 Wow, the second talk this day here, the second talk with the topic of gender and how to feel and how to be and what am I and not male, not female, something in between. I assume you basically all know intersexuality intersects people and that it is even more difficult for intersex to fit into something like society than, for example, trans people. So Maya is, fortunately, I'm so happy. Maya is a member of Entropia. She lives in Karlsruhe. So I can see her every day and it's great to talk to her and we talk a lot of intersex and her way of going through her life, managing her life and so. She talks about how the internet affected her, being her search in getting around in terms of intersex. So, a warm welcome to Maya. Okay, yeah, I have to stay here because microphone, so I'm down to this so I can't look around, so remember. Yeah, so I have to go back to how I want to start. Well, the other card says basically everything already, the introduction, pretty much everything, because, well, okay, I'm intersex, I'll tell more about it later. And the internet has been really, really important to me in, well, basically I'm here, this location and still alive because of the internet, so that's pretty big, I think. Okay, so let's get started at the beginning, because everything has started at the beginning, because before I can tell about how important the internet is, how important, how everything has happened, at first I must start at the beginning, like, well, I was born and raised in the 80s, so my parents were, well, those were my parents. Of course, we didn't have the floppy drive, it was too expensive, but of the really official monitor, we just had a, well, the TV works, the winter games, everything, I've played it so much, and of course, the little tape drive, seeing those numbers spinning and having to stop at the right location, and, ah, yes. That's my childhood, so that's how I started, then of course, a bit later, well, you get older, you get a better system, a little bit faster, so I actually had a PS2, an IBM PS2 with a Model M keyboard, it was great, so, yes, not that monitor, I think now we have a cheaper one, of course, always. It was cool, well, that was my teacher, I really liked the teacher, I could play Kings Valley on there, so that's great. Of course, friends, of course they were friends. Yes, it was actually my younger brothers, we bought that one, used, so, and he mostly played on it, but I played sometimes on it as well, and it was really fun, and then I bought that one, so, yeah, it was a childhood, not sure. Other friends, of course. That's my current small part of my current library, so as a child, I would read lots and lots and lots, and in the school, I remember sitting there in the classroom, and we were talking about how many books have you read, and someone said, well, Maya has read more than 300 books. I still remember everybody looking at me, so, and it was like, yeah, okay, I've read a lot of books, is that okay? So, my childhood was basically like being raised by computers, video games, of course, having fun with lots of people and playing with the soccer as well, and reading more books, and then the internet happened. It was quite amazing when suddenly all the computers, if you had to, they can do internet, so you must have something, of course, Windows 95 with 65K modem, of course, really fancy. I remember I could be on the internet for like one hour a day, because she had to, of course, just dial up, so it would cost so much per minute, as it would get too expensive. That was, internet was great, like suddenly this, it's grown up in little filets, like 100, 200 people, so you know everybody, everybody knows you. That's basically the entire world, and suddenly, like, you've got the internet, and I kind of got stuck on the, it's basically also in the time that I was learning English, because I was raised in the Netherlands, so you start learning English pretty soon, because you have to survive, and the internet back then was basically everything was English, so that's how you get started. Basically, great, just downloading Super Nintendo Rooms and emulators and everything, everything illegal, because hey, it's possible, and cheap, but also forums, talking with people, learning to use IRC, Instant Relay Chat, suddenly talking with people around the world. I remember the first time talking to someone from the US, in English, that was so exciting, because that person understood me, I could talk with a person on the other side of the world's life. Yeah, that was pretty amazing back then. So, but yeah, Goodbye Innocence, 2005. After my parents had a force, moved around the Netherlands a bit, I began to realize that something was not quite right. Just more of a feeling, like, I was at this do-it-yoursel-store, just walking around there with my mother, just getting some stuff there, and I suddenly noticed that I was trying to walk in a feminine manner. It was weird, because I was supposed to be a guy. I mean, I was supposed to be born as a boy, had all the requisite parts for it, but somehow I wanted to be seen as a woman. It was weird, that night. As I think about it more, like, it doesn't really make sense. Why would I want that people look at me as if I am a woman, as if I am a guy, so it doesn't make sense. For about one week I thought I must be transsexual, because that's the only thing I know that's not strictly binary. So, okay, then I must be transsexual. But thanks to the internet, I started doing a bit more research, and I stumbled over an article about intersex, and it changed my life, because I had not known that something like intersex