Transcript
Hello world, it’s me, Nat, relaunching
PracticalAndrogyny.com, the site that gender outlaw
Kate Bornstein once called “Best blog on androgyny ever”, just before I didn’t manage to publish another post for an entire year
So let’s kick off with an explanation of why I haven’t been around for so long, and why I’ve come back.
Why I haven’t been around
Well, first of all, since
my last post on the 2015 elections, I’ve been diagnosed with…
- Executive dysfunction, that affects planning skills
- ADHD, that affects focus
- and most recently hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, that can cause fatigue
Now, undiagnosed and untreated, all of those make things, just a
‘tiny’ little bit more challenging(!), especially when you’ve also got a full-time job and you’re trying to do every creative thing ever, all at once.
But now, I have –
[rattles pills in bottle] – medication,
a bullet journal, new life strategies and lots of support from friends, family, colleagues and medical professionals.
So I’m returning to many of my past projects – including
[gestures around] Practical Androgyny!
Why I’ve come back
So, I was recently asked to share my memories and thoughts about
the history of UK activism, campaigning for recognition and rights for people who just don’t fit into those legally mandated gendered boxes of ‘female’ and ‘male’ that British citizens like me are unfortunately stuck with still.
And, to do justice to answering those questions, I delved back into my personal digital archives.
And, in doing this, I realised that I first registered the domain name for the website I was planning to make that ultimately became Practical Androgyny, I first registered the domain – this site was going to be called
“The Paranoid Gynandroid”, because apparently I wanted the nerdiest name possible that no one would ever type into a search engine(!) – I registered that in December 2000. Yes, the year 2000.
It took me 11 years to even get Practical Androgyny, the idea, started.
I am
so effective(!)
But, I was also reminded that the first time I ever told anyone else that I was “meant to be androgynous” and wanted gender neutral language from other people was in 1997.
So, it’s 2017 at the time I’m recording this. That means that I first, I guess, ‘came out’ as my little special flavour of transgender 20 years ago.
Twenty Years!
And I was just reflecting on how I’m still attending trans support groups to this day.
Why is that?
Two decades of trans support groups?
Well, it’s because after two decades of trying to fit myself into the world while being
unconventionally transgender, with really
very annoying gender dysphoria, that only seems to be helped by kind of breaking out of the gendered boxes offered to me.
After twenty years of this! And it would be
so much easier if I could make those gender boxes work.
But, 20 years of that –
I’ve been writing to government, banks, businesses, organisations since 2001 – I’ve been openly trying to use their services, telling them what my problems are.
And I’m getting misgendered, excluded, forced to ask for “special treatment”.
So here I am. I’m back again! Adding to
all the activism voices that are out there.
And I’m going to keep doing this until the day when I can just exist in the world as a person.
Just a person.
Living my life. Ignoring gender.
And when everyone else will thing think that this is just completely boring – it’s routine, it’s every day. This is the norm.
So,
PracticalAndrogyny.com – more content, real soon now.
See you soon!
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