#cw: interphobia

[batsysquared]

The controversy going on with the Olympics right now is completely and utterly horrific. It is a bubbling cauldron of intersexism, transphobia, racism, and misogyny. And it's not new! This is a story that has played out before - not just in the Olympics, but in various situations even outside the realm of sporting, all across the world. When it comes to intersex people, the utter social dissection and public humiliation for not being Proper is a story that marks our very births, the one that begins from the day we're born, and every time it comes up it is deeply entwined with all of these other prejudices. But this time, there's one thing that different. The (alleged! completely alleged!) medical proof that's landed in their hands has enabled them to show plain and bare that they never cared about anything but their hatred of The Undefinable Enemy, and anyone who is sufficiently marginalized can be placed in that box when narratively convenient. To me, a person who ticks every box on display here, this was obvious - and I'll be putting aside the racism and plain misogyny for now since those are already well covered. But as far as interphobia goes - we've never fit in the category of "cis", whether we consider ourselves to be men or women, and frankly people have a hard time wrapping their heads around us being trans, excepting people who just hate trans people for existing. It's because of this that many intersex people just want to be seen as normal - and, wouldn't you know it? That's a talking point that TERFs and other various transphobes use to pretend they just care oh so much! "Oh, don't bring up those poor people! They just want to be normal boys and girls just like us, they're just rare, unique, disgusting victims of a birth defect! Not perverted and ill freaks like you!" So now, nobody has an excuse for missing what they really think when they say this: the second they can find alleged proof that a woman isn't correctly a woman - the people who manage to acknowledge that intersex and trans aren't the same thing go ahead and talk about how she's a failed man and ought to be treated as such. "It's unfortunate that she has this horrific genetic affliction," they say, "but, well...a man is a man." So much for being treated normal, right? But less obvious before this incident was that every time, every time, they missed what any intersex person ever meant by "wanting to be normal". And of course, it's because they never cared. Our struggles are only brought up solely to shoot down the arguments trans people and allies make that involve us, never to actually consider us or acknowledge the intersexist systems that the occasional trans person or ally will accidentally support. No, again, that'd involve caring. If they did, they'd understand that the plea to be treated normally is a plea to simply be considered as the thing the intersex individual wants to be considered as, without any scrutiny or "buts" or "you poor freak, we need to fix you", regardless of whether they choose to be a man or a woman or both or neither.

Yet even when they're afforded the grace of male or female, it is never without scrutiny. Every day we're questioned, even for those of us not aware of what we are. The societal push against our normality is so stark in every conversation we have about masculinity or femininity and its expectations that these pressures are often the only reason intersex people even learn they're intersex! The circumstances of their birth are hidden from them, a footnote in a surgical record, and they later have some other "problem" that must be fixed. Sometimes this problem that really affects them in some tangible life-altering medical sense, and sometimes it only does so as a result of society saying "hey, are you sure you're the thing you know you are and that we said you are? because damn you're hairy/tall/short/strong/chiseled/soft/tragically micropenised/possessed of breasts of an unusually small or large size for what you Ought To Be!". And of course, either way, once they're adults it's their prerogative to correct whatever they want! But that doesn't excuse the way that society treats this as an expectation of us, and no amount of societally enforced self-loathing changes the fact that it is an expectation, even when this false sympathy is expressed for our plight. (And, you know, if they cared about what intersex people want or the plights we go through, they'd spend less time crying about the nonexistent problem of children being "mutilated" by the trans menace and more about the very real and constant tragedy that is coercive surgical sexual assignment of literal newborns, but lol. lmao.)

My solace here is that now these incidents can be pointed at as evidence that the cry of "don't use intersex people as a shield!" is hollow concern trolling - and also that it makes clear how important liberation from both gender and sex as rigid categories are for, well, everyone, but for intersex people in particular. I'd also hope to see less "oh so transphobia only matters when it affects a cis person" pop up when intersex people get smeared into bloody streaks across the ground, as if women who do wish to fit in the category of "cis" but fail to be considered as such by society due to the circumstances of their birth don't also feel the constant daily sting of transmisogyny - or as if transphobia simply misses people for whom the terms "afab" and "amab" are most relevant. Being both trans and intersex, my experience has been that the discriminatory line here is about as thin as it gets.

