Twenty-seven seven

 It is late. I probably could sleep. But I don't want to. Sleeping means waking up. And waking up means deciding if I can face another day. They have no end. They simply proceed one after the other.

I do, I did and I will think about ending my life. I know that if you read this, you will likely say, oh, you should not. You should fight for it. 

Fight for what? When I wake up, I find out if there's any work for me. If there is, I know I can do it and make maybe enough to pay the rent. I usually can't stand to do much more because it's not fun, it's not good work. It's not boring like your job is boring, or tiring like your job is tiring. It's not even soul destroying. It's crushing because it's the best I can hope for. It's all I am good for.

Doing all you are good for is not soul destroying. It's a way of reminding yourself you do not have a soul; you do not have any beauty; you have nothing that anyone wants.

I don't have friends. There are a couple of people at the dog park I talk to but those are all the friends I have. Why don't I have them? Why don't I make more? I'm not unfriendly. I'm a bit odd maybe but not even really so much that you'd notice. If I can fight down the little professor, I'm at least sometimes interesting.

Or I thought I was. I had a couple of people I talked to regularly. But they grew bored of me. Sufficiently that they just didn't want to be my friend any more. It has left me profoundly empty, bereft.

The cause of not having friends is that I worked from home. I gave up having a life, friends, everything for people I loved. And what does that reward you? One woman I just couldn't love any more; the other, well, she never was the person I loved, and finding that out crushed me. It caused a crisis of confidence that I have not recovered from. It left me unable to find anyone who might care for me.

I know that some people who read this will protest that they do care for me. I don't mean you don't love me. I don't even mean you don't think about me. I'm sure people do. I mean you cannot care for me. Not as a child. As someone who is present. As someone who will share their problems with me and listen to mine. Not even that. I don't want to spend my days bleating. As someone who already knows them and will be a safe place for me.

I do not have anything safe in my life. I just have things that hurt. They hurt all the time. Each thing sits there and says, you deserve it. Because that is how I see the world. Despite all the unfairness, the injustice, the wonky scales that I can see all around me, I am still getting what I deserve. 

I just can't get out of it. I can't get a job to give me the money to save to have the backstop that you are supposed to have. I cleared most of my debts and then I got more because I didn't have work and I have to live. I am crushed by rent and I can't afford not to pay it. What a quandary! I am too poor to move out. It haunts me: how easily I could be free of those debts, for what a low price. But it's a price I can't pay. And I had a car crash that left me hurt and broken, and facing even more debt. I can't do anything about it. I dread hearing about how much people think I will give them. I cannot give them anything.

I cannot even be bankrupt. To survive, I had to create a situation that if I reveal it to an insolvency official, I will be in even worse trouble. 

I do know what some people will think. Just suck it up. Get an extra job and work hard. But I have had to try to make my life less miserable so that I can bear it. And seriously, what job? What extra job can I have?

***

It gets worse. I can't talk about it here but this is not all that leaves me powerless and bereft. I recently went to England and that made things worse. No one intended that it should but it did. Because I know that being here is what makes me want to die and I can't change it. It's no one's fault but my own. But I know that that's a losing battle, something I can't fix. You cannot reason with something that howls with its own pain that makes no sense, knows no reason. I will talk about it another time. I cannot afford therapy so this is all I have.

So tomorrow I will wake up and hope that it looks a little brighter. But it won't. There will just be a voice following me around the house as I clean it, whispering did you think you could have a dream? Did you think you could have what you wanted? Did you think you could be happy? Did you think you could be loved? And laughing at me, screeching with laughter, while me, I can't laugh along with it. My laughter vanished seven years ago and it's the fear that it won't come back that is making me think about stopping.

posted by Dr Zen @ 1:23 am 0 comments

Twenty-two seven

 When you feel, or maybe are, powerless, it can be hard to sympathise with people who are struggling with the outcomes of their own choices. I think that's probably truer if those choices are more proximate but aren't your own just the same, just more distant?

posted by Dr Zen @ 7:01 pm 0 comments

Two three

 A, maybe the, problem with communism is that it prescribes a revolution and then invites everyone who has been dispossessed by said revolution to live with it. In a world where capitalism still exists, that presents obvious hurdles for the communists. Not least that the dispossessed people won't just live with it and they are going to resist because no one likes to be dispossessed, and they can't be convinced by your very rational and obviously correct political philosophy. So the problem is what you do about them.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:07 pm 0 comments

Fourteen two

 Meet Joe Black has so much good in it that it floods over you when you try to think of it. Yes, I know it's schmaltzy but I love schmaltzy. I have always believed in the lightning strike. I have always believed in "you were there; you were the guy" and it's all I've ever wanted to be there and be the guy, even if that is an impossible dream.

