Spring 2016 has been extremely busy in many senses. At work
there has been a lot of extra activity full of surprises. I won’t tell about it
more to make you tired.
The other thing is that my personal life has been quite busy
as well.
On of the early bird was the news that I’ve been nominated
as president of the board of transgender affairs
of the Finnish LBGTI organisation Seta. It has been an interesting but a
bit busy thing to do – as some of the readers might imagine. We have some plans
to make the situation of transgender people better. The Finnish legislation
concerning the transgender people seems to get stuck during the current government
era but we plan to make the change as soon as it is realistically possible,
following the road map Denmark and Norway have used. The other thing is the
medical treatment of the ”androgyne transgendered” people which is very
different depending where one is getting it. Now there’s a project to make it
homogeneous all over the Finland and we try to make them choose the best current
alternative as a model.
The other issue was our survey on the discrimination of
transgendered people at work. The Finnish legislation prohibits such a
discrimination and even the discrimination on basis of the expression of the
gender – that means even transvestites have right to be as themselves at work.
The analysis of the survey is not ready but as a brief foreknowledge I’m glad
to tell the situation is not as bad as it could be. Unfortunately there were reports on severe discrimination cases, too.
In Easter time we flew to Turin, the town I’ve never visited
before. The town seemed to have really many significant historical layers.
Beginning from the ancient Romans Turin had really important role as the head
of the kingdom of Savoy and then as the starting point of the independence
process of Italy. In the palace of the king of Savoy we saw a huge amount of
”second rank” Italian medieval, renaissance and also Dutch golden age
masterpieces – second rank meaning tha there were no Tintorettos, Leonardos,
Michelangelos and Rembrants but the artistic standard was still phenomenal.
We also visited the
film museum which was in a surprisingly high tower building. We were specially
impressed with the department of the archeology of film, meaning the techniques
preceding the real films.
Turin is the town of arcades. The story tells the king hated
to walk in the rain so he told to build the arcades to both side of the street
from the castle to the banks of the river Po. After that it seemed to be a
habit to build the same kind of arcades along almost every major street – maybe
the king got bored to use the same route
over and over…
Me and the arcades of Turin
After our Turin visit we were invited to Turku to celebrate
the anniversary of the local LBGTI organisation TuSeta. The theme was glitter
and I had nothing against it.
As some readers of my blog may remember, I composed a song
on the verse my friend Eveliina had made. In February I bought some software to
make an audio and sort of karaoke kind of video files of the song and released
it on Youtube here.
Eveliina
I also have done some education about what it is to be a
transvestite. The biggest audience were about a hundred psychologists. It
was an interesting possibility to tell about the issue to professionals. And
the audience was interested in my story as well.
Tiia and me and the psychologists
This year the Dreamwearclub has its 20th anniversary. Our Hauho meeting was celebrating that issue
by inviting many network people there.
The guests of honor
As a 20 years old organisation we also must
look at the future. Doing it in our seminar we decided to change the organisation
more to the direction of the human rights, though no to forget the meaning of
mental support and being together. The
nice thing that has happened during the last two years is that there has been a
lot of new young girls coming to our activities – before that we were almost desperate and thought DWC would be only the club for elderly ladies.
My belly dance spring has been sort of different. Marinka
had her baby in November and we had a substitute leader Riitta. Her style was
totally different and I really had some difficulties to learn the choreography
for the show. At last I could make it, only with some minor mistakes in the
show.
My home rehearsal while my spouse watches ice hockey
The show
We transvestites are appreciated among the Burlesque ladies. So we got the offer to pay only one Tlady for two at the show in May. So I used that offer and had a terrific evening with friends in Kaisaniemi park restaurant.
The fresh air part of Kaisaniemi Burlesque show
And it was the same Kaisaniemi park where the multi cultural
festival ”The world visiting” took place at the end of May. I assisted Seta by
staying behind their presentation table and telling the audience about the
situation of the trans people in Finland.
The daylight picture of Kaisaniemi multi cultural festival
And the last but not the least…
I finally made up my mind and posted a note to my neighbors:
”Dear neighbors
Many of you might jave noticed a shy resident in our house.
In fact she have lived here for 21 years. In spite of her shy and hide character some of you may have seen her.
During the last years she has made her mind up: It is not worth hiding and
instead she has decided to live as the other people do.
Her name is Anukatariina and you may see her mostly when the
person XXX is absent. Her hobbies vary from oriental dance to human right
issues. She may spend her time at her garden enjoying the wonderful summer we
are happy to have.
So you may say hi to her and chat about anything also the
person XXX would chat – mostly they have the same opinions on any issues. If
you wish, you may also talk about Anukatariina.
What is behind the phenomenon Anukatariina you may read more
on:
If yous kids are confused, this link might give the good
angle to the issue:
So far no one has commented the issue, though the other issues
have been discussed. Since then I have been openly as myself at my garden and I
have walked cross the parking place. The people passing my garden have avoided
looking at me and so far I have met no one at the parking place.
But we will see… Anyway I’m very happy to skip all that hide life behind.
My look at the garden after sending the note
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