But, well, one of these revelations is more important than the other, so I'll settle for not being a toy to be played with by fascists over being slapped by casual intersexism from people that at least recognize we should be working together. Sometimes that's the most one can ask, yeah?

[estrogenism]

very very funny how intersex transfems are by far the most vocal haters of tme/tma as binary terms because of the way that perisex people use them to discredit intersex trans people's complex experiences. but sure it's just those horrible afab trans people again!!

[Plaintext: very very funny how intersex transfems are by far the most vocal haters of tme/tma as binary terms because of the way that perisex people use them to discredit intersex trans people's complex experiences. but sure it's just those horrible afab trans people again!! End Plaintext.]

(also do not fucking try to witch hunt these people. i will block you on sight, i cropped out the urls for a reason)

edit: reminder that this post was made first and foremost about intersexism, and while it's okay to discuss other forms of oppression in the tags and reblogs (especially since i tagged them as such), please stop trying to brush off the original point.

[fanby-fckry]

I just saw someone say they only care about AGAB if it “affects someone’s health” which is such a fucking wild thing to say.

AGAB says nothing about anyone’s health, because it’s an arbitrary category assigned by “vibes” about intants’ genitals.

AGAB says nothing about:

A person’s endocrine system

A person’s reproductive organs

A person’s secondary sex characteristics

Their current genitals

Intersex people exist! People who medically transition exist! People who have had the same/similar proceedures for non-gender-related reasons exist!

You can put three people of the same AGAB in a room and it’s entirely possible for none of them to have the same combination of sex characteristics and need incredibly different care because of it!

Like yes, hormones and what body parts a person has are often relevant to their health, but I cannot stress enough how little AGAB has to do with that.

[just-antithings]

wtf is a cafab is that new

Coercively assigned female (or male, for camab) at birth. I believe it’s intersex-specific and refers to the way in which they are often forced into the box of one or the other via surgery and other invasive means.

[dunmertitty]

If a child (regardless of trans, cis, intersex, or perisex status) is old enough to go through puberty, they are old enough to consent to something that will impact that puberty and the language around the subject, whether it’s puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy including hormonal birth control, non-hormonal birth control, and abortions. “you weren’t old enough to fully understand or consent to hrt” works both ways. if a doctor or parent is making a choice about a child’s body without the input of the child, that is a violation of consent. things like puberty blockers are used to delay or start puberty in people who started too early or puberty hasn’t started past the age that it’s supposed to. whether it’s choosing to give a child hrt or restricting a child from hrt (or other things mentioned above). And it’s the same with FGM and Intersex surgeries and how these are usually used as an argument AGAINST medical transition, rather than as the same issue as it actually is. All of these things revolve around consent. if you’ve used the argument “a 12 year old girl shouldn’t be forced to give birth” against the recent abortion restrictions. then you understand that 12 year olds have the ability to consent to decisions about their own body. if there is a 12 year old that has started going through puberty and decided it’s too early or they want more time before that happens, they have the right to consent to things like puberty blockers, which both have substantially less harmful side effects than both abortion and pregnancy.

it’s so funny to me when I point out t*rfs I was on HRT at 12 as an intersex kid, and they’ll do be like “that’s different!!”

not really???

I as a 12 year old had the same capacity to consent to that treatment as a 12 year old trans kid would. no one batted an eye about me being on those hormones.

“but you have an intersex condition!!!” so is it that you don’t view the gender dysphoria many trans kids experience as a valid medical condition worthy of respect and treating the way professionals recommend? or is it that you don’t mind those weird intersex freaks taking things that will make us ‘more normal’? or perhaps both?

