some thought about testing for transgender elements in biology

These are my own thoughts as far as I am even capable of having own thoughts:

I’m totally failing at this whole transgender thing…transsexual thing?. Apparently my hormones are normal, and I failed to take the transgender male to female test because I couldn’t answer their questions (cause obviously they didn’t apply to my situation)….Now I’m so excited to see about the DNA testing….what will it tell me, will my DNA turn against me too?

…most of this is a philosophical debate, and not really related to biology at all, except the horrible feelings of body dysphoria and being unable to relate to your physical appearance. . . the question I always wonder about is how can you be transgender (from one to the other) when you have no gender to start with? transgender is seen as movig from 1 to another (say from number 1 to number 2…without implying a hierarchy here, or maybe just a little)….Can you move from 0 to 0? Be an agender transgender? My mind is already Neutrois (agender, closer to Android or other forms of relevant nonexistence), I just want my body to match what’s already in my mind and my soul….Does that count as transgender? If it does, then I am, if it does not, then I am not transgender, but I am still going to me Neutrois…..what a dilemma…….Just as soon as we have the right words for everything, maybe we can move on to surgery…

 

(I wonder if next time I would get more accurate info by consulting the Tarot cards instead biology, at least they are honest…)

 

 

another things about labels

It’s pretty obvious that I am a fan of labels, of categories and of organising things properly so they are more easily understood and remembered. My studies have reflected that bias towards labels and producing mental shapes, having contours for invisible and immeasurable things, and my reactions towards people criticising this view only reinforced it.

I get really defensive when people talk about words as if they had no meaning or no other purpose than to be annoying to them. I identify as Neutrois, and it takes up a whole lot of my life, it is a part of me and how I think, how I feel, how I express myself, how I make choices…. . And that’s just a label. 

I am/was often asked why I don’t want to be a woman, why I don’t identify as a man, since both of these options are freely available to me, I have oh so much freedom to choose who I want to be. But it can also be asked, why do you want to be a woman, why do you identify as a man, have you ever thought about that? They often reply that it’s just natural, they don’t need to question where they are coming from. Is it not a label, because they don’t realise it is just as much a label as mine? It’s just as important to their identity as mine is to my identity. If I called my female-identified colleagues Steve, and bro and treated them like they were male, I doubt that they would like that, so why on earth do people think they have the authority to decide on what my label is and how I should be treated.

It’s like forcing your favourite food on someone who is allergic to it, only because you like it, and then being insulted when they don’t. 

I have many labels; they don’t solely define me but they exist for a reason. They are a communication device, a tool to figure out my likes and dislikes and something that sets me apart from other individuals as an individual. It makes room for more indivdualised existence, for more difference, but this difference is not alienating, only how people resond to it out of ignorance is. It’s not inherently bad, but often difficult to have an unrecognized label, not because the label is faulty, but because society faults you for it. It’s like being with colourblind people who keep telling you a colour does not exist because they themselves can’t see it, and you know it exists and it is beautiful.

It’s like having extrasensory perception. 

So I’ll continue to have labels and recognise tham as such. They can evolve and be discarded over time, or be stuck with forever, it’s up to the person labelling themselves how and for how long they will stick to their label, just like in a relationship.

So, when you hear the word Neutrois, know that it is a label, used by me for myself and for reasons that are important to me. 

re-blog: breaking free of the gender binary

 

Adreess where video is to be found: http://www.chicagoideas.com/videos/336

Let us allow ourselves to listen to this brave young person and also to ourselves, while we’re at it. We don’t need to live in a jungle in order to look into our selves and accept our own nature and stop running after a society that tries to cripple us with their unsound gender rules.

“They need to see their own self for once”…

Ditch those unhealthy notions society tells you about yourself, integrate your spirit and listen to your instinct. Talk to people about who you are and how you feel and be proud of it.

You are a most important part of society and can help make it a better place for everyone. We’re all pioneers in our own right.

male is the new Neutrois

A lot of things have bothered me lately: the fact that my car is not insured and I cannot reach the person who is supposed to help me draw up a new insurance contract, the fact that at work I recently stayed five hours longer to complete a project which it wasn’t necessarily my job to do, and the fact that recently I have been reading a lot about individuals who take Testosterone and want to become male.

Also, I am seeing a specialist on trans issues, who is digging into my psyche and I am struggling with the emotions that go with that. I don’t want to do intense psychological work, as I’ve done this before and I hate being in that emotional place.

