Erasure of intersex identity through enforcing of transsexuality identity

The questions regarding my treatment as an intersex person at the hands of medical and mental health professionals over the past years have been, and still are, a strong motivator in researching exactly what it was that made this group of professionals persistently apply the wrong diagnosis ('transsexuality') even when the medical evidence made it obvious that my body is indeed that of an intersex person. As has become abundantly clear by now with the changes to my body's phenotype (courtesy of a nearly finished puberty), my intersex condition most closely matches that of a true hermaphrodite, in the rare sub-form without ovotestes, but with separate testicular and ovarian tissue.

What was it that made these professionals consistently fail to diagnose this condition, even after two independent medical opinions based on a 2007 MRI scan both confirmed this condition, followed by a 2011 exploratory surgery which again confirmed this intersex condition?


While understanding the true motivations behind their decisions and reasoning will never be truly possible, to me the most worrying aspect is that the underlying motivations can only truly be based on either ignorance or malice. Here ignorance can lead to the subject doing harm while being convinced that they are doing the right thing. Malice on the other hand has the subject well-aware of the fact that their actions are doing harm, but an overriding factor (ego) makes this harm seem irrelevant in light of higher goals.

So then, what reason could one have to so consistently get things wrong? One conceivable reason is that when I first visited a Dutch gender team, in 2005, I had nothing but suspicions, and their knowledge of intersex was limited to the harmful drivel in the WPATH standard and kin [1]. As back then my puberty hadn't really progressed yet into a level where my female phenotype was undeniable, I seemed to not fit into their 'intersex' category ('true hermaphroditism' being quite rare), and thus got put into the 'transsexual' category instead.

This is supported by the subsequent talks with psychologists at that gender team, who all kept pushing me to finally admit that I was a boy who wanted to become a girl, even as I struggled to see myself as anything other than a child at that point in time. Just a child who wanted to understand their body.

Across multiple Dutch gender teams and a number of specialists both in the Netherlands and elsewhere, the same assumptions were made:

• I was biologically male.
• I wanted to become a woman.

The Dutch gender teams had refused to communicate with their (German) colleagues who had judged the first MRI scan. Instead they would come up with contradicting opinions to the original reports, refuting any points that would disprove this assumption of me having a male biology. The results of the 2011 surgery (surgery report & biopsy findings of the testicular tissue) would end up not swaying their opinions either.

The second point was something which I had never expressed. My question to the gender teams and other specialists had been to help me figure out what was going on with my body, as it had become quite apparent to me that it wasn't a male body. Yet for some reason this got ignored. It is very likely that in the end it was cognitive bias on the end of the people who I talked to and who judged over my case that made them incapable of understanding what I was asking of them.

By one psychiatrist especially it was hammered in that I couldn't be intersex, and that if I wanted to get any help, I had to pretend to be transsexual. By that time I was feeling so emotionally worn out that even faking being transsexual seemed like an acceptable alternative to getting answers to all the questions which I still had about my body. Even if looking back I knew it would have been a catastrophically poor choice.


So the cognitive bias, that makes these specialists try to cram everything and everyone into a 'transsexual' category seems to be at fault, then? In the most forgiving, in a 'the road to Hell is paved with good intentions' kind of sense, definitely. While one cannot discount the possibility of malicious intent, it would not have changed the damage that would have been inflicted by a scenario due to sheer ignorance and the blinders of cognitive bias.

This concerns damage that centers mostly around the following:

• Ignoring phenotype: enforcing the illusion of an incorrect phenotype.
• Ignoring intent: assuming desires that are not present, ignoring actual intent.
• Identity erasure: the use of brainwashing to accept the other side's suggestions as their own will.

Feeling in contact with one's body is essential if one wants to be emotionally resilient [2]. By reinforcing the illusion of me having a male phenotype, I became more susceptible to their suggestions as I began to question what my own senses could perceive. By questioning my intent they attempted to coax me towards accepting their suggestions [3]. Ultimately I would have lost my own sense of self, of purpose and direction. Identity erased.

The irony in all of this probably has to be that as part of a transsexuality diagnosis, one gets accosted with accusations about one's gender, when no such thing exists [4]. I wouldn't be able to tell you back then whether I felt more 'male' or 'female' and these days the question seems even more ridiculous to me. All I ever wanted to be was myself, and that hasn't changed. After all, one's brain couldn't care less about one's phenotype or genitals, being all sex-less [5].


And that's it, I guess. Just one more shining example of human intelligence struggling to outperform its own shadow. Cognitive bias and ego getting in the way of providing help and answering questions. Just me at what appears to be the end of that particular medical and mental roller coaster, with nothing gained but PTSD and what feels like most of my life so far tossed away for no good reason.

It almost makes one want to cry.


Maya


[1] http://mayaposch.com/intersex-controversy.php
[2] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-body-anchors-reality.html
[3] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-eternal-war.html
[4] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/gender-is-social-contract-not-part-of.html
[5] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/your-brain-doesnt-care-what-genitals.html

The meaning of life when on death row

Imagine: there are two worlds, two realities. One is accessed via the internet-connected laptop you have, offering you contact with millions of people, access to a near-infinite amount of information and glimpses of a hope-filled and bright future. The other reality is the one you find yourself in whenever you aren't engrossed in the former world inside your laptop.

The former world fills you with hope and joy. The latter is the bleak reality of death row.


For years now I have had recurrent dreams in which I am walking through a crowd of people, all apparently gathered for a party or similar. They are busily talking with each other, all engrossed in whichever topic they're talking about. I do not talk with anyone, or even try to talk with anyone. Throughout this, I know with absolute certainty that come tomorrow, I will be executed, ergo why would I bother?

In these dreams, every time that I begin to feel interested in something around me, the feeling is immediately crushed by the bitterness of the futility of it all. Tomorrow I will die. None of what I do right now matters. Yet nobody around me can even begin to understand what I am going through. If they were interested at all, which none of them appear to be. I feel like I'm already dead and just wandering through the world of the living as a ghost.


I think that for me it all started around the time that I finished high school and before my parents divorced. That was the point where I began to fully lose any concept of 'self', or more specifically of what it meant to have a body. After being forced to move out of the house in which I had grown up, I fell back into myself, neglecting my body beyond the most basic needs to feed and clean it.

During the last year of high school I had finally found out one reason why I wasn't like the people around me, when a giftedness study at a Dutch university showed me to be both a 100% visual learner and highly gifted individual. Unfortunately this knowledge didn't come with associated help with how to deal with it, nor did it tell me what I needed know about what my body is.


For some reason it feels as though back when I still thought that I had a male body I had more freedom. Ever since I found out about my body being hermaphroditic have things gone from bad to worse. Yet I had to find out. I had to know. I did not expect to be punished for this. I did not expect that it would result in me suffering horrible psychological trauma, rape, beatings and getting locked up for crimes I did not commit.

That day in early 2005 when I first travelled to the gender team at the VUmc hospital in Amsterdam feels like the day when I got arrested and locked up for the crime of having been born like this. Over the course of the following years I went through countless appeals and medical examinations, all in the hope to overturn these charges of being transgender, crazy, etc.

Yet none of it seems to have changed anything. None of it matters. The medical evidence is still deemed contradictory, despite my body clearly not being male, what with a primarily female phenotype and natural female hormone levels and even a monthly cycle. It's all irrelevant. I'm still not getting help, nor will I ever be released from death row.


Dealing with the current eviction court case and the bleak prospects of finding a home only serve to reinforce what I already knew years ago: innocent or not, I will be executed. Soon the extra time I had for appeals and help will run out and I will cease to exist.

As a result I also know that none of what I might want matters, nor do any of my plans and hope for the future matter. Why would I work on any projects, or be really invested in work or getting money back from taxes, or feel remotely interested in pointless things like vacations, relationships and the like?

It all feels exactly like those dreams. The world around me goes on, but before long my existence will be snuffed out.

And none of this will matter.


