Category Archives: Politics

6/20/2010

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Eight years ago today, June 20, 2010 at 1:37 AM in the morning I posted the following on my Facebook page.

“I’m done! I’m done! I’m done! I’m done! I’m done! I’m done! I’m done! I’m done! I’m done! I … AM … DONE!!!!! HALLELUJAH! THANK GOD ALMIGHTY!! I … AM … DONE!!”

After 3 years of remembering, researching my own past and writing down the results, I had written the final sentence in “Dear Mom and Dad.” Had it been published in that original form it would have been in excess of 700 pages long. Thankfully, the person I’d been dealing with at iUniverse advised me that unless I was James Michener it was entirely too long. Following that advice, I began a slash and burn editing process. Well, I didn’t actually burn anything. I still have the original hard copy script in a 2” black binder on a shelf in my bedroom along with all the notes I used creating my original outline. In addition to that, I have several flash drives with the various edits in my desk drawer.

When I think about writing another book I find the prospect daunting. After all I had an accumulated 60 plus years of events and people to make writing easy. All I had to do was write about those people and events as they were, though not accurately  remembered in the first draft. Accurate memories came only when I realized that the people written about would actually be reading what I wrote. Now with a mere 8 years accumulation of people and events I wonder if it would be of any value.

I also wonder if I could add anything to the dialogue engaged in by the majority of the transgendered activists and their accomplices in the LGBT (I refuse to use the “Q” since that is a term earlier used to describe gay men) community. I have, since the publication of “Dear Mom and Dad”, written about issues that are near and dear to my heart with respect to the trans community and I have written about issues unrelated to gender identity; faith and politics in particular. My opinions on the latter have met with approval and with disdain. Writing another book is somewhat immaterial it seems. What is material to me is that whatever I do in the future be of consequence. It that includes the inspiration to write another book so-be-it.

My involvement in the lgbT community has left me with a few impressions which have had a lasting effect on my attitudes regarding “activism”. The most significant of those is the impression that the demands of the community to be treated equally are accompanied by demands for laws that in essence require not equal treatment but special treatment. It seems to me that the demand for special treatment trumps the request for equal treatment. It’s an attitude adapted from the racial equality movement which approaches their situation in the same manner. In both cases, it seems to me that the demands are equally exclusionary. Granny would have said something like, “Make up your mind. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” To me, demanding equality is the equivalent of admitting that one does not feel equal or at least doesn’t see one’s self as equal.

I am firmly convinced that what our community needs are more people like Dr. Marci Bowers who has gone about her life without wearing her gender transition status on her sleeve, helping make the lives of innumerable people more enjoyable and complete.

Another person that I see as an example of getting on with life and using her abilities and education without wearing her gender status on her sleeve is Amanda Renae Simpson. While I acknowledge that her liberal political activity was largely influenced by her gender affiliation, I am not by any means going to discount her contribution to our community by using her training, education and experience to move about the halls of government in both Arizona and Washington DC exposing those realms to the notion that gender identity does not exclude one from making a significant contribution to society by productive use of their training and abilities.

These two people are not the only ones in our community who have made the transition and gone on with their lives using the training and abilities they possess for the good of society, but they are 2 that I have a personal connection with and knowledge of. They have made life more livable and enjoyable for the rest of us by virtue of their willingness to take personal risks without making demands on society for special concessions for them; at least none that I’m aware of. That’s what “people” do. They don’t make an issue of their gender; they simply apply their extensive training for the betterment of society.

For myself, I realized long ago that getting on with life without making a stink about my gender identity made life so much easier. I freely admit that I have been extremely fortunate in my physical make-up but I have also made it part of my attitudinal make-up to not expect special treatment. The expectation of special treatment generally leads to disappointments and there are enough of those already. For me, being treated as if there were nothing special about me is the highest compliment I can receive as a transgender person. The only thing I want special recognition for is the application of my skills and training in my field and the application of my talent in my writing.

“Dear Mom and Dad” finally hit the market July of 2012 and my first blog entry was posted by the publisher the same month. Since then I have posted nearly 120 more. Altogether they could equal another book I suppose. But it would be rather disjointed since my subject matter has varied so much. All in all, I will continue writing one way or another. It might be another book …it might be a more blog. It might even be some of what “ended up on the cutting room floor” as the saying goes, in that original draft..

Stay tuned …

The Ignorance of Innocence

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I am just not sure where to start, but I have to start somewhere so I will start with the laziness of parents; parents who have decided that their job is over as soon as the potty training is over. Entirely too many parents have totally turned the process of raising children who have a clear understanding of their rightful place in society along with basics required to achieve that end; such as accurate knowledge of our history. That fact has never been more on display than it was this past week in Washington DC and more than two hundred other cities across the country. The very idea that “children” should be the ones to tell responsible adults how to handle a subject as important as the right to bear arms is, on its face absurd beyond bounds, and dangerous at its core.

I’m not sure where the idea came from, but I can tell you that there is no legitimate comparison to saying that at the age of 17, young men and women are old enough to lay their lives on the line and don a military uniform are therefore old enough to tell adults what to do. In the first place, in the military at that age and experience level they are not telling anyone what to do. In the military they are being told what to do, how to do it and when to do it by people with far more age and experience. In the process they’re gaining a level of maturity and respect for authority that our school systems are doing a poor job of..

What we saw last weekend was a display of young people who were guided by pure emotion, which in some cases, I’m reasonably sure, were whipped to a frenzy by adults with less than honorable intentions.  Raw emotion has a great deal in common with the object of the frenzy … military weapons. Used for the right reasons and in the hands of someone with the right motives either can be a force for good. But, in the wrong hands and used with the wrong motives either can yield tragic results.

The fact that these “children,” and that is exactly what they are, have been so poorly educated about the history and reasoning embodied in our constitution, and in particular, behind the Second Amendment to our constitution is a worse than tragic reflection on the state of our education system.

When I was on the debate team as a junior in high school the national debate topic that year was about the advisability and necessity of our federal government providing funds for the education systems in the various states. I was young and not the most brilliant mind on our debate team, but in the course of studying the pros and cons of federal involvement in local education I did realize the dangers of a single central influence on the direction of the thought processes of “young skulls full of mush?

To my way of thinking it was a simple matter of math; the math of time. The math worked out like this. The average student spent at the most a half hour in the morning with his/her parents and in many cases barely an hour in the evening. In that brief time, what was being taught and/or learned? Probably not much in the way of how our government influenced our lives and the importance of guarding against ideas contrary to the personal desires of the parents.

On the other hand, children are under the influence and care of whatever school system they attend a minimum of 30 to as much as 40 hours a week. Socialists, liberals and progressives alike recognized this fact years ago and its why organizations like the NEA and teachers unions are so overwhelmingly influenced by ideologies in opposition to the basic Judeo-Christian principles of our founding documents. Is it any wonder then, that it was so easy to gin up the emotions of high school aged students across the country last week and convince them that it was the inanimate tool to blame and not the perpetrator or the people who raised him?

I have no statistics to back up my theory that the success of the Charter School initiative in most cases is the result of schools based on sound educational principles void of liberal dogma and experimental curriculums. Sadly, Charter Schools are not guaranteed continual existence. There are enough of them failing, to create a ground swell of concern for the lack of parental oversite of these schools. And that brings me back to my original premise that in the last 50 or so years parents have come to rely on schools to do the primary job of caring for their children.

So, I will beat the same drum I beat in a recent piece … Parents should be held responsible for the nature of the persons they turn loose on society. Until that happens organizations like the NEA and others with less than honorable intentions about the direction of our society, will control the direction of our society.