And yet you’re doing harm…

It was ten, maybe fifteen years ago, when I saw the ad in our lobby asking for volunteers to join the community group. I figured it would be a chance to meet my neighbours and to help find ideas to improve our community. The only one anywhere near my age was Christine. In our first meeting, the current president took an instant dislike of her. I have never seen someone hate someone else so fast. He announced it was him or Christine in the group. We both took the attitude of, oh well, his choice. That was definitely a “you problem”. Then he left. Immediately everyone else left too because “it just wouldn’t be the same without him”. Talk about welcome to the group! Christine and I persevered and worked on a bunch of ideas. A newsletter, a blog… we started looking into community gardens and spent an afternoon with an animal enforcement agent looking at dog turds in varying states of decay. The property manager claimed all the dog waste had been picked up the day before. We looked at a piles of waste that were growing mould and called his bluff.

The two of us clicked. Each time we were together we laughed and joked around. Then we added each other on Facebook. It wasn’t Facebook’s fault, I just got a chance to see a different side of her. A side that believed in con-trails, micro-chipping unsuspecting civilians, and poisoning vaccines so “Big Pharma” could sell more medication. Even then I could have probably ignored the posts except she was determined to have me see the light and not be a sheep. So she started tagging me in various articles and wouldn’t stop.

Once she sent me an article that had me raising my eyebrows so much I was surprised they weren’t on my scalp. But every claim it made had a credit, complete with a link. And, well, I always check the links. Then I was just plain sad. Every single link went to a paper that completely disagreed with the shared article.

Every. Single. One. Of. Them

They knew their audience. Those self proclaimed lions who were so much smarter than the sheep who refused to see the truth. They knew those “lions” would never click the links. That they would blindly follow anything the alternate media told them. Spoon fed by people selling them expensive crystals, space mushrooms, and coffee enemas (pro tip, it’s supposed to go in the opposite end).

And misinformation continues to tumble through our lives. From mis-attributed quotes to AI art being passed off as the real deal (sometimes to the point of being sold as real), most of that internet flotsam is easy to research. But many don’t. They trust the person who shared the information with them (who trusted the person they got the information from), or they’ve heard it before so many times that it’s been hammered in as true, or they simply don’t have the time or energy. And most of the time the info doesn’t really matter. I mean Plato is very much past the point of caring if someone else had one of his quotes attributed to them. But sometimes it matters so very much and the consequences can be life threatening.

I can’t remember exactly when it started, a year or so ago(ish), but suddenly everyone who supported transgender children (or any of the rest of the LGBTQIA2S spectrum) was a groomer, which showed that a whole whack of people have no idea what “groomer” actually means. It felt awful having those accusations thrown at me but I’ve dealt with bullies before so didn’t back away. Obviously I wasn’t alone. Their campaign was patently not working so whomever has been sharing the misinformation changed tactics. Suddenly they’re there for the children… watching out for them. They know what’s best for trans and queer children even over and above their parents, which is doubly ironic considering their rallying cry is “it’s my job to raise my children… you can’t teach them age appropriate sex ed and real, quantifiable proven history and science”. And what’s best for the children is absolutely no medical attention regarding transgender issues at all. Besides, all the multiple studies done over the past few decades are apparently wrong.

An article popped into my curated list of news. I guess the AI caught that I’m interested in queer issues and missed that I’m not interested in anti-queer issues. The writer, an Alberta endocrinologist named Dr. Roy Eappen, is another “I know best for the children and much better than their parents” type of guy. He is also pretty damn transphobic although I’m not entirely sure he knows this. Eappen proudly supports the “Do No Harm” organization, right down to placing their contact information at the end of his article. I went and took a peek.

The group, Do No Harm, started out with good intentions as an anti-racism organization then quickly devolved into, as Wikipedia put it, a “group that opposes gender-affirming care and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in medicine and medical education. The group assists state legislatures in attempts to ban gender-affirming care for youth.”

I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise since they started out as “a group [that] was formed to “[protect] patients and physicians from woke healthcare””

Isn’t it funny how racism, sexism, and queerphobia all travel together like the three muskateers. A little bundle of hate all wrapped up in self-righteousness.

Image by Raw Pixel

And Dr. Roy Eappen, is in the thick of it. His article is so smarmy and written in such an unctuous tone that I wanted to reach through my monitor and give him a good shake. He started off by praising his province of Alberta and the premier Danielle Smith for the common sense and science she has shown by protecting children from invasive and irreversible medical procedures. I understand that taking hormones changes the body. But know what else causes irreversible changes? Puberty. For an example of puberty and how the body changes, I give you my son Colin (not literally though, just metaphorically). You’d have to remove him and 18 computers from his apartment and, well, nobody’s got time for that.

When Colin was a child everyone from store clerks to bus drivers to, well, as I said everyone, assumed Colin was female. Even with a crew cut and wearing a Tonka shirt I’d get, “What a sweetie! She’s so pretty! What’s her name?” Which made telling them “Colin” that much more awkward. Now he’s a massive 6ft1in man, complete with a huge, curly beard. I doubt anyone mistakes him for a girl these days. That’s what puberty does and it’s irreversible for the most part, unless you can afford plastic surgery and a lot of electrolysis.

Eappen states that, “Last month the World Health Organization (WHO) declined to issue guidelines for transgender procedures for children on the grounds that “the evidence base… is limited and variable when it comes to longer-term outcomes”. He gleefully announces that “limited and variable” must mean they think there’s no proof that medical intervention helps and that some children suffer. I think that’s a huge stretch and since I have Google I can go to the WHO’s website myself and see what they have to say.

