#such as intersex women or women with PCOS

[epiceneandroid]

i know, and it sucks that we NEEDED a mainstream study in the first place for fellow tme people to know this shit was HAPPENING and it's as insidious as fuck. i'm not sure where nonbinary people who are both, neither (like i am sometimes), or both and neither (like i am now) would be represented in this study, but i assume that, at least under the binary transmedicalist system (that trans women and nonbinary tma folks suffer under alike to have to even get the stuff a lot of them need to ease dysphoria or gain euphoria), nonbinary people seeking feminizing hrt or surgical transition would be considered trans women (e.g. a toongender toygender girl seeking feminizing hrt would be considered a trans woman, despite toons internal reality as more toon and toy seeking a typical girl-shaped outer shell that helps toy feel euphoric) and nonbinary people seeking masculinizing hrt would be considered trans men (i could offer you as an example, as you identify as a transmaverine bigender neutrois trans man, and you have sought masculinizing hrt and from the posts i've seen, top surgery). (i'm not sure how, under this transmedicalist system, nonbinary people like me who only desire social transition for the most part because they don't consider their bodies inherently as their former agab and moreso as the desired gender of their transitions, but i'm fairly sure both non-hormonally and/or non-surgically transitioning tma people, especially those who present counter to their assigned sex, are HEAVILY penalized in comparison to non-hormonally and/or non-surgically transitioning tme people, who tend to be perceived simply as "tomboys" or lesbians instead which is bad because Misgendering in a lot of cases but not as bad as "risk of being put in a psychiatric hold or arrested/killed/subject to violent police brutality esp. if psychotic, level 2-3 autistic, lesbian or mspec, black or indigenous if you're a "non-passing" trans woman who wears clothes typical of cis women or even niche transfem or transfem inclusive fetish subcultures" so i'm pretty sure tme people like me who either only plan to socially transition or have "only transitioned" (ugh) with hormone blockers after puberty who neither identify as trans women/transfem or trans men/transmasculine are not given as much of a raw deal as tma people in general, whether binary or nonbinary gendered.)

and like. it's so disgusting that dr. devon price, for what i'm aware of is a transmasculine/trans man sociologist, having to be the one to break this report that trans women and presumably tma nonbinary people are reviled even in comparison to trans men and tme nonbinary people when trans women and tma nonbinary people have been telling people this FOR YEARS and most tme people have not been listening or because a lot of tma people are heavily critical of some types of "do what you want forever" type forms of gendering (such as like basically reinvented circumgender style "afab transfem" stuff which is almost always excused by someone being intersex when. a lot of the intersex people who identify with the afab transfem label have fucking pcos or some type of congenital adrenal hyperplasia which are both disorders that mostly only cause visible symptoms in babies who are either clearly or ambiguously but eventually assigned FEMALE at birth, like. just because i'm discovering i have possibly a mild form of simple virilizing congenital adrenal hyperplasia (which can cause both hyperandrogenism and hyperprogestinism in people who were afab) with pcos or fibroids (which can cause hyperestrogenism in people who were afab) likely developing after it because of the effects of the disorder and secondary cushing's likely because of the mild simple virilizing cah (which also causes further hyperandrogenism as a little known side effect) doesn't mean i'm transfem. just because i wasn't Consistently treated like my birth gender and instead treated like i was wholly and completely genderless and unpersoned and inhuman doesn't mean i'm transfem, despite transfems often sharing that experience. that specific experience of mine is because of more severe than most autism and adhd and likely schizoaffective bipolar disorder that's pretty much undiagnosed except for one psych evaluator basically saying in unambiguous terms i'm basically bipolar and borderline with schizophrenic features in a psych evaluation sheet that my mom and current therapist refused to listen to as well as my undiagnosed at the time but suspected as of now intersex conditions, not because i'm Inherently a trans woman because i'm "masculine" even though i was "assigned female" that is so fucking reductive). it's just.

god.

when will the lgbt community and the mogai/liom/whatever they're calling themselves now subcommunity i'm a part of finally recognize actual tma people and their issues instead of throwing up their hands and saying "EVERYONE IS TMA, TRANS WOMEN SHOULD STOP ACTING LIKE RADFEMS!!!!" and pushing even more transfem people that could be questioning whether they have parts of their identity that could get a bit nonbinary/xenogender with it away from the mogai/liom/whatever we're calling ourselves now community.