Maya

Intersex traumas: don't call me a transsexual

Over the past decade I have had to explain on countless occasions what the difference between intersex and transsexuality is. To this day I find it quite astounding that there are people who fail to see the difference, or who assume that there's any overlap between the two. After all, one is about moving between a sex binary, while the other is about coming to terms with a non-binary body.

I have sadly had to deal for over a decade with primarily Dutch physicians and psychologists who didn't get this difference, refused to accept it, refused to acknowledge me as being intersex, felt it'd help me if they'd brainwash me, or a combination of these reasons. At any rate they insisted that I had to be transsexual, possibly falsified medical results to hide evidence of me being intersex (and ignoring contradicting German evidence).

At this point, over twelve years later, there is no question any more of me being intersex. Yet I am left to struggle with the legacy of all those years of physicians and psychologists trying to 'prove' to me that could not possibly be anything other than a guy and/or transsexual. My passport at the time said that I was male after all, and I preferred a female role, ergo transsexual. Simple, right?

This despite the increasing amount of evidence that my body's phenotype was that of a female. Despite the best attempts by specifically the Amsterdam VUmc hospital's gender team to falsify blood test and other results to make it appear that I was a normal male, I learned through further blood tests, the hormone therapy and surgery with subsequent biopsy of the testicular tissue that I was not and never had been male.

Yet the memory remains of all those years spent looking at myself in the mirror, trying to make sense of what I saw. Some days I thought I looked female, while other days I could only conclude that I was looking at a male. I honestly did not know, but needed answers. I was however convinced that I was not transsexual beyond this brief initial week before I learned that this 'intersex' thing existed. The issue was with my body, not my mind.

As I managed to explain to a physician after a number of appointments, for an intersex person there are no answers for what's at point 'A', namely about what this body is that they inhibit, let alone what they should feel about it. This in comparison to a transsexual person, who knows point A - being the male/female body which they dislike - and point B being the inverse binary body they wish to get.

What's this point 'B' for an intersex person? Only after learning what point A is can one begin to think about that. Maybe there doesn't have to be a transition at all and point A is totally fine. One cannot know. Yet while one merely desires to figure out A, physicians and psychologists are hammering on point A being that one is a regular guy and that one should want to get to point B, being to become a gal. This isn't particularly helpful.

There never was support for me as an intersex person. Just constant, never-ending abuse and harassment. Denial that anything I thought I knew about my own body could possibly be right. Denial that the MRI results from Germany meant anything. I was fighting against the threat of forced transsexuality.


I'm a woman. I have always been a woman.

I have a normal natural female hormone level. I had my first menstruation at age 11. I have ovaries, a vagina and a typically female skeleton. There's nothing about me which would even begin to suggest that I am or have ever been a regular guy. Or a guy in any sense of the word.

This has to have been the most agonising thing about the past twelve years: trying to find that modicum of understanding and acceptance of what I am. Instead I mostly found myself constantly defending myself against doctors and psychologists who had to keep hammering on this one singular 'fact' they loved so much: I was a guy and wanted to become a girl. I had to be transsexual in their eyes. Whether I wanted to or not.

My identity as an intersex person was irrelevant to them. They never cared about it. All they wanted was to wipe it, brainwash me until I accepted their lies of me being a guy who wanted to get his dick cut off to become a pretty girl.


To this day I am not certain whether they were truly that naive or evil, or whether it was all meant to get me as an intersex person to embrace 'normalcy' and undergo a sex-reassignment surgery as a way to get me a belated 'normalisation' surgery, the genital mutilation surgery they perform routinely on intersex infants every day.

As a result, 'transsexuality' as a word only holds memories of terror, of pain and agony. Of fighting an impossible fight against a Medical Establishment who I could never dream to win against. Subsequently, when someone then refers to me as 'transsexual', or implies that my intersex condition is in any way, form, or shape related to it, it essentially makes that I am back in that horrible period again.


I hate transsexuality, because it is one of the prime triggers for my post-traumatic stress disorder. I hate transsexuality, because it is the prime reminder to me of my suffering and helplessness, of why I lost over a third of my life so far to something so utterly senseless and damaging.

And yet I cannot seem to get away from it. No matter how much I try to be just a woman and just a hermaphrodite, something which should have nothing to do with my life any more just keeps haunting me.


Maya

Dreams to highlight all that is wrong

For the past months I have had lots of dreams, usually without me being able to remember much more than just a few fragments or a sensation when I wake up. Those I do remember are vivid and stay with me for a while, such as the dream I had last night. As seems to be common, it was yet another nightmare.

In this particular nightmare I was being haunted and finally chased by these two men who somehow got me to sign some kind arrest warrant or confession document, which I then realised and tried to desperately escape. This all in the setting of the house where I grew up. By the time I woke up I was drenched in sweat and feeling rather uncomfortable.

After waking up like that, my thoughts continued pretty straight into a similar train of thought which has been playing in my mind over the past weeks or months, namely the temptation of not giving in to the humiliation of financial punishment by the Dutch state and instead continuing my decade-long resistance by just having them imprison me for a number of months.

It may sound stupid, but just thinking about paying up after more than four years and with it basically confessing that I was guilty of purposefully destroying those works of art which were on display at that doctor's office, even after years of physical and psychological torture, a suicide attempt, being diagnosed with PTSD and DID, and suffering a blackout while at said office. Things which the judges say they agree with and officially I wasn't punished. I just have to pay a large sum of money, thereby admitting my guilt and the wilful destruction of said items. It's a disgusting, back-handed way of hurting me even more through a so-called 'justice system'.

When I put up that crowdfunding campaign in order to allow others to pitch in and share the financial and with it the psychological burden, I knew I was setting myself up for judgement by the general public as well. Now that after weeks have passed and a handful of people have donated I do not feel better about things. Sure, it is great that a large sum has been donated, and I do draw comfort and strength from this fact. Those who wanted to donate, but lack the means have shared the campaign and provided kind words.

Yet the fact remains that I feel that an even larger group of people have chosen to either ignore said campaign because they do not care either way, or worse, feel that I was at fault and wilfully chose to vandalise said items, despite all of the circumstances and background. The latter is perhaps the worst feeling of all. Whether it's true or not I do not know, but it is one of the reasons which underlie this urge to just submit myself to even worse punishment than just to surrender a large part of my savings for no good reason aside from supporting a corrupt system and hateful people who do not care in the slightest about those who are unfortunate enough to be 'different'.

That I fled the Netherlands isn't just because of some disagreements and/or financial reasons. This last lawsuit is the third one. The first two were started by me, to sue the doctors at the first, Amsterdam hospital who mistreated my intersex case, and to address the discriminating behaviour of my insurance company towards intersex people with myself in particular. Both of those two cases were rejected or manipulated such that I stood no chance of winning. I lost. Intersex people in the Netherlands lost. Human rights in the Netherlands got dealt a big setback.

And nobody cared.

The feeling that all of this that I do to fight for my own rights and of everyone like me who isn't 'standard' and doesn't fit into these neat little boxes society likes to puzzle together, that all of this is for naught troubles me a lot. Why is it that we have the same ridiculous idiocy as with homosexuality and transsexuality, where one seeks to 'fix' something which isn't a problem? Why is the existence and acceptance of something that is perfectly natural and not harmful in the slightest treated as something shameful, to be 'fixed' with surgery and the medical files hidden or destroyed?

I spend a fair bit of my time on interviews on intersex with a wide variety of people, from journalists to students and even authors who wish to include intersex in an upcoming book. My website and blog with a wide variety of information on intersex is at the top of search results related to intersex. I like to think that what I do matters.

Maybe that's why I also feel so strongly about the lukewarm response I have received over the past four years since the event happened. I only had to suffer severe PTSD, DID, get beaten up by the Dutch police, suffer through one hateful, accusing court case after another, and feel utterly alone throughout the whole ordeal.

People have often said to me that they admire me for being such a strong person, but I am not. I already gave in once and tried to escape from this life. Hit the 'abort' button. The thought of ceasing my struggle, of just surrendering to the inevitability of doctors, psychologists, politicians and even regular people hating me, wanting people like me to cease existing through whatever means necessary. It's a tempting thought, indeed.

