Truly one of the sickest things I’ve ever read.

A jury in Texas has ruled against a father in a custody battle leaving the door open for the mother of a 7 year old boy in Texas (One of a set of male twins) to pursue at her option, the transition of one twin boy to a female. 

Here is an opinion piece from The Washington Examiner

Here is a news piece from The Washington Examiner

Here is the report from KPRC in Texas

Here is a report from Lifesitenews

Here is a link to a website dedicated to the boy

Here is a link to Chad Felix Greene’s article in The Federalist

UPDATE

Judge rules that the father of James Younger will be allowed to Veto medical intervention. In other words, the father has not been stripped of all parental rights.

Read More here


Oddly, I wasn’t able to find coverage on NBC, ABC, CNN, CBS or more than the briefest mention of it in local Texas papers. It is somewhat unsurprising that only “conservative” outlets are carrying the story.

A 7 year old?

WHAT?

It’s not even clear that the child has gender dysphoria. At 7 isn’t it natural, perhaps even expected for children to be curious about what it’s like to dress up? The experts in the case say the childs gender is still fluid.

Reading through the available, and no doubt biased, information points to a bitter divorce… correction annulment. I suspect that the annulment is a farce and that there is still some kind of pitched legal battle behind the scenes ongoing. To my rather suspicious mind it begs the questions, “Is the mother trying to use the child as a weapon? Is she willing to harm a child in order to harm the father?” The truly amazing thing is that she’s not the twins biological mother.  Yes she gave birth to the boys, but the eggs were not her own. 

Add to this, several years ago there was the case, in Seattle I believe, where biological parents (who happened to be Native Americans) won custody of a child. In this case the child had been given up at birth. The child had been adopted by a white suburban family and had never known anything other than that family. But the state in it’s infinite wisdom ordered the child surrendered to the Native American parents based on the biological connection.

By that logic, in the case of James, his father Jeffery should have a greater claim to custody of the two boys. 

After all, at its heart this is a custody battle. It’s a father acting to protect one of his children from medical procedures that will have permanent, potentially negative effects. Isn’t this what custody battles are all about, or at least what they should be about?

I suppose what’s shocking to me is that the jury ruled against the father. 

My shock is not about Transphobia, this is about a child who frankly is too young to understand the hubub and for whom nature should probably be allowed to take it’s course at least until the child can specifically say, “I want to be a girl.”

I have many reservations about transitioning children’s genders because of the long term physical damage. Think about it. Hormone replacement therapy is a lifelong commitment, and potentially life shortening in the case where you’re fighting the fundamental programming of the human body. Would any parent wish that for their child who didn’t need it, or was uncertain of the child’s wishes?

I found myself nodding as I read the opinion piece (above) by Brad Polumbo

This “transgender radicalism” has gone on long enough and been allowed to go too damn far.

Let children be children. All of us need to stop putting our hangups, fears, hatred, confusion, or political statements on them. 

Our duty as adults, Straight, Gay, Transgendered, White, Black, Yellow, Red, Brown, whatever, is to protect children, any children, because they can’t protect themselves. 

That means protecting their lives, innocence, and childhood, until they are ready to make their own choices. Even then, when they make poor choices and stumble, it is our duty to pick them up, dust off their clothes, put a band-aid on their boo boos (emotional, physical, or both) and tell them to try again.

That’s what being an adult is.

It depresses the shit out of me that so many so called “Adults” have forgotten that simple duty or have been terrorized into silence.

There used to be a saying, “There’s nothing worse than an X-smoker”. That statement is often true about an X anything. X- Smokers tend to be rabid about other people smoking, X-overweight people tend to point out what others are eating as fattening. 

Perhaps X-Binary Genders are engaging in something similar? “ I’m happier now that I’ve transitioned and therefore everyone would be happier if they did too”

It’s a question that has more than once flitted through my mind.

I’m quite happy being a male. I like my body, (well except for the few creeping pounds of age). I like my genitalia and have no desire to change. (Well, larger would be nice, ahem) I recognize that may not be true of all people and your choice, is to make changes to your own bodies as you desire.

BUT, don’t you dictate my choices, or impose your beliefs about what I should feel or want, or how I should express my sexuality. 

You see I, as an adult have to personal strength and conviction to say that, and the ability to defend my statement, just as you do. 

Can the same be said of a child?

Meeting (Dating, Hookup, Whatever) apps…

Ghosting v 1024x538We all know what they are. 

Many of us use them. 

They’re an outgrowth of social media and honestly, in my opinion our lack of ability to have a conversation with each other in person and perhaps fear.

It’s a lot easier to go down in flames on an application than to go down in a bar in front of your friends.

