Ph33r the whining and drama~
Is being born intersex the worst thing that could happen to you? Misery is a pretty miserable field to compete in, so I will not even attempt this. Yet of all the things which have personally affected me as a human being - living in human society - I would however have to say that being born intersex is the one thing which has made my life quite consistently into a miserable experience. Sure,…
It's been a while since I last posted on this blog. I have been writing a bit on a new blog that I started on my personal website, as part of my attempt for a year or so now to get away from the whole legacy of both this blog that I began in 2007, and the countless unpleasant memories that I made along the way. Suffice it to say that perhaps as part of writing my autobiography (which should…
If dreams are indeed a way for our subconsciousness to communicate with our conscious mind, then some dreams are as subtle as taking a brick to the face. Case in point last night's dreams, or perhaps closer to nightmares. In them I found myself in a number of scenarios in which I felt shamed for having (exaggerated) masculine features, such as (excessive) leg hair, or ways that served to remind…
Now that the first release of NymphCast (version 0.1) [1] is coming up soon, it's interesting to reflect on its development over the years, and what I imagine its future will be like. Originally NC was intended to be just a simple way to stream local audio to a HiFi system or similar in the same room, as an alternative to proprietary solutions like AirPlay and ChromeCast, as well as Linux-only…
There are times when you have to be brutally honest with yourself. As much as modern day life is about quick solutions, when it concerns something that has deeply sunk its roots into your very being, finding a suitable solution and implementing will take time. Any such solution begins with the recognition, identification and analysis of the actual problem. This is an aspect which is essential with…
What is a person? A human being, who is born and grows up learning and discovering along the way. Because no person is born with exactly the same brain structure, and no person goes through the exact same experiences in their lives, each of them is an individual. Each individual has their own wishes and dreams, as well as their likes and dislikes. Each person thus forms a part of the rich tapestry…
If there is such a thing as real-life good versus evil, it may be found in humanity's struggle between reason and dogma. When wandering tribes of hunter-gatherers established the seeds of modern society in places like Sumer and the subsequent Akkadian Empire, it would blossom into (among others) the civilisations of Ancient Egypt and Rome, bringing to people a life where clean water, hygiene with…
Everyone knows that women are more emotionally sensitive, while men have the emotional capacity of a turnip. It's also a common fact that men have better spatial awareness, can read maps unlike women, and this is then portrayed as an evolutionary left-over from our hunter-gatherer days. Back then, it is said, women would stay back at the camp to take care of the children while the men would take…
There are those moments where you find yourself wondering what exactly it is that you're headed towards in your life. If the answer is 'not much', then that might explain some frustrations you're experiencing. Whether stuck in a dead-end job, or dealing with the fall-out from years of a tumultuous, traumatic life, the hardest but also most important step is to admit for yourself that you're not…
Perhaps one of the most unsettling and life-altering experiences which a person may experience involves an empty field at night. Instead of letting their gaze wander over the ground, or use a torch to light up the path in front of them, they let their eyes adapt to the faint light before they raise their gaze towards the sky. Assuming it is a largely cloudless night, the lack of the deceiving…
Dealing with a non-standard body is not easy. When society has decided that you are either male or female, and biology largely concurs with that sentiment at least from a reproductive point of view, it's a tough point to argue. But here I am, with a body that is both, and neither. How much of that really matters to me today, after so many, mostly unpleasant years? I'm still grateful that my body…
Sometimes a new perspective comes from unexpected influences. Suffice it to say that the past years I have spent plenty of time thinking and writing about what I think the relationship between me, society and reality is. Yet it's so hard to see clearly when you have your nose pressed virtually into the tarmac of some aspect of reality. To regain this global perspective, you have to get back up…
In the zoo, a man is standing in front of an enclosure which holds a group of primates. Of the latter, most are doing the things that primates like to do when left to their own devices: eating, sleeping, arguing and so on. Yet one primate in this group is different. From where he is standing in the primate enclosure, he is looking outside, beyond the walls of the enclosure. Beyond the bars. To the…
