Diary

Today I visited my former employer's company premises for the last time to hand in my laptop, my badges and my keys. I feel very sad because I will never be back there. I am leaving behind an important part of my life there. It is all part of the past now.

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Tonight my twenty-seventh column was broadcast in Gendertalk #538.
You can find the complete program in the Gendertalk archive.
Or you can find just my column at:
http://eveliensnel.nl/audio/STEER02.mp3
A full transcript of the text is below:

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Steering Wheel

Four weeks ago I told you I was making some life-changing decisions and I wasn't sure I was making the right choice. But there is no way back. And there are some signs that tell me I am doing the right thing. Let's look at some examples:

One moment I am chatting with two female colleagues about a project one of them is working on: It is a device for making mammograms. (The technical details are secret of course, but I can assure you this procedure will be a lot less intrusive than the current way of making mammograms, where your breasts have to be crammed between two plates...)
Together we laugh about her male colleagues who are a bit embarrassed about the project they are working on. The machine will of course have to fit most normal sizes of breasts and discussing that makes the men nervous. I feel completely accepted in this 'girl talk' with two women. These women have never known me before my transition. They have never seen me as a man.

The next moment I am walking from one building to another on our company premises and I hear a remark from a group of guys who are obviously bored. In a quasi-gay-voice one them says: "Absolutely fabulous, hun!"
It is clear that he is referring to my pink skirt suit and pink handbag.
Am I being too pink today? Ah well, probably these guys know all about my background. Everybody in the company knows about me. The gossip circuit reaches everyone. But why can't guys simply behave themselves and care about other people's feelings?

An hour later I go to the smoking area in our building. I am started a little when I enter the room. Usually my colleague M. and I have this room all to ourselves, but now there are four guys in there I haven't met before. They are blue-collar workers, movers I think. Fortunately one seat is still free, so I sit down and I smoke as I had planned to do. I also get into a conversation with them. They behave perfectly normal and they don't seem to read me at all. When they stand up and leave the room, their foreman says: "Have a nice day, Ma'am!"
I am not really having a nice day today, too much is happening in my life at the moment, but it is great to notice that there are guys who can behave normally towards me!

I think the pattern is clear: People who haven't met me before my transition are very accepting and don't even seem to read me. People who have known me before transition will never lose the image that I am a guy in a skirt. It is indeed high time to move on!

And I am moving on: My new life is taking shape step by step and it is happening at an alarming speed. On December 1st., just a few days from now, I will start working in my new job and on the same day Julia, my spouse, will move out to start living in her own apartment.
I also bought a car. To you Americans this may sound unbelievable but until last week I had never owned a car. Of course I sometimes had a company car or a family car at my disposal in the past, but all that feels just like borrowing it. It gives such a great feeling of freedom and independence to be at the wheel of your own car. And I think the same goes for life itself: It is your life and you have to take control: Be at the steering wheel of your own life!

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Today I officially said goodbye to my colleagues. It was a meeting with a pleasant atmosphere. I have always gotten along with my colleagues very nicely. I also got a farewell present from the company. And this time it was clear that people had been thinking about what present would please me. The boss said our secretary also liked it very much when he handed it to me.
I immediately felt it had to be something made of textile and indeed it was: A beautiful long apron, with the company logo on it of course! I immediately put it on!

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Today we first went to sign the rental contract for Julia's new apartment. That was a rather emotional event. Yes, we have decided to split up, but an act like this makes it suddenly feel so close: It is really going to happen! Starting December 1st. we will be living apart...

After that we went to Heeze to get my new car. That is of course a thing to celebrate! We immediately went for a trip to show it to my parents. And on the way back we got into the unavoidable traffic jam on the A2 freeway. IS this what I will have to endure on every working day in the near future? What a disaster! Why don't those people just keep on driving? They all want to go home, don't they?

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My employer has asked me to use up all my remaining vacation days.
So I started to do some maths, because I usually don't keep a close count on these days. And guess what? I don't even have time to use them all before December 1st.! I don't have to come to the office any more!!

That is just as well, because many things have to be arranged. And I do need to relax a bit. For month I have been in a very unpleasant situation at work and that makes you feel bad. I do not blame my current employer. I can clearly feel the management has a positive attitude towards me. But the only customer so far is my former employer. And that is where the dickheads who wanted to get rid of me are in charge. They will never hire me...

Fortunately I have been given the opportunity to take some courses in the past months. I have now nearly finished a course in C++. With a little luck I may be able to finish that at home before I have to start in my new job on December 1st...

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Tonight my twenty-sixth column was broadcast in Gendertalk #536.
You can find the complete program in the Gendertalk archive.
Or you can find just my column at:
http://eveliensnel.nl/audio/TELL12.mp3
A full transcript of the text is below:

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Should I Tell?
Have you ever heard of Lynn Conway? I think you should! Lynn has a wonderful website about her life as a transsexual woman with lots of advice for those who discover that they are transsexuals themselves.
One of the most important things on her website is a gallery of successful transsexual men and women. These are all post-op transsexuals who share their story with us to show that it is very well possible to live a happy life after your transition. This gallery provides role-models so that young transsexuals can see what the life of a transsexual can be like. I think Lynn is a very good role-model herself too.

