Identity is an interesting concept. We like to think of ourselves as individuals, as singular entities with identities (personalities) that are unique and unchangeable. This means that as a child, we only get asked what we would want to be when we grow up. Which mostly just means what kind of job you'd be most interested in. This changes over time as our personalities develop and change.
In the end one's identity is composed out of the memories one has collected over the years, combined with one's experiences. Having presumably learned from one's mistakes and successes, and having made note of what worked for others, one will have changed one's behaviour to become more efficient and presumably happier.
Yet the question that rarely gets asked of children is who they want to be when they grow up. What kind of person, do they favour kindness and empathy over a colder, more business-like approach to others? Some of this is in obviously covered in the kind of job they profess interest for, but I imagine it would be enlightening to address this more directly. Not just for children either.
Even as a child I'd be wrestling with lots of questions about life, and found a willing person to bounce such thoughts off in my mum. She had gone through plenty of less pleasant experiences in her life, starting off with physical abuse in her childhood years, and essentially surviving through a less than welcoming family. Those are the types of experiences which force one already as a child to take a few steps back and really look at people.
As for what person I wanted to be when I grow up, I always felt strongly that being fair to others was essential, and to demand in return that they would treat me and others fairly as well. This meaning that you'd not steal, lie, discriminate or otherwise act in a negative way towards others. Mostly because it does not make sense to act negatively towards others. In the end it just creates this self-perpetuating system of negativity and hatred that will hurt countless people.
Even the experience of getting sexually abused as a young child does not seem to have affected that conviction. Yes, it is necessary to accept and understand that oneself was not to blame for what happened, but to realise that it was the person or persons who did this to you deserve all the blame. That does not mean that you should hate those people, however. To carry hatred in one's heart only affects oneself.
I have always found a lot of inspiration in the saying that 'the best way to take revenge is by living a good life'. That to me summarises the breaking of the chain of negativity. By countering something negative with something positive, you both end up living a much better life by spending that energy on something productive, and the person responsible for the negativity that made you suffer is put off-balance by not getting the expected response, as well as having to watch you ignore them and living that good life.
In the end it's about light, air and joy. A self-perpetuating cycle of happiness, honesty and progress towards a better future for all. It's all about the person one wishes one to become, both as a child and as an adult. We can be that change.
Be optimistic, do give that compliment you thought would be awkward to say, don't be afraid to make a fool of yourself by helping out that person at the busy train station who is wrestling with a suitcase, dare to smile at a child and drop the mask of adulthood. It are the small things that make the world move.
Maya
Thursday 18 July 2019
Sunday 14 July 2019
Why transsexuality hurts intersex people
It's been nearly fifteen years now since I first visited a gender team. This was in early 2005, when after an extremely confusing puberty I deduced from online references that I was most likely intersex. Part of the evidence involved my skeletal features and my general physique. I figured that I would get medical help with this matter soon. Yet as it turned out, I'd be forced to be my own physician for a lot longer than I had imagined.
My skeleton is absolutely that of a female human, with its wide, tilted pelvis, that causes the thigh bones to rotate inwards to effect the female way of walking. It also causes the inwards curve on the lower part of the 'S' that forms the spinal column. I also have the outwardly set lower arms, which presumably evolution engineered so as to allow lower arms to not hit the sides of the wider hips.
Add to this the lack of any masculine features in the skull, such as an eyebrow ridge, and it's obvious that my skeleton is devoid of any features that are masculine. The other features, however, are all secondary female characteristics that would have developed during puberty. This all seemed to point strongly towards the conclusion that despite the outwards appearance of my genitals, I was in fact not male, but had to be intersex.
At the gender team, however, my opinion wasn't shared. Though first seemingly accommodating, a blood test for testosterone levels and a urologist appointment were scheduled. The first would supposedly show that I had regular male hormone levels, and the second ended with me being told by this urologist after some unenthusiastic external prodding that no sign of me being intersex had been found by him.
Quickly this situation devolved into me being pushed into the transsexuality protocol, with numerous discussions with psychologists and kin revolving around why I'd not just simply accept that I was not intersex, but transsexual. After two years of this, the final drop was a fake-out where a previously extended offer - to start on hormone therapy towards a female hormone balance and skip the transsexual protocol - was brutally retracted and with me subjected to a ten-minute monologue of how I'd have to stop being so difficult and that following the transsexual protocol towards gender-reassignment surgery was the only option for me to get what I want.