The WHO (and I can’t be the only one whose mind goes to the rock group first) has much to say about transgender children and teens and, as far as I can tell, none of the words were “limited and variable”. For starters, this is what they have to say about transgender (or gender incongruent) children:

Gender incongruence of childhood is characterised by a marked incongruence between an individual’s experienced/expressed gender and the assigned sex in pre-pubertal children. It includes a strong desire to be a different gender than the assigned sex; a strong dislike on the child’s part of his or her sexual anatomy or anticipated secondary sex characteristics and/or a strong desire for the primary and/or anticipated secondary sex characteristics that match the experienced gender; and make-believe or fantasy play, toys, games, or activities and playmates that are typical of the experienced gender rather than the assigned sex. The incongruence must have persisted for about 2 years. Gender variant behaviour and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis.

I also found this quote about how “gender-affirmative health care can include any single or combination of a number of social, psychological, behavioural or medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” and this one:

Gender Incongruence of Adolescence and Adulthood is characterised by a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual’s experienced gender and the assigned sex, which often leads to a desire to ‘transition’, in order to live and be accepted as a person of the experienced gender, through hormonal treatment, surgery or other health care services to make the individual’s body align, as much as desired and to the extent possible, with the experienced gender. The diagnosis cannot be assigned prior the onset of puberty. Gender variant behaviour and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis.

Eappen moves on to other statistics regarding transgender teenagers while claiming that people who support trans teens are, in fact, homophobic, which is so ironic because judging by my friends, a whole swathe of the trans community are gay, lesbian, or bi/pan. I know that isn’t an official double blind study. I also know I’ve seen it mentioned quite a few times (or umpteen dozen if you want numbers). Eappen claims that two thirds of boys who started out as transgender ended up as gay and that clinicians at England’s main treatment centre (which has since been closed) joked that puberty blockers were “transing the gay away”. Sadly the information regarding that study is behind a paywall and one solitary article was the only one reporting on it. He pontificates that “about 80% of all children who believe themselves to be transgender eventually come to terms with their sex without surgical or pharmaceutical attention” following that up with, “the worst thing we could do is prevent them from discovering who they really are by pushing them down the road of irreversible medical interventions”.

I have to wonder how many of those children simply gave up on being heard and eventually said what they knew the adults they’re communicating with want to hear. And how many of those children transitioned as adults. I also want to know where he got that information from. Eighty percent is a really freaking large amount. So I searched some more found this bit of information from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

The overall rate of retransition was 7.3%. An average of 5.37 years (SD = 1.74 years) after their initial binary social transition, most participants were living as binary transgender youth (94.0%; Table 2). Included in this group were 4 individuals (1.3% of the total sample) who retransitioned twice (to nonbinary then back to binary transgender). Some youth (3.5%) were currently living as nonbinary, including one who had retransitioned first to cisgender then to nonbinary. Finally, 2.5% were using pronouns associated with their sex at birth and could be categorized as cisgender at the time of data collection, including one who first retransitioned to live as nonbinary. Similar percentages were observed when examining the 291 youth who were in touch with the research team in the past 2 years (Table 2), when examining only those 280 youth who had not begun puberty blockers at the start of the study (Table 3), or if we examine only the 200 youth who had gone at least 5 years since their initial transition (Table 3).

That’s so far removed from what Eappen said I find it hard to believe they’re in the same galaxy. Eighty percent versus 2.5%. I mean I’m bad at math but not that bad! Unless he got that information via Tavistock, which was closed due to shoddy record keeping among other issues. In case you’re curious about Tavistock I found this bit of information through an article by Hannah Barnes from BBC’s Newsnight:

In March 2022, an independent report commissioned by Britain’s National Health Service found that the type of care provided at Tavistock was, quote, ‘Not safe or viable as a long-term option for the care of young people with gender related distress.’ It also found that the center had not used customary control measures that are typically in place when new treatments are introduced. Nor had the centre collected consistent data on its patients and treatments.

As for the trans girls in his study, how about did that go? Did the two thirds of the teens simply shrug their metaphorical shoulders and say, “Welp, I guess I’m gay.” That’s a huge amount of teenagers simply changing their minds. Where are all the other studies confirming this? And why are those birds chirping? Maybe it’s the chirping heard when everything else is silent. Maybe his confirmation bias study is the only one.

But, seriously, the reason why that study had so many subjects detransion is because every subject that they lost track of were counted as detransitioning. Shoddy paperwork does not mean your subjects are cisgender. And yet people still act like it’s trustworthy, like Eappen. It’s been shown that intelligent people are more likely to believe fake information because they know they’re smart and are positive they can spot the erroneous or misleading information. Here’s a short video about it:

I had almost finished collecting the information for this post when an article popped up in my newsfeed. An article about Nex Benedict. Nex, who used they/them pronouns at home and he/him pronouns at school, was a 16 year old non-binary student. He’s been described as intelligent and a straight A student, a talented artist, and an animal lover (especially his cat Zeus).

Oklahoma is a transphobic state. They’ve currently got 54 bills that try to restrict the LGBTQIA2S community with healthcare, being included at school, and the freedom to express themselves. They’ve already created a bathroom ban, forcing everyone into the washroom of their assigned gender at birth. Which is why Nex and his friend were heading into the women’s washroom. He was in a school disciplinary course (detention) along with three teenage girls he really didn’t know and they were mocking him and his friends for their clothing choices. When the girls entered the washroom, Nex spashed them with his water bottle and they proceeded to dogpile him and beat the shit out of him. Right up to bashing his head several times on the concrete floor. He blanked out for a bit. The school has pointed out that all the students walked to the nurses office under their own power several times, neglecting to mention that Nex walked there like he was inebriated and walking a roadside sobriety test. Then he and his friend were given a two week suspension, the girls received an “undisclosed punishment”.

