hetz.nur.taelz

I have had occasion to expose myself to talk radio this week. It was a reminder of why I don’t listen to talk radio - or watch television regularly, or otherwise expose myself to much Mass Media. What seems to appeal to most people and give them a sense of solidarity and cohesion is simply irrational, irritating and insulting to me.

And it’s not about Liberal/Conservative opinion. I discredit anybody who publicly resorts to defamatory language to push a point across. If it’s a good solid point you don’t need to verbally assault your opponents on a personal level to make that point. Doing so says a lot more about the speaker’s confidence and credibility than whomever he/she is ripping on. It makes the speaker look bad. And it makes those associated with the speaker look bad. That’s an appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I despise bashing equally from the Conservative right-wing press as when I read it in the LGBT community and in other hyper-Liberal venues. Liberals deride the Conservative Right for being abusive, childish, reactionary and venomous (which they tend to be), but don’t see how abusive, childish, reactionary and venomous their own public arguments are. Look in a mirror, eh?

Oh, and please refrain from overstatement and exaggeration, people. If it’s a good solid premise it doesn’t need to be embellished or expanded upon; it will stand on its own. If it doesn’t make the point then you don’t have a point to begin with. Making a big deal of a little one is an impotent act of desperation and functionally minimizes the effect you are trying so hard to maximize; it produces the opposite of the desired effect and therefore undermines the validity of your argument.

Admittedly, in one-to-one conversation I can be as cutting as any shock jock in my verbal evaluation (ie evisceration) of someone I don’t like or with whom I vehemently disagree; that is a private, isolated and selective communication. Venting is healthy and it feels good - in private. In contrast, broadcasting and public speaking impact a huge audience of often unstable and uneducated people who are highly suggestible and will act on whatever they hear. Mass communication carries with it a responsibility that is different than you and I talking together. And by the way, that warm fuzzy little online social network you like to spew in to all your friends? You might want to remember that your postings are immediately available on the internet and open to anybody in the world to read (it’s also not that hard to join any passworded online discussion group as a spy, a voyeur or a troll).

So I am that guy who occasionally reaches my limit of tolerance with my self-appointed spokesfolk and fellow travelers, and posts in the middle of an online bash-match that the bashing is unacceptable, it misrepresents me as a part of that group, and it is embarrassing behavior for mature adults to indulge in publicly. I’m not real popular with a lot of people online sometimes. I take the fun out of feeling absolutely right through the insular coziness of peer reinforcement.

Yeah, Don’t Care. Just don’t make me look bad by showing your ass in public purportedly on my behalf.

Alternately, as readers and listeners, please don’t judge an entire interest group by some of the people who propose to represent that group. Even the most established figureheads often are truly an embarrassment to the people they pretend to speak for. It’s so much easier to knee-jerk, react and judge on the first thing you see - but it’s often a wrong impression.

Finally, I want to thank those few people - whatever you believe in and whatever views you espouse - who do show a clear, bright, articulate and informed public face with propriety, integrity, intelligence, restraint and confidence. You I will listen to thoughtfully and, even if I disagree, I will consider your point of view and broaden my understanding as a result.

You know, I know several mothers who have out-of-control kids - sons and daughters - and it’s not for lack of discipline. It’s because these kids are exploding inside, they know what they can get away with, they have no outlet for their frustrations that is meaningful to them as individuals, and they therefore have no respect for anybody anymore - beginning with themselves. They have the drive of the rugged individuals that built this country but are now forced to submit to an authority they cannot abide. Their existence is demeaning to them but they don’t know how to escape it.

Once upon a time when a kid reached the age of 14 or 15 and couldn’t stand to live at home anymore, they left home, hopped a train and went into the world to make their own way. It was Hard. There were no government programs to do for them what they needed to learn to do for themselves. They made mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes were big ones. But they learned respect for others and in the process found themselves and their own place in the world. Huckleberry Finn was real for a lot of people and for a lot of generations. It worked for those kind of kids. It was the only thing that did.

