I love puzzles! Interesting that there's a day devoted to them. They're fun mental workouts. I like pretty much any type.
I finally made an appointment to see a gender therapist yesterday. I'm even more nervous and excited about it now. Not exactly sure why I felt so hesitant. The interesting thing is I was told that this therapist, Tom Freeman, is located in Silverdale. He's actually only available at his Poulsbo location right now. Works out for me more this way. The building is really close to home. About a 5-10 minute car ride. It might be a little too convenient, since it's in the same small plaza that has Kachai Thai Kitchen. Tempting to go to the Thai place after therapy...It's a good one. This first appointment isn't until Feb 14th. I wasn't expecting it to be on Valentine's Day. It's not that long of a wait until then. This is with the one that I talked about last time that seemed the most promising. With this appointment, it feels like I'm actually starting to medically transition. Hopefully, he'll work out.
Recently, I came across a thread on AVEN about someone demanding that people enlighten her on 'gender issues'. She had a disclaimer that she may come across as offensive, but she's really trying to learn. (Supposedly...) She also wanted to confront her brother on his transphobia. She had weird ideas of what it means to be trans, gender identity, gender dysphoria, etc. People were responding with really long detailed posts about it. She had even longer posts. That seemed weird. Why not keep things shorter? She had confused gender identity with expression, and later on said she just couldn't grasp the concept of gender itself. Reading the responses on that, made me think she was either very obtuse, moving 'goal posts', or the way others were talking about it went over her head. She seemed to think gender was only cultural, and being non-binary was purposely bucking the system. Being non-binary is not a political or fashion statement. I told her it's not just cultural. There are many sides to it.
With dysphoria, she had the idea that we're trapped in the wrong body. Many people think this, but that's not exactly it. There are things that either shouldn't be there or you're missing things; to put it more simply. It makes people feel distressed, thus the 'dysphoria' part. We're not 'trapped' in our own bodies. Someone said it's kind of like we have birth defects. She has sensory issues, and said she can understand the idea of being trapped that way. No, it's not the same...She thought in order to be trans, we had to have dysphoria. She couldn't understand why we'd want to change our bodies, especially if gender and sex are different. There was a lot more on this, and seemed like a lot to unpack. Being trans just means you have a different gender than the one that was assigned to you at birth. No mention of dysphoria or transitioning. Not everyone has dysphoria. However, I do think some of the people that say they don't have it, might not realize that's what they're experiencing. Took me a while to realize that. She didn't seem to know about social dysphoria, which is another important aspect that often can be forgotten when speaking about it in general. I told her that I have both physical and social dysphoria. I went into more detail about what it's like for me. I also said while sex and gender are different, we still use gendered labels to refer to sex: male and female. It'd probably be better to say something like uterus owner, prostate owner, etc. They're just asking about our reproductive organs when they ask what our sex is. Probably why it's inappropriate to ask unless it's relevant medically. I also brought up that most people don't know their chromosomes, so using it as 'science' to back up a claim that there are only 2 'sexes' (they often referred to it as gender), is laughable. They exclude intersex people this way, too. While I thought my post was slightly longer than my usual, it was dwarfed by how long the others were. I tried to be to the point, but using myself and my own experiences to explain it to her. No one has replied after my post. One person liked it. She's awfully quiet now.
I started a new language yesterday: Korean or Hangul. I was thinking about Yiddish, but found out how bad Mango is. (At least, their 'free' version.) I'm using LingoDeer now for Korean. LingoDeer used to just have Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Now, it also has Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Vietnamese. A while back, I tried Duolingo's Korean course. I got about halfway through the first lesson, and realized that I had to have some sort of knowledge already in the language. They hadn't worked out the kinks in that course yet, too. I didn't look more into it and just picked a different language. LingoDeer has been great for an absolute beginner. I still feel like I don't have the alphabet down yet, but I'm slowly getting there. This is only the 2nd day. I tested out of the intro section already. That was on the alphabet. It's not counted as the first 'unit' of the course. It's like a get-your-feet-wet unit. They went into a lot of detail. Their 'letters' are really consonants and vowels put together, and there are 3 different orders those can go in. For the letter han, it's written like h-a and n on the bottom. I don't have the Korean keyboard enabled on here. (I might in the future.) Another one could be a vowel, like i, by itself. It's interesting, but seems like there are a lot of layers. Started the first 'official' unit. I'm actually doing better than I thought. It's on nationality. Hangug salam are Korean people. Migug salam are American people. It was things like that. They show you how to write it, sentence structure, record your voice to compare to the native speaker, match the letter/word with either the meaning or pronunciation, in depth grammar/pronunciation notes, and more. It's also interesting that they actually use spaces between words. That's different compared to Chinese and Japanese. The only issue I have is it doesn't correct you on pronunciation. Sure, you can check your own voice like I mentioned, but it's not the same. So, I've decided at some point, I'll switch to Duo's Korean course and use both that and Lingodeer. Duo's course should be better at this point, and it most likely has speaking exercises now. Since I had a more thorough intro to the alphabet, I'll be able to go through Duo's easier and with more of an understanding. It'll be interesting to go through both, too. I might get even more of an understanding of it than I would if it was just one or the other. It might take me longer with this language. We'll see.
Today, I started reading Mother Keeper. I think I like it so far...The art seems to be in an old style. It ran from 2005 until 2014. (Pretty long.) It's not as old as it seems, but maybe older than a lot of what I've read recently. The concept is interesting. There are 2 types of people in their world: those within Eden and those outside. It's like a domed city. Everything outside is like a wasteland. Eden makes it even worse as its massive exhaust is pumping outside. Only 1/3 of the world's population is allowed to live in Eden. Basically the rich and powerful. Meanwhile, people outside are suffering and dying sooner. Several rebel groups have formed from outside. The main character was apart of one of those. They had planned to destroy Eden's main CPU. If they had, Eden would cease as a 'paradise' to the few. He was killed (this happened early, so it's not really a spoiler), and turned into a cyborg. His appearance changed. The scientist there has complete control of him. They want him to help with the security of Eden. So, he's forced to help the enemy...The CPU is actually a cyborg that looks like a little girl. He had a hard time getting himself to kill her when he was given the option to, since she seemed so innocent.
Scanned the drawing of Shadow so far. It's just in case to see how it was before I add his clothes. I realized his hands are smaller than they probably should be. Not sure if I'll change that. At least, I practiced drawing them. He does look better than previous full-bodied drawings of characters. Should be interesting to see it when its done. I plan to color him in, too.
Managed to practice my clarinet today. I don't think I did yesterday or the day before. I've been feeling pretty awful again. Also, coughing up a lot of weird stuff. That's not a good combo for an instrument you blow into. Anyways, I finished playing through the Clarinet Solo book. I'll get to at least Duke Ellington next.
Edited a couple more pages of Alliance, too. Down to 298 pages in the print version. Meaning, it's 2 pages less. Yay!
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