Nex’s grandmother wanted to press charges against the girls for their unwarranted and brutal attack. She was told not to bother because Nex was the instigator and would be the one blamed. Because a bit of water is equal to beating someone to a pulp. If it was here, she’d be able to press charges. There however, it’s like a couple of four year old’s fighting in the living room, crying for their Mom because “he started it”. Sometimes it doesn’t matter a whit who started it. It’s what happened during and after that counts.

A trip to the hospital led to a diagnosis of a possible concussion then he went to bed early with a headache. And then he died in the living room the following morning. And now his family is bereft and little Zeus will never know what happened to his person.

It’s been a month since Nex died and the toxicology results have yet to be released. The Owasso police department is flopping around like a landed fish. Nex’s autopsy showed no signs of the beating being the cause of his death. Then it was too soon to tell and then a flop back. And now they’re waiting for the toxicology because they feel that “something’s going to be there”.

I read about the education superintendent, Ryan Walters, and his long list of transphobic actions. For example, last year, Walters and the rest of the educational department made a YouTube video to help end “radical gender theory” by talking about a “man” who assaulted a cisgender girl in the women’s washroom, complete with images of a crying little girl. Because nothing tugs on the heartstrings more than a stock photo. But it hit closer to home is when he called Nex’s death a tragedy then immediately went on to tell ABC that he wanted to focus on “the basics of education” and would not play “woke gender games” or back down from a “woke mob”. Feeling kind of like a martyr there Walters? People in his community are mourning Nex and Walters is busy using his death as a platform for his political view. That goes far being insensitive and uncaring.

Another example of his insensitivity is that he hired Chaya Raichik to be part of the Oklahoma Schools Library’s media advisory committee. Raichik has never lived in Oklahoma but she’s got one thing going for her, she created the queerphobic “Libs of TikTok”.

Nex had a teacher who he admired. That teacher, Tyler Wrynn, made a Tik-Tok video in support of queer and gender queer youths. Raichik used her platform to showcase him and similar teachers, stirring up a mob who sent him death threats and called him a “groomer”. He ended up resigning… for supporting his students.

Meanwhile Chaya Raichik agreed that Nex’s death was “horrible” but she also misgendered him, claimed he was mentally ill because he was trans, and stated she wanted to “eradicate gender ideology from public life.” And then there’s some walking piece of human excrement by the name of Tom Woods who, when asked about Nex, stated that he and the rest of the LGBTQIA2S community are “filth”. That’s classy, especially when you’re talking about a dead 16 year old.

These people, these politicians, they don’t seem to realize how badly they’re impacting families and children, ratcheting up the number of suicide attempts and leading to more dead children who felt unheard and unsupported. They talk about “woke ideology” and “woke mobs” and “radical gender theory”. They claim they’re there for the children. They aren’t. They claim they want to put the control back with the parents. And again they aren’t. If they were for the children, they’d ensure they never put any bills in that made a swathe of students feel hopeless. They’d realize that the more rights they take away from trans people, the more confident the general population feels in bullying and harassing the trans people in their lives. He’d realize he’s keeping medical treatments away from children which has been approved by their parents.

And I just opened a new tab to verify some information and the main article was Nex Benedict and how he’d committed suicide. The pathologist agreed there were signs of a brutal beating but it was the overdose that did him in. And I’m done, at least until tomorrow afternoon. I mean this post has taken long enough, especially since WordPress ate my entire, complete previous post and I’ve had to go back to the beginning. But now I need some space.

I’ve been suicidal before and well know the feelings of hopelessness and simply not mattering. It hurts to know he felt the same. That he looked around his world and saw more and more angry people who were against him. A school that rubber stamped approval for the other students to bully him. They even scared away his favourite teacher for supporting him and his fellow trans students. Nex had so much light to give the world and now it’s gone.

And here’s a final quote by someone with a pseudonym of Crystal who works for MSN:

With so much misinformation and panicked language floating around, it is reasonable to be concerned. Everyone wants what’s best for children.

But my suggestion would be that if you have concerns or doubts, why not have a conversation with a friend or loved one who is trans. 

And if you don’t have a trans person in your life you can speak to, perhaps you’re not in a good position to have an opinion on trans people’s rights.

Look! There’s a groomer! And one over there!

Years ago, a country had a huge edifice of learning called the Institute for Sexual Science. The primary topic they discussed was being transgender – why people are trans and, more importantly, how to help them, something that included non-binary people. This place was not just an institute but a safe place, an STI clinic, and a place to get both gender affirming surgery for trans women and hormone therapy. Magnus Hirschfeld, the man who founded the institute, was both Jewish and gay and understood the need for a safe house. Then a man rose to power and demanded the building be torn down and every book and scrap of research burned. The fire that engulfed those more than twenty thousand books was the first and largest book burning in Germany. The man was Hitler.

That’s how safety can disappear in a second; that’s how hope gets destroyed.

Photo from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This is the Institute for Sexual Studies; a sanctuary for the LGBTQ community

For many years trans rights has slowly been increasing but there’s a long distance to go. The knowledge that was lost in the flames has been regained and hormones and surgery are available (at least in Canada). Even children are allowed the right to be themselves; the school board has, in writing, that names and pronouns need to be respected. That’s easy right? It’s simply that people need to be their authentic selves and treated fairly, who could take offence at that? Apparently the majority of the right wing, fundamentalist population. They looked up from stripping women’s rights back by around half a century and pondered who else to drag through the mud. They finally decided on a double whammy of transgender people and drag queens, who they were already dragging, so it wasn’t exactly a long reach. It’s pretty clear that someone (plural) has been planning this for a while, right down to accusing anyone who disagrees with them to as a groomer. If you talk to one transphobe, you’ll hear the same lies, half truths, and misdirections as all the others. It’s like they’re reading a script.