Now the Law says parents have to be saddled with these powder kegs until they’re 18 and what happens is, they get violent in their cages. They get violent with their parents, they get violent with society. They NEED to be out learning to live in the world the hard way, they NEED to be free. They need to be able to go get jobs and work for themsleves. They need to learn to be entrepreneurs. They are bright and independent, and treating them like children just makes them angrier, which makes the problem worse.

These are different kids, they are tougher kids, and they have to be allowed to follow a different path. They have the potential to be leaders and builders - but keeping them hobbled and trapped in their homes turns them into thugs.

What will it take for American society to learn there is a time to be gentle and caretaking - and there is a time to cut people loose to learn about life by falling and getting up again repeatedly, getting knocked around some so they know where the true boundaries are and why - and to learn about consequences first-hand.

I am real tired of watching the Mom’s I know get beat up by their frustrated teenage kids, and then have the System drop those kids right back into their Mom’s home to beat on them some more. I’m sick of seeing it, for the kids’ sake and for the parents’. I’m certain I am not alone in that feeling.

Let’s have a little more Freedom again, shall we?

Tuesday I will be taking the next step forward in my gender transition that so many Transmen elect to do. I am having chest reconstruction surgery. It’s really, finally going to happen.

I keep thinking the surgery is tomorrow; in a way I wish it was, just to get on the other side of it. But I’m glad it’s not because I still have a few things to put in place - in the house, in my head, in my soul. So I’m glad to have one more day to do that.

Still vacillating between fear and exultation. Fortunately I am not experiencing panic or terror (and I am determined not to allow myself to go there) so the positive is outweighing the negative. This is good.

This morning I woke up with probably the most compelling reason yet for me to do this, big enough to dispel any further doubts I might possibly have going in. It’s not just about my self-image or my social comfort level, though those are important. It comes down to my ability to function fully toward gaining ultimate success in everything I have mapped out for my future. And this is the biggest reason.

I realized that the incongruity of my feminized chest keeps me from really putting myself “out there” to meet people, loosen up with strangers, be completely physically comfortable in front of other people - either in groups or one-on-one. Until this morning I have not been sufficiently aware of the degree to which my chest stands between me and the world at large - including my ability to really present myself fully and dynamically in business situations. If I am ever going to realize the full extent of my potential for success in business, sales, marketing, investing, even dating - I MUST remove this obstacle. It’s just necessary.

That realization put the remainder of my misgivings to rest. That newest insight was the key factor to my reaching the pinnacle of, “No Matter What, this MUST get done!” From this viewpoint, it no longer matters about pain, discomfort, fear, expense, inconvenience - none of that matters at all anymore. This just has to happen; it’s about my Life. Because my future is fucked if I bail now. Not to mention the amount of money I would lose. Or the soul-killing sense of defeat and personal weakness I would endure if I fail to follow through on this commitment.

Going forward to completion with this surgery opens the door - the floodgate - for tremendous amounts of money, success and personal fulfillment I stand to gain. The confidence, stature, sense of self, and sense of being right in the world this will afford me, will propel me forward with a momentum I have never approached even closely in my life before.

I have always hated the way my body grew, in ways that negated my soul, misrepresented me to the world and weakened my innermost sense of true self. For a brief stand of courage, that so many have made before me, I may now repair that abomination.

More ready than ever. Let’s Go.

Tough time getting started today. After six days of working a roller-coaster schedule, today I should be relaxing but I keep thinking I have to go to work. The jerking is wearing me out.

I just subscribed to this feed. It shows me there’s lots of ways that successful people work. The common thread is - they do their work. They Do “Their” Work.

Daily Routines How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days.

I’m committed to find some way to only do “My” Work for the rest of my life, and generate income doing it. Feed my need for variety by doing a variety of things. Right now all I want to do is make simple, beautiful, quality belts in a limited number of designs. Bake wonderful oat bread and cornbread - and only oat bread and cornbread. Ride my bike. And build a TransGentry Empire based on branding myself and motivating my brothers to Expand Themselves and Prosper.

