But arriving at that name was quite a journey, so I figured I might write the story down.
Trans people use the word “deadname” for what they used to be called before they transitioned socially. It's a basic sign of respect not to call them that anymore and not to mention it to anyone. Using someone's deadname might cause gender dysphoria, and in some cases it might even lead to dangerous situations when a trans person is outed.
But personally I'm not bothered much with someone knowing my deadname or by having to use it in official situations. So I usually refer to it as my “legal name”, at least until I'll legally change it. But that's just me.
So my parents named me “Andrzej”. It comes from Ancient Greek ἀνδρός, which ironically means “a man”, “manly”. That I am not.
It's pronounced /ˈãnḍʒɛj/ – which is obvious for people who speak Polish, but turned out to be quite problematic as soon as I moved to Berlin. Foreigners have no idea how to write /ʒ/ in Polish or how to pronounce the “rz”.
So I decided to simplify it into “Andre”. It's nice, short and unambiguous. Cool!
But when I discovered that I'm nonbinary, it started bothering me, how gendered it is. Even ethymology aside, it's a very masculine name.
I speak some Italian and I've always really liked how my name sounds in this language: Andrea. It has an added enby bonus as well: in Italy it's considered masculine, but basically everywhere else it's a feminine name. Just check out this Wikipedia list full of people of all genders with that name or my analysis of most “unisex” names in Poland's database. That's the level of genderfuck I really enjoy.
Andrea it is.
I had one, but literally never really used it. I don't see a point in me having a middle name anymore.
This one I really, really hated. First of all, it's a family name and I'm… well, not on the best terms with other people who use it. There's tons of childhood trauma coming up whenever I need to use that name.
And second of all, it's terribly gendered. It's one of those that are technically adjectives in Polish grammar and they need to end with -ski for men, -ska for women, -scy for plural…
I want to have the same surname as my husband. He's my family so having a common family name would be… appropriate.
When we got married in Germany either one of us could take another's name or we could use both names with a hyphen. The problem is, though, that Poland does not recognise that marriage. Poland claims we're both still bachelors and it wouldn't just officially change our names because of some foreign marriage. We're not German citizens, so Germany wouldn't issue us new documents either. A friend of ours was in a similar situation and decided to take his husband's name – and now he needs to carry around both his Polish ID and his German marriage certificate just to prove his surname.
So we kept our names and started thinking of a brand new one we could use.
We made a list of hundreds of last names we liked, turned it into a shortlist of a few dozen. Discussed them all, disagreed and vetoed a lot of the proposals, voted on them in a few different ways – not because we had such vastly different tastes, but cause so many names were too cool to just dismiss.
Eventually we landed on one: Vos.
It's a common Dutch name, so we can honour the country we've decided to build our live in, but it's not too in–your–face Dutch (no „van der” or „Gogh” etc.). It means “fox”, which has some nice connotations in culture (cleverness, good luck, charm, curiosity, mischief). It's short, simple, has a very obvious pronunciation. I'm so glad with that choice.
I'd very much love to have all my documents reflect my chosen name. But it's a bureaucratic hassle. We could do it after we get a Dutch citizenship, but it's quite a costly and long procedure, and our justification for a change might not be enough. We could do it before, using the Polish system which actually allows changing one's name to “the acutally used name” – and I have more than enough evidence of having used it for a while. But it would still depend on a good will of a random official – and we'd have to get new IDs, passports and driver's licences just to exchange them for Dutch ones next year (if all goes well with the naturalisation).
A bit anxious about this step and unsure which way to go. But I'll figure it out 😉
]]>That might sound awfully dull, but for me that's a huge reason to celebrate. Cause for years whenever I got even a tiniest wound in my oral cavity, chances were that I'd spend that week barely talking, barely eating, I couldn't kiss or have sex, or sometimes the pain would get so awful I wouldn't even be able to think.
I have (had?) recurrent aphthous stomatitis. It's benign and not contagious, but for it's a real pain in the… well, mouth.
But it did get better over the years, so I've decided it would be good to share my story and possibly help others that might struggle with similar issues. But a quick disclaimer first:
To quote Wikipedia:
The cause is not entirely clear, but is thought to be multifactorial. It has been suggested that aphthous stomatitis is not a single entity, but rather a group of conditions with different causes. Multiple research studies have attempted to identify a causative organism, but aphthous stomatitis appears to be non-contagious, non-infectious, and not sexually transmissible.
I've seen multiple GPs, dentists, laryngologists in three different countries about my problem. Neither was able to fix my problems.
Lots of advice I tried implementing didn't really help at all. Avoiding spicy food, avoiding lemons, rinsing with baking soda, things like that. Maybe it'll work for you. But for me it didn't.
I was recommended a thing called Solcoseryl in one pharmacy – and it's honestly the best thing I've ever tried for pain management. It numbs the spot almost immediately and its paste texture makes it stay in place for a long time and prevent further irritation. Marvellous! The next best thing to not having ulcers at all.
Unfortunately, it was available in Poland and Germany, but it's not a thing in the Netherlands. When I moved here I had to switch to a thing called Evisense Pro Aften Gel, which does a… decent job. Not perfect, but decent.
Oh, and I drink tea from chamomile and echinacea. Helps a lot!
I learned that there's a compound called sodium lauryl sulfate, which can cause irritation and might lead to canker sores.
A safety concern has been raised on the basis of several studies regarding the effect of toothpaste SDS on aphthous ulcers, commonly referred to as canker or white sores.
The thing is, this compound is present in almost every toothpaste on the market. Yup…
So I switched to those few toothpastes that don't contain it (or fluoride, just in case, cause apparently it might have a similar effect on some people). And although it was in no way a rigorous scientific study on my part, I can tell you, annectodally, that it helped massively. The sores didn't disappear entirely, but they got quite a bit less frequent in general, and there was about a half fewer of those that turned excruciatingly painful.
Of course I had been brushing my teeth regularly. I'm not a person who'd give zero shits about their oral hygiene only to complain that they have some magical, unexplained problems.
I switched to an electric toothbrush, I kept picking the softest brushes available. That was helping, but not solving the problem.
But one day I had a thought: if they recommend avoiding citruses cause they make mouth more acidic, and baking soda is supposed to help because it's making the enviromnent more basic, maybe I should minimise the time my oral cavity is exposed to any weird pH fluctuations and bits of food left over. There's always gonna be minor wounds and bites happening, but maybe in the proper environment, they'd simply heal properly instead of turning into an ulcer?
I used to brush my teeth twice a day for two minutes, as recommended, plus whenever I felt I needed to. But then I made it a habit to brush as soon as I've eaten something. Anything. Even a tiniest snack. Anything that could leave bits in between teeth, anything that could change the pH. Just leave as little time possible for the potential sores to develop in less than ideal conditions.
And you know what? It's been a game changer.
I'd still get some sores, but nowhere near what I had had before.
Dentists keep recommending flossing. A lot. And for good reasons, it's obviously super important and beneficial.
The thing is, though, for me it was a torture. The amount of pain and bleeding it caused was terrible. Which speaks volumes of how bad my gums went because of the sores. Or how bad my sores went because of my gums. Honestly, it's a vicious cycle – but I finally found a way to break it.
Obviously, the steps described above helped with flossing pain as well. But it still wasn't nice. Then I tried those water flossing machines, one with a “sensitive” setting. And I also found out there's a sensitive floss in Kruidvat (although only bought it a few times and then it disappeared from the shelves?), which is more like a cotton thread than a fly line.
They all worked wonders. After a few months of daily flossing with them, my gums got healthy again and I was able to switch to regular floss.
Canker sores were ruining my life for years, ever since I can remember. The solution in my case was surprisingly simple, even though it took me ages to discover it:
My husband (and I) had a friend, and she had a boyfriend. When they broke up, she started fucking around (not saying that as a bad thing; I'm a slut myself, after all) and sharing stories with us.
But you see, the thing was – they never actually broke up. She just lied.
Along with this one, we found out about a lot of other lies. And her visiting us in a multicultural country also exposed her racism that we hadn't gotten a chance to see earlier. Overall, a huge shock and disappointment.
We were angry as fuck, and feeling sorry for the boyfriend. So we told him everything we'd found out (and shared all the screenshots he might be insterested in). He was thankful. Broke up with her and kicked her out. Overall, not the happiest ending for her.
Fast forward to last week. The guy… comes out as bisexual and polyamorous.
And my first thought was: daaaamn, girl, you fucked up!
Imagine she had been honest him. Not necessarily with a straight-forward “I wanna fuck other people”, but she could have dropped a hint or two, cracked a joke, asked him how he feels about it, learned to communicate better in the relationship, and in general, you know, treated him as a partner…
They could have explored the world of ethical non-monogamy together. They could have had the most amazing group sex they wanted. They could have had an amazing, loving polycule.
But you can't build amazing relationships without the foundation of trust, honesty and communication. Polyamory isn't about promiscuous people getting together for some reason. An open relationship isn't less of an relationship – if anything, it's kinda more! Because you need to really know your partner well, trust them and be honest with them, if you don't want to be constantly paranoid about what they do with other people.