existed. So, because of the internet, I suddenly had a clue about what I actually was. I could examine, investigate more and more research, look at my body, because that's really the thing. Like, I have stared so long, so many times at mirrors. Just look at myself, look at my own image, because I have been told for years you're a boy, you're a guy, that's where you are, that's what you look like. But then looking back, puberty, but on puberty almost nothing happened in terms of secondary changes. Okay, I had a bit of breasts growing, that was weird, so okay, I'll ignore that. I didn't bear it's growth or something like that, not really anything else, masculine, not really. My clothing fits a bit weird, so I had to go for the really tiny male size, that's weird, but you're still a guy, so, or not. Look, doing more investigations on Wikipedia and around the internet and stumbling over this. There are so many forms of intersex, not just like your intersex period, done. No, you've got hundreds of different types, more common ones, more rare ones, and in a sense it's kind of fun to play your own doctor, doing your own physical examinations, and doing the differential diagnostics and everything, but it's also kind of annoying. But in the end it came all down to intersex. That's the logo I created a few years ago, and I think it symbolizes pretty much the whole thing. You've got extremes, and basically you're a song there in between there, but not really a specific point. So what do you do with that? There's also support, just the internet, IRC, Jet, MSN, it still exists, but then just talking with people, video chats, regularly just communicating with people. Of course I wasn't going to tell people about how I was different because I'd never been really clear about my gender identity or anything like that, I was just a person on the internet. Then it was basically when I found out it's in 2007 that I first got concrete evidence that I was like, okay, I still kept on keeping it a secret. Maybe I should start telling people. So I started over just, okay, I will just write it down in a text file and type it and send it to some people who I trust to be able to talk about it. That's how it started. So you've got like four, six people, you just, okay, I want to tell you something and she emailed them the file, they wrote it, and then they're like, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that or hey, I'm mostly here for you or it doesn't change anything and that's great. That's in having to keep it a secret or feeling that you have to keep it a secret, even on the internet. People are like, boy, on the internet, you can be anyone, anything, but you still have contacts with people. For example, you're in a chat group on the internet, and you talk to the same people over and over, and of course you learn a bit about the other person and you don't want to get too personal because on the internet you're more interested in just staying on topic sometimes. But then you have something really personal you really want to talk about and you're like, okay, well, it shouldn't matter. Just like, I also know people who have met, usually, of IRC who are, for example, blind and they just communicate, just make a screen reader and everything, you have no idea until they tell you, doesn't matter, doesn't really matter. But I was still stuck in this mindset of, well, I cannot tell here in real life about it. People around me in my environment, I cannot do that, because this is how coming out thing, but in the sex style, I guess, because you don't want to change, you just want to, currently I am this person, currently I am, this is where I am. Not that I want to change, but everybody was wrong about who I am as a person and physically and everything. And it basically took me until an American friend, but when I did a lot of video chatting back then, she told me in a chat, well, I was crying just completely emotionally, just drained, broken, done, and she told me, you cannot do this alone, you cannot do this by yourself. For now, I'm going to tell everybody and see it and then I had no choice but to do it as well and the response was basically just amazing. Because I was often said that while people you meet on the internet aren't real, that's not true. People on the internet, between what you've been talking for years, they're often more real than people you know in real life. You've often known them longer, you've talked more intensively about personal things and everything and the support I got from that really helped me to just say, I'm going on, I can do this. Suddenly things are easier. That was the point when I became more open about it, just publicly even talking about on forums and everything and that was the reason why I got the first medical help. It's the first point. Someone told me, hey, in the Netherlands it's not allowed to just pay for an MRI scan because I had this idea, well, I think, I'm intersex, I think I am a hermaphrodite. Both male and female organs. Assumption. What do you need to check that? Well, MRI scan. But in the Netherlands it's not legal. You cannot just pay for an MRI scan. So someone told me, hey, you can go to Germany first in Germany and you can just get an MRI scan there just for whatever. As long as you can pay for it, that's fine. So I had an MRI scan made of my abdomen. I will never forget the look on the face of the radiologist when she told me a first question to me was, were you operated on before? No. Well, here is the vagina and there you see everything and congratulations. Everything is there. That was the first confirmation that I am indeed a