Girl Free in a Boy's Body, gagablog 170

I finished this 3 days ago - it is now March 21st, 2019 - but I never said certain things I wanted to mention, here, to put it all in context. This is mostly about gender roles and how I developed my own ideas of gender in the 1980's in America, a time when America had gone through a couple decades of challenges to strict gender stereotypes and in many ways was reasserting those stereotypes. One message the mainstream culture put out there was that being feminine or gay was a result of being a "girl trapped in a boy's body." I rejected the sexism and other hierarchy implied in that formulation and saw myself as a"girl free in a boy's body." I felt this way because of who I am, because of my physical, effeminate form which made other people remark about my "girlishness" and because of my heart, because I cared about things - which also made people remark, or increasingly stood out as Counter-cultural. American culture demonized caring as Feminine which made me care, value the feminine, and reject that aspect of the culture. Plus the people expressing those ideas were mean ("If she's rude and offensive maybe she is your mother," Arthur just said to Maude as I typed that.)

The main things I left out were that, at age 10 or so, I decided to rebel against this cultural genderization by growing my hair out, at first like other kids who rode skateboards in the early 80's and then, after being ridiculed for it, growing it longer so by 1987 it was shaved on the sides and back and about a foot to two feet long from the top, and it stayed that way for most of my life. It was a pretty unique haircut that didn't become known, popularly, for a decade or two thanks to some musicians. But at the time, in my pre-teen and teenage years, it made me aware of a small portion of the sexism and homophobia in America becuase some of it was directed towards me. For my long hair. And then as I developed Caring in a culture that puts Violence and Power, first, I came to realize that it was THIS that made me Feminine and ultimately showed all the problems of the world were the result of Male Domination, or, simply, The Masculine. "Toxic Masculinity" is redundant.

This is the story of how I came to and deepened that conclusion. The other thing I forgot to mention was a meme I saw and loved while writing this, based on that Brain being more active in four stages meme - with increasing light-beams coming out of it at each stage, if you haven't seen it when/where you read this. The four stages of the text, in order of increasing illumination, are "I Wish I was a Girl -  I Could Just Be a Girl - I Always Was a Girl - Destroy Capitalism" and this sums it up nicely, exactly how I've felt since I was 10 - I just wanted to go ahead and skip to stage 4.

The last thing i will say, now, is that recent events, since I finished writing this 3 days ago, have further emphasized the points I make: Trump has recently criticized "Mr. Kelly-Anne Conway" ("there was actually a man who wanted to be in the gay section of the cemetary? That's where all the laughter comes from." Lola just told Maude. Also as I started this it was the introduction of Joey Lawrence on Gimme a Break, a con-man scamming for "Jerry's Kids" -  which made me think of Trump and how he could grow out of his bratty, crook ways, too, if he had an Aunt Nell.) because Kelly Ann Conways' husband has been tweeting about how Trump's mental condition is "getting worse." I could, and probably will, write a whole edition on Narcissism  - Trump is a poser Narcissist in my opinion, but I'm not a doctor, either, I'm more of a mystical buddhist Narcissist - I'm obsessed with ALL of our self, collectively. But the important, pertinent thing to mention, here, is that over the weekened Trump's attempts to diminish Mr. Kelly-Anne Conway by calling him that reveal his sexism, the type I've been writing about, here: ashamed if a girl drives the car, like Wally in "Leave it to Beaver" - see last 2-3 editions.

I also felt vindicated, verified, in my predictions that John McCain would Haunt Trump when news reporters reported that John McCain is haunting Trump. Apparently he has been tweeting about John McCain all weekend and I have no idea why or I don't really care except to say all these various levels of fascism will help us destroy them by destroying themselves. And Ghosts, Nature, The Goddess, is on Our Side.

The worst part of the White House response to criticism by Mr Kelly-Anne Conway was that they were trying the same tactics they did against Cohen at his testimony: It was all about suggesting that THEY, the Trump Defenders, are Insiders and the ones who are criticizing them are Outsiders. It just sounds exactly like the Mob or the Klan or a Fraternity to anyone who IS an Outsider and sees the club they are protecting as Disgusting and Evil - sees it for what it is, White Supremacy. (The Maude episode, now, is about the Exclusive Golf Club Arthur belongs to.)

One thing being Girly, Feminist, a Longhair, and Revolutionary did for me, all my life since I was a young kid, was make me an Outsider. As an outsider I have had a Whole perspective on the culture I live in, not one infested with the evils of that culture. This is the story of how that developed, around Gender, for me - thanks for reading, commenting, sharing!

 

I grew up in the 1980's and developed a keen understanding of gender and stereotypes from a young age. I was raised without the same strictness of gender stereotypes in my family as the wider American culture thanks to my parents being liberal,, my mom studying feminist theology while becoming a priest and my dad being an open-minded preacher in the Disciples of Christ church. But I was very aware of gender stereotypes, sexism, and homophobia in the culture from going to school and watching TV.  I don't want to recreate the era in text, plenty of folks lived through it and unfortunately too much of the same damaging and archaic ideas still persist, and even remain dominant, today. At least they are built into the racist, sexist, and dominating system, even if most of the population is evolving past them. Since that system is hopefully in its death throes, now, and is exerting the last of its hold on our culture there has been a big "debate" in recent years about gender with thoughtful people agreeing gender is a spectrum and thoughtless, bigoted, climate-change denying idiots insisting, meming, posting that there are only Two Genders. These Nazis are even promoting this message by marching - as our new Supreme Court Justice's fratbrothers marched to say "No means Yes" - protecting their rape culture, and "There are only Two Genders" propping up their toppling patriarchy and sexism.

There are plenty of examples of why the folks who insist there are only two genders are wrong based upon the other things they "happen" to believe - especially if you realize it is not all coincidence, it is part of their programming: flat earth, white supremacy, male domination, greed war and pollution are good, the world is disposable, God chooses leaders and authority even if they are evil, etc. But I want to address how I came to my own ideas about gender, even in the 80's, which I think the rest of the world is waking up to, because I believe that's a better way to prove it is all true - and I talk about how evil the Agenda of Evil Ideas is all the time and should address it regarding how sexism and sexual repression poison our lives and culture at the very heart - its the very core of evil. But I will talk about all that later, this is mostly about getting out of that way of thinking.

As you can tell by watching any of the TV shows from the 20th century there were ubiquitous stereotypes about sexuality and gender. Specifically, being gay was girly and included cross-dressing and various other associations. These stereotypes change and evolve in the development of television, too, both challenging and reinforcing themselves. Maybe I should point out that for most of these decades TV was the main factor shaping culture in America - it's always been mostly how the culture is reinforced yet there are always creative shows and developments that challenge and change the status quo. I won't get into too many examples but wanted to mention a few.

I should also mention how much music, radio and then MTV and the general marketing of the music industry, also served to mostly reinforce but occasionally challenge gender and sexual stereotypes. Instead of focusing on the numerous examples of the patriarchal reinforcement I will mention the significant impression on me, and the world, from Boy George. Boy George took the world by storm and is a huge icon, especially in the 80's when The Culture Club had some of the decades biggest hits. My aunt gave me a Dan Fogelberg cassette, my big brother got Michael Jackson's "Off The Wall" and my little brother got Culture Club's "Color By Numbers" and we listened to those two a lot. I would have been 7 or 8 in 1983 and was unaware of sexuality but I was aware of gender roles and was already suspicious of them.

I was a skinny kid and had an effeminate voice - I still am and do. I was mocked and made fun of in school for this, not excessively but enough to get the message, that I was girly and therefore gay, even before I knew what that meant. I realized an attraction for girls at a very young age before I even knew about sex, too. But mostly I was sensitive to the fact that being called a "girl" was supposed to be an insult and instead of trying to avoid that I decided the problem was with the mean people calling names and with the very idea that there was anything wrong with being a girl and nothing wrong with me, personally. Since I was sensitive to this, and it was encouraged by some feminist upbringing in my home, I was aware of sexism at such an early age I developed with it in mind that it was wrong my entire life.