If you actually get interested in your partner's needs, it might just turn out they align perfectly with yours. But if you lie and cheat and make up an entire fake reality to cover up your infidelities, trust me, no good relationship will come out of that – even if the other person just happens to crave other relations as much as you do.
]]>It's not the kind of post I usually write, but you know, I've been a full blown adult for a while now, so why wouldn't I start ranting about some boring chores, huh? 😅
No, seriously, my laundry went from an exhausting and time consuming housework to something I just casually spend a few minutes a week on – and I'm so excited about that that I need to share.
My first big laundry realisation was that… you don't have to iron your clothes. I know. Mind: blown 🤯
My ex mother would iron almost everything. She'd spend hours on it sometimes. I thought ironing is just a sad, inevitable fact of life. But then, on one of my first dates, the guy was talking about living on his own, and he mentioned that he just doesn't iron at all.
“Like, I didn't iron any of the clothes I'm wearing right now. Can you even tell?” – I couldn't.
Pretty much all of the modern washing machines have some anti-wrinkle techniques. Me and my husband used to own an iron and an ironing board at first, but we soon forgot they even existed. Boom, tons of time saved – by simply not doing a chore I used to think is necessary.
When we moved to a fully furnished apartment in Rotterdam, it was equipped with an electric dryer on top of the washing machine. Have heard of those, but never really used one.
Jesus Christ on a cracker, what a time saver it is! I've never seriously thought of those before. Cause why even spend hundreds of euros on a fancy machine, when you can just meticulously hang your wet clothes one by one on ropes, and then wait and wait, right? But since it's already there, let's try it out, right?
Trust me, it's worth the investment. If you can afford one, get one. (Just not a combined washer-dryer, those seem to be doing a meh job while being super power inefficient). Not only does it save you plenty of time, but also space (if you put it on top of your washing machine).
All you need to do is just put the wet things in, press some buttons, wait, and take them out. (And every once in a while empty the condensation container, I guess – but after moving again and getting a dryer of our own, we found out that you can just use a drain pipe instead of a container, so you don't even have to empty it.)
This thing I wanted to do for a while now, but didn't have enough space until moving to a new place. Namely: get a laundry basket that is simply… split in parts. That's all. Simple as that.
Now I just have to pick the correct hole (blacks, colours, whites) whenever I put dirty piece of clothing in it. A fraction of a second of chosing for each item at the time, as opposed to going through a big pile of stinky stuff at once before each laundry. Marvellous!
That one requires a bit more space in the closet, but speeds up the work massively. I used to neatly fold every top before putting it on a shelf. But then we started hanging them on hangers. Much faster, and prevents creases too.
That might be obvious for many, but it just wasn't a thing in my ex family, so I didn't even think for a second about any alternatives.
I used to hate laundry.
Now I just undress, put the clothes in their proper basket, whenever one colour gets full, I put its contents in one machine, then another, and then hang it in the closet.
It seems so simple and obvious now, yet somehow it took me eight years so get there 😅
]]>Just like the name “starter” / “appetiser” / “entrée” means that, well… no one comes to a restaurant just to eat that.
But sex isn't like that at all. It can still be fucking awesome without any need for the penetration obsession.
You know this cliché in movies when a teenager gets shamed for only lasting a few seconds in bed? I honestly, honestly didn't get how that's even possible, until I realised that for so many people… “sex” = “penetration”. And also that many men try to avoid doing anything other than penetration, if they can.
OMG, no. It's all sex! And all of it should be fun! Oral sex is still sex. Fingering is still sex. Rimming is sex. Erotic massages, cuddles, hugs can also be important parts of sex. And surprise surprise, despite the lack of penises involved[1], lesbian sex is still sex too!
Where might this definition of sex as “penis in vagina” stem from? Well, to quote my lovely partner:
It's just someone with a penis fully believing the myth of the importance of a penis.
Yeah, sorry guys, but your penis just isn't as important as you seem to think it is. It's cool, sure. I love dicks as much as any other gay slut. But it doesn't have to be the main dish. Everything else you do in bed isn't just a foreplay to when you can finally grace her pussy with your dick.
Unless I'm a very specific kind of horny, I don't want a guy to just come over, stick his dick in my pussy and keep pushing until he's done. I'd be bored out of my mind.
And it's not just boredom that's an issue. In some cases believing this distinction between “foreplay” (as in: what she wants) and “actual sex” (as in: what he wants) might even lead to abusive behaviours… To quote my partner further:
It's that idea that hold up, first you gotta do what you think she wants you to do, get her all nice and agreeable, and then you can fuck her the way you really want to. And the whole idea is so manipulative almost. How to emotionally sedate her. How to make her agree to your coercions without debate. And then you wonder why men don't take no for no.
Exactly. Sex should be something that everyone involved enjoys. If you treat it more like a chore that you do in exchange for consent, you're probably not making her (or yourself) happy.
And if you rush through the “foreplay” and only crave penetration… Well, I'm almost certain that the vast majority of people who enjoy being penetrated are not looking for a bionic dildo.
You're so much more than a dildo. Act like it 😉
[1] Well, some lesbains have penises, but please forgive the simplification.
So today I'd like to take a moment to rant about three of the awful things that contributed to that.
In pretty much every movie, book or TV series the heteronormative relationships look the same. The girls is supposed to be submissive, delicate, while the guy is dominant and strong. He's supposed to fight for her, impress her, ask her out, pay for her. She's supposed to play hard to get, innocent… He makes money, she's a hausfrau. Roles are clearly defined and very asymmetrical. Most love stories don't look like love, but rather a conquest.
Seeing same-sex relationships was so fucking refreshing for me! No stupid schemas, expectations, rectum-derived rules!
That's why straight people keep asking gays the iditoic question “who's the man and who's the woman in your relationship?”. They get that a guy might like men instead of women, but still cannot comprehend any other model of the relationship than what popular culture taught them.
And I did the opposite – I knew I don't want a patriarchal relationship, I just didn't realise I can have that with a woman.
As hard as it might be to believe, this outrageously unrealistic porn sceneCW: porn has been released by a studio called “Reality Kings”. How ironic!
Those boobs are fake. Those lips are fake. This voice is fake. The plot is unrealistic. Getting a blowjob while still hanging from a basketball loop is probably not comfortable enough for people to actually do in real life. And don't even get me started on his dick springing out rock hard right away with no mental or physical stimulation whatsoever.
And that's not an exception, the fakeness pretty much a common theme. The strong makeup that's supposed to start dripping with her tears when she gets face-fucked by a colossal dick. The almost absolute lack of interest in the girl's pleasure…
If that's what straight sex is like, I don't want it.
Except porn lied to me! Sex isn't like that.
Well, not monogamy per se, but forcing it as the default, or even the only, option.
When everyone in your life tells you you're supposed to find “the one and only” and “till death tears us apart”, it's easy to fall into the trap of feeling forced to choose. Not just the person to spend your whole life with, but the entire gender.
Finding out that it's possible (and awesome!) to love more than one person at the same time has also opened my eyes to endless other possibilities.
There's way more, but those three things in particular I'm very angry about. The world keeps lying to us about how to be happy. It shows us just one possible way: a patriarchal, monogamous relationship. Or, yeah, whatever those gays are doing.
But turns out that queerness is vastly more colourful than any of that!
]]>I used to think that the biggest advantage of the Internet compared to the old-fashioned media is that the communication doesn't just go one way. It's not just a few people broadcasting to everyone, but instead it's everyone having an equal voice.
But having spent years on the Internet has taught me something more: most of those “equal voices” are stupid and spiteful. And that's I don't have to listen to all of them.
I have a bad habit that I'm trying really hard to get rid of: and it's the need to always be right, to always have the last word. I was basically this person:
I'm not saying that I'm always right, of course, because I'm not. But I usually decide to only voice my opinions on issues that I know a lot about. I can't be wrong about Kardashians for example, because I simply don't talk about Kardashians. But when we're talking about web development, the stuggles of the LGBTQ+ community, linguistics, etc., I'm speaking up and backing up my views with data, knowledge and experience.
The problem is – not a lot of people seem to share that approach. Just last week, after having created zaimki.pl and being featured in a Queer.pl interview, I went through the comments underneath and wept for humanity.
People would start their comment with “I'm not an expert, but…” and end with “…creating neopronouns / neologisms is absolutely impermissible in linguistics!”. People would read see an article mentioning that one of the creators of the website is a professional English-Polish translator, and then accuse the creators of not even knowing how Polish and English are different or even that they belong to different groups of languages. Seriously.
And that's the kind of comments that bring absolutely no value. They are a thing because of this stupid notion, that everyone's opinion is valid.
