Intersex and the City

my hysterectomy

2011-10-05T19:52:00.000-07:00

Hello readers, I owe you all an apology for not posting in so long, but I promise, I have a very good excuse … I was recently gutted by robots … No, really … I had a hysterectomy and they used the Da Vinci surgical robot system.

I have only two thoughts on this in retrospect, why did I not do this sooner? And why didn’t my parents take my uterus when they took my gonads? I was sore for about a week and a half but the recovery really wasn’t bad, the Da Vinci is the best in terms of being noninvasive just five little holes, not the big belly slit of the old days.

I had several reasons for doing this. The most obvious is that it was the cancer risk my uterus posed. It was small (similar to a prepubescent or postmenopausal uterus, not a typical 25 year olds) and somewhat malformed. The mixed gonadal tissues in a true hermaphrodite (like me) can often go cancerous, and there is a higher risk for the entire reproductive system. I was quite relieved when my pathology report came out clean.

The other reason I did this, admittedly, was the periods. I know, the women reading this would give me a sarcastic “poor baby” but I HATED the periods. They have no biological purpose in me, and were very embarrassing (and almost constant in my case, just another of my unexplained medical oddities, like my lack of wisdom teeth). Every time I started menstruating it felt like a slap in the face, on top of all the biological/sexual difficulties I was dealt out in life, I just couldn’t catch a break on this menstruation business, which I felt should be an obvious gimme. In any case I am no longer afraid to wear white or khaki pants anymore.

Another factor that should be noted is that they greatly reduced my hormones. I took 0.6 mg of estrogen since puberty until my hysterectomy. Now I am on a 0.1 mg/day patch. I like this so far, in theory, It’s still too early to say what, if any, effect this will have on me. I never liked taking hormones, popping pills to provide the world with a more acceptable façade. So in my book a lower dose is a good thing.

In conclusion, I am happy to have this done with. It removes a serious cancer risk and makes me happier with no periods (just exclamation points from here on out). On a symbolic level, I have had horrific unwanted surgeries related to my intersexuality, but this one was completely my choice. It felt really empowering to regain some control over my body, which is really what the whole intersex movement is all about.

porn and this blog

2011-02-22T17:10:00.000-08:00

hello, first I must apologize to my readers, I realize I have not posted on this blog in a very long time, but I was running out of ideas and didn't want to become repetitive. I will try to write more

I am writing today to discuss an infuriating event that often occurs when you search for intersex (or trans) issues online, you inevitably run into porn sites. The reason I bring this up is because I was recently reviewing the comments on this blog and realized that most of them were links written in a language my computer could't read. On clicking these links they took me to an Asian soft core porn site. I have deleted these linked comments.

This behavior will not be tolerated. Pornography is dehumanizing, degrading, and frankly offensive. It offers nothing to the issues and discussion I hope this blog will generate. From now on I will be policing the comments and any pornographic links will be deleted.

doctor/patient collaboration for surgical consent

2010-08-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

Dr. Katrina Karkazis of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University recently published a suggested protocol for parents and doctors to reach a decision about whether to operate on their intersexed babies genitals. This involves 6 steps:

1. develop an appropriate, multidisciplinary team comprised of a variety of subspecialties such as endocrinology, urology, surgery, psychology/psychiatry, gynecology, pediatrics and social work.

2. Establish preferences for information and roles in decision-making. By gauging parents preferences early in the process, physicians can decrease the risk for misunderstanding patient needs and preferences. Physicians are encouraged to perceive and address parents’ emotions, with an emphasis on open communication.

3. Perceive and address emotions, Parents and physicians are uncomfortable discussing certain topics. One example is the future sexual sensation of the child who is potentially going to undergo surgery. Some physicians do not discuss that, although it is something that parents would need to know in order to make an informed decision.

4. Define concerns and values, common parental concerns include fears of teasing, ensuring that the child looks “normal” and using the least treatment intervention possible, all of these things come into play when deciding about surgery, but families rank them differently and it is integral to understand what they want to achieve with surgery and whether the operation will be able to achieve it.

5. Identify options and presenting evidence. Once an understanding of the parent’s needs and goals are established, a presentation of all treatment options and subsequent consequences should be objectively made to the parents. This should realistically explore the risks and benefits of treatment; examine parents’ ideas and assumptions while correcting their misperceptions; and ensure that they understand the nuances of the complex situation.

6. Share responsibility for making a decision. A shared decision must be made by the parents and the team. At this point in the process, parents should possess a technical understanding of the situation while the team will have an appreciation of the families best interests and hopes.

This decision making process does sound like a very small step forward. At least the parents are not panicking and making a rushed decision without all the options and outcomes made known to them. That being said, this suggested process still misses the most important point, it is NOT the parents or doctors decision to make, the only person who has the right to make such a decision is the intersexed individual. Anything else is a serious violation of their human rights and bodily integrity, often with disastrous physical and psychological consequences. The only protocol that is needed is to wait until the child is old enough, and give them all the information to make an informed decision.

anti-intersex drugs

2010-07-17T17:10:00.000-07:00

A medical paper published recently in Australia recommended prenatal screening for congenital adrenal hyperplasia female fetus's and treating them with dexamethasone to prevent "behavioral masculization" including "same sex attraction and tom boy type behaviors" (there is a much higher statistical rate of both in CAH girls).

I find this absolutely disgusting, it is incredibly homophobic and transphobic. So your little girl isn't the beauty pageant contestant/cheerleader/ballerina you were hoping for, does it really matter? No parent-to-be knows what their child will be like, but they adapt and love them anyways, they don't try to drug out who they are, or will be. This non-consensual medical intervention is little better then genital mutilation, it is the strict enforcement of gender stereotypes at the expense of the humanity, individuality and power of choice of the intersexed individual. It also contributes to the view of intersex as a pathology.

I also find the thought of prenatal testing for intersex conditions very disturbing. The strict social enforcement of gender roles, coupled with the fact that doctors treat intersex babies as social emergencies, could equal a lot more prenatal intervention, or abortions of intersex fetuses, all in the name of conformity and fear of anything different.

Review of "Fool for Love" by Lisa Lees

2010-07-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

I just finished the book Fool for Love by Lisa Lees (available at Amazon, or at lulu.com, a self publishing site). The writing style was a rather choppy, and referenced a lot of things that most intersexuals already know, however I enjoyed reading it and would highly recommend it. Its always nice to see yourself in print, which doesn't happen very often for us extreme minorities.

Fool for Love is a love story between two high school students, an intersex girl, Jamie, and a genderqueer butch lesbian, Carys. What the book covered very well is the emotional complexities of relationships with intersexuals. Relationships are difficult enough for "normal" people, but for intersexuals they can get extremely complicated.

Just look on any intersex discussion forum and you will see that intersexuals have a lot of apprehension about relationships and often downright terror about sex. They are afraid that they will be rejected if the object of their affections knew, or if they know, they are interested out of some strange fantasy. For many, if not most intersexuals, their genitals have been a source of have been a source of great emotional anguish, and sharing them with another is simply to emotionally painful.

This is why I liked Fool for Love, it showed that in spite of all these fears, love can prevail and intersexuals can have a happily ever after.

the amusing risks of ultrasounds

2010-06-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

Hello readers, remember a few posts ago when I wrote about using humor at an ultrasound to ease the tensions? Well, I got the results back from the ultrasound and wouldn't you know it, it said I had ovaries, even though my gonads had been removed as a small child, they went so far as to say my reproductive system was "unremarkable". To say I was shocked by this would be an understatement. There were only four explanations I could think of:

1. The surgeons removed the wrong thing, and I still had my gonads

2. The ultrasound had been misread

3. Like some of my hermaphrodite brethren, the earthworms and sponges, I had the ability to regenerate lost body parts

4. There was a mix up and I was given someone else's ultrasound result (I hoped this was not the case because some poor "normal" lady would be in for an even worse shock then me if she got my ultrasound)

As it turns out, it was number 2. In a case of scotoma, the ultrasound tech expected to see ovaries, and thus mislabeled loops of my colon as ovaries. The moral of this story is when things seem weird, ask questions of your doctors, that's what they are there for.

cultural compromise and genital integrity

2010-06-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

a hot button issue for intersex activists lately has been the recent change in the protocol of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). This change is the AAP's recommendation that the US permit doctors to "nick" the genitals of their female patients as a compromise for their African patients seeking their ritual genital cutting. They have said this is justified on three grounds.

1. nicking is very minor, the equivalent to a pin prick or an ear piercing.

2. it demonstrates a cultural sensitivity for immigrant populations

3. it is a compromise that could prevent the parents from preforming more extreme genital cutting.

This is unusual since AAP's previous statement on the subject states (rightly so) that female genital cutting is a form of gender based violence. Even if this nicking sound harmless, it is important to not quibble over severity, if something is wrong, then milder forms of it are still wrong, human rights standard must be absolute. Many anti-FGM activists fear, rightly so, that this recommendation opens up shades of gray which will muddle up and ultimately set back their movement.

FGM is very similar to the way intersexed people are treated in America, our genitals are cut up to satisfy a sociocultural requirement. There have also been hardworking grassroots movements in their respective cultures to change theses practices.

I think it is very important to understand understand other cultures, but it is also important to realize that cultures are not static, they change all the time. As I mentioned there are many African activists trying to change this practice of FGM. I think the AAP did these activists a great disservice by stabbing them in the back with this recommendation. In any case, no child should be put in harms way just because of cultural norms, that is deeply unethical, and suggests a norm that needs to be changed.

American Female Genital Mutilation

2010-06-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

If you are standing (at the computer, that would be weird) you should sit down, the news I have to report is shocking.

Dr. Dix Poppas, a pediatric urologist at Cornell University has been surgically shortening the clitoris's of girls who have been deemed to be too big and too sensitive (God forbid a woman actually enjoy sex). Then at follow up examinations he uses a vibrator to test how much sensitivity is lost. I for one am outraged by this. The mutilation and molestation of children is sick. No other pediatric urologist preforms this procedure. What kind of parents would allow this to happen to their little girl? There is nothing wrong with these girls, it is a completely subjective, aesthetic judgment (I shudder to think what these parents would do with an intersex child).

The fact that Dr. Poppas does these vibrator follow-ups shows he is aware of the risks. In spite of this he goes forward with the surgery, violating his Hippocratic oath and demonstrating a disturbing lack of respect for his patients humanity. Look up any intersex discussion board to realize how psychologically devastating genital surgeries and especially the repeated examinations and poking and prodding are on children. These posters are adults who are still not over it. Emotionally they are very much like victims of child sexual abuse.

Even if, as he claims, that he is proving that the sensitivity loss is minimal, it is still wrong. Even if genital surgeries were perfect (they never are, the results are often quite terrible) I would say that it is horribly unethical. Whatever happened to learning to accept yourself, this turning to plastic surgery to solve our insecurities is deeply problematic. It is important to feel at home in your own skin, and when you are implicitly told that you are so unacceptable that we have to operate, it is very difficult to learn that self acceptance.

the importance of humor

2010-06-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

Hello all, I'm sorry I haven't done an entry in a while, but I am running out of topics and don't want to become repetitive. Today I'm sending a piece of advice to my fellow intersexuals, or really anyone in an awkward position, that advise is to use humor.

My personal situation where humor was useful was in the doctors office (as these stories often are). I was in for a sonogram to get a better look at my uterus (a small, misshapen organ referred to by doctors as a "shadow uterus" which is in and of itself a funny term). The technician who was doing it did not know that I was intersexed (and I didn't feel like enlightening a total stranger). All she knew was that doctors orders prohibited her from using the vaginal probe. In any case I was feeling very awkward, so while she was looking at the screen, I asked if it was a boy or a girl when I was obviously not there due to a pregnancy. This broke the ice, she laughed and said it was twins, one of each.

Thus my advise to deal with these situations is to never underestimate the power of a joke, a little humor goes a long ways.