hermaphrodite. Both male and female alternatives. Thanks to the internet, because I would never figure it out on my own without having all those resources and contacts with people. Who would just tell me, hey, you can go there and there's the website of a service which is offer, to say that's a company which just organizes everything for that. So it's an MRI scan. That is just amazing. So I did that. Great. Finally confirmation. Second point. You can just order anything hormones. Because I did hormone therapy for a while until my body decided that it wasn't necessary anymore. And I just ordered it online without prescription for a couple of years. Because, well, I wasn't getting a doctor crazy enough to just prescribe me those hormones or medicines and anything. Because they didn't believe that I was in just sex. I had the MRI scans there. And could you please help me? No, it is a normal boy. Or he's transsexual. And I become really intimate with the transgender protocol with those years of talking and the real life test. And that was not fun. That was really not fun. But because of the internet, I found a way around it. Because people helped me. And I got hormones. I could start on that. I had to also figure out the right dose for those hormones because nobody wanted to help me. So I had to go online to figure out, OK, I need some in my blood. I need those values. I calculated, converted from milligrams. I think they were often used to nanomall. And that was really fun, geophysics. But that all worked. And so I finally got something going with hormone therapy. Just done it all myself. And things just seemed to get a little bit better. Then starting 2009, well, the media, they can really find you really well if you have an online presence, as I've noticed. So I would just still get these people during this contact me. Email, Facebook, everything. Like, hey, do you want to do an interview? So since 2009, I've basically done the whole thing, including talk shows and everything, radio, television shows, newspapers, magazines. It's pretty crazy to think about. And of course, starting my own website, Weblog. Weblog is also great because people have told me, well, you can just write it down. If writing down helps you, you can just write it down in a dictionary. But you can just write it down on paper or type it somewhere and store it on the hard drive of your computer and leave it there. But does that help? Because what I've noticed is that when you really open about it, when you really open about, OK, this is who I am. This is what's happening to me. These are my plans for the future. This is what you want to accomplish. This is what stands in my way. And then you let people read us. And then you get contacted by people. I've met so many other intersex people because of my Weblog, mostly, because I write about it. And of course, this gets indexed by Google and someone searches, and they're like, hey, blog posts about all the symptoms. I know that. That sounds familiar. And then they contact you, or they start following you on Twitter. And then they contact you later. And you're like, huh, I'm not alone. Because intersex isn't really rare. It's like 4% of the population who has some type of intersex. Just about. There's no real proper statistics because nobody wants to research it. But something like that, there are quite a few. But meeting them, just finding out because most intersex people are still like, just like how I was years ago. Don't want to talk about it. Don't want to be open about it. People know. So what I have done is pretty useful. That's what I've noticed also with the media because they're like in the Netherlands. I was always the one intersex person in the whole entirety of the Netherlands where they could actually find and was willing to appear publicly. So... Yeah, maybe I'm just weird like that. But I think being open about it is the better way to go about it. So... Yeah. Also, that's interesting enough. When I did the talk show, in Netherlands, then next day actually the publisher contacted me, hey, I would like to publish your autobiography. Okay. Let's pick. I'm still working on that one. It takes a while. It happened since then, so it's becoming better and better. But, yes, 13 plus years went well. It's been pretty crazy just contacting doctors everywhere and just trying to get something going, trying to get some answers and to have received some answers. But the biggest answers I've got are really the second point. Because in 2015, I suddenly began to notice, hey, I've got a really funny little brown line there. Linnea nigra. That's something you're supposed to only get when you're pregnant. Okay. Or, as someone told me over the internet, as a nurse in the United States, it can also happen if you have too much female hormones in your system. That's how I found out that I didn't need a hormone therapy anymore. Because I had to complete over those and I was getting not just a bit PMS, but like extreme PMS. I have a normal psychone, as I've learned. And basically, my body decided to say, let's try this female thing and properly this time. So, yay. It's also resulted in not so pleasant symptoms every month because, well, no doctor has deemed it necessary yet to really look at this closed off vagina. And I have a monthly cycle, so that's not a good idea. So, I'm just looking for medical help there. And I'm not really sure what's going on there. That's going to be really exciting in the coming time. But we'll always have the internet. So, there is still hope. If you compare that to, well, the world without the internet. That's you just walking there with