My First Blog Entry...

 I was recently at my therapist (ya, therapists are good for your mental health. Try one.) and she told me that whatever I do next in my life, I should keep sharing what I know. What I’ve learned over my lifetime (so far at least).

This led me to thinking about how we don’t really value what our elders say.

Specifically, my therapist was addressing what I share as far as knowing about gender, sexual and neuro- diversity. Offensively, queers and retards. But there’s so much more to people than meets the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hands (that’s 5 senses, right?). What exists, is indeed a “spectrum” - that now-overused organization name for diverse groups. It means that there isn’t just “this or that” There’s everything in between and nothing at all.

To be fair, my therapist’s suggestion was to write an advice column so I could respond to real people about real things in real time and not just try to wax philosophical about a bunch of crap. I think that’s probably good advice in and of itself, but how do I get people to write to me to ask questions?

Maybe I should start with a little bit about myself. I’m a real person, vs. a composite person like most advice columnists. Those people did start out as real people - like Dear Abby - but that just makes me think that the idea of writing advice to people is passe´.

I am a 60-years-old in January 2022, white, genderqueer gay man. The genderqueer and man part seem to be at odds, but I think that’s my age. As a youth, I hated being misgendered as female. It happened frequently before adolescence. 

The generality of conditioning formed my rigid perceptions of what gender was and could be. This somehow passed the message to me that how I acted and my gender were at odds - and that I better change that behavior. All my attempts at it were half-hearted though, and no one really wanted me to be anyone other than myself. So, most of the protests from those around me who loved me were half-hearted too. Everyone gets the same social conditioning about gender binaries, but the reality is that most people don’t believe them. They know there’s too much evidence to the contrary. There’s too much in between. 

I am happy with having my body the way it is, so I am not interested and never was in transitioning, but that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t also have been just as happy with an opposite gender body. I think that is fine for my own definition of genderqueer. I suppose that makes me transgender - under that umbrella, but that umbrella has opened so much bigger in the last decade or so. It’s taking us all on a trip of what it means to be just plain human.

People who rebel against their true selves tread the hardest paths. Self-denial is a trip that will take all your energy. If you try to maintain it your entire life, you will most probably shorten that life.