What freaks me out a lot lately is that this specialist is watching me and doing tests on me (only verbal tests, thank God), and has already diagnosed me with Borderline (yeah, yeah, I have known that for years) and mild autism (I got some autistic traits that counteract the Borderline traits and vice versa, which I find very refreshing). We’ve established that I am a complex person and not definitely this or definitely that and I am glad the one in charge of my name change realizes that. That’s a good start.

 

I just wonder why there are so many tests and I can’t just say I want to do this because every fibre in my body screams for it and it feels right and that is not really considered valid. Why would anyone in their right mind not accept that there is no gender? Why would anyone want me to be male or female. What’s it to them?

If you live mainly in your head and you have long stopped even feeling parts of your body and consider the body to be secondary to the mind, then I think it’s quite valid to be outisde of gender. To add to this, you do not abide by gender rules, and have nearly absolutely nothing to do with your peers (men and women, who identify themselves so). Why do people still try to make me have a gender, as if it was imperative to my existence? I can exist without one.

 

I also wonder why many who have initially said they are Neutrois or another type of agender or genderqueer or another type of label suddenly now take Testosterone and say they are a guy and even aspire to live as male. Where does this shift from genderless to male come from? Is it easier for them to do so? Has society made them do it, because of their constant stigma and forms of victimisation? Have they lost their ability to see past gender and thought in their little heads they have to settle for one, discarding their formerly so proud assertion that they are genderless?

All these defectors aren’t really helping the cause, the cause for a genderless way of life, the struggle to highlight gender politics’ bigotry and enslavement of the human spirit. Binary thinking.

For God’s sake, stop following the binary. Even if you are, in your heart and soul, a person who recognises and appreciates gender diversity and who does not necessarily feel so utterly male or female that you need to make other people’s lives hell, why don’t you show it proudly and unabashedly? Show the world that you are not part of the binary. I have three brothers, I know a lot about male priviledge and that you are able to get more out of being or presenting male and may even get to fool the medical establishment in order to get the surgery you want. But that, to me, is not a true victory. While you think you are fooling others or even being authentic, you are only playing their game and using the established gender concepts and pandering to their ideals, using their language.

I find that the struggle to be outside gender norms is akin to the struggle of women’s liberation. This is Neutrois liberation. It does not mean that this cause is more important than other causes, but it’s a highly political one and one to be taken seriously.

Please stop shaping your body accordsing to what’s practical or more suitable to society or even prettier. Unless you are truly male (and I don’t doubt that many people who take T are, or else they wouldn’t put their bodies under so much stress and make irreversible changes to their bodies), why don’t you live as neutral or at least be proud enough of it that you resist the temptation to be mainstream? Male is not the default gender for genderqueer people and certainly not for Neutrois. Neutrois exist alongside male and female and should not be amalgamated into the binary. I think it’s sad that many people default to male. It only goes to show how much priviledge is in the male gender, and how easy it is to become male (legally).

 

I sometimes seriously feel like apologising to people for being so difficult, and I don’t mean because of an inherent personality disorder or two or however many they are (I’ve not gone through all the tests that exist out there, yet). I’m talking about my gender problem. I want to apologise to the therapist (the one who determines whether I’m real), because I am so complicated and don’t ever shut up about gender equality and my desire to be outside of the binary and still have the same human rights as the default males. I want to apologise to her for taking up so much of her time, and for her having to try and understand me eventhough she knows already that I am either male or female or both. “She knows”, but yet she listens to me and my incoherent ramblings about gender neutrality. She must indeed think I am very sick and very deluded.

She is probably just waiting until I scream out for my first T shot and until I find enough masculine force in me to warrant becoming male. Or she thinks perhaps a small hormone imbalance and a bit of oestrogen would change the whole situation, and I would suddenly find myself in the kitchen preparing dinner for my husband, wearing only skimpy clothes to appeal to him, because that will be my only mission in life.

People apparently think I can be male one day and female the next. Isn’t that rather proof that these categories are arbitrary and don’t have a solid foundation?

 

Male or female energy: energy. Energy: neutral. Male or female: Neutral.

If anything, the default category should be neutral.

 

And the ennemies of gender liberation forget that there are more parts to a human than just the body, or just energy. There’s also thought and desire, motivation. There’s philosophy, morals, psychology, worldview, instinct, and all sorts of factors that decide whether one is male or female.

At least for those people who have these.

go f…. yourself, sexuals (politically not correct, but honest)

I just blocked a person/site/group of people from my twitter account.

 

I don’t remember the name, something like sexual health and somethig with fantasy   (= {in other words}, SHIT [for me]).

 

Why would a sexual site like this follow me on twitter? Was it just a random follow, or did someone actually sit there and wonder whether to follow my twitter account and then decide it was a good idea?

