#intersex women

[simbistardis]

I was born intersex. It is a condition in which a child is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. I came to America seeking asylum because the condition made me a target in my country, where being associated with the LGBTQ community is illegal and could get you killed. There, people are bullied into remaining in the closet. They can never reveal their true identity, leading many to commit suicide or endure the endless pain and feeling of constant rejection.

After college, I moved South Africa, where I knew I could probably find a doctor who would understand. I did. He confirmed that I was intersex. That led me back to Zimbabwe, where I started running an organization for intersex and transgender people called True Identity. I wanted to join the fight for equality for people like me. At first, I started secret support groups because such advocacy was still illegal. I began receiving funding and tried to create a dialogue between the community and transgender and intersex people. I wanted to foster understanding and awareness. I wanted more people to see it as normal—because people like me are normal. That didn’t stop me from being physically and emotionally abused for doing that kind of work. Sometimes, the police would raid our offices. Sometimes, people would say: “You are an abomination to the culture. You are the reason we don’t get rain. You are a taboo.”

America didn’t welcome me; it didn’t even understand me. Americans don’t know what intersex means. That includes many within the LGBTQ community, the community where I was supposed to find empathy and love. And it includes the black community. Most of the intersex people I’ve met in America are white. Intersex people are not celebrated in communities of color. We are not represented on their platforms, in the media or anywhere else. It hurt even more after I found out about intersex infants here who are forced to undergo unwanted surgeries that violate their bodies. When those children grow up, they will have felt robbed, as though their body, their voice, was stolen from them before they could even speak.

As a black woman who is an intersex, immigrant asylum seeker, it feels as though America was built to silence me. Though I’m allowed to work now, the asylum process takes years and I can’t visit my parents until that is resolved. And I miss them dearly. But I have work to do here. Ignorance and hate and stigmatization will not stop me. I represent too many voiceless human beings who live with unbearable pain. I will persevere. I will use that pain to build beauty, to show others the struggle is worth it. I will keep speaking to remind other immigrants that they are not alone. I will keep speaking so that any woman, or any man, who society tells to be ashamed will know that nothing can ruin their spirit, that they can conquer the world.

I'm an Intersex Black Woman. My Voice Matters. Listen. By Tatenda Ngwaru for QWear Fashion (2019)

[desbianherstory]

Category: Woman (2022, dir. Phyllis Ellis). Stream here.

When 18-year-old South African runner Caster Semenya burst onto the world stage in 2009, her championship was not celebrated, but marred by doubt, her personal medical records leaked to the international media. The public scrutiny of her body, driven by racism and sexism, questioning the most fundamental right of who she is, a great champion. The International Amateur Athletics Federation (now World Athletics) then ruled that targeted female athletes must medically alter their healthy bodies in order to compete. Their naturally high androgen levels, 'deemed' a performance advantage. Category: Woman focuses on four remarkable athletes, from the Global South, forced out of competition by these regulations, the devastation to their bodies, and their lives. Equally arresting is their passion for sport is further emboldened by their conviction to stand up for their human rights. Following her award-winning film Toxic Beauty, filmmaker and Olympian Phyllis Ellis exposes an industry controlled by men putting women’s lives at risk while the policing of women’s bodies in sport remains, in a more nefarious way, under the guise of fair play.

Breaking from this blog's hiatus to post this in light of the racist bullying of Imane Khelif. I'd recommend everyone watch it (it's only 76 min) for an understanding of the issues at play - how the false, easily digestible narrative of "fairness" in fact means unfairness and racist mistreatment for these extraordinary women. Even the introduction is powerful:

"Some bodies are marked. The gender that goes unmarked as male. Women are maked in all the ways that they are different. The unmarked race is white. Some bodies that are black and brown and female have a particular kind of marking. These bodies are marked as insufficiently human. How do you castigate a category of people as insufficiently human? By throwing their gender into doubt."

Dutee Chand, India's first openly lesbian athlete is interviewed in this documentary about the racist mistreatment and scrutiny she received for these issues.

Please watch and spread!

[blackqueernotables]

Christine Mboma: first ever Namibian woman to win a women's Olympic medal and broke the world under-20 and African senior record.

[madintersexmermaid]

Fae (slang and subculture coining proposal)

Good afternoon, my loves! This idea had been sitting on my brain for a while, and I want to share it with you guys.

In summary, since the word "dolls" is slang term belonging to trans women/transfemmes, I figured that there should be some special affectionate slang term that we intersex women/interfemmes should use for ourselves and each other: "faes".

What does the slang fae mean?

A fae is slang for a beautiful, mystical, ethereal and stunning intersex woman/interfemme. This is meant for intersex women and interfemmes to claim as a way to build confidence and empowerment in acknowledging and embracing our beauty, especially the beauty in intersex womanhood and intersex femininity and intersex queer womanhood and femininity, in a harsh, cruel and nasty world and society that frequently tries to erase, mock, dismiss, laugh at, disrespect and dehumanize us yet also simultaneously and hypocritically objectifying, fetishizing and hyper-sexualizing us.

