Way too cute for my own good college age guy behind the counter at the camera store in San Luis Obispo when I went there looking for red filters for my Canon F1n and Miranda Sensorex. Even worse, he knew everything about my F1s and really liked that I had that Sensorex and we talked film photography all the while he was digging up filters. Or trying to.

Searching for parts for film cameras these days is a lot like browsing flea market tables. You find a camera store that stocks used equipment and asking about things like filters and lens caps quickly turns into a deep search through boxes and trays. But that’s how it is. I feel lucky there’s even a decent camera store nearby.

They didn’t have any to fit the 28mm lenses I had on those cameras, but instead of just throwing up his hands and telling me he couldn’t help me, this kid digs up a 62mm red filter and proposed finding me some step up rings for both lenses for that filter.

I liked the idea because I didn’t want to have to go online for the filters I wanted. You find any camera stores now that have stuff for film cameras and you want to support them so they stay in business. And this kid’s creative solution to the problem was appealing. I could tell he wasn’t just trying to sell me something, he was trying hard to help a fellow photographer. I mean…he just took one look at my cameras and we instantly clicked. So to speak.

Eventually the counter top between us filled up with step up/step down rings and he kept trying this and that combination until he found ones that worked for both cameras. All the while we kept talking photography and film cameras. While checking my F1n to make sure the step up rings weren’t causing any vignetting with the 28mm lens he looked confused momentarily, then we both realized I had installed a diopter on the viewfinder and his eyes, being still 20/20, couldn’t quite focus with that in place. He was super impressed that I’d managed to find a genuine Canon diopter. I told him I’d got that camera body long enough ago that parts for it weren’t so hard to find, but I still had to look hard for diopters.

Then he realized the Canon F1 I had with me was an F1n…the slight improvement over the original F1, which he had one of and loved. I think my heart skipped a beat right just then. I remarked about how one tiny but very nice improvement over the original was the battery check button position was spring loaded so you couldn’t accidentally leave the battery check on and drain the battery. He emphatically agreed and wondered why they’d not done that on the first generation F1s.

I showed him some of my shots of Monument Valley as a way of explaining why I like to work in black and white with a red filter. He loved them, told me what he liked most about them, and about the film he likes to use that gets him similar results. And it really cheered me up to see how another generation of film photographers was coming into their own.

I think a good rule of thumb now for film photographers is if you need supplies go find a college town nearby if possible. The kids there are into it. I often see Hopkins students at the camera store near where I live in Baltimore.

So many times I run into other middle age and older photographers and we start talking and it turns into a subtextual duel to see who the alpha photographer is (that happens with software developers too). This kid (yes I got his name but I won’t repeat it here) and I just started talking like a couple fellow countrymen. We had a perfect affinity, at least regarding our mutual love of photography. Made me feel very good.

And wishing I was 40 years younger so I could ask for his phone number, and could he take me someplace he knows where there are good photos to be had, and I’d bring my camera. And some film. And that red filter he just sold me.

Fifty-Four years ago…

December 15, 1971…sometime around twilight I took a walk from the apartment mom and I shared, up Parklawn Drive to Twinbrook Parkway, then across the railroad tracks and to Rockville Pike. I sat down on a curb near the Radio Shack and watched the twilight deepen over Congressional Plaza. A classmate I was madly crushing on, but could not admit to myself that I was crushing on, had put an arm across my shoulders as we walked together down a school hallway to a side exit where he always parked his little motorcycle, and given me a quick little squeeze, and my head went into the stratosphere and I’d been walking on air ever since. I was watching the colors in the sky deepen, but all I could see was his face, and all I could think about was how it felt to have his arm around me.

Eventually I could think it: I’m in love. And then I could think the rest of it and not be afraid or ashamed, because nothing had ever felt so wonderful. And from that moment on I was never afraid or ashamed. Life was better than I’d ever thought possible.

It didn’t last. He left the country the following summer for parts unknown. A classmate told me he probably went back to Germany which surprised me because he always led me to believe he was a Brazilian. It wasn’t until many years later I found him again and we reconnected briefly. I should tell the rest of this story at some point.

I need to make this point first: I had it good. I had it very good. Compared to other kids I had it golden. Mom loved me, I never doubted that. But there were others on her side of my family tree who would have been happy if I’d never been born. Not all of them…I need to emphasize that too…but enough of them that I felt the static over being my father’s son all the time I was growing up. Here’s the thing: you grow up in these situations others might consider strange and it doesn’t seem strange to you at all. It seems normal. Because for you it is normal. I didn’t get to meet my dad until I was 15 and that had to be on the down low because otherwise mom’s family would go nuclear. Which…they eventually did anyway. But that was normal for me. Your mileage may vary.