What has defined my life over the past decades is not wanting to find answers about my body. It has been about being regarded as a freak, as a disorder. As something that is wrong and cannot or should not be. As a result I have pretty much always been unhappy and alone. Never understanding, never feeling understood or cared for. Even as a child and teenager this feeling was ever-present. I am not alive today because I wish to be a human, or part of human society. I care nothing for either, because neither mean anything positive to me.

All that I receive is the judgement from others. I cannot simply be or exist. I cannot live my life. I cannot be not 'different'. I cannot ignore the reality of my situation. I cannot change things to simply be possible.

There is only the heaviness of the burden of being alive and the numbing pain of dissociation at the realisation of the preceding.

At this point in time I await this dreaded moment where I will have to pay up or face jail time. I also await further medical results which can make my life either very easy, or very difficult, or just add to the string of utter disappointments that has been the sum of my experiences with medical professionals so far. Suffice it to say that the resulting stress levels are high. Far too high to be healthy.

Yet I cannot do anything but wait. Just push it away. Just wait. Ignore it. Maybe it will be fine. Please wait. There's nothing else to be done.

Those moments when you realise that you would be so much happier trading one's body for an artificial one, because there is nothing to be gained by trying to live with a body which doesn't make one happy and will die and rot away before long anyway. Utter disappointment.


Maya

In The End Everybody Lies And Is Wrong

I just received a letter from the clinic I recently had the MRI scan at containing the results for the MRI scan and the genetics results on my blood. After the earlier surgery cancellation by another hospital in Erding this letter went even further. Basically I'm not a hermaphrodite. They found no indications that I'm intersex at all. Genotype and SRY look normal, MRI scan shows male reproductive organs including a prostate. I should be a normal biological male as far as this hospital is concerned. And yet I'm not.

Whether this hospital is trying to deceive me or not isn't even that relevant any more. Or that they're the first German hospital to not conclude I'm a hermaphrodite. They did consult a Dutch physician from the VUmc gender team in the Netherlands, but that shouldn't affect their judgement so much, should it? In the end the point seems to be that there won't be any answers to what this body is, which genitals I do or don't have, why I have these monthly cramps and pains and what the hell has been happening in general that I have a body which from a young age has decided to be decidedly not male.

Enough.

For over a decade now I have been going from hospital to hospital, always getting contradicting conclusions without any real answers. Germany was supposed to be the end point of my medical search as they had up till now always concluded that I'm a hermaphrodite, which is what led me to get vaginal reconstruction based on their findings. Now it appears that a decade wasn't long enough to find answers. At this point I'm throwing in the towel, releasing all five sets of MRI scan images in the idle hope that something good will come from it. I'm all out of ideas and losing what little bit of myself I thought I knew to ever increasing dissociation.

So, here are the MRI scans. I don't know what's on them any more. I never looked at the fifth set, even. I don't really care any more. I'm just a brain without a body at this point. Medical secrecy never did me any good, so feel free to share, I guess.

2007-12-21: MRI, Germany: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxh_xOXTRtQqVjJUUHY4NGtlREE/edit?usp=sharing
2008-11-06: Erasmus MC, Netherlands: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxh_xOXTRtQqQzZxN3hNWVdNN2M/edit?usp=sharing
2009-12-??: OLVG, Netherlands: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxh_xOXTRtQqZllzX1U5UGJYcTA/edit?usp=sharing
2013-06-28: MST, Netherlands: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxh_xOXTRtQqbTRZb3BxeWVxa00/edit?usp=sharing
2014-07-08: Uni Tübingen, Germany: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxh_xOXTRtQqd3dTUk9uQ0dYQUU/edit?usp=sharing

Will there be further updates on this blog? Doubtful. I started this blog seven years ago to document my search for answers about this frustratingly confusing body of mine. Unless there's anything to write about which doesn't involve me feeling sorry for myself, there's no point to ever adding to this blog again.


Maya

Surgery To Prove What I Am To Others And Myself

In the case against the VUmc gender team I lost because Dutch physicians (almost) all agreed that I am not intersex. In the case against my former Dutch health insurance company Univé they can comfortably slide back into the defence that there's no proper medical diagnosis yet due to the Dutch and German physicians not agreeing on what I am. Wherever I go, whatever I do, the question of 'what am I' is being twisted and changed depending on where one looks or asks. The average person may think that after I got my official gender change approved by a judge in the Netherlands that the battle has been fought and won by me, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The Dutch physicians, psychologists and related rabidly stick to the position that I am not a hermaphrodite, that I am not intersex in any way, form or shape, but merely a feminine-looking, biological male. The statements, conclusions and MRI/surgery/biopsy reports from Germany are dismissed as being 'wrong'. I think that the German physicians are right, but at this point I have no way to know for certain. Without stronger, better evidence I can not win or get justice in the Netherlands.

On a personal level it's not much different. Ten years of fighting against severe doubts cast both by others and myself have left their mark. I'm waiting for better evidence myself, too. While I do not think that I am a biological male, I am having trouble telling myself what I am then. 'Hermaphrodite' is the German conclusion, yet I do not see the female genitals nor am I able to use them in any way. I do feel severe monthly abdominal pains which could be a period, but I'm not past telling myself that it's just imaginary, psychosomatic pain. I need more evidence here to know what is truly going on.

The only solution here is to undergo surgery. If I truly have this closed-off vagina all German physicians so far have said I possess, then connecting it back to the perineum and restoring these female genitals to what they should have formed into before I was even born, then that would be all the evidence one needs. Having obviously both male and female genitals at that point nobody could deny any more that I am a hermaphrodite and thus intersex. Not Dutch physicians or health insurance companies. Not me, either.

At this point an internal examination via the vagina would also be possible to finally learn what is going on when I have these monthly pains. My GP already got me a reference for a gynaecologist as well as a name of someone she recommends. This seems like a very good idea to set up soon. This uncertainty can not last forever.

Just one week until I know whether I will have this surgery. One week from now at this time I should be back home in Karlsruhe from my surgeon appointment. I should know by then what he can and wants to do and have made a surgery appointment. I hope this is going to be the one. The end of every single uncertainty and the main source of my depressions, continued PTSD and suicidal thoughts. Finally the truth being revealed.

Everyone will finally know what I am.


Maya

The End Of Justice In The Netherlands

Today I received two items from my personal damages lawyer's office: one massive parcel containing my medical archive as I had lost part of it when the psycho ex-housemate destroyed it along with most of my belongings. The other was an email with the PDF attachments of the rulings of the medical disciplinary commission on each of the four physicians and psychologists. The medical archive is filled by report after report by Dutch medical specialists and the like on why I can not be intersex and why I'm actually an oddly behaving transgender. It also contains the German reports containing the conclusive reports by three independent German medical teams that I am in fact intersex, based on a variety of examinations and a surgery. It shows the clear madness of the past nine years during which I have searched for my identity.

The ruling by the medical disciplinary commission is the final evidence I needed that I have made a capital mistake in not abandoning the search for help from the Dutch side sooner. In every of the four cases they have rejected all of the points on which those four individuals of the VUmc gender team could have been punished. This leaves me with virtually no further recourse in the Netherlands, legally speaking. Appealing this decision is quite futile, as the central disciplinary commission in Utrecht is unlikely to change this ruling. This means no acknowledgement that Dutch physicians were wrong on any point during my treatment the past nine years. It also means no compensation, financially or otherwise.

I'm not even angry at this point any more. It is what I more or less expected. All physicians in the Netherlands so far have covered each other, blindly repeating the same lies and attempting to complete the brainwashing of me. It should come as no surprise that this medical commission would do the same. That the German medical world and the Dutch justice system disagreed with their assessment couldn't phase them in the slightest. I have no idea why they had to lie to me for those nine years and hurt me in so many ways, not in the least by wasting nearly a decade of my life on something so ultimately futile and pointless.

