Introduction
Forty Years to Life is an exposition of part of the transgendered condition from the perspective of the author who has known it personally. I received a request to review this book and proceeded to read it.
Author
Brenda Bradford Ward is a transgendered male-to-female woman. She had a career in financial services and is currently a doctoral student in sex and gender psychology.
Contents
Forty Years to Life has a total of 20 chapters.
The chapters are:
1. The Terminology War
2. A Matter of Perception
3. A Manner of Being
4. Encounters of Youth
5. A Singular Event
6. A “Normal Boy”
7. For Higher Learning
8. Key Relationships
9. Lessons of Self and Gender
10. Music Discovered
11. A Room with No Door
12. A Time for Resolution
13. Stepping Out
14. The Condition and its Future
15. The Law and the Church
16. Popular Misconceptions
17. A Call to Action
18. Following the Plan
19. A Closing Word
20. Definitions and Conventions Used In This Work
Review
I knew Forty Years to Life would be a difficult read after a few paragraphs. Although this book is the author’s own personal experience, she wrote it with scientific rigour. Thus, there are a lot of references and evidences to make her point. Perhaps this is because the author is currently pursuing a doctoral degree.
Human essential identity
A person’s honest assessment of self should be neither overly generous nor excessively harsh. It should include a special focus on things that, with motivation and effort, might be changed if that change is desirable. But the assessment also would examine the essential self that is unlikely or even impossible to change.
Humans learn throughout the journey of their lives about the person each one is in terms of things that bring fleeting, and others that provide lasting, peace and happiness; but that knowledge comes from, rather than, determining one’s essential identity.
Whether others accept you as you are is not a negotiation, but their acceptance, rejection or mid-level attitude will certainly affect how you feel about them. A person who dislikes herself or himself must find it nearly impossible to speak, act, and exist with appropriate confidence.
A keen awareness of, and concern for, each person’s own appearance may be as innate as a human trait as is consciousness. Each person continually considers personal physical attributes that easily or reasonably can be improved either from a self or altruistic interest but appearance should never become or be confused with the whole of any person’s identity.
Life experience and identity
The past of a human is forever being a part of him/her but that past need not bind that person. Each person’s past both informs the present and guides the future whether or not it is recalled accurately. The life experience of each person helps shape that individual even as each person influences her or his environment.
Humans usually see the world through their own eyes that they cannot know what life is really like for someone whose life has been significantly different from their own, and in some way, almost everyone’s life has been that different. People are not defined wholly and accurately by their actions but they are identified by them.
Countering fear
A primal part of being human is fearing things that appear to be dangerous. Thus, telling a child not to be frightened is almost as practical as telling the wind not to blow. Reasonable efforts to protect life and property from real and likely perils are an obligation of self-interest and stewardship.
The emotion of feeling threatened by something one does not understand must not be permitted to rule one’s action. It is not the human ability to reason but use of that ability that separates humanity from all other terrestrial forms of life. Adverse bias significantly and adversely affects its practitioners as it harms the people toward whom it is directed.
Countering fear with knowledge or understanding means analysing the thing that was encountered and if it poses a threat, accessing the nature of the threat and how best to counter it.
Human interaction with society
Whether from nurture or nature, each person’s virtues are either exposed and enhanced, or significantly diminished through that person’s interaction with society. Each society and government enforce requisite prohibition of undesired actions as they attempt to provide encouragement for worthy thoughts and actions before, or when, they are needed.
American economic system was designed to achieve in perpetuity the greatest good for the greatest number with consumers as the ultimate arbiters of what good means. It encourages individuals to enhance public good by pursuing individual goals.
People are most likely to be happy when they pursue their own authentic ambitions, not when they choose to pursue happiness or the goals of others. Inability to obtain something intensely desired would logically feed either an obsession to obtain it or the resolve to eschew it.
Achieving the cooperation of volunteers in pursuit of the organisation’s goals depends almost entirely upon the members’ abilities and their degree of commitment when asked to participate, rather than any supposedly implicit authority conveyed or acknowledged by a title.
Where the legislature is or the people are unwilling to act when action is necessary, even greater harm is done to the whole of government and the society it serves.
Life lessons
The author shares a lot of nuggets of wisdom in this book. I will include three here.
1. A few things in life are subject to our control and influence but a host of other things is decidedly beyond them.
2. There is a big difference between waiting something and the tedious discipline necessary to achieve it.
3. One of the most refreshing aspects of vacations is the ease of association or separation, the freedom from formal responsibilities, and the independence from the role each person plays to, for, or in the lives of others.
Conclusion
From this book, I can feel that the author is a devout christian. Her intention of writing Forty Years to Life is to explain what has happened in her life and to explore the transgendered condition from the perspective that experience has afforded. She also suggests some solutions to solve gender identity conflict in America.
Although this book is supposed to be a biography, it is also quite technical. This book will definitely widen your horizons and let you know more about the transgendered condition, perhaps even clearing some long-held misconceptions. Nonetheless, this book is not for leisure reading. If you are looking for something light to read, you should skip Forty Years to Life. Personally, I do not think I would pick up this book if I was not asked to review it. I gave it a one-star rating as it was a hard read and it did not really interest me.
One-sentence summary for Forty Years to Life
Gender identity conflict is a real condition that is often brushed aside.
Quotes
- Speculation regarding what might have been could be as limitless as it is unproductive, except for the insight such introspection provides regarding possible future encounters.
- Those people who seem so objectionably different from us that we seek to avoid having any future contact with them can teach us about things we thought we knew and about things we did not know existed.
- Children seem inevitably bound to exhibit independence and individuality that is often surprisingly different from the expectations of their parents.
- Science is not that set of rules but the process by which its practitioners attempt to discover and decipher the rules.
- Symptoms might be treated but the cause of the problem must be addressed when the problem will not resolve itself.
Rating
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