And it's not. If your knowledge of linguistics comes down to speaking your native tongue and having heard in school once about the existence of Slavic languages and Germanic languages – your opinion about language evolution will probably not be useful to a professional translator or a finalist of a national linguistic competition, will it? If you're a white, able-bodied straight cis man, your opinion on how minorities should behave and how we should fight for our human rights will probably not be too useful in the discussion, now will it? If you haven't read and understood the original post, your comment below that post will probably suck, won't it? And so on, and so forth…
But I was taught toxic habits, so I kept answering those comments. I kept answering the guy who transparently was trying to destroy my project for a personal vendetta. I kept educating priviledged people that they don't have a say in the minorities' fight for equal rights. I kept re-writing points from the post for the people who clearly have not read it. I kept answering the guy who used the online comments to bully me in real life.
Reading what haters and know-better-than-the-experts have to say is hard emotional labour. Answering them is even harder. It requires a lot of time and effort, and leaves you with ragged nerves. Some people clearly come to my mentions not to have a valid discussion or to share their point of view – they come specifically to waste my time. And I'm so stupid to let them play their game…
Anyways… a few years back I was really into making sure that everything I create has a comment section, that I don't “censor” any voices, don't ban any abusers, don't hide any homophobic slurs…
But now I don't care about that anymore. I simply create things that I like, I share them with anyone who wants to listen to my words or to use my projects – and if anyone has found a factual error in my post, a bug on a website, if they have any useful input or suggestion, or if they want to cooperate – there's still plenty of ways to contact me about it.
There is simply no need for a space, where everyone can anonymously put their queerphobic views on my website.
Technically speaking, creating a comment section is complicated – with the need for a database, possibly user authentication, moderation, rich text editor, etc. When I was creating a new version of this blog, I kept it simple (and then again I went even simpler). The current version doesn't even have a database – it generates static HTML from SUML files. So a comment section would be more complex than the blog itself 🙄 That's why I had decided to outsource that logic to Disqus.
Technically, Disqus works like a charm. But for the sake of my mental health and hours of needlessly wasted time – it's time to go one step further.
I simply removed the comment section. Poof.
And I'm not the only one to do that. Many major newspapers get rid of their comment section nowadays, or at least limit the write access to paying subscribers.
Life's too short for trolls.
PS Before you accuse me of “silencing criticism”, “hiding in my bubble”, “not being open to discussion”, “not being open to change my mind”, etc., please let me tell you that I used to be a devout catholic, conservative, right-wing… Now I'm a pansexual, polyamorous enby, intersectional feminist and human rights advocate. I am able to change my mind, because I already have made a 180° turn (and multiple smaller ones). I am constantly exposed to people disagreeing with me and calling me queerphobic slurs every day. Don't worry about my openness to opposing ideas. I'll be fine without this one extra place to anonymously bash me, thank you very much.
]]>Baby, I can't wait to know
What do you think about things
Believe me, I will always be there, so
You can tell me anything and I'll listen
You see: my parents were never eager to learn what I think about things. They already knew what I have to think.
They knew I'm gonna be a nice catholic boy that will grow up to love Jesus and marry a woman that they would approve of. They had my whole life planned out for me.
Except, they didn't take into account that it's my life, not theirs. They ended up with a nonbinary, atheist child who married a man. And it would've been waaaaay easier, both for me and them, if they had just accepted the possibility that I won't grow up to be a clone of theirs.
Almost every bigger problem, every stressful situation, every abusive behaviour of theirs can be traced back to this stupid idea that their goal is not to bring up a person, but to… well, produce more of themselves.
Can you imagine how hard it was to come out as queer to someone who treats it as a personal failure (and a personal attack) that they didn't manage to make you exeactly the same orientation as they are?
Otherwise, they weren't ”actively” homophobic. They weren't saying ugly shit about gay couples on TV or pro-gay politicians, they just didn't care at all. When it came to their own child, though? Right after coming out I've heard that ”those fags should get their balls cut off” from my own father.
They shamed me for having the second highest grade average in the best high school in the city (”why not the highest?”), for not having exactly the same skills and interests as they do, for not liking the exact same types of food they do…
All of that could've been avoided, if they just considered me my own person. If I were a stranger, they wouldn't tell me whom to marry or what to believe in. But, since they gave birth to me, I'm somehow supposed to be what they want me to.
The thing is, though: I won't be. I'll be my own self, sooner or later, whether you like it or not. The only thing you can do about it, is make it harder for all of us.
Another fragment of the song that really moves me is this one:
Though I know I love you
I find it hard to see how you feel about me
'Cause I don't understand you
Oh, you are yet to learn how to speak
Daði doesn't assume that his child loves him.
Love and respect are not a given. You have to build a relationship with someone and earn their respect. Few things in the world angry me more than people forcing each other to like other people ”because it's family”.
Yeah, no. Blood ties don't mean shit on their own.
I'm way closer to some people unrelated to me than I ever was with anyone of my family. And I'm happy.
What's very important: it seems like my experience is not an exception, but a rule. Think about all those parents who have to have a child that becomes a doctor or a lawyer. Think about all those fathers who hate their daughters because they really wanted a son. Thing about all those mothers who send their offspring to extracarriculars that they just hate. And so on, and so forth.
Not even that! Think about all those people who switch to a bizzarly awful ”baby talk” whenever they see a child. Why the hell do they do that? How do they expect the child to learn to speak like a human, if they keep exposing them to a caricature of speach?
Think about parents who hate it when their kids call them by name. Every other person close to them just calls them by their name. But if their child says something other than mom/mommy/dad/daddy/whatever, they take great offense. As if the kids were inferior to them. Not allowed to call them the way that every other human being calls people close to them. Isn't it strange?
Your child is a human being. Treat them as one.
Oh well, anyways… Enjoy the song 😉
]]>The most obviously tricky part is the pronunciation. My name, “Andrzej”, is pronunced like this, with the “rz” as /ʐ/. But hardly anyone outside of Poland knows that and has no problems pronouncing it and writing it down. That's why I usually go by “Andre”, as a simplification. And recently also as “Andrea”, to make it gender-neutral.
But dificult pronunciation is almost a given when talking about other languages. What's quite specific to Polish then?
Many languages have diminutives. Many use them also for names (eg. English: Tim → Timmy, Richard → Dick, ...). Some languages even have a concept of double diminutive (Italian: casa → casetta → casettina). But Polish just loooves its diminutives!
According to ksiega-imion.pl, my first name, Andrzej, can be tuned into: Andruszko, Andrzejek, Jędrek, Jędruś, Jędrzejek, Ondrzejek, Ondraszek, or Ondrysz. Diminutives of Katarzyna are: Kacha, Kachna, Kasia, Kasieńka, Kasiunia, Kaśka, Katarzynka, Katka. Of Jan: Janek, Janosik, Jasiek, Jasio, Jaś, Jaśko. And so on, and so forth...
And the thing is: which one to use can depend on so many things... Most are regional forms. Some you can use more like a joke or a nickname rather than a diminutive of a name.
I've noticed that many follow a three-level pattern. For instance:
The first one is very formal. That's what's in your documents. That's what you probably hardly ever use outside of formal situations – at least I wouldn't, if I had one of those names. I've had friends and family members who would always go by “Wojtek” and never “Wojciech”, always “Gosia” and never “Małgorzata”, etc.
It sounds so formal that my sister Małogrzata, upon moving to the UK, wouldn't go by the English version of her name – Margaret - but by an artificial anglicisation of the Polish diminutive “Gosia”: so she's now known as “Gosha”.
The second one is usually what you use informally, what friends call you, what the extended family calls you. The third one is pretty intimate and quite infantile. You might call your romantic partners that, you might call children that.
Usually. It all differs from name to name, it differs from person to person. Sometimes it can get quite tricky to decide which form of one's name to use, in order not to sound too formal, or too familiar, or too childish...
That's why I'm very glad that my name is not one of those “three-level” names. “Andrzej” just doesn't sound so formal that it would be weird to call your friend that. One can form a diminutive of it, if one wants, but “Andrzej” itself is pretty neutral.
And they did, btw. My parish priest, for example, jokingly called be “Jędrek”, because he's from the mountains where this form is popular. And my mother called me “Aduś”, completely ignoring the fact that it's not in the slightest a diminutive of “Andrzej”. It is a male-ified version of a diminutive of a female name “Ada”. But she also called my brother “Maciuś”, even though it's a diminutive of “Maciej”, not “Marcin”, and she called his daughter “Magda” even though her name is “Wiktoria”, so what does she know 🤷
Summing up: the Poles can get pretty inventive with their names, and chosing a proper form can get tricky sometimes.
And then there's surnames. Most are quite straight-forward, but there's one category that behaves a bit unexpectedly. Those surnames, ending in -ski and -cki, are basically adjectives, which means they get declined.
Polish, as a stronly genderised language, distinguishes between male and female way more often than necessary. So for example, my surname is Prusinowski, but my sister's is Prusinowska. The family name is Prusinowscy, but a subset of two or more women would be called Prusinowskie.
Let's look at Lana & Lilly Wachowski, collectively known as “The Wachowskis” or “The Wachowski sisters”.
If they lived and transitioned in Poland (or treated their Polish heritage more to the letter), they would probably change not only their first names, but also surnames. It would be “Lana Wachowska” and “Lilly Wachowska”, and collectively “siostry Wachowskie”. Also, the pronunciation would be vastly different from the anglicised version, just saying...
