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I might be in the most beautiful place on earth right now. I have forgotten my camera but if I and you are lucky my parents remembered to bring it.
It is a beautiful countryside B&B or more like a mansion on the shore of one of the bigger and more beautiful rivers in Sweden. Me and one of sisters and our families will stay here for two days.
Tomorrow is the funeral for my grandfather and I will meet all my cousins on my mothers side for the first time in many years. It will be the first bigger family event I attend to as myself post transition. It feels really good. It is about time we get to know each other this way. I have great cousins.
Well. That is all for me tonight. My body is punishing me for my eight hour drive I just did.
I am writing this in as I sit in waiting room at the Swedish National Board of Health. I am meeting with their Legal Council today. Waiting room is maybe to nice a name for this. It is the xerox room with some chairs in. A rather small room. The chairs are nice but the xerox machine is huge, makes a lot of noise and it is probably 90° in here.
I drove down from the northern parts of Sweden to the capitol Stockholm two days ago. It is close to 400 miles to drive here. Will drive up again tomorrow.
I came to this meeting an hour ago. First I got to meet dr Andersson who will present my case to the Legal Council. Now I have to wait for them to get to my case.
I am here because I have applied for:
* A legal sex change in the government database
* A name that fits my gender
* Castration
* SRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery)
In Sweden all citizens are registered in a national database at our Skatteverket (IRS). Every citizen has a number called personnummer (person number). It begins with the birth year, birth month and then birth day. For me born the fifth of June 1979 have a personnummer that starts with 790605. Then we have the important last four digits. Well, three of them are just to make sure two people wont have the same number but the last one indicate sex. Even numbers for women and odd numbers for men.
This personnummer is the written on your drivers license, in your passport, on your journals, in every database ever keeping track of you like in schools, at work, in most clubs and organisations.
To get a new personnummer you have to do a 2-5 year long inquisition that is lead by a physiatrist. When that is done that physiatrist will approve that you apply for a new personnummer. But to get the new personnummer you need to be castrated and had your SRS. For transmen the SRS is sort of optional but women has to do it. But we can apply for all that at the same time. As I did and that is why I’m here.
In the nearest hour I will be called into a room with the Legal Council and they have already got my papers and read them thru. dr. Andersson has already said that I am genuine and will pass. So this is just formalities.
Oh, thats another thing. Being genuine. That is what it is all about. For a transsexual to get a new personnummer and everything that comes with having paper telling the right gender you have to be “Genuinely Transsexual”. It is classified as a sickness. I have yet to meet a transsexual person that don’t find that term horrible. Are you genuine enough or a bit to false?
So everything you chase for during several years is to get the label genuine put on your papers. That can mess any insecure person up. That can mess any stable person up. Am I genuine enough? Will they see that I’m genuine? If I walk like this, will they discover I’m genuine sooner? Several years of trying to prove that you are genuine enough. The inquisition is made just to find the ones that are not and sort everyone out that has any faults and aren’t genuine enough.
I started my road to this room in may -05. In a matter of minute dr. Anderson will come and get me. We were three people here today. One woman that went in first and came back just 10 minutes later a minute ago. She came back absolutely radient. Now a man sit across for me and looking fairly calm but I guess he is as nervous as me.
Just to be here means your papers are in order. I will pass, I will get everything approved and as soon as the hospital will do my surgeries I will get my name and my identity. But never the less I am shaking and sweating. So much hard work to get here.
Now dr Anderson came and called for the quiet man infront of me. You can hear a couple of seconds before he comes because of a locked door with a code on it. Will it only take 10 mins for him too? I need to go to the bathroom. Should I wait or should I go? Why didn’t I bring my bottle with water? My mouth is dry. The xerox machine just quieted down. I want a cigarette. But I quit. Or did I just run out of them? I haven’t decide. It was a while ago so I guess I have quitted. As most I smoke one pack a month so it isn’t that easy to know when you stop and when you just don’t do it for a while.
The other man just came back. He is glowing like the brightest star. Took him only five minutes.
I just took a photo of myself here in the xerox room. Here it is:
Is it minutes or seconds left for my turn? How will it go? What will they say?
Now I hear the beep from someone pressing the code at the door. It is just seconds…
It seems like I’m not in the mood of writing about all the media apparences. It was fun. Most of them got it rather right. Of course a few minutes in a national TV-show wont tell my life story in a fair way. Even if I tell my life story in just a month I wont be fair.
I can feel a bit frustrated by the fact that we are portrayed as the couple with a love that strong it could survive anything. Even if I am very fond of Noa or love has at least the same levels of frustration, misunderstandings and stupid mistakes as anyone else I know.
But it has been really fun to do. The best part is everyone who have written to us and just said hi or told us their story. So very nice of all of you!
Here is a link to an article in Aftonbladet. The biggest newspaper in Sweden. Bigger isn’t always better but I love the family photo.
And then a link to the TV-show.
All in Swedish of course.
A year ago our Swedish Integration Board published a study about Swedish values in regards to other cultures. It showed that Swedes have the most different values of all countries. Or “atypical and deviant” as the study said. The values that we have that the study metioned was:
How we reject strong leaders and fights for representative democracy where the leaders truly listen to their voters.
How we wants everything to be open and accessible especially when it comes to political decision making.
We also had the worlds highest level of trust to others.