[undersaarthal]

something something the expectations of the remaining snow elves and fear of extinction and resonating with me in an unexplainable parallel (unconfidently intersex)

[ cw bioessentialism, internalized interphobia, artistic nudity ]

[burning-academia-if]

sorry for the off topic question/if you’ve answered this before, but since you mentioned being into shoujo i gotta ask now: what are some of your favorite works? (totally not asking because i want recommendations)

Em's Ultimate Shoujo Guide:

The popular ones everyone recommends:

Fruit Baskets

A Sign Of Affection

Yona of the Dawn

Snow White with the Red Hair

It's Gay:

My Love Mix-Up (slice of life romance)

Cocoon Entwined (light surrealism, slice of life)

She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat (josei, slice of life romance)

Nightmare Academy (horror; cw for SA and violence)

Requiem Of the Rose King (dark fantasy, major tw for SA, sexual violence, gore, and interphobia (mc is intersex))

Standard school-life romances:

A Condition Called Love

Honey Lemon Soda

In the clear Moonlit Dusk

You got me, Senpai!

Futari de Koi wo Suru Riyū

Fantasy:

Children Of The Whales

Prince Freya

RG Veda

Magic Knight Rayearth

QQ Sweeper/ Queen's Quality

Horror:

Alice in Murderland (cw for violence, also kinda goofy but I have a soft spot for it)

Bride of Deimos (cw for violence, gore, and SA, technically never completed but it's episodic so it doesn't feel incomplete)

Manga literally no has ever talked about:

Tenshi Dattara, Yokatta (psychological/romance, cw abusive frienship)

Doku hime ( josei, fantasy tragedy, cw for gore and SA)

Snow White And Alice (weird fantasy)

Falling, Drowning (slice of life/mystery)

Hard hitting contemporary:

My Girlfriend's Child

We Were There

‐-------------------------

Aaaand I could add on but I'll leave it there! It's been a while since I've read some of these so I'd double check cws if you need them! Some of these also have no official English translation sjsjs but the fan translations shouldn't be hard to find!

[momma-mogai-sphinx]

Just to be clear: If you purposefully drop the I from your acronym, I don’t trust you.

If you deliberately and persistently use acronyms like QULTBAG, MOGA, and LGBTQA(+)/LGBTA(+)*, I am immediately skeptical of the idea that you have intersex people’s best interests at heart and have taken the time to actually listen to us (other than maybe the intersex people you already agree with). And I understand that some perisex people are worried about starting discourse that they have no place in anyway; they drop the I to avoid being confronted by an angry intersex person who doesn’t want to be included and feels like they’ve been spoken over. Whether or not that’s a thing intersex people actually do, the important thing here is to acknowledge that we’ve already had this discussion: “The I Doesn’t Mean You.”

But apart from that, we also have to recognize that “LGBTQ community” is not synonymous with “LGBTQ people.”

The LGBTQ community is a way for LGBTQ people to organize, feel included/validated/accepted, and work together to accomplish common goals (such as opposing & destabilizing cisheterosexism & cisheteronormativity). Not every individual LGBTQ person has to be a part of our community. Racists, ableists, misogynists, “MAPs,” and transphobes, for example, do not belong in our community. People who, for one reason or another, don’t want to be associated with the community should not be forced into it.

It is no different for intersex people. Or, rather, it should be no different, but the question continues to be asked: Are intersex people inherently oppressed under the specific institutions of cisheteronormativity/cisheterosexism? And the answer from intersex people has repeatedly been, “Many of us (especially those who are otherwise non-cis and/or non-het) feel that, yes, the institutions of perisexism and cissexism largely overlap in some places, and we are therefore marginalized on both axes of oppression (albeit likely to varying degrees case by case).” And this is often followed up by, “Hence, it is only natural that we are given our own space within the LGBTQ community to discuss our specific oppression, organize, feel accepted, and work with other members of the community to fight against our shared oppression.”