I think the example Boy George set for me, the reason I could relate to him, was not based upon sexuality but more on fashion and rebelling against gender norms. I was sheltered enough in my home and society at that age that I don't think I was aware of "homosexuality" at that time, I didn't know what "gay" meant other than the stereotypes of being "girly" that applied to me - but once I was aware of it, again probably thanks to Boy George and a rare few other examples in the media, I realized immediately how wrong it was to be bigoted against gay people from the same sensitivity that made me know sexism was wrong.

I didn't feel a personal desire to dress as a girl but I couldn't deny and didn't have any reason to feel shame for my effeminate characteristics, so instead I embraced them. And I certainly looked up to Boy George for being the shining example, at the time, of defying gender stereotypes. And I also just loved that style, I liked Cyndi Lauper a lot, too. It might be that I never wanted to dress as a girl because I accepted the society notion that this was all "gayness" and while I didn't think I had negative associations with being gay, I felt and knew homophobia was wrong, I couldn't personally feel physical attraction to other boys, and did feel ever increasing attraction to girls, so I knew I wasn't gay, myself. But also knew that these things weren't all connected in the way society insisted, so I didn't believe I wouldn't dress like a girl unless I was gay  - but I didn't have the inclination to dress "as a girl" to rebel against the stereotype, like I did with my hair. I saw "Glen or Glinda?" as a teenager and thought "that makes sense." Not because I was justifying my own desire to wear "girl's" clothes without "being gay" but because I knew that one didn't necessarily mean the other, based on my own inner experience.

But I certainly looked up to Boy George as a hero. I realized what he was doing was important, politically, culturally, for gay people, for girls, for boys, for everyone, including "freaks and weirdos" - which I always identified as. And I realized it was threatening to "some" elements in society which was an indication that those elements were wrong. It was as if Boy George and the Culture Club got so famous because of the quality of their music, his singing and songwriting talents, but also because the world needed a hero like this. And he broke through all sorts of barriers by filling this role. Certainly there were other Pioneers who helped pave the way but I believe most of them were "sexually ambiguous" for much of their careers or somehow not broadcasting their sexual identity as flamboyantly as Boy George did - but that is what was needed for the MTV decade of visual presentations of music. I remember watching the A-Team episode where Boy George was a guest star - we regularly watched that show. He was Murdoch's friend, I think, and what I remember is that he was treated well and helped play a role in the mission and sang. That show is mostly all about "male" fantasies of heroic deeds of action but it was also anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist in many ways and themes, and non-violent to the extent that they blew up a lot of stuff but never killed people. But it was a pretty "manly" team, the A-Team, and it was nice to see them getting along well with Boy George - not bullying him to "prove their manhood." Just having Boy George as such a famous icon in the culture had all sorts of ripple effects, such as this, the notion that "manly men" can get along fine with "girly boys."

I wasn't allowed to watch Three's Company when I was a kid, I believe that is because my parents were liberal about social issues in many ways but due to religious upbringing and cultural norms themselves weren't "liberated" about sex and presented the message that it was for "after marriage" with one person in your life - it doesn't sound liberal at all to say it, but they were liberal about most everything else, especially relative to the surrounding Southern society. That might be the reason why sexual repression and phobias stood out to me as the root of the problem, in humanity - good, smart people, my parents, who had seen through so much of the bullshit of the world, still suffered from the effects of cultural repression of sex, in this case mostly through religion.

This led me to the conclusion, years before I had any personal sexual experience, that the foundation of all evil misinterpretation of scriptures was the demonization of sex and right along with it the demonization of the feminine. My conclusion after a few decades of pondering this, which I came to a few years ago but was always in development, is that Masculinty is a Dangerous Myth, like a trick we have played upon ourselves for no good. But I'll come back to that because it took me a long time to realize it.

The reason I mentioned Three's Company is it came on my TV and of course there are already some of the constant gender and gay stereotypes presented: Since Jack, who pretends to his landlord Mr Furley that he is gay, is in this episode is pretending for Janet's parents that they are married. When he tells Furley the ruse Furley says "Well THAT's a Fairy Tale!" This reminds me of the "fairy" association with being gay, which is another thing i just defiantly went with -I might not be gay but I AM a fairy - and it magically evolved in my life into and stronger and truer identity.

Mr Roper was possibly even worse with his jokes about Jack being gay or a girl but it's the standard joke for both him and Furley - and basically every character if the subject ever came up on any show that ever aired in the 80's, to my recollection. I've watched pretty much every episode of Three's Company in syndication but I didn't see the show "Soap" when it came out - but I've seen a lot in the last year since they started showing it on Antenna TV. I wanted to mention it because of how much Billy Crystal's character, Jody, represented that "junction" of gay stereotypes. Jody is gay and in the first episode is described as a cross-dresser and by epsiode 2 is getting a sex change operation in order to marry his boyfiend. He is basically "a girl trapped in a boys body."

Because that was the conclusion at the time when the mainstream culture only presented "three" options: Boy, Girl, and "Fruit." If you were gay you were basically a girl, was the idea, and neither of these were "preferred." And there was only one way they talked about the "whole thing" - "a girl trapped in a boys body" is the oversimplified way being gay was presented.

Of course there were already counter-cultural examples that defied these stereotypes but I'm talkin about how mainstream culture was presented and fashioned by Network TV, etc, the molders of mainstream culture. The culture caught up to more nuanced ideas of gay and lesbian people as different depictions were made in TV. For most of the 80's the representations were still pretty close to stereotypes, and even as stereotypes were expanded and challenged somewhat by "revolutionary" shows - and some probably do deserve to be called that without quotes, even, as actual art - mostly the same stereotypes were reinforced.

Editing in on the 21st: Some examples to give the flavor of gender and sexuality in the 80s: Bosom Buddies: Tom Hanks and ... (Michael from Newhart? I only saw the show once or twice, probably, when it first aired) dress as girls to live in the Girl's Dorm - to be near the girls, because they Are Not Gay. Jack Tripper pretends he is gay to get the landlords to let him live with two girls, but only when the landlord is around, the rest of the show is mostly about his dates with girls. Nicole has two dad's on My Two Dad's but it isn't because Joey and Michael are gay it is because they don't know which is her father so when the mother dies the Judge decides they should both be her Dads. I don't remember why Kate and Allie lived together or if they even did or were just friends but they weren't lesbians, openly, or I was missing the jokes. 

As I type this, on Monday March 11th at 4:13 PM, there is an episode of Maude on. Vivian's husband, whose name I forget, he becomes Mr. Drummond on Diff'rent Strokes- Arthur! - just said "Walter and I are men, it's not like we sit around all day like you two." I just wanted to mention this stereotype, from the 70's, and how even if he is being the jerk for saying that, the joke is supposed to be "on him", he is still openly putting that idea out there. It's like the Archie Bunker character saying all sorts of unevolved, racist, sexist things. Maybe the joke is supposed to be on him, maybe people are supposed to learn by hearing him say these things, and being really stupid about them, and see the stupidity of the ideas. But even if it challenges these ideas in this way, plenty of people are too stupid themselves to get the joke and end up cheering on Archie, cheering on these ideas being so openly, brashly expressed on their TV. You can see how it becomes a recipe for Trump, to keep and increase a population of people who are dumb enough to cheer along with the bad ideas on TV and just don't get that the joke will always ultimately be "on them."

Unless they get enough of the world's power to destroy us all. Then it won't really be a joke, after all.