The act of grooming, is not about reading story books to children in a public library, something that about 99.9% of the right wing population seems to have forgotten. It’s when a pedophile slowly and increasingly introduces things of a sexual nature, as secretly as possible, into a child’s life, with the intent of having sexual interactions with said child. Like when my younger sister came home from school with candy one afternoon. My Mom asked where she got those treats and was told, “From that man who lives at the corner”. Yes, she had gone into his house to get them even though we’d been told not to but she wasn’t all that old. This was the 70’s, when kids walked themselves to school in grade one, kindergarten if there was little traffic on the streets. My Mom immediately called the police, who assured her after a talk with my sister, that nothing had happened to her. That’s how it works though, starting small and innocent then progressing to more adult things and eventually sex. And he was a bona fide pedophile too, he was certainly not supposed to live a block from an elementary school, or invite young children into his house. Pedophilia and grooming are definitely not inviting children to listen to age appropriate stories in a library with their parents and staff right there (literally right there).

I’ve been sitting up here in the north, watching news and posts about the States. State by state tumbling down like dominos. The conservatives rant and scream about how they’re saving kindergarten children from having their genitals mutilated by surgery and from being put on hormones. Basically they’re saving children from things that weren’t happening in the first place. But when they’re informed of this they plug their ears to the truth and keep on with their campaign of cruelty. No more blockers until they’re an adult and old enough to decide, meaning yet another generation gets to go through the wrong puberty. Forced detransitioning for teens who had already started puberty blockers or hormones. To me that sounds like a ticking time bomb for suicides. I can’t imagine the terror, panic, and fury of teens who were happy and comfortable matching with the gender of their hearts, only to find out they now have to stop their blockers or hormones and go through a puberty they never wanted. The conservatives need to put themselves in those shoes.

There’s another reason I don’t believe the right’s claim to be doing all this for the children. That’s because I’ve seen how Christian conservatives treat transgender children when those kids stubbornly stay trans. I watched a story about a little girl who simply wanted to use the girl’s washroom at her school, and when I say girl I mean prepubescent child. A good portion of the interview was conducted while sitting on the roof of their house because it was the girl’s favourite place to sit. She was sad because she wouldn’t be able to sit there for much longer as her parents were already making emergency plans to leave the state with her. Not only was she dealing the fear of using the boys toilet at school, considering she was pretty much a human punching bag seeing as she was slender, slight, and feminine, but she also was dealing with guilt. She knew that the whole family was getting uprooted because of her. They were leaving friends behind and a good chunk of their belongings. The interviewer spoke to adults in her home town too. You’d think that since the religious right were so devoted to helping children they would be intent on helping her, even it was misguided assertions of telling her she’s a boy. No, they jumped right into insults and threats of violence. According to them she was an “it”, “the thing”, and a “half baked maggot”. They then moved on to bragging about beating the shit out of her. Sounds very family oriented, doesn’t it.

A few months ago I logged onto Facebook and noticed a girl I follow was moving, as in right now, due to safety reasons. They had to leave almost everything they had including her much loved hens but it was worth it to keep her safe. I really don’t think that families in the US should have to drop everything and flee. How about you? So much for the land of the free. Maybe it should be changed to the land of the free-ish.

I did a lot of reading while writing this post and discovered a number of things done mainly by parents on the right side. Like taking the kids to Hooters for a meal, which isn’t the worst except you know there’s definitely at least one Dad leaning over the table to his five year old son and pretend whispering, “Would you take a look at her bazongas???” What’s worse is I discovered multiple Moms sewing Hooters outfits for their very young daughters then taking her to Hooters to show off her outfit, complete with group photos from the staff. I don’t have anything against the staff but shouldn’t the little girl have an array of job opportunities, far later than kindergarten, and not settle for a minimum wage job with horrible pay and shitty job requirements.

Worse than that are the beauty pageants. They must be a US thing, specifically a southern US thing. Basically the Mom stuffs her little girl (it’s always a girl) into a dress designed for a woman except sized for a little girl and then she’s gussied up to look like the child version of a grown woman. Hair extensions, false nails, pancake makeup… what does it do to a little girl when her dress, makeup, and fake hair seem to matter more than her. When she’s judged on how sexy she can appear. This isn’t a hobby or activity, it’s a multi-million dollar industry formed on backs of children. And not a peep from the religious right.

Even their claim to be concerned about permanent damage rings false. First there’s circumcision and pierced ears. Whether you agree with them or not you have to admit they change the body. Circumcision is obvious (even more obvious with complications) but pierced ears (and other locations) can get infected, the body can reject the metal or, like me, they could get scars. My right earlobe sinks down, leaving my earring look like it’s flapping in the breeze. I’ve had so many people warn me I’m losing an earring. Even the most accepted practices are often performed without consent on babies and toddlers.

But I’m not really talking about that. I’m talking about things like plastic surgery on an eleven year old to make her look older. I swear there was an article about her. I must have set it down for a minute and now I can’t find it anywhere. She got her hips, buttocks, and I believe her lips. And now she and her Mom are pretending she’s older so she can date young men. I wonder how many innocent men she’s put at risk of getting labelled a pedophile. I don’t know whose performing these procedures but they’re getting done and this girl’s not the only one.

Kansas is doing it’s absolute best to ignore trans people although the children, so far, are safe. Florida’s busy banning books, oops they’re simply putting books in a different location away from children. The law is written so broadly it can encompass the whole LGBTQIA2S community. I highly doubt that’s a coincidence. And then there’s Missouri. Why is there Missouri? I just have the name jotted down, I just can’t remember why. There are so many states in the United States, so many countries in the world, it’s impossible to keep up with the hatred. I just looked and, damn, Missouri has forbidden teachers to say anything about the LGBTQIA2S community and then they need a guardian’s permission first. By the end of January they had wracked up at least 27 anti-LGBTQ bill and were leading the country. I think Texas has surpassed them; this is not a race you want to win, Texas. And they’ve started after the children. Their bill, which bans children from receiving any gender affirming surgery, has been placed on hold. The senator who introduced the bill had this to say, “Sex changes and little kids are two things that should never go together,” Proving, once again that the people making these bills do no research and speak to no one in the community.