I adore when Quince, who is borderline pathetic but finds his balls, courtesy of Joe, to rise to the occasion magnificently, tells Mr Black that Alison knows the worst thing about him and he about her and that means they can love each other without restraint, and yes, I believe in that too.

I knew the worst thing about my Alison and yes, I would have loved her even despite that but she has no capacity to be loved. It's so much worse than being incapable of love, or even just being really bad at it. My dad is really bad at it to the point you wonder if he ever has been capable of love. Not infatuation. He can do that. He is and always has been infatuated with one of my sisters, just like Bill in the film. And poor Alison, who is almost a comic figure trying to put together a party to show her love for him while he just cannot be arsed with it and despite being portrayed as loveable, just not being good enough at loving her back even to pretend to care, well, she is a story about what is just enough for you if you cannot get the real love you yearn for.

There are plenty of wrong notes, mostly stemming from Brad Pitt's mannered "acting", which sometimes really works and sometimes, well, just doesn't. But I think you forgive him because of his incandescent chemistry with Claire Forlani, who is magnificent, even if he does get acted into a tiny ball by Anthony Hopkins, who doesn't steal every scene so much as caress it out of the room and off to a quiet place with him. The wrongest note may well be at the end, where Joe's sacrifice ends with letting Susan have what she should have? could have? will come to want? It's just awkward and weird, and you have to wonder whether she really would just go with it. Anyway, films are not after all real life so of course she does, and if you are a lady, I don't need to ask you if you would because you would. He's the guy and there he is.

So of course this is how I spent my Valentine's night. I have no Valentine but I have not entirely given up on ever having one again. I think that I have spent so many years just with what is enough, or even what is nowhere near enough, that I'm not sure I always mind so much. I am just sorry to have been that person for other people. For some, just enough is enough. It always has been and always will be. Meet Joe Black will never be the film for them. But for me, it is. It is the film for me, the dream of the gauche boy, overfamiliar with loneliness and pain, who wants the love with no restraints, off the edge of the cliff and no regrets.

posted by Dr Zen @ 11:42 pm 0 comments

Sixteen one

 Just before Christmas, I had plenty of work. I could train AIs all day and make enough money to live on. I felt that it would be okay.

posted by Dr Zen @ 3:06 pm 0 comments

Eleven eight

 One thing that is wrong with me is that I can't just ride with a convenient lie. That's a particular disadvantage when it comes to politics, where you *ought to* believe a certain thing because of the bad company you're in if you don't.

But stupidly, I'm committed to the truth. And this isn't something you just sit and *do*. It's something that happens to you. So obviously, I know that in the recent furore over the Olympic boxing, the boxer in question is male and shouldn't be supported by right-thinking people. After all, I doin't countenance men hitting women ordinarily, and whatever the reason for that -- probably just the ingrained sexism of a childhood in rural Cornwall -- it's meaningful to me.

Here are the facts as I understand them. Two boxers had aroused suspicion among their opponents. We should understand the world of women's boxing as a fairly closed circle. There's something of a "tour" and the women pop up at events all the time. And look, I'm well aware that there's a bit of a trope in which white people accuse women of colour of being manly, but I don't think this applies to boxers who spend time in each other's company. 

So the IBA asked the two boxers in question for a blood sample, which the boxers freely gave. It was tested in an accredited lab in Turkey and the result came back for both: XY.

The IBA did not straight away ban the boxers. In sport, you are rarely punished for the result of one test. The IBA decided to test them again. But it needed them to be under its "control". They don't have any jurisdiction over the boxers out of competition, any more than any body does. Boxing is not covered by WADA in this respect. 