3-21-19 Edit: This is also how the internet is being used for evil - as Tim Berners-Lee said recently that the first 15 years of the internet had been "For Good" and the 2nd 15 years was mostly "For Evil" I see this as the essential factor: People ARE "too stupid" especially if you make a lot of effort to keep them that way. Plenty of people hear the Archie Bunker lines and aren't smart enough to realize the joke is on them - and when you have trolls working to promote stupidity and Facebook, the main platform of social interaction, favoring those trolls, systematically, and censoring people and messages that educate and enlighten people, you see the nature of the problem being "people's stupidity" is not as easy to solve as it SHOULD be - but the solutions are still the same, enlightentment, awareness, education, communication, expression, storytelling, songs, art, etc.

I took two days and nights off from writing this, which is why i gave that update. There were a few things I heard on the radio I wanted to include, here - but the truth is there are reminders of gender stereotypes everywhere, not just in this (and every) episode of Maude but every episode of everything - they are all part of maintaining gender "norms" with minor alterations through the years.

Repairing stereotypes is still essentially the opposite of breaking them. As I typed that Walter was explaining to Maude that he went back into business because The secretary of ... went on Television and said the recession had bottomed out, the secretary of... went on television and said... and the President went on television and said... - all about how the economy had recovered. But now his business folded. The joke is Maude saying "well you can't believe everything you hear" but it emphasis the point I'm writing that we do listen to the television and what it tells us about how the world is.

The things I heard on the radio I wanted to mention were these: They were interviewing an owner of an Austin BBQ restaurant and asking her about when she was vegan. Why were you vegan, having grown up in a family that owned a BBQ restaurant? Was it a rebellion? And her answer was "well it just went with being a lesbian, is the best way I can put it" and the audience laughed knowingly. This is, in 2019, another example of stereotypes about being lesbian and how it goes with other beliefs. And I said the same thing when I started writing this - accepting gay people, being accepting of people, generally, is a "leftist" and not a right-wing "thing." And it "goes with" other left wing - true - things. If I were to object to this sterotype, that being gay or being feminine means you also care about the environment or your health, MY personal objection would be coming from my own feeling that I should be vegan, because I believe in it, both for health and Goodness, but still eat meat and dairy. I feel somewhat "chastised" by this stereotype  - but in a helpful, healthy way, it's good to be reminded to improve your diet. I don't feel any more chastised by it than the lady who said it felt -because she went back to not only eating meat but running a wildly successful BBQ shop.

The stereotypes associated with being feminine/gay - and therefore, in our culture, demonized by association with being feminine/gay, such as: being artistic, caring, expressing feeling, environmentalism, seeking justice, equality, and peace - all of these are good things. Veganism is Good -sorry - even if I don't live up to it I know that goodness is true, for individuals and the world. And you don't have to be gay to be on the Good Side of things, and being on the Good Side of things doesn't "make you gay" AND there's nothing wrong with that. (3-21-19 edit: want to take credit for my response to the "alt-right" claim that AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, "wants to take your hambuger away" to which I added the Fry meme, but with a Hamburger, and saying "keep talking and take my hamburger" camption)

I write all this stuff to challenge the way language has been used to trick us into limited and bad ways of thinking. Even though they used sexism and homophobia to demonize other "unrelated" beliefs, such as environmentalism and pacifism, the truth is that all of these things are Good and the demonization of them, the demonizers, are bad.

This reminds me of the other major news story of the days since I've been writing this, the second crash of a new Boeing 737 model plane. The plane just came out last year and one crashed last October in Malaysia and now another one in Ethiopia. They never determined (or rather, Reported) exactly what the cause of the first crash was but the second one, yesterday, seems to be the same situation, the same cause - which suggests, logically, that it is a flaw with the plane. The other part of the news story was that China and Ethiopia, so far, have grounded all of that model of plane - almost 5,000 were sold worldwide. But when the news anchor asked a representative of the airline industry (actually an "expert" - she re-appears later)  if it suggested a problem with that model of the plane she said it was too early to make that conclusion and "we shouldn't demonize a model of plane." I was reminded of this by using the same language, just now. We shouldn't "demonize" anything, maybe - but if there is a flaw in a plane, and a flaw in a company that doesn't reveal and recall the flaw, would rather let more people get killed by it - well, that situation the plane, the company, has demonized itself.

"I got nothing against queers but they make me nervous" a customer in Archie Bunker's place just said. After more homophobia and homophobic "jokes" Archie asks the cop, black cop, "why don't you shut those places (gay bars) down?" "Too many of our leading citizens want to keep them open" Now when Archie asked if there is Fruit in the kitchen he says "I see fruit out here." Now Archie's Jewish partner Murray is telling him their new gay Waiter Fred is not a problem - he's never brought his friends around there. Archie asks him - this is probably 1982 - "do you want 3 torlets in here? His, hers, and theirs?" Now their solution is just to turn him "Let him look at playboy magazine - he'll see what normal sex is like, then we will fix him up with a hooker." Archie says they need a nice girl to torture him by saying no - "the minute he's tortured he's as normal as the rest of us." But now Murray admits he was only kidding, you can't change these things - he was putting Archie on but just got Archie going, and now he's trying to fix Fred up with Linda.

This is just another example of how there were Only 3 options in the 80's - in the most mainstream culture representations, anyway. Straight Male, Straight Female, and Fruit, or girl trapped in a boys body. And it wasn't presumed that all gays would want a sex change to become "normal girls" - but that idea WAS promoted, it was "basically" understood that way. Soap, for instance, is supposed to be an "over-the-top" spoof of soap operas, but it's still based upon a common idea, and oversimplification.

Why did they have that oversimplification, in the 80's? Because gayness and gender non-conforming were starting to appear in the television representation and construction of culture which challenged the "traiditonal" depictions and beliefs that There are Boys and Girls and that's it. The idea of gay or trans people had gotten "out of the box" and the mainstream culture wanted to put it back in that box as much as possible, go back to Boys and Girls - and never the two shall meet. Or we certainly better not talk about it in the "one case" when they do meet, sex, the taboo they are talking about now on Archie Bunker "the fun things, that you're not supposed to do until after you got married, know what I mean?"  - ALL of this is to promote an idea of male superiority and using women for sex and as property. It's not like a gay couple "threatens" someone with traditional views - they aren't trying to have sex with him  - but the very IDEA of it threatens their wrong worldview. They want to deny it, or say it is wrong, because to admit it, to acknowledge it, to respect it, at all, would be as "bad" as "respecting women" - their whole belief system would crumble. Because that whole belief system is based upon repression of sex and the feminine. "My wife and I have been doing everything for years and we're not even friends" Murray just said. "I'm different/ You're not ready for different...I am what I am, it IS different." And it turns out Tom, the customer complaining about him, had hit on him at his old place and Fred rejected him. "Why didn't you tell us about Tom when he called you a fruit?" "Would you have believed me?"

To get back to my story - the culture, America in the 80's, said that it was bad to be girly and bad to be gay. I knew I wasn't gay but I knew I was girly and didn't feel bad about it, decided the ones who said that were actually being bad, were wrong, and they were just as wrong about being gay and ultimately wrong about everything. And it wasn't just my voice or my skinniness that made me "girly" - those were just some of the ways I was reminded of it by other kids. I realized that had been my focus in writing this but my actual experience, all my life, was that the thing that made me so "girly" was caring. I cared. In one way this manifested in loving my stuffed animals and never giving them up, for continuing to watch Sesame Street and kids shows and movies all my life, continuing to play and value play all my life, staying Young at Heart. I mention these things not because they show I "cared" so much but because they are examples of things the culture insists you, as a boy, grow up and put aside: stop playing and start work. Stop caring and do what you HAVE to do. I rejected that message, those ideas, from a very young age and I'm happy I retained that youth by refusing to accept the lies.

