Babes and bozos

In last week’s column, an observation on being able to feel like an ordinary woman unburdened by a felt need to be actively political anymore, I didn’t comment on how sweet it feels to me to be in a groove like that and still be capable of liking girls. Yeah, it’s a niche thing; so many aren’t there and don’t miss it. And that’s perfectly fine with me. Women like interacting with each other, and can get a thrill from it that, while platonic, certainly contains elements of innocent flirting. And that is, as they say, a happy thing.

As an example, I’m certain that young checker at Trader Joe’s wasn’t cruising me. I can’t be certain we were having a mutual gaydar moment, but I had my suspicions. It was obvious, though, that we were both having a fine time yakking through the transaction, through the warm farewells. Things like this make me happy, and they make me happy to know that my appreciation for women will get engaged in the world, even in mundane situations.

And then there are the opportunities, from afar, to leave snail trails, as it were. Yes, that means watching the Winter Olympics … and having my heart broken by the news that U.S. Women’s Hockey Team Captain Hillary Knight proposed to a woman other than myself. At least she didn’t crush any lesbian dreams.

Hillary Knight came across my radar during the last Winter Olympics. She’s definitely a girly tomboy (pant, pant) who cleans up right nice. Shortly afterwards, in one of its body issues, Sports Illustrated ran a color photo of her unclothed but unexposed. There was a tattoo running up her side. And I was gone.

Not an athlete, but a little hottie nonetheless, is sex and culture commentator Arielle Scarcella. She’s someone of whom it could be said the liberals’ slide to the far left left her so far behind she ended up on the right. She’s highly intelligent in her gender critical outlook, one that’s nuanced and generous enough that she says the transactivist crazies are making things difficult for “normal transsexuals.” She’s friends to trans people critical of the madness like Blaire White and Buck Angel.

My paesana Arielle left Brooklyn for Florida, where she can wear things like a stars and stripes bikini. And post a picture of herself in it. Causing me to set down my mouse so I could fan myself.

Back to Olympics, there’s an American athlete who’s not conventionally gorgeous, but her basic good looks and intelligence concatenate. She’s the Captain of the U.S. Women’s Curling Team, and wow, can she slide the rock. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything suggestive in that. I just find her a woman who may be nothing special on the surface but strikes me as a woman I wouldn’t mind meeting.

All endorphins aside, we all had the shock of two mass murders by mentally ill trans people in short order. One, in British Columbia, was by the now all-too-typical teen with mental issues that should have precluded their being on cross-sex hormones and the like. The other, in Rhode Island was a family self-immolation by a big hulk of a midlife transitioner, similarly not quite right. This situation looked like a bomb ready to explode. The perp, who took himself out along with a wife and child, arguably should have been talked out of surgery on grounds he’d never, ever make a credible woman. And yet, he was someone with a chip on his shoulder about being mocked or misgendered; he rage-posted thing like, ““Keep bashing us. But do not wonder why we Go BESERK [sic].”

Meanwhile, state legislatures are tightening down on any sexual wiggle room. They are calling a halt to allowing amending birth certificates with a different sex marker, and in at least one case revoking previously amended birth certificates and driver’s licenses and issuing ones with the original designation. There’s a new thing of doing the math to ascertain the prevalence of mass shooters by percentage in various populations … and things aren’t looking good for trans people.

Meanwhile, a new meme is starting to make the rounds about transwomen killing more people than do ICE. (That’s cold.)

There are statistics floating around, whose accuracy I can’t ascertain, about people commencing medical transitions and ending up a psychological mess. There are, no doubt, a good number of people who never should have been taken on as patients in the first place who crash and burn. Nonetheless, I can’t wrap my head around the increasing number of claims that anyone any kind of trans is mentally ill. It doesn’t jibe with my experience. Heck, one transsexual woman I know, the wife of a one-time newspaper colleague of mine, sits on the Superior Court bench here in the East Bay. Sober as a judge, you might call her.

While pondering this, I recalled hanging out with a resident of Trinidad, Colorado who got a kick out of his town being called the Sex Change Capital of the World. Obviously, so many clinics have been started to cash in on the trend that the claim is now moot. I think this was on a 2016 Indonesia/Bali total solar eclipse tour. Dr. Biber and his clinic might or might not have been Jeopardy! clue material. His clientele seemed to be uniformly low profile, and his altering them then letting them loose on the world seemed to have little, if any, impact on the world.

Dr. Biber had one patient who became his assistant, and then with an M.D. of her own, took over the practice by the time he passed in 2006. From what little I heard through the gay and gayish grapevine, things proceeded at a steady state. However, this is the same Marci Bowers who, as head of the self-styled experts on gender medicine WPATH, promoted treatment of children. WPATH even came to endorse “nullification” surgery, which left (presumably male) patients with nothing but a urethral opening.

WTF happened here? And when, and how?

Maybe we’ll get a clue when binders and testosterone and puberty blockers are replaced by the next adolescent girl social contagion fad. Certainly “gender medicine” for children and adolescents is on its way out, despite attempts to create “sanctuary states” for same. Court verdicts and damages award to detransitioners will assure that. We can only hope more mass shootings by people who never should have been allowed onto the trans path are not in our future, though I fear they are.