On Gender Identity

I was born in 1950 at a time when spouses were specifically excluded from rape laws and homosexuality was illegal. Homosexuality was only whispered about in “polite company” and people with a gender identity or gender expression that differed from their assigned sex did not exist, and by that I mean their existence was not acknowledged by “mainstream society”. In the early 1950s only 25% of women were in the work force and most of those were doing women's work, in female dominated occupations.

Things have changed a lot since then as far as women's work roles and the acceptance of gay people as fully accepted members of society, even the terminology has changed with “homosexual” going the way of “negro”.

Society as a whole seems to have a harder time understanding and accepting transgender individuals. I can understand how it can be hard, especially for members of a certain generation (mine), to wrap your head around what is essentially a very complex concept that is foreign to a generation born when males mere males and females were females and the roles were very strictly defined.

That in a way was the most difficult thing for me to get my head around. I spent most of my life belonging to movements that opposed the concept of sex role stereotyping, such as the idea that there was men's work and women's work, that women belonged in the caring occupations like nursing and teaching while only men were suited for heavy industry or the police or military. We essentially argued that the way you acted, or who you were, was separate from your sex. We did not consider the concept or gender identity as we would describe it today.

However when one thinks about it more deeply one realizes that people are individuals and the idea of separating sex and gender from identity as a way of defining sexual equality may be the wrong way of looking at it.

For some women being able to work in a non-traditional job may be what they need to be fulfilled. For some men it may simply be not being required to act in society as a stereotypical macho male.

But for other people there is a much bigger disconnect between their assigned sex at birth and who they are as human beings. For them being their authentic self requires them to live life as a different gender than the sex assigned to them at birth, in some cases requiring surgery to align their outer bodies with their inner selves.

What the rest of us need to understand and accept is that people live more fulfilling lives when they can be their authentic selves, while miserable lives, possibly leading to suicide, is a real possibility if people are not allowed to be their authentic selves.

The rest of us have a choice. We can play word and definition games telling people they are wrong about themselves and that we know them better than they do, or we can be decent human beings and affirm their existence as who they are.

Definitions

Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender.[1] Gender identity can correlate with assigned sex at birth, or can differ from it.[2] All societies have a set of gender categories that can serve as the basis of the formation of a person's social identity in relation to other members of society.[3] In most societies, there is a basic division between gender attributes assigned to males and females,[4] a gender binary to which most people adhere and which includes expectations of masculinity and femininity in all aspects of sex and gender: biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression.[5] Some people do not identify with some, or all, of the aspects of gender assigned to their biological sex;[6] some of those people are transgender, genderqueer or non-binary. There are some societies that have third gender categories. Source: Wikipedia

Transgender people have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from their assigned sex.[1][2][3] Transgender people are sometimes called transsexual if they desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another. Transgender is also an umbrella term: in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex (trans men and trans women), it may include people who are not exclusively masculine or feminine (people who are genderqueer or non-binary, including bigender, pangender, genderfluid, or agender).[2][4][5] Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or else conceptualize transgender people as a third gender.[6][7] Infrequently, the term transgender is defined very broadly to include cross-dressers,[8] regardless of their gender identity. Source: Wikipedia

Cisgender (often abbreviated to simply cis) is a term for people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. Cisgender may also be defined as those who have "a gender identity or perform a gender role society considers appropriate for one's sex".[1] It is the opposite of the term transgender.[2][3] Source: Wikipedia

Is American Democracy Fucked ?

So is the American political system completely dysfunctional.

I suppose the easy answer is to say they elected Trump so case closed, but of course it is much more complicated than that.

What advanced developed democracy cannot manage to keep it's government functioning.

The obvious answer should be “none” but of course we know that is incorrect.

Even countries that require months of negotiations after elections to form a coalition government do not let their governments shut down. They understand that government is more than just politics, that government is a good thing that provides vital services to the people. They have processes to allow the everyday work of government to continue while the politics is sorted out.

Take Canada for example. If a government cannot get its spending plan (in the form of an Appropriation Act) approved it is considered a loss of confidence in the government by the legislature and an election is called. However the Prime Minister and Cabinet (whom are all Members of the legislature) retain their positions and what are referred to as Governor Generals' Warrants are issued to fund the day to day operations of government. Government continues in a caretaker mode with no new policy initiatives undertaken until a new government is formed.