it's always bothered me especially as someone who's pretty pro-good faith identities for the most part and even accepts stuff like bi lesbian and lesboy as frequent identities that primarily transfems (and yes, i've seen lesboy transfems, not all lesboys are transmasc and not all lesbian transfems are femme, stop with that stupid binarist gender essentialist assumption too) identify with to explain their complicated relationships with their sexualities and genders like. it's so irritating. i hate how our community purports itself to be Radically Inclusive but ends up so Radically Inclusive they end up Radically Excluding tma people from it.

omg did not expect to see “we have mainstream research evidence for transmisogyny now” this morning but happy friday?? thanks dr. devon price for pre-digesting it

and of course there’s the angle of, well lmfao yes trans women have been saying this in mainstream print since at least 2007 and doubtlessly in other fora for much longer, but sometimes an argument from authority has more force and how do we emotionally reckon with ongoing lack of agency in conversations about us, but i digressss

[thetimekeepers]

a take from my priv i don't think should stay private

[aesops-boy]

TERFs: “We refuse to let women be solely defined by conventional beauty standards! She doesn’t need your opinion on her body or abilities to be a woman!”

Also TERFs, the second a tall, buff woman is good at something: “That’s a MAN! How dare a MAN pretend to be a woman and INVADE our spaces!”

[voidimp]

really not loving this trend lately of acting like shaving makes you a disgrace to the whole fucking queer community

like we really went from "not shaving is totally fine and good, body hair is completely natural & not gross" (correct) to "shaving is disgusting and unnatural, why would you do that to you body" (hmmm sounds kinda familiar) & even "its literally impossible to have dysphoria or sensory issues due to body hair/want to shave for any reason other than to appeal to patriarchal beauty standards & anyone who says they do is lying" (real, actual things i have seen people say, what in the god damn)

you can shave your face you can shave your head but as soon as its below the neck suddenly shaving is some sort of unforgivable crime. god forbid someone doesnt like the way it feels when their clothes rub against every little fucking hair. god forbid they dont like how it holds in sweat. god forbid they dont like how it holds in heat. god forbid they dont fucking like how it looks on them.

like. is the word "choice" not in peoples fucking vocabulary or something

[schizowitchic]

also like i partially found out i might be intersex because i was looking at trans stuff and there was like "(however many) months on t and finally seeing some bottom growth" and like pictures of t-dicks and i was like.... um.... that's kind of just what my clit looks like anyways. so i was like "hey google give me a quick rundown on this" and learned what clitoromegaly was and then i was like. hm. intersex resources. and it's like a sign? symptom? side-effect? of certain intersex conditions

[supercantaloupe]

truly detest how pcos tags/forums/etc are absolutely crawling with terfs

[vamptastic]

saw a post of someone unironically claiming there is some large conspiracy of cis women with PCOS identifying as transfeminine... so out of touch. ime the vast majority of people with PCOS are cis women who are offended to even be considered intersex. online spaces focused on PCOS are kinda transphobic and mostly focus on weight loss and restoring your natural (read: female) hormonal balance and whatnot. like sorry but the vast vast majority are not doing that. and i trust the few ones who do to have a legitimate connection to the term.

[palms-upturned]

.

[mithliya]

Do you mean that other intersex ppl aren’t male or female I’m low-key confused, I thought they were…that most if not all intersex conditions are exclusively female or exclusively male (not that pcos is an intersex condition afiak)

no i meant that unlike with intersex conditions, there is no kind of confusion on where those diagnosed with PCOS are placed (male or female). very often those with intersex conditions are genetically male & phenotypically female or vice versa. some are raised male, then develop more female sex characteristics around puberty for example. it’s also why terms like “assigned male/female” even exist bc there are male ppl assigned female due to their intersex conditions or female ppl assigned male due to their intersex conditions. it’s not the same as PCOS where there is no kind of grey area or lack of clarity in that regard. yes ppl who are intersex are either male or female & many intersex conditions are male/female-exclusive, but unlike PCOS there can be grey areas and it can be hard to place where an intersex person fits in socially or in terms of their experiences

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

"But only 2% of the population is intersex. It's not that common. Why should we reframe or perception of gender for intersex people?"

Completely ignoring the fact that empathy exists. You do realize that 2% of the population in the medical field is considered very common, yes?

