My big talk on intersex next week

Next week here in Karlsruhe, Germany, the 18th installment of the so-called Gulaschprogrammiernacht (Goulash Programming Night, GPN18) [1] will kick off on Thursday with a large number of talks and workshops over its four day duration [2]. For this year I also submitted a talk, which got accepted [3]. I'll be holding that talk on Friday the 11th.

Not a big shocker is that this talk will be on intersex, but not just that topic. My goal with this talk is to let people see how being intersex gradually became a part of my life, with technology - and particularly the internet - allowing me to stay more or less sane throughout the whole ordeal that would follow after the initial discovery. I'll be holding the talk in English, and it will be recorded for later public viewing as well [4].

In some ways holding a talk like this is more difficult than just going on a live talkshow with millions watching. With the latter you can just wobble into the studio, act all cool, respond to the questions of the host(s) with flair and grace, get that standing ovation and wobble out of the studio again while feeling pretty good about yourself. Oh, and the make-up session beforehand. Love those.

When you do your own talk, it is you who has to prepare everything, plan the time, schedule and ready any images, slides and other materials. And then improvise nearly an hour of chattering about a really big topic without tripping up, technical issues, stuttering, awkwardness or sudden unscheduled rapid descents off any stairs or platforms.

So basically I'll be totally fine :)


Only thing which I'm not really looking forward to is receiving the judgement on the (baseless) eviction case against me on Wednesday. Things like that do not really help improve one's mood, to be honest. My hope there is that it's not such a bad judgement, so that I can take a relieved feeling to the talk on Friday, along with a positive result from the next chat with someone from Amazon earlier next week.

I can kind of picture this as my last hurrah in Germany before I declare my efforts to receive medical care as an intersex person a loss and move on to greener pastures with a new job, advancing my career and possibly building up those crucial contacts I need to sort out the last remaining issues from my life as a nobody.

Would make for a great film, at least.

*Scribbles down some notes for her autobiography~*


Maya



[1] https://entropia.de/GPN18
[2] https://pretalx.entropia.de/gpn18/schedule/
[3] https://pretalx.entropia.de/gpn18/talk/SZMAYU
[4] https://media.ccc.de/