This is a blog post about me. It feels a bit strange to write this post; I am used to writing about the things I do rather than who I am, which has always been a deliberate choice. I also know this post will be wholly uninteresting to many, and frankly that's fine. If this ends up inspiring one person, then that's already enough.

In many ways I'm a bit of a strange person. That's not necessarily a negative, in fact, it's probably one of the reasons you're reading my blog. As you have been able to read on my blog so far, my hobbies include things like building an index of all podcasts published by the Dutch national government, building a DNS resolver you can call, making FOI requests to the UK government, and maintaining half a dozen niche software projects. That's not exactly football or crochet.

However, I'm a curious person not just in my hobbies. As people that follow me on either Mastodon or Bluesky (hint hint nudge nudge) probably already know, I'm queer. I use "queer" because, like many things in life, it's complicated.

I was always very confused about all of this when I was younger. Things like the birds and the bees, falling in love; I tried desperately to apply the concepts I learnt about in school to myself, but they did not make any sense. At that time I did not realise that this was not a ubiquitous feeling; I did not have anyone to talk about this. This realisation would only come about ten years later after learning how things work for others. When the realisation finally came when I was about 22, I decided I wanted to be that person I could have used so much when I was 12. That's part of why I'm writing this blog post.

As I already alluded to, it's complicated. I'll try to use some labels to roughly describe me:

• Aromantic (I don't feel romantic attraction to others);
• Demisexual (I don't experience primary sexual attraction to others);
• Pansexual (I experience secondary sexual attraction regardless of gender identity or biological sex).

Again, these terms are already quite a mouthful and even then still not a perfect match, but they are the closest I can get to describing this part of me using "common labels". The interesting thing about this is that on the outside, nobody notices. To most of the world I just appear as "single".

As a small side-step: being demisexual (or asexual) does not mean someone does not enjoy sex, it just means someone does not experience sexual attraction. Just like you don't need a boardgame attraction to play Scrabble with someone, an asexual person can still engage in and enjoy sex.

But wait, there's more! I'm also what I describe as genderfluid -- I identify as both man and woman, depending on the day and situation. Genderfluid falls somewhere under the trans and non-binary umbrella. I sometimes jokingly call it "double-binary". It shares many aspects with trans people, with the main difference that I don't hate "the old self", and would miss it if he were gone. I go by the name of Koen and also Kim, the latter born mainly out of pragmatism to avoid giving off mixed signals. It's not a split personality, I'm one person, and I will always listen to both, and if I had had a gender neutral name like "Alex" I would have used that. By the way, I'm aware of the, in hindsight, unfortunate choice for my website name and domain. 12-year-old me did not forsee this, and frankly I don't see how they could.

Unlike my sexuality, my gender identity can be quite visible to the outside world. At times I do get intriguing looks, curiosity (mainly by small children), smiles... but sadly also harassment, being called slurs, followed in the streets, wildly inappropriate questions asked by strangers. As likely many LGBTQ+ people can attest to, finally feeling free to be yourself is awesome. It's incredibly liberating. Simultaneously, realising that I deviated even further from the norm than I already did is quite difficult in its own right. I think most people have a desire to both be unique, but also to fit in. I am incredibly fortunate that my surroundings are incredibly accepting, but the world as a whole is far from, and as things currently stand it seems to be getting worse.

The fact that it seems things worldwide are getting worse is exactly why I decided to write this now. I'm not looking for pity, far from: I hope this blog post reaches someone to whom it provides a bit of courage and strength. If that's you: I hope it encourages you to be you! Whether that's straight or queer, cis or trans, something in between or something different altogether, playing football or specialising in building trees for O-gauge model railways, do what feels right for you. It's your life, live it like you want to live it, which I know can be quite difficult. I also hope that if one of you, anonymous readers, recognises themselves in this, it makes you feel that you're not alone. I don't expect you to experience things the same way I do, in fact, I have yet to come across someone who does. I have however over the years met the most interesting and wonderful people, all different in their own unique way.

Additionally, the people that have a problem with "queerness" tend to be few but loud. It's what made me start carrying around a small Blåhaj (a trans symbol), and it's why I fly the pride flag outside my flat year-round. No matter your orientation, you can do something small too, like a pride sticker. You can also do this as cis straight person. It has more impact than you think.

One last thing. For autistic people there is a nice saying: if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism. The same applies here. I don't expect you to intrinsically know what this feels like, and that is fine; I don't know what it feels like to be straight and cis either, or what it's like to enjoy football. The main thing I do want to ask of you is to not make assumptions of how things are for me, or anyone else for that matter, and just accept me as I am. I don't mind curiosity, asking is fine, but it's frankly rather tiring when people think they know how things work for you, but get it completely wrong.