2% of children and 0.5% of adults have a peanut allergy and that's so common that they have entire rules around in in public spaces.

0.24-1% of the population has Rheumatoid arthritis. That's an eighth to a half of the number of intersex people!

1-2% of people are estimated to have autism, and that's considered a common condition.

0.1%-2.6% of people will get melanoma in their life time, and that's considered common.

1.2% of people have epilepsy and that's considered common.

Completely ignoring statistics like 6% of women have PCOS (which is a condition that can fall under the intersex umbrella). 2% of the population in the medical field is considered a common condition, and ergo by medical terms intersex is in itself common.

I don't think you realize how big 2% is. That's 2 in 100 people. If you walk into 3 fully filled classrooms (when I was in school a full classroom was 40 students). Chances are you just saw 2 intersex kids and didn't even know it.

So yeah. I think intersex is common enough to include in our discussions around gender and how transphobic rules affects intersex people.

-fae

[andromachos]

self proclaimed epic post-discourse city gays trying not to call a woman a brainwashed bimbo for shaving her face

[intersexfairy]

PCOS is an intersex variation, full stop. The reason that's controversial is that just accepting it as one undermines the gender and sex binaries.

The idea that we're just rare mutants that need to be fixed, or can be ignored for the sake of the majority, would further begin to fall apart. Recognizing people with PCOS as intersex makes it harder for them to treat people with PCOS like broken women.

Doctors treat their intersex traits as a malady that needs to be fixed. Even in the case of a cis women with PCOS and gender dysphoria or health issues, the treatment is so often laced with intersexism and coercion. There is no real choice given, and no affirmation of one's body as worthy of respect regardless of what it looks like.

This isn't unusual in the treatment of intersex people - people do try to hide from us the fact we're intersex (entirely, or by saying we have a disorder instead). But by not even considering people with PCOS under the umbrella, they prevent them from finding community with people like them, and advocating for themselves.

This is all to say, people with PCOS are not less intersex than other intersex people. They are just as intersex, and face all the scrutiny that comes with it. But more than that, they are integral to intersex liberation - and queer liberation overall. Your story as an intersex person with PCOS matters. We need you, and we want you with us.

May you find peace, community, and healing. May you find comfort and home in your body. May you find health and wellness. You are loved, and you belong - just as you are, and have yet to become.

Sincerely, a trans intersex person who doesn't know if it's PCOS or something else.

[katrafiy]

Really not so sure how I feel about the idea of redefining transfem to include people with PCOS if for no other reason than it muddies the water of what the term transfem is generally understood to mean and also totally crowds the kind of people that term was originally coined for out of their own identity.

I'm an """amab""" intersex transfem. I was surgically altered as an infant, I was assigned male at birth and while the records are inaccessible i have good reason to believe I was born with PMDS that was dishonestly characterized as a "congenital inguinal hernia repair" (the scars are way too big and in completely the wrong location for that to actually be true).

Anyways, this is not a matter of inclusion/exclusion. Its a matter of people with PCOS generally outnumbering "amab transfems" by over 10 to 1.

By redefining the term like this, you are turning "amab transfems" into an extreme minority within the identity their label was coined to describe. It's a total appropriation of an identity label by a group that massively outnumbers the original people that label has been used to describe.

And it absolutely is appropriation in the truest sense of the word, wherein a group takes over a label or practice such that the original people that term was for can no longer meaningfully be understood by that term.

Intersex transfems obviously do exist, I am one after all, but I find it endlessly frustrating how often the term "intersex transfem" isn't being used to refer to transfems like me, but instead to refer to people who are blatantly attempting to appropriate an identity label.

I also find it endlessly frustrating the way people seem to invoke the spectre of intersex transfems as a cudgel against other trans women in discussions about transmisogyny. Trans women/fems are my sisters and my community, the people trying to weaponize me against them are not.

[thealternates]

Can perisex people actually shut up for 2 seconds instead of invalidating, harassing and denying intersex people the simple basic function of acknowledging intersex isn't RARE. Every time one of you calls us "DSD" or similar words an angel should come down and throw a bag of hammers at you. Acknowledging PCOS is under the intersex umbrella does not mean we're calling you broken women, it doesn't mean we're calling you men, it doesn't mean you're disordered now, it doesn't mean you aren't cis. intersex people can be whatever they want, cis, trans, both, neither, etc.