I have lists of ideas. I need unbroken time and warm weather to bring them all to life - to feed the Life in Me. That is what I am working toward. But the damn job keeps getting in the way. So it has to go. Maybe it looks like I’m being brave and courageous and I’m trying to give myself due credit for the major life changes I am engineering. But to me it feels more like - what else am I gonna do? Sit in shit and complain about the smell? I don’t think so.

I found another quote today to post in my house and follow:

I believe that will work for me.

Today I am doing laundry, clearing my sorted paper piles off the weight bench, and am about to go join my new Toastmasters club. Tomorrow I will use the weight bench, clear my leatherworking table and bake wonderful bread. And next week I will do my best to maintain a regular schedule and accomplish some small victories for myself beyond the disruptions of finishing off the last weeks of the damn job. I am planning beyond it. And I’m more excited about my future every day. Probably because it is truly becoming My future. I’m learning how to own it, instead of letting anybody or anything own me.

It’s a plan.

In 1958 when I was born, transgender people didn’t exist in the social consciousness of mainstream America - particularly in fundamentalist Christian homes. So in my earliest formative years when I was trying desperately to identify myself as male to my parents, they came down on me hard to force me to conform to my “proper” gender. That conflict between us never ended.

I never recall as a child feeling close to either of my parents. I was more comfortable with my mother, but I have never gotten along with my father. In short, I never had any real sense of emotional bonding with my parents, or with my extended family. Now, as an adult, I find it is difficult, even impossible for me to form real emotional bonds with anybody, either in friendships or in romantic liaisons.

I wonder if anyone reading this feels that same sense of disconnection and inability to bond deeply, normally and naturally with their families and other people. Might that inability to bond have to do with never having it occur at the proper time during early childhood? I’m sure many of us were never acknowledged or supported as the people we really were, but rather we were viewed and treated as someone we were not by the people who shaped us from birth.

It’s like being a symbiant raised under the authority of strangers who only acknowledge us by the shell we live inside - only interact with the shell and never the being inside of it.

Beyond that, having never had that parent/child bonding occur during the phase of childhood that it normally should, is it at all possible to develop the ability to bond deeply with others as an adult? Or is that a hard-wiring that can only occur at the proper developmental stage during childhood?

Opinions?

BB

This is not about being transgender. This is about being honorable.

Comcast came to repair my high-speed internet connection yet again today. They’re here about every six to eight months to restore my service. Once again they informed me I lost service because my neighbor hooked into my line so he could use the service for free.

This happens every time I get a new neighbor. Over the years I have had cable service, I have had six neighbors. With each neighbor I have lost cable service due to their pirating my line. Furthermore, they never have the balls to own up to me once they’re caught, and they never apologize. What does all that say about people?

I would like to think at least they feel that they are “only” stealing from Comcast and are completely unaware that they are dramatically slowing down the service I pay for and eventually knocking me offline completely. Sadly, though, I think they just don’t give a damn.

Let me explain the situation just in case there are cable pirates or friends thereof reading this right now. Please Pay Attention.

I pay a premium price each month in order to have consistently available high-speed internet in my home primarily so that I can do business anytime 24-7 online. When you or your thieving buddies cut into my cable line and divert my service so you can surf porn or watch football on TV, I lose connection with my online businesses, my customers, my clients, my bank and my professional network. I Lose Money. For Days. At best I pack up my laptop and do abbreviated damage control at the local bookstore over their unsecured wireless WiFi. I do not, however, pay for home internet service in order to hang out elsewhere and do an insufficient portion of my work on a truncated schedule with the travel and interruptions involved.

It is disturbing enough to be compromised this way by the nice people next door who smile and chirp a neighborly, “Hello!” and stop to chat a bit whenever we both have time. But to be thus compromised by a continuous string of neighbors speaks to an even greater issue with our general social conscience. Apparently there is no more social conscience.

