From Passive to Active Trans-feminine

Organisms don’t just passively wait, then, for a lucky accident or resign themselves to dying out, but actively remodel themselves in response to changes in their environment. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

… i read this today in the light of my own “remodeling,” which is a remodeling of my outward bodily landscape to align with my trans-feminine psychological landscape… my understanding of self internally, manifested to the surface of my body, with the knock on effect of changing the way i am interpreted by family, friends, acquaintances and strangers…

… what McGilchrist has in mind here is the ability of organisms to change their biological characteristics on the fly… he is also adamant that we have to consider all manifestations in the cosmos as interconnected and part of a cosmic flow…

… i wonder, can my trans-feminine evolution be viewed as a response to a changing environment?… can i consider it both a psychological and a physical evolution?…

… yes and yes…

… the basic reason is that my psychology is intimately bound with my biology… the two are not separable… and the changes brought about in my level of happiness or despair have to be both psychological and biological…

… what changes in environment might i be responding to?…

… the political environment became more toxically masculine than ever in the past decade… an enormous amount of stress has been put on my liberal stance… i have great worries that the tolerance i believe in will be displaced with intolerance… my response with trans-feminine presentation is an act of defiance that, in retrospect, seems necessary… challenge the intolerance with the thing it fears most…

… my very intolerant father died three years ago now, which is no small factor in the release of my feminine, something that disturbed him greatly even when it was only long hair…

… i am in a phase of life (retired) that means i don’t have to care what people think of me…

… i am in a phase of life where one either ossifies and withers, or one continues to evolve… i choose to evolve…

… because i am so much happier with my being in this world… feel so much more complete and whole in my being in this world… i believe there are biological changes going on in response to the changes in how i feel about myself…