Battling Dragons: The Fight for What is Right

I finished reading The Players Handbook for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and started reading The Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. Dragons is the campaign that ships with the D&D Starter Set for 6th Edition. Once I get through that, I’ll start signing up as an alternate DM for game nights. I’m excited to try out the new rule changes for the sixth edition.

Last night, I rejoined the JayRod’s table for D&D, mysteriously transported into the steel mountains 2 1/2 weeks since I was separated by the party, investigating a new magic lantern I had acquired. We modified the game to explain that I had lit a Lantern of Many Places, which had transported me across time a space. It definitely came in handy when we had to escape revengeful storm giants at the end of our adventure last night. Hjolmin in now at level 5, in preparation for closing the campaign within the next 10 sessions.

Tiffany and I enjoyed watching the musical adaptation of The Lightning Thief at the West Valley Performing Arts Center last week. News is that the city council backed off shutting the playhouse down after community members protested the action.

Sunday was Father’s Day, or as I like to refer to it, male-identifying parental figure day. It is a day set aside once a year to show homage to the person in someone’s life who is their father. It is also a reaction to Mother’s Day, which has a history as a call to end wars universally--a plea by made by mothers around the world to not sacrifice their children to war. Father’s Day, I believe was created as a reaction to Mother’s Day, so the male is given equal treatment. In doing so, these holidays have created an exclusive club for the cissexual gender binary. Both fatherhood and motherhood have multiple definitions, which include both the biological contributors to a person’s existence as well as someone who actually provided the nurturing and caring for them.

Not all fathers have been equally nurturing, and not all fathers are the biological father. In the transgender community, Father’s Day can be painful. A parent who has transitioned may wish to be honored on the day allocated for their identified gender. Children who have transitioned may be estranged from their parent or parents if they were unaccepting. The same can happen for the transitioned parents. These days can bring up painful emotions, and so some trans people opt out. I, personally, accept any day that my kids want to reach out to me, and always remind them to contact their Mother on mother’s day, even though she and I have been estranged some years now. To make things fair, we should have a Non-Binary Parents’ Day.

My Dad passed away in 1999 at the age of 57. He struggled with PTSD, and would occasionally express his frustration through anger. It was frightening to watch, and his play was at times a little too rough, maybe as an overcompensation of what society expected out of men and fathers at the time. But most of the time he was sweet, loved to fix things, especially the things he broke, tried to participate in my life, encouraged my education, and almost always had quotes at the ready for inspiration. I love my Dad, even though there came a time when I was 16 that I desperately wanted Mom to leave him for our own safety. She almost did. But that was the year that Dad started to change, becoming increasingly gentler year by year. When he bought our home, it was all we could afford, and we had to live incredibly lean.

My Dad believed in sacrifice to make things better for everyone else, and I love him, and I miss him. While I was afraid to come out to him while he was alive, I know now that he would have just grabbed my shoulder in a side hug, and told me, “Life isn’t always simple, kiddo. This is not an easy road that your choosing, and I wish you would’ve know that you could have come to me sooner. I am sorry if I did anything that made you unsafe in coming to me. But I want you to know one thing: no matter what you choose to do in life, no matter who you choose to be, I know that ultimately you will make the right decision. We raised you that way.” And then rubbing his knuckle in my scalp, would say, “Your mother and I love you no matter what, and don’t you forget it, kiddo.”

I’ve started reading Some Desperate Glory. I’m about 26% of the way through the book. Imagine you are a bioengineered warrior teen growing up on as asteroid, and the planet Earth was completely destroyed long before you were born. Your entire culture as part of the remnant is devoted to someday reclaiming a place of your own. Imagine also that you are assigned a role for life when you graduate in either being a warrior, a system tech, and agrarian, or a mother/nursery worker. Now imagine you were one of the best ever to complete warrior training, and your duty is not to go out and battle, but to give birth to and raise children instead. This is where we find Kyr in Some Desperate Glory. In this novel, we also encounter queer and gender-nonconforming characters.

Today I submitted my Primary Finance Report from my run for the Utah House of Representatives, and put my jalapeño plant back out on the porch; the weather is safely back up to at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit. It's keeping company with the tomato plant, which is looking stronger--I’ve ordered a tomato cage to help provide it a lattice work to hold it up.

I am planning to be at the Health and Human Services Committee at the Utah State Capitol, which starts at 1:15 PM. On the schedule is the discussion of medical care for transgender youth. I get that they have concern about the risks that trans youth take when they consider starting medical transitioning, or taking puberty blockers. Requiring knowledge of medical procedures and informed consent makes sense, but not if it only singles out a class of people who have been marginalized in the past. If they are going to require these items, they should do it for all professional medical care, not just the trans community. In this regards, adding class-specific restrictions is outside the bounds of the Utah Legislature and interferes with individual liberties.

Each trans person’s experience is different. Each person has a different level of severity of gender identity dysphoria. Each person has a different medical history. In many cases, early medical intervention is not needed, in some it is medically necessary. The wrong hormone to a brain of a transgender person can result in chronic anxiety or depression. In those cases, with informed consent, it may be the optimal course toward mental sanity.

In the worry about penis size on puberty blockers, the study is completely ignorant of the work done by world-class physicians in Thailand that do not use the penile inversion technique or the abdominal graft techniques for people who have shorter phalluses. I, personally, did not have penile inversion or a graft. My phallus was used for the labiaplasty, while retaining a portion for a clitoris. My vaginoplasty was done using scrotal tissue.

The study seems to also not recognize that testosterone delivered later in trans men increases the size of the clitoral material significantly. There also seems to be concern that some youth would prefer to live non-binary. That’s perfectly okay, and their choice. The fact that 92% of people who start puberty blockers fully transition, while 8% change their mind is a great indicator. The concern about bone density is already handled via Vitamin D and Calcium supplements.

In the end, general medical practice should and must be performed by people who are trained in their field with informed consent. That’s a given. Let that be the law, but let people make their own medical choices, and let medical professionals do their job.