-05T02:37:00.001-08:00

Senate seats still up in the air and gay marrage in CA, but Obama wins pretty overwhelmingly. This means a lot to my family and how our daughter will view the world.

I think that before Obama came onto the scene black people had an unduly pessimistic view of things because there were such conundrums as his grandmother who raised him, but was also afraid of black men. Now that conundrum has been made president and shown that most people just aren't secretly racist. They may have some troubles, but they are more skin deep and in my opinion simply due to leftovers from how the brain works. The irrational parts of the brain don't as easily change, but they can be overridden.

If the gay marriage amendment passes that will be sad for our family as it will be reflected in American culture. Fortunately our marriage will still exist, but it will be a symbolic setback and symbols are important. Especially if I ever move to California.

China is due for a fall

2008-11-04T01:20:00.001-08:00

One of these days (probably pretty soon in my opinion) China is going to hit a wall and stop growing and stop being watched. Back in the 50s Russia was considered a wunderkind of a growing economy. One day though it just stopped and never really recovered.

China is in that position today. It does not have the culture and it does not have the government to progress beyond a factory economy and other countries are going to be undercutting it on that pretty soon. It will have a ravaged environment and nothing to show except the failures of an unsustainable system.

Either that or powerful capitalists will get in charge and usher in modernizations and it goes somewhere. My opinion is that that doesn't happen though.

Nintendo Wii

2008-11-02T16:18:00.001-08:00

I just got a nintendo Wii and DDR. Its hard getting into but very fun to play and definitely worth it.

Family

2008-11-02T02:19:00.001-08:00

One thing I found is that it is important to be around supportive family members when you start a relationship.

For a while I moved away from family earlier in the relationship, but a lot of unnecessary stress happened and it only really got resolved once I moved back and was back around my family.

Stress

2008-11-01T07:47:00.001-07:00

Currently I have found my emotions to be somewhat too strong at work. I think it is because of my naturally ADD nature and paying attention while fully awake gives me trouble. The stress unfortunately takes most of the day and weekend to decompress from. Fortunately most of the stress from being transgendered and hiding it is gone, but I still have too much and am trying various techniques to combat it.

One thing that helped was taking Ashwagandi . It forced the stress down and allowed me to think without it. Currently though I am stopping as I think it helped me enough to stop and I think the amount I am taking is too large to continue for a long time without side effects.

I need to relearn how to be half asleep when I do things as that is how I successfully managed school. I stopped when I had a long commute, but now that it is short again I need to relearn it.

My marrage went wonderfully

2008-11-01T07:38:00.001-07:00

I had a great friend who setup the whole thing. She spent a bit more than I wanted, but it turned out great and wondering distant relatives (our aunts and uncles) understood that we are happy and we have a wonderful supportive community.

Before that I had my nails done for the first time and I have to say I really like having my nails done. They don't wear too well on me, but they are fun. I never really understood the whole sex in the city reinventing your look thing, but I have to say I understand it now and I intend on putting more effort into my looks.

First post!

2008-11-01T07:24:00.001-07:00

Welcome to this blog.

About me. I am a transgedered lesbian mom who was recently married and is going to have a baby with my partner. Currently I intend to be anonymous on this blog as I am at work.

Here are the identifying facts about myself that I intend on revealing.

I live in a conservative state in a conservative area.

I am a software engineer.

I am white and married to a black woman.