Now, before I finish my story about my gender identity, I want to mention the other two things I heard on the radio since I wrote the first half of this. One was a study they did in rats where they mixed up the broods of rats and gave some rat babies to a "high-licking", affectionate, mother and others to a non-affectionate, "low-licking" mother. They discovered that the genetic benefits of getting affection, a cascade of genetic effects, would happen whether the rats were from a "high-licking, " affectionate gene pool or not - that is, it actually changed their DNA to receive affection. "he doesn't like taking care of me" Stephanie just said about Archie, who backed out of a promise to sing with her on Father Daughter Day at school.

It changed their DNA to receive affection. There were other stories on the radio, too. Some were about attachment, raising kids with autism or who had reactive attachment disorder from neglect in orphanages as kids - I have too much to say about that to get into it here, since I worked for years with kids like this in an institution - but the one I wanted to mention was about a psychologist who proved the existence of love and introduced it as a concept to psychology.

I had heard the story about the rats the night I started writing this. I wanted to include it because I felt it supported my theory that Masculinity is a Myth, a dangerous myth. It suggested to me that the genetic benefits of receiving care prove that care, affection, are good. "Take That!" I say to 1985, "I don't have to give up my stuffed animals, Care is Good, I can prove it, with science!"

The program of sexism, the way it works, is to demonize Care as "feminine" and a lesser concern than Work or War or Greed or whatever, "personal advancement". Ambition, Drive, Achievement - these are presented as not only Masculine Concerns but therefore Superior to "feminine concerns" of basically caring for or about Anything: Art, health, Nature, kids, family, etc.

("Is there any rule against a girl having two fathers?" "I don't think so, Amy Plume has two fathers, and Diana Fitch has three mothers." Archie decided to sing with Stephanie, after all, and Murray will play piano. )

I've been suspicious of Masculinity, of God, all my life, since the young ages of becoming sensitive to these things. When I was very young I had an idea of The Goddess and very quickly decided that I would focus on the Goddess because the Goddess had been repressed and denied, I didn't want to see the Goddess equally to God - or, in the Christian tradition, "compromise" and see the Holy Spirit as the feminine aspect of the Holy Trinity with God being "male" and Jesus being "male" or something - I just decided that, with so much focus on God if I were to ONLY focus on the Goddess it would only help make up for the extreme repression and wouldn't hurt anything at all. This perspective highlighted all the ways that the patriarchal ideas of god were all damaging and dangerous and for years I gave the benefit of the doubt to God, to the masculine, by saying maybe there was just something I didn't "get" about it - but I would leave him up to folks who were into that sort of thing.

But the more I asked the question, is there ANY value in masculinity? the more I became convinced that there isn't. I realized that every quality that our society praises as "masculine" - such as Protection - are actually feminine qualities, too, but with an important difference: the masculine version is the same quality but with the addition of Violence. The increased ability or willingness to commit violence in the name of Protection, or Advancement, or whatever the quality is, that is the defining characteristic of what makes it masculine.

And I felt like the rat experiment addressed this - if you provide affection, beings become more loving, if you deny affection you miss all the benefits of it and become "course", less caring - more "manly", even rats. This confirms my suspicion that masculinity is a dangerous myth, and one we have embraced and replicated over many generations - but I was shocked and enlightened even more, and my suspicions confirmed, by what I heard next, last night, on the radio.

It was about a psychologist named Harlow who "proved the existence of Love" to modern psychology. The way the story was presented they said that early psychology did not account for Love because they couldn't measure it - they didn't even include the concept, it wasn't in the indexes of any psychology textbooks - psychology didn't believe in Love. Until Harlow "proved it to them" in the 1940's. This was surprising to me but fit with my understanding of the patriarchal nature of early western psychology. But what they said next was really eye-opening. They said that for decades, in America, from the late 1800's, I guess, until the 1940s, there was a consensus among psychologists and the medical community: affection for infants and children was Bad. It would lead to psychological problems or weakness. They cited one prominent psychologist who claimed that over-kissing a child would result in whatever kind of "imbalance" later in life - over-kissing was more than one kiss per year, according to him. And it wasn't just psychologists bandying these ideas about for decades - partly because doctors were getting an emerging knowledge of germs they noticed that babies that were handled more frequently would get sick more - but they weren't actually aware of how germs worked so they attributed it to "affection" making them weak - and probably just weren't washing their hands. So the medical and psychological communities agreed: affection is Bad. And they didn't just agree in their journals - they got the Government to agree - Or did the Government arrange this the whole time? - so that there was a national campaign - for decades - with flyers sent out and taught to people at the doctors - to make sure that no one touched their babies.

In an individual, like neglected and abused orphans, this kind of neglect produces trauma. If the entire country is instructed to do this, for two generations, it produces a traumatized culture. We had new communication ability in the early 1900's - you could foresee a time, soon, when we could communicate around the world and solve the world's problems, together, by caring - make a world where girls, where everyone, is accepted and safe. We had that opportunity just from inventing telegraphs and telephones. And again, at the start of the 21st century, with the internet, there is a promise we can all connect and Heal the whole world - and there are forces that want to opposed this, to make sure we don't get together and solve all the problems, because they profit from the problems staying in place. (3-19 edit since Facebookkk banned me again: And they spend that money to thwart or attempts to make progress, by paying trolls to attack us on Facbeook and paying Facebook to focus its censorship on US, working with the trolls to censor us.)

So they traumatized a generation or two by insisting that to be a good parent you can't love or care for your children. That attitude hasn't worn off - Groundkeeper Willie's dad, when asked if he wanted to cut the cord at Willie's birth, says "Let him cut it himself - it's time he learned life isn't one great big party."

Why ISN'T life a big party? Because of some Party Poopers, Major party poopers, who threaten ruining the entire world to avoid confronting the reality that maybe the masculinity they are trying to protect is merely evil bullshit.

If I had been born a bigger, more muscular guy, with a deep voice, and got into sports and other "manly" pursuits that kept me in the "traditional" Boy role, I like to think that I would still be natural and sensitive enough to remain sensitive and caring instead of growing into an insensitive and uncaring "man". But if I had, that still would have made me stand out from the other Boys - just because I CARE - about anything. Even if it was just my own art, caring about art could be ridiculed by the rest of the football team, for being "girly". This is to point out how much CARING is presented and demonized as "feminine".

In the 80's, and still today, there is a concept of men "being in touch with their feminine side" which is presented as an acceptable way for males to actually feel a little bit of emotion where otherwise this is prohibited by the Masculinity Code  - unless the emotion is anger or hate or ambition or lust that ensures the "target" is demeaned.  Today, 30 years later, the feminine and more open understanding of gender and sexuality HAVE developed, even in mainstream culture - yet there is still a strain of thought reacting to this, insisting that their are only two genders and women are subservient to men - and that strain of thinking is the one that is in control of the government and courts, all the "worldly power" is still allied against the better future. the more natural and sustainable ways of thinking - and will destroy us all if we don't overcome them.

But we do have REAL power, true Natural Power, not of the World of Man's' creation but from the True World that honors the feminine, nature, and Love.

How did the Government, Doctors, and psychologists all convince the population that it was bad to hold their babies and touch their kids - for 40 years or more? Was it just a "really bad idea?"

Or does it fit in with their whole program of bad ideas?

Women have been naturally raising and loving their babies for millions of years. All the sudden "psychology" comes in and says "You're doing it wrong" - and not only has the audacity to say that but has the power to convince the government and doctors to back them up. Or they were doing it all along as tools of the Government - whichever, it is a clear example of how the Evil System oppresses us no matter where the evil originates.

This is how patriarchy ruins everything, a smaller example of a larger trend. Medical science has pushed women out, pushed out herbal and natural remedies used by women for years in favor of the pharmacuetical and modern medicine industry which is controlled and run by men. The attempt by the government and "science" - successful attempt - to convince women to neglect their babies and kids is a perfect example of how Evil tries to replace Good with lies and "campaigns" - and succeeds in doing so.