Since "fae" is short for "fairy", this not only is in reference to fae/fairy mythology from fairy tale folklore but also thus overlaps with intersex women and interfemmes reclaiming the trope and idea of being seen as alluring, fascinating, magical, desirable and intriguing but only reclaiming it for ourselves to take back our agency and autonomy, and not for the sake of appeasing or getting approval from interphobes, intersexists and intermisogynists that erase and dehumanize us while also simultaneously objectifying and fetishizing us (ew!). This also parallels some queer folks reclaiming the word fairy. (refererence: @satyrradio's Alluring Intersex flag, for intersex folks who reclaim the Intersex Allure trope)

This slang and subculture will especially aim to empower and uplift black and brown intersex women and interfemmes of color, intersex women and interfemmes and autistic, neurodivergent and disabled intersex women and interfemmes (especially as I'm a black/brown mixed race and autistic neurodivergent intersex woman and interfemme). This also incorporates elements of hyperfem, coquette, bimbocore, fairycore, punk, cryptidcore and fairy grunge (though whatever fashion and fashion or subculture aesthetic you feel best fits you is welcome, and intersex women/femmes who are masc, butch or futch are welcome to use as well!).

Also, I hope there'll be a flag coining for this soon, especially by somebody like either @satyrradio or @brokendollhouse22-blog (whom I hope will see and read this! Please let's make it happen! 💖💖🤞🏽🤞🏽).

Note: Intersex men and intermascs, especially autistic, neurodivergent and disabled intersex men and intermascs and black and brown intersex men and intermascs of color are absolutely welcome to claim the slang fae, as intersex men and intermascs, especially those of color and who are more feminine and androgynous in expression and presentation are just as likely to face intersexism, interphobia, intermisandry and intermisandrinoir just as much as intersex women and interfemmes face intersexism, interphobia, intermisogyny and intermisogynoir.

[officeobject]

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY ...

BUT NOT FOR ME 😎

(God says I'm not fit for being girl).

Regardless, Imma tag a bunch of women!

Also turns out there ARE cis tags, which Imma use, because I keep not being able to decide on what tags to use, in regards to gender.

[androgynealienfemme]

“SURGERY SHIFTS SEX OF WOMAN” Aug. 31, 1972

[simbistardis]

"As a black woman who is an intersex, immigrant asylum seeker, it feels as though America was built to silence me. Though I’m allowed to work now, the asylum process takes years and I can’t visit my parents until that is resolved. And I miss them dearly. But I have work to do here. Ignorance and hate and stigmatization will not stop me. I represent too many voiceless human beings who live with unbearable pain. I will persevere. I will use that pain to build beauty, to show others the struggle is worth it. I will keep speaking to remind other immigrants that they are not alone. I will keep speaking so that any woman, or any man, who society tells to be ashamed will know that nothing can ruin their spirit, that they can conquer the world."

- Tatenda Ngwaru, I'm an Intersex Black Woman. My Voice Matters. Listen. for QWear Fashion (2019)

[blackqueernotables]

Aminatou Seyni: track and field sprinter

[sexypennymaykitten]

Who wants to play with me? I promise I will be rough❤️🥰🤗

[spiderfreedom]

Knowing that AFAB/AMAB don't mean female/male requires knowing a lot about intersex/DSD conditions. They are relatively rare conditions, so for 99% of people, AFAB/AMAB just mean female/male. (To understand what the male/female sexes are, I recommend this article.)

Learning about intersex/DSD (differences in sex development) conditions is something I've done piecemeal. I know about 5ARD because it's the condition Caster Semenya has. The Wikipedia page is pretty good. I recommend looking up lists of DSD conditions and reading about individual ones. If you can find biographies of people with these conditions, even better!

"Assigned X at birth" makes sense for people with DSDs because the doctors often literally assign a new sex for them to "live as." A male born with a deformed penis, for example, may be surgically altered to create a neovagina, and his parents may be told that he should be raised "as a girl" because it would be easier than being a boy with a deformed penis. As such, this is literally a case of a male being arbitrarily "assigned female at birth" because his genitalia is considered substandard for a male.

This applies in cases of ambiguous genitalia, too. Girls born with unusually large clitorises (clitoromegaly) may have them surgically altered to be "normal." The difference is they are female and assigned 'female'.

Note that most cases involve shortening or removing genitalia because, to use the cruel and crude phrases surgeons use, "it's easier to make a hole than a pole." As such, you will not find cases of neophalluses being given to infants. The surgery is always in the direction of shrinking, which is another reason that most mismatches between assigned and actual sex involve a male child being assigned female.

The majority of 'sex assignations' correctly reflect the sex of people. A very small number of people are assigned the wrong sex and then forcibly surgically altered because doctors have strict norms about what constitutes a 'correct' male. Another small number of people are assigned the wrong sex (almost always AFAB) because they have ambiguous genitalia and live in a region where they do not have the medical facilities to know that the child has a DSD. This is probably what happened to Caster Semenya.

