In my parents' home:

1) In one desk drawer where they do their bills, there sits easily 15-20 long, well-sharpened pencils with full erasers.

(Will they manage to use them all, before...?)

. . . 

2) My mother pulls out a tube of sunscreen for me, and we have to turn another light on to see the soft imprint of the expiration date that's printed on the crimped edge of the tube.

"I think it's 2022," I'm like.

"No, it can't be," she was like. "Let me get a magnifying glass."

And, it is indeed 2022.

So, she pulls out a spray-can of sunscreen, out of the same medicine-cabinet where the tube of sunscreen came from.

"Here, use this," she's like.

But, before that, we also look for the expiration date on that, and we find it printed on the concavely-curved shiny metal bottom of the can, and it also turns out to be 2022.

"That's bad," she's like.

. . . 

Addendum addendum addendum.

My recent approach to the new trans population that I'd like to try out but have not yet is this:

Ask people if Andrew Tate-like theories of men's dominance over and superiority to women are a more or less desirable channeling of heterosexuality.

(Expected answer: less desirable, with acceptance of the premise that better and worse forms of culture can be overlaid onto something biological.)

The next question:

Could there then be better and worse forms of behavior, overlaid onto whatever the underlying thing is, with the new trans population?

(This type of thought is probably forbidden, but is necessary.)

Ideally, this would open up someone to asking, what feeds into these behaviors, and what paths can be taken with whatever this underlying thing is.

Beyond the whole thing of questioning targeted groups, though, the trouble is that people don't like to be told they're undertaking damaging behavior, and you just have to stand back and let the fallout occur, even though this fallout isn't on an individual level, but also involves advocacy groups trying to institutionalize stuff and spawn more of this whack misguided behavior all around the country and even globally, via non-profits and whatnot.

The new trans population also has so many automatic comebacks that end discussion and write you off as a bigot, like the whole thing about questioning someone's existence.

Like, what does that even mean?

I can question Andrew Tate's b*llsh*t and that only negates him, to the extent that he sees his b*llsh*t as a non-negotiable.

It really is like with the new trans population, they have these wacky fundamental premises (wrongly assigned souls resulting in hormone use), and you can't go near them with a ten-foot pole.

Somehow, too, this reminds me of some post-election interview with some late-deciding (20-something) (male) (Latino) voter who was swayed by some anti-Harris trans ad.

"I don't want them teaching that shit to kids," he was like.

Indeed.

For the majority of this population that you see -- not all, but the majority -- you just have to be around it and observe, and your gut tells you that something is seriously wrong...  Just much, much different, than older generations of trans people.

Addendum addendum.

One of the less interesting takes that I've heard on the new trans population is from my one (art school) colleague who wears women's clothes.

First, he's said that conversations haven't evolved for a decade, and an editorial now reads like an editorial from a decade ago, and that's not normal with a social movement, and it's clear that some major buy-in isn't happening and isn't going to happen, with the goals and current approaches.

Second, he's more recently said that he's tired of the biology of it all and how intersex and theories of its origin come up all the time and people say you must believe this or you must believe that, and can't you just support people from anti-trans discrimination without having to accept this or that theory having to do with science.

With that last point, I'm not so sure, since some sort of innateness is what everything from minors taking hormones to "transition the kids and don't tell the parents" policies are based on, and to the extent that this is some new cultural overlay that's loosely or not at all necessarily rooted in something innate, those other claims become more and more untenable.

Really, discussion of biological inputs becomes unavoidable, and I don't think the theories of the new trans population come out on top...  They've hitched themselves to something that's scientifically whack, and that never ends well.

Addendum.

About the whole new trans population, my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair) always calls attention to commonalities between gay people and trans people, and asks how much do people from the different populations really have in common.

He also said that in the past year in London, he heard a group of (gay) men talking and saying that they didn't want to go to this one bar, since it was all "fake men" (!!!), and he said that he got the impression that they just didn't really take them seriously.

It's interesting, too, because he's had 1 of the 2 recent takes on the new trans population that I've found interesting.