Next month I'll be moving to Germany. There I will go to this surgeon who has seen my medical file, agreed to the previous conclusions on the MRI scans as well as the exploratory surgery and will hopefully be performing the reconstructive surgery on my female side as soon as early next year. With that I'll have the medical side of my search finished, leaving me as a virtually perfect natural hermaphrodite. For the first time in my life I could allow myself to feel happy. It's such a stark contrast with how things were and are in the Netherlands.

Let hereby the lie that the Netherlands is in any way progressive or tolerant be shattered for eternity. Any country where the medical profession is so ignorant and the political system so apathetic when it comes to issues like these doesn't deserve any of these labels. All it takes for me to see how things should be done is to look just over the border in Germany where since 2007 I have had only positive and useful experiences with German physicians and surgeons. Where in the Netherlands I got treated as... a number? A freak? An annoyance? What exactly? In Germany I got treated consistently as a human being, with all of my questions and worries answered and eased.

I still feel like an idiot for not realizing sooner that the Netherlands as a country and institution is hell incarnate for anyone who isn't 'normal' by the sickeningly narrow definitions employed by its elite. With less than a month to go until I bid farewell to the Netherlands I can honestly say that nothing would cheer me up more at this point than to be able to swap my Dutch passport for a German one. I'm ashamed and humiliated that I'm still able to call myself a Dutch citizen.

I wasn't born into the wrong body, I was simply born into the wrong country.


Maya

Restless Nights

As I went to bed last night I thought I felt relatively relaxed, yet after I finished reading a few more chapters in my current book (Discworld series, FYI) and turned off the light, uneasy thoughts began to swirl through my mind. From worries and fears regarding finding a place to live in Germany to possessions lost and the fear induced by the psychopathic former housemate, to uncertainty and worries about the ruling by the medical disciplinary commission this week. After a few minutes of this my heart was pounding in my chest and I was feeling restless and uneasy.

Turning onto my back I just felt like crying from exhaustion. It still didn't feel fair that I'd have to go through all this, and I still can not think of any reason why I should go through it. All of these struggles, having to prove myself over and over again, facing ridicule and scepticism over and over again. Not being able to ever get a decent night's sleep has got to be one of the worst parts of it. This night, too, I'd keep drifting in and out of consciousness, experiencing nightmare after nightmare.

This morning I awoke, feeling mostly numb. I'll have to get through this all again somehow. Yet not today, it appeared. Logging onto the company IRC I found that the colleague who I needed to talk to about about any updates on this one house she is liaising for me was sick and absent today. The rest of the day I'd thus spend working as well as possible. I still have the cold bothering me, but I reckon that the general feeling of exhaustion due to constantly feeling stressed is worse than any cold.

Tomorrow I'll be heading to a local beauty salon for what should be one of the last times that I'll undergo the hair-removal therapy in the Netherlands, if not the very last time. Related to it, I'm having a public hearing at the College voor de Rechten van de Mens (Human Rights Institute) [1] on November the 25th, regarding the discrimination of my insurance company - Unive - for refusing to cover this hair-removal therapy due to them not recognizing the similarities between a transgender and intersex person in this case and therefore refusing to fully cover the therapy.

The week after it I'm having an appointment with my publisher, to discuss the details of my first to-be-published book. The week after that I hope to be moving to Germany. Assuming I can get this one house I mentioned earlier, I'd still have to bridge a few months until I can actually move into it. Some temporary solution will be needed regardless, it seems. It'd be so much easier if I could just move to Germany in that week regardless of further details and take care of matters from there. Whether that means staying at someone else's place, temporarily renting something (expensive and not entirely practical) or some other solution, it would mean that I can at least have an official place of residence again and thus finalize matters with the Dutch tax office, my health insurance company (due to changing countries) and others. I'd also be able to go ahead with visiting this German surgeon to hopefully arrange the surgery.

Again, I'm left completely out of my league there and wouldn't know where to start, especially not with only a brief three weeks left.

And thus the restless nights continue.


Maya


[1] http://www.mensenrechten.nl/

Asymmetric Changes

Since last week Friday my life has suddenly and rapidly changed. From a relatively unknown figure in the little known intersex/gender scene of the Netherlands and internationally I'm now suddenly a generally known person in at least the Netherlands after my appearance on the talk show Pauw & Witteman. Today while on my way to an appointment at a nearby city a group of girls sitting near me in the train were openly discussing my appearance on said show and hermaphroditism after spotting me before that. Moments like those make it clear to me that my relatively anonymous life is over with. See the videos of the TV appearances on my site here: http://www.mayaposch.com/media.php

Beyond the interviews on Friday I also did an interview for TIME magazine on Monday (publication date pending), and I have also been contacted by a publisher about the publication of my autobiography. It's all pretty crazy, but in a good way. For the first time in... ever, really, does it feel like things are finally moving like how they should. Now all I need is to have the medical disciplinary commission decide in my favour on the 19th this month so that the personal damages lawsuit against the VUmc gender team can proceed.

And yet, there's still a big chunk missing before I can proceed to this new future which is beckoning me. One of them is this surgery which I still require. While I have found a willing surgery in Germany, I can not set an appointment there until after I move to Germany. Before I can do this moving I need a house, something which is taking considerably longer than I had hoped. Sure, I could pick something small and cheap, but I'd really like to be done with moving for a long time, hence why I'm looking for a 3-bedroom place so that I have space for all my hobbies and the company.

Fortunately the company I work for is helping me find something and at least one usable response came in after they posted the following message: http://synyx.de/neuigkeiten/haus/. The opening paragraph of it starts with the following (in English): "It should really be reason for joy. Maya Posch will soon be part of our team. She will enrich us with among other things her broad knowledge of Mobile Solutions. There is however still one small problem: Since Maya still lives in the Netherlands, does she urgently require a new place in Germany. To be precise, in the Karlsruhe area. Therefore our request."

I think it's great that they are helping me like this. Over the past months I have come to know many at this company quite well as well some outside it and I am really looking forward to start my new life in this area of Germany.

Hopefully this month this last part of the puzzle will finally be found and put into place. I'm keeping all appendages crossed which are capable of such a motion.


Maya

Media Madness; Thank You, Germany

First of all I'd like to apologize for any inconsistencies or nonsensical ramblings in the following text. I still haven't fully recovered from the happenings yesterday, which included four interviews, one of which requiring me to travel to Amsterdam to be present at the Netherlands' most important current affairs talkshow, Pauw & Witteman. It wasn't until 3 AM that I finally made it to my bed. Come Monday it'll all start again, with at least one more major interview scheduled.

The thing which set this all off was the decision by Germany to introduce a third gender option, basically an 'undetermined' option for when a child is born with unclear gender. This will allow said child to make any decision later and relieves parents and physicians from any pressure to make a decision and perform harmful, unneeded and forced genital surgery on an infant. Yesterday this new law became active and thus media around the world worked themselves up into a frenzy. I was one of those intersex individuals who got pounced upon to give my opinion.

To give an idea of how crazy yesterday was: late Thursday I just had one interview scheduled for Friday. A brief, 3-minute piece on Dutch Radio 2. Before noon on Friday, however, I had been contacted by a journalist for UK's Channel 4 News, another from BBC's World Service and the aforementioned talkshow. This resulted in a crammed-full schedule with regular phone calls as things got set up, a Skype interview and then a train journey to Amsterdam for Pauw & Witteman. Before heading off to the latter I also had to gather up and send photos and other materials, some of which still had to be scanned in.

The Channel 4 News interview was brief but fun and I heard from others that it looked quite well. The 3-minute radio interview went well too, with the hours of preparation somewhat silly in retrospect. The discussion I joined by BBC's World Have Your Say was disappointing with one of those staunch intersex organization fanatics taking the lead, with me and most of the others getting virtually no speaking time.

After those three interviews/discussions it was time to travel to Amsterdam for the talkshow. To be honest it was rather cool that I got invited for this. As far as news in the Netherlands goes it's about as far as one can get with a topic. It'd also be largely be about just me, with the general topic of intersex secondary. One could say that with this a dream of many years has come true.