So, the majority of these cases are a male who looks like a female due to missing or inverted penis. Most mismatches are therefore male/AFAB. I have only ever read of one potential female/AMAB case, which is this one, and it's contentious for a lot of reasons (reports are inconsistent about whether he had ovotestes or normally developed ovaries; patient was forced to have neovagina and live "as a woman" on doctor's recommendation).

I don't know if this sounds familiar to you - the idea that "failed" males (infant boys with small or deformed penises) are more like females, or should live as females? These DSD surgeries are sexist and do nothing but hurt little boys and girls on the idea that there is a "correct" type of male and female. Little boys with small/deformed penises have their genitalia removed and are lied to about their sex and made to live as girls. Little girls with large clitorises have their genitalia altered to be smaller.

The 'assigned X at birth' language reveals an important truth, which is that people with DSDs are medically coerced into surgeries that leave them with impaired functioning, and told lies about their biology.

Some of the people with DSDs end up being transgender - either they do not have the gender identity of the sex they were assigned, or they do not have the gender identity of the sex that they are. (The majority of transgender people do not have DSDs.) We should have sympathy for people with sex-incongruent gender identities, especially with DSDs. They should certainly never be lied to or forced into surgeries! However, regardless of their identity feelings, their sex is a biological reality that must be acknowledged in a medical and social context.

i hate hate hate hate hate hate being called an "assigned female at birth" i wasn't assigned a female I AM one

the doctor didn't decide i looked female enough to call me one when i was born, i am a female since the moment of conception

[deathtokillian]

“Your body MY choice”

My knife YOUR life

[simbistardis]

As the years passed, the child that Betina and Isaiah were raising as a son began to express that she was, in fact, a girl. Betina remembers Tatenda begging to wear a dress to school, rather than the shorts and shirt that made up the school uniform for boys. Tatenda explains: “I grew up in a society where women behave a certain way and men behave a certain way and there’s no gray area. As soon as I knew how to differentiate genders, I knew I was a girl. It was instinct. When I started school, people would laugh at me because I walked like a girl. And I thought, how am I supposed to walk? I am a girl.” Tatenda’s parents encouraged her to hide her femininity and try to fit in as a boy.

Tatenda feels lucky that her parents didn’t have the money to take her to a doctor who might have removed some of her female anatomy. “They would have taken away what’s mine,” she says. “They would have robbed me of that choice. I would tell the parents of any intersex child to wait until that child is old enough to speak for themselves to tell you who they are. There was a time when my parents really discouraged me from being who I am, and that weighs on them so heavily now.” It wasn’t until, as a teenager, Tatenda traveled on her own to South Africa to see a doctor and find out what was happening to her body that her parents realized their error. “After they read documents from a doctor that explained who I am, things gradually started getting better,” she says. “I hadn’t spoken to my parents in a year, and they asked me to come home. They said, ‘You are our daughter. We love you. We accept you. And we’re sorry for how we dealt with this before.’ The universe slowly started being kind to me, and it gave me back my family.”

When Tatenda realized that she was no longer safe in Zimbabwe, she moved to the United States. She was only 20 years old. “My family was robbed of me in an instant,” says Tatenda. “The life that I had built was taken away from me. My freedom, my home, all the love that I had ever known, was taken from me. I came here and had to start from scratch,” she recalls. “My father is the love of my life, and the fact that I couldn’t see him made me cry every day. But I decided that if I had to make all of these sacrifices, that I was going to succeed in living my life as myself, and to be a voice for intersex people. That gave me hope.” 

At this point, all Tatenda wants is to help raise awareness about intersex people. She recently starred in a short documentary, called She’s Not a Boy, which aims to show viewers the unique hurdles that intersex people face. She also runs her own website on intersex visibility and shares her experience with publications like Vogue. But Tatenda feels like she hasn’t scratched the surface when it comes to educating the public about the intersex experience: “Even within the LGBTQ community, a lot of people don’t know what intersex means. I sometimes feel like the ‘I’ in LGBTQIA stands for invisibility. We don’t have a platform in the community. How can we expect kindness from outside the LGBTQ+ community when we don’t express kindness to one another?” That’s a big part of the reason why Tatenda wants to tell her story. “The trans community has gotten a lot of attention over the past few years, and that’s wonderful. I just want intersex people to have a seat at the table, too.”

This Intersex Woman Had To Flee Her Home Country — Now She Wants the World To Know Her Story by Emily Pinto for Kate Couric Media (2022)

[blackqueernotables]

Maximila Imali: sprinter; silver medalist in the 2022 African Championships in Athletics.

[sexypennymaykitten]

Can I be your first trans❤️🤗

Send me a private message if you’re down for fun

Telegram @pennymay001

Reblog❤️

[secretlumi]

Wanna jerk off together 🙊