Declaration

The post after this one will be whimsical and magical. But this one is serious. This one is a declaration of my physical and mental independence in a world that is built on dependence at its worst and interdependence at its best. Dependence is a toxic attachment to whatever powers, systems, and material realities we can not survive without. It can manifest in the form of addiction that takes us to our graves, or it can be a life-long trauma bond to an abuser without whose financial support we can not get by. It can be seen in the relationship between the state and the individual, or the health care system and the patient, where compliance of the individual or the patient becomes the currency with which freedom and survival are bought. Interdependence, on the other hand, is about the connections we make to other humans and life-forms. There is no existence without it, and interdependence is at the core of humanity. Societies exist because humans have evolved to be a species that reached an unheard of mastery over the natural environment through co-operation. We are proficient killers, but we are also better skilled at healing than any other species on Earth. It´s an interesting internal contradiction. We have so much potential for good, so why is it that humanity seems to be so wretched?

Nothing has opened my eyes to the inherent injustice in society as effectively as being diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder as an adult. I had gotten glimpses of societal ableism when growing up with a legally blind sister and even more so when I used to work with disabled people, some of them autistic. I have seen first hand how awful the conditions these people live in can be. An individual caretaker can do little to fix the systemic neglect, apathy, and lack of respect towards people who are unable to put their experiences into words and advocate for themselves in a societally recognized manner. They can either express their discontentment with violence, which leads to their effective and cruel subjugation with psychiatric medications, or they can withdraw into their inner universes where existence is tolerable. I imagine that a big portion of the withdrawal from social interaction that up until recently used to be used as a cornerstone for autism spectrum diagnoses stems from physical, sensory and social distress. The world is kind of… Shitty and too much, and while neurotypical people may be better at bullshitting themselves into justifying horrible things, autistic people lack this ability. I do not possess the trifecta of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. If I see or hear evil, I will speak out about it. For some reason, the neurotypical majority sees this as a sign of me as being evil, not as me being the canary that spots evil long before a neurotypical person becomes aware of its existence. Before my autism spectrum diagnosis I was labeled difficult, hysterical, and unreasonable. Now any criticism I voice is chalked over by labeling it as a ”misunderstanding”. Don´t get me wrong: both approaches are equally excellent at silencing me. It´s a dead end both ways: I´m either the ditzy, overly emotional, blonde little fuck toy whose thoughts don´t matter, or the autistic subhuman whose thoughts are too alien to matter. When the societal character creation screen lights up, I choose to be the alien rather than the fuck toy. But ideally I would love to live without the weight of stereotypes. I wonder if that is ever possible.

Transness is something we are born with. But I´ve mentioned before how the trans clinic system seems to operate from a completely ahistorical stance, pretending as if transness was societally accepted and well known decades ago. Also, each trans person has an individual experience about their transness and how they navigate it. I knew in my teens that the surgical options for FtM surgeries are not as advanced, and are physiologically more difficult to pull off than MtF ones. Women and AFAB people are also allowed to express slightly more gender fluidity than men and AMAB people without getting societally chastised for it, of course depending on the culture; but as a very banal example, a man wearing a skirt is a deviant or makes a statement, whereas trousers are acceptable for women to wear and do not compromise their perceived gender. As I´m autistic and a trauma survivor, I´ve had to accept the fact that the trans clinic doctor Kettula was probably speaking the truth when she yelled at me during a video call and told me no psychiatrist in this country will ever diagnose me as a trans man. Fortunately, thanks to the 2023 trans law, I have been able to legally transition, and as such am recognized as a trans man everywhere but at the trans clinic. You see, even other healthcare providers are required by law to refer to me as a man. Sure, it comes with some slapstick elements, like when a nurse had to write down that I gave a drug screening sample sitting down for the lack of a penis, or how I have to manually check my lab results to be within the norms of my biological sex because the system automatically compares them to average male results. But going through all this I often think about how impossible it really is to make judgments about whether or not my trans identity has been ”valid since childhood”. Such assessments can not be made in a transphobic culture, where hiding is often a necessity for survival.