On the way to Amsterdam I also found myself in interesting company, including a Polish guy, a Russian man and Dutch girl with an interest in Russian, Polish and other languages. It definitely made the time pass pretty quickly. Once in Amsterdam I walked to the studio from the central station, a brisk 20-minute walk. Though I hadn't been in Amsterdam's center for a while it was nevertheless still very familiar. It was the first time I walked the route again which brought me to near where the British girl I once dated used to live. This made it feel... strange, considering how much I and my situation have changed since then.

I arrived in time at the studio, where I was received by very friendly assistants. After running through the script with the main editor of the talkshow I was run through the obligatory make-up session, followed by the notification that it was almost time for the (live) show to start. Gathering at the studio's doors, we all awaited our cue. The rest is basically as seen in the broadcast of November 1st of the show. Despite initial doubts by the editor of the show that I might be somewhat too timid, she was really quite impressed after the show. First thing I heard from her was that the Twitter and other social media responses had exploded. People from the audience also wished to talk with me, expression their utmost respect and sympathy for me.

I must say that I felt quite flattered by it all. The show itself went very well, with me getting to say pretty much everything which needed to be said. Though I haven't rewatched the show (yet), I have only heard positive feedback on it, via Facebook, Twitter and the flood of emails I received via my site. I'm still working my way through those. After the show I spent some time talking with the other guests, including one of my idols, biologist Midas Dekkers, the journalist Arnold Karskens and Sunny Bergman. You can see a recording of the whole show as well as individual fragments on this page: http://pauwenwitteman.vara.nl/media/302957

After bidding everyone goodnight I left the studio, to be driven home by a taxi. This taxi driver is regularly hired by the talkshow to drive guests around, including politicians and the like. As a result we had a lot to talk about on the long drive home. Only after arriving at the place where I'm staying did I notice how tired it was. It was nearing 3 AM and I had been up since before 7 AM the previous day. Sleep seemed like a very good idea.

This morning I awoke with a pretty bad headache and general lethargic feeling. I guess it's a normal feeling for those who like to go wild in clubs on Friday night. I hadn't even touched a drop of alcohol the previous day and I already felt like a well-used chewing toy. Even as I am typing this I wouldn't describe my state as 'awake'. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be somewhat back to my usual self.

As things stand, though, despite yesterday being extremely stressful and tiring it nevertheless brought me much of what I had been dreaming off for years: attention, respect and acknowledgement by the media for everything which I had to go through. In many ways it makes me feel a lot less worse about myself and my situation. The flood of positive comments by viewers of the show also contributed a lot. Everyone seems to be rightfully outraged at the VUmc gender team for mistreating my case, as well as sympathetic about me moving to Germany. And it's not over yet.

On Monday I just have a single interview scheduled, with TIME magazine. It'll be interesting to see how that one works out, I guess. So far I'm not sure what format it'll get or how big it's going to be. Time will tell, I guess. Here's to hoping that things don't turn into a media frenzy again like yesterday. Though it's kinda fun, I'm not sure I can keep pulling 20-hour shifts like that :)


Maya

On The VUmc Hearing And Those Who Hurt Me

Maya

Aftermath Of Hearing Against VUmc Gender Team

Two days ago was the hearing against the VUmc gender team as previously announced on my blog. That I haven't written about it yet has multiple reasons, mostly that I needed some time to process it all and due to being quite busy with the efforts involved to leave the Netherlands. Long story short, I got virtually everything arranged there now. All services I was subscribed to have been cancelled where appropriate, I have no official place of residence in the Netherlands any more, and I have all the necessary paperwork to settle in Germany. Only blemish on this all is having to deal with the theft of my belongings, but this too should soon see some police and legal action.

Anyway, with all of that out of the way, I finally am able to write this summary of the hearing. Of course to me it's been something which is more than a day. Since the previous hearing on February 10th this year I have been more or less living towards this hearing. It's also in many ways the culmination of the nearly nine years I have had to suffer, the wasted decade of dealing with physicians refusing to be physicians. Yet despite the importance of the whole event I couldn't find myself to be nervous or apprehensive in any sense. If anything it was more of a 'let's get this over with' kinda thing, what with the low chances of success I have written about before.

On the day itself I travelled to Amsterdam together with my mother. We arrived just a few minutes before my lawyer, Yme Drost, joined us fresh out of another hearing at the same courthouse. He and I spent the minutes before the hearing started reading up on some parts of the massive piles of medical evidence and letters collected as well as discussing a few items of importance. Two friends also had arrived at this point and were waiting in front of the doors to the room where the hearing would be held. Shortly after 2 PM we were all let in and the hearing started. There was a surprisingly large audience, according to my lawyer. Nearly half of the seats were filled.

An interesting and pleasant surprise was the commission presiding over this hearing. The chairman was a female jurist, flanked by two physicians and two psychologists. This was unusual because psychologists aren't normally a part of the medical disciplinary commission, for quite obvious reasons. The chairman explained that because of the involvement of psychologists (Ms. Cohen-Kettenis) in the case, as well as the general psychological aspects, their presence was warranted. She also started the hearing by asking me how I was doing, after which I told her that I'm in the process of moving to Germany, for work and personal reasons, including my hope to have the final surgery there soon.

The general theme during the hearing which would take close to two and a half hours was that the VUmc members kept repeating the same mantra that it was their task to prevent unnecessary surgeries, that their approach of having only psychologists talk with patients even if they indicate being intersex is the right one, that their use of a blood test and quick external examination is sufficient to rule out intersex (or 'DSD' as they kept calling it), and that I was the one who had refused psychological help instead of them not having offered such help. They also insisted that I had normal male blood levels at the time and a normal functional set of male reproductive organs. The radiologist, Dr. Van Waesberghe, insisted that he had not seen any female organs on the scans, in addition to claiming that there had been no reason to contact the German radiologists, scoffing at the notion.

As the two physicians of the commission began to ask their questions, they asked me a number of informative questions, including on this restorative surgery I hope to have soon in Germany, the effects of testosterone blocker on prostate and testicle size as well as on the presence of the sperm-producing tissue (absent in my biopsy report). They also asked me questions about how I had experienced the help from German physicians, where I answered truthfully that I had loved it with their quick, efficient and personal attention. During their questioning of the VUmc physicians the latter were quickly forced to surrender on a few points and admit grudgingly that there were indeed a number of things they could have checked, including genotype (chromosomes, mosaicism), have performed an ultrasound and in general have paid more attention to the list of points I had brought to the VUmc's attention in the form of letters which were also part of the evidence.

The psychologists mostly had questions for me, especially on my drive for answers, whether I wasn't trying to prove that I had to be intersex or such. I told them about how until quite recently I'd regularly be standing in front of a mirror looking at myself and not knowing what I was seeing. How frustrated I felt at this, and how much I wanted to have a self-image. Some idea of what I was looking at instead of just facing endless questions. This was the only part where I actually became somewhat emotional.

During the final round of statements and questions my lawyer asked Dr. De Ronde of the VUmc whether the testosterone value measured of 21 nmol/L couldn't just have been a measuring error, considering the low amount of testosterone blocker I had to take (25% of what a male-to-female transsexual takes). De Ronde here upon dodged the question, saying that the exact amount of the blocker taken differs per patient. Besides, as he pointed out the other values which should be affected by a low testosterone level would have to be affected too, such as LSH, which were also 'normal male levels', according to De Ronde. I would like to note here that there is no way to verify the VUmc's measured values in any form or shape at this point. The testicular tissue biopsy results and testosterone blocker medication levels seem to put reasonable doubt there.

Yme also pointed out in his closing statement that it should be obvious to anyone in the room that even to his not medically trained eyes an intelligent woman was sitting next to him. That I would get referred to as 'male' by the VUmc seemed bizarre to him.