When I was in college, I had a teacher who explained the primary difference between the parenting styles between liberal and conservatives. The liberal parents believe in following their child’s lead, discussing what went wrong, in the case of negative behaviour, and brainstorming how to make things better. Conservative parents feel like their kids unfinished as children and shouldn’t have any say in decision making until they’re nearing adulthood.

Liberal parents have children who wander into their grade one class wearing orange track pants, a lacy purple top, and mismatched shoes (one’s bright red). The parent with the child shrugs and says, “At least they stand out in the crowd.” The conservative parent’s child is well dressed and they’re noticeably scratching themself. “Quit scratching yourself,” the parent says in that hissed whisper parents use when they wish they were both silent and invisible. The parent gives the offending sweater a quick swipe before continuing with,”See, your sweater is nice and soft so stop wriggling around” It won’t be until the evening, at bathtime, when they discover the huge, torso sized rash. A parent is dispatched to the pharmacy for soothing cream and the child is slathered before bed. In the end each family has happy and content children.

And that would be the end of it except one side has decided that parenting their own children wasn’t enough, they had to take control of other people’s children as well. Other people they’ll never meet. Because they know better than those other people. And so it goes, with the right listening to the people they trust; the leaders of their churches and the good ol’ boy local politicians. And the liberals getting derided for listening to their children.

And somewhere out there, there’s a little girl worrying about her chickens.

A solitary Christmas…

I was a tiny toddler, which makes sense considering I weighed less than 5lbs at birth. My second Christmas, while the adults all chattered, I would perch on a present and stare in awe at the tree.

“Mustn’t touch,” I’d murmur to myself, one finger mere millimetres away from an ornament. “Mustn’t touch.” And there I’d sit, awed by the shining lights and shimmering decorations.

Not much later my Mom would ask me what I wanted for Christmas and my answer was always the same; a tree with lots of sparkling lights and decorations. My Mom would assure me we would get that, it came with the whole Christmas package, but I was insistent it was all I wanted. So she’d guess and I was happy. The tree was still my first Christmas love though.

The years went on. My sisters and I discovered the Sears Wishbook and spent hours pouring through it, circling items we (along with the rest of North America) never got. I started paying attention to ads and things in stores as we were passing through. Plus I had genuine needs. But I still spent a good chunk of time just sitting beside the tree and admiring it. There was still that tree shaped space in my heart.

Finally I became an adult and then a mother. My tree wasn’t just for myself but for a couple of little ones. I began buying ornaments and decorations every year to remind me of the time we spent together. And the years went from the ornaments being placed.all.together.on.a.single.branch to “I’ve brought all the totes up from storage Mom. I’m going to play Fallout 3 now.”

And February 2020 I moved into an apartment on my own.

I’ve downsized a bit. I no longer have my grouping of three small trees (with real bark trunks) and my tree has shrunk from 5.5ft to 4.5ft. But I still have four Rubbermaid totes and several bags down in storage. I need two trips, and that’s with my big canvas wagon. It’s definitely pretty when everything’s up though.

I was out with two of my friends one evening and we were under my living room window.

“You can see my wreath,” I said excitedly. “And my tree!”

Both friends admitted they didn’t put up any decorations because, “It’s too much work just for me”.

STOP right there! It is not too much work. If you want the decorations and the glitz then you deserve them. Society acts like being single is some sort of holding pattern that you wait in until you’re back into a relationship. It’s not. You are equally valid no matter how many or few partners you have or how many people you expect to stop by over the holidays. You matter. Just that. You!

Also, make it your holiday. After all it’s your place. Got a thing for pink? Get a pink tree! Don’t want the hassle of putting up and decorating a 6ft giant? Buy a three footer and stick it on the side table. Want everything Doctor Who? Great! Just, umm, face the weeping angel topper toward a mirror. You can never be too safe, right?

But please don’t think you’re not worth it. Christmas is for anyone who wants to celebrate and that includes you. You know you’ve got some inner tinsel in you (just keep it away from the kitties). Now, here’s some vegan chocolate chip cookies and a Christmas music playlist on YouTube. If you’ve got decorations you’ve still got time left. If you don’t then you can browse for next year’s decorations to your heart’s content.

The Potato Bucket…

I bought myself a potato bucket. This is not something I thought I’d ever do except I seem to have acquired quite a few potatoes and it’s all because of the vegetable ring I’ve found myself in. And, to be honest, I never thought I’d be in one of those either. Do other people even have vegetable rings? Can I call it nefarious? Is this a normal part of adult life I’ve somehow missed? Either way I’m smack in the middle of one, zucchini in hand.

Now I like veggies, most of them at least. Carrots and potatoes… onions and celery… I even like zucchini and broccoli. But there’s a few I don’t like. Eggplant for example. I know vegans are supposed to love it and it gets stuck on vegan menus quite a bit (when the menu’s being prepared by a non-vegan) but I find it bitter. I don’t like chewy water cucumber either. Enter my friend S. She likes both of those things. So when I get gifted them (which happens surprisingly regularly in the summer), I give them to her. Meanwhile she goes to a food bank about a half hour from here and they don’t let you choose what you’re receiving, they have a bag ready and waiting for you. And she has a lot of foods she won’t eat. One of them happens to be potatoes. So I’ll be given potatoes elsewhere, she’ll have been with me and received potatoes as well then given me hers, and she’s gone a half hour away and got still more potatoes. And they’ve all been shoehorned into the bottom of my fridge.