According to him, he says it's mostly a consumer rights group, because if you really drill in on what they want, the core demand is hormones on demand at any age, and that's a consumer rights demand.

The other take I heard was from some people who are in circles around the one (local) (animator) who I know, who are increasingly saying that the new trans population is a religious group where they have a dogma about souls being in the wrong body, and either you buy into that premise or you don't, and everything follows from there.

Like, they support people being able to dress how they want and adults to take hormones within reason etc., but otherwise it's like someone putting a very specific religion in schools or asking to convert you, and they shouldn't pretend it's science or some neutral norm, but rather it's a very specific religion that should have all the protections that all religions have but at the same time other people should be able to recognize it as such and say "NO" and put boundaries on it like any other religion trying to worm its way into state institutionalization.

Trans nerd hormone culture.

In the college town that I now live in, I am always simply shocked at the number of (nerd-y) (autism-ish) (young) women who are obviously on "T" (testosterone), what with their baby down-ish facial scraggle and wearing low-cut tanks that flaunt the hair on their chest and back and upper arms and whatnot.

I mean, there's some men like that, too, dolling up and trying the woman-thing, but it's just staggering amounts of young women versus the young men doing it -- easily 30-40 who I've seen at the restaurant where I now work, or around town.

And, it's not even obvious to me how many of these are (lesbians) who try to "flip onto the other side" for social transition so they can love women and look like a (straight) couple, versus just random-ass (nerds) who got turned on to hormones.

From everything I've gathered, you really have tended to have 2 historic populations with biological inputs who start moving in this direction:

1) Men and women with measurable same-sex arousal patterns, who for whatever reason want to try to start patterning as the opposite sex (usually to "fit in" better); and

2) The whole "trans lesbian" population where it's basically the most major instantiation of this auto-erotic target location error, where men want to look like what they love (women).

And, just like you can shoehorn any sort of biological inputs into different and new and shifting cultural categories, the whole hormones + "I've always been a man"/"I've always been a woman"  narrative thing is a new very culturally-specific thing that people can read their inchoate impulses into (here, a counterpoint would be Brazilian travestis, who can imitate women in dress and use cross-sex hormones, but don't have the overlay narrative about being natural women and being born into the wrong body etc.).

Anyhow, from things I've come across and what I see with these women around town, however, I think basically it's people -- mostly women -- with neuro-divergence who feel like they don't fit their assigned sex-category, and then read their discomfort as meaning that they must be the opposite sex.

Then, to the extent that they don't fit in, it's no longer a matter of something being wrong with them, but rather with the way that society treats trans people, and they can project what was their personal failure into something wrong with the world, and re-cast themselves as a beleaguered heroes fighting against injustice and hate.

In comparison, they could be part of any number of movements -- feminist movements enlarging the idea of what women are and can be, fat-positive movements that resist body shaming, Goth movements where you get piercings and wear black and where people love each other more than in other subcultures -- but, no, they use cross-sex hormones and read themselves into this whole other thing.

And, somehow, although this might change with younger generations, these current cohorts are going to be around with us for a very long time...  I really do wonder how vocal and present they'll be, and how long they'll be in gay spaces.

I also wonder if/when and to what extent they'll start to develop serious health problems, from all the hormones.

A new feat of environmental neuroticism...

...that I began this summer:

I keep the bag from a pack of ramen noodles sitting in my sink, so I can slip it on like a glove and crush any ants that I see skittering around.

. . .

(I had used bunched-up pieces of napkin from leftover napkins at work that I'd save in my backpocket of my work pants and take home, but oftentimes the way the ant was crushed, its kerosene-like stink would get onto my hand and then I'd have to go wash them, which just doesn't happen when you use the ramen noodle bag.)

Addendum --

Like two or three days after I spilled that pitcher of water by the front host-stand at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker was going to bring a little pot of chili flakes to a customer who had requested it, and somehow she looks inside, and she sees that it's full of water with chili flakes floating on top.

"You did that!", she was like, pointing them out to me, after she had already cleaned out both of those little pots of chili flakes, the ones with the little ceramic lifting-spoons.