Anukatariinan päästöt: The end of the year 2019

The last quarterly of the year 2019 was busy as usual, maybe even more so. In addition to normal Dreamwear Club and TransHelsinki managements was Dreamwear Club homepage project. Luckily we have a professional among us, Tuula Marika was the head programmer. I was sort of architecture planner and content producer. The pages are based on Wix technology which means ready-made templates and makes my work easy as a non professional programmer. We made various sections including information to trans people and people interested in the subject, news, calendar and formal part for the association among others. In the very end of the year we added forum part and the members only section and hope these sections will make the pages more interactive and popular.

As I attended the Radiation safety day for professionals I finally introduced Anukatariina to my entire professional environment. There were lots of my former students to meet. The response was very relaxed: When I tried to say it’s me, they just interrupted and said hi, T.... maybe the rumor had spread wide enough.

The congress hall in Tampere

The congress attender

There were an evening event between the days. The star of the night was a pop artist Arttu Viskari, but I and my colleague Pia were too tired to listen to him too long – so we decided to walk back to our hotel.

With my former students and collagues Pia and Päivi before Arttu Viskari

The big change to my daily work was that the campus moved to Myllypuro from places around Huopalahti bay. For me it means I must use metro instead of train and I have no benefit of using bike. On the other hand lecturing online instead of live audience increases. Part of it can be done at home but part of it must be done in studios at the campus.

Lecturing in the studio

Closing the season with colleagues in a restaurant in Myllypuro

My political activity included things that have become somewhat constant parts of my life. Against Hate campaign activities included some meetings in National Board of Education and Crime Victim Support.

At the National Board of Education

Education about gender diversity was directed totally to my students. I was also interviewed to the Seta video project - which surprisingly took place at my home.

Being interviewed

And as usual, I attended Seta representative assembly, as a representative of Dreamwear Club. The assembly took place in Joensuu, my old home town. It was also the hottest Pikkujoulu (Little Christmas) season so the hotel was crowded with celebrating people. I tried to spot my old friends but failed totally. Maybe their outlook has changed too much or –which is the most possible explanation – they have mostly retired and so not present at the events arranged by workplaces. And the star of the night was Arttu Viskari – which I skipped also this time.

At the assembly with Tuija

With Amanda after Arttu Viskari

Arranging TransHelsinki is a major effort and despite I had much more people doing it than last year it took some resources. The main efforts were the community seminar and the Transgender Day of Remembrance event TDOR in 20^th of November.

We had a nice opportunity to arrange the seminar at the old cinema theater Orion. The theme was the young trans people. The new government offers a major progress to trans legislation by separating juridical and medical procedures. Unfortunately the reformation excludes people over eighteen years. There are no rational reasons to do so: The young people need social transition before they get the medical one. On the other hand living in one’s own gender role helps to assure it really is the right choice; if not, the procedure is rather easy to cancel. The other thing is the international recommendations suggest the medical procedure should start just after thorough examinations that might take years. In Finland the examinations are started only after age of thirteen which makes it hard to use effective medical methods for adolescent people. Another very serious thing taking place simultaneously is very aggressive attack from conservative religious groups targeting any support to young trans people. Unfortunately the attack is carried out even by some doctors with authority in this field, representing the theory of so called Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria which is derived by a transphobic doctor on basis of the parents who would not accept their kids being trans. The theory is not approved by the international expert organizations. However, because of the authority position of the Finnish doctor even the Finnish Broadcasting Company let her introduce the theory without any criticism on it.

So we had a lot of program about the youngsters in the seminar. We had the chair of Seta and medical student Sakris Kupila talking about the medical points of view. My friend Tanja von Knorring spoke about the history, background and future perspectives on trans legislation. Milla Kissaniitty gave a speech from the perspective of trans kids and their parents. I told the results of our survey of the implementation of the new name law. From the beginning of this year it has been possible to change one’s first names to other gendered name with so called good explanations for the need – before it the proof of gender reassignment process was needed. The sad thing is there is a instruction to demand the medical proof for kid under fifteen – there is no such mention in the law though.

Telling about the implementation of the name law at the seminar

The highlight of the seminar was the All Youth Panel with very bright thinking and quick-witted youngsters.

The TDOR event took place on the front stairs of the House of Parliament. The event is for remembering the murdered trans people in the world this year. There were a list of over 300 murdered just for being trans – of course trans people are also murdered for other reasons as well.

I had reserved the place and made the notice to Police a couple of months before. Some hour before the event I was contacted by a police officer. She said that she is very sorry but there has been a double booking for the stairs that time. The other was a demonstration against Chile government. There is enough room for two events on the stairs but there was another problem: Our event is based on very quiet remembering of the dead people and their way to demonstrate was beating kettles – a tradition from the Pinochet junta era. When we had similar event before the police was sitting passively in their vans to observe our and possible intruders’ activities. This time they were very active and willing to settle our possible conflicts. The main organizer of the Chile demonstration came to me to negotiate the situation. I had an idea to act in turn but the language barrier made it clear too complicated dramaturgy would be too difficult to be carried out. So I said we were the first ones to inform the Police so we also had the privilege to start first but it will not take more than a half an hour. So when we started the Chile demonstrators joined our event and we joined theirs after we had finished – a nice win-win situation instead of a conflict.

Remembering the murdered trans people on the front stairs of the House of Parliament. Photo by Jussi Hirvi

I had a destination to go to gym once a week but it failed because of my other activities. I’m still satisfied with the concept and will continue in the same gym place.

Fat burning after Christmas

The other thing I had to skip was an intensive training of belly dance. I’m still in the group with a level slightly beyond my skills. Fortunately I had a weekend just before the performance when I had enough time to rehearse. So the performance was not a disaster, though with more practice it could have better, much better.

Just before the performance

My busy semester continued as my spouse got ill just before Christmas. So I had to do some more preparations than I used to do. Maybe it was a good thing, now I have at least emptied my mind of my other daily issues and only think totally something else. J