Sunday 29 July 2012

On The Topic Of Being Something And Not Being Something

Earlier I was just reading around a bit on some websites when my eye fell on a scheduled event involving someone involved with LGBTI topics, or Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Intersex. Seeing that 'I' there and realizing what it stood for almost immediately made me feel uncomfortable as I realized that it applied to me, and why we even differentiate between those things. I so want to not be intersex or anything else which implies being a wrong existence by the definition of a large part of the world population. Merely existing implies that I have to suffer because others want me to. My own country wants to force major surgery on me, withhold proper medical diagnosis and treatment and trample over my basic human rights. The Dutch constitution's first article says that Dutch citizens are protected from discrimination based upon any criteria, including race, gender, etc. My own government has repeatedly decided since the 1950s that those who are not heterosexual and not strictly male or female are undesirable entities.

I do not want to be something controversial. I do not wish to be something others hate. I do not want to be an existence despised by my country's own doctors, psychologists and politicians. And yet it is inevitable unless I kill myself right here and now, terminating the controversy.

Being something or not being something makes such a huge difference, even though in the end we are all just human beings. I like to forget that I am intersex. I like to just think of myself as a human being. Not as a woman, man, intersex person, or something else. Just a human being with a thirst for knowledge and social contacts. And yet it gets thrown at me. I get beaten around with it. It haunts me. It's everywhere. Yes, I do participate with media interviews in which I tell my story, but in the end that's just so that I can get rid of it all. So that I can just be a human being.

I yearn more than ever for the legal cases against the Dutch hospitals to proceed. First the case against the VUMC via the medical disciplinary committee and then the personal injuries case against four or five Dutch hospitals. I want the national and foreign media to report on it constantly, and for the Netherlands to be unmasked as a hateful, persecuting country, no better than the National Social German Workers' Party [1] of the 1920s which sought to eradicate unwanted elements from society. Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In this case it involves the eradication of anyone born with ambiguous genitals as the Dutch government and medical system denies that such individuals have the right to exist in their original form, and have no say about whether or not they receive surgery to 'correct' this.

When I put my recent positive events in acquiring a proper job and now nearly getting my own place to live in next to the above horrors it makes for a very peculiar contrast. I'm not sure how to look at it myself. On one hand I'll be considered very successful, having survived the past years without running up any debts while getting a well-paying job at a well-respected employer. On the other hand I feel too much alike those survivors rescued from Auschwitz [2] by Soviet troops in January 1945. Hollow-eyed, skin folded loosely around a starved, bony frame, with incomprehensible horrors imprinted on their mind's eye. It's like being in the midst of a black tornado of pure Chaos. You can't see anything but shapes while you get tossed about and hit by random objects against which you have no defense. There's no peace to be found. And that tornado will always be there inside you, turning day into night, joy into horror, pleasure into pain.

On Thursday I'm doing TV recordings for a Discovery/TLC documentary of four parts titled 'TLC Over...' or 'TLC About...' in English. I'll be featured together with my girlfriend in the fourth part which will probably be broadcast by the end of October. The topic of that fourth part is about taboos in sexuality, relationships and the like. If back in 2005 the VUMC's gender team had treated me normally and offered me reasonable options after properly diagnosing my hermaphroditism I would not have participated with this documentary. I'd probably not have been asked. I would not have had my personal website like I have it now, or this blog and its many hefty posts. Yet it all did happen and it is all there, and now there is no way to not tell my story and to not let others help me deal with this Chaos inside of me.

Anything to survive.


Maya


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

1 comment:

Nicky said...

That's why I think Intersex should not be included in LGBT because of the fact that vast majority of Intersex people are not LGBT. Were just human beings with a medical condition. Were just trying to exist despite being biologically born Intersex. The problem their is that too many LGBT people like to use Intersex people as political football to push their agenda using intersex people as pawns. It's why I believe that Intersex should be taken out of LGBT because of the Harm it dose to Intersex kids and it scares the crap out of parents of Intersex kids.