10 Myths that Hurt Intersexuals

2010-05-09T18:20:00.000-07:00

This list was recently posted on the blog Intersex Roadshow, it is a list of myths that hurt intersexed people, complied from that authors conversations. I think it is a very insightful list, with issues that should be brought to the public attention, so I decided to post it on my blog:

Myth 1: Intersex people all have intermediate genitalia

Imagine this: you're an intersex person, nervous about dating and finding a partner. You work up your courage to disclose your status to people you're interested in, and after a series of them seeming polite but disinterested in dating, you finally meet a guy who expresses interest. You date for a while, and get to the point where the clothes come off. Your boyfriend gets a good look at you naked, accuses you of "making up that story of being intersex" because your body looks female to him, and breaks off the relationship, leaving you feeling misunderstood and ill-used.

Many people are intersexed in ways that are not visible to their partners. For example, an individual with AIS (androgen insensitivity syndrome) is born with internal testes but genitalia that look typically female. Intersex people born with visibly intermediate genitals are often subject to infant sex assignment surgery, another reason why our bodies may not appear visibly intersex to others.

What disturbs me about incidents in which a partner seems interested in dating an intersex person until the clothes come off is that it generally reveals that the partner was fetishizing the intersex person--only interested in them for their "exotic" body. In the situation described here, the boyfriend wanted to have sex with someone who looked genitally intermediate generally. I've also heard stories from intersex people whose genitals are visibly atypical about how a partner lost interest in them when the clothes came off because they didn't see the kind of "hermaphrodite" genitals they'd dreamt of, with a big penis and a vagina (a configuration almost unheard of in real life, but popular in pornographic fantasy). It's depressing to find out your date wasn't really interested in you, but in playing with some fantasy set of genitalia.

Myth 2: Intersex conditions are always diagnosed in infancy

Here's another unfortunate scenario: a person is having infertility problems, so they visit some doctors. They receive a diagnosis and turn in shock to an online gender forum to post "I was just diagnosed as intersex." Somebody responds, "Stop trolling this blog. You're not really intersex--intersex people all know what they are from childhood. You probably have sick fantasies or think saying you're intersex will give you an excuse to gender transition without controversy." The non-intersex person is accusing the intersex individual of being a non-intersex person exploiting intersex individuals, which is pretty ironic.

As noted above, many intersex conditions aren't obviously visible in external genitalia. That means that people may not find out about their intersex status until quite late in life. While the experiences of late-recognized intersex people are different from those of intersex folks diagnosed in infancy, they are not "less" intersex, and have to deal with physical and psychological ramifications for which they need support.

Myth 3: All infant sex-assignment surgery is aimed at creating "female" genitalia

Imagine this situation: you were born with intermediate genitalia but surgically assigned male at birth. However, you grew up hating your male sex assignment, and so you transitioned to female. Your experience has given you a lot of empathy for people viewed as gendertransgressive, so when you notice that a friend of a Facebook friend identifies as genderqueer, you write her a nice message and offer her friendship. She refuses your offer and writes you a nasty note back about how she knows you are lying about being intersex, since "all intersex children are made into girls." She accuses you of being a stalking, posing, creepy man-in-a-dress. Ironic and sad, isn't it--that a woman who identifies as breaking down the boundaries of sex and gender is policing those boundaries so rabidly and wrongheadedly?

It is true that intersex infants are disproportionately surgically assigned female, based on the appalling medical aphorism, "it's easier to make a hole than a pole." But some intersex infants are surgically assigned male--usually when they have at least one external testis, but sometimes under other conditions. The myth that this "never happens" leaves intersex people assigned male at birth open to constant suspicion and exclusion, increasing the difficulties they have to face.

Myth 4: Intersex people should be genderqueer

This myth comes up again and again in academic, activist and feminist circles: that intersex people, being neither male nor female in physical sex, must be genderqueer and androgynous. We're supposed to be standard-bearers for the fight to subvert artificial dyadic gender categories. Encountering an intersex person with an ordinary and "boring" masculine or feminine gender identity who doesn't look at all androgynous, these activists express puzzlement and disappointment--and in private, speculate that the person must have some minor, mild intersex condition, so they are not "intersex enough" to be insightful.

Intersex people face pressure from doctors and families and society at large to genderconform. Facing the opposite pressure to gendertransgress--subversivism-- is just as unfair. Yes, most intersex people open enough to disclose our sex status agree that it is damaging for our society to insist that everyone must identify as male or female. But we live in a society that understands gender dyadically, and like non-intersex people, we commonly identify as masculine or feminine.

Myth 5: "Real" intersex people are not genderqueer

Frustrated and upset by pressure from gender activists to gendertransgress, as descibed in Myth 4, some intersex people have created a reactionary opposite myth: that "real" intersex people have no interest in subverting dyadic gender understandings of male and female. These genderconservative individuals often don't actually identify as "intersex" but as "people with DSDs (Disorders of Sex Development)." And they go around arguing to institutions that "real" intersex people don't identify as genderqueer--that people who say they are intersex and argue for third gender categories and the like are posers, probably crazed feminist zealots or deceptive trans people.

What makes the myth that intersex people are never genderqueer particularly painful to me is that it is spread by members of our community. To undermine your own intersex siblings and deny their identities is counterproductive, pathetic, and cruel. Many intersex people identify as typically masculine or feminine people, but there are plenty who do not do so, and like all genderqueer people, they face a lot of social bias. We have no duty as intersex people to be genderqueer, but I see a strong moral imperative for us to support people who do have genderqueer identities and manners of selfexpression. There are enough hurtful myths circulating about intersex people already. We don't need to add one of our own to the mix.

intersex fetishizing

2010-04-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

Hello readers, I'm sorry my postings have become somewhat sporadic, but I have been kinda busy. Today I am writing about sexual fetishes and haw they are hurting the intersex community.

Ever since the intersex community formed there has been a discussion about whether there is a fetishized aspect to surgeons doing genital surgeries. Many plastic surgeons have admitted that genital surgery is considered an "art" and since there are statistically few people who have such procedures done, there is not really a set surgical method, but several of them, and it is largely left up to the surgeons discretion. They definitely get excited over the opportunity. Whether or not this is a sexual excitement (fetish) is debatable (some would argue, and I would agree, that anything involving the genitals is inherently sexual). Even if this is not technically a fetish, it still is disturbing.

The more blatant use of fetishs to hurt intersexuals is in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM is the big list of psychological issues and their recommended therapeutic treatment that psychologists use. The most recent edition, the DSM IV, lumps intersexuals who reject their assigned gender into a broad catagory called GIDNOS (gender identity disorder not otherwise stated) which is a sub-branch of GID (gender identity disorder) which is mostly used for diagnosing transexuals (personally I hate the expression, there is nothing disordered about trangender). The sub-branch of GIDNOS not only includes intersexuals, but also cross-dressers, and autogynephilia, a fetish some men have with the removal of their penis. Personally I do not think intersex has any place in psychology, by definition it is a biological, not merely psychological condition, and certainly doesn't belong in GID (by definition an intersexual cannot be transgendered). That aside, I think lumping intersex and autogynephilies shows a great misunderstanding of intersex. We do not get turned on by the thought of being mutilated, the doctors mutilated us. I think that doctors and psychologists have done this because they have seen the writing on the wall (that the intersex community is gaining power and is mad as hell at them) and did this humiliating lumping to protect themselves. If an intersexual who has rejected their gender assignment comes to them, they can say, according to their diagnostic books, that it is not a matter of gender identity, but a fetish to either gain or lose a penis (how Freudian).

parents perspective

2010-04-06T08:44:00.000-07:00

I bugged my mom into writing a piece for my blog. This way you can hear other peoples opinions (gasp). So, without any further ado, here's what my mom had to say:

A parent’s perspective;
I was recently filling out our 2010-census form and I realized that once again I had to inaccurately settle on gender for one of our children. I wanted or needed to be able to have more choices on the census form. While I don’t personally like the term “neuter”, I applaud Australia’s willingness to alter Norrie May-Welby’s birth certificate to better represent this person’s gender.

When I hear an expectant parent announce the exact sex of their child prior to birth, I cringe. I wonder how can a picture tell the child’s story?

When our child was born the “sex” was immediately determined to be male. Later, upon further inspection the hospital staff changed their minds and expressed uncertainty of the “sex” of our child. They immediately took the blue blanket away and used a white blanket for swaddling. We were told that this “unique phenomenon” had only occurred one other time in the hospital’s 27-year history. We were led to believe that we needed to change our child so that “society would be kind”. We listened and we trusted that we needed to follow the medical professionals advice. While their advice was well intentioned, they were wrong.

If we had known then what we know now, we might not have listened so intently to the physicians. We still would have needed to determine a gender so that society could acknowledge our child’s existence. Just like today, 20 plus years ago there were only male or female choices on US birth certificates. On paper our child needed to have a gender distinction, but physically probably not.

We followed the professional opinions and physically modified our child to be more female in appearance. Today we would have had more informational tools within our grasp and we would have realized that this ”rare” occurrence wasn’t as unique as the professionals believed.

While we tried never to mislead our child about who they are. We would say things like “nature didn’t make the decision about who you are so we had to”. All that time, while we thought we were keeping the perception of who our child is open to discussion, we were missing the most important fact. There was no perception; nature had in fact made a decision about our child. There was no need to modify the fact that nature had made our child intersex. We didn’t need to have physicians physically modify our child’s appearance. It wasn’t nature’s problem its society’s misunderstanding that gender is not two single points, but actually a continuum.

a hermaphrodite at the OB/GYN

2010-03-22T14:49:00.000-07:00

Since I had a few doctors appointments this past week, and Obama passed his health care bill (thank God, or I might have moved Canada) I thought I would write about one of the most uncomfortable repeated experiences I have as an intersex person, trips to the gynecologist.

From the moment I step into the waiting room I can't help but think "the alien has landed." I am lucky, my gyno is actually very kind and understanding. That being said, I find the whole environment of the office and waiting room to be very unwelcoming, surrounded by diagrams and pamphlets of organs I don't have and pregnant women and parenting magazines when I'm sterile (if I wanted children that would be painful). Then, as if I'm not feeling out of place already, the nurse asks routine questions that really don't apply to me (When was my last period? Hmmm, let me think about that). I realize they are just doing their jobs, and I am probably being oversensitive, but it used to really bother me. Now I make a game out of being different, and have probably unintentionally scared a few of the expectant mothers, girly girls and conservatively dressed immigrant women when I swagger in with my short mussed up hair, wearing my Hard Rock t-shirt, jeans, and leather jacket carrying a radical feminist book (thank you Andrea Dworkin).

I think it would be a nice gesture of acceptance to the intersex (and transgender) community if the OB/GYN waiting rooms looked more generic. Even better would be researching there medical files beforehand to realize just how silly, awkward and often unanswerable their questions are to an intersex patient.

gendered documents and third sexes

2010-03-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

On May 13th Australia, after going through considerable bureaucratic red tape, changed an adult birth certificate to "gender not specified" and may well change their passports as well. In light of this development, and the US census this year, I think it is important to talk about gender on official documents. Pretty much every document in pretty much every country require us to check of one of two boxes, any variation on that is not an option. For intersexuals, this forces us to lie on these documents. To be recognized on these documents would be a major step forward for intersex rights and greatly legitimize our issues. It would also be interesting if we were counted in the census, the sheer numbers would show we are more frequent then most of the world realizes.

I'm not a huge fan of the term "gender not specified" since it sees intersexuals in term of lacking. This may not seem like a major issue, but the language we use to describe things shapes perception (for evidence of this look at African Americans and homosexuals reclaiming words that were used to hurt them, taking away their power, or the PC push for gender neutral wording for jobs traditionally seen as male).