Not only were these generations affected by neglect they were affected by that, traumatized by that, taught not to have empathy or compassion by that. It was a poisonous program and the poison continues to effect us. We might, as a culture, have accepted that hugging and holding babies is Good - yet there is still the fear and belief that "too much affection" can "turn kids gay" or "make them soft", in other words, "feminine", in other words, "Caring."

The problem is NOT that people might grow up and be Caring. The REAL problem is that people can grow up and be Uncaring - but that is still the goal of Mainstream, Conservative America.

"Let them cut it themselves, it's time they learned life isn't one great big party."

Harlow proved to the psychology community that Love exists and is crucially important in raising babies by having chimp babies with "two fake mothers" - a wire one that was uncomfortable but supplied milk and a cloth one that did not provide nourishment but the monkey could cuddle with it. He did many tests but the results were that the babies spent 17 hours a day with the Cloth, comforting mother and only one with the Wire Mother - and everything they tested suggested the baby monkeys needed the Love, even from a dummy mother, just because it was possible. And when they made the Cloth mothers "reject" the babies for some tests, after they had bonded, the monkeys would do anything to "win the cloth mother back"

This is an analogy, to me, of how our culture has deprived us of the Goddess and whether we know it or not it is the deepest need of our souls to re-unite with this Goddess. We would do anything to restore that feeling of Love - but in our world we are taught all the wrong things so we don't even know what to do. Get Rich? Exploit people and Power? The world is too much built on repressing the feminine, the Goddess, nature, for us to "think" of how to get back to it - but once we know it is possible then ways open up, magically, where we might most or least expect it.

So how could America spend a half century teaching people that Love is Bad, wrong, damaging? It wasn't just a bad idea, a mistake they stuck with for decades. It was part of other bad ideas. It fit the idea that War is acceptable. Maybe War itself is another bad idea we should have outgrown. And it fits the idea that Masculinity is Good - but maybe even masculinity is a bad idea we need to outgrow.

One way I wanted to introduce this edition was mentioning a song I heard on the radio, on KUVO Jazz, I think - a remake of Pat Benetar's "Love is a Battlefield" by Maysa. I just looked it up to get the artist's name and watched the video - maybe that is why the radio DJ said it put a Modern, Protest/Scocial Justice "Twist" on the lyrics, because the video certainly does, it's awesome.

At the time, months or even years ago, when I was contemplating this edition and heard that song, I came up with a phrase: "If Love is a Battlefield, Gender is a Neighborhood Association." By which I mean that beliefs about gender are all dependent on "your community", where you live, what others around you believe and express. The "There are Two Genders" crowd are in some gated community, or Lost Island - they aren't growing into a larger community, just putting up more walls and oceans to Keep Apart from ideas that threaten them and their beliefs. Ideas such as Peace, Caring, The Feminine, Nature, Sex, Love - all of these ideas threaten them.

But the rest of the world, despite the attempts of the bigots to keep us all dividing, fighting each other, the rest of the world IS coming together and will come together.

Kids all over the world are taking the lead in protesting and demanding governments take action to address climate change. Kids in America were leading the most recent campaign to get new gun laws to protect kids in school and people everywhere from mass shooters. The important thing is that Men want to ignore women and kids, have built a world on ignoring women and kids, ignoring anyone who CARES - but that world is coming to an end, to be replaced by a world where no one is ignored and Caring is encouraged.

The other news story besides the Boeing crash - that prompted China, Singapore, and Australia, so far, to ground these planes - but the FAA in America is still insisting they are safe, they are reporting that some Top Experts Agree - but other Top Experts DISagree - but we are going with the ones who allow Boeing to save face and money instead of the ones who are concerned about keeping people alive. I'm not demonizing them, I'm saying they are demonizing themselves and when the rest of the world bans your planes but you don't - well it becomes obvious that you DON'T actually care about people, just money. And that is obvious, already by the way people talk about it.

"When will the public demand action about these planes? Will they wait until after the report?" the news man asked the Expert. "Well, these investigations can take two years." The expert said.

Like Trump - are we supposed to wait two years and just keep letting everything happen until the report is finished? How many planes would have to go down, in America, before we changed that tune? Or, more appropriately, how FAMOUS or "Important" would someone have to be who dies in the crash to actually prompt America, or the Government/Corporations - to even PRETEND they care? How many more planes - and how much more protest in the streets - would it take to ACTUALLY MAKE them Care?

We have to undo the evils of this system. I was going to say, the OTHER news story besides the plane crash was in Algeria where -

It's been six days since I started this - I began it on March 12th 2018 and now it is March 18th - and some news needs to be mentioned that happened since then.

To finish what I was saying, and to speed this up: The people in Algeria were protesting for weeks or months that their President was running for another 5 year term. His name is like Butaflika, I don't know how to spell it I just hear it on the radio and talk a little with a friend who is from Algeria about it.

(on 227 just now: Brenda: "Mahatma Gandhi wouldn't have returned the dress" - "He would if he was my daughter... old enough to get a job, move out, make your own decisions." "See Mary, THAT's why I wanted a boy." Julian talks with the plants and Brenda does, too - he says they are better than wives.)

They have been protesting because the President was running for a fifth or sixth 5-year term, I think. But he hasn't spoken in public in 7 years. My friend says he is dead but the news reports that he hasn't spoken in years since he had a stroke and only just returned from seeking medical treatment in Geneva. In the time I have been writing this, about a week, he had announced he would still run but would have another election in a year - and the protests continued. So he announced he wouldn't run after all - but would postpone the election. And the protest turned to celebration, but also continued.

Why can't our president in America resign? Why can't we protest in the streets to make him resign? why couldn't he be the one who hasn't said anything in 7 years, at least?

That is what I was going to say, last week, to just make the point that Its a Good Idea to Protest Against Corruption and Injustice So You Can Help Stop It.

"In a world where the Berlin wall is coming down, The Russians are trying to make friends, some of the beaches in south Texas are finally integrating, why can't the Redskins ever win the Superbowl?" Lester just asked on 227 - which I had to mention because that was the state of affairs in the 80's, at the time of healing after World War 2 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, healing at the end of the Cold War with the Russians Making Friends, it was also time for more healing after slavery and the Civil War, with, finally, SOME of the beaches in South Texas integrating - all revealing how racial divides are deeper than almost all others, in America. But Why haven't the Redskins won the Superbowl? And why does he equate that as a form of "Justice"? If it had been any other shitty team the Joke would be the same - but not Ironic. Because he is praising the end of one kind of racism - segregation on Texas beaches - but unaware that the name and mascot of his favorite team is racist. In the second episode, today, he laments that he is in church instead of watching the Redskins game and will soon be dreaming he is in Heaven and Hell. I feel like I have written about both of these episodes in the gagablog before - I repeat it now to emphasize, with the "Heaven and Hell" idea, that much more immediately we actualize "heaven" and "Hell" in every moment, every day. Lester, the writers of 227, are doing a service to society by mentioning that beaches were integrating. They were exhibiting social conscience to mention it and increasing it letting people know, reminding people at the time that there were and are still SO many spaces in America that aren't integrated, that racism was still alive in the society. But Lester is never conflicted over the racism of the Redskins team name - the writers never address that issue. And while 30 years later we aren't too much "closer" to World Peace or Racial Equality and while there is wider known protest to the Redskins, they still haven't changed the name. As I wrote that they said "Redskins" twice and the Limo guy just asked "Are you still thinking of changing the name to the Washington Lesterskins?"  - this is supposed to be in The Future, when they are looking down on their kids from Heaven.

This is all intersectional feminism - we can't seek justice for women, for the feminine, without seeking justice for everyone, for the planet and Nature itself. Because the enemy is the same, the forces that oppress everyone are the same: Man.