The gynaecologist of the VUmc, Dr. Trotsenburg, said in his final speech that all they wanted to do at the VUmc gender team was to avoid that people got unnecessary surgeries which wouldn't make them happy (despite me never have discussed surgery there). He also addressed me directly, saying that he had no idea where I found this current German surgeon, but told me to be careful. After this the lawyer of the VUmc gender team went on what I can only call a rant, distributing a stack of A4 pages to everyone with on it the reasons why I was a bumbling fool, couldn't be intersex, had arrogantly refused psychological help at any point and that all of the complaints against the VUmc should be summarily be dismissed. She sounded so angry at some points that I found myself thinking how much I disliked this person if she truly meant what she said.

After this I got a chance to say my piece. In my closing statement I mentioned how confused I still felt. I pointed the commission to how in 2010 a Dutch judge had approved my request for a first name change based upon having a female appearance, followed by the approval of my gender change to female by another Dutch judge in 2012. This, I said, showed that the justice system in the Netherlands agrees with me a) having a female appearance and b) being intersex, specifically a hermaphrodite. It also means that Dutch judges agree with the German physicians and not the Dutch ones. The only ones who do not agree here are Dutch physicians for some reason. I finished by saying that this was all I wanted to point out.

With the hearing over, Yme and I said goodbye to the commission and went outside along with everyone else. I felt pretty exhausted by then. Fortunately I could go home almost right away together with Yme. Before leaving, one of the friends who had arrived to watch the hearing gave me this plushie he had brought for me. I liked Yme's response to this: "That's part of it too, I guess." referring to me being female, I think.

Once back home I felt initially pretty good about things, what with Yme being more positive about our options of winning the case than ever before. Gradually I began to feel more depressed, though, until I couldn't stop myself from crying for a while. Even though I did very well at the hearing, with my lawyer complimenting me a number of times on my performance, it is as I pointed out in my final statement a ridiculous situation. To hear people who have ruined my life for so many years already say the same hurtful things again, defending their decisions and using the crude term 'Disorder of Sex Development' as though people with an intersex condition are some kind of freak, in addition to vehemently accusing me from exaggerating things and being a selfish little bitch... yes, it hurts. A whole lot.

I really hope that I do win this case. That those involved will have to eat some humble pie for once in their arrogant, infallible little lives. That life for people like me won't be turned into a living hell over and over again. Things have to stop here. If there's any justice left in this god-forsaken country, I hope it will be dished out here.

Whatever happens, though, I hope to be living safely in Germany by the time the verdict is made official. I still have to find house in the Karlsruhe area, but I have good hope that within two months it should all be arranged. Hopefully sooner. And please let this current German surgeon end the medical nightmare. I'm so sick of being 'special', 'different', 'unique' and whatever other sickening terms keep getting thrown at me. I want to be a plain, boring as hell person who just happens to be female. Pretty please?

The ruling will be made public on November the 19th this year.


Maya

Public Hearing Against VUmc Gender Team Tomorrow In Amsterdam

Tomorrow, Tuesday September the 24th, the first public hearing against the VUmc gender team will take place in the case I started via my personal injuries expert Yme Drost last year at the medical disciplinary commission in Amsterdam. Complaints against the VUmc gender team include lack of psychological care and lack of any proper diagnostics aimed at diagnosing my intersex condition.

The hearing will take place at the Courthouse Amsterdam at the Parnassusweg 220 in Amsterdam at 14.00 hours. I will be present with my lawyer, Yme Drost. Of the VUmc gender team the following will be present: Mr. van Waesberghe (radiologist), Mr. van Trotsenburg (gynaecologist) and Mr. de Ronde (endocrinologist). Not present will be Ms. Cohen-Kettenis, who will be represented by the VUmc gender team's lawyer.

Any interested in following this hearing can report to the main entrance of the courthouse for the exact location of the hearing.


Maya

Vlog: Moving To Germany And Angelic Kittens

• Moving to Karlsruhe, Germany.
• Angelic Kittens.
• Next week's vlog: hearing against VUmc's gender team.

Maya

One Person Living Two Lives Which Are One Life

Most people of my generation will be familiar with that scene from The Matrix, where Agent Smith tells our protagonist the following:

"It seems that you've been living two lives. One life, you're Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, pay your taxes, and you... help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias "Neo" and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not."

A life of two identities, two lives lived by the same person, keeping up a different face for each of them, as one can not bear the other. Both separate, and yet intertwined.

I feel like this too, only there was no free choice for me. The 'Thomas' part, of being a law-abiding citizen is a given. That's what you need to be accepted in society. I got that pat down, with the identity of a capable software developer thrown into the mix as well, making for a respectable identity. It's an identity people can admire and approve of.

Then the 'Neo' part for me is not so much that I chose to go into the dark side myself, but something which happened. There are a lot of 'if's here. If physicians would have helped me right away. If psychologists had helped me at all. If politicians I contacted had done something. If society had known more about intersex already. If I hadn't been born intersex. If I hadn't been born at all. If the medical specialists had done their job I wouldn't be writing this. I wouldn't be in court on September the 24th in a hearing against the VUmc gender team. I never picked any of it.

Worst of all is that it has forced my life to take two distinctly different paths simultaneously. Two identities to keep up. The 'Thomas' identity can not reveal anything of the 'Neo' identity. The other way around the 'Thomas' identity has no relevance to the 'Neo' identity. Living two lives like this is hard. One life is hard enough to live, but living two lives which directly contradict and oppose each other... it's trying to achieve the impossible. One makes the other look like a mere dream, while the other way around it makes the former look like a twisted nightmare.

The past years I have more and more often elected to get rid of the side which I feel has no future: specifically the 'Neo' identity. It's a dead-end, in the most literal sense. It's a life of total despair, of hate, blood, gore, suicide and mutilation. In comparison the 'Thomas' identity is about as close to the 'perfect family with white picket fence' stereotype one can get.

As I'm heading out tomorrow on a two-week trip to Germany for my work including to the BMW offices in Munich I'm reminded of this ever so strongly again. While I'm there in the capacity of a team member on this project. There's no room for any 'Neo'. It can not exist or show itself.

One could say that this 'Neo' is merely a magnification of one's personal life, and this wouldn't be incorrect. However, the average person has a personal life which hardly gets more exciting than picking the right brand of pasta sauce at the store after work. My personal life is more akin to a hefty medical thriller. It's become larger than life.


Maya

Cutting Through The Lies: Testosterone Levels

Today I received the data from my current GP's office containing the use of and dosage of the testosterone blocker I used to take called cyproteronacetate. This is relevant for the disciplinary case against the VUmc gender team next month, due to their insistence that they measured a (total) testosterone level of 21 nmol/L (normal male level: 9 - 38 nmol/L according to WebMD). I knew this couldn't be right and thus did a fact check.

The facts are as follows: I took 25 mg a day of cyproteronacetate to reach a total testosterone level of 0.7 nmol/L. The dose for male to female transsexuals is twice 50 mg a day, as listed in multiple places including the VUmc's own website [1]. This means that I was taking 25% of the full dose one'd take with an average (~22) testosterone level. Carrying through the calculations, this would mean that I couldn't have had a testosterone level of more than 22 * 0.25 = 5.5 nmol/L. The German biopsy of the testicles which showed them to be undeveloped offer the explanation for this low level.

This tackles one of the two points where the VUmc claims to have done proper testing for intersex. The other point is the physical examination, which is trickier, as it touches upon a third point: that of the MRI scans. The VUmc did not see anything out of the ordinary on the first set of MRI scans, and the disciplinary commission has decided that they too didn't see anything special on the MRI scans. This in direct contradiction with three independent German teams so far who all judged me to be a hermaphrodite.

Despite everything I have gone through the past nearly nine years, I still find myself unable to prove to the Dutch physicians that I am intersex. Part of me hopes that the current German surgeon I'm in contact with comes through on the surgery and that I'll have it next month, prior to the hearing. It might be the only way to win the case, depressingly enough.