Using the term "gender not specified" is a cop out. It allows for the existence of intersexuals, but doesn't take that to its logical conclusion, the existence of a legitimate third sex. I think most gender nonconformists would agree with me that a recognized, acceptable category to but them in would be a major step forward for them. I am not suggesting a major social reorganization or revolution, just an honest recognition and acceptance of reality. If it is in our documents, that is a good first step.

a defense of DSD

2010-03-08T08:40:00.000-08:00

By far the most controversial topic in the intersex community is the term disorders of sexual development (DSD), an expression that gained much legitimacy when it was used by the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). I, like most activist intersexuals hate the term and the use of the word "disorder." That being said, ISNA does have a good defense of its use of DSD on its website. Since I am as fair and balanced as Fox News, I have posted that defense for your reading pleasure:

Over the past year, we have begun to use the term “disorders of sex development,” or DSD, in place of “intersex” in these contexts. It’s not our intention to make intersex an entirely medical issue. But we are addressing people working in a medical context. We have found that the word DSD is much less charged than “intersex,” and that it makes our message of patient-centered care much more accessible to parents and doctors. Our aim is to meet them where they are.

Intersex itself is not a disorder, rather a variation. But Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, for instance, is an inherited disorder affecting adrenal function. Many women with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome have become comfortable with the term AIS, which is based on “syndrome.” But “syndrome” is a pattern of symptoms indicative of some disease or disorder. “Disorder” refers to the underlying cause, not intersexuality itself, and certainly not to the whole person.

That said, there is so much more to intersexuality than the medical context. ISNA certainly doesn’t mean to tell intersex adults or support or activist groups what language they should use. If “intersex” is working for you, by all means use it!

We have found that the word “intersex” means many different things to different people. And sometimes it means different things at different moments to a single person! This makes it hard for parents and doctors to really hear what we are trying to say: that all children deserve to grow up free of shame, secrecy, and unwanted sexual surgeries.

The word “Intersex” was not invented by ISNA. It has been used in medicine since at least 1923 to refer to individuals with atypical sex anatomy. But we’ve seen it used with a variety of meanings by doctors, including these:

* there is a question about what sex to assign (so after a sex is assigned, is the child no longer intersexed?)

* there is ambiguity about the “true” sex (itself a problematic notion)

* there is a discordance between any of the sexual characteristics, including genital appearance, gonadal histology, internal reproductive organs, chromosomes

* there are ambiguous genitalia now (thus we have seen some doctors refer to patients after genital surgery as “formerly intersexed”)

* a synonym for the older terms based on hermaphrodite

And, since the advent of intersex activism, some new meanings have arisen, including these:

* an experience of gender identity (obviously very personal, and differs from person to person)

* a political identity (also differs by person and over time)

Parents and doctors are not going to want to give a child a label with a politicized meaning. Nor should they. People born with atypical sex anatomies grow up to have many different kinds of gender identities, and no one can predict for sure what gender identity any particular baby will grow up to have. So it doesn’t make sense to label a child’s anatomy with a term that implies a particular gender identity. Furthermore, many adults born with intersex conditions reject the label “intersex,” some because their experience of gender is typically male or female, some because the word labels the whole person rather than a particular aspect, and probably for a variety of other reasons.

Intersex activist Emi Koyama writes about more of the ways that ‘intersex’ interferes with communication. We share her experience that media, time and time again, want to talk to us only about people who were “assigned the wrong sex,” an important but extremely narrow aspect of what’s wrong with the traditional medical model.

As we were working with adults, parents, and doctors to create documents that provide a detailed explanation of patient-centered care, we came to the conclusion that a medical term would be the easiest way to communicate about medical care, and we began to use the term “DSD.”

Since we began to use “DSD,” we have found many more doors open to us. We are now able to have discussions with doctors in which they begin to understand that paralyzing shame can be a worse outcome than gender dysphoria; that a person may have an atypical gender identity without experiencing that as a problem; that people with gender dysphoria can transition and do very well. The handbooks have found a grateful audience with doctors, parents, psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, and genetic counselors. We are sure that this information will help medical professionals and parents feel more comfortable and do a better job of caring for children born with intersex conditions.

The fact that intersex people are speaking out is still a very new phenomenon. ISNA’s thinking, our use of language, and the focus of our work has evolved since our founding in 1993, and they will surely continue to evolve.

SECOND interSEX

2010-03-02T10:23:00.000-08:00

Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir is considered a masterpiece of feminist thinking. Her ideas about how women are subjugated are also easily applied to intersexuals.

De Beauvoir's main premise is that women are oppressed by having men define them as 'other' being opposite from men in every way. This is why intersexuals are mutilated, we blur that line between the essential and absolute male who imposes his will on the world, and the inessential incomplete female who waits for the male to rescue her. This is why the majority of us are made to look female, we are seen as lacking that essential masculine quality to earn manhood, and yet we are close enough that we challenge men's authority and thus cannot be allowed to remain as is. The fear these cultural myths creates perpetuates the mistreatment of intersexuals, just as it does to women.

Even though we live in more enlightened times then De Beauvoir, these subconscious paradigms are pervasive, especially when it comes to gender roles. De Beauvoir discusses various mythical representations of women and demonstrates how these myths have imprinted human consciousness. De Beauvoir hoped to debunk the persistent myth of the “eternal feminine” by showing that it arose from male discomfort with the fact of his own birth. Throughout history, maternity has been both worshiped and reviled: the mother both brings life and heralds death. These mysterious operations get projected onto the woman, who is transformed into a symbol of “life” and in the process is robbed of all individuality. In previous blog entries I have written about the many mythologies surrounding hermaphrodites as being mystical, monstrous, and hyper-fertile (ironic since most intersexuals are sterile). these myths create the attitude that intersexuals are somehow subhuman (or perhaps superhuman) and thus robs them of their humanity, making them into something out of legend.

De Beauvoir's most famous quote from Second Sex is that one is not born a women, but becomes one. She claims women are shaped by a thousand external processes. At each stage of her upbringing, a girl is conditioned into accepting passivity, dependence, repetition, and inwardness. Every force in society conspires to deprive her of subjectivity and flatten her into an object. Denied the possibility of independent work or creative fulfillment, the woman must accept a dissatisfying life of housework, childbearing, and sexual slavishness. Some people, on the other hand, are born hermaphrodites and are forced to become a woman by far more rigorous methods. Most intersexuals are also unhappy with what society has forced on them. These changes are done for the same reason, to preserve male domination.

intersex on TV

2010-02-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

Intersex has been showcased on a couple of TV shows recently. This can be good and bad since it increases intersex visibility and informs more people that such things happen. The downside is that it can sometimes misinform people, or in the case of humor, be downright offensive.

The most recent case of intersex on a TV show is on the Sarah Silverman show episode The Proof is in the Penis, aired on February 4th, 2010. In the show, Sarah's sister, Laura tells Sarah she was born a hermaphrodite to try to get her to 'man up' and get a job so Laura wouldn't have to pay her rent. The episode is actually more about gender roles with Sarah camping out and acting macho as a part of the comedy. The general moral of the story is a nice anti-sexism message with Sarah realizing she didn't need to be a man to take care of herself. There was some interesting accurate intersex moments. For example she seems genuinely upset and confused when her sister tells her. Her sister finally admits that she got the dismembered baby penis that Sarah found in her medical files from the hermaphrodite trashcan at hospital. This is hurtful, but it also recognizes the medical mutilations intersex infants undergo.

A much better and more accurate portrayal of intersexuality was on House last season in the episode The Softer Side, which actually used the term "intersex". Dr. House and his team are faced with a genetic mosaic teenager who was raised male. It has a very accurate portrayal of the parents with the pain and confusion and second guessing their choice to make the child male. Another very accurate thing is that they kept his condition secret from the child, calling testosterone injections "vitamins." His mother also forced strict gender roles, making him take basketball instead of dance which he preferred. It also shows the doctors points of view. Dr. Hadley (aka Thirteen) was tired of lying to the patient and tipped him off about being intersexed. This leads to his realistic anger and mistrust of his parents. Thirteen then gives him some good advise that all intersexuals can take to heart, saying he can to dance and basketball, and doesn't have to hide behind a mask. There are also other areas of intersexuality that are brought forward such as complications from surgery (strictures of penis, and depression in this case), and a fear on the part of the patient that he is gay, since he likes one of his team mates (homophobia is one of the leading factors contributing to intersex mistreatment. House is notorious in the show for being an asshole, however, gives some advise to the parents that is offensive to intersexuals, but also refreshingly, bluntly honest when he says "you gave birth to a freak of nature, that doesn't mean you have to treat him like one."

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

2010-02-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

Former Congressman Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, was interviewed by NPR's Melissa Block about his opinion on Don't Ask Don't Tell (the law that says homosexuals must stay closeted to serve in the military). He was not even asked about intersexuals, but his answer managed to include them, and was offensive and perpetuated the status quo of intersexuals as invisible second class citizens.

BLOCK: You are not in favor of a repeal of don't ask, don't tell. Why not?

Rep. HUNTER: No, because I think that its bad for the cohesiveness and the unity of the military units, especially those that are in close combat, that are in close quarters in country right now. Its not the time to do it. I think its - the military is not civilian life. And I think the folks who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there. And I think that bond is broken if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gays and lesbians.

BLOCK: Transgenders and hermaphrodites?

Rep. HUNTER: Yeah, that's going to be part of this whole thing. Its not just gays and lesbians. Its a whole gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual community. If you're going to let anybody no matter what preference - what sexual preference they have that means the military is going to probably let everybody in. Its going to be like civilian life and the I think that that would be detrimental for the military.

The one thing I will say in Hunter's favor is that he realized queer inclusion. All gender and sexual minorities are oppressed by the same sociopolitical forces, and as such, our fates are all intertwined. You can tell, just by his word choice, that he has nothing but contempt for anyone who does not fit into his pseudo-fifties view of gender and sexuality. He might as well have said if gays are allowed to serve, then we'll also have to let the real freaks in. He obviously has very little respect for our troops, both gay and straight and their ability to find common ground. Civilians have adapted greatly these last couple decades to work with gays, and now are working on other gender variants, our military personnel can do the same. Personally, I think anyone who wants to serve their country should be able to. There is no evidence of negative outcomes to a more open acceptance policy. The majority of Americans, both civilian and military support repealing DADT, and other countries that allow open gays to serve, like Great Britain, have not been any worse for it. To unilaterally block a minority group like that is not only discriminatory, it's also hateful and mean spirited. Plato, the father of western thought, would also disagree, he said gays were ideal for the military, because it would make them fight harder to impress their lover. In the case of intersexuals, there are probably several already in the military, we are so hidden, and it is such a taboo topic, they would never know. Intersexuals are already becoming more known in other parts of society, why should the military be any different?

intersex valentines poetry

2010-02-11T11:52:00.000-08:00

In honor of Valentines Day, I am going to showcase one of the oldest expressions of love, poetry. In this case poems written by intersexuals. These poems are obviously not about romantic love of another person, but of learning self acceptance, but I think they are still relevant because it is true that you have to love yourself before you can love another, and that goes double for those of us who are different. I hope you all have a wonderful Valentines day with that special someone, or with yourself if you are single or working on that self acceptance. Enjoy the poems.

Ode to a Life
Heidi Walcutt

A little child was born today,
whether it’s a boy or a girl was hard to say.
The poor, innocent mother they quickly sedated,
While the doctors and nurses stood around and debated.

One doctor said “The penis is too small,
this will never, never do at all.”
Another spoke up “No, the clit is too large,
we need a specialist who can come in and take charge.”

So the call went out across the land,
and when a group of specialists was at hand,
A series of tests was the first thing they did,
the result of these, from the parents they hid.

When all of the testing and probing was done,
the doctors said “We can never tell them of their son.”
So the parents were never told of their little boy child,
who by a miracle of nature was born to be wild.

So they sliced and they diced, a new woman to make.
“To hell with the consequences, we’ll fix Nature’s mistake!”

Counseling next became their obsession,
they hounded and pounded into the child their lesson.
“You are a girl, there’s no doubt of that,
trust what we tell you, a fact is a fact.”