I´m a feminist. The greatest gift of feminism to contemporary thinking is that it has articulated over and over again the many forms of societal commodification of the female/AFAB body. Humans came together to form societies, and at some point something went horridly wrong, and the female/AFAB body and its reproductive capacity was demoted from human to cattle. Similarly, capitalism has created conditions in which all bodies, even disabled ones, are required to mimic the act of labor. Disabled people are put to perform mock work and told that this is good for them and provides them participation in society. But the reality is that this mock work takes place in designated spaces with only other disabled people, and abled forepersons are running the charade, being the only ones paid living wage. It feels like some kind of a cargo cult based on the belief that Work is Sacred, and by performing as-if-work, some of the sacredness and acceptability of being a proper laborer will rub onto the disabled folks and make them more whole as people. I´ve been told by psychiatrist after psychiatrist that the cure for my mental illness would be to go work at a supermarket shelving cornflakes and sorting milk cartons by use by date, because work cures depression. This is hogwash, of course. Meaning cures depression, not any work at any cost. Also, manual labor is not ”light” or ”easy”. It´s literally back-breaking, and it takes a healthy person with plenty of energy to spare, hobbies, and social interactions in their lives to be able to handle something as gruelingly monotonous and soul-killing as most forms of manual labor. When I used to work, I was unable to cook for myself, exercise, or take care of my home. I was too exhausted after 8 hours of nonsense to do any of the normal things I am able to do now that I´m not being ”cured” by labor.

And of course, one of the reasons that the sexual oppression and commodification of the female body especially is so normalized is that sex is seen as a form of labor. We even call the act of giving birth, the natural outcome of unprotected PIV intercourse, as ”labor”. People with pussies are supposed to provide their bodies to be used by cis men. It´s a nightmare. And the boom of OnlyFans during the pandemic speaks its own language about how broken society really is. Sex work is work, and I don´t condone the vilification of sex workers. The industry exists because there is demand for sex work. I am privileged to be on disability benefits and to not have to resort to survival sex or sex work, although dr P of the employability evaluations clinic has informed me that I will lose my benefits unless I play along and go perform mock work with the other disabled folks. Perhaps it boils down to the ravine between neurotypical and neuroatypical thinking again. How the fuck could I enjoy sex when I know what the sausage is made out of? I´m too sane to fuck. And still, even at the fertility clinic, it was clear that my unwillingness to have sex and date was seen as a problem, perhaps even a threat to my future child. This may have been because the therapist there was, among other qualifications, a sex therapist. That industry seems to have seeped everywhere in the last past years and does not take ”no” for an answer. Sex is a must that has to be had, and patriarchy dons yet another set of clothes to dress up in to fool the foolish. Perhaps OnlyFans girlies and sex therapists could form a perpetuum mobile, where the blue collar sex workers could spend their hard earned money to support the white collar sex workers, who could keep the motivations of the former up by parroting how sex is such a powerful emotional resource and sex work is very liberating and cool? This way the sickness would at least be contained within a limited societal niche.

I declare independence to articulate my own gender identity. I declare independence from participation in sex acts. I declare independence regarding my reproductive rights. I declare independence from forced labor as a pretended rehabilitation. In other words, I declare bodily autonomy. And by God, this society hates me for that. I will be punished for refusing to allow my body and my life to be used up. But I´d rather reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven, because the ”heaven” this society pretends to be is no Heaven at all. If it were, middle class family men wouldn´t murder-suicide their families and high-income career women wouldn´t drown themselves in Merlot. My anger and my disillusionment with this society are the most beautiful jewels in my possession. Paradoxically, they have freed me from feeling like I´m left out unless I perform; they have removed my anxieties about having to accumulate worldly wealth; they have made me to look inward and seek my true values. My anger, once realized, has become a source of joy and peace. It´s like how inflammatory reactions are the body´s way to rid itself of injury and pathogens. I am healing; and the negative emotions that I´ve been punished and pathologized for for my entire life were never wrong. They were the keys to my peace of mind all along.