Part of the reason I was able to handle my emerging sexual orientation as well as I did was I’d already accepted by then that there would be people in my life who would hate my guts for something I couldn’t help being, and which all by itself wasn’t anything for me to be ashamed of. But it left its mark all the same, and at age 72 I’m still picking out pieces of the scabs.

So if it seems strange for a guy my age to be completely taken by a series of books aimed mostly at teenagers and young adults, it’s because that background premise in those books of “Forbidden Children” and “Children Who Should Not Have Been Born” and its main character telling the gods at the end of the first series to recognize all their children from now on so no one ever feels unwanted again, really hits me in a very deep place where I didn’t expect the books to take me.

I started reading the Percy Jackson books when I saw the cover art pop up in one of my feeds for The Sun And The Star and realized looking at it that it was a story about a young same sex couple in some sort of fantasy/adventure story.

I have been devouring those kinds of stories ever since Mercedes Lackey wrote her Last Herald Mage books, as a way of vicariously having/reliving an adolescence reading boy meets boy, have adventures, win their battles, defeat the bad guys and fall in love stories I never had a chance to have growing up in the late 60s/early 70s. So I bought a copy and started reading, and then fell into Rick Riordan’s universe of forbidden demigod children, unknowingly born into world where they are misunderstood weird kid outcasts at best, targets for monsters at worst, and half their family tree is dysfunctional, and they have to fight for acceptance and find and defend their chosen family.

I was only able to get halfway through the first Harry Potter book before I got bored with it and put it down. It was at the quidditch match part and I put it down to my reliable allergy to watching sports, and bad memories of being forced into it in grade school. This was well before I saw her dark side online. At the time I thought I should at least try to finish it because it seemed like everyone was thoroughly enjoying the books and the story of an outsider kid growing up in a family that raised him in a little closet away from the world of his birthright should have appealed to me. But once I put it down I moved onto other things, and then later I saw her dark side. It was probably less traumatic for me than others since I’d already become bored with her world. In retrospect Rowling had all the tropes and the skill to use them better than most, but not enough to make them rise above themselves. It’s like the difference I found reading Zane Grey versus Louis L’Amour, or Tom Clancy versus Alistair MacLean.

Looking forward to watching the second season of Percy Jackson And The Olympians, and then season three where we finally get to meet a young Nico di Angelo. Alas at the rate they’re going it won’t be for another six years after than before we get to Nico’s fight with Cupid and it comes out he’s gay and he had a crush on Percy. Maybe in seven years Disney Corp will have enough backbone to actually tell its audience that no kid should ever feel unwanted again.

Even if they’re gay and their father is Hades.

[Edited a tad…]

I took a wee trip to Disneyland and now I’m back at my brother’s house. He lives about two miles from the Amtrak station at Grover Beach. There are two trains that run up and down the coast regularly from there. The Very Nice Coast Starlight which runs from Seattle to San Diego, and the Pacific Surfliner which runs from San Luis Obispo to San Diego. Both stop at Los Angeles Union Station and I have traveled on both of them to and from there, but only the Surfliner stops in Anaheim. The biggest problem with the Surfliner is I have to catch it in both directions at an ungodly hour. This time instead of asking my brother to get up at 5:30am to take me to the station I rented a room at a nearby motel I could walk it from. But I still had to be up by 5:30am just to make sure I got dressed and ready to walk to the station before the train got there. In Anaheim I have to cross my fingers that a ride share will pick me up at 5am from a hotel near Disneyland to get me to the station. Which means I need to be up sometime after 4am to dress and make sure I’ve packed everything.

It’s about a six hour ride on the Pacific Surfliner from Anaheim to Grover Beach, and a large segment of that around Vandenberg is kinda boring if you’re not on the ocean side of the train, until you catch sight of the launch facilities there. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of lumpy treeless hills and no cellular data signal for about an hour and a half. I was wishing I’d brought a book along.

A situation at work has been super stressing me out since I got here and I’m going to try one more time to find a resolution to it, otherwise I’m going to need to disappear into my vacation for the rest of the trip and take whatever static I get out of it. I won’t go into details other than remark quietly under my breath that I am ready to retire again. One heart attack and an ablation later I am not up for a lot of stress anymore.