All of this should, by this point, be widely understood and accepted, as this conversation has been going on for years now, but I get why there are some perisex people who still haven’t quite got it yet (it’s mostly that they don’t want to end up speaking for us without knowing every nuance to this issue). Even so I really can’t help it that my first reaction when seeing a perisex person intentionally drop the I or make note every time they see the I that not all intersex people want to be included is to assume they have some perisexist tendancies (if they’re not outright interphobic).

I guess I don’t really have some sweeping concluding statement to tie this all together. I just felt like sharing that I’m tired of having to think of my identity as a point of contention within my own community. And I don’t care if, in your heart of hearts, you truly believe that intersex people deserve a place in the community. If you don’t show that with your actions by making us feel included and accepted—meaning those of us who want to be accepted and included; if you can’t even do something as simple as tacking an I onto the end of an acronym—then what is the point?

-

*I don’t include LGBT(+) or LGBTQ(+) here since these are often used as shorter alternatives by even the most inclusive folks (as the ‘+’ is meant to be all-encompassing).

—

I normally wouldn’t make this request, but perisex people: you’re encouraged to reblog, but please don’t make this post all about you.

[kirksfattitties]

“the concepts of male and female are universal constants”

watching metamorphosis again and im still reeling about how they gave the cloud a gender sksbsjsjsk

[carrionspiked]

(cw: eugenics, interphobia)

this is more tangential evidence, so it didn’t make it into the main post. but you know what really struck me as weird?

Tarkin is an only child, in a family that is presumably losing a lot of potential heirs

but! they're eugenicists :/ if baby Wilhuff was perceived as being deformed, his parents wouldn’t be allowed to have more children

[estrogenism]

cafab/camab were coined by intersex people for intersex people btw.

[dunmertitty]

okay you know what? i’m still fucking mad about this

this skyrim specific and i’m not gonna go into too many details but i’m mad (and i realize eso is better about most of this stuff but i’m still ://// about it)

i’m not gonna get in to the early games too much, but look at a picture of the arena cover and see how that game treated women. also titty armor is still a thing in all of the games.

they REALLY could’ve made vivec intersex and/or nonbinary without being interphobic and transphobic. they REALLY could’ve done without making vivec into a rape fantasy as well :)

“heavily implied” gay relationships don’t count as gay rep :)

gay rep that had to be taken out but somehow is still canon because someone outside the game said so isn’t gay rep!

homophobic jokes don’t don’t count as gay rep either!

dead gay trope (multiple times, might i add) ALSO isn’t good rep!

argonians don’t count as trans/genderfluid rep if you only mention it a few times and don’t implement it into the games :)

making a perverted character bi IS NOT good bi rep!

making all the daedric princes (ya know, the """bad guys""") genderfluid doesn’t count as good trans rep! (yes i know that not all of them are bad, but labeling only the daedric princes as genderfluid and not any of the other “higher powers”? sketchy.)

also making a bunch of feminine male (dumag gro-bonk, cicero, adoring fan, etc) characters purposefully “annoying” and “hateable”? sketchy.

also on a completely related note that i’m not gonna explain,

FUCK MICHAEL K*RKBRIDE

i’m still mad about the “gay rep” in skyrim tbh

[momma-mogai-sphinx]

I mean, the anon who coined the term originally did actually consult with one (1) intersex person, that being me. I don’t know if OP/whoever came up with that definition did, though.

I was always on the fence about Anon’s definition, but I didn’t bring it up because of how vague it was. In hindsight, I really should have questioned them about it. This definition is much more blatantly fetishistic of intersex people (and, one could argue, transitioning trans people); but again, I didn’t say anything because I haven’t exactly been active on this blog and I didn’t feel like starting discourse.

In response to your tags though, yes, this is pretty interphobic. The emphasis on biology and hormones is just...yuck.

Astrogen- Pride Flags

Astrogen-: attraction to both or a mix of secondary sex characteristics associated with dominant action of androgenic and estrogenic hormones, regardless of gender or primary sex characteristics.

(I had a little too much fun with the organic chemistry skeletal formulas, so I made some with and without the symbols)

-Fy