transition

The Sexual Freedom Project: Born This Way?

(También en Español)

Are we all “born this way” or is it possible for us to evolve in our sexuality as we grow up? Do you agree that there is pressure even within the LGBT community to conform to the idea that our sexual orientation and gender identification is inherent, genetic, or otherwise predisposed? What does “born this way” mean to you?

Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

Video by Tiye Massey.

The Sexual Freedom Project: “I AM” Gina

Here’s another great video from the I AM: Trans People Speak project of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. Please be sure to check out their website for more information and videos of trans individuals telling their own stories in their own words.

Gina identifies as a union elevator constructor, a parent, a dog owner, and trans. She talks about the results of coming out as trans to her mom and dad, her children, and the owners of her company and her union, and her joy in how she has been accepted and welcomed. Gina reminds us that by living one’s truth and walking through our fears, we open our lives up in new, better, and unpredictably exciting ways.

What is your coming out story, and what were the results?

Tell us your story, let us know what you think. Make a video, write a poem, song, or an essay — or even create an original work of art — and express your thoughts on these topics. If we feature your contribution on the site, we will send you a free VenusPlusX t-shirt to thank you.

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Becoming and Being an Avatar—Choosing the Transhuman

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español “I think when one sees something true and beautiful, one wants to tell people about it, out of affection, out of compassion, out of love. … Can you ask the flower why it grows, why it has perfume? It is for the same reason the speaker talks.”                                            —Jiddu Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti was “discovered” at age 14 by Charles Leadbeater, a prominent Theosophist, who proclaimed him destined to become a spiritual teacher and a great orator, likely to be the “vehicle for the Lord Maitreya,” an advanced spiritual entity, according to Theosophical doctrine, who periodically appears on Earth as a World Teacher to guide the evolution of humankind.

Krishna was removed from his family and educated by the Theosophists, preparing him to assume the great role for which he had been chosen. His education in colonial India was followed by the worldwide development of the World Teacher project, of which he was the nominal head. Apparently he had more serious and personal thoughts about this matter than his sponsors in the Theosophical Society, for in 1929, at age 34, he publicly repudiated the project and Theosophy.

The remainder of Krishna’s life suggests that Leadbeater’s recognition of the boy’s destiny as a spiritual teacher and great orator was entirely correct, at least after he was educated and prepared by the Theosophists to be their messiah. Krishnamurti denounced the concept of saviors, spiritual leaders, or any other intermediaries to reality, and urged people to directly discover the underlying causes of the problems facing individuals and society. He declared allegiance to no nationality, caste, religion, or philosophy, and spent the rest of his life traveling the world as an independent speaker. In the end, he came to be recognized worldwide as a noteworthy teacher and advocate of Truth.

Krishnamuti is unique among those who have claimed to be avatars, literal embodiments, of Truth. His story shows us that an ordinary person may become an avatar of Truth if only one’s potentiality is understood properly. Krishna truly embraced the concept, even though it overturned the entire foundation and supposed purpose of his life and education. By refusing to be proclaimed an avatar to serve a human dogma, he demonstrated the very quality of being a genuine avatar in the service of Truth.

But what do we really mean by avatar? The word comes from Hindi and refers to a deliberate descent of a deity from heaven to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being. In the New Age of sexual freedom we are revealing through VenusPlusX, the supreme ideal of Truth holds a position comparable to that of a deity in legacy human religion and it is entirely reasonable to use the word avatar to describe a person who chooses to become an embodiment of living Truth. An avatar is most definitely not a messiah. True avatars arise as ordinary human beings who become sensitive to the living Truth that is always present in their minds, and resolve to live their lives in service to its direction.

Why would anyone want to be or become an avatar? There are plenty of wrong reasons born of  the temptation to imagine oneself to have been “chosen” by some cosmic force to perform some heroic function, as is the case with the avatars known through the distortions of myth alone. Of course, as Krishamurti’s case shows us, there are two sides to this quest and its personal experience. Krishna received the material bounty and attention of being the publicly recognized avatar chosen to bring Theosophical truth to humanity. But Krishna did not take this on as a label of himself, so much as a life task to be lived out. By rejecting the distorted image of himself, overburdened with Thesophical doctine, he was able to live the Truth.