I got not very much relaxation out of my Disney visit, and maybe a big part of that was how crowded the parks were. Also that notification that I had a fifteen hundred dollar hospital bill waiting for me that I wasn’t expecting. But I should consider myself lucky health expenses wise. I asked if it was another out of network doctor trying to gouge me (this has happened before) and the hospital said no it wasn’t a doctor charge but a hospital charge. I’m still going to run it my my health insurer.

My Disney visit was good…I adore California Adventure…but I am still just as stressed as I was before I went. On the other hand…I’m back in California…so there’s that.

Made my usual Back In California visit to an IN-N-OUT burger joint to see if the burgers and fries as still as deathly bland as I remember.

Yeah…same old same old completely tasteless food. Especially the fries. How hard to you have to work to make fries taste like nothing? Why this chain is so popular out here I will never know.

Milkshake was pretty good though. They will need to work on that.

On the left of Nico is (I think) Persephone, and on the right is dad (Hades).

I’m back in California and the ancestral Garrett Family homeland for the month of December. Neighbors, the alarm company, and all the remote gizmos I’ve installed are watching the house for me. During the winter and summer months it’s really nice to be able to remotely monitor the house and control the thermostat. 

I took the train this trip. Probably after I retire for the second time, and have more free time to myself, I might do more road trips out to here, but the other side of that coin is the political situation and my Maryland license tags might make that somewhat dicey if I have to go through places like Texas and Oklahoma. Plus ICE on the roads. I would never have believed when I was younger that someday I might need to have my passport with me when I go on a road trip.

Initially I was going to take the Amtrak Cardinal from Baltimore to Chicago, but I got bumped off it, despite having made my reservations many months ago. I didn’t get any notifications and only found out about it when I was double checking my ticket for departure time, and saw I was on the Acela not the Cardinal. That was confusing (the Acela doesn’t go to Chicago), so I looked closer and saw that the Acela was taking me to DC Union Station so I could connect with the Floridian.

The Cardinal is a small train with only one sleeper car and it only runs three days a week. The thinking among the Amtrak crew I talked to was they’d overbooked it and I, being a solitary traveler, was easy to bump. But Amtrak made it up to me. When they put me on the Floridian they gave me an upgrade to a full bedroom, and refunded me nearly 500 bucks. So…okay…not complaining about having to make an extra connection to DC Union Station. Also, the Floridian is a bigger train that takes a much quicker route to Chicago.

The snow storm in the midwest worried me. Last train ride back home the Southwest Chief had to turn around in Albuquerque due to a big snowstorm in Kansas and instead of getting to Chicago I went back to Los Angeles and back up the coast to my brother’s house. I didn’t want to get turned around back to Chicago because then I might just as well have gone back to Baltimore and cancelled my December visit altogether. But the weather cleared up quickly once out of Chicago and I made it all the way to Oceano with no trouble.

The three day three night train ride is a lot of fun…at least I think so. Provided of course you get at least a roomette. With a sleeper ticket you are a first class passenger and your meals in the dining car are included, and you get to use the first class lounges in the connecting Union Stations. (The one in Chicago is Super Nice!) One other nice thing about going to bed on a rocking moving train is I don’t have to worry about my self winding watch, winding down when I take it off for the night.

It’s nice to be back in the land of my birth, with family that gets me, Old Juan’s Cantina, and that lovely Pismo Beach to walk.

Here’s something a little fun. Going through the “Science” folder I found this BBC Where Do You Fall On The Male-Female Brain Continuum self test I’d taken back in 2006. It used test questions that it purported to relate to sex differences in the brain, but also in our physiology. That ratio between ring and index fingers for example (mine are equal).

So I bit and took the test. Here’s my score.

Unsurprised…

Also…this:

Totally unsurprised.

I’m going through a bunch of old files…newspaper and magazine clippings from a time when paper was the default means of communicating news and information…and running across some oddities and memories of a past life. Let me bore the rest of you with some of it today.

This was in my “Rightwing Mindset” folder. I remember driving past this on my way to Walt Disney World. Basically all you could see from the Interstate was the large faux Roman Colosseum, where I assume they held daily reenactments of Christians being thrown to the lions, or some such. Not sure how they would have enacted the lion’s part of the show.

I never went, not even out of curiosity. Too late now. 2001 – 2020. They couldn’t make it work and the COVID epidemic apparently finished it off. And now it’s gone to its heavenly reward. Here’s the thing…’Christian’ is big word that compasses a Lot of belief, any random quarter of which is probably not completely on board with the other three.