And finally, something more loosely related to names: people in Poland celebrate name days. It's also popular in some other Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries, but not as universal as birthdays, so worth mentioning, I guess...
Basically, if a person died and became a saint, there would be a “memory” day put in the liturgical calendar, usually on the day of their death. That way the priest will know to read a short note about their life before the mass. Eventually, those names ended up in regular calendars, and people bearing those names started celebrating the feast day of their patron saint.
So in Poland you usually have two celebrations of your person every year – a birthday, usually celebrated with family, and a name day, usually celebrated by getting super drunk with your friends. Unless you're a child, then you only get a birthday, sorry.
]]>For me, gender is over.
Not in a sad, “Game Over” way.
In a happy, “Mission accomplished” way.
Because for me gender is just a set of rules and regulations, based on someone's perception of what kind of genitals you might have. If people think that you have this or that in your pants, they'll also expect you to get a specific type of job, wear a specific amount of makup, have specific amount of body hair in specific places, wear specific clothes, behave in a specfic manner, play with specific toys...
We know it's all made up rules, for instance because it differs from culture to culture and from time to time. “Asian woman”, “Western woman”, “Medieval European woman”, etc. etc. are all made to follow different set of rules. Pink used to be a colour associated with boys not girls (because of being close to bloody red).
Dictionaries define gender as “the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex”. But I would go one step further: it's not just the “traits” that are “associated”. It's rules that are enforced.
Be it by getting physically beaten up for “looking like a faggot”, be it by being publicly riddiculed for “being too butch”, or be it by simply being quietly frowned upon – the society has its ways to make people look and behave the way their designated box says they should.
And yes, I know, there's plenty of people being very comfortable in their box. And there's many who know they'll be happy and fitting once they transition to the other box. But wouldn't it be simpler if we just got rid of the boxes?
Just let people be people. Let us be ourselves.
Ever since I put the nonbinary label on my gender, ever since I started gender bending, ever since I started experimenting with my pansexuality, I started realising how made up gender is.
We don't choose our partners based solely on the mere existence of a penis or a vagina, right? We like them for their character, skills, sense of humour, we're physically attracted to their body type, body hair, muscles, face, hair, makeup, etc. etc.
Our appearance and behaviour, our romantic and sexual attraction – are way more complex than just those simple binary categories: man and woman, gay, straight and bi...
Sure, it's a decent approximation, and I still use them to describe myself and other people. And I'm not trying to invalidate anyone's identity.
I just wanted to share how much liberty it gave me when I started to just care about those labels less.
I'm not enforcing gender rules on anyone. I'm not trying to follow them myself. In my mind – gender is over 💪
]]>Have you ever noticed how unfairly we treat our brains?
Just take a look at the stigma surrounding mental issues. How mentally ill are being treated as dangerous weirdos, instead of... just sick people?
Just take a look at how often we don't treat intellectual work like a real work. Thinking that one can't possibly be so tired after eight hours just sitting at a desk.
Just take a look how many of us still believe in a “soul”, without giving enough credit to their brains.
But here's the news: your brain is you. The rest just keeps your brain alive.
You can lose a finger or a leg. You can replace a heart with a transplant. But you can't lose or replace your brain, can you?
It's you, treat yourself with respect.
Mental illness is just a type of illness. Mental work is also work. Consciousness is a function of brain, not a magic astral mystery.
]]>it’s the saddest fucking comedy ever
don’t trust the trailer, bring tissues
(oh, and also, it’s great!)
]]>Nightwish is the musical love of my life. Their power metal gave me power to get through the darkest moments of my life. Their symphonic metal managed to combine into single songs my passion for both classical music and heavier sounds. Seeing them perform live was no doubt the most eargasmic experience of my life.
And their Tuomas Holopainen is IMO the greatest modern composer. Absolutely no doubt about it.
Which brings me to the song that is the absolute peak of their work, combining plentitude of talent, years of experience developing their style, the refined technique, and a beautiful, powerful message.
“The Greatest Show on Earth”.
Let’s start with the message. It can’t get more solemn than the story of the universe, of life and everything. Than asking the big questions, who are we and where are we going. Than contemplating life and death, creation and destruction. It’s all there.
The whole album is inspired by one of the most brilliant and important theories in the history of science: Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory. The album’s name actually comes from Darwin’s “Origin of Species”. And the name of the song itself comes from the title of Richard Dawkins’s book about evolution.
Speaking of which, the album features Dawkins himself as a guest. He reads excerpts from both Darwin and himself, including this powerful quote from “Unweaving the Rainbow” that provides a wonderful solace for the fear of death without there being an afterlife:
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. [...] In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?
Musically, the song is actually a mix of genres, even being a bit tribal or a bit pop in some places. As it tells the story of the entire universe, it consists of multiple vastly different parts, yet all of them fitting so well together. It’s a whole conceptual album in one song.
And it’s being sung by Floor Jansen – immensely talented woman with a beautiful voice, and probably the most versatile one that I’ve ever heard – together with Marco Hietala, who manages to both contrast and complement Floor’s voice. Simply wonderful!
And on top of that, they manage to take this already top-notch song and create a live show that elevates it even further – with a great stage design, sometimes even fireworks, or in case of the concert that I attended – weaving in my second-favourite song from Nightwish, Ghost Love Score.
Considering all that – could I make any other choice than going for The Greatest Song on Earth?
]]>My bio says I’m “pan/gay”, which might seem pretty self-contradictory, right? It’s one or the other, right?
Well, here’s why:
First of all, sexual orientation is a spectrum. Second of all, it’s not set in stone. I don’t think anyone has to just pick one label and stick to it. Calling myself “pan/gay” is my way of saying that I’m attracted to people of all genders, but with a strong preference for guys. How strong? Am I a 4 or a 5 on the Kinsey scale? Dunno 🤷 There’s the word “homoflexible”... But am I homoflexible? And how many people know what it means without googling?
I don’t know, and I care less and less about putting a label or a number on it. One thing for sure: just “pan” or just “gay” doesn’t tell the whole story. But combined? They say enough and are easy to understand.
And then, there’s also this thing that I’m nonbinary. I might look like a man at the first glance, I might own a penis, but I’m not a man, I don’t subscribe to the binary. Is it gay to be into guys, if I’m not a guy? What do I call that? There’s this thing called diamoric orientations, but neither one from the list really fits me (and again, almost nobody knows them).
And finally, I’ve spent a huge chunk of my life identifying as gay ( Coming out as... not so gay 🤷🏼). I’ve become a part of the gay community, used gay apps, visited gay bars, and I still do. That identity doesn’t disappear overnight just because I finally decided to embrace other sides of my sexuality. It never will. My “gayness” is more than just attraction to guys.
Don't forget, that in many contexts “gay” might actually be a synecdoche for the whole LGBTQ+ community. For instance, when you advocate for “gay rights”, you probably don't want to exclude bi or pan folx, you do demand the same rights for them as you demand for gay people, even if you don't explicitly mention them. Or when you use the rainbow flag to represent gays specifically, as well as queers in general. Or when you use “gay pride” and “LGBTQ pride” interchangably.
So, summing up: it’s not self-contradictory, it’s just complicated. But “pan/gay” is the best approximation of the truth I can fit in 7 bytes, so I’ll go with that.
]]>I think we should see other people... No, I’m not breaking up with you, quite the opposite.
Seeing other people might be beneficial for a relationship. How? Well, let me introduce you to the concepts of “NRE” and “compersion”.
Imagine there’s a situation that makes your partner objectively happy. How do you feel? Happy as well, right? Duh, obviously, you love them, of course you’re happy for them!
But what if this “situation” is the fact that they started being romantically involved with someone else? They still love you, they don’t intend to end things with you, it doesn’t negatively impact your relationship – they have simply found someone else who also makes them happy, that’s all.
How does it make you feel? If you’re unhappy about it – that’s jealousy. If you’re happy for them – that’s compersion.
If it weren’t for this strange idea, which society feeds us almost every day, that romantic and sexual exclusivity are absolutely necessary for a happy relationship, we would simply treat romance as yet another source of happiness. My partner picked up a new hobby? Great! Found new friends? Awesome! Got a raise? Wonderful! Found a lover? Marvelous!
According to a definition from PolyMatchMaker.com:
Compersion – The opposite of jealousy; the feelings of happiness that your lover(s) are also loving and being loved by other lovers. Coined by the Kerista Commune of San Francisco, which practiced polyfidelity and was disbanded in the early 1990s.
Now, for the other thing...
I’ve been in a wonderful relationship for over six years now. It’s plenty of time to build something incredible. For years we’ve been living together, spending most of our time together, we got married, we are each other’s best friends and we can’t imagine our lives without the other.
But six years is also plenty of time to forget what we felt back when we had just started dating. Our love is now stronger and more mature than ever, but that initial euphoric joy of falling in love has obviously faded away by now.
But I’ve met another great guy recently, and he reminded me how it is to feel that. And I know how crazy it might sound to someone who’s monogamous, but dating him actually might have made me a better husband to my husband. He made me remember how I felt when our relationship started. He constantly reminds me to always put my husband first and to always be honest to him. Knowing him makes me discover new things about my primary relationship. He makes me a better person.
