#eta: this is also why i feel a strong Resonance with intersex activism interests - the work overlaps heavily

[epochryphal]

just saw someone crediting me for coining xenogenital and clicked through to a post where i indeed mark it as i coined it, and

i completely fucking forgot that i did

doubly hilarious given i was just thinking “i bet all these definitions focusing on Imagination are just same phenomenon as quoi and originally it was more nuanced and could indeed fit Transition” (answer: yes)

apparently i originally described it as Conceptualizing and linked it to alien… whereas now i would emphasize it as a Relationship To Body and that it should be understood as agnostic about physical transition/modification, but certainly not understood as Unaltered or as Just Fun Fiction Narrative (nor about “always a dream, alas, definitely physically impossible, mustn’t get hopes up, let’s preempt any innovation and always specify it is hopeless wish”)

which of course is the whole. issue. and probably requires more intentional careful pushback (but also, is simplification and flattening just inevitable)

how do we open up the cognitive space to think about “hey, some people have genital setups that don’t occur naturally”

(without activating dysphoria and anti-trans cooptation along the lines of “-plasty surgery results are never ~real~ genitals”)

and this is where eunuchs and nullos are obvious but often forgotten examples. assumed archaic, or always only coercive. no thought about changes in healthcare experience or needs (eg risk of osteoporosis after gonadectomy unless on a hormone therapy; i wonder what preventative care some folks may still need and get denied because it’s tied into assumptions about organ inventories; how much does disgust reaction activate and prevent life-saving care)

but even then, how do we avoid the sort of “male / female / neuter” trinary?

i’ve been about removal (literally, blockers-and-ectomies) of sexed organs and tissue and traits, and it’s led me to yearn for transmutation into something visibly notably unrecognizable

and i don’t know what “not penis, not vagina, not a smooth doll crotch either; not scrotum, not labia, not smooth skin either” looks like, still — even as i literally have it, lmao.

like… how does this visually, conceptually (there’s the original word i used again) register? and how do we create the possibility to register something new? something possible. literally able to be noted/noticed.

i think a lot of xenobio designs focus on the physically humanly impossible for the foreseeable future - prehensile, especially.

probably all of this is very directly tied to phallocentrism. and it generates a binary yes/no, where further details are irrelevant (beyond coercive intervention to reinforce and reify that binary).

and anyway for all discussion there’s this looming spectre of “it’s sexual harrassment to discuss your own genitals, tmi inappropriate predatory creepy, can’t hide behind the veneer of fictional and have to be explicit (anything less gets misunderstood and elided back into penis/vagina/neuter) so that makes it real life sexual boundary crossing” - when uh how does one “get consent” to arguing with a paradigm of what can/does exist

mm. i threw this in my drafts for two weeks trying to think further and/or encourage myself to Formalize this into a bigger Plea For Paradigm Shift Around Genital Reality, and i hope i’ll be able to articulate that better in the near future but i’m gonna share this now as is