On top of that my neighbour Cat Dad has a worker who gives him food every other Thursday. Meanwhile he’s a pickier eater than even Colin (that would be really picky). So every other week he comes next door, fusses with my cats, tries to get his cats to come over for a play date (so far they’ve ignored him on that one), and hands me a bag of food. Some goes to S, a bit goes to Colin, and most goes to me. And there are always potatoes. I swear I could serve myself potatoes every day this week and I’d still have some left over and yet I still take more then say to myself, “Well I’ll just make a few more batches of fries”. For who? Half the building?

Now Colin’s thrown himself into the mix. He’s heard me talk about veggie swapping so brought several over for me. His workers bought them for him so he’d eat healthier. Colin has food aversions. The equator will hit absolute zero before he eats a bag of baby carrots and I’m pretty sure earth will be incinerated before then. To celebrate welcoming him into this group of veggie swappers I gave him an entire bag of potatoes. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

A second covid birthday…

It’s Colin’s 24th birthday today. I’m not sure how he feels about that age but I’m feeling pretty damn old! For once the stars aligned and the extreme part of our lockdown ended yesterday, which meant my parents and I could drive into the countryside and visit Colin today. Yesterday I got all the bits and pieces of his present tucked away in a gift bag, baked a batch of vegan chocolate cupcakes, and checked my email umpteen dozen times. I’d ordered Colin a Doctor Who t-shirt which has been slowly meandering up from California. It made it through customs on the 10th at 9:41pm and was processed at the “local distribution centre” according to the email, but that had been the last I’d heard. Actually that’s still the last I’ve heard, I had to setting for showing Colin a picture on my phone after he’d opened the rest of his gifts then I assured him that just meant we’d need to make another trip to bring the shirt to him.

We lucked out and today was gorgeous. Sunny and quite warm. We sat on Colin’s patio and looked at his little garden with it’s lavender and some sort of succulent (and a bunch of grass which had gone to seed because Colin thought it was awesome). And we ate burgers from A&W… and fries… and my chocolate cupcakes (I made sure to bring plenty of extras for him). He loved all his goodies from me and his morning glory from his grandparents, and was thrilled to pieces with his Super Mario game from them. I’m sure he was playing it before we fully backed out of the driveway. He sent me a photo of the game screen pretty quickly!

Once the lunch, present opening, and cupcakes were done we all were getting more than a little wilted. There was no shade anywhere in the big yard, all the trees seemed to be casting shade elsewhere, and the cupcakes were melting. The cupcakes were an easy fix, Colin brought them inside to the air conditioning. We, however, were not. No one other than staff or clients were allowed in the building, not even to use the washroom. Speaking of which, it’s an hour’s drive home and I have a bladder roughly the size of a walnut. If we could go inside and sit in the air conditioning on his couch and nip into his bathroom that would be one thing, but we couldn’t so we really needed to go. We took a quick look at one of the two ponds on the property, which is seriously right beside his patio. No wonder I can hear the frogs croaking during phone calls! And then we went back to the driveway.

I don’t think I will ever, could ever, get used to covid goodbyes. I should have wrapped my arms around him and squeezed as hard as I could, said “I love you” by his ear, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He should have kissed my forehead, patted the top of my head, and called me his “pocket sized Mom”. Instead, we stood six feet apart, waved, and said goodbye, pausing awkwardly before heading towards the car and the house.

It might have been different than usual but I am so glad I got to see my birthday boy today. I can’t wait to see him again soon!

Planning a long distance covid birthday…

I have always planned the kids’ birthdays well in advance and this was still true for Colin’s upcoming 24th birthday. I found a handful of neat things I knew he’d like but was stuck for a main item to put in the gift bag. No biggie, I knew I’d find one soon. And then the lockdown hit, complete with it’s essentials ban. In previous lockdowns I could browse through stores like Walmart and Dollarama but, in this one, I couldn’t browse anywhere! I began to panic then reminded myself the ban lifted at the beginning of June so I’d still have time. Then the ban got extended until two days after Colin’s birthday. I have ordered him something online and it’s on it’s way. According to the website, it’s heading towards a “DHL ecommerce distribution centre” and has been since May 28th. Deep breath… deep breath… it’ll get here when it gets here. Everything else is tucked away in my room.

And whatever’s left is up in the air. Will we be able to go up and visit him once the lockdown’s been lifted? I know we won’t be able to go inside (thanks to covid I’ve only seen his apartment via zoom and photos) but could we stay in the front yard or sit on his patio? It would be nice to see his patio. If we can physically go there I can whip up a batch of cupcakes (so much easier to serve on a lawn than cake) but will they let someone deliver cupcakes from a local bakery if we’re stuck at home an hour away and can’t be with him? There’s no point in even asking until I get a bit more information. And so I wait. And think maybe I should start pinpointing out which bakeries are even near his country home and which bake cupcakes soon. I looked a little earlier, long enough to know not to bother asking about cakes as everyone is all about the theme cakes and I don’t have a theme cake budget. I have a plain, no sprinkles, chocolate cupcake budget. Luckily that’s Colin’s favourite.

I wish so much that things were back to normal (whatever that is) and that in 1 1/2 weeks Colin would be showing up here all set to play with the cats and camp out in the living room. That I could take him in the backyard and show him where the rabbits live and take him on my neighbourhood walk by the creek and show him the duck pond (with a crane, swans, and geese), the tiny waterfall, and the farm. We’d take the bus to visit all the family and stuff ourselves with burgers and fries. And he’d sit at my kitchen table, pulling out item after item with excitement, eager to see what was next until all that was left was remnants of tissue paper and the bottom of the bag. Then we’d watch Doctor Who, or go visit my friend, or stuff ourselves silly with cupcakes, but we’d have fun at the very least.

Hopefully we can do some semblance of this next year for his 25th birthday but for now we’ll just have to piece the days together as best we can and make this his best covid birthday yet!