So she lived in the shadows, without any life,
she was constantly battered by emotional strife.
Never voicing her fears, her hopes or her doubts,
until she found ISNA and let it all out.

Anger
Michelle O'Brien

I had to let the anger go.
It got in the way of everything.
It did not help.
It still can well up.
But the aftermath is often not good.
It hurt others, and it hurt myself.
I did not want to carry on with my life driven by anger.
It would have destroyed me.
This is the thing with this anger, it is not my anger.
Somebody else put this anger inside of me.
If I allow myself to hang on to that anger,
they are still there, inside of me.
By letting go of that anger, their power is broken.
Only by letting go of the anger could the true healing begin.
To accept the anger took half a lifetime.
To recover from it will take the other half.
I want to love, not hate, for I was born to love.
I will not waste the other half of my life on anger.

What Ails You, Hermaphroditos?
Testika Filch Milquetoast

each day is as a riddle
a giant game of twister
for I won't be your brother
nor shall I be your sister
I won't be your "disorder"
nor a "false" to what is "real"
I'm humyn, all too humyn
because that's the way I feel
your "science" won't define me
no matter how hard you try
nor shall your law confine me
as I breath a heavy sigh
your "faith" can not condemn me
for I have faith in my own
we will turn back your attack
'til we free your heart of stone

intersex fashion

2010-02-05T12:31:00.000-08:00

Judith Butler's book "Gender Trouble" is a seminal work in feminism that helped kick start gender studies and queer theory as subjects of study. The book is too esoteric to get into on a blog. That being said, the example she uses in her conclusion, of wearing drag as a way to subvert the gender dichotomy holds great implications for intersexuals, and society at large.

Drag, for those who have been living under a rock, is the wearing of clothes typically associated with the opposite gender. The term was actually coined by Shakespeare, since women weren't allowed to act in his day, men played the female rolls, which old Bill Shaky designated in his manuscripts as "drag" short for DRessed As Girl.

Drag can be done for entertainment like Shakespeare, or "trouser rolls" for women in opera since there is a serious shortage of castrati these days. There are other people who wear drag for personal reasons, such as cross dressers or transgendered people before they transition, either they prefer the other gender's clothing or it better fits their gender identity, or both. Butler, however, was talking about drag and gender performativity for sociopolitical reasons, namely challenging people's assumptions about gender (it could be said that a drag show is political, as well as entertainment).

Drag only exists because of a quirk of human biology and culture. Humans have far less sexual dimorphism then many species (that is to say, human males and females look fairly similar to each other). What differences there are between men and women are covered by clothing, thus clothing and hair style becomes the primary method to tell men from women. What, you may ask, does this have to do with intersex? Since what clothing one is expected wear is connected to biology, what does the discerning intersexual wear to be gender conforming or variant? Many intersexuals feel that they are real men or women and live as such, and for them, what attire is normal and what is drag is self evident. For those intersexuals, like me, who have a more complicated gender identity, this becomes more tricky. There is no hermaphrodite or genderqueer department at the store, therefore, it could be argued that anything an intersexual wears is drag, since none of it was made for their sex. Luckily for those of us who were made into women (a vast majority), androgyny is quite stylish for women, with pantsuits, waistcoats (vests), and even tuxedos (thanks to Yves St. Laurent)are becoming a staple of women's fashion, it is easier to create a more androgynous, intersex style.

It should be remembered, as Butler said, that drag is a performance. Drag artists generally do not see themselves as the gender they are acting, this is why drag has the power to upset gender. This is something intersexuals always need to remember, gender itself is a performance. What you wear will label you as deviant or conforming. Whether or not you are actually male, female or lucky enough to be something in between, what you wear will determine if people see you as male, female, or a drag artist (which they may not like). Always be aware of the message you are sending.

intersex and political parties

2010-02-01T07:52:00.000-08:00

One interesting thing about being a member of a very small minority group is that we are only recognized by very small minority political parties. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have ever made a stand on intersexuality or made intersex rights a part of their platform or agenda. However the Green and Socialist parties have included intersex on their platforms of issues they would fight for if they ever got into office. This is not to say that intersexuals should become socialists or greens, but that they should be aware of this fact, and encourage Democrat and Republican leaders to support intersex issues. Ideas, like music and fashion, originate on the fringes and become more mainstream. As such, as intersex becomes more well known, it is inevitable that the mainstream parties will recognize us and eventually we will get our full human rights. For your reading pleasure, I have included these parties statements on intersex:

Green Party 2008 platform:
"We support the right of all persons to self-determination with regard to gender identity and sex. We therefore support the right of intersex and transgender individuals to be free from coercion and involuntary assignment of gender or sex. We support access to medical and surgical treatment for assignment or reassignment of gender or sex, based on informed consent.

We support the inclusion of language in state and federal anti-discrimination law that ensures the rights of intersex individuals and prohibits discrimination based on gender identity, characteristics, and expression. We are opposed to intersex genital mutilation."

Socialist Alliance 7th National Conference:
Intersex people are people born with physiological differences that may be seen as being both male and female at once, not wholly male or female or as neither male nor female.

Intersex people are subjected to discrimination in employment, in housing, in the provision of medical services, and the provision of government services.

There are no laws preventing discrimination against intersex people.

Intersex children may be subjected to non-consensual surgery so that their bodies conform to dominant ideas of what constitutes a ‘male’ or ‘female’ body. Non-consensual genital surgery is particularly controversial and where there is little debate against prohibitions on female circumcision, similar procedures on intersex people happen with little community comment.

The Socialist Alliance rejects pathologising definitions of intersex such as “disorders of sexual development”. The difficulty for Intersex is not differences in anatomy but rather how those differences are perceived by the community.

Social prejudice against non conforming bodies such as intersex, are the issues that needs attention. Intersex people should not be compelled to change their bodies, their behavior, or themselves to meet mainstream social expectations.

The Socialist Alliance stands for:

1. All non-consensual surgery on children, where the child is denied the informed and cognizant right to consent or reject) ceasing immediately save for those cases where surgery is life preserving.
2. Children being able to declare their sex, even if that is none, when they are fully informed and able to understand those concepts.
3. Any individual having their passport marked with X rather than sex or gender if they so desire.
4. An affirmative action policy in public housing, work opportunities, education, and the provision of medical and government services.
5. Education campaigns to be conducted in schools and wider society to debunk the myth of sex and gender binaries, informing individuals about sex and gender diversity, and opposing bigotry because of perceived sex and gender differences.
6. Intersex athletes like Caster Semenya not being publicly outed. That there are no compulsory sex testing procedures in sport.
7. Legislation that provides protection against discrimination and vilification and promotes equal opportunities for intersex people.
8. Access to appropriate medication and surgery when and if required based on the needs of the individual and not on the expectations of diagnostic protocols. This includes the abandonment of the diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” for those intersex who reject their birth assignment.
9. All people, particularly legislators and medical professionals, acknowledging that sex and gender is more than men and women , male and female.

more on intersex and the olympics

2010-01-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

My last post on the Olympics was in September, with the winter Olympics coming up, I realized I left two important facts, and their frightening potential outcome.

Officially, the Olympics have not done any gender testing since the 1996 games in Atlanta. They now only test on 'questionable' women, like Caster Semenya. One article I read compared this to the old blood quantum standards in anti-miscegenation laws to preserve the separation of the dominant class. They were only applied to blacks who looked too white, not whites who looked to black, just like these standards of women being too masculine, rather then men being too feminine. This is blatantly discriminatory, why should women undergo humiliating tests because some people view their behavior or appearance as being too gender nonconformist? The other fact is that they allow transgender athletes to compete providing they have had genital surgery and have been on hormones for two years. Personally I agree that transgendered people have every right to compete if they qualify, however, they should only undergo surgery if that's what they want (some opt not to).

This creates a disturbing, but logical platform for the International Olympic Committe to mandate that intersexuals simply need to be surgically and hormonally modified to compete. This would be morally repugnant, a continuation of the violation of intersexuals bodily and human rights. There are many alternatives such as simply stopping all sex investigations, or creating a new category for intersexuals to compete in. The basis of gender testing is out of a sense of fairness, so why not divide athletes by ability, like weight classes in boxing and wrestling rather then by sex? In any case the Olympics showcase the physical potential of the natural human body (if this wasn't the case why not use steroids to do better?). To stop intersexuals from competing as they are made hides their physical capabilities from the world.

is the intersex movement radical?

2010-01-18T08:05:00.000-08:00

Today I am going to touch on the controversial world of sexual politics. I wanted to talk about an odd thing I occasionally read about on the web. This is an accusation by social conservatives that the intersex movement is radical. This argument is best summed up on the the Wikipedia entry on "intersexuality":

"social conservatives have claimed that the talk about third sexes represents an ideological agenda to deride gender as a social construct, whereas they believe binary gender (i.e. there is only male and female)is a biological imperative"

The crux of their argument rests on the biological necessity of male and female, and they are part right. Until humans start budding, cloning, or human parthenogenesis becomes a reality we will rely on males and females having sex or else our species will die out. However this does not mean that they have to cling to the gender roles and expectations associated with their sex. This also does not mean that there can't be a third, or more sexes, many cultures throughout history have had such a system.

The most important part of this accusation is that the intersex movement has a radical agenda to destroy gender. This is simply not the case. None of the few intersex organizations out there are calling for an end to recognizing males and females, and their differences. We are asking for the right to decide what happens to our bodies, and what gender category we want to be in (including a third sex, but, as I said, this does not mean an end to the genders we currently recognize, just a new one, and a slight expansion of the ones we have). Granted, there are radicals out there who do want to deride the gender binary, and sometimes use the existence of intersexuals in their arguments, however what most intersexuals are asking for is far more modest by comparison.

Personally I sympathize somewhat with those radicals, a world that does not recognize gender would be much friendlier to intersexuals, and we would all be much freer and more self actualized without the constraints of gender roles. However I realize such a thing would never happen and might create more problems then it would solve. I would be happy if society recognized my bodily rights and had a proper category to place me in.

gender versus sex, the ultimate showdown

2010-01-13T08:17:00.000-08:00

By far the most difficult concept to get right when it comes to intersex is the difference between sex and gender. This is one area that trips up many people (both gender conformists and non-conformists alike) and prevents them from "getting it."

Let me clear this up with a little Gender Studies 101: sex is biological, whether your gonads, chromosomes and genitals are male, female or intersexed. Gender, on the other hand is social, how other perceive you, and how you see yourself, masculine, or feminine, or, often somewhere in between, like a tomboy or a metrosexual. There is also considerable variation with interests such as a guy who likes to dance or a girl who likes cars, and it can also be situational, like a woman who takes charge when the pressure is on, or a guy who is secure enough with himself to cry. In spite of the incredible variation in gender, most people still see themselves as men or women, and most of society would agree with them (there are some people who consider themselves genderqueer, but they are few and far between).

There are many different ways to look at gender. It used to be "men are from mars and women are from Venus" They are so completely different that they aren't even from the same planet. The more common way now is to look at it as a spectrum. However I think this leaves a very big piece of the puzzle out. The piece is power. It is by domination that gender is defined. Even in a single sex group there is always a dominant leader, usually chosen subconsciously based on a myriad of social status factors(race, (dis)ability, wealth ect.) and personality. This leader is seen as more masculine, the alpha (fe)male.