So part of the fear is the fear of rejection. I assume there’s a lot of fear in general too. I mean in a society where someone is more likely to film you being mugged than to stop the mugging, an application provides a safety margin and the ability to keep someone at arms length until you decide if they’re someone that you’d actually like to meet.

The downside is that instead of someone seeing you as you really are, and you them. Both of you have the opportunity to create completely fictitious personas. If these personas decide to meet then there’s the very real possibility that as the personas meet and dissolve, the two people are left with a critical choice.

ghosting101.pngTry to pick up the pieces of the fractured personas or call each other assholes. In many cases, meeting never happens. One party or the other “Ghosts”. Technically it’s a no harm, no foul, but one person is always left not knowing what they did, or didn’t do.

At least in a bar, you know from the other person’ body language that your advances are a no go. With the online world, the conversation just stops mid thought.

Another problem with online dating apps is that some people just engage in conversations that lead nowhere and then get pissy when you call them on it. Then there are those people that are trying to have affairs and who are so dishonest with even themselves that they can’t believe that someone might actually be just a simple honest person. 

You know, that unicorn of unicorns… Someone that’s honest in their profile and honest in their intentions.

The thing that really blows me away is the folks that “MEGA-Ghost”

These are the folks that not only stop communicating but also delete their profiles on whatever app and then completely disappear. I’ve personally run into a couple of these folks. What’s weird is when they do this and their stated intentions were just to find friends. 

2a11eb0547a0d8b0eea9670390bbc5f3It’s always gone something like this;

Them: “Wow you’re really nice, I’d like to meet sometime.”

Me: “Yes, that would be nice what are you thinking about? Coffee? Drink? Light lunch?”

Them: “Sure, that sounds nice.”

Me: “Okay, when and where?”

….

I honestly don’t understand why suddenly asking when and where causes silence and ghosting.

All you have to say is, “We’ll have to schedule it”. OR “You know I’m not ready to go there yet, can we just chat a while longer?” OR “I’m sorry, this is too scary; too fast; or I’m not ready to meet”

I’m a big boy, I can take it and we could go on chatting as before.

But damn! There’s no need to completely disappear. 

I recently ran into this kind of situation with a man who said they were looking for men in the local area with similar interests for friendship. Their profile said he wanted to go hiking and that he was looking for someone to talk with have an occasional drink and do outdoors stuff.

I don’t know what his true motive was, but we’d been chatting some, and even had made jokes about people not being clear about their wants. We live within 2 miles of each other and both of us could use a friend to go do stuff when we’re not up for the obligations of our respective relationships. You know… Having some guy time where you can say what you want and not worry about offending anyone.

If you’re hiking on a trail, you can say what you want without being accused of some heinous thought crime.

It was a Friday night, and just five minutes before he went silent, He’d said that he was alone for the next week as his wife was out of town and that he was bored.

I told him hey, “Let’s meet down at the bar. We can have a drink and get to know each other in person. From there we can see if we want to plan a hike or something.”

Ghost! 👻

What the hell?

It’s gotta be me. I must be too direct or something.

I figure anyone with a set of balls should be able to meet for a drink and see if the entertaining conversation is as much fun in person.

But apparently, that’s not the way we do things anymore.

I guess I should take it as the final test.

If I ask someone to have a drink, coffee, lunch, or whatever and they freak out. I should count my blessings and be thankful that I’m not going to get caught up in their drama.

I tend to take people at face value, If you tell me you’d like to get together I assume that you’re not lying and the next logical step is to arrange to meet. After all we don’t need to get carpal tunnel in front of our computer keyboards when we can actually chat in person.

Humm, maybe I’ll put that in my “Profile” and see if that changes the behaviors.

GOD, I miss the good ‘ol days of bars and real conversation.

Huh, My winter cold has arrived early…

DawnofthedeadThus far it’s just annoying.

Hopefully it won’t get any worse than just annoying. I don’t actually feel too bad, just tired. I guess it’s not surprising now that the stresses are reducing some. The weather is changing here and between that, my body remembering the pollens from up here, and pretty much everything in my environment changing I’m bound to react a little.

It doesn’t make having the cold any better but it does at least explain why I might have been susceptible so dang early in the season.

Ahhh well, at least it’s not like I’m going to have to worry about calling out sick to some inhuman manager.

Nothing to do but rest and ride it out. There are things I can do that require only a digital presence. 

Thus far no drugs or anything have been necessary. But coffee is my best friend right now.

I do want to go take a walk later in the day just to be outside. It’s nice that it’s not blazing hot up here.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll take my computer with me up to the forest, find a nice rock and sit there writing. This new machine has a lot of battery life and if worse came to worse, I could always pull out the Goal Zero for additional power.

My walk is contingent on how much energy I have… 

Right at the moment, that is questionable this thing is accelerating. So it might be a very slow day.