a condition with nobody else had. And you have no clue about what's going on there. And you just feel different. And you feel alone. And there is nobody you can talk to and nobody will understand you. And there is no help. You can go to a local doctor, and I'm crazy before I got medical evidence that I was not crazy. But, yes, that's the kind of world which you really, really, really don't want to have. And that's basically the point of this entire talk, I guess. Imagining what my life would have been like right now if I did not have access to the internet. If I had other people who have helped me, who have given me advice, who have been there, who have told me on many occasions, hey, I'm here for you. We can just talk about it, or I found something here, and I will contact this person for you. And suddenly, like, I've actually had one real surgery so far. Because I needed to have my official gender identity changed, because, well, I looked like this, and I still had a male official identity. That's really confusing, because you're sitting there in the waiting room, and they're asking for a sur-pause. You get up, people get really confused, and you have to explain, okay, yes, I'm into sex, that, and so, and then they're like, oh, okay, okay, and then next time you're somewhere else in the waiting room, you can do it all over again. And that for years, and years, and I was really not happy with that. So actually, I was able to research how you get that changed. I found a lawyer, Netherlands, to actually help me with that. I needed to prove that I was no longer a male as a male, because this whole used to work in Netherlands not anymore, I don't think. So then the conundrum found, okay, I need to, easiest way is to just have those testicles removed, but that's not allowed in the Netherlands, because you can only get, voluntarily, get your testicles removed in Netherlands. If you, well, A, you have cancer, or B, you're undergoing the gender reconstructive surgery. So I was a transgender person, and you've gone through those 15, 20 years of everything. So, but I found help in Germany, again, to talk with a transgender friend. In Germany, it was like, hey, well, you need to have your testicles removed, or my surgeon here in Hamburg can probably help me, or can help you. And he could, and he did more, did also exploratory surgery and everything, and like, for two weeks I had, our testicles were not fully developed, or I was never fertile as a male, also common, that explained why I had almost no testosterone, yay. Again, that is our, the reality we live in with the internet, that you're able to contact people, that you talk with people, they can give you advice, help, links, references, everything. Or you could be stuck in a reality like that, where you're like, okay, well, everything is weird, I don't understand anything. Where do I go from here? And if I'm, that's, I don't really want to think about that, to be honest, because if you start to think about that, that reality, then it's also easy to just realize that, well, likely I wouldn't be here on this planet anymore. So, no, I don't like this reality, I really don't like it. So, there's still a future ahead of me, fortunately. First point is really important, because well, I'm quite visible on the, on the internet, but being intersex is something that, for example, you want to get anything done pertaining medically to your intersex condition. For the insurance, it's always marked as a transgender thing, always, because the insurance here in Germany or in Netherlands, they don't know this intersex thing. So, any procedure, any surgery that gets performed, even if I had to undergo the reconstructive surgery from a female side to reconstruct that, to open it, that would be marked and covered by insurance as a transgender surgery. So, that doesn't help politics. That's this intersex thing. I've done a bit of lobbying in the Netherlands. That was fun. Doesn't help, they don't care. I've talked with one politician after emailing so many. One was like, oh, we can talk about it. Just provide some time. We talked about it and yeah, that was it, basically. Others were like, well, yeah, we're already doing something with that. Something. The medical help, yes, because I've got, because of the physical change to my body, I've kind of got chronic pains. That's kind of annoying. Also some point, third point, while the autobiography, I started writing on it in, well, late 2013, but then lots of stuff happens. I mean, writing about the second yeah, so many things I could add to it. So, actually, that I didn't get it in 2014 was a good thing, because now I can write about losmar things or I could have written a second autobiography, of course, hey, more money. But this works, so that's something I still have to finish. And, well, I also have to work. I have to make money. I have to eat. I have to live somewhere, so that's also important. But other than that, I think I've got everything covered there. So, how do I do that? That's the question. Well, the internet is, again, the answer. Because, actually, I recently lost my job, but I got completely overwhelmed with messages from recruiters who are like, hey, we want you. So, thanks to the internet, that's really not a problem. And I will probably be moving to the UK, because that's where they want me. When this works, so, and then I have to look there for more medical help and make more contacts just use the internet to my advantage. So, that's quite a bit of uncertainty you've got there, but compared to just being there without any easy contacts, without people around you whom you can talk