Freedom and Rights

It bothers me that I have to cover something so basic, so obvious... something with literally centuries of understanding, til recent years.  But... here's where we are.

Let's talk about freedom and basic human rights.  We have a lot of use of the words by those that don't understand the basic definitions, so let's start there.  

Rights: "A right is a power or privilege held by the general public, usually as the result of a constitution, statute, regulation, or judicial precedent." (Legal information Institute)

Freedom: "The state or fact of being free from servitude, constraint, inhibition, etc.; liberty" (Oxford)

We have in recent years adopted another view in society that says freedom is freedom from discomfort.  It says, you shouldn't be forced to do or be exposed to something you don't like.  The view says... I should not be expected to observe you living your life in your way, if it conflicts with my own beliefs.  It says.. I shouldn't have to learn something that I don't want to learn.  It says, I shouldn't be made to feel guilty for my actions.

Let's take crossdressers, trans people and such, even though this can be equally applied to gay couples, atheists, women's rights, minorities and... well.. basically everything being attacked by one political party, today.

When someone wakes up and says... you know... I'm not comfortable with the stereotype I'm seen as being.  This can go either way .. a man that doesn't want to be seen as commanding or controlling or competitive or more... or a woman that says I don't want to be seen as only a support of a man or weak or as an object for men to observe or use.  Yes, this crosses over into equality of men and women to choose their role, as well.  Or, maybe they say as a man that they prefer soft clothes or using makeup or feeling "pretty" or a woman that doesn't like that look and just wants to look strong and to fit in with men, like another "dude."  What harm are they doing... to you .. in doing it?  On your side, no one is telling you to be trans.  No one is banning dresses and makeup for women.  No one is banning testosterone for men.  Indeed, even if a woman took testosterone, it wouldn't block your ability to use it.  

One point I have made many times in the past and again recently is this.  When someone is upset that a man wears a dress or makeup or a woman cuts her hair short without makeup... or they choose occupations or hobbies of the other sex, it gets huge and vocal objections by conservatives.  A few days ago, one President candidate repeatedly called a male VP candidate on the other side a "tampon" and encouraged his side to mock the man for not being "masculine" enough.  And, right there, they make is ABSOLUTELY CLEAR that gender is not based on sex organs.  After all, if it were, it wouldn't matter WHAT a person wears or how they act.  If they have a penis, they are masculine.  If they have a vagina, they are feminine.  By attaching definitions to what qualities those words have, they are DEMANDING that gender is a CHOSEN way of acting that they demand you must do... getting us back to "constraint, inhibition..liberty" above.  Those demanding people live in one specific way are taking away their liberty and demanding they live by the choices of others.. just so those others feel more comfortable.

But, who ever said life was comfortable?  Try making money without work.  Try getting fit without exercise.  Try getting ANYTHING done in groups if you only allow like minded people to interact with you.  

Diversity.. for all the hate on the right for the term.. is simply saying that you have the freedom and right to choose what makes you happy, so long as you don't stop my right to choose the same in my life and with my body.  That's what was understood when the Constitution was written (though it would take a while for all to have equal access to that right), and that's the only way we move forward to peace and success in our national future.

Be a Man (or Woman)

In the conversation with my mentally ill ex when she was cutting me out of my child's life based simply on her not thinking I was a good influence, she said many hurtful things in true modern Christian fashion (she pretends to be holy).  One of them was to tell me to "be a man," when I was objecting to her actions.  I think that's a good launching point for this topic.

Be a man... what's that mean?  After all, according to the rigid right, gender is not a behavior construct.  If you are born with a penis,  you are a male and vagina female.. unless your political supreme leaders say your not a female boxer, I guess.  So... how can one act like a male or female.  If you have the equipment from birth... it's settled, right?

Of course, they don't believe that.  You have to act like a man or woman, too... follow the proscribed way of acting... jobs or lack of them, house parent or not, visual appearance, etc.  That's, I think, the biggest problem they have about trans people.  They don't care of you identify with the other gender, as long as you don't LOOK like the other gender, suggesting it had nothing at all to do with your born equipment at all... it has to do with how you choose to act or appear.  It's not about your biology. It's about control.