The IBA told the IOC about the test but the IOC took no action.

So the next year it tested them again in India. Again they were found to be XY. The IBA banned them.

The IOC demurred from action and allowed the boxers to take part. It was satisfied that the national authorities of both boxers certified them as female and that is the IOC's criterion.

These are the facts. Nothing else is known as far as I'm aware. One of the boxer's fathers presented a birth certificate, which I haven't studied. I'm perfectly content that the boxer was thought to be female at birth.

None of this is very interesting. A lot of shit has been talked but the facts seem clear enough. These boxers are males but the IOC doesn't actually care. Some of the boxers' opponents have protested but there's nothing they can do.

***

What's interesting is how much misinformation there is and how quickly it spread and changed.

First, it wsa claimed that the boxers had been tested for testosterone. At one point, the IBA president had said the issue was high testosterone (which in a certain respect, it is) but he was put straight. No, they had not tested the testosterone. They had tested their sex. 

So the story was that they had high testosterone.

Then it was claimed the father had said Khelif, the Algerian, had a vagina. This is very unlikely to be true, but you can imagine that the baby was "sexed" in the same way any child is: the midwife looks for a penis, and if she finds one, it's a boy!

I don't know what condition Khelif has but it's likely one that left him with undescended testicles and a micropenis. That can be interpreted as "female" by an onlooker quite easily.

Anyway, it soon spread that he had a vagina.

Next up, people claimed he has Swyer syndrome. In Swyer, a baby is XY but has a defective or absent SRY gene, so it does not develop any male characteristics and can be considered female.

I should point out at this stage that human babies are not in fact "all female" in the first few weeks. But what is true is that our *default* is female. If the SRY gene does not operate, we develop as females, simple as that. 

Why can Khelif not have Swyer? Well, these are not just words. There are outcomes. Someone with Swyer will present as entirely feminine. They do not produce testosterone at an appreciable level so they will not be at all virilised at puberty. Khelif clearly is. Even if he was a female, he is one that has been strongly affected by testosterone. He is very well muscled, broad shouldered, flat chested. Of course, women can present that way but not women with Swyer.

Nor is he likely to have CAIS, which might have provided him with said vagina. In CAIS, a genetic male is not sensitive to androgens. But again, Khelif very much looks like someone who has responded to androgens during puberty. His voice is broken. His features are virilised, not just "manly". Still, it's not impossible, just extremely unlikely. And I do think we can apply Occam's Razor.

Next up, some claimed he had XXY chromosomes and this meant he would show up XY on a test. This is beyond nonsense. XXY males have Klinefelter's syndrome and are clearly male. They have penises and visible testicles. And they do not have XY chromosomes!

Along with bullshit about his genetic makeup, stories about Algeria's anti-trans stance also spread. Algeria would have killed him! It would not permit a man to pretend to be a woman.

Now, not to impugn Algeria but that's obviously nonsense. There's no reason to imagine that Algeria is either all that integrated in its thinking or unwilling to go with the flow and just accept the gold medal. Algeria has only ever won a handful. 

And no, it's not going to kill its gold-medal helpful, or imprison him, or whatever people imagine, just because he tests male. What it's more likely to do, and Algerians on the whole seem to have done, is simply ignore it, call the IBA racist, and cheer Khelif on to glory. Or just ignore it. I haven't seen anything official from Algeria. Like any place, it's not a monolith. Women do not scuttle around the streets of Algiers in burkas. Or even hijab. It's not Iran (which also does not kill troons).

***

None of this really matters. But it's become a political thing. A lot of people on the "left" have taken Khelif's side and spread this bullshit because the right have of course taken the other side. But sometimes the right are correct about things, albeit rarely, and sometimes the "left" are just wrong. Their hearts are sometimes in the right place but often they just want a good reason for hating other people. Troon bothering has become one of those things.

It's a difficult subject because after all, who cares? There are men who don't like being men for whatever reason. Let them don a dress and call themselves Dolly and why should we care? It doesn't matter if they are following a fad, or have a mental illness, or are just made that way -- whatever it is, who cares? 