There’s an old Dutch joke about how one Dutchman is a theologian, two Dutchmen are a church, and three Dutchmen are a schism. And of course, the best God joke ever by Emo Phillips. The point being you are not going to bring in the crowds you think you are, just by branding your attraction as a Christian thing.

Especially if it’s Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.

This news article came across my feed today…

Top Trump officials Miller, Noem and Rubio adopt bunker mentality with housing reserved for military officers: report

Top members of Donald Trump’s White House are reportedly living in homes typically reserved for top military brass in Washington, D.C. as they pull back from neighborhoods where their presences were often targeted for protests by the many Democrats who make the Capital region their homes.

Stephen Miller and Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently joined a growing list of Trump Cabinet secretaries and advisers who’ve chosen to live in reserved military housing, with Rubio moving onto “Generals Row” in Fort McNair and Miller also living in the area after abandoning his digs in Arlington, The Atlantic reported.

They join Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who moved into military housing earlier this year, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is alone among his compatriots in finding some precedent for his decision to move onto Generals Row alongside Rubio.

This had me remembering this recent post on BluSky by Mrs. Betty Bowers (The World’s Best Christian):

People claiming that the Epstein Ballroom™ is really just a cover for a bunker has me fondly recalling what Hitler did in his.

Heh.

Listen…I’m not about to downplay the peril my country is facing now, but for all the warnings about how it was in Germany in the 1930s, it is well to remember that this is not Germany, it is not Italy, it is not Spain, it is not Chile. There’s a reason it is a nation of many sovereign states (and a few Commonwealths) plus Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands, gathered under the umbrella of an overall federal union.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

It was the only way. The diversity of the states and the people within them made no other form of self government possible. The British King tried to impose one and could not. By that time we had become Americans. Diverse, and a bit unruly. Civil War historian Shelby Foote famously said, “Before the war it was always the United States are; after the war it was the United States is… it made us an is.” But either we are or we is, it was the only way to make a thing out of that patchwork quilt.

Listen to an American you MAGA fascists…Fascism demands total control and conformity. You failed to get it from Germany, close as your kind did come, and even then you needed the help of the Treaty of Versailles and the hyperinflation of the great depression. You failed to get it from France…they kept killing your soldiers all the way to the end of the war and maybe you don’t want to recall what they did to the collaborators afterward. And those were small, pretty homogenous nations which America is not. You are not getting servitude out of all 46 states, the 7 commonwealths, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands. Maybe you get a significant fraction of those…for a little while…but you are not putting a collar around all of it, yanking its chain and demanding obedience. It’s just not happening in the country a Russian general once spoke of, saying that the reason Americans are so good at war is because war is chaos and Americans live in chaos.

It is the way…

I think the bunkers you want to be in are somewhere in Putin’s Russia…not here…

Clickbait article this evening, about a youngish straight guy browsing Tinder, getting matched with this beautiful young lady who turns out to be an aspiring singer/actress/model with thousands of Instagram followers, and the meeting she arranges with him turns out to be an outdoor pop up concert that several dozen other men also show up to, who she’d also invited via Tinder, and she gets up on stage and announces they’re all there to compete in a contest for the prize of dating her.

Poor guy is angry for some reason. Says he’ll never trust anyone ever again. Let me tell you about having trust issues: I’m reading this and wondering if this guy is another one of her scams and his sad clickbait story is only another way she’s trying to get her name out there.

Mind you, I’m 72 and still remember everything from Nixon’s The One, the Pentagon Papers, the 18 and a half minute gap, and Expletive Deleted, to Donald Trump.

Hey guy…if you’re real then I apologise, but listen, those dating apps won’t do anything for you except make you feel even more unworthy and unmatchable. I have some experience here. Think about it. If they get you matched up then you leave and then they get no more money from you and what kind of business model is that?

What you want is a business situation that involves getting you close to a lot of people with the same sexual interests as you, but isn’t actually interested in matching you up with any of them. I speak from experience. In the 90s I spent thousands on gay dating memberships and I am still single, but people I know who spent thousands on ex-gay therapy when they were younger (or were forced into it) are now in happy, loving, same sex relationships that have lasted decades. Some of these are even married now!

Not sure if there’s anything like that for heterosexuals… apply to a religious college that emphasises sexual purity maybe… but look into it.

