Originally published at The Danger Room. You can comment here or there.

There’s a definite sentiment out there, expressed loudly whenever any media articles about transgendered children is written, that they’re too young to be making that kind of decision and nobody should do anything at all about such feelings until they’re 18. I think some of this stems from the confusion between sexual orientation (which often isn’t clear until being a young adult) and gender identity (which is, for most people, absolutely crystal clear by age 10.)

At any rate, this view is not just bad, it’s incredibly harmful. It leads many, many youths directly to suicide, and I don’t think that’s even slightly hyperbole.

If you take your time to figure out your sexual orientation, experiment in college, and then settle down on who you are, that’s all good. However, for your physical gender, permanent, irreversable changes happen (or fail to happen) between the ages of 12 and 16. Consider:

Trans girls (girls with XY genetics): Excessive, unwanted height. Widening of frame, especially shoulders. Larger feet and hands. Facial hair. Permanent deepening of voice. No hip growth. Unwanted body hair. Not even mentioning the psychological scarring from missing out of even more of a chance to be a young woman. The facial hair can be fixed later – for many thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of excruciating pain. (Again, no exaggeration – it takes that long, costs that much, and is horribly painful.) You can’t shrink the frame, or get hip curves, later. You can train your voice, but it’s hard and many trans women never quite get where they want.

Trans boys (boys with XX genetics): Breast growth, hip growth, lack of height. It’s not quite as dire, because Testosterone can be delayed and do its stuff (voice deepening, facial hair) later, but no man wants to be much shorter than necessary, and having broad hips doesn’t go away. And a double mastectomy is not a fun or cheap surgery.

So, there’s a lot to be lost by not acting at a young age. On the other hand, some people are uncomfortable with it.

Permanent physical damage, thousands of dollars of painful procedures, years of psychological torment vs. feelings of discomfort in others. Yeah. It’s really not an issue with two equal sides.

Many parents love their image of their children more than their children themselves. That’s the only way you could stop them from fully exploring and fixing an issue like this. Hormone blockers are available and well understood medically to delay puberty and allow time for a responsible decision – don’t hesitate to explore this route. And seek out a therapist who specializes in Gender Identity Disorder, not a child psychologist generalist. Too many members of the psychiatry profession are woefully uninformed about our unique needs.

In a just world, every fourth grade class would have a day where a professional discusses this issue, encourages the children to treat transgendered people like people, and provide a way for students who think this might affect them to confidentially ask for more help. Very very few kids want to be the opposite gender that don’t keep wanting it as they get older. And of course you take every precaution to weed out false positives. But for the kids who need this, you’re turning a life filled with major, painful, emotionally devastating issues into a life with mostly minor issues. There’s no greater act of love for a transgendered child, than to get them the medical help they need as soon as possible.

Feel free to pass this along to anyone who it might help! I wish my parents had seen an article like this 30 years ago and asked me some frank questions.

Originally published at Kirby's Dreamlands. You can comment here or there.

There’s a lot of things that, to some degree, we’d all like to do. For me, this list is something like:

* Contribute to an open source Perl project

* Write a novel

* Travel to a variety of exotic places

* Learn to play a musical instrument well

* Learn to speak Chinese

and so on.

I could do any of these things. (There are other types of goals, like Be A Billionaire or Live on Mars or Conquer France that are a bit more out of reach, and are not in the scope of this discussion.)

So the trick is, when I come across one of these ‘would like to’ things, really think about it. What would it take, what would be the reward? And if I end up, like for most of these things, to just ‘would like to have done’, okay, I don’t actually want to do it. The Musical Instrument goal is strongly in this camp for me.

But the other side is, when I come across one that you end up going, “Huh, I really could do that.” I must let nothing stop me. It’s an actual life goal. These are precious, valuable things, and once I’ve separated out all the fakey goals and can see the real ones, there’s no excuse not to do them.

I think I accidentally stumbled across one of these this weekend. I don’t want to set any expectations, so more on that when I’m further along, but it’s actually a lot of fun to realize you want to do a project, and then start doing it and realize that yes, this is only mildly insane and well within reach!

Originally published at Kirby's Dreamlands. You can comment here or there.

Short version: Wow, what a fantastic weekend! Spent time with friends new and old, saw some neat things, leveled up in Entourage. Best weekend in a long time. Boy are my legs tired.

I spent a lot of the con hanging out with my friend / bestselling author C.E. Murphy. Some of this was wandering the con, some of it was stalking Marvel for editors and talent scouts, and some of it was helping out during her signings. At one point she was doing a signing after Judah Friedlander, who plays Frank (the guy with the hats) on 30 Rock, and he was running long, so I escorted Kit up to the front, and very politely asked Judah to leave. He was very nice and apologetic and it was perfectly cool on both ends, but that was first class Entourage business right there. And he left a copy of his book behind, so, free book for me! (Kit was on Severe International Traveller Weight Limit.)

Saw lots of excellent costumes. People are neat. Fez’s really are cool now.

In general, the vibe was very relaxed for a con that was this huge. People were smiling, having fun, even as we squeezed past each other in crowded aisles.