But they failed to mention how Melodifestivalen affects us as a people. If you are in a representative sample of Swedes and want to chit-chat and ask them what their team they support most people will laugh. Sport isn’t that big here. Some love it but most don’t. If you ask what church they attend most will say “none” and it will be sort of true. Religion is supposed to be a private matter and we often are described as a totally secularized country. In that matter I just want to add that even if people say no Swede goes to church we are described as a country where going to the movies are very common and there are more visitors to churches than to the movies so it isn’t entirely true that we have no church goers and most people are believers at heart, they just don’t go to church.
But if you ask that group what they think about this years Melodifestvalen contributions you will get some reaction from everyone. There will be four distinct groups. The one that are first to tell you that they hate it. They will later on still tell you what tunes they hate especially much and probably knows the lyrics to many of them. Then we have the group that tells you that they don’t really like it but the half-time show can be fun to watch and it will turn out that they watch every minute of it. Then there are always some who really don’t watch it. Then we have the final group, we who adore it. All gay men are assumed to be in this group and that is fairly true.
But no matter what group you are in every Swede has seen the Melodifestivalen many, many times. Many families have traditions of what to eat during it.
Until a couple of years ago there was only one show every year. Now we have a system with five parts before the big final show. Yesterday was one of them. Two winners from that show goes to the big show in Stockholm.
After the Stockholm winner has been televoted to success they go off to the big Eurovision Song Contest. When I was little we won that now and then but nowadays the eastern Europe does better there so we are more focused on the Swedish parts.
A big part of the Melodifestivalen are all the bad contributions. Either with people who can’t really sing or just doing something that was supposed to be crazy fun but just became crazy embarrassing. Without those contributios the Melodifestivalen wouldn’t be the same. Sometimes the absurd and strange songs wins. Last week was one of them times. No one could really believe it was true when this came on: (Don’t miss it when the dancers pull out flags from their ass in the end.)
Then we have the really good contributions that everyone just love for real. Yesterday was one of those times. Two identical twins that we just fell in love with immediately. They are known as backups singers to a childrens band in Sweden and they have worked with music in many ways for years but this was something new that we all loved and they immediately got a place in the big final:
The reason why Melodifestivalen are so lovable is because we both get to listen to our biggest stars and get to see new stars rising. It was this way ABBA became famous. Many times it isn’t about the winner, many stars has been born just by being on Melodifestivalen.
Before 2002 everyone had to sing in Swedish and then they translated the winning song to English to sing in the Eurovision Song Contest.
There are so many reasons to love Melodifestivalen. One is that it is so easy to dislike. There will always be several songs you just hate. There are always some really strange dance or clothing. Some really good parts besides the music, the glamour, the fun or beautiful half time shows, the perfect mix of newcomers and veterans in the game, the families and friends gathering is that when we look back on the winners we get such a nice journey through time.
To round this up I will do just that and you will get the Swedish and the English version of a schlager every Swedes knows and most in my age know every single word and nuance by Carola, one of our most famous Melodifestivalen artists. She has won it three times and one time she also won the whole Eurovision Song Contest. She had a contribution yesterday that wasn’t that good but here are the song Främling/Stranger the winner of Melodifestivalen 1983. First in Swedish and then English.
No pressure but if you want to make it in the gay scene in Sweden you just have to learn this:
Well, now I am off to a quaker meeting. I will tell you all more about that later. If anyone in the Umeå area is interested to know more about quakerism in Sweden you are welcome to Rågången 2C at 14.00 today Sunday Feb. 17.
(A short breakdown for you who likes this: Melodifestivalen are the words melodi (melody) and festival (festival) put together with the definite article “en” in the end. We like to do longer and longer words so the melody festival becomes melodifestivalen. In the same way we can make any word. The trans blogger becomes transbloggaren (bloggare swedish for blogger). We share many words in Swedish and English but the grammar is rather different)
Two days ago me and hubby was in my childhood local newspaper Norra Västerbotten and today we are in the largest national paper Aftonbladet. On Wednesday we will appear on national TV in an afternoon show called Go’kväll on SVT 1. Both the paper of today and the TV-show have an estimated number of readers/viewers of about 7-10% of the population here in Sweden.
The TV-show will most certainly get online but the articles are as far as I know not online.
So in a week, statistically every Swede will know at least a couple of persons that knows my story. But that is not the huge thing. The huge deal for me is that local paper. A small little paper with a circulation of less than 40k.
When I grew up I was deeply closeted and as soon as I finished the 9th grade and turned 16 I moved away to my sister who lived in the city I live in now. I didn’t keep in touch with anyone. I sort of disappeared. To be on the cover and get a spread in the paper that most of the people I grew up with reads is a big deal.
I know many transgendered people who move away from thier home as soon as they can afford it and never comes back. It is not only hard emotionally to transition around people you grow up with, it can be a very dangerous thing to. Even if most people can accept transgendered it is easier for people to understand when it is a stranger and not someone you already had a clear image of how they are.
For me, doing this article is coming out at home. When I go back people will get who I am. Last time I was up there I met several people who I really know that looked at me and only saw a stranger. I do no look at all as the person I grew up in.
When I come out as trans to people I have gotten to know the last couple of years they still see me and just add another background story. When I come out to person that only knew me as her it is a different story. Then they have to take someone that looks and sounds like a stranger and merge together with someone else. And it was always easier just to be the stranger. Now I’m not. And it feels pretty good.
It feels like the final piece in a bit extracted childhood puzzle.
Now I just have a thousand other parts of my life to be puzzled about. Right now I’m liking the pieces I have to play with. Things goes rather well at work. If anyone wants an audio bible go to voxbiblia.com and listen for free or buy something and I will be the one sending it to you. Even if it really doesn’t do any monetary difference for me my it does for my boss and since he might be the most supportive boss imaginable I want the most of success for him.