And that’s the New Relationship Energy. Or as PolyMatchMaker.com’s defines it:
NRE – New Relationship Energy – That lovely euphoria you experience when you become involved with a new love.
So in short: that’s why I think that we, the people, should see other people.
]]>So it turns out, coming out is still something that I have to do sometimes 🙄. Surprisingly, though, it’s the other way around now. That’s a brand new experience to me 😅 So here it goes:
Let me tell you a story of a random, average gay guy growing up in a homophobic environment.
He discovers something strange about himself, but he can’t even put a name on it. He never saw gay couples in his life, he has no idea that liking boys is an option, he never saw gay porn, he never even heard the word.
Then he does hear it. And he hears that it is a bad thing.
He lives half of his teenage years in fear – fear that he’ll have to tell someone one day, fear that he’ll be hated for who he is, fear that he’ll end up alone for the rest of his life...
But he also hears the word “bisexual”. Hmm, sounds like a safe middle ground, actually. Maybe his parents will hate him less if he tells them he’s bisexual, and not gay? (they won’t, don’t kid yourself, kid)... Maybe he actually does like girls? He was focusing so much on the threat of eternal damnation for liking boys, that he didn’t really consider that.
They tell him that one must “pick a side” though. They bombard him with Disney movies and Hollywood clichés of a perfect romantic love that he absolutely must pursue if he ever wants to be happy. The once-in-a-lifetime love only happens once in a lifetime, silly! If you ever want to find “the one”, first select the right half of the population!
It’s a struggle to come out. But he finally does. As gay. It’s simpler that way. Nobody knows about the Kinsey scale anyway. Nobody can think outside the binary. They won’t understand you. You don’t even know yourself who you are – how can you expect anyone else to?
Being gay turns out to be not so bad. Homophobia is terrifying, sure, but the community is so lovely! Everywhere he goes, there’s his queer family ready to welcome him! Well, his gay family.
So here I was. I met a perfect guy for me. We were monogamish and our sex was always 100% male. We got married. I was pretty much “confirmed” as gay.
Except that’s not what I am.
I never “came out” to my husband as (as he calls it) “pussy-curious”. It just was out there, that some day I might want to experiment in that direction.
Our relationship got more open and slightly poly, so I did. And I liked it.
I might be turned on by masculinity and cocks more strongly and more often than by femininity and pussies, but I’ve noticed that at the end the person’s gender or their genitals are not really that high up on the list of reasons to sleep with them 🤷🏼
But hey, everyone thinks I’m gay... I’m married to a guy after all! I fight for marriage equality, I’ve used the “gay” label so many times in my life... No wonder that friends simply see me as gay.
But I’m surprised that even to me it kinda feels wrong in a way...
But it isn’t. At all. Human sexuality is not set in stone. Your sexual orientation can just change overtime (it’s not the same as saying that you can forcibly change someone’s orientation!), and it’s totally fine. You can keep discovering your sexuality that has always been there and it’s still fine.
Experimenting with my gender made me realise: we’re not really bound by binaries. They’re all in our heads.
I don’t have to comply with gender norms, I don’t have to be “male” or “female”. And my sexuality isn’t (and doesn’t have to) be so clearly defined either. I’m still gay, it’s still a huge part of my identity. But I’m also pan.
I used to feel like I’m kinda self-censoring. Like I’m not supposed to like this or that. It’s so much easier not to care anymore!
I didn’t lose my identity after eating the first pussy. I just discovered a new one.
It took me a while to figure it out, but beter late than ever, right? 😉
]]>It’s #ComingOutDay, so I feel like I should tell you something...
Here it goes...
Ekhm...
I’m queer af 😱
I know, I know, but please try to contain your shock 😅
But in all seriousness: I’m so lucky and privileged that I can just say it out in the open. Most people still aren’t.
When I first came out, it was scary, risky and dangerous. But I did it. It got worse, but then it got better. Being truly myself made it better.
If you’re scared to come out, remember:
What hit me most at yesterday’s debate, was a story of a workshop where 12-13yo kids were totally open about their identity, but their teacher just couldn’t understand “that pansexual and nonbinary nonsense” – despite her being a lesbian herself.
How come kids are better educated, more open and more self-aware than their teachers?
Simple: because now they grow up with the Internet, with all the inclusive Netflix shows, with all the celebrities coming out... Those kids will educate their parents, teachers, friends...
That’s why your coming out is so important. It’s a snowball effect. More visibility ⇒ more acceptance ⇒ it’s easier to come out ⇒ more people do so ⇒ more visibility.
Inclusive society is inevitable! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
Happy #ComingOutDay!
]]>No, honestly, am I? I wanna know 😅
One thing is, in general, I don’t think gender should be a thing. It’s just some set of stupid arbitrary rules telling you what are you allowed to do and what not depending on which genitals you were born with. I don’t want to follow those rules. I refuse to follow them.
Women used to have no right to vote. Women used to not be allowed to wear pants. But they refused to play by those rules – and now, surprise surprise, turns out having a penis is not a requirement to vote or to wear pants anymore! Who would have thought!
I went to a Pride Week showing of “The Danish Girl” this Monday, followed by a panel discussion with three transgender people who told the audience about their experience of being trans in the Netherlands. What struck me is how much their lives would’ve been easier if only our society didn’t have those strange gender rules. No one would mock that trans guy as a child for having a “boy haircut” or riding a “boy bike” if there was no such thing as a “boy haircut” or “boy bike”. Our society has put gender labels on mundane things like toys, books, movies or haircuts and now it hates people who don’t comply. That’s crazy and hurtful!
Summing up, I really believe that breaking all the idiotic gender-related rules that our society has made up is a right thing to do.
But do I break them?
Well, that’s why I’m not sure if calling myself nonbinary would be okay... I just look like a guy. That’s all.
I mean, I have a friend that looks a different gender in each picture of their dating profile. I see Jonathan van Ness rocking their heels and long hair... And then there’s me – a guy that looks like a guy. I sometimes feel that if I did call myself nonbinary, I’d be all like how dare I do that?
But also, I don’t always look 100% like a guy. I paint my nails every once in a while when I feel like it – and I’m gradually getting more and more comfortable wearing shiny pink nail polish in public. On some occasions (mostly Pride) I wear some makeup on my face as well.
On the other hand, I don’t shop in the “women’s” part of stores, I don’t wear heels or shirts or dresses. I am planning to buy some, but I probably won’t dare to wear them in public for quite a while anyway.
I use the “men’s” locker room at the gym and the “men’s” restroom at work, no matter how inclusive for gender nonconforming people that restroom might be. I don’t think I’m ready for the confusion / confrontation it might possibly spark... Does it make me conforming after all?
People refer to me as he/him, but I honestly wouldn’t mind she/her or they/them. I really, really, don’t care. In my native Polish, which distinguishes gender in many more ways than English, I started using artificial, gender-neutral forms or words (”chciałₐbym” instead of male “chciałbym” or femal “chciałabym”, “zrobiłæm” instead of male “zrobiłem” or female “zrobiłam”). Oh, and I also use female emojis 🤷🏼
I don’t do that because I don’t feel like a man anymore or because I feel like a woman, or even anywhere in between.
I do that because I truly hate the very distinction of “femininity” and “masculinity”. Skirts should be just yet another type of clothing one could wear, and not a political statement or a reason to be beaten up in the street. Makeup should be just a time-consuming way to look better – not something reserved to a particular half of the population depending on the contents of their underwear.
I don’t care about being or not being a particular gender. I care about being free from caring about those stupid rules.
And you know what? Is a person not gay if they’re still in the closet? Are they not gay if they are still a virgin? Of course not! Then why do I care so much if I am non-conforming enough to call myself so?
I am angry at the world for attempting to put us all into binary categories – and I don’t wanna stay in one of them anymore.
So yes, I will be putting “enby” in my bio 😉
]]>I started crying during one of the first scenes and I couldn’t stop till the end.
I don’t think I ever saw a cinema audience reacting so affectionately to a movie. There was a moment when I thought “damn, good job, Javed, I so wanna start clapping for you!”. Stupid, right? He’s not gonna hear me. He’s an actor playing some guy and they both are nowhere near, why would anyone sane applaud some pixels on the screen?
And literally one second later half of the movie theater started applauding Javed.
We were laughing with him, we were sad with him, we were angry with him, we dreamed with him, we enjoyed music with him...
Even the strange musical-ish scene turned out to be not so fake after all. Have you ever seen a musical where people don’t know the choreography or lyrics? Yeah, it’s called life.
Javed was told by his father that he, as a Pakistani, has to keep his head low to avoid racism. I was told just today, for a thousandth time, that as a gay man I have to hold my head low to avoid homophobia.
Javed had parents who wouldn’t let him be any other version of himself than what they had imagined for him – no matter how unhappy it would make him, no matter that they could lose him about it. And myself, well...