From the Facebook feed this morning (and I wonder how long ZuckerTrump is going to allow people like him to post…)

Remember during oral argument on the presidential immunity case when conservative justices scoffed and mocked at the hypothetical that a president with immunity could just start killing whoever he wanted and there was nothing that could be done if he has immunity?

I submit they weren’t mocking the idea a (republican) president could kill whoever he wants, they were mocking anyone who might object.

This came to me via email just this morning…

Safe Holiday Shopping Tips:

Be aware of your surroundings at all times, and know where the exits are wherever you go.
   
If the crowd gets out of control and you feel you’re getting pushed:

 “Stand like a boxer”, keep your arms in front of your chest to create space between you and the person in front of you.

If you drop something:  leave it, don’t try to pick it up.

If you fall:  lie on your left side to protect your heart and lungs when being trampled.

May I please go live on another planet…

Sartre was right…

Surprisingly enough since I was born in southern California, I’ve only been to the original Disneyland only twice now, and just in the last few years; the last time a little over a year ago. I’ve come to really like the new California Adventure park. It has elements of Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World, plus some California specific stuff and it really appeals to me, more so than the original Disneyland, which I went to more as a pilgrimage. I’m going again for a few days this December and really looking forward to that, and a month with my brother in Oceano. At some point I should probably blog about getting my Disneyland annual pass, then losing it, then getting it again. 

You walk into the Disneyland parks on the west side entrance by way of its Downtown Disney zone, which is between the Disneyland Hotel and the two parks. This is different from Disney Springs in Walt Disney World, which is a completely separate from the parks area. Both are free to enter shopping and dining areas. Disney Springs is large enough (like everything else in Walt Disney World) that it also has dedicated entertainment venues like House of Blues and Cirque de Solari. Downtown Disney is crammed into a small space because that entire original Disney park is crammed into the only available space to it in Anaheim. Walt Disney was taking a big gamble when he built it in 1954-55 and he bought as much land for it as he could afford. Then it became a big hit and all sorts of other commerce began nuzzling up to it to get a piece of the action and he couldn’t expand. So he went to Florida. But over the decades they’ve been buying a piece here and a piece there in Anaheim and they’ve been able to add new things to it. California Adventure was made out of what was the original parking lot, after they got space enough to build a huge parking garage nearby.

So everything in Anaheim is on a much smaller scale to those of us who came to know Walt Disney World first. I suppose people who’ve only known Disneyland are awed by the scale of Walt Disney World.

And so…burying the lede…as I was saying, if you’re entering on the west side, you walk into the Disneyland parks by way of Downtown Disney. Walt Disney called it the Happiest Place On Earth, and the parks are definitely some of my happy places, along with Ocean City New Jersey, Oceano and Pismo Beach. And the open road. I am expecting, hoping, Needing in these stressful times to enter my happy space, at least for a little while, to remind myself from time to time why life is a great adventure, and worth the static it often throws in the faces of us gay folk.

I’m all smiles as I’m walking into Downtown Disney. Then I look to my left and see this…

There…in the upper left…two boys on a scooter…

Two boys who are trying hard to keep the townsfolk from knowing they’re really sea monsters…

Yeah…that movie.

I’ve said pretty much all I want to say about that movie in that blog post. But can you appreciate why it was the first thing my eyes locked on as I walked into that happy place. Oh well…it can’t be all pixie dust and magic.

I’m bringing this all up again because apparently that movie is being re-released, and we’re already beginning to see another round of run up to the (re)release publicity. This appeared in Epcot Italy…

It’s temporary chalk art that they put around Epcot for the Arts Festival. Which is good because it can be easily washed off before Ron DeSantis gets mad.

I can’t even look at these characters just…just being happy together…without knowing how that pure and wonderful first teenage crush (they’re 13 in the movie) has to be smothered and denied if it’s two boys, for the sake of not rousing the howling bigots. But then they’re not boys, they’re monsters, and monsters don’t have teenage crushes, let alone fall in love.

It gets better this time around…apparently. The run-up t the (re)release let’s get the gays interested and increase ticket sales publicity that is. This came across my Instagram photo stream the other day…

This makes my heart ache. I did a little digging and found another…

This is art from the story lead on the movie director Enrico Casarosa was pleased to assure everyone was not about a teenage crush, but rather the “pre-romance time in boy’s lives”. I’m guessing they didn’t get the memo.

