#in communities I've probably just unfortunately surrounded myself with shitty people who don't care

[sagehaubitze]

sometimes I wonder and get a little scared that if I fell off the face of the internet, no one would think about me, I'd cease to exist. the internet is bad about having no object permanence after all (not just the internet, but in-person communities too in my experience)

but then I remember that I wonder about people I used to talk to on AIM, yahoo messenger, beseen chatrooms, in the 90s.. I think about them all the time and hope they're still out there doing okay.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for pretending to be intersex?

Keeping details vague because I know a couple of my students use Tumblr.

I (late 20s, AFAB) work as a teacher in the southern United States. I'm probably somewhere on the transgender spectrum, but I don't like to put a specifc label on my gender identity. I deal with intense physical dysphoria and going on testosterone has quite literally saved my life. I don't feel a need to socially transition–I don't really care how people refer to me, my dysphoria is entirely physical, and labeling myself as transgender is dangerous for reasons I'll get into.

It's no longer easy to hide the changes my body is going through. I had planned to move before now, but a family emergency has changed things and moving is no longer an option for me. I'm still stuck teaching in my state I'm in until further notice.

Some of my students are nosy but most of them dropped it when I told them it's a medical thing that I don't feel comfortable talking about. (I'm not supposed to bring up queer topics and I'm sure many of them have caught on to that.) The people I work with and my superiors are generally cool about it, and/or just don't ask. (We all work in education in this shitty state, we all get it.)

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for parents. As a teacher, I'm employed by my community, and if a group of parents get together and throw a fit they have the power to get me fired. Not only would I be out a job, but I would be forefitting the progress I've made towards getting my student loans forgiven, and it would also be near impossible for me to find a new job as I am. My specific role puts even more stress on this, because parents fund my program directly and I have monthly meetings with a parent booster organization. I've caught wind of a lot of gossip surrounding me, but I've been turning a blind eye to it until now.

Last week, during one of our summer meetings, I had a mother of one of my kids show up who hadn't been there before, and she accused me outright of being "transgendered." In the heat of the moment and with my job on the line I defensively blubbered something about being born with a hormone condition (basically told her that I was intersex in everything but name) and that I was self conscious about it and didn't want to talk about it, and she shut up. The entire meeting was awkward after that, but the mother (whether she believed me or not) was obviously embarrassed and didn't bring it up again, and that much felt good.

Still, I feel like an ass. I'm very much perisex and I know that it's screwed up to pretend to be a part of an intersex identity. So, AITA??

(As a disclaimer, I obviously I can't stop anyone from weighing in, but I'm mostly interested in opinions from actual intersex folks.)

What are these acronyms?