Javed went through his struggles. I went through different ones. And anyone who wasn’t privileged enough went through theirs. But we all saw the same hatred and the same bigotry on the faces of people who wanted to hurt us. We all heard the same arrogance and lack of understanding in the voices of people who thought they knew better what’s best for us.
It felt like everybody could relate to some part of his story. And that everybody could find hope there.
I saw plenty of movies this year, but I don’t think any of them was anywhere near as good as this one. You should definitely see it once it’s released. I know I will.
]]>It might be obvious for most people, (you know, those who know the meaning of words), but apparently, judging from the tweet above and the answers to it, (where Polish right-wingers show WNBR as an example of how the LGBTQ community has “deprived” the West), some people still confuse naturism with exhibitionism and they think that it’s gay...
Well, here’s why it’s neither of those things:
According to ICD-10 F65.2 exhibitionism is classified as sexual deviation and is described as:
A disorder characterized by recurrent sexual urges, fantasies, or behaviors involving the exposure of one’s genitals to an unsuspecting stranger.
A disorder in which fantasies about or the act of exposing the genitals to an unsuspecting stranger produces sexual excitement with no attempt at further sexual activity with the stranger.
Now here’s what the World Naked Bike Ride, and naturism in general, is all about: precisely not that.
It’s about freedom, it’s about loving your body, it’s about not caring about clothes, it’s about feeling good...
Usually, we’re naked at home or at a nude beach, among other nude people... But not necessarily. For instance in Germany it’s pretty common to see nude people sunbathing in random public parks. It’s perfectly legal, it’s considered normal, and it’s not sexual and it’s not exhibitionistic.
With WNBR there’s an additional message attached to the public nudity: bringing the public’s attention to the problems of car-based transportation in the cities and “delivering a vision of a cleaner, safer, body-positive world”. It’s a political statement, not a sexual act.
Take it from a person who has actually done it once: My first World Naked Bike Ride – and I absolutelly loved it!. I rode totally naked through the city centre of Amsterdam, and yet I’m not a exhibitionist. I don’t get off of that sexually, I don’t fantasise about it, I’m totally capable of achieving sexual pleasure without any stranger seeing me. I simply enjoy being naked, that’s it.
(Full disclosure: I did have sex in public places a couple of times, but the whole point was not to get caught by anyone. 🤷♂ I also post some explicit content online sometimes, but it’s specifically targeted to people who want to see it. 🤷♂)
It differs between countries, obviously, but in all of those I’ve been publicly naked in: 🇩🇪 Germany, 🇳🇱 The Netherlands and 🇪🇸 Spain, there’s a distinction in law between just being naked in public (legal, with some exceptions like churches, cemeteries, schools...) and sexually exposing yourself (illegal).
So, what about public nudity allegedly being gay? Some people on Twitter were thinking that those photos from WNBR were taken during Pride, which is simply not true. I happen to take part in both, but in general they are separate events targeted to a different group of people.
Judging from my observations of how few of my gay friends are eager to join me at a nude beach, and how many guys I’ve met during the WNBR Amsterdam who talked about their wives/girlfriends or came together with them – I can see no clear correlation between the LGBTQ community and naturists.
Although they do have a lot in common: freedom and openness.
And that’s all it is about.
]]>Być może dla wielu jest to oczywiste, (dla tych, którzy znają znaczenia słów), ale sądząc po tweetach z prawej strony, niektórzy mieszają naturyzm z ekshibicjonizmem, i myślą, że WNBR to przykład tego jak społeczność LGBTQ seksualnie deprawuje Zachód...
Well, naturyzm nie jest ani ekshibicjonizmem, ani domeną homoseksualistów, a oto dlaczego:
Zgodnie z ICD-10 F65.2 ekshibicjonizm jest klasyfikowany jako parafilia i opisany jako:
Zaburzenie charakteryzujące się nawracającymi popędami seksualnymi, fantazjami lub zachowaniami związanymi z eksponowaniem swoich genitaliów niczego nie podejrzewającym nieznajomym.
Zaburzenie, w którym fantazje lub eksponowanie genitaliów niczego nie podejrzewającemu nieznajomemu wywołuje podniecenie seksualne bez próby dalszej aktywności seksualnej z tym nieznajomym.
A oto czym jest World Naked Bike Ride i ogólnie naturyzm: czymś zupełnie innym.
Chodzi w nim o wolność, o kochanie swojego ciała, o nie dbanie o ciuchy, o czucie się dobrze...
Przeważnie jesteśmy nago w domu albo na nagiej plaży, wśród innych naturystów... Ale niekoniecznie. Na przykład w Niemczech całkiem często można spotkać w publicznych parkach ludzi po prostu opalających się nago. Jest to całkowicie legalne, postrzegane jako normalne, to nie ma podtekstu seksualnego i nie jest eksbibicjonizmem.
W przypadku WNBR nagość ma jeszcze dodatkowy przekaz: ma zwrócić uwagę opinii publicznej na problemy związane z opieraniem transportu w miastach na samochodach oraz ma “pokazać wizję czystszego, bezpieczniejszego, body-pozytywnego świata”. WNBR jest manifestem politycznym, a nie aktem seksualnym.
Mówi to człowiek, który sam brał w nim raz udział: My first World Naked Bike Ride – and I absolutelly loved it!. Wprawdzie jechałem całkiem nago przez centrum Amsterdamu, a jednak nie jestem ekshibicjonistą. Nie jara mnie to seksualnie, nie fantazjuję o tym, nie potrzebuję eksponować się nieznajomym by osiągnąć satysfakcję seksualną. Po prostu lubię być nago, to tyle.
(Full disclosure: Muszę przyznać, że zdarzyło mi się kilka razy uprawiać seks w miejscach publicznych, ale nie był to ekshibicjonizm, a wręcz przeciwnie: właśnie o to chodziło, by nikt nas nie przyłapał 🤷♂ Wrzucam też czasem seksualny content do Internetu, ale jest on konkretnie kierowany do ludzi, którzy chcą go zobaczyć. 🤷♂)
W różnych krajach wygląda to różnie, wiadomo, ale we wszystkich tych, gdzie byłem publicznie nago: 🇩🇪 Niemczech, 🇳🇱 Niderlandach i 🇪🇸 Hiszpanii, istnieje w prawie rozróżnienie pomiędzy po prostu byciem nago publicznie (co jest legalne, z paroma wyjątkami jak kościoły, cmentarze, szkoły...), a obnażaniem się przed kimś seksualnie (nielegalne).
A teraz kwestia tego, że publiczna nagość jest niby domeną homoseksulistów. Niektórzy na Twitterze uważają, że te zdjęcia z WNBR były zrobione podczas którejś z Parad Równości – a to zwyczajnie nie jest prawda. Ja akurat chodzę i na jedno i na drugie, ale są to zupełnie osobne wydarzenia skierowane do różnych grup ludzi.
Sądząc po moich obserwacjach, jak niewielu moich znajomych gejów chce pójść ze mną na nagą plażę, oraz jak wielu facetów poznanych na WNBR Amsterdam opowiadało o swoich żonach/dziewczynach albo przyszło razem z nimi – nie widzę korelacji między byciem LGBTQ a byciem naturystą.
Aczkolwiek obie grupy mają sporo wspólnego: wolność i otwartość.
I tylko o to w tym wszystkim chodzi.
]]>Yeah, you have some cool photos... But do you have a photo of yourself biking naked in front of the Iamsterdam sign in the centre of Amsterdam? 😄
It was definitelly the craziest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life – and I enjoyed every single second of it!
The World Naked Bike Ride is an event that happens every year in multiple cities around the globe. Its goal is to promote two things: biking as an efficient, environmentally friendly, zero-emission mode of transportation, and nudity as a natural, healthy and pleasant way of living (that doesn’t necessarily have to be sexual). Although admittedly the Dutch love their bikes so much, that the first goal becomes kinda moot.
As much as I love being naked and even have no problem posting my nudes online, biking naked through a city centre is a totally different league, it’s totally hardcore. I wasn’t sure until the very start, if I’ll be able to do it. I’ve made a friend online, we went there together, and we supported each other to do it. We don’t regret it at all.
What totally surprised me, was how positive random people were about the whole action. They were waving, screaming, cheering, supporting, clapping, taking pictures! Sure, many were confused about what’s going on, a few (but only women!) were covering their eyes. But that’s as far as the “negative” reactions went!
On the other hand there was a guy – a clothed bystander – who saw us and just took off his pants and started waving his cock 😄 Another guy, a really friendly and open-minded Brazilian, saw us biking, decided it looks fun, got completely naked and joined us, without even being sure what is the action about. It really felt like in a big big family.
How does one feel, when riding naked through Amsterdam with like a hundred other nude people? Free. Liberated. Extatic. It’s totally indescribable. It really teaches you not to give a fuck. And that’s just beautiful!
There had to be also some things I didn’t like that much. The speed, for instance. When riding in a group, it’s almost inevitable that you start and stop really often, and you’re going really slow in the process. Also: driving round and round and round the square in front of the Rijksmuseum was kind of lame, IMO. And some guy kept ringing his bell constantly, as if he was a 6 years old girl on her first bike...