However the American system seems designed for deadlock with no confidence mechanism to break deadlocks by electing a new government. They have an executive with a Cabinet appointed and led by a President that is not responsible to the legislature and a bicameral legislative process, requiring the two legislative bodies and the President to agree for legislation, including government funding bills, to become law.

Currently the two legislative bodies are controlled by two opposing parties and the President who, while nominally the leader of one of the two main parties, is in reality a rogue actor with no political allegiance except to himself and no discernible political philosophy except for his own incoherent version of populism. This is a recipe for the chaos that is the current American political situation.

I can only suppose that when the founding fathers drafted the American Constitution they put a great deal of faith in the good will of the political participants to put the good of the American people ahead of petty politics.

Now let us look at the American electoral system.

We will start with Election Day when most (but not all as there are variations between states) Americans vote for federal, state and local officials. They could not design a better way to overwhelm voters leading them to take the path of least resistance and vote a “straight party ticket”. Just the mechanics of voting for that many officials (including many positions that should be public servants), without even considering the time and effort to consider local, state and federal issues and make meaningful voting decisions, must be completely overwhelming to voters.

Americans also elect prosecutors and judges. This raises the whole other issue of the politicization of the justice and judicial systems all the way up to a very politicized Supreme Court. This could be the subject of a treatise all by itself.

Looking at elections for federal office we have the absurd situation where the states set the rules and procedures for federal elections and these vary from state to state. So a federal election is not a consistent process with consistent rules for all Americans.

But the most egregious fact is that it is state politicians from the state's governing party that control the federal election process in that state, including the drawing of the electoral map with that infamous American institution of gerrymandering (to manipulate the boundaries of an electoral constituency so as to favour one party). This also includes the use of various voter suppression methods to reduce voting, usually of black and other minority voters.

Then we have the electoral college system which routinely elects Presidents that are not the choice of the majority of American voters. The system is somewhat designed to do that by giving smaller states relatively more electoral college votes but is made worse by the fact that in most states all of a state's electoral college votes go to the candidate with the most votes in that state. So if a presidential candidate gets 60% of a states votes he gets 100% of the states electoral college votes further skewing the results away from the popular vote.

Another concern is the primary system used to select the individual parties candidates, including the presidential candidates. Again we have an inconsistent system of primaries and caucuses that are different for each state. But perhaps the biggest problem is the timing of these primaries at different dates for each state. It makes for great drama and entertainment but the results of earlier primaries cannot help but affect the results of later primaries. There is a reason election results are not released before all the polls are closed – so that earlier voters do not influence later voters. The primary system seems designed to do just that.

A consistent federal election process overseen by an independent non-partisan agency (similar to Elections Canada) would go a long way to solving the structural problems with the American electoral system. The cultural problems of political corruption are another matter.

And we have not even looked at the role money plays in American elections which is a huge subject all by itself, especially the role of wealthy donors, PACs (Political Action Committees) and SuperPACs. No one in American government can possibly govern without constantly thinking about where the money is coming from for their next campaign. It is very hard to argue that that will not affect their decision making.

And it is almost impossible to do anything in the form of political financing reform as the Supreme Court has ruled that money equals free speech, effectively ruling that the wealthy have a greater right to free speech than ordinary citizens and a greater ability to promote their preferred candidates for election.

So with all of these fundamental problems how can American elections be fair. If American elections are not fair, they are not democratic, and if the electoral process is not democratic then the whole governing structure is not democratic.

American democracy is fucked.

Beliefs That Will Destroy The World

Christmas – Whose Holiday is it Anyway

It is time for the annual discussions about the “War on Christmas” and putting “Christ Back in Christmas”, but whose holiday is it anyway.

The Christians claim it as theirs because, well, it has “Christ” in the name and celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. But yet they chose the timing to coincide with existing Pagan celebrations of the Winter Solstice, basically because they did not have a clue as to when Christ was actually born.

The Christians only have one high holy day during the season, Christmas. However, the capitalists have several, seemingly celebrated, at least in North America, by many more people (or should we call them consumers as the capitalists consider them) than Christmas. They have Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Boxing Day, not to Mention Black Friday Week and Boxing Week. And then there are the December 25^th celebrations of the Patron Saint of Consumers, Santa Claus.

In Canada, the Christmas holiday season, to many. is more a celebration in line with the original Winter Solstice celebrations, a celebration of winter and snow and ice and winter activities.

Of course there are other than just Christian religious celebrations at this time, including the secular Festivus celebrations for fans of a certain television show.

In reality these winter holiday celebrations belong to all of us to celebrate however we choose and to call whatever we want.