As Lester and Mary looked in on the living, from Heaven, everything was Good. When looking in on them from Hell everything is bad - they are poor and live in squalor in the same apartment instead of everything nice. Pearl is there saying "If you were a real wife you could cook dinner without food." it is all a dream Lester is having in Church but it has a lot of meaning, magically.

Yes you can Look at everything from a "Heavenly" perspective, or a "Hell" one - and it will determine what we see. But we ALL know what the Hellish life is - the squalor and struggle. You can't just look at it differently and change it "'No Nice Haircut, Bernie!'?" Bull, from Night Court, the Host of Hell, just said. Meaning, you can't just look at poverty, or tragedy, or war, and Wish it away - but we CAN look at things differently and CHANGE things so that they DO go away. We know what the bad things are. If we say "well everyone is where they are supposed to be to learn the lessons of life - it just depends on how you LOOK at it" then we are accepting poverty and war just because "other people" are having to experience it, not us. If it is possible to see it it is possible for it to happen. Just because it is happening to "someone else" doesn't mean it can't happen to you - it already IS happening to You if you accept that we are all connected.

So looking at poverty and war CAN have the effect of convincing ANYONE who sees it or hears about it to DO something about it, to change it so it doesn't exist anymore. We have to convince people that is possible, we have to talk about things, to call things out, to be able to converse so that New, better, interconnected ways of seeing things can spread and win out over ways of thinking that keep us isolated and unaware.

When I started writing this, today, there was an episode of Benson on where they were calling to resolve some problem with Veteran Care. "Shouldn't we let the VA deal with it?" was suggested but the lesson was "if everyone says 'let them deal with it' and they aren't dealing with it, they never will." We need to talk about things, to open up discussions. 30 years later we still don't have good veterans care or accountability. Back then the Veterans could have mostly been Men - yet veterans care could have been called a "feminine" concern, while starting wars is Masculine.

But mostly this relates because if we Don't Talk about things, if we don't call out bad things and stop them when we can, they get worse.

Why haven't we been protesting against Trump's racism and fascism all along? Why haven't we forced a corrupt and incompetent leader to resign like they did in Algeria? It's been 3 years. Maybe it's because a lot of the stuff he is doing wrong HAS been going on before Trump, too. This doesn't make it right it just makes us more accustomed to it. But he's made it worse, too, and we aren't responding.

This weekend was when a terrorist killed 50 people in New Zealand. There has been a lot of news about it and "speculation" of his motives but he wrote a manifesto and some of his online activity has been scrutinized for hints. He was a white supremacist and looked up to Trump as a symbol of that. Other fasicts online are busy trying to emphasize that he "disagreed with trump's policies" or anything else to "distance" him from Trump, from Themselves. Except the problem is that they DO believe in the same things, in violence and White Supremacy  - in Fascism.

I've been calling Trump a Nazi, KKK, fascist, for years - because it's true. But the media won't address it. I take to Facebook to help spread awareness and get banned. I just got my third month-long ban, all in the last 6 months. (Fourth, now - 3-21-19 edit - for asking a Troll, John Agassi, whom everyone in the "Progressive Party" group he trolls calls him a troll, if he was KKK, Nazi, or Trumper and when he asked if there was a 4th option I answered "they are all the same option! are you really that dumb? #kkkonfirmed" and got banned from ALL activity for 30 days when he reported it.)  Facebook and Russia are certainly partly responsible for electing Trump, Brexit, etc - but we, the People, also lost an online war and to win, this time, we need to recognize Facebook as the Enemy, too- because that's who they serve. It is either their "plan" or just something they allow that fascists report and get accounts banned for the mildest choice of words while they spew hate-speech, threats and fascist propaganda with impunity. Maybe because right-wing trolls make missions out of reporting certain people and getting them censored but especially because Facebook favors and protects fascists with it's censorship of their opponents and not even enforcing the actual rules if the perpetrator is themselves fascist. It protects their obviously fake accounts, by the tens of thousands, until days before elections, once they've done their work to sway the election, if it ever deletes them. It takes their ad money for fake news stories and white supremacist propagande and can't even get disclaimers for them.

The day before the NZ White Supremacist terrorist attack Trump gave an interview in which he says "His" police and military, and Bikers For Trump, would "get tough" and things would be "very bad" for his political enemies. He was being completely fascist, threatening those who disagree with him with violence, both state violence and thug posse violence.

This is bad enough that he said this, that he believes in this and thinks this way. It's bad enough and proof that he is a fascist, a racist, and a white supremacist - especially how it fits everything else he says and does which is an example of that.

His base are all Nazi, KKK, too. They may not admit it - they may not KNOW it - but all of their beliefs come from the KKK-Nazis - they are all based on White Supremacy. And the Australian terrorist who killed those people in New Zealand didn't HAVE to read that interview, where Trump said his thugs would make it "very bad" - but he probably did. He probably took that as his signal or clue to carry out his attack - maybe he even had a more back-channel signal, from Trump, from the KKK, to carry it out. That is entirely possible - denying that underestimates the influence of White Supremacy.

But even if the terrorist had NOT heard Trump's interview the day before  - he was only carrying out the orders, the worldview, that Trump has been trumpeting all along. And we should have done more to stop him, Trump, before it got to that point. But no amount of right-wing denial will bring them back to life.

NOW we can still talk about the Evil of Trump, fascism, and White Supremacy to stop the NEXT attack. We can save the NEXT 50 people, the next 500 people, five thousand people, five million people, or more.

We CAN save them - by talking. The last thing I mentioned before I left off writing this, 5 days ago, was the Aviation expert on the radio who said it was "too early"

("You haven't let Vivian make long distance calls ever since they got male operators." Maude just said to Arthur)

"too early" to jump to the conclusion that the recent Boeing crash in Ethiopia was related to the one in Malaysia last October just because it was the same plane and seemed to be the same circumstances. She literally said, at that time, that it was like saying if a man walked out of his house and broke his leg in one country and another man broke his leg in another country that the same thing broke their leg. That is what the expert said - and I felt offended, you probably were too just to read that part - but I was offended that it hurt my sense of common sense, my sense of intuition and being psychic, that she would suggest that we were "jumping to conclusions" - that we can't demonize Boeing or that model of plane.

It really made me mad that she, the expert, would say that on BBC radio, to try to protect Boeing and the FAA and American airline companies, since the planes had not been banned in America at that time, only China, Australia, and Singapore. And it sounded to me, with my ear for truth, that this was exactly what she was doing: protecting the Corporations, the Government, trying to make sure they "still looked good" instead of trying to protect the people. Another example of this was when the BBC interviewer asked a different expert if the Public would protest and demand these planes be grounded or just "await the investigation" and that expert replied "these investigations can take up to two years"  - as if the Public would just continue to accept planes falling out of the sky "because the study wasn't complete."

But we feel that way about the Mueller Report, apparently.

And it's all the same thing, the same kind of thing: protecting the corrupt status quo from scrutiny. Now it is a week later and I'm glad the news since then has proven the expert wrong, that my instinct - and probably everyone's instinct - is true. There is a flaw with the plane. Now America and more countries have also grounded the plane and when asked about it the same expert said that was "absolutely the right idea." But the week before her appearance on the international radio news didn't give the impression that it was the "right idea" but rather that it would be jumping to conclusions. So now that the Government / Boeing have agreed to ground the planes she can say it is "absolutely" the right idea but the Government just took a few days longer to make this decision than China did - because our government doesn't actually care about human lives, only corporations.

So now that they've grounded them, and the first reports from the flight recorder has come in, they are pretty sure that it is a problem with a system Boeing installed to compensate for the new engines not fitting the old model very well, casing the tip of the nose to rise, risking stalling. So Boeing, instead of fixing the mechanical, design problem, installed a technological system to compensate for it. And they didn't tell the pilots about this - when asked they said "we can't tell the pilots everything" as if there was "too much information" when it seems like this is a major difference that should require some training - or not exist in the first place - but Boeing would prefer to let pilots "figure it out" or just hope it didn't malfunction instead of paying to train and teach pilots about it. And even after the first flight the news about that system change was not widely reported.

