Showing posts with label Caitlyn Jenner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Caitlyn Jenner. Show all posts

Thursday, June 18, 2015

I am now a TRANSTAXUAL.

Someone once said that life is but a series of teachable moments. If that is true then for the last couple of weeks, school has been in session. I've leaned all sorts of things, thanks to Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal.

From Ms. Jenner I've learned that gender isn't about biology as much as it's simply a social construct. The roles that society has assigned to men, women, boys and girls are arbitrary and full of patriarchal biases. The sexual hardware that you are born with can no more define who you are sexually as being born Caucasian can any longer define who you are racially...enter Ms. Dolezal. She self-identified as black despite the fact that her parents were both very white. What matters for Dolezal was how she felt, not what she, in point of fact, was. Powerful and impressive new words and phrases have crept into my consciousness. I now know what gender fluidity means. I now understand that truth is no longer transcendent. Truth has now become a personal possession, as in "my truth", much like a handbag or a golf club. When they wear out, we can simply get new ones.

My discovery of these new realities has caused me no shortage of anxiety. I'm now considered an older man, white, privileged and something other than middle class, so the air is thick with condemnation for my kind among the new cultural elite in America. But there is no reason that it has to be this way. A person doesn't cease to learn, grow and evolve just because he happens to be white, relatively well off and male. I intend to make the best of this new world. I'm going to embrace the new possibilities that have presented themselves to me courtesy of this new personal truth fluidity thing. If what matters in life isn't objective reality but how I feel, then I say...what the hell?

I today declare myself a TRANS-TAXUAL man. In my heart, at the core of  my very being, I truly feel like I have paid enough taxes already. When I add up all of the taxes I have paid over the last twenty years or so of my business life, it is staggering. From federal payroll taxes to both halves of FICA, to Virginia state taxes, down to personal property taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, and all of the taxes hiding within my eight page Verizon bill, I'm done with them. Besides, I identify much more with people who don't pay any taxes. For years I have denied who I really am as a taxpayer. I used to just go along to get along like everyone else. But then I started being punished by the tax system,(talk about your social constructs!!), for my success, losing one deduction here, another over there and before you know it I was paying an obscene share of my income to the government. But now with the advent of taxpayer fluidity, its a brand new world. My personal truth is that I've paid enough, so to be true to myself, which is now the ultimate truth, I'm just not going to pay anymore. 

Now I realize that there will be those out there who will object to my new truth declaration. I will be accused of having ulterior motives, of being a tax-cheat, of dodging my civic responsibilities. Well, to quote that great philosopher Taylor Swift, " haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate." It takes great courage to go public with this announcement, and I will take comfort from the support of my real friends and family as I make the transition from tax-payer to free-loader.


Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Men of a Certain Age...




This is the picture that greeted me yesterday morning on every single news site I visited at 6 am. This was big news. The man whose Sports Illustrated cover photo once graced the walls of my bedroom in 1976 has been reborn as "Caitlyn" and lionized by none other than Annie Leibovitz.

I am told by sophisticates that what the former decathlete has done is "brave." Mrz Jenner her-himself has spoken of how he-she finally feels free, that for the first time in his-her life isn't living a lie. The fact that this picture is on the cover of Vanity Fair purportedly says something about our evolving culture, the chattering classes intone. The photographic talents of Ms. Leibovitz have at least saved us from the ghastly decision of whether to place "Caitlyn" on the cover of Playboy or Playgirl.

For men of a certain age, the spectacle of seeing perhaps the greatest American athlete of the past fifty years wearing a silk camisole is deeply unsettling. I count myself among this unsettled group. I harbor no ill-will towards Bruce-Caitlin. I want everyone to be happy. I can't imagine what it must have been like to train for the decathlon all the while hating yourself for being in a man's body. That's an existence that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. But, why must all of this truly amazing plastic surgery be proclaimed to the world below the masthead of Vanity Fair magazine? Herein lies the difficulty that I have. It seems like suddenly, irretrievably, we have decided to celebrate things that, historically speaking, fifteen minutes ago we prescribed therapy for. You can either view this phenomenon as some sort of supercharged burst of sublime progressive evolution, or you can worry that we have gone stark-raving mad. Seriously, who among us a mere twenty years ago would have thought that this sort of thing would get the sort of fawning treatment it has gotten today? A brave new world we have.

So, I wish Bruce-Caitlyn the best and hope for him-her that the remaining years of his-her life provide the happiness that he-she has been denied. 

One nagging question remains...I wonder why he chose to spell his new name with a "C" rather than the trademark "K" of his famous reality television family?