Apparently the concept of personal integrity is dead. How many people even understand what that is, or where the boundaries lie? Who cares?

Well, here’s one boundary you will now be aware of: the cable and all its fittings belong to the cable company. The service I pay for belongs to me. If you mess with the cable or the box or the connections or any part of it, you don’t just screw The Man; you shut me down. You screw your neighbor. It’s cowardly, it’s a criminal offense (yes, the cable company can have you arrested) and it’s fucking rude.

Pay for it or do without. How hard is that?

BB

The past year was difficult to say the least.

Things can only go up from here. So I have made a list of commitments for 2009 and I am taking them seriously. I won’t call them “resolutions” as that term has become synonymous with failure. I will not fail. I will succeed. These commitments are all part of an overall plan. None of them will fully succeed if I don’t come through with all them. So let’s git’er done in 2009.

First, I’m moving to Tucson by April at latest so that I will be physically comfortable and therefore fully active through most of the year instead of half the year as I have been here. All else will become possible once the comfort and mobility issue is handled.

I will make TransGentry.com a standout entity in the LGBT Community. The bigger plan is to expand into the mainstream but let’s conquer the neighborhood first.

At least one of my business ventures will be productive and profitable by year’s end. I’m looking into multiple opportunities for passive income; something will take off. I’ll make sure of it.

I will finally get all the silly routine mundane repetitive boring housekeeping crap pulled together and organized so I can get back to concentrating on the fun, creative, complex, rewarding, exhilarating Empire-building projects I enjoy.

I will get my chest reconstruction surgery done so I can progress the rest of the way with my gender transitioning.

I will take my fitness to a higher level than ever through consistent bicycle commuting and overall physical capability workouts. I’m looking into CrossFit or Ross Training as possible regimens.

Beyond personally whipping myself and my enterprises into shape, I am going to learn how to let other people help me – and how I can give back – because that just helps everybody win. And, hey, it feels good. In all directions.

I will become consistently active in Toastmasters for both Leadership and Communication skill-building. I have a long way to go but I’ll get there faster if I simply make it part of my lifestyle. My interpersonal skills need work (understatement, yes, I know). There’s not a better place to chip away the rough edges than Toastmasters.

And just for practice along those lines (purely for social skills-building of course) I will make an even more diligent effort to meet as many intelligent, attractive, stimulating, exceptional - okay, “hot” - women as I possibly can. Developing an ongoing exchange with a few of them would be the desired outcome. In short, appreciating a fine derriere on account of watching so many walk away from me just isn’t working for me anymore.

And so in that arena, and in my life overall, I hereby vow and commit to have more fun in 2009. I seem to have forgotten how. I’m going to fix that.

Finally, and comprehensively, whatever happens – or doesn’t happen – one way or another – I Will Succeed. I may not gain immense financial wealth quite yet, and I won’t necessarily make it onto Oprah’s guest list – this year – but for my own life, and by my own criteria, I’m going to make a big leap forward in 2009.

Watch Me. And feel free to kick my ass if I get whiney.

BB

Lately I am seeing much animosity and mistrust being generated from within our LGBT communities against our soon-to-be President Barrack Obama over his choice of the Reverend Rick Warren as an Inaugural speaker. You’d think from the outrage that the Reverend was to be the only Inaugural speaker and that allowing him to participate is a marker of direct support for his anti-gay agenda. As a transgender male I understand how, on the surface, this choice of a speaker feels like a kind of betrayal. I can see how in particular my LGBT peers would react the way they are reacting.

I, however, support Obama’s choice to let Reverend Warren speak. I understand what Obama is doing on a deeper level. It is in fact the wisest, most mature thing he can do as a Leader, and is completely in keeping with the proactive changes he has committed to effect. It gives me even greater trust in his ability to make the kinds of decisions that can bring this country some degree of unity again. For those of you who are so upset about this, I believe you are missing the point. Here’s how I see it.