The aviation expert said that they knew that was the problem with the Malaysian plane since October and knew that Boeing wasn't training pilots or even telling them about the new system on the plane. They knew this, but weren't going to tell us, the public, apparently, until the second crash.

The FAA had cleared the planes, I don't know if they changed their mind or caved to pressure but before Trump or the FAA grounded the planes in  America the Flight Attendants Union was protesting keeping these planes in the air - there WAS some public pressure and if not they might not have grounded them. We have to give credit to speaking out and encourage it.

The same is true for Trump and White Supremacy - we have to call it out, and call out every part of it including denial and ignoring it. John Boehner, former Republican Speaker of the House, was giving an interview about how he now bought stock in and is on the board of a cannabis company. When asked if he regretted his previous votes and positions that resulted in people being incarcerated for marijuana, and it disproportionately imprisoning minorities 4-5 times more than white people he replied that "it never crossed his mind." (3-121-19 edit: and if you know my work, my name, Puffin, you know my belief that Weed is a Form of the Goddess who WILL save the world with our belief in her, which is emerging to show us the natural way - just wait until more folks actually smoke it and access it's mental and spiritual benefits with greater cultural acceptance! And read my book "All I Really Needed to Know I Learned from Smoking Weed.")

We have to talk about these things so we KNOW they always cross everyone's mind. If we had called out Trump and his supporters, more, we could have avoided his supporters who are terrorists from being so bold as to carry out their violent nightmares. And we still can call them out and avoid the next ones, be more aggressive about dismantling the network of White Supremacists and Fascists worldwide. (3-19-21 edit: I'm very pleased with the statements and actions of the Prime Minister of New Zealand who has started by calling out White Supremacy as a global problem and the source of the evil terrorism carried out there AND started banning certain guns to avoid in the future  - which will also piss off and let the White Supremacists know they are all, always, inevitably going to lose, including Trump - his obvious loyalty ONLY to the White Supremacists will soon be his undoing since he always doubles down on it and it keeps getting worse.)

They reported on the news that of the 50 killings in America in 2018 by extremists, terrorists, in every case the terrorists were White Supremacists or right-wing. But the article, in the Atlantic, was titled something like "The Terrorism there isn't an uproar about" - because there wasn't an outcry about this.They WEREN'T reporting on it, widely, until this mass killing in New Zealand - just that one article. Of course they would mention it in mainstream media, and deny it on Fox, whenever there were White Supremacist / Trump connections with the killers - but it didn't become a national focus. Just like the national protest against cops killing mostly black people isn't what is should be -  a unifying, national concern we are addressing  - but a "debate" because of how entrenched the racist side -the System itself - is. If there had been more of an outcry, more blame pinned where it belongs - on White Supremacists - and more scrutiny of Trump for egging them on and signalling to them, empowering them - we could have stopped more of them. And we still can but we NEED to do the things: Call out Trump, seek out the networks that are hidden but also further expose the ones that are in plain sight: the justice system, politics, mainstream media, the banks, etc.

The Whole System IS fraught with White Supremacy and Sexism - and the solution to both is the solution to fixing the whole system and saving the world. I didn't plan to focus on the racism as much as sexism in this edition about Gender but they are entangled by the same forces of oppression. And the solution is the same - expose the evils and discuss them and focus on creating the new, better system to replace the old, evil one.

To return to the Original Spirit of this edition, and conclude it, today I hope, I will say I'm glad it took me a week to write it. Partly to include the new events, horrible as they are, express sympathy for All the victims and assess the blame that CAN prevent more victims in the future.

The same dynamic that makes it a "debate" instead of a national concern that the system is so racist is what keeps us from getting action on climate change, too. The entrenched powers have put all their money and effort into keeping the fossil fuel industry in place instead of going green. They've kept us stuck in a "debate" phase just by paying to put messages out that keep a lot of the population ignorant but mostly by controlling the system itself. Yet this week also saw millions of kids walking out of school all around the world to join protests against the various world governments for ignoring climate change. It's the kids who care, the kids who will force us to change because they've decided to speak out, to create a Good Future instead of accepting an evil one.

3-21-19 Edit - in the three days since this was written there was a major cyclone in Mozambique killing hundreds of people, that they know about, submerging many kilometers of land, effecting thousands of people. The government says it was "not prepared for the magnitude of the storm" which suggests it was a "bigger storm than Usual" or "expected" which implies the effects of climate change - all severe storms suggest the effects of climate change. Meanwhile in America I heard one report of a storm in Nebraska, I think, that overswelled a river flooding farms and depositing fifteen-foot icebergs. The farmer they interviewed said his farmhouse that his grandfather built in 1907 was completely submerged and destroyed, that he couldn't tell if his farm would be saved or not and it was such a terrible disaster for everyone. He said he didn't have much empathy for people in natural disasters, before, but now, it was just awful and he discovered empathy for others who had been in disasters. I think of this as why we Need to develop empathy just because we WANT it, we want to take care of other people and see their sufferings as our own, so we can Stop Suffering  -and not just to stop it before it becomes "our turn" to suffer but to stop it all, everywhere. And we can - but we need to start developing that empathy while we still have a place to live, before we destroy it.

The last thing I heard on the radio last night that I wanted to include here was a lady who worked to preserve Grizzly Bears. The interviewer asked her about a Gender Divide in the support and opposition to her efforts to protect the Grizzly Bear. I thought she was about to say that in her work she noticed that a vast majority of people who contacted her to support the Bears were female and a vast majority of the people who criticized her or wanted to kill the Bears were male. She actually said that it was a "feminine" energy that wanted to protect the bears and also that it was the way of the indigenous people of this land, much older than the invader beliefs. She mentioned that 170 or 270 tribes had signed onto an effort to protect the bear in Yosemite and that thanks to various efforts the range of bears was increasing and isolated bear populations could finally reconnect after decades of being reduced. She said that the "masculine" spirit of frontiersmen "taming the west" was what opposed bear preservation. She mentioned the NRA and others pouring money into the suits that determined if the bears could be hunted.

To me this was the perfect example of how there are two ways, right and wrong, feminine and masculine, and that's exactly what they are.The Feminine is Good and the Masculine is Bad. If we criticize it, expose it, and change it, from the top, at the root, in the system and ourselves, we can fix everything at once and save the world. As I type this there is an episode of Alice where Mel is leaving the Diner and the three Waitresses are deciding to buy the diner and run it themselves.

The Good, feminine way includes cooperation, equality, harmony with nature. We don't need to enumerate all the things that are wrong with the opposite. We can say there are Good, Masculine things, I guess - none come to mind - but the point is that since the Evil System is built very primarily on sexism, Male Dominance, then by promoting the Feminine, at every opportunity, we open up to the New, Better World - the Future. We just can't go wrong or "overdo" it by seeking the feminine way as the Way To Be, there is just so much to break down, in so many ways, in the evil Patriarchal System.

For me, personally, I realized that it was Good to be a Girl at a young age. I guess I could say I have always been envious of girls, for what they are, but not envious of what they are subjected to. And I always wanted to change the system that allowed, demanded that mistreatment. And I wanted to change it to end war, and to end pollution, and restore living in harmony with nature. And I always thought these were "girly" concerns, in the same way that "girls like animals more than boys" in the America I grew up in. But I was proud to be a Girl, in that way - inside, to have a caring, loving, sensitive heart, the things my culture only "allowed" Girls to have - to mock them.