Suffice it to say, that was the day when I decided to become my own doctor again. Getting hormone level tests via my GP was easy. Obtaining the hormones via the internet was too easy and even affordable. Calculating the right doses took a bit of effort, but was doable. That was the moment when I figured out that I had neither typical male, nor typical female hormone levels.
Testosterone was being produced at elevated levels for a female body, but not significantly so, while estradiol would be high for a male body, but on the low end for a female body. I also paid out of pocket for an MRI scan of my abdomen. That scan showed me to be a hermaphrodite, with both male and female genitals present, though with a closed-off vagina.
While initially thinking that this MRI scan in 2007 might change things, this quickly resulted again in my getting stonewalled in the Dutch medical system, with doctors there insisting that nothing could be seen on the scans, and that I was just male, and transsexual. After shifting gears in 2011, I would focus on getting my official gender changed from male to female using a Dutch law aimed at intersex people, to finally put an end to the mass-confusion in waiting rooms due to this official gender not matching my phenotype.
I managed to get the required orchiectomy ('castration') that the Dutch law required to prove that I could no longer be fertile as the old gender. The resulting biopsy of the removed testicles showed that they were underdeveloped, explaining why they had never produced significant amounts of testosterone. This just added to the body of evidence about me being intersex, along with the exploratory part of that orchiectomy surgery, where the surgeon opened the perineum and found the entrance of the vagina.
Fast-forward another eight years, and the same pattern repeats over and over. I can try my utmost to find solid evidence about me being intersex, but it will be denied and I will be pushed back into just giving up, admitting to being transsexual and playing that game. Giving up, getting my body cut up and my spirit broken. Never being allowed to just be myself.
When I say that I hate transsexuality [1], it is from the above described perspective. If transsexuality didn't exist, would I have had to spend fifteen years (and counting) suffering through this non-existence with a condition that is more than real to me? Will there ever be an end to this? Is giving into what feels like the tyranny of transsexuality the only option that's being provided other than to simply end one's life? I question this.
And I'm not the only intersex person to feel this way. A good (trans) friend of mine mentioned recently on Twitter how she had been told the same thing by other intersex people she knows: how the insistence of the medical system and society to force intersex people to be like transsexuals is harming them. It feels both positive (confirmation) to hear this from others, though it also makes me feel terribly sad that so many of us intersex people are affected by this.
I will never judge a person for something what they are. I will however judge anyone based on their actions and deeds. I will judge those medical professionals and kin who caused me and so many others like me such untold suffering and trauma. They made us feel disgusted and have our traumas triggered at the mere mentioning of 'transsexuality', and who made being confronted with transsexual people such an awkward and at times traumatic experience.
As mentioned in the linked post as well, I would love to be able to find a place for this trauma, but I cannot do so while the cause behind it hasn't ended. Transsexuality is still hurting us intersex people, and those hateful, ignorant doctors will keep inflicting that same blunt instrument of transsexuality on us intersex people until we finally all submit to it, giving up our own identity.
I cannot find medical help for my intersex condition, even as it changes, causes discomfort and pain, with possible harmful long-term implications from the closed-off vagina. All I can be to the medical world is either a regular woman/man or transsexual. As I'm neither, I do not exist.
Here's to being invisible and hurting in so many ways.
Maya
[1] http://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/06/torn-between-hate-love-and-hope.html
My skeleton is absolutely that of a female human, with its wide, tilted pelvis, that causes the thigh bones to rotate inwards to effect the female way of walking. It also causes the inwards curve on the lower part of the 'S' that forms the spinal column. I also have the outwardly set lower arms, which presumably evolution engineered so as to allow lower arms to not hit the sides of the wider hips.
Add to this the lack of any masculine features in the skull, such as an eyebrow ridge, and it's obvious that my skeleton is devoid of any features that are masculine. The other features, however, are all secondary female characteristics that would have developed during puberty. This all seemed to point strongly towards the conclusion that despite the outwards appearance of my genitals, I was in fact not male, but had to be intersex.
At the gender team, however, my opinion wasn't shared. Though first seemingly accommodating, a blood test for testosterone levels and a urologist appointment were scheduled. The first would supposedly show that I had regular male hormone levels, and the second ended with me being told by this urologist after some unenthusiastic external prodding that no sign of me being intersex had been found by him.
Quickly this situation devolved into me being pushed into the transsexuality protocol, with numerous discussions with psychologists and kin revolving around why I'd not just simply accept that I was not intersex, but transsexual. After two years of this, the final drop was a fake-out where a previously extended offer - to start on hormone therapy towards a female hormone balance and skip the transsexual protocol - was brutally retracted and with me subjected to a ten-minute monologue of how I'd have to stop being so difficult and that following the transsexual protocol towards gender-reassignment surgery was the only option for me to get what I want.