to, where you can ask for help, there's nothing better than having the internet that you can just, even on Twitter, just cry for help, just like, hey, I feel terrible, that's a problem, can someone help me? And somebody respond, it's like, I can help you. That contact is so easy. And I think, that gives a lot of hope for the future as well. Because you know that, even if things aren't great right now, because there's the internet, because you've got those millions of people out there, someone of those millions of people, they may have the solution, they may have the life that's better, they may have the answer, sometimes an easy answer, sometimes part of the answer, like people have met over the past, well, there's one person who can tell me, oh, you have to go there, then you can have the MRI scan made, and that person, like, well, I've got here, searching, those are the big pizzas. And sometimes there's someone who just says something, like, you're right. Small things. And that really, really, really helps. Yeah, my autobiography. What do I expect from writing my autobiography? Because I've got my weblog, that's of course interesting, but the problem with my weblog is I've been writing on it since 2007. I've written more than a thousand posts. Nobody in his right mind is going to read through all of them. I mean, he would be mad. I mean, I wouldn't do it. Just 1,000, 1,200 posts I don't ever count years ago. I just write, publish on there, and I can forget it. Autobiography is more that I can cover the entire team of my story, also the earlier period, and everything. And more, I'm still autobiographic, of course, but more concise and easy to read and just put it all together in one work, that someone can just start it, start reading, finish it with, well, depends on how fast you read, I guess. But to make it a real experience and fun, and for myself it's helpful as well, because there's a difference still between writing a weblog. A weblog is just a diary. So you just write on it every day or once a week or once a month, once a year, because you have something that you need to get off your chest. You have to write about it right now. So when I just look back on what I write about, like most of the time when you're writing a blog post it's because you have something that you really need to say or you're just upset, something terrible happened. But to write about the whole picture, and it's something which I don't think I really covered in my blog, certainly. Of course, my career is also an interesting point, because as you could see at the beginning of my presentation I was kind of raised by computers. That also means that I learned to program like when I was seven or so because well, that's how you talk with computers. So yeah, I've always done that in school, never really done that. It's boring. But I'm currently in my career. I'm a senior C++ developer and I've never really done any kind of education thing there. I've used the internet to learn. And that's another area where if I did not have that, if I had to rely purely on the school system in a way. So everything together, I guess that despite how things are not made easy for me, it's still because of the internet I was able to find ways to get around obstacles, to create and hold on to a future for myself and hopefully with my autobiography and with my web blog and everything to also change the lives of so many other people because it's not just about me. It's also something that you really learn when you're on the internet for most people. There are so many people out there. So many people like yourself. So many people who need the same help as you. So many people you can help by writing something like the impact of a blog article. Sometimes you're like, okay, well nobody reads that. You look in the statistics of 500 people for that. Oh, somewhere in Italy an article has been published about it. It has impact. Everything you do, especially when you're writing about topics like this, have impact on the lives of so many other people. I've influenced directly the lives of people other intersex people by just talking with them and allowing to sharing my experience with them and they could make a decision about their own life which made them happier in the end. So that's pretty big deal. That's also I want to do more of that in the future because it's kind of fun to make people happy. I guess we're free to that point. Does anyone have any questions? Maya, thank you so much. You do a great job for everyone else. So are there any questions? There are no dumb questions. I promise you there are no dumb questions. There are just stupid answers. But she's clever enough to give a good answer. So just ask right away. She's so open and she knows so much. So... Wow, it seems you have an early off. Freedom. Okay, yes, great. Hello. Thank you very much for your presentation. It was a really great insight. What is the current legal situation in your country? Since you weren't allowed to do this legally a few years ago, has it changed in the Netherlands? The gendered change, you mean? Yes. I've heard that they've actually made it so that you don't need to prove any more as the old gender. So it's become a bit easier there. I would still have opted to just remove those use testicles because they weren't functioning and they didn't need them. So they're just annoying. So for me, it wouldn't make a difference but I think that for a lot of non-binary people are like I just want to change it. Difficult more options and that's always a good thing. So recently there were changes to the German laws regarding the third gender. Do you know