Starting the year 2019, before I forget...

Year 2019 ha started quite actively so I have to make the first blog before I forget everything.

Work

There has been some progress at my workplace. I finally got my staff ID card with my own face. It made me very happy, it is one sign of the fact I’m at least almost officially recognized.

My new card

With my nearest colleagues

My workstation is still in the old place but we are getting ready to move it to totally new campus. The first part of it is already in use and I visited there with colleagues. The architecture seems quite impressive but I don’t like the idea of open offices - even if there are also silent places and separate meeting rooms.

At the new campus

Sports

My sport life has started busy. I have a season ticket for a gym and I’ve visited there about twice in a week. 

There has been enough snow (actually much more than needed...) to ski so I have been skiing almost every weekend.

I also bought figure skates and went skating with them for the first time of my life. Since then I’ve never skated with skates with toe picks and it made my skating a bit clumsy. 

On the ice

Finally a dense cushion of snow stopped me and turned the skate to the toe picks which finally made me fall. My arms and elbows were quite sore and I went to the hospital to check whether there would be any fractures. I was X-rayed and after that I was called to the operation room where the doctor said I have a microrupture in my right radius and it must be plastered. So I got a modern “plaster” made of wood chips and biological membrane. They also said they will contact me after some more doctors have seen my X-ray images.

Not so happy birthday cake

The worst thing was it was my birthday and I had to cancel the meeting with my grandkids. I also had to replan many things that would be inconvenient with my right arm plastered. On the other hand I wondered: I’ve never had fractures but I had an impression that they would hurt – and this one actually didn’t. I even pushed snow with a snow shovel and did many other things I haven’t seen any person with fractures doing.

After this unhappy weekend I got a call from the hospital: My images have relooked and the fracture turned out to be a vein channel and I was invited to take the plaster away. So I still have had no fractures in my life as far as I know.  I had to replan my replans and try to forget which things I wasn’t able to do with the plastered arm.   

Removing the plaster

Wonder healing...?

Politics

My political year has also started with full of activities. The first one was implementation of our new Name law. Before that you had to show some evidence for the officials that you are in the gender reassignment process. Now it is possible to show the need for the change also in other ways. Now it is also possible to have a mixture of male and female names – the combination possibly needed by transvestites, some non-binary and intersex people.

We assumed there would be some troubles in implementation of the name law in registry offices so we made a survey about the experiences. We will send the results to the Ministry of Justice to get the process better.

My friend Tanja wanted to be the first one to use the new legislation. So we went to the registry office early in the morning 2^nd of January – the earliest possible time to do it. She wanted to have Tanja her official name with no male name with it. It took some weeks before she got the first information about her application. She was asked to give some more information about her gender reassignment process – which was totally against the policy of the new law. So we contacted the Ministry of Justice where we got a statement where it was made clear that such requirement should not be used. The result of our action was fast: Tanja got her new name the next day!

At the registry office with Tanja and Tuija

I also made my application for my new name. Or actually it was new only in juridical sense, I just added Anukatariina to my old male name. In my application I told that I live mostly as Anukatariina but I still need my male identity in some special situations. I told my story during the last few years and added lots of pictures as a proof. 

Hey, what am I doing....? 

My situation seems to be more complex, because it has taken some weeks with no decision. On the other hand my friend had made almost identical application in another registry office and her case is already ready – probably as the first male-female name in Finland.

I attended the Educa expo for teachers at the Seta showroom. We had material for the staff working with kids with variety of gender and sexual orientation. We were mostly well received and our material was very popular.

At Educa expo. BTW: As I forgot to name my organization in that place is "Nainen" (Woman) in my card.

  Unfortunately there was some kind of campaign of religious fundamentalist who tried to take space in our showroom. We answered the place is non discrimination area so we dragged them out of the showroom area and their aggressive message can frighten someone. There I had some discussion with some of them outside of the area probably with no harmony as a result.   

The new year means also new plans for political activities. As a chair of Dreamwear Club I attended the summit of the chairs of Seta member organisations.  I also continue in the Seta Trans political group.

A new and interesting opening has been anti hate crime activity. I attended the meeting in the Ministry of Justice about this issue. We were sorry to tell the authorities the reason for very obvious underestimated findings of hate crimes concerning the sexual orientation or gender diversity are result of things as follows:

1.      Victims don’t recognize the crimes as such

2.      The police officers don’t recognize them as such

3.      Victims don’t believe they are taken seriously

4.      In many case the police officers don’t take the crimes seriously

5.      The victims also cannot recognize discrimination and don’t know what to do about it.    

To solve all the problems is a vast task. One little thing to get things better could be a internet site where different situations and ways to get help are described. We also would need kind of “rainbow sensible” police officer. I heard there really is one in Finland (In Sweden there has been Gay Polis for decades...). We planned an option to have a link to this institution to make the victims feel safer when they contact police.

At the Ministry of Justice

 Culture

My cultural life hasn’t been very lively. Once I went to a symphony concert with my friend Harri. Last time we were there together was nine years ago and my feelings were very different: Then I was very nervous and thought a colleague who happened to be there would definitely recognize me and I would be “outed” – well she naturally didn’t recognize me and I lived closeted many years after the incidence. Now there also were a colleague who didn’t notice me – so I naturally went to say her hi!   

At the concert hall

The other night life activity has been a burlesque show. The synopsis of the show pieces is approximately invariant but the innovations how to express it is sometimes with imagination. The best thing in burlesque shows is the feeling of community, the audience is also dressed mostly in pin up style and takes part very actively. This is what I like the most. 

Burlesque audience

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