You don't have to personally identify as intersex for you to let others exist with the term and community. I'm going to combust! focus on other things that isn't chanting your intersexist views!

"Woah you're so aggressive" whenever we try to be calm, gentle and patient we get verbally stomped on or straight up told we shouldn't exist. i think its time we got mean - 🪽

[wukodork]

If it's something that has outward physical ambiguous traits, yeah. Iirc, most kinds of intersex aren't really gonna be affected by the kind of surgery you're thinking of. Surgery absolutely does happen (I personally know someone whose parents were asked "do you want a boy or a girl" right after they were born bc it was ambiguous), but it's more than that. Intersex people will get put on hormones without their consent, get dragged from doctor to doctor once they hit puberty to find out what's "wrong" with them. The old "circus freak" type of bearded ladies were likely intersex women - having more testosterone than what's acceptable for women will cause you to grow facial hair even though it's far less than what's considered normal for men. I'm literally able to grow a better beard than some men I know. These are just tip of the iceberg things off the top of my head for one kind of intersex experience where the intersex status isn't even known until adulthood.

Reminders:

"Intersex" means "someone born with sexual characteristics that don't fit quite well in the male/female sex binary."

"Intersex" is not synonymous to "non-binary". In fact, being intersex has nothing to do with gender at all. Intersex and trans people have many struggles in common, but if you're talking about trans-specific issues you really don't need to say "intersex and trans people".

Intersex people can be trans. Intersex people can also be cis. Intersex people, in the majority of countries, are assigned a gender at birth just like everyone else.

"Intersex" doesn't necessarily relate to genitals. When I say "sexual characteristics" it can also mean secondary sexual characteristics, hormone levels, chromosomes, and probably a bunch of other shit I forgot about. Please stop reducing intersex people to their genitals.

(On that note, having both working sets of genitals is at best extremely rare and at worst physically impossible. Sorry, intersex people can't fulfill your futa fantasies. Please stop tagging futa shit as intersex. The two are unrelated.)

Please. This pride month remember that intersex people like. Exist. Intersex folks are not hypotheticals they're not "that one letter we gotta tack at the end of every queer post and never think about any further" they're. People. Remember that they exist. Every year I have to make a post like this one where I explain the very basic things you can learn by reading the intersex wikipedia page because people see "intersex" and make assumptions as to what the word means without actually reading the dictionary definition. Please remember that intersex people exist, I looked up "intersex pride" on tumblr and half the posts I saw were a variation of "happy pride to people of all genders and sexualities!" when being intersex has nothing to do with either gender or sexuality. Please. I understand that you guys don't mean any ill, but I am very tired of making basic posts over and over.

And inb4 someone tries to strike dumb discourse on this post: I live in a country where it is legal and encouraged to perform surgery on intersex infants. Looking up "intersex athlete controversy" returned to me like three different cases of athletes who were coerced into surgery without being informed of all the risks and having to lead with lifelong consequences for it. When I say "remember intersex people" I don't mean "uwu intersex people are valid" I mean they're a demographic whose literal human rights are constantly spit upon. I don't give a shit if you think intersex people belong or not under the queer umbrella or what you think are the proper qualifications to identify as intersex literally everytime I talk to an intersex person I hear a variation of "my doctor straight-up lied to me to get me to undergo medical procedures to make me normal without my consent or input" I think people should be aware of that actually I think it's more important than arguing over labels.

[roisinivy]

September is PCOS Awareness month, and I'd like to point out some of the many symptoms people with PCOS deal with everyday...

moon face

excessive body hair, arm, chests, back, face, legs and buttocks

irregular periods

painful periods

extremely heavy periods

constant bloating

mood swings

struggle to lose weight

struggle to gain weight

food cravings

high cholesterol

insulin resistance

oily skin

acne

insomnia

fatigue

sleep apnea

depression

anxiety

tubular breasts

dark and sensitive underarms

skin tags

belly fat

high testosterone

excessive hair loss

thinning hair

pelvic pain

infertility

ovarian cysts

And so much more, as well as having to struggle to even find a doctor who will take any of our symptoms and pain seriously. The medical industry needs to take better care of women, intersex and trans folks with PCOS and Endometriosis.

Our pains are real and we deserve better.