anything about it? Like you would probably apply for those or you're, I don't know how to put this, like you're not a German citizen, right? You're from the Netherlands, but if you were would those apply to you? That's actually one of those really big questions like because I've of course changed my official gender from male to female, simply to fit my appearance and just I feel more like a woman. I need not that song, not that song again. That's a third gender. It's like what I really want is just talking about gender because it's not that important. It's like everything is gender, gender, gender, even when you don't need it. Like why do we need to have gender in a passport? Why does it matter? Why is it being registered? Why is it not something which is just when you're born they may not make a note there like 100% male or 90% male or CIS or hermaphrodite or something else and sleep with it. That's registered. That's interesting also for your personal doctor but the government students care about that and other people shouldn't care about that. Should this be so I'm still registered as female. Would I want to be registered as an ex? No. That's just missing the point. That's just segregation. I don't want to be an ex. I don't want to be male. I'm perfectly fine just being called an ex. I'm much better as a sur. You said that you would like to be a more female. Are you also a bit sad to leave the male gender behind? Well the first place, I'm human. Second place, I'm a hermaphrodite and I want to keep it away. Even if I do find a surgeon who wants the constructive surgery with the opening of the vagina creating the labia and everything the penis would stay there because it's just, it's mine I'm keeping it because it's useful it's this particular come on Yes, thanks again for your talk. What would you wish for in sex education and also at which age do you think we should educate people about this because as seen in your talk this has been something that has been with you for a very long time? That's also a very good question. The thing is that the whole problem with intersex and sex education starts before, long before child has even been born because everything is about this binary spectrum or binary system I should say, definitely system because even before a child is born it's like well is it a boy, is it a girl start with that which color do we pick for the room, which clothes do we buy for the baby which name do we pick, everything is gender, gender, gender, gender and then a child is born and they do not conform to, with their genitals to either males or females and you're like okay because confusing, we don't want to be confused we as parents or we as doctors we don't like being confused, we don't want to think we just want to fix it and those normalization surgeries as they're called their big problem is also problem with the parents because they don't know that intersex exists they get a child with funny looking genitals so is it a vagina, is it a penis and I'm sure this is both, like you see a penis and then a whole below there that's often which hemorrhoids I was lucky that it was not visible in my case or I would have a scar there and something would have been removed already that's something which when when a woman is conspicuous they should already know about intersex, should be educated about they should know that it's nothing bad, nothing serious when children grow up they should not be forced into a gender realm that's something which we as adults as parents, as educators something we can already do that's something which we has to do it's not just we just leave it to abilities, classes like then they will learn about intersection everything will be right, that's not how it works it has to be an integral part of society that people know about you've got men, you've got women and you've got everything else and that's a really big spectrum with lots of different bodies and people would not fit into those two extremes and when you start with that well, everywhere parents, teachers gender public what I am trying to do currently and of course the law that is actually there's also another law in Germany about the third gender, namely that a baby can be born in Germany and does not immediately have to be assigned a gender that's positive first step because then you take away the pressure of choosing why would you have to choose okay, your baby gets born why would you have to choose whether it must be male or female how could you, I mean we have gender people their chromosomes do not match up with their assigned designated gender how could you figure out for an intersex child what gender they would prefer why would you make them male or female why would you take away those organs and leave the other so that's a really big issue what we've got there and something that has to be something that has to be tackled at so many levels then then maybe one follow up question are you annoyed that the intersex issue is or it seems that what is talked about as first is genitals or do you think we should talk about genitals much more in general I really don't think the genitals are that important I mean sure if you've got a partner and it's nice if you're like hey you've got cool genitals, I like those but beyond that I don't think like why would your boss care about your genitals, why would a politician care about your genitals why would a guy sitting in your church care about your genitals what's the relevance of that and there's a point where I say that people just be people so everything else is of complicating things and things must stay simple much more fun thank you Maya