Defining oneself by the things that do not matter

 Assumptions make life easy. If you replace doubt and uncertainty with rock-solid assumptions, suddenly life seems much happier and easier to navigate. Not that it really changes reality, of course. It merely covers what is there with pretence and deception. Who can say what is real, after all?

And yet we have had the facts staring us down like the headlights on the front of a truck as it barrels towards a deer caught in the sudden light. It's just too bad that the deer is blind and isn't even aware of the light. Just like how some of us find ourselves suddenly caught by the fender of the truck as it tosses our limp body to the side of the road where we get to figure out these facts if we wish to survive.


When the violence and pain subsides and you find yourself truly seeing for the first time in your life, it doesn't feel good. More like waking up from a drug-fuelled trip that had one feeling all good and awesome, only for it to end and leave one trembling and shivering to face the grim reality of the run-down existence one is squatting in, while surrounded by others who are still caught in the cruel lie.

Like Neo waking up in his pod in The Matrix, naked and confused, and confronted by reality. Not the cushy, make-believe world that would be so comfortable to slip back into while forgetting about the real world. Choices have to be made and the consequences of one's actions confronted head-on. After all, only one of these worlds can be allowed to exist, Mr Anderson.


The feeling of being jaded, of having seen it all and yet the charade still continues even after you have lost all interest. After the confusion of escaping the make-believe world about gender roles and gender identity, to look back on all those wasted years is enough to fill me with bitterness along with a strong sense of fatigue as it becomes clear to me that many others are still caught in this delusion, this artificial world of fantastical imaginings that have absolutely no bearing on reality.

When the choice between a male or female body was offered to me, I thought that was all there was. Yet I could feel my mind slowly shattering as I tried to grasp my own identity within that context, to redefine myself as existing as merely an amalgamation of only male and female attributes. The reality of that experience was as pleasant as the one captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation went through while imprisoned and asked to perform one simple task. Merely to state that he saw five lights, when above the head of his torturer it was clear that there were only ever four lights present.

Everything starts with a small lie. Just a small white lie to make the annoying thing go away, or perhaps a larger one. Lies grow and develop, they multiply and procreate, until it develops into a society and a way of living. Up till that point, I had not found myself overly concerned with defining matters in terms of male or female, finding myself perfectly happy just seeing everyone as fellow human beings. All of that got destroyed when I found out about being intersex and began to think about my identity.


How do you define yourself in a society, when this society has no concept of a being like you? As jaded as I am today, I find that none of it matters to me. Not any more. Things are pretty simple, after all. Biologically speaking, male genitals make for a man, female genitals make for a woman. Simple. That is before society then comes in like a party crasher who ends up lighting the whole joint on fire by accident, through segregating by genitals and making up rules and limitations that lead people to believe that there's any meaning to one's biological sex beyond intercourse.

The freedom that I found in the end was this realisation and with it the relief that I have no obligation to define myself using an arbitrary and non-deterministic set of qualifiers. It's fine to just be you and not worry about the genitals of people around you and the possible implications that their genitals may have on your life. Unless you are in fact intending to date them, of course.


Along with this sense of freedom came the release from having to 'pass' as anything. I am seen as a regular female by society, even though biologically I'm male and female, yet none of this matters to me. Just use those female pronouns so that we can skip the bit where I can awkwardly explain to very confused people what this 'hermaphrodite' thing is all about. I'm too jaded to care about any of those things that do not matter.

Of all ludicrous notions that societies have come up with, the notion that one's biological sex would somehow intrinsically play a role in and limit one's capabilities is perhaps the most cruel. Slipping insidious poison needles into one's psyche that make one believe that something should be easy, or hard because of one's biological sex, or to feel like a failure because one does not live up to the lofty expectations tied to those stereotypes.

None of that is real. None of that matters. Most of us just assume that it does, because that's part of the make-believe world we live in. Except for those of us who experience that high-velocity kiss with reality and live to tell the tale, and the rare few who manage this process in a less traumatic way. To wake up to the reality that this obsession with genitals is not helping any of us, and psychiatric intervention is more than overdue.


Maya