Vlog: Back Again, Surgery And My Farewell To Intersex

Topics in this video include:
- What has happened since my last vlog video in late 2011.
- My impending surgery.
- My current views on being intersex and intersex in general.
- How I regard my future.


Maya

Welcome To The Nomadic Life Style

The past months have definitely been an interesting experience so far. Chased out of the place I used to call home amidst the disintegrating mess which maybe with the clarity of vision after the consumption of liberal amounts of alcohol and various substances which may or may not be legal in your jurisdiction could have been called a relationship, my life was properly turned upside-down. So badly even that I'm not even at liberty to reveal at this point where it is exactly that I'm staying currently, or where I have stayed previously, as it's too risky.

In some ways it's as though I was forced to shed a part of myself. Right out of the aforementioned mess I found myself in an ICE train to Germany to start my new job. Only a few months out of my previous job which had been everything but fun, it was all together quite a daunting thing. Over in Germany I did however find myself in good company. The owner of the business is one of the most awesome bosses you could imagine working for, and my colleagues are all pleasantly whacky, just as you'd expect of fellow developers, sysadmins and the like. I felt right at home.

Traveling away again after a short week, I found myself at temporary lodgings. From there I was able to take care of the legal matters required to get my home back, something which I hope will get resolved soon now. I was also able to continue all the other things with regards to the legal case against my insurance company, Unive, and the Pride Photo Award submission. For the former I'm now awaiting the next move by my lawyer, Yme Drost, and as for the latter, it's going to be hard to make the deadline, I'm afraid. I haven't been able to get into contact with the photographer for over a week now. Maybe that one is a loss after all.

In the end, though, the one thing I have learned through all of this is how it feels to be a nomad. I have no fixed place of residence, no large possessions and can pack up at a moment's notice. My laptops are the only things which combined with internet access give me some kind of fixedness in this world. It does mean that I largely exist on the internet, and that the world around me has become something less... solid and less relevant, I guess. It's there and then it isn't any more. My days mostly exist out of working on my laptops and going outside only to buy food and other necessities. When I'm not traveling, that is.

In some ways it's liberating to not be fixed to a single location and all the taxes, duties and annoyances and burdens which come with it. On the other hand it's also unsettling to be a transient. It does make one realize how fixed everything is in this world. It also makes me realize how many things are trying to pin me down to this one location as well. With currently four legal cases underway, me awaiting the judgement of this one surgeon and various bits and ends, I could easily stay fixed to this location for a very long time.

I'm a nomad and yet I'm not. I have a home and I do not. I may get this surgery or I may not. I may win certain legal cases or I may not. I definitely could use more certainty in my life.

On another note, I'm planning to obtain a video camera soon as some of you may already have gathered from following my online postings on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. With it I'll attempt to resume the video log I started back in 2011 but didn't quite continue in 2012 or this year so far. Maybe it'll give some more solidness to my currently quite insubstantial existence and words.

Maybe some day I'll be able to vlog from a place I can call 'home'. Haven't done that yet.


Maya

Planning My Pride Photo Award Debut

Today I got a message from photographer Eric Brinkhorst informing me that he'd like to plan a photography session for the Pride Photo Award really soon now to fill up the series as the final submission date is May 31st. It's going to be quite excited to see what will end up in the final series in the end. While a lot of things you can plan yourself, there are a few variables, such as when the first public hearing against the VUmc's gender team gets planned and what the response from that surgeon on my final surgery will be. Both would provide excellent material for the series, but there's no way to know whether any of them will work out the way we hope and whether they would occur within next month.

I felt pretty heartened by the response from Pride Photo Award (PPA) so far, with them spending an actual news article on their site on my story. I think that having a successful submission to PPA could mean a lot to intersex people in general. It would not only inform a large number of people that we exist at all, but also of the major horrors we have to suffer due to medical and political ignorance and will will. My hope is that the series works out well and gets into the top 5 at the PPA.

As far as the surgery goes, I doubt that it'll get into the series, as physicians are very busy people. I was supposed to be contacted by the surgeon this week, but with just one more day to go, I think it'll take longer. Probably far into next month. Even then I expect a rejection, as that is the only response which would be consistent with this world I was born into. Deny, crush, extinguish. Fatalistic, maybe, but based on years of cruel experience.

Then the public hearing. This may actually work out, as I received a response from the VUmc's lawyer via my own lawyer's office to the hormone level results I had put in as new evidence for my case. That the disciplinary commission is sending this now may mean that they are preparing to set a date for the public hearing. I really hope that this is the case and that the hearing is next month. Not just for the PPA series, but also to move this case ahead at last. This waiting is killing me.