Delete your blog, your social media profiles, burn it all, and pray that whatever it was that was bothering you will go away. Move to an isolated mountain cabin, in the midst of a dense forest located on an island in a remote part of Siberia. The quiet will be nice for a while, I imagine. That's when it begins to dawn on your that reality doesn't care about anything what you did. Nothing you did…
It's been nearly fourteen years since I began this personal blog. Back then I remember it being mostly an outlet for what I was going through at the time, as a way to let others share in my experiences while I was trying to figure out my body and my place in the world as a then presumed intersex person. Above all it felt like a way to not feel so incredibly alone. Until earlier that year, I had…
The incidence of urinary tract infections (UTIs) in adult men is approximately 30 times lower than in adult women, mostly due to many natural defences [1]. One of these is a urethra that's on average between 18 - 20 cm long, compared to approximately 4 cm for adult women [2]. As a result, while 50 - 60% of women will experience at least one UTI in their lifetime [3], most men will not experience…
Assumptions make life easy. If you replace doubt and uncertainty with rock-solid assumptions, suddenly life seems much happier and easier to navigate. Not that it really changes reality, of course. It merely covers what is there with pretence and deception. Who can say what is real, after all? And yet we have had the facts staring us down like the headlights on the front of a truck as it barrels…
Before the recent pandemic, the only major vaccination campaign that I have participated in took place during HS, after a girl in our school had died from encephalitis as a result of some virus that was going around. As a result a mass-vaccination campaign in that region of the Netherlands was set up, which saw me and the rest of my family driving over to a nearby town where a vaccination centre…
After stumbling over Caitlin Doughty's videos on YouTube and learning her thoughts on not only the (US) funeral industry but also many other death-related stories from all over the globe, I felt I had to get a copy of her first book: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, And Other Lessons From The Crematorium. What follows are my thoughts on this book, as well as (probably) copious spoilers for those who…
What do you really look like? It's not a question which many people struggle with. After all, we grow up with ourselves and see this face and body every single day of our lives. Some of us could probably even draw their own face from memory. Yet despite this what really hits me more and more as I try to be more... extroverted, expressive and I guess myself, I find myself constantly running into…
I'm fairly certain that little more has to be added to the topic of racial segregation: this is a situation where the social concept of 'race' is taken and used to discriminate against the people who find themselves in one of those groups. Got qualified as 'coloured' or happen to be Irish? Sucks to be you. Happen to be Japanese or Chinese during certain parts of US history? Bad choice. Yet this is…
When I look back upon the years during which I was dealing with gender teams and other medical and mental healthcare professionals as a result of my intersex condition, I think that which hits me the most is the antagonistic attitude towards one's own body that was so prevalent in the communication and general attitude in this world and community around it. The idea that whatever you think that…
Memories of the past and visions of the future. That's how we find ourselves moving from childhood into adulthood, gathering more of the former and watching the latter evaporate like a Fata Morgana. In the background there lingers the thought to revisit pleasant old memories and follow their trail. Tomorrow we'll do something with that, we'll tell ourselves. As our lives wind their paths through…
It's interesting to stand still by the big changes in the software we are running on our computers today versus back in the 1990s and early 2000s. When I bought my boxed copy of SuSE Linux 6.3 in 1999, that year was hailed by the computer rags which I read at the time as the 'year of the Linux desktop'. The evil closed-source Mac and Windows operating systems would be banished and replaced by an…
Want ik hou van jou is niet de sleutel tot de ander maar ik hou van mij al klinkt het bot en slecht want wie van zichzelf houdt die geeft pas echt iets kostbaars als hij ik hou van jou tegen een ander zegt (Because 'I love you' is not the key to the other but 'I love myself' even though it sounds bad and wrong because those who love themselves give something truly precious if they say 'I love you'…