Saw some celebrities. Seth Green, who is tinier than I expected even knowing the jokes. Felicia Day and Sandeep Parikh from the guild. Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca). Jewel Staite from Firefly. Eliza Dushku. Rick Fox, basketball star and dancing with the stars alum. Various comic book folks like Chris Claremont, Peter David, Matt Fraction, Terry Moore, Dan Abnett, Zander Cannon, Frank Miller, Matt Wagner, Jeph Loeb, and many more. Clark Gregg, who is Agent Coulson in the Marvel movie series. (He was great, he’s clearly a geek first who became an actor and just loves what he does.) Matt Smith who works on Dr. Who. (Not that Matt Smith, though, the one who draws the comic book.)

I didn’t go to many panels, but the highlight I went to was the Marvel TV panel. First they announced the four in-development (aka definitely happening) live action TV shows.  For ABC, “aka Jessica Jones”, from the excellent Brian Michael Bendis series “Alias” (which they couldn’t call it, obviously.) Carol Danvers and Luke Cage will be part of the regular cast.  Also, “The Hulk”. Since it’s the same studio as doing the movies, they’re using things like The Avengers as an R&D budget, so it should look good. For ABC Family, live action Mockingbird show, and Cloak & Dagger. (Squee!)  Animation wise, they announced a Hulk animated series (Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., with Hulk, Red Hulk, She-Hulk, and a couple of others.) Then we saw clips from the upcoming Ultimate Spider-Man show. Great voice actors, like Clark Gregg continuing to play Agent Coulson, JK Simmons staying on as J. Jonah Jameson, Chi McBride as Nick Fury. It looks good! (This is the first Spider-Man show made by Marvel directly.) And then they announced Season 2 of the Avengers coming out next year, and said, “But this is New York, and you guys don’t like to wait, right? How about we show you episode 1, right now?” And they did, the whole thing on the big screen, and it was fantastic. Doom!

I spent a lot of time in Artist Alley this time. When I saw art I liked and the person wasn’t busy, I went up and talked about it. Turns out this is a great way to meet some cool people. (Hi, Anne Cain!) Spent a lot of time encouraging folks who drew superhero women with sensible outfits.

Overall, wow, it’s hard to come back to work. I’ve got all sorts of ideas in my head, some of which I’ll share later. I really needed a weekend like this, to re-establish who I am and where I’m going with my life.

Originally published at Kirby's Dreamlands. You can comment here or there.

Everyone’s talking about the new 52 DC books! And there’s some neat stuff, but 3 weeks in, I’ve come to a clear conclusion: They’re still nowhere near Marvel in writing quality. So, if you want to get back into comics, what do I actually recommend?

Journey into Mystery: Kieron Gillen came out of nowhere and is a fantastic writer. This book focuses usually on Loki. Imagine what a great writer could do with the Asgardian Prince of Lies? Plots within plots, treachery, playing two sides against each other for some other purpose entirely – it’s pulled off brilliantly. Love this book.

Uncanny X-Men: Gillen’s other, more mainstream title. I love well written X-Men, and this is it, way better than any of DC’s team books. It’s rebooting at #1 in October, which should be a good jumping on point.

Fables: This is not news to anyone, but Vertigo’s long running title is great, has always been great, and shows no signs of not being great in the future. Fairy tales coexisting, done really well.

Batwoman: The standout of the new 52. Beautiful, inventive art, good writing, I expect great things.

Usagi Yojimbo: Samurai rabbit in ancient Japan. This is not a furry title, despite anthropomorphic animals. It is a beautiful, well researched story of Feudal Japan. There are no bad issues, and it’s been running for 25 years.

Buffy season 9, Angel and Faith: Both just started up in the last month, and are great continuations of the series. Buffy season 8 is also finished in comics, and was good, though they went a little overboard at times, and have acknowledged it publicly. Season 9 promises back to basics, Joss Whedon is involved, it looks great.

Avengers Academy: The best ‘young heroes’ book on the stands. Interesting personalities, uncertain of their place in the world, and several of them very likely to turn villain if the wrong things happen.

Avengers: Brian Michael Bendis is just masterful at mixing big action with strong characterization, and he does it beautifully here.

Amazing Spider-Man: New writer Dan Slott understands what makes a good Spider-Man story, and Humberto Ramos brings a vitality and youthfulness to the art. Spider-Man hasn’t been this good in years.

Daredevil: Recently restarted, Mark Waid is reinvigorating this character, stripping away the angst and making it fun again.

Honorable mentions: Ultimate Spider-Man, Secret Avengers, New Avengers, Generation Hope, Uncanny X-Force, X-23, Captain America, X-Factor

All of these are better than the non-Batwoman DCs. Give one a try!

Originally published at Kirby's Dreamlands. You can comment here or there.

I went back to my livejournal archives, mostly looking for baseball entries from the Moneyball era, and ended up spending a few hours reading my archives. Oops!

Observations:

* Boy, I was unhappy with politics in the Bush era. These entries aren’t very interesting to me now.

* On the other hand, some of the philosophical entries hold up well enough.

* I followed baseball a lot more closely than I do now. I wish I’d posted more, I really knew a lot back then.

* For me, the random events out of my life posts are the most interesting.

Like many people, I’ve gotten out of the habit, giving in to facebook and google plus and such instead. But it’s a loss – I’m never going to go back and see archives of those things. I should use this space instead.

Also, I really miss all my friends. Moving somewhere random in my late 30s: not a social success.