Suffice it to say, that was the day when I decided to become my own doctor again. Getting hormone level tests via my GP was easy. Obtaining the hormones via the internet was too easy and even affordable. Calculating the right doses took a bit of effort, but was doable. That was the moment when I figured out that I had neither typical male, nor typical female hormone levels.
Testosterone was being produced at elevated levels for a female body, but not significantly so, while estradiol would be high for a male body, but on the low end for a female body. I also paid out of pocket for an MRI scan of my abdomen. That scan showed me to be a hermaphrodite, with both male and female genitals present, though with a closed-off vagina.
While initially thinking that this MRI scan in 2007 might change things, this quickly resulted again in my getting stonewalled in the Dutch medical system, with doctors there insisting that nothing could be seen on the scans, and that I was just male, and transsexual. After shifting gears in 2011, I would focus on getting my official gender changed from male to female using a Dutch law aimed at intersex people, to finally put an end to the mass-confusion in waiting rooms due to this official gender not matching my phenotype.
I managed to get the required orchiectomy ('castration') that the Dutch law required to prove that I could no longer be fertile as the old gender. The resulting biopsy of the removed testicles showed that they were underdeveloped, explaining why they had never produced significant amounts of testosterone. This just added to the body of evidence about me being intersex, along with the exploratory part of that orchiectomy surgery, where the surgeon opened the perineum and found the entrance of the vagina.
Fast-forward another eight years, and the same pattern repeats over and over. I can try my utmost to find solid evidence about me being intersex, but it will be denied and I will be pushed back into just giving up, admitting to being transsexual and playing that game. Giving up, getting my body cut up and my spirit broken. Never being allowed to just be myself.
When I say that I hate transsexuality [1], it is from the above described perspective. If transsexuality didn't exist, would I have had to spend fifteen years (and counting) suffering through this non-existence with a condition that is more than real to me? Will there ever be an end to this? Is giving into what feels like the tyranny of transsexuality the only option that's being provided other than to simply end one's life? I question this.
And I'm not the only intersex person to feel this way. A good (trans) friend of mine mentioned recently on Twitter how she had been told the same thing by other intersex people she knows: how the insistence of the medical system and society to force intersex people to be like transsexuals is harming them. It feels both positive (confirmation) to hear this from others, though it also makes me feel terribly sad that so many of us intersex people are affected by this.
I will never judge a person for something what they are. I will however judge anyone based on their actions and deeds. I will judge those medical professionals and kin who caused me and so many others like me such untold suffering and trauma. They made us feel disgusted and have our traumas triggered at the mere mentioning of 'transsexuality', and who made being confronted with transsexual people such an awkward and at times traumatic experience.
As mentioned in the linked post as well, I would love to be able to find a place for this trauma, but I cannot do so while the cause behind it hasn't ended. Transsexuality is still hurting us intersex people, and those hateful, ignorant doctors will keep inflicting that same blunt instrument of transsexuality on us intersex people until we finally all submit to it, giving up our own identity.
I cannot find medical help for my intersex condition, even as it changes, causes discomfort and pain, with possible harmful long-term implications from the closed-off vagina. All I can be to the medical world is either a regular woman/man or transsexual. As I'm neither, I do not exist.
Here's to being invisible and hurting in so many ways.
Maya
[1] http://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/06/torn-between-hate-love-and-hope.html
Friday 12 July 2019
Where there should be happiness, there is just exhaustion
A new home has been secured, the necessary forms have been filled out and submitted, and financial obligations have been handled. Next week should see me moving into a new place. It's big and spacious, with a large conservatory, multiple terraces and a garden. It's located in a quiet area, with a nearly completely unobstructed view from the living room windows across the fields.
I notice that I do find comfort in the thought that I'll soon be living in this new place. Yet at the same time I find it hard to commit to any thought like that until it's become reality. And even then there's still this massive backlog of... things and feelings of the past years that have to be processed. Not just from when I first moved to Germany, but also so many years of living in the Netherlands, but not really living.
Earlier today my mom sent me more pictures of my youth she had found and wanted to show me. Pictures of me with my brothers on the farm, working on our projects in the mud, amongst the fields and wide open spaces. Looking at a picture like that brings memories flooding back and makes me realise just how much I miss all of that. The village where we grew up, our neighbours and friends, the school and everything else.