Now you must be asking yourselves, what does all this have to do with intersex? Well intersex is a sex, not a gender, however there some obvious overlaps. For example most transexuals would be quick to point out that their brain structures resemble that of the sex they transitioned into, not the one they were born with. Also the more older brothers a man has, the greater the odds are that he will be gay. The theory behind this is because the more male babies a women has, the better her body will be at protecting itself from him and their cellular incompatibilities. In short he is bombarded with more female hormones in utero, feminizing him, resulting in a gay guy. These overlaps in gender and sex are especially important to intersexuals. We are no different then "normal" people, many see ourselves as male or female, just a little different then most. However, as I pointed out, there is an overlap with sex and gender, and many other intersexuals have a more complicated sense of their gender. In short, most of the medical abuse against intersexuals are out of fear that they will be "abnormal" or mistreated by others. This shows a remarkable ignorance to how varied gender is as well as strong latent homophobia and transphobia which, is not only wrong, but also stupid since many intersexuals lead mundane male or female lives.

intersex and music

2010-01-07T08:42:00.001-08:00

Hello readers. I'm going to switch gears for today and talk about one of the great loves of my life, music (don't worry, I'll go back to my usual serious self after this post). It has occurred to me that, as far as I know, there has never been an out intersexed professional musician. There was a rumor that Lady Gaga is an intersexual, based on some jokes she made during and interview and tweeted about, and an 'accidental' flashing during a concert. She claims to still have her genitals intact (almost unheard of in the US) and her manager has denied these claims, leading me to agree with the majority of music blogs, that it was a publicity stunt. I find this kinda sad since, at 1 in 2000 births, we are not as uncommon as most people think, and with the very emotional circumstances we undergo, and our unique perspective, we could write some great songs that could increase intersex visibility, and should never be used for publicity. If I am wrong, and Lady Gaga is an intersexual, I would hope she would use her position to further our cause, not make jokes and start rumors to further her career. Until I (or another intersexual) starts winning Grammys, there are a few good songs out there that I think really capture the intersex experience. The following songs make up my small, but nice "intersex" playlist on itunes. If you can, you should listen to them and comment this post with your opinions on them, and if you know a song that should be on the list and isn't, let me know, I'd love to hear it, enjoy!

Androgyny by Garbage
Postings on the Bodies Like Ours intersex discussion forum crowned this song the intersex anthem. While it does not directly mention intersexuality, the song is all about gender nonconformity in positive light. I think the refrain really sums it up nicely:
"Boys in the girls room, Girls in the mens room
You free your mind in your androgyny
Boys in the parlor, Girls getting harder
I'll free your mind and your androgyny
Boys - behind closed doors and under the stars
Girls - it doesn't matter where you are
Boys - collecting jewels that catch your eye
Girls - don't let a soulmate pass you by"

Half Jack by The Dresden Dolls
According to their singer Amanda Palmer, this song is actually about her estranged father. The lyrics are so poignant toward the intersex movement that personally I have trouble interpreting it any other way. It is even used as background music on some pro-intersex videos on youtube. For example, how could the following lyrics be about anything else?:
"its half biology and half corrective surgery gone wrong
you'll notice something funny if you hang around hear for too
long ago in some black hole before they had these magic pills to take it back
I'm half Jill and half Jack
two halves are equal, a cross between two evils,
its not an enviable lot
but if you listen, you'll learn to hear the difference
between the halfs and half nots"

Hermaphroditos by Frank Black
This song is quite powerful, it can be interpreted to include the issues of surgery, suicide and how intersexuals are historically mythologized, but its lyrics are quite strong, not to be listened to by the faint of heart:
Hermaphroditos is my name
"How do you love me
Deeply with your scalpel?
I got a mouthful
Of suicidal drugs
I am a dog
I am a sculpture
You hate my features
You name me for a God"

Herm Aphrodite by Stephen Lynch
Some intersexuals may not like this last song since it is meant to be funny. I like it, and say take it in the spirit it was intended, its all in good fun. It also makes some comments on gender roles in society and one verse has a good (probably unintended) message for keeping intersexuals unmodified:
"Somethings are white, somethings are black
some girls wear makeup, mine shaves her back
but she is still beautiful, she is still fine
it's too bad her package is bigger then mine"

intersex anger

2010-01-02T09:28:00.000-08:00

It has recently come to my attention that some readers consider this to be a very angry blog. I am sorry that it has been interpreted as such. It is true that I (and most intersexuals) are angry about our situation, and sometimes I use this blog to vent. The purpose of the blog is to raise awareness of issues and problems that many people don't even know exist, it is supposed to be a teaching tool, and if my readers don't see it as such, then I have failed in my objective. I am not an overly angry person, It is just frustration over my situation in general and a world that often doesn't "get it". This frustration is not focused at any particular people, no one is to blame. In fact everyone involved in the medical treatment of intersexuals has charitable intentions and feel that they are doing the best thing for the child. We are just victims of groupthink and social views of normalcy. I am sorry if my readers got the wrong idea about me, or intersexuals in general, and I will try to watch my tone more closely in the future.

Who is Intersexed? new thoughts for the new year

2009-12-29T13:24:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I finished the book "Intersex, for Lack of a Better Word" by Thea Hillman. I found it very thought provoking. Hillman was born with a case of Congenital Adrenal Hypreplasia (CAH) so mild it was considered borderline. As such she had "normal" female genitals and did not undergo any surgeries as an infant. She repeatedly mentioned in the book that she often was unsure whether she really was intersexed, and sometimes felt she shouldn't use the label. This presents an interesting point. Intersex in really an umbrella term used to cover a wide variety of medical conditions that have very little in common except that they all result in a body that is biologically neither male or female. While the most visible intersexuals are those, like me, who were born with ambiguous genitals and had them surgically mutilated as an infant, but this does not mean that those with more hidden conditions are any less intersexed (there are many people out there who are intersexed and don't even know it). Some women with Turner's Syndrome (just one X) do not see themselves as intersexed, yes they have unusual sex chromosomes, but they are not hermaphroditic. I have even heard of a provocative button that asks if xxy (Klienfelter's Syndrom) is intersexed since depending on how you look at the chromosomes, they could be totally both male and female, not necessarily a hermaphrodite (the same could also be said of chimeras and some mosaics). As a mosaic with a complete x chromosome and my second sex chromosome made of segments of both x and y, perhaps I also fall into this category. In short, biology does not determine who is intersexed, people (usually doctors) do. It is doctors who decide which bodies are so ambiguous that merit medical intervention. It is often this shared pathologized experience, with repeated examinations and often losing all sexual sensation due to surgeries, that brings intersexuals together to find support and form an intersex community and movement. However this is not always the case. Some intersexuals (like those with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) appear normal at birth and are not mutilated, so how do they fit into this paradigm of community through shared experience? Hillman points out that we all have different experiences, resulting in different emotional issues that affect our identity. Some intersexuals have more in common with the fat acceptance movement (both are told they are not attractive and encourage to change themselves, but feel fine the way they are). Others are emotionally more similar to those with disabilities (both are in world built around assumptions and expectations that they physically cannot meet (heterosexual intercourse, in this case). Also, many intersexuals are psychologically very similar to sex abuse victims (both had others preform invasive acts on their genitals without their consent). So, what is intersex and who is an intersexual? Like all questions involving identity politics, you will get many different answers. I think the best answer is an intersexual is someone born with a condition that makes them not fit into societies catagories of male or female and who chose to take on the label of intersex as a part of their identity and want the community and support that goes with it.

Christmas Wishes

2009-12-19T12:31:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog 4 months ago, I was unsure what sorts of reactions I could expect from people. In spite of this uncertainty, I wrote and invited family and friends to read it, and slowly more people started following. I was amazed and overwhelmed by the acceptance and supportive feedback, I felt so loved. I just wanted to say thank you to all intersex allies out there, your support is more appreciated then you will ever know. in short, I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

legality of intersex surgery

2009-12-15T10:47:00.000-08:00

Non consensual genital mutilation is ethically abhorrent, this begs the question, is there any grounds to render it illegal?

To drag their misguided surgeon to court for restitution, and perhaps set a legal precedent against genital mutilation is a pipe dream for many intersex activists. The trouble is that it is very much an uphill legal battle. Since intersex surgery is accepted medical procedure, it is not considered malpractice. Also, since the surgery is done on infants, by the time they are mature enough to realize what has happened and speak out, the statute of limitations has long passed. Because of all of these difficulties, it would be hard to find a lawyer to take such a case. It would also be almost impossible to find expert testimony, doctors know the cost, both financially and professionally, of a lawsuit, and will circle the wagons to protect their own. They have been doing this to the intersex community for decades, in spite of a warning by the Yale Law and Policy Review that the conditions for consent are arguably not given.

A favorable legal trend for intersexuals might be starting. In Germany Christiare Volling successfully sued the surgeon who removed her uterus and ovaries without her consent.

With a favorable lawsuit seeming highly improbable, there has been some movement to create legislation to change this. An example was an attempt to add intersex to the Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act. So far congress has not taken notice of the issue.

Right now there is only one country in the world that has made intersex surgery illegal, Columbia. They declared that intersexed people are a minority that need special protection against discrimination and harm from their differences. The Colombian Constitutional Court claims that parental consent depends on the urgency of the situation, the invasiveness of the procedure, and the age and autonomy of the child in question. The Colombian model allows parents to consent only if all the risk, and alternatives are made known, and even they they have to give consent in writing several times over a period of time (not panicky decisions), and they cannot consent after the child turns 5. We can only hope that the US will see the wisdom of the Columbia law.

the Genderfree Manifesto

2009-12-11T11:19:00.000-08:00

I have decided to put a copy of the Genderfree Manifesto on my blog. It was written almost a year ago. It is quite radical (the wording is based on the Communist Manifesto) and I do not agree with all of it, however I think it makes some good points about gender and power in society, so I decided to post it to give my readers something to think about.

THE GENDERFREE MANIFESTO

A spectre is haunting the gender conservatives -- the spectre of gender freedom. All bigoted men and women have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Sunni and Sufi Islam, Catholic and Protestant, Israeli Orthodoxies, "True-Blue" Men, and Anti-Tranny Lesbians.

Where is the transgender in politics that has not been decried as immoral by her opponents in power? Where is the intersex celebrity that has hurled back the branding reproach of faggot, and accepted hir multigender birth? Where in the hallways of power are butches and drag queens respected as true men and women?

Two things result from this fact:

I. The intersexed and transgendered (i.e., the genderfree) are already acknowledged by all bigoted radicals to be a state of being.

II. It is high time that the genderfree should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of gender freedom with a manifesto of gender choice.

To this end, genderfreedom activists of various nationalities will assemble in the Internet wilderness to sketch this genderfree manifesto, to be published in Facebook, Multiply, Myspace, Wikipedia, and other social networks where freedom is uncensored.

PREAMBULE: Dec 31, '08
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

A century ago women were third class citizens, forced to watch as men decided their futures for them. Two decades ago, the non-Caucasoid race were the underclass. This 2008, two women and a black man made a bid for the highest offices in the most powerful nation in the world.

Right now, the genderfree are third class citizens, freaks, beasts of unnature.

A few decades from now, an intersex or transgendered person can run for president.

It is not a pipe dream, nor an impossibility. It is the natural progression of events, from the unimaginable to the certain.

It is high time that the genderfree can rise up as the special ones, as nature's noble-born.

For we have elements of both genders, and we see the world through more angles than the genderstuck.

This manifesto argues for the equality--if not superiority--of the genderfree.

WE THE GENDERFREE BELIEVE THAT WE ARE EQUALS OR MORE…

For we do believe that any and all religious and societal norms can be reconciled with gender choice and gender freedom.

For the religion of Islam recognizes the intersexed as such. The intersexed in Islam are called "khuntsa". Khuntsa have their own rituals and rules which are completely different from women (called "akhwat") and men ("ikhwan"). Effectively, there are three genders in Islam. Khuntsa, akhwat, and ikhwan. Intersexed, female, and male.
And if Islam recognizes them, why don't other religions?

For the religion of Islam obligates transgender men and women to have surgeries to become the gender they feel to be, especially in Iran, under the auspices of the Ayatollah.

For we do believe that people suffer needlessly with intersexed and transgendered conditions, yet they should be free.

For the AIS youngsters who are confused with their bodies still close their eyes and weep since no secret is deeper than the secret of the intersexed, in many societies.

For transgendered youth who hate their mirror reflections are still forced to hide away within pretense and lies, to avoid the transsexual stigma given by many societies.