It was probably some random commercial act, like people shuffling through the phone book to make calls to unsuspecting people to try and sell whatever it is they have or work for whomever they are working for.

I’ve always wondered how sexual people could take any interest in someone who is asexual, antisexual, celibate. Perhaps it’s rather a case of them wanting us to be interested in them, ’cause in the end, everyone is always interested in them and it cannot be otherwise. If it is, then they’ll make sure it isn’t.

 

What sexuals should really do is go f… sex.

 

The art of negotiating

It seems to me that every trans person needs some skills in negotiating. The terms of our existence are far from fixed, but ocassionally shift, sometimes in our favour, and sometimes in another direction.

A trans person is also lucky if they know some trans law and a way to communicate to people in positions of power. A trans person is like a fish swimming in an endless sea, trying to get back to where they live, a safe space that they call home, whilst trying to avoid all the nets and other traps set in place to capture and dissect them or even tear them apart.

How to negotiate an identity: First, get someone else, who does not know you and has never been an important part in your life but is considered a specialist to judge you and hope they judge in your favour.

Second, make sure you have enough money to pay to people who will then go on and tell you who you are or who you are supposed to be. If surgery is required, make sure the funds extend to that point where your body is cut open and revealed to complete strangers who then reshape it according to the terms that have been set.

Make sure you have time to run around here and there and confront people all the time on your identity, who cannot believe it is really so and would like to steer you in a certain direction or at least understand you. Be aware that what they call understanding might not be what you might call understanding, and their way of empathising with you might differ from what you would expect. Be aware that if they cannot believe in your type, they cannot understand.

Be prepared to get what you are given, to take what you can. Name change, fine. Under what conditions…you decide on which name? A neutral one, they say, but neutral does not exist. A name such as Alex or something like that. To me, that’s not a neutral name. In a gender-obsessed culture there is no neutral. This does not mean that I am less of a neutral. Just because nobody sees me does not mean I don’t exist. Just because nobody understands my language does not mean that I am not communicating. People just have not come to terms with me yet.

Negotiating is frustrating, when you have no tools at your disposal to help you out, to give you authority or to justify yourself. There is not much evidence I can use to justify my claims of being trans.

I believe I am transsexual. Just not the traditional type that wants to swap one gender role for another. My gender role does apparently not exist yet, eventhough I as a person exist alongside my gender.

Apparently my best option is to lie and cheat my way to some form of resolution that would benefit all parties involved, except mine. Oh, I forgot, I’m not even a minority enough to get credit for being marginalised, because I do not succesfully represent a group and can’t shout as loud as others. I am not represented in the media, my identity scares people more than aids or cancer. But I represent myself. I guess that’s not quite enough.

People make so many assumptions and mistakes and I am to reinforce them by playing along. How do you think that makes me feel? I feel like a criminal trying to escape conviction only to then be free and then serve the sentence of having to perpetually lie to myself and others. I don’t think I am a good liar, even with hours and hours of enforced training and accomplished survival tactics. I am sick of lying and having to defend myself and my core principles when there is really nothing to defend. There is absolutely no logical reason to attack my ideas and beliefs and the way I see myself. Me being Neutrois will not destroy the universe, so why try and keep me in line, in check? I am a good enough little citizen even without your intervention.

What do I need to give and what do I get out of it is the question? I want my freedom to express myself, I want to not get bullied into submission by complete strangers who don’t like me, I want to be left alone to make decisions about myself. But it seems I am not able to, because I will always need a specialist to hold my hand and some authority to approve of me.

I really wonder if this is really what true negotiating is about, what diplomacy is, or if this is just another form of majority rule, where I benefit less from the ruling than my majority counterpart human life forms.

I know what I want. That is also not good enough. I need to know what others want and need first and then fit my desires around their needs. I need to get back into the fold of a crazed social construct and function normally. Apparently my abstinence is an issue. It makes me happier and makes me much healthier (both mentally and physically), yet it must be a problem because others cannot fathom it. I think it wouldn’t be a problem if I had promiscuous unprotected sex, because that at least would better fit the description of trans, or even of a Borderline person who is also trans. But being happy with who I am at this moment, that’s called being diseased.

I am not saying I don’t have many issues, but that does not make it right for people to claim to know my identity and what is good for me and write the rules that govern my life.

I apreciate the help I am getting, but am far from feeling that I have found an advocate for my rights. I have found a person who does not beat me for being who I am, nor send me away, but listens to what I have to say. That is indeed something.