It made me realise strongly just how much I am not a city person. That's why this new place that I'll be moving into is the right choice, I think. Away from the city, back into a more rural environment, with more of the space and nature with which I grew up. It should provide a healthy environment for me to do all of this catching up, as well as to finally finish writing that first part of my autobiography.
Rationally I'm all onboard with this, and I can see myself plotting a course through all of this, finally leaving the misery of the past years behind me. Yet emotionally it will all take much longer. There's only so much one can take before burning through one's emotional reserves. After the brutality of the now finished legal eviction battle, it's clear that there were no victors there, with both sides incurring massive financial losses. Maybe if I had switched to that better lawyer sooner I'd have come out better, but that's all too late now.
It's also hard not to feel largely alone, either. Recent events have shown me that sadly the same kind of bullies who have harassed and terrorised me before will likely always keep popping up. The type who'll try to find whatever weakness they can find in you and exploit it for their own sick games. Like the bullies who'd harass me in 2011, both before and after my failed suicide attempt. It's often hard to tell whether they have a real goal, other than to live off the misery of others.
I'm at least grateful that such... people do not really get to me any more. They'll try to spread rumours and try to character assassinate you, but the people who really know you, and who aren't afraid of actually talking to you and ask questions will no fall for such tricks. It's just a matter of finding those decent human beings with whom it's actually a pleasure to interact.
At this point my faith in humans in general has quite obviously been diminished significantly, with me being hardly any further as far as my intersex condition and its treatment goes than when I moved to Germany in late 2013. It saddens me to think that perhaps I'll never know the answer to any of my questions, receive medical help and live out my life just as invisible as an intersex person as I do today.
My sincere hope that this raw, bleeding wound inside my very psyche can heal over time, with everything else that causes me grief resolving itself as well. Because I don't want to be always occupied with myself. There are far more interesting things out there, after all, and so many people to meet and sights to behold.
And maybe, just maybe, in the near future I'll feel that spark of happiness again.
Maya
I notice that I do find comfort in the thought that I'll soon be living in this new place. Yet at the same time I find it hard to commit to any thought like that until it's become reality. And even then there's still this massive backlog of... things and feelings of the past years that have to be processed. Not just from when I first moved to Germany, but also so many years of living in the Netherlands, but not really living.
Earlier today my mom sent me more pictures of my youth she had found and wanted to show me. Pictures of me with my brothers on the farm, working on our projects in the mud, amongst the fields and wide open spaces. Looking at a picture like that brings memories flooding back and makes me realise just how much I miss all of that. The village where we grew up, our neighbours and friends, the school and everything else.
It made me realise strongly just how much I am not a city person. That's why this new place that I'll be moving into is the right choice, I think. Away from the city, back into a more rural environment, with more of the space and nature with which I grew up. It should provide a healthy environment for me to do all of this catching up, as well as to finally finish writing that first part of my autobiography.
Rationally I'm all onboard with this, and I can see myself plotting a course through all of this, finally leaving the misery of the past years behind me. Yet emotionally it will all take much longer. There's only so much one can take before burning through one's emotional reserves. After the brutality of the now finished legal eviction battle, it's clear that there were no victors there, with both sides incurring massive financial losses. Maybe if I had switched to that better lawyer sooner I'd have come out better, but that's all too late now.
It's also hard not to feel largely alone, either. Recent events have shown me that sadly the same kind of bullies who have harassed and terrorised me before will likely always keep popping up. The type who'll try to find whatever weakness they can find in you and exploit it for their own sick games. Like the bullies who'd harass me in 2011, both before and after my failed suicide attempt. It's often hard to tell whether they have a real goal, other than to live off the misery of others.
I'm at least grateful that such... people do not really get to me any more. They'll try to spread rumours and try to character assassinate you, but the people who really know you, and who aren't afraid of actually talking to you and ask questions will no fall for such tricks. It's just a matter of finding those decent human beings with whom it's actually a pleasure to interact.
At this point my faith in humans in general has quite obviously been diminished significantly, with me being hardly any further as far as my intersex condition and its treatment goes than when I moved to Germany in late 2013. It saddens me to think that perhaps I'll never know the answer to any of my questions, receive medical help and live out my life just as invisible as an intersex person as I do today.
My sincere hope that this raw, bleeding wound inside my very psyche can heal over time, with everything else that causes me grief resolving itself as well. Because I don't want to be always occupied with myself. There are far more interesting things out there, after all, and so many people to meet and sights to behold.
And maybe, just maybe, in the near future I'll feel that spark of happiness again.
Maya
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