The road to hell…

(All quotes, unless stated otherwise, are written by Sarah Plake)

A friend of mine posted on Facebook yesterday. Okay, that part isn’t new or newsworthy, it’s why that matters. Someone on a Kansas City News Facebook page shared an anti-transgender meme that featured her then nine year old child. Even now her child is, just that, a child. She thought about ignoring it but, well, this is her baby. So she called in reinforcements. That’s where I came in.

I very rarely enter the comment section. I joke that’s where the trolls live but, in reality that’s pretty close to the truth. My first foray into the comments years ago was a shock and a half. I’d expected it to be the online version of The Letter to the Editor. Heavily moderated and edited for brevity. What I found was the online version of a drunken college party but with worse grammar. But I do make exceptions on wading in there for friends.

I found the offending comment right away and my friend’s request to please remove her daughter’s photo, stressing that she was just a child. I took this photo hours later, obviously he didn’t care. And that’s why his name has not been edited out of the image. I’ve edited the girl and I’ve removed everyone else’s names. I even removed my friend’s profile picture. But him? Pfft. If he can’t be bothered to remove a child’s photo off the internet, so be it.

The comment was on an article regarding transgender youths and medical procedures regarding them plus transgender athletes. It quickly became obvious that pretty much nobody had a frigging clue what the hell they were talking about. I mean here’s a quote about the bills being proposed in Missouri and Kansas.

“Kansas House Bill 2210 and Missouri House Bill 33 would make it a crime for doctors to perform any gender-reassignment services, procedures or surgeries for transgender children under 18, which includes puberty blockers and hormone therapy.”

Puberty blockers for pete’s sake. They’ve been used for decades to treat precocious puberty. You know, like when a five year old girl starts getting her period or an eight year old boy grows a beard? They are not new or experimental or dangerous or permanent. There is no reason to stop them. Absolutely none.

A Republican, of course, introduced the bill in Kansas to protect children because, in his words, “I don’t think a child would ever think about something like that if their parents or others around them weren’t telling them that they can choose to be the opposite gender. I think this is something that’s just being forced on kids.”

Meanwhile his co-sponsor is only opposed to children being “surgically altered”. She goes on to say that “if a child has a tendency or curiosity, or there is a ‘fad’ to be gay, the child [needs] a parent who is open to conversation with the school, [their] pediatric physician and then an experienced child therapist to work with the child before permanent decisions are made.”

Really? Really??? I mean totally ignoring the whole bizarre “fad to be gay” thing, what did she think happened? Sadly the reality is she doesn’t have a clue. I bet she’s never spoken to a single trans adult or the parent of a trans child let alone a trans child. Neither of them have reached out to a paediatrician or any other doctor who works with transgender youths. I mean that’s all just patently obviously. No one who’d done any amount of research would think children are being “surgically altered”.

And they’re not the only ones. The more I read, the more I find there’s a whole swathe of people who claim to be fighting against kids transitioning on their behalf. They can’t believe a trans child would know their gender at seven years old; someone must be forcing them to think they’re transgender. Meanwhile they’re just as likely to say that of course their five year old son picked the blue ball, he knows he’s a boy. It’s only the trans kids who don’t know their gender. The cis kids not only are allowed to know it but they have their noses rubbed in it (gender reveal parties anyone?).

And multiple people, like the co-signer, are there wailing about the six and seven year olds getting surgery and how it’s abuse and it needs to be stopped immediately! Umm… it never started to begin with. I have no idea where they come up with this idea but there’s always someone new who’s positive a kindergarten student is going in for gender confirmation surgery.

And the people who just want to be “reasonable” and let trans kids minds have a chance to mature before starting any kind of treatment. Kids and teens change their minds so often and they shouldn’t be allowed to make such life altering decisions at such a young age.

Wait… what??? Teens can join the military and see live action. They can get their driver’s license and take control of a several tonne vehicle which could easily kill themself and/or the people around them. They can take out a massive loan for post secondary education, one that will take decades to pay off, and one which they could end up taking out on a program they ultimately don’t like. They can get married. They can have a baby (or more). They can have a tattoo and/or piercing in a variety of places. They can have sex, which, depending on the person they’re with and the STI they have, can be very life altering. Where the fuck are these people at recruitment centres with their signs reading “Getting blown up is a life altering decision”? Why aren’t they protesting student loans? Especially in the States where they can’t be forgiven no matter what circumstances you’re in. Why aren’t they fighting against child brides? But, no, it’s only against trans people.

I just read a tweet by someone who goes by the name Tamra Bonvillain, which reads, “Not allowing trans teens to go on blockers/hormones is also an irreversible choice”. This is absolutely true and absolutely never mentioned in these bills or in conservative discussions regarding transgender youths. These people are saying they’re trying their hardest to protect the poor innocent children and teens but have never spoken to a single transgender youth. They’ve never thought of the ramifications of their actions. Why not? Maybe it’s because they’re not trying to protect transgender children. They don’t want to believe trans children even exist. They don’t like trans people. They don’t accept trans people. They think of trans people as being horrible and abominations of nature. And there’s no way innocent children could be any of that.

So they claim it’s adults causing it and try to legislate them out of existence. If they’re not having name changes in the classroom, or using the correct washroom, or playing on their proper team… those people don’t have to think about trans children at all. They get total ignorant bliss. Unless they have to notice because a child simply won’t just go away and then it gets ugly. I read one story a year or so ago where a child, a literal prepubescent child, wanted to use the girls washroom. Parents of her classmates got together and she was called such things as “it”, “the thing”, and “half baked maggot”. Fathers were bragging about how it was going to be their son who beat her up. Parents. Of children her own age. How could they tuck their children in at night, kiss their foreheads, and marvel at how young and precious they were while literally referring to another child that same age as insect larva? It just doesn’t make sense.

