How did we say it again in kindergarten? A, B, C, I’m not participating anymore. That feeling came over me on Tuesday evening. So then you are a politician, you spend the whole summer thinking about whether to start a party, and as soon as you think: ‘I will do it’, Mariëlle Tweebeeke from News hour ready to hear from you how and why. How do you take your time, put together a list of candidates, and then you can join the top 20 of them at On 1 to introduce them to the viewer. Then you procrastinate with your election manifesto. You wait until after the first election debate – which you wouldn’t participate in, but then you did. And then it was on Tuesday, and then I definitely have to go Khalid & Sophie look to hear him tell you what it says?
Still looked, of course. What struck me was that Pieter Omtzigt was not alone at the table. According to presenter Khalid, on the day itself there was a “demand” that a male member of the party had to be included. Who wanted that? About? Or a handy party strategist from NSC? It was Eddy van Hijum, the man behind the election programme. “He wrote it,” was Omtzigt’s laconic explanation at the table. Yes, as if he himself didn’t know what it said. You also call this power play, the making of a president, masculinity. A, B, C…
I switched to NPO 3, where a large part of the evening was devoted to hormones. For a moment I felt very elderly, then I had to… mind till the end stretching to be able to participate in the new times without judgement. Hormones make women, I learned from that The Unasked Questions Show. So that’s where things are going wrong. This crash course on the menstrual cycle goes over consistently people who are on their period. And that is, in the words of radio DJ Frank van der Lende, “something very big”, because the hormonal cycle influences everything: the partner, the colleagues, the family.
The program is a bit like a biology lesson taught by a super cool team of teachers, but it is interesting for people with and without a uterus. Facts are checked, misunderstandings are cleared up (yes, you can pee with a tampon in) and even better: misinformation is corrected. To pick out one thing: online there are a lot of hormone coaches who tell (mainly) women that they feel this way or that way due to an “imbalance in their hormone balance”. This can be found out – for a fee – and something can be done about it – for a fee. But is there such a thing as hormonal imbalance? Gynecologist Ingrid Pinas says she has never come across it in her medicine books. And apparently not in her consulting room either.
Testosterone replacement therapy
The hormones also make the man. Or not. Thorn de Vries spoke in the documentary Hormone revolution with four people who don’t feel like who they are. Or vice versa. Sharan Bala was born with female and male sexual characteristics. Trans woman Savannah Wolin is on the waiting list for a transition and can’t wait for breasts to grow on her body and testosterone to make way for estrogen. Ryan Ramharak identifies as non-binary trans. Not a man, because a womb. Not a woman, but pregnant. Beard, chest hair, baby bump. Hormones make these people who they want to be. “You make a journey towards your gender.”
The outsider in this row of portraits seemed to me to be Max Moszkowicz. He sees himself as a man-man, but noticed that his hormone balance became imbalanced after the birth of his son. He was tired, sad, lethargic. He chose testosterone replacement therapy. He now applies an androgel to his upper body and feels like a man again. I wonder if this hormonal imbalance is in the medicine books.