Congratulations. Do you know who the father is? Sorry - the "My wife" instead of "We" triggered this.
Hahaha fuck off im the daddy. Though a co-worker asked that exact question seriously. I just kind of boggled for a bit before I said "my equipment still works."
I wonder if bulemia and aneroexia existed per capita to such a degree before media and television shaped the perception we have of the ideal form. I wonder why people used to dress like emo punks when I was growing up, but I no longer see such dress. I wonder why diagnoses like ADD and depression have increased steadily with their level of awareness in the U.S., but not necessarily in other parts of the world. I wonder why identity is such a hot button issue these days. I wonder why people wholly believe in the literal teachings of the Bible or Koran or Torah. I wonder about cognitive dissonance and delusion. I wonder why the millenial generation appears to be represented in LGQTB at rates much higher than their predecessors. I wonder why these same millenials are being led to intellectual slaughter by the academic endeavor to promote social science above hard science. Social science studies are so often irreplicable that I wonder why people at all take them seriously, let alone promote them above hard sciences due to their "sexist" and "colonial" underpinnings, e.g. glaciology. I wonder why so many people are watching it happen with applaud or deference. I wonder if anyone has ever read Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World. I wonder if push came to shove if someone would rather fight in a battle against other men with men or with transmen , women, and transwomen.
About a year after my mother died, my little sister at the time(she was 6) was basically kidnapped by her real father. She was separated from her two full-blooded siblings and her two half-siblings for a duration of seven years without contact or cognizance of where she was. During this time, the young girlfriend of her father tried to erase any memory of her former family. She was told lies about who we were and accusations were made against myself that I had sexually abused her. She was a toddler and I had stuck a baseball card between her butt cheeks as she walked around. It's not as graphic as it sounds, I wasn't jamming it in there or approaching her private parts. It was possible because she had a chubby butt. My little sister and brother were present and we all thought it was funny. There was nothing sexual about it(I didn't think that way back then) and it was done for a laugh. It might sound weird, but it was a one-off joke shared between siblings, none of us older than ten. It didn't last more than a few moments and I never thought of it as a violation. Anyhow, it was told to her that she was sexually abused. This combined with years of manipulation at the hand of her father's girlfriend left her very much confused about her identity. She had memories of her family of course, and they were good memories. She was the baby of the family and we all had adored her. Fast forward seven years and her father finally gets the courage to be a human being. He comes back into the picture with my sister and we finally get to meet her after all those years. Her dad is a wreck, so my older sister takes her in at the age of 13. This is where I got to know my sister as a woman. I saw her go from geeky 13-year-old with glasses to a HS senior tanning in the lawn in a bikini, going to the prom in a dress, and sneaking out at night to go hang out with boys. I saw her enter her first relationship, at the time, a heterosexual one. It lasted for a couple of years and they had even lived together for almost the duration. She was always a very timid person, but one with excessive amounts of compassion. The thought of her lashing out at anyone for any reason was a fantasy. So her relationship ends and during this time her ex-boyfriend's mother gets divorced from the father and enters a lesbian relationship. My sister had thought it was very strange and gave no sign that she empathized with it. I move away for a few years, I come back to Portland and she's announced that she's a lesbian. The crowd she hangs out with is nothing like the crowd she hung out with in HS. She had begun seeing a feminist psychologist and going to feminist support groups during this time period and had entered into a few somewhat serious relationships with women. Her circle of friends were of a certain political bent, one might call them extreme feminists, the kind who don't associate with men. The kind who men don't find attractive because they go out of their way not to look feminine, ironically. After a few years of dating women, seeing the psychologist, and hanging in a social circle-jerk, she meets and enters into a relationship with a transman. Suddenly, she's now a transman too. There's a dissonance between who she was, and what he became. Right in the middle was a very vulnerable person with a history of identity traumas. The person I see now is unlike any man I've ever met. The compassion and timidness is the same. Pretty much everything is the same, except his extreme SOCJUS activism that is present, and where now exists a fairly feminine looking man without muscles. From my vantage point, it's fairly obvious she fell into a crowd. Her extreme compassion lined up with those who most like to profit off the victim narrative. She fell right in and was twisted, shaped, and formed into something else.
would be a shame for our youth if that was the future but at this rate I wouldn't doubt if we all actually lived in bubbles that protected us from any sort of reality in the future
Well for our youth it's the present; the ability to get access to hormones earlier means the testosterone poisoning I got as a teen that gave me all this body and facial hair I have to manage, this deep voice, etc., isn't happening to teens these days (except of course when their families disown them and they become homeless or what have you). So the percentages of trans people who are invisibly trans, who pass perfectly as their expressed gender, is going up and soon that will be the norm and hulking lady gorillas like me will be the exception.
I have no idea. I have never asked anyone if they are transgender and no one has told me they are transgender. That doesn't mean there aren't any that are my friends though.
Just like a lot of people said they never knew anyone gay ... until they learned they did. I once met a man who said he'd never met an atheist. I shook his hand, said Hi, my name is [crandc], pleased to meet you.
I've known a few, and in my experience they're perfectly capable of doing anything that anyone else can. In general. I mean not everyone is an artist or good at computers, etc. I never found them to be somehow less human or humane, worthy of pity or disgust. That's just ignoring who the person is and what they have to offer. If you love the constitution, consider that everyone has the right to pursue happiness. Let them pursue their happiness. Judge people on what they say and do and if they can do the job. You'll be better off for it.
Giving hormones to kids is a horrible thing to do when they are that young and the brain is developing. It's criminal really.
We have a good family friend who is fairly famous and is trans. Bob Tur practically invented eye-in-the-sky news. That's his OJ slow Bronco chase footage you know - filmed from his helicopter - and he also shot Reginald Denny's beating in the L.A. riots. Bob is now Zoey. Here's a piece in Los Angeles magazine about her and her transition. Really interesting. Irony of ironies - Bob's biggest competitor back in the day was another jetcopter news reporter. He is a woman now too!
Seems about right Denny. But I wonder how you knew? I would imagine I worked with some along the way, but I don't know it.
I agree; I never consented to all the testosterone I received as a teen. That's why I'm all for blocking all puberty-causing hormones for kids who think they might be trans before they hit puberty, then waiting until they're 18 to start the actual hormones of their choice (this is the standard of care, btw)