For many transgenders die every year of murder, merely because of their transgendered status.

For intersexed babies are mauled without their own consent, by the authority of medicine and misguided parenting--and this is a violation of bodily rights.

For intersexuality is a common biological condition, and transgenderism has a basis in biology.

For the existence of intersex people was known to many ancient and pre-modern cultures, and 1.7 percent of human births are intersex.

For the Yale Law and Policy Review has determined the following: "Surgeons who perform genetic normalizing surgery, whether on an emergency basis or at the behest of the intersexed infant's parents, should be aware that, because genital-normalizing surgery is not necessary nor proven beneficial for the infant with clitoromegaly or micropenis, the required elements of legal informed consent are likely to have not been met."

For the biology of gender is far more complicated than XX or XY chromosomes.

For the psychology of gender is far more complicated than even the biology of gender.

For the brain of the female transgender who is born male has structures/size ratios exacting the brain of the normal female.

For the brain of the male transgender who is born female has structures/size ratios exacting the brain of the normal male.

For society has a definition of normality that never goes beyond the boundaries of "ideal" reality.

For the societal definition of normality is flawed and scientists have historically politicized the body.

For many in the general public still don't understand that sexual orientation is NOT gender identity. A transgendered woman is not a gay man; A transgendered man is not a bull-dyke; An intersexed person is neither bi nor straight, unless s/he identifies to be so.

For the general public do not even know the difference between the intersex (with *biological* disorders of gender differentiation), the transgender (with minds that are hardwired to the opposite of his/her biological gender), or the transvestite (with normal minds and normal gender biology, but a fetish for the opposite gender's clothing). Each of these is a choice, but the first two is allowed in Islam.

For The Prophet Muhammad SAW has recognized the existence of a khuntsa/mukkhanath (intersex/transgender) in his society, yet most societies today don't understand.

For the "ideal" reality is not true, and gender is a Bernoulli fluid.

For there is a third biological gender, inbetween the two common ones: Intersex.

For there is a biological girl right now in the rainforests of the Amazon, or the shining cities of Singapore, or the suburbs of Mexico, or a small house in Israel, or perhaps reading this Manifesto on a tiny iPhone screen, that has the brain of a boy.

For there is also a biological boy right now in the plains of Australia, or in a garden in England, or in the glass-marble towers of Japan, or perhaps reading a printed version of this Manifesto on sturdy white paper, that has the brain of a girl.

IN THIS UNDERSTANDING, WE THE GENDERFREE AND OUR SUPPORTERS HEREBY DECLARE:

That the rights of children with intersex conditions must be fought for, and the choice given for them to make on their own—without any kind of “corrective” surgery before the age of consent.

That the rights of transgenders to change their bodies in accordance to their true mental gender must be fought for as a God-given right.

That bigotry against the genderfree must be fought against in all forums of discussion and spheres of existence.

That the genderfree statuses, whether intersex or transgender, is a symbol of power, not a stigma, and the genderfree must be proud of the innate capabilities of hir/her/his kind.

Genderfreedom Fighters of the World, Unite!

A Rant About Surgeries

2009-12-01T13:09:00.000-08:00

Surgeons are constantly trying to "improve" intersex surgeries. They see intersex complaints as a challenge to improve their technique, blind to the pain and suffering they are causing.

Granted Intersex surgery has come a long way from its origins in the 50s which consisted of amputating the clitoris/penis (whatever, it's really the same organ). However the outcome is still just as terrible. No doctor can dispute that when you cut someone, your body patches it with inflexible, unfeeling scar tissue, and in an area with such high nerve concentration, some nerves inevitably get severed as well. As a result most people who have undergone this surgery are rendered completely inorgasmic, the victims of social fears and medical hubris.

This is not to say that I am totally opposed to surgery. Once an intersexual is old enough to make an informed decision, and want to bring their genitals more in line with their gender identity, they should have every right to do so, and I wish them luck with that. However it must absolutely be their choice, and not their panicky parents. However most intersexuals (at least the outspoken ones, myself included) have a somewhat ambiguous gender identity and are very hurt and angry about what was done to them, feeling that their ambiguous genitalia was better suited for their gender identity, but had them irreversibly taken away.

Even if the surgery was perfect (they often don't work very well anyways and usually require follow up surgeries) with no loss of sensation, and identical appearance and functioning compared to "normal" genitals, I would still say it is unethical to operate. Informed consent must be given by the individual. Genital "correction" is not like fixing an infants club foot or cleft pallet, it has lifelong consequences for the individuals sexual enjoyment and determines how society will perceive them. As such, parental consent should not be enough to authorize such a procedure.

Not only in there a problem of consent, there is also a problem of gender. Infants cannot express a preference for one gender or the other. If the doctors and parents make a mistake in their gender assignment it is far worse if they have surgically removed the parts that were desirable and would have made the transition much easier thus increasing anguish in an already emotional situation.

I also question why such surgeries are needed. Granted some situations, like mixed tissue gonads which go cancerous 98% of the time need to be removed. However, infants are not experiencing any confusion or emotional pain over their genitals. It's everyone elses comfort level that is being considered and not the one person who will be most affected. It is the heteronormative expectations of society that ultimately win.

My intention here is not to demonize anyone. Both the doctors and parents have totally charitable intentions. Parents are concerned that their child will be bullied and harassed and consider themselves a freak, not to mention the old panicky parent concern with locker rooms. These are all valid concerns. I think the Intersex Society of North America offers the best solution. Without operating, raise the child with one gender so they can function in society and hopefully avoid social ostracising. However they should also be open to the possibility they may change, and when they are old enough, let them make a decision about what they want. Suicide is also a major concern, the rate is very high for intersexuals. Doctors and parents think that having unambiguous genitals reduce psychosexual confusion and depression and reduce the rate of suicide. This argument does not hold water. The few case studies and follow ups out there suggest that unwanted surgery actually increases the chances of suicide by increasing the sense that you were so freakish, ugly, and unacceptably abnormal, that you had to be changed.

In short no one should be subjected to nonconsentual, purely cosmetic surgery, which, I would argue, is a breech of the Hippocratic Oath. I urge all my readers to inform themselves on this issue and to speak out about it. On behalf of the intersex community, I thank you for listening to this rant (that is already more then most of the medical establishment has done, most of them are too embarrassed, I think, to address our complaints head on).

Things I am Thankful For

2009-11-19T08:50:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is next week. Contrary to popular image, there is more to this holiday then stuffing your face and watching football. In honor of Thanksgiving, I have decided to list some of the many things I am thankful for in hopes that, in these hard times, my readers will remember that we all have much to be truly thankful for.

1. My family (both nuclear and extended) and friends (I know sometimes I don't express it very well, but I do love all of you, more then you'll ever know)

2. Chocolate

3. Being intersexed (this may sound odd, since it has also been a great source of emotional pain for me, but it is also a great gift, allowing me to question myself and society and see beyond some of the most pervasive artificial social constructs we have)

4. Rock 'n Roll

5. A roof over my head, and food in my stomach (that's more then a lot of people have, never forget that)

6. A hot cup of tea on a cold day

7. today, because it is another opportunity to make a positive change

8. dogs (truly the greatest, most loyal friend you can have)

9. Freedom of speech (the single best defense against tyranny, and essential to right sociopolitical wrongs)

10. beautiful violin solos

11. graduating from college debt free, what a great gift

12. an exhilarating fencing duel

13. The variety of humanity (it would be so boring if we were all the same)

14. jazz (hot or cool, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing)

15. being able to laugh at myself, its important for good mental health

16. fine wine

17. volunteering, its very important, we should all be thankful for the opportunity to give back, and be thankful for others who volunteer

18. The change of seasons, each one has special qualities to it that keep things interesting, I wouldn't want to live somewhere with more constant weather.

19. birds, their singing and flying free always makes me happy

20. Camping, a great way to relax and reconnect with nature

What are you thankful for?

more on queer inclusion

2009-11-12T07:36:00.000-08:00

In September I made a post about the connection between intersex and the LGBT movement. In retrospect I realized that I painted an overly rosey picture about that relationship. There are complaints by some on both sides about sharing an identification.

Some of these complaints have some justification. Intersexuals realize homophobia and transphobia are largely the motivations behind surgical mutilations. Their parents and doctors (especially if they are more traditional in regards to gender roles) are terrified their intersexed baby will end up gay or will transition away from their assigned gender. Books with intersex narritives are full of stories about parents who are very strict about their kids gendered behavior. They fear that streanghening this relationship between the LGBT and intersex in the public mind will weaken their anti-surgery message. It is also true that many intersexuals consider themselves straight and do not want to be associated with LGBT's. They certainly have the right to identify any way they want. These are both valid arguments, however, they should be aware that intersexuals, homosexuals, transexuals, and all queers, are really fighting the same fight, but I will get to that later.

Many gays are not afraid so much as they are confused. They realize they have different agendas then intersexuals and even transexuals (who have been associated with them for a lot longer) and don't see why they are lumped togeather. This is especially true of some lesbians, many of whom are very knoweldegable about radicle feminist theory, some of whom exclude transexuals, feeling that transmen (most of whom were butch lesbians) are traitors who have internalized sexism issues, and transwomen are wannabes who will never be "real" women. Like some intersexuals, these gays do not realize that all queers are fighting the same adversary.

This common fight is against heteronormativity. All of these groups do have specific issues that pertain to them on a more personal level, but the fight is the same. They all cannot be themselves within societies gender expectations. Members of all of these have been ostracized, mutilated, arrested, raped, and killed out of fear and social disaproval. More groups are realizing this common fight and becoming more inclusive. This is wonderful. Queers are such a small percent of the over all population, the more people we have on board, the more effective we will be in our struggle to live and function in society the way we want, as equals without being hurt out of fear and misunderstanding from society at large.

The Intersex List of Demands

2009-11-08T10:33:00.000-08:00

This list was written in 2004 by some intersex activists in Atlanta. It is a good list, and gives great advise for anyone who wants to be understanding and not accidentally offend intersexuals, so I decided to post it.

INTERSEX LIST OF DEMANDS

Don’t assume you know someone’s sex based on how you perceive them or their gender.
Don’t assume all women have a vagina, uterus, etc.
Don’t assume all men have a penis, testes, etc.
Don’t fetishize our bodies.
Don’t use the word hermaphrodite to describe us unless we identify that way and give permission.
Don’t feel sorry for us.
Respect our sex identification.
Don’t exploit our existence to discredit biological determinism or other academic ideologies.
Know the difference between sex and gender.
Know the difference between intersexed and transgendered.
Don’t ask us or try to picture what our genitals look like.
Don’t ask us if we have sexual sensations.
Don’t assume you have the right to know intimate details of our bodies. We have the right to privacy and safety like all other people.
Realize we have historically been mutilated, fetishized, and made into freak shows. Understand how this affects us and our safety.
Don’t say “cool” or “weird” or treat us differently when we tell you we are intersexed.
Educate yourself!!! Read books on intersex.
Girl, woman, female; boy, man, male are not always interchangeable.
Don’t assume all intersex people are queer.
Realize that not all people with intersex condition are out.
Realize that not all people with intersex conditions even know that they are intersexed.
Remember that we are 1 in 100, and that is not rare at all!!!
Don’t call our conditions “disorders,” “retardations,” “abnormalities,” etc.
Realize that bodies come in all different shapes, sizes and with different parts.
Realize how fucking strong we are to speak up about the medical abuse and victimization we have been through and that we deserve mad props.
Don’t write us off as rare and unimportant. Don’t put off educating yourself for other “more important” issues.
In situations such as gender caucuses, keep in mind that not all the people who identify as women have similar genitalia, etc. Understand that we have been taught that our bodies are “wrong” and “ugly” and that it reinforces this when people say they love being women because of their vagina, uterus, etc., this reinforces those feelings. Woman does not necessarily = female. Man does not necessarily = male.

religion and intersex

2009-11-06T08:36:00.000-08:00

Today I am going to tread into the dangerous, controversial waters of religion and queer identities, and more specifically intersexuality.