So, topics like women not having children are mocked by the right VP as "childless cat ladies" and men that stay at home to raise children are given suspicion and insults.. I know that from my time doing that by choice, as well.... so that that ex that mocked me could go be a manager with her MBA.  Had I "been a man" as she charged, she would have had little opportunity for her to do exactly that.

So, ignore the critics.  They aren't even consistent in their own arguments.  Just be yourself and when that crosses a gender barrier for them, just tell them to fk themselves... because they'll probably have a problem finding an acceptable partner.

Free to Be Happy

Not the blog post I was expecting to write, but it's one necessary to be written in our age and with the last year of falsehoods and anger and even violence that results from the ignorance.  I have had experience and learning and considering on the subject, both from my child and from my own exploration and consideration on the subject.  

My child is no longer reading my posts, and my exploration determined it was not necessary or accurate to change, so neither is fueling this, but I tend to rise up when I see oppression... so, here's several things I learned about gender and transgender.  I'm not saying it to criticize anyone... my estimation is most people never gave these points a thought, because it didn't apply to them and makes them feel uncomfortable to think some of their foundational "truths" are as shallow as following the crowd.  But... here we go.

The loudly spoken objection to transgender is that someone is messing with "God given nature" of the body that was given to them.  Except... we literally do that all the time.  Women and men of a certain age take hormones to help them look and feel like they want, and ESPECIALLY if they want to enjoy SEX.  Women after a hysterectomy take hormones.  Men after other operations take hormones.  Children born with birth defects have surgeries done to change their God given bodies, and the pharmaceutical industry is based on changing what your body is literally doing on its own.  So.. if restricting treatments that is against nature is our goal, we have a lot to restrict.

Ok.. so what about the appearance issue?  That's actually more easily dismissed.  Do you know that many celebrities and politicians and news people that are men wear makeup?  Often, they'll wear more than your average woman, in fact.  Not only do Scottish men wear dresses (kilts) but for literally thousands of years, so did men... including Jesus, very likely.  That's just what was normal.  And EVERY play until very recently was only done by men, meaning kings and queens and villages watched Shakespeare and others' works watching men in drag for women's roles.  If we are going to teach kids true history, we'd need to mention that.

Well, aren't they going to attack women in bathrooms to have sex?  Not to put too fine a point on it, but very likely they and the other women in the bathrooms have the same gender target of sexual attraction.  Transgender women wouldn't be attracted to women, very often.  And for the rare exceptions,  I could point to gay examples that exist, as well.

I could go on and on... I put quite a lot of time into the subject... realizing most of our "differences" are semantics and very fine... women carry a purse, men a briefcase or backpack, women and men both value shoes, how their butt looks, wanting to be desired, etc... but I'll just end with this.

Why is it so important to criticize how someone ELSE lives their lives if it doesn't impact you?  Wasn't that the anti Vax argument?  Live and let live.  Find your own path to happiness that doesn't include stopping others that are often not a good fit in their birth gender from being happy in another.

Freedom to be Happy

We just passed Memorial Day.  I did not post criticism or support, because even though I am a Veteran that joined and served for protecting freedom, much of the use of the military has been using soldiers to promote economic or political goals or to enrich political or weapons groups.  So, I don't have a position AGAINST soldiers, and especially soldiers that served in older wars I have great respect for the freedoms that they did defend.  HOWEVER, we don't always see that goal in the mindset of those that are in power ordering them in recent decades.

Indeed, freedom has taken a back seat to partisanship and media crusades in recent years, and this is true on both sides of the major party spectrum.  It's one reason that I don't align myself with either party.  It's not a battle for freedom versus control.  Both have groups they want to have freedom and groups that they want to control.  Me, being in the middle along with many independents, we get to expose the hypocrisy of both sides of the political spectrum.  