But what usually happens after the short phase of being delighted at having found someone who is versed in trans issues is a bit disappointing. Far from trying to beat the system, they reveal that they are, in fact, a part of it. They like stereotypes and ideals that everyone in the system appreciates and want to uphold. They enjoy priviledge, as anyone would. And they decide how to work with the system to further my rights.

Is negotiating really about me or is it more about how to become closer to the cis gender? I don’t believe negotiation is a win-win situation, and  it seems to me to come closer to conforming to established rules.

Authorities may be satisfied with the results, but I am still left to negotiate my life. I will still struggle to be seen, and the torment will go on…

It’s up to you to decide

…do I have the ‘X-factor’, as in ‘extremely discomforting’ or maybe ‘rather xcellent’, or not?

I will never know how people feel about me and my agender agenda unless I communicate it to them in sometimes more and sometimes not so subtle ways.

I have come up with a few ideas to make people aware of myself:

(1) gender tag: wearing my identity on my sleeve or somewhere else where it is visible to people, stating name, non-gender, and pronoun preference.

(2) going swimming topless. It sounds horrible, but other than scars, people will not be confronted by anything upsetting. Come on, I mean, huge big scars on one’s chest? That’s nothing new…..at least not to me….

(3) writing an article for a newspaper outlining something or other people should know about me, it’ll probably reach more audiences than swimming around, but will it have the same dramatic effect?

(4) writing a book. Considering I have not done my 1700 word nano toll for my 50,000 word novel today, this seems like an unlikely way to get my points across and people will still have to buy and want to read it.
I like to confront people with reality….my reality.

When I asked the person in charge of the swimming pool whether I could swim there the way I wanted to, he had no precedence case to turn to for help in making that decision and giving me a sure answer. He only said I should try swimming without a top on and observe people’s reaction and told me he would have to take me aside and tell me off for it if he saw that it annoyed fellow simming pool users.

I asked him in case I would do this and appear in front of people as a Neutrois would, with nothing to hide. Perhaps I will get shoved back in my rabbit hole, but perhaps this could be one more win for me…one more way to feel free.

Freedom is such an illusive goal when one is fighting for it on so many fronts and there’s no end in sight. Or perhaps I’m not looking hard enough?

I wish people would stop hijacking my identity

Let’s be clear about this: i identify as Neutrois.

Some people seem to think “Oh, this is a girl who identifies as Neutrois. SHE’s so cute”
or “Oh, wow, another fetish”.

I am a ‘they’ or an ‘it’, not a he/she or a mix of these. I don’t wear boy’s or girl’s clothes but clothes, I don’t gender everything that exists and I don’t think of people in terms of sexuality or gender, but think mainly in other categories: like who is this person really?!

Though Neutrois is a gender of sorts, providing a contrast to other genders, it’s actually a non-gender. It does not include rules such as that I have to wear pink or I need to wear make-up.

Neutrois want to move away from gender.

I wish people would stop calling themselves Neutrois and start educating themselves on what it means: What it means to people like me, and what it means to them. It’s not just a fancy word that sounds slightly french and “Oh, I’ll just use it for now to deine myself, but I don’t really know what it means”.

You can’t really say you are a Neutrois if you sometimes feel male, sometimes female, and sometimes Neutrois, I suggest you say “I sometimes feel Neutrois”, instead of saying you are Neutrois. There’s a difference there. You can’t say “I sometimes feel dysphoria and sometimes I don’t” and therefore I am a Neutrois. I don’t want to pathologise being me, but a Neutrois experiences constant overwhelming dysphoria to a point where it gets very dark and ugly, it’s not just about having a bad day once ina  while. It’s like people saying they have depression when they only feel a bit sad, usually for good reason. How does this minimise another person’s acute and bearable sickening depresion that is able to completely ruin his life if this person does not fight against it constantly, every single day?

Surgery to me is life-affirming, it’s a major part of the Neutrois identity. A Neutrois who does not want surgery and eventually wants to have kids and actually realy likes who they are without surgery, to me, is like a penguin who actually lives in the desert and does not like swimming and does not look anything like a penguin….

I hope you get my point.

A Neutrois who is pansexual…..I don’t get that. If you tell me you are Neutrois and thereby have major body dysphoria, especially about ‘sexual’ parts, then how do you experience attraction and how could you ever act on it even if your body was attracted to someone? And why call that sexual attraction? I think a Neutrois can experience romantic attraction, but when it comes to sexuality there is a natural repulsion due to them not liking their body parts and not even wanting to touch these themselves let alone anyone else going anywhere near them.

A Neutrois, basically someone who wants to remove all their sexual and gender aspects, including social stigma AND body parts who is a sexual? A eunuch who is a sexual? These identities do not match and would create great conflict in myself were I to identify like that. It’s like by having one of these identities you are at the same time denying another.