In the sixties, when she was still a young guy, she invented an important improvement in the architecture of microprocessors that is widely used nowadays. But for a long time, nobody knew who invented this, because the inventor had disappeared into thin air!
Or had he? We now know what really happened: The inventor was fired from IBM because he was a transsexual. Soon after that he underwent the sex-change operation and became a she: Lynn Conway!
Lynn started her career way down at the bottom again as a programmer and worked her way up the ladder to become a professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan.
And she did all that living in stealth mode: Nobody knew of her past life as a man. For thirty years she kept quiet about that and she got away with it! I think this must have been very difficult and I admire her for her courage and strength.

What can I learn from this? Can I do the same thing? Can I live in stealth mode? Should I? On one hand, it is not nice to have to be a transsexual forever. What I wanted was to live as a woman! On the other hand, if you want to completely hide your past you will have to lie and cheat a lot. You will have gone out of one closet and back into another one, living in fear of being outed day after day...

I don't want that. But I also don't want to tell people about my situation too soon. This is very complicated. It is something I should think about in advance now that I am starting a completely new life.

I am very much 'out' at the moment of course. I have an internet site where I publish a lot of information about myself and I have made these columns that are on the Gendertalk site. I have also helped Lynn Conway by translating several pages on her site into Dutch language.
If you do a Google search on my name you get more than 500 results. And if you do a Google search on transgender related issues you might find a page with my name on it on the first page of results, especially if you tell Google to look for Dutch language documents. I think many businesses would envy me for that. There is no way I can ever hide that again.

So I think complete stealth is out of the question for me already. If that was what I wanted, I should have kept my big mouth shut right from the beginning. But these are not things I thought about in advance. And I don't think it is very helpful to other transsexuals to treat this fact about myself as a big secret.

Of course when I first meet people I don't have to tell them. There is simply no need for them to know. But things can change over time. What should I do if I want to date someone? If I tell them too soon, they might loose interest in me, but then they will know about my little secret already. If I tell them too late, they may get very angry or disappointed.

This will likely be a dilemma I have to solve time and time again for the rest of my life...

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Today we went out to buy me a car.

Well, out... That is not the way to handle a thing like that nowadays. I just sat at my desk and explored the Internet to find a suitable used car. When I had made my choice, I called the dealer to make an appointment. No messing around, just heading straight for the target!

And here it is: A beautiful black Twingo! Faithful readers of my weblog should know by now that we are true Renault fans and we love the Twingo in particular. But this one is a much more modern type than the one we used to drive in. All controls are exactly where I expect them to be, but there are some additional features compared to our current Twingo.

Owning a car is a bit of freedom and now I can enjoy that for the first time in my life. This is not my spouse's car, this is not a company car, this one is truly mine! I just have to wait for a while, because delivery time in is one or two weeks from now...

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This month's T&T-evening was an occasion that is best to forget about as quickly as possible. I have been in doubt whether I should write anything at all about it, but well, life is not always pleasant.

I got into a flaming discussion with one of Julia's friends. By the time I write this down, we have apologized to each other and the matter has been settled, but it was a very emotional confrontation.

I have also spoken with several people about the fact that Julia and I are separating and about how sad that makes both of us feel. Most transsexual lose their spouse during the transition, so they understood our situation very well. But in our case it seemed like we were able to handle this together against all odds. That makes the situation even more sad.

Previous T&T-evenings: October, September, July, June, May, April, March, February, January, December, November, October, September 2004, August 2004, July 2004, June 2004, May 2004 and April 2004.

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Along with my job contract I had to send a photo copy of my passport and I noticed it will expire on December 8th.! I need a new one! So today I took my old passport and a new photo to the city office to have this arranged. It is always a nuisance to have to do things like this, because no matter how female I look, I still have a passport with my male name and the dreaded 'M' in it, not to mention the picture that was taken five years ago. And I refuse to go in male attire for an occasion like this! No way! I am who I am and I am not going to play hide-and-seek. So I went to the office in my pink skirt suit.

I thought I had brought everything I needed: Old passport, old ID-card, brand new picture taken on the way there, but when I was on my way it crossed my mind that I had forgotten one important thing: The letter from my doctor at the VU, that says: "This person is under our medical care due to male to female transsexuality. Although born in the male sex this person will look and act like a female."

Fortunately, nobody made a fuss about it at the city office. So I'll get a passport with my female-looking picture and a male name. It will be ready next week!
In two years from now I will again get a new passport, but then with my female name on it. I can hardly wait! Why does it all have to take so long?!

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