But it's not just that, is it? It's a brutal culture war. It's believe this or be burnt. It's get sacked if you don't agree that Sally is a woman. It's my primary schoolkid being taught that she has a "gender identity". It's drugs, surgeries and above all it's people screaming at each other. And above above all it's money. People make a lot of money out of it, pro and anti.

It's become something of a shibboleth of the "left". And you might ask, why do I keep putting "left" in quotation marks? Because there's nothing really left about hyperliberalism. The left traditionally did not in fact favour self-expression particularly. It saw it as a luxury that bougie people had the leisure to indulge in. But that strand of leftism that sees identity as important came to the fore as leftists realised how totally impotent they are, and how little the working class likes them or their politics. Leftism became a preserve of the middle class and became simply a marker of what fine people middle-class liberals are because they don't want to interfere with other people's individual expression.

Now it's become an entirely incoherent worldview that sees capitalism as an inchoate evil that somehow does not exist within people but controls them. A bit like evil in religion. But capitalism is not a simple force for bad. A lot of people have comfortable, happy lives within it. They cannot connect their own happiness and material wealth with the exploitation of poorer less happy people and the "leftists" can't either. Most of them have no answers except to destroy what there is and somehow imagine that socialism will grow in the rubble.

Having said that, there's no point getting all No True Leftist about it either. Leftist thought is worthless in today's world. It is largely too backward -- imagining that postcapitalist economies can be analysed as though they were the emergent industrial economies of the mid-nineteenth century -- or wishful -- don't ever allow yourself to get dragged into a conversation with an "anarchist" about how they will arrange the sewage in their brave new world. It is now itself just a luxury belief, just another way of expressing unease at a world in which you are somewhat, but not much, favoured. 

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:19 pm 0 comments

Ten Eight

I recently watched After Life. Like all things by Ricky Gervais, it's a little uneven, but it was in parts touching. One thing Gervais is good at is pointing at things and saying, Look what this is. Not really insightful but he does evoke recognition.

The main character's grief was not real -- didn't ever really feel real -- but what Gervais got right was the way grief can rob you of something intangible. I have felt it and that was why the show had meaning for me.

It doesn't make any difference that what you grieve isn't real. In the same way that my sisters make up versions of my mum that never really existed, I grieve for a wife I never really had. I have grieved for how she felt rather than how she was.

Sometimes I think about how we should be watching our child grow together, and how much giving that up ought to have hurt. But it didn't hurt her. It broke me in two but left her unmoved.  I don't know how you decide that. I still can't reconcile any of it; cannot really accept who she is.

It feels so important to me to love people that I cannot undersand someone who doesn't. Can't. Never will. I remember vividly her telling me that she had never felt love, and I didn't take that as a warning.

I was vain enough to think I was different. Now I know I'm not.

And when I say I'm not, it's like something in me has been extinguished. My belief in my own worth went out like a pilot light in a hurricane. I feel like my whole self drained away, down the plughole, and I wasn't able to find anything to rebuild it with.

I hoped that given time, I would recover. But maybe that would have needed stability that I just don't have. Maybe I have to accept that the stability is not just a thing others give me -- not just a product of a good job and a girlfriend or whatever I imagined it might have been. It's a thing inside yourself.

***

The worst thing is that it made me feel hollowed out and I couldn't refill myself. So I feel I have nothing to offer. I feel I deserve it. Where once I would have believed I was a stained glass window and pieces of a particular colour were broken and then another and then another, now I just think I'm the same grimy uncared-for glass it seems everyone sees.

In After Life, Ricky Gervais' character is perceived by everyone around him as special. But he isn't. He's not kind, not witty, not willing to be a good talker. There's no reason that people should see him that way but Gervais writes it like that. He responds to other people in the end, proving their belief in him well founded. Or well founded ish, let's say. There is no twist. It ends happily. Gervais is not a particularly good storyteller so it's ultimately predictable that he'll have a happy ending.

Maybe I will. Maybe I need to recover and stop lying to myself that I have recovered first. But I don't know how I can. I don't know how you fill yourself if you've been drained away like so much dirty dishwater.

posted by Dr Zen @ 3:36 pm 1 comments