Or, well it does. They don’t like trans people. They don’t know anyone who’s trans and they don’t want to know anyone who’s trans. Children are innocent and therefore can’t be trans, someone must be forcing them. Unless they prove they really are trans and then it’s fair game to call them a maggot and share their picture in a meme that mocks them. And, well, the kids get ignored until they’re adult and can’t be legislated out of existence anymore. And then they’re mocked and harrassed for looking different and not fitting into gender norms, like they picked the wrong puberty on purpose. And so on and so forth and I’m sick of it and furious.

Friends talk and share stories about health care woes. Of having to teach even the good doctors how to treat them. Of being called “it” and “he-she” by medical professionals. Of having doctors simply refuse to treat them. Of a man who died of ovarian cancer after a three year struggle to find a doctor willing to treat him. A woman hemorrhaging from her leg who was made to walk downstairs to an ambulance, while the attendants mocked her, because they didn’t want to touch her enough to help her onto a stretcher. I even found my own psychiatric intake papers from 2016, shortly after I broke up with my then fiance, stating I had a “recent breakup with a ‘boyfriend’, who was actually a transgender female to male”. She went on to state that the relationship “was perceived to be romantic in nature”. I really doubt she’d have written any of that if Lenny had been a cis male. The psychiatrist literally recoiled when she found out.

For the love of all we hold holy and/or dear can we not just listen to other people, care for other people, and accept other people? Can we stop trying to make decisions for people without finding out what they want and actually need first. Can we accept people as, you know, people instead of othering them in a derogatory fashion? And… this should be complete and utter common sense here… can we please not take the picture(s) of children, make derogatory memes about them, and spread them around the world wide web? It doesn’t cost us a single thing to be kind.

Finding joy in the spam folder…

Every couple of weeks I wade through the spam folder on my blog to make sure no one got stuck in there. I have had a couple of legitimate posters get stuck in there so I figure it’s worthwhile to wade just in case.

Usually it’s the same old garbage; overly generic and polite messages that say nothing.

“I love your writing. Readers are sure to get your point and you come to a decisive conclusion. I would like to read more of your work.”

Buddy, you replied to a post about shopping at Dollarama. The only conclusion there is I spend a bit, although not as much as Colin. Not exactly groundbreaking.

Lately I’ve picked up arms length porn messages detailing every kind of sex imaginable (and quite a bit I couldn’t imagine). So you could understand my happiness when I came across this gem…

Isn’t that pretty much the nicest, most thoughtful spam ever? Sadly I had to delete it because posting spam on my blog leads to a ten-fold increase in spam in my inbox. But it’s saved now as a reminder on days I feel down. Feel free to safe it to your own computer for your blue days. And remember to always follow your heart (I’m following mine into the living room with a mug of hot apple cider and a peach).

My story is still being written…

I sat in the corner of my bedroom and typed furiously on my phone. Facebook was open and I’d scrolled through my list of friends for someone who could help.

“Please can you stay and chat with me until my son gets home?” I begged. “He’s due back in a half an hour but I can’t stop thinking about jumping off the balcony and I don’t think I’ll make it until he gets here without someone to talk to.”

And she did. She stayed on and chatted about inconsequential things until Colin came bounding back in the door from youth group. I really don’t think I would be here if it wasn’t for her. And I would have missed so much.

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day, a day meant to remind people that every death was someone who mattered and every life is someone with dreams. We all have a story and, as the 11th Doctor said, we should try to make it a good one. Otherwise it’s our narrative to write.

Many of us need help to keep writing that story. Here, in Canada, we have a variety of services like COPE and CMHA, both of which provide support. Friends and family can be a good support but lots of people struggle with one or both. Social media’s taking over the role of friendship. This makes for easy communication but it also makes for easy breakups, I’ve found that out far more than once. One minute you’re chatting with someone regularly and the next they’ve blocked you over a hamburger. And if those people online are your only friends the breakups can be brutal.

Please, please if you have a friend or family member who is depressed and says they’re suicidal – believe them. It takes a lot to admit that. Please listen to them and understand if they’re really damn silent. It’s hard to talk when you’re depressed. Offer concrete help with no judgement. Depression weighs you down and makes you feel like you’re encased in cement. Imagine cleaning or washing the dishes like that. People can (and do) spend days in their bed or go for weeks without bathing. Someone who’ll pick up the garbage and wash the dishes without asking, “How could you do this to yourself?” make a huge difference. Some easy to eat food can be a help too.

World Suicide Prevention Day should be every day. It’s part of looking out for each other and supporting the people in your life. Help can be as simple as a Facebook message. You can make a difference.

Half a century…

Fifty years old. I’d counted ahead years ago and knew it was going to happen in 2020 but that seemed so far away… sometime in the distant future. It was so unreal, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. To be honest, I never thought I’d make it this long. And here I am, halfway to a hundred.

Fifty doesn’t feel like what I thought it would feel. I don’t feel that old. My shoulders hurt occasionally but that’s it for pain. I love to go for hikes. And if my local mall ever offered a slide as an option instead of stairs I’d be first in line.

But little things trip me up. I can’t believe 1990 is 30 years ago. How did it get so far away so fast? And I’m finding techy things more and more confusing, which feels weird as someone who once worked in technical support. I don’t own a television and have no clue how to operate modern remote controls. I don’t even know what half the buttons are on my microwave.

My birthday was yesterday and I had my parents, sister, and nephews over for dinner. We had curry, pizza, and vegan cheesecake then opened presents. It was a lot of fun and so nice to have everyone over. My place might not be large but it’s welcoming and I think that’s more important.

The presents are put away, the couple of cake slices are in the fridge along with the last serving of curry, and the wrappings are down the chute. My celebration is done for another year. Now it’s time to get on with life and living. I’ve got another fifty years to work on!