And digging further, I found some fan art…

Is it too much to wish that maybe this time, just maybe, this time, there won’t be any more tut-tutting from the director Enrico Casarosa over the suggestion that these two are in love? Because the goddamned story lead sure thought so, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t the only one on the crew who thought so. Is it too much to wish upon a star that a budding romance between two teenage boys is treated honestly and everyone be happy for them?

Probably.

[Update…] I found this link to a story with the headline “Disney’s Luca declared ‘canonically gay’ after spin-off director shares ‘Luberto’ fan art”. There was a spin-off short I never knew because I’ve been avoiding anything to do with this movie: Ciao Alberto. The director of that short shared some of the artwork posted above and that’s given fans grounds to declare that Luberto is canon. For those unfamiliar, this is a fan thing now, where fictional couples have both their names joined together a’la Solangio (Nico di Angelo and Will Solace from the Percy Jackson novels) and Percabeth (Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase, also from the Percy Jackson novels).

On the one hand, this is very gratifying to see now in the younger generations. The heterosexuals among them get it, they see the love between same sex couples, and they recognise it as like their own. I am so glad I lived to see this.

But on the other hand…

In fact, Casarosa said that when they were making the movie they were thinking more about race than sexuality. “Because like, hey, how many different ways as kids we can feel like outsiders. It’s so various. And my version was certainly we were two geeks, losery, and so it’s not where I was coming from but it’s so wonderful and even more powerful for the LGBTQ+ community who has felt so much of as an outsider, right, where this is so real and stronger than my experience, I’m sure to have to grow up with that kind of a difference,” Casarosa said. “I felt really honored and I don’t like to say yes or no. I can say, well, that’s not how we wrote it. It wasn’t my experience, but I love that that metaphor is reading in all these different ways.”

Okay…I see where this is likely to go and it’s so tragically familiar territory. He is so honored. And gay kids are still so much on the outside looking in. And they are still throwing them into ex-gay camps in some parts of this country, and in some parts of the world they are killing them.

Is it too much to wish…too much…too much…

…only the targets ever change, and then only for a while.

So there is apparently a new survey MAGA is waving around that shows a decline in the number of people identifying as transgender. Elon Musk and Matt Walsh are celebrating it as a victory over “transgenderism.”

Oh really?

I was drafted, not entirely against my will, into the gay civil rights struggle ever since I fell in love back in my teen years, and I have seen how this game is played over and over. The idea is to minimize our numbers, as if that makes our demands for equal rights seem unreasonable and excessive. Oh you don’t want equal rights, you want Special Rights. But when you question people for a survey about sexual orientation, in a climate of hate, you are unlikely to get a lot of honest answers. Combine that with people’s own misunderstanding of their sexual orientation because they’d grown up with nothing but myths, lies, and superstitions about it, and a good many of your respondents will give what they think is an honest if completely wrong answer. Then add to that the spectrum of sexual orientation. There’s a reason Kinsey’s scale goes from zero to six, not zero to one.

I would have answered incorrectly about my sexual orientation if asked, before I realized I was in love that first time and saw that everything I had been taught about homosexuals was wrong, even though I was crushing madly on the object of my affections. I was 17…what did I really know about it back in 1971? And even knowing I was gay at that point, I would have been unlikely to publicly identify as that, in a time when almost every state had a sodomy law on its books, and you could be discriminated against in jobs, housing and services. I’d like to think mom wouldn’t have thrown me out of the house had I identified, but lots of gay kids had that happen to them.

What does it mean to Identify As? Being willing to stand your ground and say publicly Yes I Am…or is it a private Yes I Know.

So no surprises, they’re doing the same playbook now against transgendered people. This from comments in a thread about the new survey…

“It’s raw data of those who took the survey. Going just on that, it’s much more probable people are less likely to say they identify given the hostile politics. And when it’s actually weighted correctly, the data shows a 9% increase, not a decrease.”

There is nothing complicated about this. Transgender people start coming out of the closet and asserting their own true identities. A vicious backlash ensues in the commercial press, political campaigns, and social media. Hostile billionaires throw tons of money everywhere they can to demonize transgender people. And then transgender people find themselves facing a torrent of threats against their lives and livelihoods. And surprise, surprise, they start ducking for their own safety and mental well being. And the bigot industrial complex declares victory when their surveys show a decline in the number of people identifying as transgender.

My people have been there too. We know how this game is played.

And understand this: they don’t think the actual number of transgender people has declined. What this survey is telling them (which it actually fucking isn’t) is their expensive hate mongering is working. Transgender people are afraid.

Victory.