So, while people chant and sing patriotic hymns for a weekend twice a year, they turn on their heels within hours to identify what people SHOULD and SHOULD NOT be ALLOWED to do... more on the should not than should.  However, EITHER is one person making a decision about what another person may do, prompting the questions of where they got authority to decide that and more directly how freedom is maintained within it.

Take Trans people, for example.  Groups on both sides have recently came out to battle against them... or more precisely.. battle against their FREEDOM to wear what they want to wear and do what they want to do, suggesting that their freedom must be restricted if it is in the presence of someone that disagrees.  If that is the case, no one should be allowed to do anything, anywhere... since we will always have critics.

Then.. and to break the Google and social media ban on mentioning Ukraine's war (for obvious point in this article), if you speak about the Ukraine war, you are subject to being shadow banned or more for doing so.  If you suggest that while Russia was and is wrong for their part in the war they do have a point that the area they occupied was Russian favoring people that asked for Russia to come save them from daily rocket attacks... you are suddenly THE ENEMY for having a differing opinion.  There is a lot of that going on in the last decades.... condemnation of people for simply being different than the politically approved text or standard.  

Of course, being an INFJ like I am and an independent, I have offended countless people for speaking uncomfortable truths about the church, the GOP, the DNC, the media, the vaccines, the wars, and so much more.  If I haven't said enough code words to get this post banned, let me just add questions about Scripture, religion, hedonism, and wealth.  But, I do have the gift that many do not have... the peace to be able to say what I feel and do what I want to do... you know... freedom for which our soldiers died.  I hope for you all the same freedom to pursue your own happiness, however that happiness looks to you.

Troubling History

 The other day, I passed a car painted like the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard.  I was going to snap a picture of it and post, saying something like.... A great car from a great show that was hardly as controversial as it became decades later.  I was going to say something like... when we watched the show, it was just kids of a moonshine running guy that were out there having fun and avoiding the law with a very hot actress.  Then, my mind started critiquing my own narrative..

..why DID they have a confederate flag on the car?  Was it supposed to be good to be breaking the law?  And, when this guy painted his car with that flag, was it just for the show or more?

I know... the confederacy had good things in it that the North rarely did.  In an age of industrial growth, they were focused on things like family, civility, and tradition... but they did also OWN people.  There was definitely mistreatment of slaves, women, and even children.  Not all of that was part of the tradition, but it did exist.  So, when those that promoted the good ignored the bad, it was like an enabler saying what a hard worker and provider the abusive father is.

But, we have a history of doing this.  The church is particularly clear as an example of this.  A few months ago, a trans kid was beaten up and later died after being bullied.  Whether that beating or the harassment of the trans student directly caused the death or indirectly did is beside the point.  The facts of the events are clear.  It happened in that order.  Shortly, a church of Fred Phelps showed up that has been the subject of controversy for decades for showing up at funerals to condemn soldiers and LGBTQ events to shout that they are all going to go to hell.  However... neither the abuse of the trans kid or the actions of the extreme church was condemned by churches around the country, nor church members that were out there saying how loving Christ and the Church was and that others should come.

But... again... without acknowledging or calling out the evil done by church members, we are back to the enabler justifying the abuser.  If you can't condemn someone in your group for saying or doing something, it makes you seem to be an ally of the evil.  And, while SOME FEW of the church are out there doing some good (which deserves congratulation, albeit acknowledgement that non religious people are doing that too), MOST in the churches never give to charity, and almost all of their contributions go to a bigger church and well dressed and driven and housed ministers.  That's just a fact.  Also a fact is that the historical church defended the above slavery, since even in the Bible Paul tells a slave to go back to his owner.  The church was very slow to condemn Hitler, because Hitler used religious symbols and had a perverted church.  The church burned witches for hundreds of years in different places... picture it... literally BURNED women who even if their charge was true simply believed otherwise.  They marched into the middle east in the crusades and killed men, women, and children and sexually abused many, simply because they had a different faith.  Simply having a different faith has been the origin for MANY wars in the past and even some of the present, I believe.  Women were treated like property, and there are BIBLE accounts where "God" supposedly told his people to go kill every man, woman, and CHILD of other regions... as well as all their animals.