But what was the saddest, was how few women came to the event. It’s sad, because it’s a sign of what people generally think about naturism: that it’s something sexual. That the whole point is to stare at naked chicks, or whatever. Well, it’s not. There’s still a long way before us to fix that misconception.
Apart from that, I really can’t complain. The whether was wonderful, the people were so friendly, the ride was so fun!
Who’s joining us next year? 😊
BTW, if you’re looking for a nudist place near your location, confirmed and described by people who have actually been there, you might want to check out our project naked-adventure.eu. The database of places is still small, but constantly growing 😉
]]>I’ve had enough of Germany. I know, I know, it’s given me opportunities that I could never expect in my homeland of Poland, I’ve spent amazing three years here, I married the love of my life here... But now it’s not time for good stuff. Now it’s time for a complaint.
Here’s (some of) the reasons why I want to move out from this country.
Germans don’t care if you know how do a job. Germans don’t care if you already have experience doing that job. There’s just one thing they care about when deciding whether or not to hire you: your Ausbildung.
Well, ok, not necessarily. For high-level specialists it’s skills that matter the most (but they probably have a degree anyway), and if you’re happy with working without a contract or working your ass off at McDonald’s or you simply have some luck – you can be fine without an Ausbildung as well. However, if you’re a talented, clever, young person, speaking fluently in three languages, who emigrated right after their A-levels and didn’t have a chance to start studies yet, but has ambitions beyond cleaning hotel rooms – it can be quite a while before your CV gets answered by anyone.
Ausbildung is basically 3 years of working for a company, during which you “learn” how to do a given job. You’re not an employee. You’re not entitled to minimum wage, your working hours aren’t regulated by law. The employer can theoretically abuse you as they wish. Why? Because if you get fired, you basically need to start all over again. Imagine working 10-12 hours a day for 500€/month and after two years not being able to speak up, because those two years of sacrifice would get wasted.
Also: if you need three years to learn how to be receptionist or a cashier in a supermarket, you’re an idiot. It’s not rocket science, it’s not car mechanics, it’s not IT. My husband was a fully self-sufficient, responsible and highly valued hotel receptionist after, like, two months or so of work. In Poland, a training for a cashier can take two days. Germans require a 3-year “kaufmannische Ausbildung” to handle that job.
What’s funny about that (well, bittersweet) is that even the employers are suffering from this system – on their own wish. We’ve heard some complaining how they can’t find any workers nowadays... sure, the CVs are coming in huge numbers, but none of those people have Ausbildung, so how the hell am I supposed to trust them to use a cash register and talk to people?!
There’s a stereotype in Germany that Berliners are the most rude people you’ll ever meet. You know how there’s some truth to some stereotypes? That’s definitely one of them.
Let’s start with smoking. Cigarette smoke is the stink I hate the most in the world. Not only is it nasty, it can also give you cancer. How could anyone force someone to breathe that shit in? Of course, Berliners can...
“No smoking” signs are totally ignored, the fire hazard of open fire in a subway station is totally ignored, the common decency of not producing cancerogenous stench when you’re in a crowd of people who cannot go away is not an issue anyone worries about. Seriously, I’ve wasted a ticket to the second day of Pyronale because during the first day I literally couldn’t breathe.
But it’s not only smoking. For instance, recently my husband got shouted at for “following” some lady – while he was walking in front of her. People can’t learn to stick to the right side when walking slowly up or down narrow stairs. They don’t even think of taking off their backpack when it’s crowded in the subway, or about letting people out of the train first, before they start squeezing in. Those are things that 5-years-olds are learning! There’s plenty of situations that make you doubt human decency and basic intelligence. I almost forgot that cars letting pedestrians through on a crossing is a thing – in one day in Rotterdam it happened to me more times than in three years in Berlin.
Speaking of transport and of comparing Berlin to Rotterdam: In the latter it’s trams, bikes and pedestrians who are first-class citizens. Berlin is clogged with cars. In Rotterdam I saw half-empty parkings in the city centre! What I didn’t see was idiots (pedestrians or cars) blocking a bike lane, which in Berlin or Szczecin is a sad norm.
Do you think air conditioning in public transportation should be a given in modern cities of the 21st century? If you’re coming to Berlin, think again. Not even the newest models of U-Bahn or S-Bahn trains have (or are planned to have) AC. Busses do, but it’s usually set up in a way, that you can’t really feel that it’s colder...
Speaking of newest models... Did you know that Berlin still uses wagons from 60s and 70s that are also what the Pyongyang Metro is using?
It all makes them slow. They are unable to send trains in 1-2 minutes intervals, like they do in Warsaw or Madrid. They are unable to go fast, like a subway should. To both my current and previous job, the comute by bike (with all the lights, traffic, crappy bikelanes) takes roughly the same time as by subway (you know, with engines and designated tunnels just for the trains).
BVG is old, rusty and unpunctual. They don’t see any problem whatsoever with annoying musicians or stinking people in their trains. Basically the only thing they do right is laughing at themselves for being this crappy...
The Berlin-Brandenburg Airport (BER) is already known in the world for being constantly unfinished. Billions have been spent on it, but the opening date keeps getting pushed forward and forward. I think it would be fair to say it’s the biggest waste of money in Germany’s modern history.
Speaking of airports: the two that Berlin currently has (and both to be replaced by BER) are both on tops of all the rankings of worst airports in the world. Whoever has flown from Schönefeld to, well, anywhere, will be able to give like tens reasons why SXF sucks.
When it comes to less significant constructions, it’s still not impressive. For instance the U-Bahn station I live near to. How long can it take to renovate a simple subway station? In Berlin, apparently, 2,5 years already – and nobody really knows when is it going to be done. But maybe let’s not talk about the whole station. How long would it take to renovate a single entrance to a subway station? Nothing fancy, no escalators, no art, no fancy design, just some stairs with ~30 steps. I didn’t count exaclty, but half a year is my lowest estimate. Seriously.
Rent prices in Berlin are skyrocketing, growing ~20% every year. No wonder: lots of people are coming, but hardly any new living spaces are being built. The city is huge (my daily commute is about one hour, without even leaving the city boundries), but it’s unbelievably short. Berlin has virtually no skyline, no skyscrappers.
Don’t people want to built them, live and work in them? Sure, many do. But even more don’t, including the Senate of Berlin claims “it’s not in the spirit of Berlin to build high”. They are fighting like lions to protect the “spirit of Berlin”, which seams to mean crappiness, unimpressive buildings and horrible rent prices.
Deutsche Post and DHL are crap. Me and my husband weren’t able to collect each other’s mail before the wedding, even though we signed a relevant authorisation, twice. I can’t even count the number of times when a package wasn’t even attempted to be delivered – just marked as “receiver not at home” and left at the post office (and yes, we were home, we even saw the delivery guy from the balcony).
It’s not any specific post office, by the way. We had to visit at least five different post offices, some of which were kilometers away, because they were, apparently, all responsible for the deliveries to our address. And sometimes they were dropping my package at a shop ~500 m away, claiming that shop is our “neighbour”.
I’ve sent plenty of formal complaints to them about situations like this. How many were answered in any meaningful way? Just one. Only because I was especially furious – they forced me to rent a car, so I could bring some balcony furniture home from a far away post office. I specifically ordered it online with home delivery to avoid problems with transport. But why would they care about doing their job? They didn’t even attempt delivery, just made me pick it up myself. So how did they react to my complaint? They gave me a 10€ voucher for sending packages (which I never do, so it expired already).
BTW, what the fuck is the big deal with apartment numbers in Germany? In Poland, Netherlands or US people simply have numbers on their doors, mailbox and intercom. Germans aren’t convinced by that idea. So when a mailman wants to deliver something, they need to scan all the mailboxes or walk door to door to find the correct receiver. In Poland they could just think “ok, appartment 40, there’s five doors on each floor, so it would be on the 8th floor” – and that’s it.
Here only the surname matters. So having multiple families called “Müller” in one building is problematic, having multiple people with different surnames sharing an apartment is problematic, delivering stuff is problematic, picking up stuff is problematic, moving out is problematic.
A notice period of three months is crazy – at least from the customer/employee side. But Germans seem to love it (it’s the legally allowed maximum for services).
And as much as I can understand it for contracts like employment or rent (where the other party needs time to find a replacement for you), what sense does it make in case of mobile phone or gym membership? None, except for them counting on you to miss the deadline and automatically prolong your contract for another year.
It kills flexibility and it kills my trust in the honesty of 1&1, SuperFit etc.
When I was fighting with Schenker for my right to warrantee service I came to a sad discovery: while Poland has a special government agency that supports customer rights and helps in the cases like mine, Germany does not. They do have Verbraucherzentrale, but the thing is – they’re just an association, with no authority and no ability to fine companies that abuse customer rights. And you have to pay them to help you, while all they can offer you is a consultation.
A Dutch guy who heard that we live in Germany joked “oh, so you’re coming from the past?”.