Maya


[1] http://www.vumc.nl/afdelingen/zorgcentrum-voor-gender/337056/337060/337556/

Convicted Of Vengeance Vandalism; Appeal Pending

Yet another installment in the case of the lawsuit which just won't go away. Two and a half years ago I lost control over myself when one of my Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) personality fragments took over control of my body. The result involved some broken glass and a lot of physical and psychological damage on my end: http://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2011/05/taking-nightmare-notch-further.html. Today I finally heard the verdict: guilty of willful vandalism but due to the preceding circumstances no punishment beyond having to pay thousands of Euros to the artist whose uninsured statues were also damaged.

As the district attorney put it, he could imagine me becoming extremely frustrated due to the trouble with the hospitals and such, but he still deemed that I did the vandalism on purpose while knowing very well what I was doing. The judge went along with this. Salient detail hereby is that this was based on the incomplete psychological report from an NFI psychologist who examined me in January of 2012 for one hour and even mentions in said report that it is incomplete. The complete report on the same topic by my own psychotherapist, who has been treating me since 2009 and who deemed the event a classical example of DID, was completely ignored. This even though both individuals have similar qualifications.

Obviously my lawyer (Robert Speijdel) and me decided to appeal this decision as only full acquittal of any prosecution would be morally acceptable. While I did go to the GP's office and must have destroyed the items in question, I had no thoughts of vengeance or plans to destroy anything. Until the assistant behind the counter uttered those unfortunate dismissive words - setting off the DID event - I just was there to get that referral letter from the GP. Nothing else. The rest is a blur like watching someone else committing acts of violence. Then the horror of clutching my bleeding hand whilst sitting in the midst of my own blood, then the horrific pain from metal cuffs biting into my wrists, my head repeatedly getting beaten into a car door, a cop sitting on top of me and me being forcefully undressed.

The first appeal hearing probably won't take place for another half year. Before that I will undergo a second opinion by a trusted and independent psychologist. Then finally I should be able to fully put this case behind me in the knowledge that justice has been served in this one case.

At the hearing today two journalists were also present, of RTV Oost and newspaper the Tubantia. They were there after my lawyer had mentioned the case to me. It's a pretty juicy case after all and deserving of the eye of the public. It shows how rare cases like mine are being treated by the Dutch justice system after all. On which note, the man representing the artist cornered me after the hearing, mentioning to me on an incessant tone how much the artist was suffering emotionally and that there should be a quick end to this case. All I could tell him was that we were all here to see justice served and thanked him for his understanding.

Next month there is the first public hearing against the VUmc gender team in Amsterdam by the disciplinary commission. It's definitely a case I'm looking forward to more than today's case. Even if it's really annoying to have to deal with no fewer than four legal cases, all of which determine my life to some extent for the coming months and years.

Maybe by the end of next year all of those cases will have been resolved. Justice is among the slowest things on this planet, probably right after glaciers.


Maya

Losing Sight Of Myself And Motivation

Today I bought new sandals. Really nice ones made by a Spanish brand with a minor heel and an overall very elegant design. With the current temperatures around 30 degrees Celsius during the day it's nice to feel cool and look fancy while doing so. This time I wisened up and got EU size 40 as for some reason I used to buy things size 41 which always turned out to be a tad too big. Now I'm all happy with these new sandals.

Looking at the sandals again, though, it occurred to me that I bought those because of my struggle to find myself. It's only because I figured out that I have a female physique and with it female sizes that I'm dressed the way I am now. Today I'm wearing jeans shorts and a black top with a bit of black lace around the top part. It really brings out my figure and when looking at myself in the mirror I have to admit it looks good. The looks I get in public are telling too, even if they make me feel uncomfortable more than anything else.

Yet what does it truly mean to me? I do express myself through the way I dress, just like everybody else does. I go for a rather basic style, with mostly primary colours and generally no prints, pre-destroyed clothes or accessories. I do like skin-hugging clothes, though, and dislike loose clothes. This seems to mean that I'm extroverted, but not seeking attention. I'm present, but would prefer to draw attention to me by my personality rather than my looks. I'm okay with that.

With all that I guess everything that can be said about my body and everything around it which doesn't touch upon traumas has been said. This year seems to have been the one which broke the proverbial camel's back, pushing me firmly away from sexuality, relationships and my intersex body. It also pushed me into the big wild yonder, as I am forced to grudgingly accept that there is absolutely no way I could conceivably stay in the Netherlands. Much like my body is traumas and traumas are my body, so the Netherlands in many ways stands for everything which has gone wrong the past almost nine years.

Amsterdam to me means the VUmc, AMC and OLVG hospitals and the terrors and humiliations I had to suffer there. Same for Utrecht, Rotterdam, Groningen and Breda. The Hague with its politicians means the gross violation of human rights to me. The public transport systems, other places... everything seems to hold a piece of the trauma which is just called 'the Netherlands'. If I stay in this country I'll forever be surrounded by the reminders, causes and ruins of my traumas. I have to escape. Break free. Even if it hurts and forces me to leave part of myself in this country.

The Netherlands is the place where I was born and grew up. I learned its language and customs from a young age. I was a good student at school, breezing through everything and generally considered exceedingly polite, intelligent and well-spoken. Somehow, somewhere along the way this country changed, like how a gentle, caring husband changes into a violent, gambling drunk. This made the other transformation I had to deal with even harder, namely that of my psyche and self-image. In a way what happened to this country and its treatment of me was the inverse of me learning the truth about my body and the joy at learning the truth, hard as it was at times.

So now I'm left with again the rejection of free will and choice. There is no future, no existence for me in the Netherlands. For all eternity the physicians, psychologists and politicians will keep denying that I'm intersex and refuse to provide me with the medical and psychological care I require. At this point there is nothing else for me to concern myself with but pure survival. Staying in this country will mean having to hide in crevices like some small critter, terrified of the next predator to swoop or run past. It would be not something compatible with a humane existence. Thus I have to move, which won't be easy either.

Germany seems to be the obvious country for me to move to. I work for a German company after all, the German physicians have been very helpful and honest and in socio-economic perspectives Germany is a very attractive choice as well. It won't be easy of course, because I'm not familiar with all systems in Germany and do not speak very good German yet. I have given myself a few months to work on the latter through reading books and the like. Unless after the public hearing against the VUmc in September something changes, I will finalize my arrangements to move myself and my company to Germany. Just a matter of which area and city then.

It is my hope that in Germany I can finally find myself again. At this point I'm feeling so worn out and emotionally numb that I barely respond to triggers any more. It's nice because it allows me to focus on my work more, but also disturbing because I know that I'll have to pay the bill for it soon enough.

All I hope for at this point is to find myself in a place where I do not have to fight for my life and existence any more, but where I can be an actual human being. Maybe even the woman I keep dreaming of, with the final restorative surgery finished and never having to worry about MRI scans, physical examinations and hospitals again. As usual hope is dangerous for me as it triggers depressing, suicidal thoughts directly opposing any hopeful thought.

It's easy for me to know when I'm happy and in the right place. That will be when I do no longer feel this pain inside and the thought of ending my life doesn't fill me with an intense longing any more. If only...


Maya

Awaiting The MRI Scan And More Observations

Today I got a phone call from the local hospital I sent the request for the MRI scan to. They wanted to verify a few details before putting the appointment into the system. A confirmation letter will be sent to my current address via snail mail, which I will thus receive tomorrow. I'm hoping that the MRI scan will take place at least this month, so that the last surgery consult and the surgery itself won't spill too far into next month. It really gets pretty tiring to have all of this going on.

I can really say that since Monday I haven't been feeling myself, really. In as far as 'myself' ever was my self, if you catch my drift. As I mentioned in my previous post it's as though only now I get to fully go through puberty. The past few days I'm noticing this even more. For a few years I figured that I had grown up emotionally and would be comparable to a 16-year old on an emotional level. The past days that theory got thrown pretty much out of the window. Now that I am beginning to accept that I'll finally have my body back I am also beginning to realize that I can only now truly go through puberty. Before I was only pretending.

