gratitudes, the yinyang of feminine presenting me, gender on passports, structure of memory, everyday mandala
yesterday i was grateful for the farmer's market and all the friends met there...
today i am looking forward to yoga men's lunch and meeting with my cemetery colleagues...
When he took office on January 20, Trump issued an executive order overturning this 33-year policy, saying ā[i]t is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,ā which it defined as āan individualās immutable biological classificationā as assigned āat conception.ā Transgender identity, the order said, is āfalseā and ācorrosiveā to the country. Plaintiffs led by Ashton Orr sued, and on April 18 U.S. District Judge Julia E. Kobick granted a motion to make the case a class action. She also granted a stay, finding that the plaintiffs would likely win on the merits of their claim that the new policy violates their right to equal protection under the Fifth Amendment. The administration went to the Supreme Court for emergency relief.
i reject the view that "transgender identity... is "false" and "corrosive" to the country"...
periodically there is a conversation with my wife about my feminine presentation shift in which she inevitably states her preference for me in masculine presentation... she doesn't hate feminine presenting me (fpm)... she is, in fact, more supportive of fpm than i had any right to expect... but she makes it clear that masculine presenting me (mpm) fits better with her conception of herself in partnership with another human being... she has said she desires a strong male partner who can and will protect her, or at least look the part...
i do mpm from time to time... mostly for her... mostly on date nights... she has made it clear she wants to be the girl in the room on date nights... mpm is not a dishonest presentation for me, but fpm is my happiest place...
fpm erupted a couple of years ago... i realize now that she had been lurking for a long time... she sometimes made herself visible through certain clothing choices... for example, a black maxi length tunic that could be viewed as a dress...
i believe we all need to be part of a masculine-feminine continuum... traditional hetero-normative social structure centers on the model of male at birth (mab) in union with female at birth (fab) uniting in yinyang configuration to produce children... this makes sense for the survival of humanity... i pursued this configuration for most of my adult life... i liked it well enough... physical intimacy with a woman was necessary for the wholeness of me...
in my late 50's sex stopped... i don't understand why... the waning of the reproductive imperative probably had something to do with it...
i was angry about this for a long time... i fantasized about having affairs or hiring sex workers... fear of destroying my marriage and lack of financial resources foreclosed those options...
i self pleasured a lot... well, i have always self pleasured... what can i say... i love orgasms...
and then i started wearing lipstick, skirts and dresses...
i no longer missed physical intimacy with a woman...
i speculate that i was able to find yinyang completeness within myself... that is... the yinyang wholeness i used to get from intimate physical involvement with a woman is now supplied by the wearing of skirts, dresses, lipstick, etc... i have become both the yin and the yang...
to be clear, i have always had this capacity for feminine expression... just not the circumstances that encouraged it to flower...
i am still "he" in my internal dialogues, even as i present she-ness to the world outside... i accept all pronoun designations... i leave it to the beholder of me to use the pronoun that most naturally surfaces when they see me...
some first peoples describe people like me as two spirited... i like that description...
in the current political climate it has become important to me to manifest my feminine self... to be the anomaly that questions the rigidity of fundamentalist christian values... i am testament to the vivid and colorful diversity of humanity... i am a good person by almost anyone's judgement... there is nothing immoral about me... i am beautiful as i am... therefore i resist...
i found this interesting excerpt from a book on literary hub...
Literary Hub Ā» How the Human Brain Actually Gets Us From Point A to Point B
It may not seem obvious that memories and a mental image of an environment would reside in the same part of the brain, but they both share things in common: relations and a sense of proximity. Memories come in categories, like the names of teachers you may have had or long-lost loves. You might āstroll down memory laneā or say that youāve lost your ātrain of thought.ā There is an emergent view among cognitive psychologists that episodic memories are intrinsically visual in nature and, effectively, the brain is re-tasking the navigational parts that include knowing landmarks and their relative positions as a means of organizing memories.
i have a series of photographs going called "everyday mandala"... it focuses on circular objects in the landscape and presents them in a sacred leaning way... i suppose the idea is that we find conceptual and symbolic windows into the sacred whole all around us...