All of that is truth.  Ignoring it won't make it any less true, but it will make it look like you tacitly approve of what was done.  Then, whether or not you actually approve of those events, children and generations grow up watching all this and BELIEVE you approved of it and it gets re-enacted.  My point is that you can't just sit silently on some things, and you cannot hide the truth.  I've mentioned in other posts how my silence for a long time in personal matters allowed a narcissistic ex and others to create false narratives about me, and because I wasn't vocally objecting to them even my children were and are being swayed by the fiction to make the ones saying it have more power over me and more sway over others.  Indeed, even as I move, I must explain WHY my ex withheld my child from me to diffuse the created narrative that I did something wrong, which is automatically the assumption when any man divorces... because granted it is rare for a woman to be as big of a btch as mine was and is.  It is why Johnny Depp faced such an uphill battle upon accusation BY the abuser.

I am always focused on truth, but the truth needs to have more effect in our world, today.  It needs to be spoken, owned, and if needed contrition shown.  It may be truth that WE are not the racists that our ancestors were, and they may have been just doing it because it was trendy and done in the day... we can definitely understand that in our trends driven society.  However, if we fail to acknowledge the evil done, we are only setting ourselves up to be judged guilty of the same crime.  Even in Christianity, you cannot get forgiveness without confession, and there seems to be VERY little confession of any evils done being done in our world, today.

The Completely Unauthorized Divine Love Letter to the LGBTQ

 I thought about doing this as a book, but I think a post will suffice.

In recent months, there has been a lot of love directed at trans people, and when one died after being bullied at school, there was a rather LOUD silence from the religious community, which makes sense... they are, after all, mostly committed to a religious body more than a loving God.  It's not like they DID it after all... they just didn't object when it was done... or when a religious group showed up to spew hate in the name of their "loving" God.  It's like when the Nazi's said they didn't actually participate in burning jews.. they just kept the trains running on time.  One phrase that I recall that we used to learn typing when I was growing up was "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing."  And, the church has a long history of watching as evil was carried out in front of them, from the killing of Christ to the killing of witches.

But... that's religion.  Recently, I changed my dating profiles to say that I have faith in God, not religion.  There has definitely been some testing to the first part, but I have had no reason to regain trust in the second part.  

I wanted to write a note towards the LGBTQ community, which I have some connection with trans family members and have written lesbian books in the past.  When I studied faith, I was taught that the sum of the law is love, and many seem to have forgotten that, even if I have not.  I don't want to base it on Scripture, as Scripture is... to be historically accurate... written by those with a religious direction purpose.  Also, there is more original text proof of Socrates than there is of Christ, as there remains no original text from the lifetime of the person said to write it, and theology schools teach ministers across the country that what we have is a "majority text" which means most of the copies contained this or that with some additions from non majority texts.  So, we don't in actuality know what was said.  Even the gospel of John says most of what Jesus said was unrecorded.  So, the next time that someone is thumping a KJV Bible written by a King that wrote a bible to allow him to get divorced, remind them it's all about love.

You are not wrong to want to love others or to want them to love you.  Those that hate you are not speaking from God, and trust me...in a few years, you'll never see them, again.  Also, those that hate you will continue finding someone or something to hate, so they will never be free from their curse, so pity them.  There was a Christian book written some years ago that I liked called The Dream Giver.  It focuses on how there are echoes of universal truth in books and stories through the world... not just the Bible.  So, I want you to consider this.  If you see a universal theme in stories of people fighting to be free to be themselves against those that demand you be a copy to validate them.. consider that it is just a reflection of the will of God, and you are not alone.

Believe in yourself.  Love yourself.  Go forward.  When you are in the middle of the valley of evil, why would you stop?  Forward.