I never before truly noticed the mental blockades preventing me from feeling and experiencing certain things. I knew that getting the medical research and any surgeries performed to get my body into the state I felt was right, but I was never really able to express why this was important. For years I have been fighting in my experience against often well-intended comments that I should learn to accept and be happy with my body the way it is. Looking back now I can see the unimaginable damage those remarks have caused. Each of them tore away a little bit again of my sense of self-worth and determination. I'd never have to go through puberty. I don't need a self-image. I don't need to listen to these feelings about what'd make me happy. Just numb your feelings a little bit more and everything will be fine.

At the same time that I realize all that I also know fully well that it all doesn't really make a lot of sense rationally. I mean this whole sexuality business. Why waste so much time and effort on it, just for something whose use can be described in two words, those being 'pleasurable' and 'procreation'. The latter doesn't apply to me in any fashion since I wasn't born with any functional reproductive organs. The former is in my view very much debatable. Those who have read my previous posts know that I harbour a deeply seated hatred against sex, sexuality and couples. Maybe it's just that the way I was born and being prevented from going through puberty in any normal fashion fostered this hatred. Maybe the way physicians and psychologists further broke down my psyche together with the sexual abuse and rape I suffered over the past eight years prevented me from ever developing anything but sheer hatred and distrust on those topics.

Then why do I still want this surgery? Why do I feel this absolutely overwhelming need, nay, necessity to get a functional vagina? Maybe it's just that when one is born one has this mental template of one's body, of how it's supposed to be, look and function. Outside influences can tweak and distort it, but it'll always be there, driving one. If that's true then my drive for this surgery is simply to complete this template. It's what I'm supposed to be, look and function like. Maybe it's the final piece of the puzzle which will allow me to finally experience the emotional side of puberty, which is to say making lots of stupid mistakes in the areas of sexuality and dating to become emotionally mature enough to not make those mistakes again.

Maybe this is my last shot at the normal life I feel I never had. I was living in the wrong body all these decades, all because it didn't match up with my mental template. I couldn't find the 'me' in amongst all the chaos and confusion. It feels like a certainty now. Something solid. Something about which I can truly feel that it is me. This body. This mind. These thoughts. Nothing as trivial as the wrong gender either. This isn't about gender, but about existence. In previous posts I sometimes alluded to this, of this body I could see in the distance, but which I could never reach, despite knowing that it was my body. I felt that physicians and psychologists kept me from reaching it.

In the end all it took was the recognition of my body's physical state and a relatively minor surgery to create a new vagina entrance and labia. I'm a hermaphrodite. This is me. It's who I'll always be. It's how I was meant to be. This is right. This feels proper.

This whole process is making so much loose inside my psyche, it's astounding, I had never imagined I could feel like this, even though it is logical at some level. It's wearing me out at the same time, though. I'm sleeping more and more, and trudging off to bed before 10 PM feeling completely exhausted, sometimes literally falling over onto the floor, unable to keep my balance and almost too tired to get up again. It's probably a healthy process, but since I'm catching up on nearly three decades worth of emotional and mental luggage it's also murder on my mental and emotional reserves.

Here's to a well-executed surgery next month and the end of a major chapter. Then it's onwards to the first public hearing in the case against the VUmc hospital's gender team, scheduled for September 24th this year, and with it the confrontation with another major part of my traumas. I just hope I won't have to spend another eight years fighting that war. I'd like to actually do something useful with my life before reaching the half-way point of my body's lifespan. Experiences like I have had and still have make one far too bloody aware of one's own mortality and limited years on this world.


Maya

All The Stuff You Didn't See

Looking back at the things I have written about on my blog the past months I have to admit that there's a lot of formal stuff on it, but very little about me as a person. I think that this is a bit of a shame, as originally I had set up this blog to share my daily happenings as well as larger events with the world. Much of this is of course due to the changes which happened during late 2012, when I got my first job as a developer.

Considering those five months I spent there I can honestly say that I'm more glad than ever that I landed the job I currently have. My previous working place was extremely demotivating and also didn't match up very well with the other demands my life places upon me. I'm not suited to working from 9-5 at an office, partially because it goes in against how I work, partially due to the curbing of my freedom in setting my own schedule, and partially because in software development there's precious little reason to spend time at an office when you can do the same work from anywhere.

Anyway, as a result I had to cram in media events, hospital appointments, legal hearings and heavens know what else into the few paid free days I got offered. This didn't leave much time to... well, live. In addition to a relationship going from bad to terrible, various uncertainties about financial and legal matters and trying to help a person who just didn't want to be helped it seems as though I kinda just didn't quite _live_ during those months.

Now that I'm out of it all, with the relationship over, me having gotten an awesome job at a great German company which allows me all the freedom I could wish for, and the ramping up of various events media and legal-wise which will both further break down the tyranny of the legal system against all those who are born 'different' - as well as inform the average person about what the hell intersex is and how the heck they could have missed something so extremely common - it's hard for me not to start feeling more myself. More... human, I guess.

Sure, from yesterday until a few hours ago I had a continuous migraine, and I regularly suffer from mild migraines for the past months now, but I think that's just the stress of the past months coming out of my system. I actually am beginning to feel creative and motivated again. I want to go back to working on fun things, as well as write again on my stories, such as my Ocarina of Time-based Zelda novel, the Viral Desire survival-horror novel and the semi-autobiographic In Between And Neither. Maybe I'll even start work on my autobiography.

I have plenty of ideas for games as well, Android and PC. This in addition to various ambitious software projects I have underway, such as the VHDL compiler I'm writing and the now rapidly progressing WildFox browser project. The latter I'm especially happy with. I'm hoping to replace all other browsers I use with it pretty soon now. Sure, it still needs a few more features and some debugging love, but I'm actually using it for the past few days on this old laptop, and it's a breeze of fresh air compared to bloated Firefox and Chrome.

With money coming in now I am also able to get that new laptop I talked about before. It should allow me to go back to doing 3D modelling and such. I'm also of mind to play around with programming that custom CPU architecture in VHDL again. It's good to be creative, even if I have just shown myself to be a total and utter geek :)

I'm looking forward to returning to my apartment in Almere soon. While it's going to take some adjusting to live on my own with no one around, I think I'll be fine. I should be able to get everything which suffered due to my absence quickly in shape again.

A last thing I wanted to talk about are the movies and games I enjoyed lately. I recently watched the second Silent Hill movie, which is based on the third instalment of the game series with the same name. It was a quite good movie, capturing well the atmosphere of the game, and definitely not a bad movie version of the game's story. I also watched it in 3D, which looks quite good with this movie since it was filmed in 3D.

The 3D effect with the second movie I watched recently watched was even better: The Hobbit, the first part. I watched the High-Frame Rate (HFR) version, which uses 48 frames per second instead of the usual 24. All I can say is that I'd recommend people to always watch the HFR version if possible. The motion is just so much smoother especially while panning and during action scenes that it makes non-HFR movies look cheap. The movie itself is quite enjoyable as well, and I will watch the second part when it comes out.

Finally, I enjoyed playing Mass Effect 2 a lot a while ago. It actually saddened me to lose two team members, though I was rather annoyed to learn that I lost most of my ship's crew because you have a time limit after they get kidnapped to get them back. Nobody told me, I guess :(

A game I didn't play, but of which I watched multiple walkthroughs, has definitely astounded me with its awesome writing. The game is called Bioshock Infinite and it's the third part of the Bioshock series. Truth to be told it's more of a spiritual successor, since it doesn't play in the same time period (1912 instead of 1960s) and aside from one scene there's never a direct link. That doesn't take away that it's an awesome game, however. The writing has such depth and brilliance that you literally have to experience twice. Once to get bedazzled by it, the second time to actually understand the depth and meaning of everything you see and hear.

Anyway, I'll be heading to bed now as it's nearing midnight :) I have to work tomorrow, then after dinner I'm meeting up with a photographer regarding our attempt at winning first place in this year's Pride Photo Award. All we need at this point is really the first public hearing against the VUmc's gender team to get the final shots to perfect the series.

Goodnight and see you all tomorrow :)


Maya