You can never bring someone around to your own point of view by excluding them. This only perpetuates divisiveness and the misunderstanding that comes of people not knowing each other, never communicating, never blending cultures.

Undoubtedly the most effective way to counteract ignorance is through patient and repetitive demonstration of positive rationale that cannot be denied. Leaders must do difficult things in order to bring about change. Very often their intent is misunderstood until the results eventually become too clear to ignore.

Our issues are of primary importance to us. But our issues are not the only ones that must be addressed.

President Obama is taking responsibility for reuniting a severely divided country. He has committed himself to bring America back together again. He will not succeed in this by ostracizing constituents whose opinions and politics differ from his, or ours. The President cannot show favoritism to any group and be an effective Leader. Barrack Obama isn’t just “our” President; yes, we voted for him, but he is going to be everybody’s President. There are a lot of people who did not vote for him and are unhappy with that reality; he must find ways to reach out to them as well. In order to bring the country back together, the Leadership must recognize, consider and acknowledge all viewpoints, opinions and sensibilities; the whole of the American people.

Barrack Obama is making a refreshingly wise step here as the new, inclusive, responsive fresh-start Leader of a country that was originally built on the premise of free speech, free thought, free people. That includes the people who disagree with you and me.

This is about taking the High Road – which means doing the right thing no matter what anybody else does or thinks. It means being big enough to absorb the situation as it exists so that you can begin to change it. It’s about dropping our fists, opening dialogue and breaking down barriers. It’s about doing the hardest thing – calming down, listening to each other, understanding each other, and eventually reaching a place of common ground. We can only do that if we’re all in the same room - or respectfully sharing the same Inaugural stage.

If we conduct ourselves like mature, rational adults, then the people who oppose us have no choice but to follow suit or look foolishly irrational themselves. When everybody stops reacting and starts communicating then maybe we will get somewhere. Not overnight. But we could all grow pretty far in the next four to eight years. And our new President will make a lot more progress with our foresight and support than he will without it.

BB

We didn’t know yet what we were doing.

It all started one hot, sunny day when I was walking my dog Jack around the neighborhood. I saw what looked like a lizard standing in the middle of someone’s driveway. But it was an odd-looking lizard. And it wasn’t running away.

When we got to it I saw that the lizard had no tail - common enough in a neighborhood full of cats. But this lizard also had no head. Just a stub of crusty spine sticking up where the head used to be attached. The lizard was standing upright on all-fours. As if the head and tail had blown off its body in some kind of explosive moment, leaving it standing dumbfounded and frozen in the heat of mid-afternoon, on a New Mexican summer Sunday.

I tried to walk on and ignore the significance of such an odd thing. I could not. I pulled a plastic bag from my pocket (remember I was walking my dog), picked up the lizard, took it home and put it in the freezer.

It’s still there.

I began contemplating what this iconic thing meant, why I had to bring the smelly thing home with me, and what I was supposed to do with it. As is best at such times, I relaxed and let my reptilian mind become primary; ie, I stopped active thinking and allowed reactive thinking to surface. And as happens when I do this, something came to me.

A Web site. But what kind of Web site?

It was a stiff lizard. With no head. With no tail. I chuckled to myself; “Can’t make heads nor tails of it.”

Heads nor Tails. My convoluted German heritage kicked in; Heads nor Tails – Hetz nur Taelz. Yah. Yah!

I bought the domain name, stuck the lizard in the freezer and pondered things for a couple of years.

Until Now.

I am a Transman with a Mission. I want to see a legion of Transmen with a sense of a Right. I want to give you that sense of a Right. I want to show you – all of you – that we can do the things any other man can do. That we can have what any other man can have. That we can be what we all want to be. Men. Men with a Right to the World. All you have to do is take it. It really is just that simple.

That is what this Hetz.nur.taelz blog will be about. Being a Man. A Trans Man. A Complete Man. With Benefits.