In my fantasies I am contacted by a enthusiastic surgeon who wants to examine me for that surgery which he thinks will restore full functionality of my vagina. I also hear that the public hearing is early next month. In those fantasies I can finally shed off a lot of the impossibly heavy burden resting on my shoulders.

In reality, however, I'm left a bitter, overly sarcastic person. It's not who I want to be. It's what life has made me into. As someone once said, only fairy tales know happy endings.


Maya

I'm Somewhere In There

Yesterday was terribly exciting. Or maybe not. I did my usual working on the iOS application project I'm assigned to, then went to visit this photo exposition thing for a Dutch photography award, called 'Zilveren Camera' (Silver Camera), which had a tie-in with the Pride Photo Award for which I'm applying together with the Dutch photographer Eric Brinkhorst. Ergo my pictures and story were put up there as well.

While I had nothing bad to say about the two photos of mine on display there, nor the NRC newspaper article accompanying them, I didn't really feel like I should have been there at the event. It was mostly people talking about the award and along with me not knowing anyone there beyond Eric, there was also nobody seemingly recognizing me or wanting to show they had recognized me from the photos there. In the end I just wandered around a bit aimlessly before leaving. I also really didn't like the works of one of the winners of the Zilveren Camera, who specialized in photography bordering on child pornography. I found it to be pretty tasteless at any rate.

On my way back from the exposition I felt pretty uncomfortable. Beyond having some of my traumas triggered by seeing the child nude photography and getting ignored I felt I had to question my desire to participate in the Pride Photo Award event. Wouldn't it just lead to more ridicule? What would I truly accomplish with it? It took me until this morning that I realized that while the Pride Photo Award is useless to reach the common folk, it can nevertheless serve to inform others about the existence of intersex. Ergo I decided to press on with it.

This morning I went to a local beauty salon for my usual hair removal therapy, with Eric accompanying me to make some photos for the Pride Photo Award series. There I learned from the beautician that she couldn't really say whether this method actually is effective. Since it uses waxing as a start followed by an IPL flashing using the device generally used for rejuvenation, it shouldn't have any effect. Yet the beautician I was at before claimed that it had worked for another client of hers. Who to believe, I guess. I do hope it's effective at any rate.

After the treatment we went into the city so that I could pick up a few electronics items, including a USB hub for use with my new laptop since it only has 3 USB ports. We also got some ice cream, which is a good idea now that the weather is finally turning towards spring from the 'ten degrees too cold for this season' kinda feeling. Once home I saw that I had received the money I had earned last month and used it to order my new laptop along with a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. I can't wait to finally switch to a proper system to work on again.

A few hours ago I also received from Yme Drost's office the response my insurance company Unive had sent to Yme in response to his earlier letter to Unive in which he demanded that they'd start fully covering my hair removal therapy since my situation is very much comparable to that of transsexuals in this area. Unive's response was that since SKGZ has previously judged that my situation and that of transsexuals are not comparable that they do not have to cover it.

The next step here should be then that Unive will have to defend their view before a judge since SKGZ has no general legal jurisdiction but is more of an advisory body for health insurers and their clients. I'd very much like to see this issue finally see being resolved. I started trying to get this procedure I need to remove facial hair growth back in early 2011 and still haven't accomplished anything there, over two years later. Nothing would please me more to see Unive having to get back on their words, to make life easier for intersex individuals in the Netherlands and others as well. Me getting back the thousands of Euros I have spent on hair removal therapy so far would be nice too.

Oh yeah... in between all that there's me as well :) Just another person trying to live her life amidst evil companies and uncaring politicians, dodging obstacles in a worse-than-a-jungle society.

This week I'll try to contact a surgeon a friend contacted for me. This surgeon might be willing to help me with the last issue I have towards feeling like my body is finally complete: having my female side restored by opening up the existing vagina and creating labia. This really is something which doesn't benefit anyone but myself. It's a highly personal thing, yet I still feel the need to share it because it too is part of the list of items I tried to get fixed for over eight years now. Having this last issue resolved will mean for me that there are no remaining medical issues and a general feeling of calmness where there are now turbulent emotions.

Any woman with a condition which results in a non-functional vagina can probably agree on the severe psychological issues this causes. It's no different for me as a hermaphrodite. Losing one side of oneself might as well mean losing everything in a sense.

Here's hoping that this, too, will soon be a thing of the past.


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