I was always proud of who I am, inside, and I was proud of who I am, outside - I really liked my body even if no one else seemed to. I always thought I was beautiful, a really beautiful boy. And I wanted girls to think I was beautiful, and be attracted to me, the same way I am attracted to them. And I always felt that ALL people are beautiful - but there is something More Beautiful, to me, about girls, maybe because of some universal aesthetic or just because I'm personally attracted to girls - maybe people who are attracted to boys think they are the More Beautiful people - but I kind of lean to the Aesthetic interpretation and think that people who like boys accept that they prefer the uglier sex, but still like them because that is their sexuality.

But even caring about beauty was a Feminine concern. If everyone is encouraged to Care For Beauty, in all it's ways, it's not hard to see how a Beautiful, Peaceful World will emerge. Everyone admitting to their desire for beauty and making a collective effort to make EVERYTHING beautiful would save the world. We don't have to make a "Universal" idea of Beauty, just access all the beauty that already exists, everywhere in the world. And get rid of the ugliness. Just stop accepting it - in the world, in ourselves. Getting rid of all the ugliness. For me, I can identify that ugliness as Masculinity and don't have to put "toxic" in front of it, just see it all as Bad in order to focus on the Goodness of the Feminine.

I grew up when the only way the idea of "Trans" was presented as a "Girl trapped in a Boys Body" and the idea seemed to be, now that it was medically possible, if you were like this you would transition, medically, and become "who you really are." And Gay and Feminine were "identical", too - we only had effeminate gay stereotypes and if you were feminine it was presumed you were gay. Since I was effeminate and attracted to girls it just didn't "add up" in these restrictive conditions: if I did become a girl I would be lesbian, still not "playing by the rules." It didn't "work" - but it wasn't my problem, it was the problem with Society. Its the same with "disability" - society creates problems for different kinds of people by failing to accommodate them. We can overcome this but only by realizing it is Society's problem - all of our problem - not "their" problem.

I'm grateful that I was encouraged enough in my family to be feminist and accepted for being feminine instead of pressured into gender norms, besides some jokes about my long hair. I had my own identity and felt good about it before there was a "place" in society for me, about 20 years "early." Which is what makes me grateful that other folks without the advantages I had, in their families, will have better examples in the culture to understand themselves in ways that are best for them. I think I was 10 or 11, so it was 1987, when I had the idea I was a "lesbian boy" which might be an acceptable term, by now, 32 years later. But the more terms we have the more people can realize who they really are.

I don't want to spoil anything but it was something in the Oz books I read when I was probably 9 that let me conceive of magically transforming gender. In the following years when it became an idea everyone was familiar with, as a medical procedure, it held no interest for me. By that time - largely thanks to L. Frank Baum / Oz and thanks to Music, too - I felt fine with my own identity, "Girl Free in a Boys Body" because I rejected the idea that I was "trapped" or that there was anything "wrong" with being a girl, or being a "girly-boy." It helped that anyone who said that as an insult always sounded like a jerk.

It also helped me, in 1986 or 87, to play Metroid on the Nintendo Entertainment System. At the end - "spolier alert" (I can say it in quotes, here, because you Already Know and I can't even say it about Oz because I don't want to spoil it / you most likely haven't read it-  please do!) it is revealed that the Hero is a Girl. She is in a spacesuit the whole time you are playing and no gender is assigned but I guess since all the video game heroes up to that time were male  - and patriarchy in general - one can be forgiven for thinking Samus Aran would be a boy. So I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, that Samus was a girl. I remember telling my dad, when I was 10 and discovered this when I beat the game, I was so excited to discover she was a girl. Also I think my parents were suspicious of video games at the time so I wanted to convince my dad that they were good, that there were going to be Good Messages in video games. I don't think he was excited, as I was, about Samus being a girl -he didn't seem to see it as an important moment, politically, culturally, like I wanted him to - or maybe he was just busy and didn't seem as enthusiastic as I wanted him to be.

But it made me realize how important it is to have heroes, to have examples you can relate to, for everyone. Samus is so well-known, now, since Metroid has continued to be a popular franchise for Nintendo for over thirty years. And there have been numerous female video game characters since then and I would suggest that gender equality has progressed faster in video games than in movies, for example, in part because of Samus's example, and success.

When I started this Captain Marvel was the record-breaking top movie of the weekend and was again this weekend, too. I still haven't seen it but get the impression that having a female superhero really feels empowering to people. And having it be really successful is a good lesson to disprove sexist ideas that it's not profitable.

It was only about ten years ago that I first came across the idea of Five Genders: Female, Male, Two-Spirit Female, Two-Spirit Male, and Trans. When I first heard about it the idea was presented that the indigenous people, here, all believed this and it "offended" the White Invaders whose culture insisted there were only two genders so they wanted to wipe them out and wipe out all traces and records of the five gender belief. When I looked it up the other day online it mentioned a number of countries in Asia that believed this -but that's all. It seemed true, to me, that it was what people in this land believed, too, until recent times - and seemed the more natural way to see gender. And it made sense that it was essential for the Patriarchy to eradicate this idea and keep "our" culture from being influenced by it. And it makes sense why the White Supremacists and Alt-Right have their chants and hashtags of "Two Genders!" to try to insist their way is right, to shout out the alternative. The problem is they are just wrong and the Better Ways, the Natural Ways, are returning to take over.

The Goddess is re-emerging in the world, in us, all the time. We help Her just by wanting Her, by believing in her, and even more by acting like it. Since She is the Goddess of Everything she emerges in Everything and this emergence is the most magical thing, ever, and enables all other Good Magic. You really can just envision Better Ways of being, communicate about them with others, and get these ideas out there in a way that Magically Transforms the world - by which I mean if you just do the dreaming and creating part the magic of the Goddess takes over and makes the world transform - you just have to go for it. Believe in it, Believe in Her, Believe in Yourself and Believe in The Goddess IN Yourself and yourself in The Goddess. Discover, reveal and share the magic that waits in abundance for us to come to it, to free us from the constraints that hold us back and threaten the health of the world. We just have to want it, be open to it, and challenge the ways of thinking that oppose it. The Feminine, Natural, Compassion, Beauty, Art - we can feel how these things are all part of the Good World that is merely held off by Evil. We focus on Goodness, we challenge and overcome the evil, and we WILL make a world where we ALL feel free in whatever bodies we end up in.

I've talked a lot, not as much recently, about Gaga as The Goddess but I've been neglecting that perspective in my writing, and more importantly neglecting the most important part of that perspective in my own life. I think Gaga is such a pure manifestation of the Goddess because the Way she Is the Goddess is a Way that Makes You the Goddess, Too. But I haven't been doing my part, I haven't been living up to my potential and true purpose as The Goddess, in My Form, as I was so grateful and responsive to her doing, in hers. I realized that was part of it, and a big part - because whatever was going on in the world to bother and enrage and distract me, the only thing that really blocks me from accessing Art, from conveying better Writing, is Me, holding myself back, letting anything "get to me" or give me an excuse to remain "the old me" instead of a New Me I'm becoming. And I can't wait for anyone to agree with my ideas or give me permission anymore, I just have to stop making excuses and stop holding myself back and write, draw, paint and sing.

One thing on the radio last night was about a "terrible" singer, Florence maybe (?) who was humored by her friends until she sang at bigger and bigger venues and was eventually a smash hit at Carnegie Hall and her music is still available. The report ended that while people were still laughing at her decades later - and it did make me laugh and chuckle again just to think about it - that her music would live on forever, they didn't know if she ever really knew she "couldn't" sing or if she was always "impenetrably delusional" that she could, her whole life. But the only clue they had that she might have "known" she couldn't sing was this, her quote:

"They may say I can't sing, but they can't say I DIDN'T sing."

Which makes me smile and cry to end this with, and reminds me to Sing. For my Soul, for the Soul of the World - and I hope you'll join me, in whatever songs you choose - but Sing!