Vague Political Regurgitation part 1,000,004

Field Notes In/On Transition

Vague Political Regurgitation part 1,000,004

Again, I’m having a hard time focussing on a single issue or event in my life to write about on my blog. My discipline seems to have fallen by the wayside, the more comfortable and less stressed I become about/during my transition. 

Things still bug me, like being called “Sir,” or buddy, or “boss” Really? Boss? Just off the chain gang? Fricking hipsters! Otherwise I feel pretty good about how things are progressing. There is a new Trans drop-in at the health clinic  where I go to my GP happening a couple of times a month. At one of them this month there will be a free yoga class. I plan to inch my way to better health by starting yoga in this pro Trans environment. The big yoga studios, yoga moms, and fanatical yoga going... etc scare me to death (irrationally, sure, but most fears are irrational) so I’ve never given it a shot ’til now. Heck I am still pretty careful about not using public restrooms at all, let alone the Ladies.

What is really annoying thing to me, this “conservative” witch hunt style fearmongering that somehow Transwomen are men stalking women in the bathroom. The last thing any Trans woman wants to do is being read as male in the bathroom. Weirdly, we just want to pee, like anyone else. Maybe we are checking our makeup.”Male” behaviour, this is not. I’m pretty sure there are more effective ways to stalk women than lowering your testosterone, taking estrogen, and living 24/7 as a woman for several years. Take a breath and worry about real problems like poverty, inequality and saving the planet from the doom we have wrought by treating it like an indestructible garbage can. Are all women so scared of men that even someone who was once a man is to be feared? Sad. Just stupid and sad.

It’s just more fear mongering, “the other” is what we are, vague evil “other”. People who “need” an enemy are jerks. It’s just that simple, no person needs to be your enemy, but lots of them/us are enemies. Why? I’m not sure, but the adversarial nature of politics, and basic human interactions has in the last 20 years or so become insane in its takeover of any sort of political or social discourse, pretty much everywhere. Its like everyone has become an internet troll and/or real life bully. I feel like this whole US/Them thing that has removed any sort of bi-partisan (or multi-partisan) cooperation from the world of politics has infected our daily life.

Religious organizations are telling people who to vote for (despite being forbidden to do so as part of their tax-exemptness) and big companies are threatening their employees with layoffs if they vote “wrong.” The people who say these things, threaten these things are the people who need to be punished/censured. But since they are the rich in charge people, the rest of us just have to lump it. The people in charge are always on about families, helping children, the elderly, and always make a big patriotic show of support for the military, veterans. Yet what gets cut when it comes to new Provincial, Federal budgets? Health care, schools, vets benefits, the arts? Really? 

You know, only a pittance of whatever budgets is already allocated to these things which are crucial to our existence. Break the teachers’ unions? (like all the rest of the unions in this country) Yeah because it’s not like we want children to be taught by people who feel they earn a decent wage. Any politician who cuts education, healthcare, the arts (where so little money goes) and vets benefits in my view: is a traitor, and should have to live on vets benefits or welfare for as long a time as they have spent gouging the poor and filling their oil company buddies’ pockets. 

We should be looking after our populace, rather than cutting the only essential services there really are. 

Okay, the vague political rant is happening I guess. 

I just wish that the jerks in charge had the balls to occasionally say no to someone who offers them barrels of cash to destroy our land, and create a false economy based on the destruction of the environment. Clothing the sale of our resources (non renewable ones as well as renewable) in smarmy “patriotic” TV ads is more than disingenuous, it’s offensive. These ads go on and on about our perseverance and love of the outdoors and how we defeated the evil science of getting oil from the dirt. Really? Our patriotism ends up in us selling our resources (yeah, as it turns out, I pay taxes too and Harper works for me as much as he works for anyone else.) to another nation, and in a sweetheart deal that gives us no rights over our own resources for 30 odd years... seems fair? Nope.

I’d love for all this horrible stuff that the jerks in charge are doing to actually backfire and cause their downfall, but it won’t. Those same people are re-drawing the map of seats in parliament in their own favour. I can almost guarantee that next Canadian election, well over half the population won’t vote Con, yet they’ll still have a “majority,” which they will use to continue their “patriotic” evolution (ironic that) of our identity, all the while cutting vets’ benefits, putting people in those fancy new prisons, brought to you by the same folks building that pipeline that empties into one of the biggest earthquake zones in the country.

What does this anti-jerk (the “party” is not important, as it’s a marketing scam to start with, having changed its core identity at least 3 times in the last 20 years) screed have to do with my transition? 

I’m more than a wee bit frightened by the jerks in charge, actually. As a Trans person, I’m a pretty big target for fear mongering bigots. It would be pretty easy for me to end up more than disenfranchised as the country shifts ever right wing and allows for less and less education, understanding of peoples’ differences. 

I wrote all of the above before the US election, and while Obama winning and a lot of good State initiatives going through like pot legalization, and gay marriage getting a chance makes me feel a bit better about the world in general, here in Canada we are still governed by people I don’t trust to do anything whatsoever in my interest. There is no longer a National Conversation. 

We get “Omnibus Bills” so jammed with new rules, and means of going about the business (and this is the most important part to these jerks, the business) of Canada that no one has time or stamina to go through it all with any kind of critical eye, including those who wrote the bill. There is no discussion, hardly, no chance for the NDP, like the CCF, and The Federal PCs (Who NO LONGER EXIST. Our current Government are not the Tories: they are the Alliance/Reform parties dressed in Blue ties.) before them had the occasional chance to help amend and shape legislation so that there was a little bit for everyone. These Omnibus bills are so vast and huge in scope that the citizenry is lost, and numbed to it all.

Okay I’ve exhausted and depressed myself now. Maybe my opinions are half baked, but well, they are just one person’s opinions. 

Let’s talk about makeup instead. I recently had to make a big makeup purchase as I ran out of all the foundation, etc that I was gifted over the summer. My Visa balance (actually I shift it all to the line of credit every month so as not to drown in interest) is stupid, with this transition, and the amount of socializing I’ve been doing recently. The socializing, mind you, has been a long time coming as I see it. I’ve spent so much of the last 10 years or so feeling like I couldn’t afford to go out more than a couple times a month, that now that I’m going out for dinner, coffee, etc at least once or twice a week, it’s starting to affect my budget in a bad way.

But back to the makeup, I went dermablend on the foundation and am very happy to have done so. The coverage is better (way more expensive mind you) than my previous covergirl foundation, and not so cakey as I feared based on internet reviews. I’m getting very comfortable doing the makeup every morning, part of my routine, like making coffee, eating breakfast. I’ve really got to get my eyebrows re-threaded/tweezed again, getting a bit too bushy.  It’s a sunny day today, and despite the doom and gloom of most of my vague rant above, I feel really good about most of the things in my life. I need to vent though, and well, I do have a blog or 4.

My plan for the future: try to avoid being annoyed by the people in charge quite so much, by living my life in a fuller richer way every day. This is no easy task when you are prone to doom filled fantasies, as much as you are fantasies of joy. Also, I’m trying and more often than not failing to eat, exercise in the healthier way I had been prior to this summer. 

I’ve really got to get back to writing/exercising/meditating more and gorging on snacks, drinking beer, wine, buying clothing that I no longer have room for in my closet as a means to deal with my swings in mood, my hopes and fears about my transition often collide in self destructive behaviour, just as they always did when it was all just a dream that was never going to happen. It’s happening, and I’m trying to slowly change my attitudes, and my expectations as it happens. Transition is nothing like my fantasies doing it over the years. It’s much better in a more grounded and realistic way. I’m doing it, rather than dreaming it.