C'est La Vie.

This started out as just a post about the song Lola but by the time I went to publish it I decided to make it about being canceled.

~~~~~~

I grew up with the song Lola, when I heard the song for the first time, it was the first time that I wasn’t alone in the way I felt, There was actually a song about it!

But now somehow it has become “Taboo” by the younger generation because of the language used to describe us. Some of the lyrics they object to are,

Well, I'm not dumb but I can't understand

Why she walked like a woman but talked like a man

------

Well, I'm not the world's most masculine man

But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man

And so is Lola

But to me Lola is a lot more than the song. And now a days they only hear the words and do not understand what it was like back then.

When I first heard Lola I thought I was all alone, I didn’t think anyone else in the world thought the way I did. There was no internet where the world is at your fingers, your world consisted of those around you. You didn’t communicate with anyone that you didn’t know “in real life.”

One summer day I was washing my car when Lola came on the radio and I heard “Girls will be boys and boys will be girls It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for Lola La-la-la-la Lola.” Whoa! There is a song about the way I feel! There must be others that feel the same as me!

But now I am told that the song is disgusting and it should be banned, but they have no idea how others feel about the song.

So what do you think?

find bike trails

---

There are those who think that the transgender umbrella only covers them, post-ops. A while back as executive director of CT TransAdvocacy Coalition somebody emailed us saying that they no longer support us because they found out that we supported crossdressers and drag queens! That we didn’t support the “true” transgender person those who transitioned.

When I first came out into this world as trans the world “transgender” was defined as anyone who crossed the gender norm but the word is being morphed into meaning something else.

When we were trying to pass the gender non-discrimination law one of the things that we held #1 was that the law would cover everyone, not just those who have transitioned. Nowhere in the law will you find the word transgender, the law says…

(21) "Gender identity or expression" means a person's gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person's physiology or assigned sex at birth, which gender-related identity can be shown by providing evidence including, but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of the gender-related identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held, part of a person's core identity or not being asserted for an improper purpose.

We defined it as broadly as we could, we wanted the law to cover all those who crossed the gender norms.

So what do you think of the “transgender” inclusive or exclusive?

bike trails

---

Lastly I read a blog post where they found the word “trans” objectionable, they preferred “transgender” to “trans.” They find it disrespectful to the whole person, but the way I see it the words “trans” is respectful to the whole community because it allows a person to add woman or man or just leave it as trans.

What do you think?

picture polls

---

Word meaning changes over time, just look at the word “gay” it mainly meant to be cheerful, carefree, and happy. When I do training I start off with definitions and my first slide is…

•     Every culture has their own language 
•     Definitions evolve
•     Words can have different means to different people
•     Some people are very passionate about labels

I think that the third bullet is the most salient point, words have different meaning to different people and we have to respect those differences, unless they deny our right to exist, so whether you agree will Lola being disrespectful, or finding “trans” objectionable or not  we have to respect their views but at the same time they have to be respectful of our views.

We are a very diverse community and there should be enough room in it for a wide variety of views and we might not agree with them all. Language morphs, words morphs we must be respective to the changes while they have to be respective to us.