A Neutrois is, yes, it has finally been revealed, a non-sexual, a sex-less being. Compare it to an android or a disembodied spirit if it makes it easier for you to understand.

A Neutrois is more or less dissociated from the physical and prefers mental things to physical things. A Neutrois is not a fan of biology, not in its current state, anyway.

That’s why recently I have come to identify more and more as not trasgender, though I fit the category, but as transhuman. Transgender implies moving from one gender to another form of gender. But this is inaccurate for me. I want to be clear to people how I identify and I want my identity to match the definition that is out there, so I will in future reference trasnhuman instead of transgender. I want to reach a new paradigm in terms of humanity and body modification, in terms of language use and behaviour. It permeates every single aspect of my life and will affect me until I am dead and cease to exist.

 

Being Neutrois is a lonely, scary, uncomfortable, and even dangerous place to be. It is soul-destroying beacuse one receives nearly no affirmation of one’s identity and struggles to get a voice even amongst all these different queer peers. Even they mostly do not understand the concept behind this identity. And yes, it’s not that I woke up one day and knew that I was a Neutrois, I had to think about becoming a Neutrois. I had to decide to be a Neutrois, as rarely a Neutrois is born this way.

Neutrois is as much about ‘what do I want from my life and how do I get it’ and ‘who do I want to be’ as ‘I just feel shit in my body and wish I could change it and just know that something is not right’. But it’s definitely not ‘I am male or female or sometimes this and sometimes that’.

Be clear about what it means to live your life like a Neutrois. It has implications, you know. I challenge you to live like a true Neutrois!

Where are our allies?

I recently got transferred into the transit area where I meet many more people from diverse backgrounds and also met new staff members. They were all nice, of course, but nice is not quite enough when one barely exists and is rarely, if ever, seen as an equal.

I don’t mind being patronised when I’m new at work, because it’s true that I need to listen and learn a lot of new things, but stop patronising me because of or in spite of my gender (identity).

There are so many priviledged people and they don’t even know how priviledged they are. Only when this prviledge is taken away do they realise what life can actually be like.

They say they’re so accepting, but their reaction to what I tell them about me is mostly shock or disbelief or even amusement, and most often I have to listen to patronising comments afterward. They say it’s ok to be me and then get pronouns wrong. One woman asked me what my first name was after I had told her, thinking it can’t be true. I wonder why do people not just make up their own names for me like the character Dr. Cox from the TV Show Scrubs does to the character Dorian?!

They say they are accepting of all sorts of sexualities!! Do they consider accepting the fact that I don’t like fucking? No, they don’t understand how sexuality is repulsive to me, how I’d rather protect and nourish my body than use it for someone else’s gratification. How sickening is it that they think I follow the same low standards as them when it comes to what they call ‘love’ and ‘affection’.

These days I openly tell people I am Neutrois and I often add that I am female to eunuch. I want so badly to show them my scars, to tell them what it means for me to be like this, that it means a lot more than just sitting around saying fancy new words for other people’s enterainment.

I can’t believe that they don’t get it!!

One person said at least having no gender is no problem, it’s nothing to get worked up about, really. It’s true, it SHOULDN’T be a problem, but it is. First it’s sensational to be without gender, and after a while nobody cares. After having outed yourself to people and told them personal stuff they just ignore you and get on with their gendered lives and gendering you as if you had never spoken one word about this whole topic and how you are different and you are left to pick up the pieces and try to find some form of positivty elsewhere. And the struggle to exist with your ideals in a place that doesn’t recognise these and denies you ownership of yourself (to a certain extent) continues every single day. Even when I am alone in an empty room, in my apartment, I hear those voices denying me my self.

WHERE ARE OUR ALLIES?

 

 

 

 

No blog posts lately

Sorry for not blogging much lately.

Not much has changed, except my laptop is doing strange things again: When I type a sentence it jus leaves some letters and spaces out. I think it has finally had enough and needs to be replaced. Now that I have easier Internet access, it’s doing these things.

So, at work I am still trying to get people to adopt my name and accept my concept of non-gender. People in the higher echelons at work have certainly done their best to make me feel welcome, but for security reasons I still have to go by my legal name on legal documents. Now for finding out if a name change is possible and under what conditions.

I would like to take full ownership of my name; I have never owned my legal name. It feels like for years I never had a name at all, only now am I starting to exist like other people.

But I realize I am still attempting to sort of steal the identity of others. After my grandfather died and the house had to be emptied, I took so many old things. These things made me feel closer to family history/tradition and by extension to a stable existence with both meaning and continuity.