In effect, the path of personal development for one who would become an avatar is basically the same as the path of one who would transition to become fully Transhuman. The human state is hardly transcended by the installation of new body parts. The human state is also a shared consciousness—a common story of what our life experience is about or if it be about anything at all. Transition of this consciousness from simple reliance upon myth and fact to incorporate vision and truth makes the human mind become more than human, indeed, it becomes Transhuman. And this phenomenon is what separates visionaries like us from the simply human. Initially, this is simply a change of viewpoint, a commitment to a certain way of approaching challenges; however, with experience, as the response becomes automatic, completely new modes of coordination with physical reality are opened up to us.

In the virtual reality known as Second Life, each participant makes their selves visible to other participants in the form of an avatar, a three dimensional model of a human body or some other form that can be manipulated by an operator (who is, of course, a real human being). This experience is a powerful addition to the original avatar concept, which we will explore in our next post.

 

Can I Transition to be a Transhuman?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español Of course you can. On a normal world, with decent human lifetimes, it would happen naturally as your personality developed; however, the social structures of present-day human society are intentionally organized and maintained to inhibit such personal growth, assuring a docile attitude to the social bullies who manipulate unearned privilege to enslave the masses through religion, government, and business. But these are easy to override if you are serious about realizing your destiny.

But would you really want to be a Transhuman? Becoming Transhuman carries with it the personal assumption of responsibility for the consequences of your actions. It implies that you love and serve every person as you are loved and served by others. It implies that you are committed to the realization of a supremely perfected society throughout the universe by vigorous development and ethical exploitation of human technical and artifactual ingenuity on all levels of literal reality—physical, mental, and motivational.

Transhumans serve humanity in this way because their reasons for being and acting are completely removed from typical human concerns. The characteristic difference between a human and a Transhuman viewpoint is that, in contrast to the human, whose behavior is based on mythic memes imparted by family and society, the Transhuman sets aside all such myth in favor of direct engagement with reality guided by personal dedication to the realization of love.

It is hard for a human to understand how Transhuman behavior is controlled and directed. Without hard and fast rules of response to each social situation, how can anyone expect to have a coherent social experience, without the markers of privilege and dominance so beloved by the apes? The answer is quite simple. The Transhuman abandons all mythic systems in favor of a solid belief in and behavior towards a transcendent ethical system constructed from Transhuman actions in support of the finalization of destiny.

The guide to such living action, as well as the test of the validity of experience, is summarized in each Transhuman’s personal attitude towards the four supreme realities of existence in service to destiny. Love is the desire to do good to others. We Transhumans express the supreme values of reality when we demonstrate Love by living Truth, doing Good, and making Beauty. We reject all acts that do not contribute positively to the expression of one or more of these supreme values.

Humans transitioning to become Transhumans often experience conflict between the fixed attitudes of their old beast and their cosmic vision of personal destiny. For example, they may easily abandon religious myth, while adhering strongly to equally silly beliefs in philosophy or science. The challenge before humanity today is not to meet endlessly around a table to hammer out some foolish patch on a failed social model, but to abandon the cause of the confusion—the myths of our pastfathers, which never really had any value for us, no matter how we tried to breathe energy into their dead patterns. We may take inspiration from the motivation they displayed in their service to Love without being bound by the limitations of their acts and vision.

Humans who increasingly dedicate themselves to the honest demonstration of loyalty to supreme values in their lives are transitioning to a Transhuman state, and this is the fundamental connection that allows the human mind to interface with the cosmos and become part of the emerging collective consciousness of a joyful universe.

–Dan Massey

What Kind of Trans Are You?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

There is a tremendous eruption of discussion, categorization, and disagreement going on now in the Trans community. Two excellent articles were published by Jillian Weiss and Mercedes Allen on Bilerico and have garnered an astounding number of comments. This is, of course, usually the case when anyone says anything about Trans in a public forum. I have compared it to lobbing a bowling ball into a dense minefield, setting off a chain reaction far beyond anything you might have expected, as each personal expression of outrage triggers several more.

Briefly, Jillian speaks for Trans and LGBT unity idealistically and Mercedes criticizes Trans unity as artificial, yet needed in some better form to make progress. As I understand it, the core issue is how concerns of surgical transsexuals are addressed under the more encompassing term, transgender. The formal distinction is whether the individual has undertaken any form of deliberate body modification to acquire the physical characteristics of the opposite chromosomal sex (biosex). Thus transsexuals are people who have modified their bodies by physical, medical, or surgical methods. In this strict sense, transgenders are people who have any erotic or physical sexual characteristic that is similar to persons of the opposite biosex or unlike persons of the same biosex.