In the Abrahamic religions the trouble starts out in Genesis with the creation of Adam, and then Eve as his companion. This story has been used to justify the subjugation of women and the exclusion of gays (remember the old homophobic chant "Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve?"). This also affects intersexuals because it denies that we exist. If God only made men and women, then hermaphrodites must really be one or the other, and the victim of a deformity. Some Jewish sect believe this is inaccurate, claiming that Adam was a hermaphrodite, poiniting out how the pronouns used for him switch from masculine to feminine.

In Matthew 19:12, Jesus specifically refers to intersexuals, calling them eunuchs born of their mothers womb, as opposed to being castrated. In ancient times enunchs were given important religious, and royal administrative jobs, as well as guarding harams (somewhat simular to two spirit people in Native American cultures, both were also considered to be a third gender, neither male nor female). However Jesus also says eunuchs should not get married, and urges them twoard celibacy.

In Islam, Quranic law provides for the existance of intersexuals, a third gender called khuntsa. They are allowed to live as men or women and could marry men or women. They prayed between the men and women in the Mosque and were required to wear some male and some female clothing. They had all of the rights and most of the obligations of both a Musilm man and Muslim women within their society.

The very existance of intersexuals threatens fundamentalists of most religions since one of their primary goals is ordering and controling sex. Many fundamentalists thus claim intersex is unnatural and contrary to God's will (Ironic since intersexuality is the most physiologically obvious form of queer, there can be absolutly no question as too whether its a choice). They generally support surgery as a way to continue the social construct of dichotomic sex, which they see as a prerequisite for personhood.

In other words religious societies have created spaces and roles for intersexuals, however these positions have been disappeared, and are unlikely to reappear until intersexuals are no longer hidden. Perhaps its time to take a lesson from our past and recognize that intersexuals are also created by God in his image.

Here Comes the (sort of) Bride

2009-11-02T10:23:00.000-08:00

Very soon, the courts of this country will discover the problem the International Olympic Committee has had for years, man and woman are not easy to define. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) refers to marriage between 1 man and 1 woman as if they are obvious, self evident catagories. If this horrible law, and other state laws persist, not only will it continue to hurt gays, but it also puts intersexuals in an ackward spot in regards to the legal validitiy of their relationships. What happens to the intersexuals who are in straight marriages? Under a strict interpretation of DOMA their marriages could be declaired nonvalid in some states. What about intersexuals who consider themselves gay and want to enter a same gender marriage? By definition, can an intersexual be gay or staight? Technically they would have to marry another intersexual with the same condition for it to be a same sex marriage, and that could look gay or straight to the outside world, depending on how the participants choose to live. For those who transition later in life, it gets even more complicated. Some states uphold the gender transsexuals transitioned into as their legal sex, while others do not. For example Texas and Kansas courts have said chromosomes are the determiner of sex, allowing transsexuals in same gender relationships with a cisgendered (gender "normal") person to get married, but ironically transsexuals in a different gendered (straight) relaitionship with a cisgendered person cannot. For intersexuals this gets even more confusing since some of us, like me, have ambiguous chromosomes. I wonder, in Texas and Kansas, could I legally marry anyone, or no one. It is true what they say, sunlight is the best antisceptic. These homophobic laws are meaningless when faced with the reality that their catagories are arbitraty and all but impossible to define. Any two consenting adults who want to get married should be able to without regards to sex or gender. To do otherwise is a blatently discriminatory and mean spirited. It is unjust, and for transexuals and intersexuals, needlessly complicated. Support love, not fear and hate.

halloween, magical hermaphrodites and queer horror

2009-10-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

In honor of Halloween, I would like to address the main cause for intersex surgeries, fear. Doctors are afraid the children will not be normal (within a patriarchal, heteronormative context). They may subconsciously fear the children's condition as something monstrous and abnormal that need to be immediately corrected. The parents, on the other hand, consciously fear that their children will be mistreated and ostracized by society, and seek to prevent that. Their intentions are entirely charitable, but they are still letting fear cloud their judgement and leads to some very bad decisions.

This fear is pervasive. Dreger was absolutely right when she said "In terms of sex, me have much in common with the Victorians. We still worry a great deal about sex and order, and about ordering sex. We still insist that there are no hermaphrodites, lest they grow and multiply." This fear of the intersexed as something strange and out of legend dates back to antiquity with Hermaphroditus in Greek mythology, and Ardhanarisvara in Hinduism. This has lead to the notion that the intersexed have magical, spiritual, or psychic abilities. For example many Native American cultures hold a special, sacred positions for two spirited people (can include transgendered, intersexed, or homosexual people, depending on the specific tribe). They are considered especially powerful shamans. To this day in India people show great respect for hijras (a third sex made up of castrated men, considered to be neither male nor female) out of fear of their power to hex. This is also true in Wicca were the balance of masculine and feminine energy is considered essential for spells to work. Many transgendered people like this idea of a mystical history they are transitioning to be a part of, however I find this view to be detrimental. No offense to those who hold these belief systems, but queer people are no more magical or psychic then anyone else (how cool would it be if we were though?). In mainstream western culture, which does not have any place for the intersexed, the thought of hermaphrodites being powerful increases the view that they are monstrous and unnatural.

This perception of queer as something monstrous has been perpetuated through recurring characters in horror movies. The most obvious queer monster is the lesbian vampire (Dracula's Daughter, The Vampire Lovers, Twins of Evil, The Hunger ect.). These movies are fairly common, based on straight men's fantasy, but they still harm queers with their assumptions. Another obviously queer horror character is the transgender psycho (Psycho, Dressed to Kill, Silence of the Lambs ect.). These movies are very harmful to the entire LGBT community in general, and to transsexuals in particular by portraying them as murderus maniacs. In any case, the message is the same, that any sort of gender nonconformity is dangerous and threatening, and not he natural order of things. This is not the case. Intersexed people are no greater threat then "normal people" (except maybe to themselves, the suicide rate is very high for intersexuals, that is the real horror story). This message of queers as being somehow subhuman, or psychotic and violent gets absorbed by society and perpetuates abuse and mistreatment of queer people, including the intersexed.

In short, I hope everyone has a happy Halloween, just be aware of the stereotypes scary stories play into and don't let those lies to translate into the harm of real people.

feminism and intersex

2009-10-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

As I have stated in a previous post, I consider myself a feminist. I have studied gender for years and have a bachelors degree in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Like most feminists I realize there many areas of inequality between men and women, and these are largely based on false assumptions and gender roles. As an intersexual, I realize that until these harmful gender roles and assumptions about men and women, what they want, how they look, and behave ect, are changed, there will be no hope for equality for us gender variants.

Unfortunatly, many feminists do not return this support for the intersexed. Most academic feminists ignore our plight entirely. They will speak out against female genital mutilations in Africa, but don't care about the intersex genital mutilations that are being done in there home country (a racist additude at best, they are preserving their privledged cultural status by claiming Africans have barbaric practices, while ignoring simular practices their culture has). The 1996 Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act was written by former congresswomen Patricia Schroeder, who recieved, and ignored several letters asking intersexuals to be included in the bill, making this practice of feminist ignoring into law.

More evidence is the notoroious annual Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. The festival's famous policy of Womyn born Womyn bars enterance to any transexuals and intersexuals who identify as women. They claim this is to celibrate the experience of being born female. Those women feel liberation, being completely free from the objectifying gazes and threat of rape that comes with a male presence at the music festival. This is very conroversial, with many feminists realizing that this contradicts what they have been fighting for. This has lead to "Camp Trans" forming and protesting outside the festival, and 'real' 'womyn' inside who protest the policy by wearing yellow armbands inside the festival.

The question that keeps coming to mind is why is the feminist movement so supportive of gays, but silent about other queer identities, especially intersex. I believe this is because many feminists agree with the work of Dr. John Money, who lead to the current treatment of intersexuals. His theory was that infants can be molded to have either a male or female gender identity. This thought that there is no ingrained psychological difference between men and women is very appealing to feminists. Dr. Money's theory, however, has been proven wrong by many subsequent studies, even his main research subject, David Reimer, rejected his theory (Reimer's penis was destroyed in a botch circumscision when he was an infant, so Money told his parents to raise him as a girl, but Reimer turned out a total tomboy, and eventually started living as a man).

As intersex issues become more mainstream, more feminists have started to support our cause, including writting those letters to add intersex to the bill, and protesting at the Michigan festival, however we still have a long way to go.

wannabes

2009-10-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

For this blog post I want to discuss a rare sort of person who occasionally posts on online intersex discussion forums. These are people who wish they were intersexuals. At first this revelation shocked me, there is certainly no social advantage to being intersexual, but on closer examination, I realized there are 2 different kinds of wannabes, and they each have their own reasons.

The first variety is a transgendered man who is living in denial. Such wannabes will post about how they have their doctors run a battery of tests to look for some indication of intersexuality. Of course the doctors don't find anything, intersex conditions are not something that stays hidden. If you appeared physically normal at birth, and went through a normal puberty, you are almost definitely not intersexed. In essence they are looking for some medical justification for why they feel that they are a woman. They have my deepest sympathy, our patriarchal society has so ingrained the ideal that men are superior, and to want to be a woman is such a step down, that they feel there must be something biologically different about them. However, real intersexuals, myself included, also find them to be detrimental to the intersex movement. As I have mentioned in a previous post, most intersexuals do not change gender from the one their parent assigned them, and transphobia, and fear of gender nonconformity in general, are one of the major causes behind intersex surgery. To further this connection in the public mind between transsexuals and intersexuals will only lead to more destructive genital surgeries. These poor people need to learn to accept their sense of gender and not project their feelings on the intersex community.

Another, rarer, and harder to explain group genuinely are wannabes. They are people, usually women, who genuinely want to be intersexed, even to the point of using hormones to alter their appearance, often to make a statement about gender. The most famous example of this is the performance artist Del LaGrace Volcano, who uses hormones and title of "intersex by design, not diagnosis" as a way to subvert our current gender paradigm, and show what a wide variety of gender presentation and variation there is. I am all for the genderqueer (those who choose to live as neither male nor female), and defiantly support a breakdown of gender roles (most of them are based on a patriarchal power imbalance, but then I'm not just a hermaphrodite, but also a feminist). However I also think this rare breed of wannabes need to be very careful. They need to realize they had the good fortune to be born into a socially condoned body, and as such were not mutilated in a misguided attempt at 'normalizing' their genitals. If they want to use the label they had better be very understanding and use it to further the cause of real intersexuals (and sorry, no, technically you can't be an "intersexual by design," by definition, it is a medical condition you are born with).

information is power

2009-10-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

The purpose of this blog is to increase awareness of intersex issues. In that spirit, I dedicate this weeks entry to list other sources you can go if you want to learn more information, and (gasp!) other people's opinions.

