Queer and queer activism

In the debate triggered by the PSOE's trans- and queerphobic discussion document, queer people are being made invisible, and part of the trans movement and the PSOE are joining in queerphobia.

While I'm slowly reading Pete Walker's book, Complex PTSD: From Surving to Thriving: A Guide and Map to Recovery from Childhood Trauma, I have another book to "relax", as Pete Walker's book moves me a lot sometimes, and I have to stop.

In July 2014, Andalusia recognized the right to the self-determination of gender identity. After a four-year struggle this right was finally recognized for the first time in the case of a non-binary person, thus opening cracks in the binary gender system.

For some years now I have defined myself as a genderqueer, a non-binary gender identity: neither man, nor woman, nor - in my case - at any point between the two extremes. I have come to define myself this way after a process of many years. I was assigned male at birth; I was raised and educated as a boy. In this process I have benefited from the privileges that patriarchy assigns to boys, but I have also suffered a lot and continue to live with my wounds and scars. I had a rather conflictive relationship with (my) masculinity, having tried to fit into various masculinities (hetero, gay...), with less and less success. I got to a point where I said "enough is enough", I was tired of being defined as a man, and of the pressure of fulfilling (or resisting) what it means to be a man in our society.

On June 29, 2019, as Bloque Critico - Disidencias del Sur, we participated in the "official" Seville Pride 2019, that is, the capitalist pride, depoliticized, mercantilized, homonormalized. But we are not silent! We reclaim our pride, a political pride, a pride of dissidence, a pride as revolt.

For already nine weeks I am now taking hormones, more concretely oestrogen. With this I initiated a process of transition, a change of my body, or my relationship with my body, and of the relationship between my body and society. This process is still pretty new, at the very beginning. Nevertheless, I’d like to share how I feel with this process.

A necessary conference – but do we want to mainstream queer identities?

“We identify as queer, have an analysis of gender and sexuality as power and are positive about women and gender non-conformists in tech” - this is what we say on our page about our ethos and ethics. I myself define as genderqueer, a non-binary identity, and have had some experience with queer or transphobia in tech (see the comments on this feature request for ISPConfig for example). So when I heard about Non-Binary in Tech, I thought “this is the conference for me”.

My experience of being genderqueer, non-binary

Almost every day people deny me my existence, but here I am, and I exist. But yes, I’m pissed off, pissed off by this almost daily negation of my existence, of my identity as a genderqueer, a non-binary person. I’m pissed of by people putting me into their binary boxes – man-woman – boxes in which I don’t fit, boxes that impose on me the binary system of sex/gender, and nobody ever asks me if I do agree with this. How many times when someone greets in a supermarket as “sir” I would lime to respond “fuck off! I am not a man, and you don’t have any right to impose on me this identity!”. But I don’t do it. I don’t have the strength to every time when someone imposes on me how they read me (without asking me) to correct them.