May 2021

Shower Thoughts

First thing I want to get out of the way: I don’t use a pseudonym to be cool. I think the name sounds cringey. Really cringey. To me it has “I’m a cool anarchist hacker” vibes. I use a pseudonym because I don’t feel particularly safe putting myself out there.  

I first thought of this pseudonym a couple of years ago. I was starting to explore my queerness and at the time I identified as agender and asexual- although things have changed ALOT since. In many ways I felt like nothing or undefined and the pressure to be something was what tormented me for much of my life.

A lot of my work is about the restrictions that assigned identities (assigned genders, nationality, race etc.) create for us. In a way I feel that the frustrations I experience as a transgender migrant surround the resistence of the identity that I was prescribed to be at birth. The fact that institutions and society measures people and prescribes values to them is a form of bondage. So I decided to pick “nnull” as a pseudonym, not just as a synonym for “anonymous” but also as representing something that is not measured and holds no value. Being undefined has some freedom. I guess I dream of being undefined.

By the way the extra ‘n’ at the start is just so I can get a website domain. I figured that if there’s a double l at the end, there might as well be a double n at the start.