When I got my first German credit card (first available after six month living here, before that I could only get an EC-Karte that was useless anywhere abroad), it came with a leaflet, declaring that is has a brand new, shiny, modern, super-über-comfortable feature: PayPass 😒
PayPass is a thing that I already had in my first debit card when I was 13. PayPass is a thing I was always taking for granted. But no. Most Germans still have no idea you can pay contactlessly. After a long, long adaptation period, at least the cashiers know that it’s possible.
They usually don’t know, however, that you can pay with your phone with an NFC chip. One thought that my husband has to be trying to scam her, and she threated to call the police on him. Seriously.
There was a wind of hope last year – Vodafone introduced a service called Wallet, basically the NFC payments, like Android Pay. This year they are rolling back completely, because people didn’t use it.
Netto, a chain of supermarkets, has three (yes, only three) markets in Germany with an option of self-service cash check out. It’s only for testing of how it would be received. And well, it’s not being received well – queues to the remaining cashier-operated registers got longer, while the self-service stands are usually empty. Which makes it really fast for me to make groceries there.
When it comes to technology, Germany is in the third world.
Germans put dubbing over every movie and series they can. Trying to find a movie in OV (original version) in a German cinema might be really hard sometimes. Even though I’m fluent in both English and German, watching an English movie with a German (or Polish) dubbing is a total go-no for me. It just sounds fake. It doesn’t match the dynamics of the film at all. (With a noble exception of dubbed animated movies, of course). I had to cancel my Maxdome (German Netflix) subscription, because crappily dubbed movies was all they offered.
That’s why it usually takes Germans a couple of months more to prepare a premiere of a new movie – we can watch them only after the rest of the world already forgot about them. That’s also one of the reasons why Germany isn’t that good at English.
You might have thought that Berlin is international and multilingual. Well, sure, in one sense. During a short subway ride you could hear like twenty different languages, either from tourists or residents. But try to use English in a shop (outside of Mitte, of course). Or try to run an errand in Bürgeramt, Finanzamt or a bank without speaking German. There’s almost no way. One of my employment contracts was bilingual, but the other was German-only (for an English-speaking job). I can’t imagine signing that, if I didn’t know German.
For comparison: in the Netherlands you seem to be able to do anything in English. Employment contract, official paperwork, shopping, anything. And it’s not even their official language (except in Dutch Caribbeans).
Of course I’m learning Dutch anyway, but you know... It already felt like home, even just after first arriving there, when you’re able to communicate with anyone freely. Shouldn’t English be a given in our modern, globalised world?
As a person who worked for a couple of start-ups trying to digitalise Germany ( Campsy, Caterwings, Zinsgold, Vendomo, ...), I know how big of a struggle that is. Germans are used to communicating over the phone and reluctant to change it.
I, on the other hand, have a strange phobia of calling someone I don’t know on the phone. Especially if it’s in German (which I really prefer in writing) and if my signal reception is crappy (damn you, 1&1!). Sometimes you write someone an email (and maybe even explicitly select “email” as a preferred contact method in a contact form) and they still call you back on the phone – only to complain about my shitty reception and to present me an offer that I could mishear, I could forget, and that I have no written record of.
But nothing can beat the situation that my husband had. He sent someone an email asking for an appointment. They asked him to call. But the next day he was around the place, so he just came over. The girl at the desk told him they only make appointments on the phone. So he did call her, literally standing two meters away – and he did, indeed, get an appointment this way. What the actual fuck?
Oh, and some institutions love physical mail just as much as the others love phones. For instance our health insurance – whenever I send them a question via email, they answer it via post. Which costs them money, costs the environment and makes me wait 2-3 more day for a response. Brilliant, isn’t it?
I have praised the German healthcare system in one of my blog posts, but that was in comparison to Poland. If you look at it from the Dutch perspective, it starts to look really crappy.
~350€ each month go from my salary to a health insurance company, plus another ~350€ paid on the employer side, plus my husband had to pay 175€ before we got married. In return we get a system when getting an appointment at a specialist usually takes about three months.
In the Netherlands a similar level of coverage, for two people, will cost us 247€/month. Seriously. And although we didn’t see it yet with our own eyes, they say queues to a specialist aren’t a problem over there.
I could go on for quite a while, but I guess it’s enough already. The point is clear, I think: as much as Germany is a better place to live than my country of origin, it can still be annoying as fuck.
We moved here looking for Ordnung, modernity, innovation... We got Berlin – total contempt for the rules, hipster-anarchy-squat-whatever culture, rude people and technological stagnation. Ich bin ja kein Berliner. I’m totally out of sync with “the spirit” of this city.
It’s time to move on.
Nederland, hier komen we!
]]>I don’t really like Esperanto. As a language. As an idea I love it from all my heart! ❤️ That message of unity, peace and understanding though a common language! That brilliance of simplification and unification!
But I’ve always seen it advertised as “extremely simple”. Simple indeed, but extremely? You can certainly do better!
Esperanto has five characters that annoy me way more than they should:
ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ
It might have looked like a good idea to add those neat diacritics back in the times when you mostly wrote by hand. But in the age of computers having any non-latin characters in your alphabet is just annoying – with all the switching of keyboard layouts, with those damn non-UTF8 encodings, with some people replacing ĉ with the ugly cx and others with ch...
And also: who really cares about the difference between h and ĥ?
They aren’t in any way better or simpler than in natural languages. Such a missed opportunity! Especially for the words used so often. Just look:
singular | plural | ||
---|---|---|---|
1st person | mi | ni | |
2nd person | vi | ||
3rd person | masculine | li | ili |
feminine | ŝi | ||
neuter/epicene | ĝi | ||
indefinite | oni | ||
reflexive | si |
Although they describe people and things (=substantives) they have nothing to do with the substantive -o suffix. And the plural doesn’t seem to stem from the singular at all.
Apparently, it’s necessary to distinguish between three 3rd persons, depending on their gender (as if someone’s gender was relevant at all in most of the contexts...), but only as long as it’s one person. And for the 2nd person even the singular/plural distinction stops being relevant, for some reason.
There is an -ino suffix for substantives that indicates femininity of a person. Which implies in a way, that all the human-describing substantives are male by default, and it takes a special effort to express such a rarity as a woman...
They say it’s nice to have at least those two cases (Nominative and Accusative) in order to distinguish between phrases like “Peter killed the lion” and “The lion killed Peter”. Except, you know... I just did it – in English, which has (almost) no cases anymore. You can easily tell, who killed whom. The word order is the key. And if you really want to start with the object, not the subject, (say, for emphasis), just use the passive voice: “The lion was killed by Peter”.
Even in Polish, which has seven grammatical cases and not that strict rules regarding word order, messing up with this order can result in strange sounding sentences. Cases aren’t really as useful as they seem to be.
An why would you even want so highly flexible word order anyway? It might be fun for shorter, simpler sentences, but the more complex ones would become incomprehensible, regardless of the number of hints that are given by cases.
I never really got that concept. Why does it matter so much, if I’m talking about something new and indefinite or something known and specific? Most of the time it’s really obvious from the context, isn’t it? And when it’s not, we can just add “some” or “this”. Which is exactly the way that Polish does it. And it works just fine.
A “cute guy” is “beleta ulo”. To make it plural, we can’t just pluralify the substantive: “beleta uloj” makes no sense in Esperanto. Only “beletaj uloj” does. Cause, you know, nothing says “simplicity” like duplicating the same information twice.
German does just fine with adjectives simply acting as adverbs, depending on whether they describe a substantive or a verb, whereas Esperanto necessarily needs to distinguish them. You know, for simplicity’s sake.
Positional notation is awesome! Way simpler than Roman numerals or other systems that humankind came up with in the past. A digit can have a different value depending on its position in a number. Brilliant!
When writing a number down, digits (grouped by three[1] for convenience) and their positions are basically all we need to accurately represent it. But when saying a number out loud, in most languages we have to additionally emphasise the positions with verbal indicators: thirteen, twenty, five hundred and so on. We end up with oral system not really being consistent with the written one.
Sure, the numerals in Esperanto are already way simpler than in most natural languages, more consistent and lacking in exceptions, but one obviously can do better.
Not much. I just wanted to say that Esperanto disappointed me a bit. I really wanted to learn it (back when I was maybe 15?). But in the process I realised that it’s just not as much fun as I expected. Its sound isn’t really to my taste, it’s grammar isn’t such a piece of cake as everybody advertised it to me, it’s not a magical “free” language that just slips into your mind as you go. I do understand it quite well, without trying that much, but I wouldn’t say I have any considerable motivation to actually learn it.
Because, let’s not kid ourselves, Esperanto isn’t that useful either... It has way fewer speakers, way smaller influence and significance than it deserves to have. (Yeah, I might not like it, but I do admire its achievements and wish it the best!). There is some practical purpose in learning Esperanto, but way to little to keep me interested.
What I do enjoy, however, is creating my own conlangs. Not as a competition with Esperanto, not with any aspirations for a world auxiliary language... Just because, just for fun. And I’ve recently got back to working on my old project that stems from my adventure with Esperanto.
Keep fingers crossed that I finally finally finish it 😀
[1] or not three, depending on a language