BOOKS:
"Intersex and Identity" by Sharon Preves
"Insersex" by Catherine Harper
"Intersex (For Lack Of A Better Word)" by Thea Hillman
"Intersex: A Challenge for Human Rights and Citizenship Rights" by Annette Bromdal
"Bodies in Doubt" by Elizabeth Reis
"Are You a Boy or Girl?" by Stephen Kerry
"Intersex: A Perilous Difference" by Morgan Holmes
"Fixing Sex" by Katrina Karkazis
"Lessons from the Intersexed" by Suzanne Kessler
"Sugar and Spice and Puppy Dog Tails" by Katherine Connella
"Intersex in the Age of Ethics" by Alice Dreger

BLOGS
The Intersex Roadshow
Intersex News
Intersex Pride
Intersex USA

WEBSITES
www.isna.org (Intersex Society of North America)
www.intersexualite.org (Organization Intersex International)
www.intersexinitiative.org
www.bodieslikeours (a disscussion forum)

gender roles, passing, and social acceptance

2009-10-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

Judith Lorber hit the nail on the head when she wrote "talking about gender, for most people, is the equivalent of a fish talking about water." Absolutely everything we choose to do with our lives, from hobbies and interests, to careers, to life goals, has a gendered component that is so ingrained in us we do not even realize it. From the moment a baby is born the first question people ask is whether it is a boy or a girl, and based on the answer people make thousands of assumptions about the baby, what clothes it will wear, what its personality will be like, what it will want out of life, how it will interact with people, who it will want to spend its life with, the list goes on and on. This is why contemporary society has such trouble dealing with intersex, they have to undo a lifetime of conditioned assumptions and get to know the person as a unique individual, not a category with specific expectations for behavior (wouldn't it be wonderful if we approached everyone with such an open mind?). This is also why society is so dedicated to preserving the lie that everyone is born male or female, they would have no idea what to make of a genderless person, or how to interact with such a person, thus they force us to pass as one of their categories. Awareness of intersex issues has slowly increased as the feminist movement challenges some of the more blatant gender roles society holds. This is means more and more intersexuals are able to live at least partly open lives. Granted, society still makes us check one box on formal documents, but nobody raises an eyebrow if we do not adhere to strict gender roles and social expectations; and if people are informed about intersex issues, most are sympathetic and understanding. I recently 'came out' to some close friends and they were very understanding, in fact they always knew I was different in a very gendered way (my disgust with dresses, skirts, and makeup were kind of a giveaway). I pass perfectly in society, no one has ever questioned me, however those who know intersexuals know we are different in our approach towards life, especially the very gendered parts of life. Intersexuals, at least those comfortable enough to write about themselves, generally feel somewhat different then their peers, and don't pass as well to those who know them well. In short, society needs to learn that gender is not two diametrically opposite categories (there is actually more variation in behavior within each sex then there is between them). In reality, there are three spectrum's, physical sex (intersex aside, "real" men and women still have much physical variation, some guys would kill to be able to grow a beard as nice as the bearded lady in the circus), gender roles/identity, and sexual orientation (according to Kinsey, almost no one is exclusively gay or straight, they just present as one or the other because, like intersexuals, it is easier to pick a category). In short, no one lives up to the gender ideal, no one is John Wayne or Marilyn Monroe. All this variation keeps life interesting and should be celebrated. Ideally no one should have to pass, they should be able to live comfortably with who they are without social pressure to conform.

Identity v. Disorder

2009-09-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

Today, I want to talk about a disappointing new phrase that is being spread around, and has even been endorsed by the usually enlightened Intersex Society of North America. This new expression is Disorders of Sexual Development or Disorders of Sexual Differentiation, commonly referred to as DSD. DSD is supposed to replace intersex, hermaphroditism, and pseudohermaphroditism in clinical nomenclature.

I find calling intersex a disorder to be highly offensive. Most intersex conditions are not life threatening, or debilitating. The birth of an intersex baby, however, is regarded as a "social emergency." The only real disorder intersex creates is a social disorder. Society has no category to put us in or roles to give us, so we are forced into one of their two boxes (usually female because, to quote one surgeon, "Its easier to poke a hole then to build a pole"). Intersex conditions are not like Down Syndrome or Spina Bifida where they will need special medical treatment and may not have all of the abilities of their 'normal' peers. Instead, intersexuality is a problem with identity.

Many pathologized conditions have unintentionally create a sense of unity and proud identity for those diagnosed, for example deaf culture which does not view deafness as a disability, just that different experience then most. The similar medical treatment and social experiences give them an identity and a strong sense of unity. Intersexuality is no different, already the intersex movement has banned together and has put increased pressure on the medical establishment to change their policies. Granted, some intersexuals do consider themselves to have a disorder or birth defect, however I think this is sad. They are buying into the belief that they are wrong, and cutting themselves off from a potential source of support, all because society has a problem categorizing them.

There is also a very real concern amongst some intersexuals that labeling them as disordered is a form of eugenics that could potentially result in an intersex genocide of sorts. Studies have shown that 96% of parents who are told their fetus has some form of genetic disorder will choose to terminate the pregnancy. I think this concern is a long ways off from actually happening, however it is not inconceivable. Current medical practices towards intersexuals already are not aimed at improving the child's quality of life, but rather at relieving the homophobic and transphobic anxieties of parents.

Intersexuals are already pathologized enough, what we need is less medical intervention, and more open, compassionate minds.

homosexuality and intersex

2009-09-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

Intersexuality has a long and unusual relationship with homosexuality. As intersex awareness increases more LGBT organizations recognize that intersex is another form of queer (any variation in sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression that deviates from the "norm"). This queer inclusiveness has lead to organizations adding some of the various letters including I (intersex), Q (queer), Q or ? (questioning), U (unsure), TS or 2 (two-spirit), A or SA (straight ally), A (asexual), P (pansexual or polyamorous), and O (omnisexual). Obviously some intersexuals, especially those who identify as straight and live in different gender relationships, are opposed to being lumped together with other sexual minorities, and see themselves as having a birth defect, not queer. I think this is silly, seeing as intersexuals, by nature, are unique, and that difference should be celebrated, and as I mentioned earlier, the very existence of homosexuality has shaped the treatment of intersexuals.

Homophobia has been a driving force in the "correction" of intersexuals. For example, when feminizing surgery was first done on girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, two reasons cited for preforming the surgery was to prevent excessive masturbation and to keep them from becoming lesbians (jokes on the surgeons though, CAH girls end up gay in much higher percentages then "normal" women). The current medical policy of genital surgery is heteronormative in that it presumes genitals incapable of heterosexual intercourse are not normal and no one could develop into 'normal' or even happy person without such things. It also presumes that heterosexual sex is something everyone wants, which is simply not the case.

Whether because of intersex psychobiology, or because gays are more accepting of gender variation, a disproportionate number of intersexuals live in same gender relationships. This is also why the relationship between intersexuals and the gay rights movement are so strong, many intersexuals identify as gays. I realize many intersexuals see themselves as straight, and many also live celibate, often due to the surgery (the outcome is never good), however we should embrace this affiliation with homosexuals, since many of us identify as such, and until the largest category of sexual minorities gain their full human rights, there will be no hope for the rest of us.

intersex and sports

2009-09-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

Caster Semenya's gender testing to defend her gold medal in the 800 meter in the World Championship in Athletics has generated new interest in the problems intersexuality causes in the highest echelons of sports. Gratefully, the South African leadership has been very supportive of her, but that does not take away the invasion of her privacy and human rights created by this investigation.

Semenya is not the first intersexual to have these issues. Erik Schinegger, an Austrian world champion women's downhill skier (he transitioned later in life), was disqualified from the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble (ironically, this was the first modern Olympic to introduce sex testing after an inaccurate complaint that many of the Soviet top women athletes were actually men). Edinanci Silva, a Brazilian Judo fighter, has been allowed to participate in Summer Olympics at Atlanta (1996) Sydney (2000) and Athens (2004) but only after undergoing surgery and hormone therapy. This would lead some to believe that sports organizations are becoming somewhat more sensitive to intersex athletes, however in 2006 Santhi Soundarajan won the silver medal in the 800 meter race at the Asian Games, but had it taken away when she failed a sex test.

The reasoning behind sex testing is quite obvious, they don't want men to sneak into women's events where they are perceived to have a natural advantage. As an intersexual, I find it frustrating that this is the reason to take away intersexuals medals. The most common intersex condition, and the one most of the afore mentioned athletes get caught with is androgen insensitivity syndrome. In this case, their bodies don't respond to testosterone (unlike "real" women who still do make and use some of the hormone). If anything, they are at a disadvantage competing in women's events, even for those with conditions where their bodies do respond to testosterone, and they are living successfully as a women, their levels of testosterone are usually not too far out of the range for a normal female.

Gender in general is becoming less and less of an issue as the athletic achievement gap between men and and women closes, and in some cases overlaps. My favorite example of this is Hermann (Dora) Ratjen who was forced by the Nazi's to participate in the women's high jump in the 1936 summer Olympics in Berlin. The Nazi high command believe he would easily beat all of the women, but instead he came in fourth, three 'real' women were better then him. Another case of this is the marathon finishing times between men and women, which are shrinking every year. In short the practice of gender testing causes many problems, and the reasoning behind it is becoming more of a moot point.

This is not to say I think men and women should compete against each other in the same event, that would create more problems then it would solve. I do think, however, that sex testing should be eliminated, it is degrading and humiliating to all athletes (just ask Princess Anne, who got out of testing in the 1976 summer Olympics in Montreal, claiming it was "unseemly"). It is even worse for an intersexed athlete who might not even know about their condition. They would be humiliated, and possibly ostracized if their ethnicity has strict rules about gender roles. It is also a terrible invasion of their privacy, if they don't want the world to know about their condition, they should have that right. The worst part of gender testing is that it is terribly unfair towards intersexed athletes, if they qualify, they should have every right to compete without having their medals taken away if they win. Even if gender testing is not eliminated, some sort of provision should be made to allow intersexuals the right to compete. To do otherwise adds to the practice of keeping intersexuals a hidden group of second class citizens. In some ways this is our bus, and like Rosa Parks, we have to say we have as much right to be here as you.

the problem with Middlesex

2009-09-12T13:02:00.000-07:00

For my first post after introducing myself I wanted to talk about the book that helped make intersexuality more well known. That book is Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides. I want to preface this by saying that I very much enjoyed reading Middlesex, it is very intelligent and well written, and I am glad that it has helped bring intersex issues into the public eye. That being said, the problem is there are some inaccuracies in Middlesex that need to be addressed because they could cause intersexuals and their families to be misunderstood. This should set the record straight and help you to avoid any major faux pas in dealing with intersexuals.

INCEST - In Middlesex Cal's grandparents are siblings and his parents are second cousins. This incest lead to Cal's birth with 5 Alpha Reductase, an intersex condition. The truth is the chances of having a child with an intersex condition, including 5 Alpha Reductase, are not increased greatly by incest. The birth of an intersexed child in no way means that the family is incestuous.

SEX CHANGES - Cal was raised female, but chose later to live as male. While some intersexuals choose to change genders from the one their parents assigned them at birth, statistically most do not do this (same as people who were born entirely male or female). If you are lucky enough to meet an intesexual, you should not assume they transitioned, because most likely they did not. Odds are they have lived that way their entire life.

SURGERY - It is a very sad fact but in America almost all intersexed babies, including me, are forced to undergo genital "normalization" surgery and are made to look more female, usually with terrible outcome in terms of sensation and functioning. Even worse, they are lied to by doctors and parents to promote "normal" gender identity formation. In Middlesex, Cal is lucky enough to have his condition undetected by an incompetent doctor. He later finds out about his condition by his own research and runs away before they can operate. This is how his experience differs from pretty much every other intersexual. Never assume that an intersexual has different, special, in-between parts, most of us wish we still did. Also, never ask us about this, it is an incredibly painful topic.

in the begining...my virgin post

2009-09-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Hello, and welcome to the first ever post of Intersex and the City. I have created this blog to create awareness and generate discussion about an issue that is very near and dear to my heart, intersexuality. If you have never heard the term intersex before, I am not surprised since we are systematically hid from society. For those who do not know, intersexed people are people like me who were born with physically ambiguous sexual traits. They can have male and female aspects to their chromosomes, gonads or genitals (I was born with ambiguity in all three). It is the new PC term for hermaphrodite (I am very sorry if I offend any of my fellow intersexuals, but I sometimes use that term because it gets peoples attention and they immediately have some idea of what I'm talking about).

So you know where I am coming from in future posts, I will tell you some of my history. I was born with very atypical mosaic Turners Syndrome. Like most intersexuals, I underwent surgery as an infant, and hormones as an adolescent to appear female.

I will try to post every week, so I hope you will follow it. I also encourage you to comment, especially if you disagree with me, the more ideas and discussion we can generate, the better. I will do my best to respond to any comments and questions you might have. I hope you enjoy my blog.