Practical XX and XY androgyny (click)

Thus, transgender really encompasses the intersex, the transsexual, the cross-dresser, the genderqueer, the “admirer” or “tranny chaser”, the bisexual, the polyamorous, and, in some limited sense, both the gay and the straight. It is a true umbrella concept. Since gender is a social artifice, while biosex is a physical reality of human life, we should find ways to remove gender details as a matter for debate and discussion. We need to get beyond verbal battles over the exact meaning of sex and gender, and open the door to social acceptance of all orientations and presentations. All people want to get on with much more important matters. The key concept lies within the term trans-.

In English, trans- can have many effects when applied to a root word. Trans-sexual specifies a sub-attribute of sexual that has a complementary formation, cis-sexual. The same is true of trans-gender and cis-gender. On the other hand, a form like trans-it or trans-portation implies movement from one place to another. Trans- can also imply a movement toward a new viewpoint from which true unities and harmonies can be discovered and enjoyed, as in tran-scend.

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One interesting modern use of trans- is in the term trans-human. The meaning of the term is quite clear—anything beyond the purely human, whatever that is taken to be by the speaker. The word may be a noun or an adjective and gives rise to the term trans-human-ism, which refers to the study (by trans-human-ists) of what it means to be or become transhuman and how that state or process might be achieved either now or in the future. There is a substantial community of human transhumanists, loosely organized as Humanity+ (formerly the World Transhumanist Association), with a large number of dependent, allied, supporting, and affiliated groups focusing their efforts on different aspects of what it would / will / does mean to be transhuman either speculatively through the imagination, achievably in time, or immediately by simple direct choice from available technology.

Let us assume for the purpose of discussion that heteroerotic cisgender sexplay is, as so many humans agree, the only normative form of human sexual orientation and gender identity (SO+GI). Then transhuman SO+GI is necessarily something more than human and could potentially accommodate all degrees of variation on each dimension of SO+GI. (These dimensions are discussed in the paper I Am An Intersex Bisexual Transgender And So Are You, which presents a model for describing all forms of human erotic expression.)

Thus transhuman erotic behavior necessarily includes all possible forms of SO+GI expression and it appears that the vast transgender population is probably the majority of all transhumans on Earth. As individuals, we may or may not be transhumanists, that is, students of transhuman emergence. But we are all living transgender examples of what it means to actually be and live and love and creatively harmonize the transhuman, through our own personal transphysical, transmental, or transmotivational developments.

Collectively, we are all trans-. And specifically, we are all transhuman, because our experience and expression of the dimensions of SO+GI departs from the human norm. We should claim our place under the transhuman umbrella with many other people who are similarly transhuman because they have augmented their metabolism, nervous system, skeletal structure, mind function, or motivational consciousness by artificial means.

SO+GI is the most fundamental defining quality of our personal identity. From these dimensions of possibility flow all the unique personalities of individuals, being the instantiation of love in distinct persons. Oppressive acts of families and societies that deny the free expression of individual SO+GI fundamentally distort the growth and function of the human personality. No one has the right to tell another what SO+GI to express, and no society has the right to impose any strictures on individual or collective SO+GI expression.

Click for more on transgender / transhuman connections

Transhumans do not pursue a collective agenda. Rather, they find a few important principles on which they can agree and give everyone the freedom to work to realize these principles without uniformity of viewpoint or approach. By itself, unity without uniformity is the transcending method of conflict resolution, and those who will completely devote themselves to its honest application will find the power to achieve any true and loving purpose.

Transhumans, to be successful as a growing body of committed individuals for the indefinite future, will have to be guided, as a group, by some great vision of a transcendent goal that, once achieved, will justify the efforts of transhumans to bring it into existence.

An initial step towards such a goal is to reach towards a position of unity among all trans- that necessarily recognizes the commonality of our desire to enhance our experience of life by the rational development and utilization of scientifically based technology.

I am a transhuman. I believe the time has come for the transgender community to recognize that we are each individually transhuman ourselves. As such, we are the natural successors to the human, hence the current social and economic warfare against us by those who are scared of the consequences of accepting the human transformation. We refute the foolish myths on which much of modern society is built. But this is not an exclusive club. Anyone willing to reorder life priorities based on love rather than hate is becoming transhuman. All transfolk are transhuman by nature. Our goal should be to recognize these unifying transhuman qualities in our transgender selves and visibly express them through the example of our lives.

—Dan Massey