definitelymaddy

[definitelymaddy]

so often i see people commenting on a post about a cis intersex person affected by these policies & laws with something like “Why do cis people always need to centre themselves in trans issues” when like no! that is not what’s happening here!

i feel a large part of it is that intersex erasure is so prevalent that half the time someone’s intersex status is just omitted from reporting, or lost at some point before the story reaches various other sites

the lack of recognition of how bathroom bills affect intersex people is intersexism.

this laws are usually pushed under transmisic agenda, and it's fair that trans rights advocacy addresses transmisia in these campains and laws. but these laws also affect intersex people.

some intersex people look visibly sex variant. and they are also seen as a threat to the sex and gender essentionalism. transmisia and intersexism are intertwined and may become inseparable in some parts.

intersex people are also at risk in gendered spaces. we can also be harassed, banned, charged for "violation," face various violence.

it's important to recognize that risk and remember about intersex people in discussions of these laws.

[definitelymaddy]

i’ve put the intersex inclusive pride flag in a few online spaces i manage, and it’s led to so many people legitimately asking “what’s the purple circle mean?”

a large part of what we need from allies as intersex people is awareness, and this flag achieves it more than anything else in recent memory

Anyone talking shit about this flag-

-needs to shut the fuck up.

I do not care if it's "ugly", I don't care if it's "cluttered", being pretty isn't the point of a flag. It's a symbol of our community and it serves the purpose of representing us.

Yes, I know we are included in the original flag. I prefer the Gilbert Baker flag myself for its history and aesthetics and I feel it represents me as an intersex person. But this isn't about personal preference.

You do NOT know how many people know what intersex means because they asked why that flag waa put there. That's people who might've never asked that question. That direct representation of us DOES matter. It DOES help us. And your aesthetic preferences are not a good reason to get rid of a direct refrence to intersexuality in one of our broadly used queer community symbols.

[definitelymaddy]

i was wondering if time is usually personified as male or female, and honestly it got _weird_.

Father Time, Chronos, etc are all masculine

but then you have “time’s a bitch”, “time is a cruel mistress”, etc that are feminine coded

seems when they’re personified as a person they’re masculine, but in idioms or when referred to they’re feminine

so therefore i can only conclude that time is a femboy

[definitelymaddy]

this feels like it could be entirely filled out just by spending a week on Twitter 😌

I'd fill this out but I'd just be highlighting the whole board.

[definitelymaddy]

unfriendly pissed off reminder that “afab” does not mean “has a vagina/uterus” and “amab” does not mean “has a penis/testes”

agab is something that happened to you, not something you are. and frankly, it’s not generally useful even in a medical context. there isn’t really any context in which agab is more useful than just saying “has a uterus” or “has a penis”

stop using “agab” terminology to make your bio-essentialism sound progressive

[definitelymaddy]

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ban on consensual healthcare openly endorses mutilation of intersex children

H.R. 3492, like every state law banning gender-affirming care, carves out an exception for nonconsensual procedures on intersex children (link). First introduced in 2022, this federal legislation is now reintroduced with new language that explicitly admits that the exception is endorsing “genital mutilation” on intersex children.

They’re not even hiding it anymore: they know they wrote a bill that hurts kids rather than protecting them.

This Act aims to take away trans adolescents’ ability to access healthcare they desperately need. The care transgender adolescents receive is informed, consensual, and proven by research to be vital for their well-being. But Marjorie Taylor Greene would rather force a clitoral reduction on an intersex 6-month-old (link) than allow a trans adolescent to get a prescription for puberty-pausing medication. 

This legislation proves the only concern for lawmakers is forcing trans and intersex kids to obey sex stereotypes, conforming them to narrow perspectives of what “male” and “female” can look like. These lawmakers seek to control children’s bodies at the cost of their health and autonomy.

Trans and intersex youth deserve control over what happens to their own bodies, and this bill takes that control away from both.

[definitelymaddy]

Intersex trending?

• Friendly reminder bæddel, hermaphrodite, & futa are all slurs no matter the context.

• Intersex doesn't mean having a penis and vagina/cosexual/bigenital.

• When trans people go on about how "cis people get gender affirming care" "cis people get puberty blockers/hormones" etc, you are talking about intersex people. And most of the time we don't have the autonomy granted to us to choose. The same system oppresses us and forces us into the status quo. The only difference is for intersex people they are medically forced into one sex category, for the peritrans they are denied medical things to keep them in society's binaries. It's a lack of autonomy.

• IGM (intersex genital mutilation) is when doctors decide to genitally change intersex babies. These surgeries are only cosmetic, meaning the doctors do not care about how it functions, just the look.

• Every single anti trans law has made an exception for intersex people so they can continue oppressing us.

• Lying about being intersex doesn't make you safer. You as a trans dude lying about having gynemastica isn't making you safer. Intersex people are treated just as badly.

• Intersex people are still raped & mutilated by the medical system (yes even in '1st world' countries) and it's common practice.

• A species cannot be "all intersex", as being intersex refers to variations in ones sex.

• Whenever you see a "nonbinary" animal, it's usually just an intersex animal.

• Intersex people are not assigned "intersex" at birth, We usually still have AGABs, as AGAB was original used by doctors to refer to us. Additionally, an intersex person may be reassigned throughout life.

• SIG refers to socially imposed gender, for many intersex people they have an inconsistent socially imposed gender.

i'll think of more later, feel free to add on

[definitelymaddy]

so much this, honestly. this is something that i’ve experience that people always seem so absolutely confused by. i’m not non binary, i’m an intersex trans woman, but due to my life experiences with my intersex condition i’ve had a lot of typical trans masc experiences.

i naturally went through a partial female puberty at the age of 10, but was forced to present as a boy- so i was either assumed to be a butch lesbian or a trans guy by strangers, depending on if they were aware trans people existed (this was late 2000s early 2010s, before the current wave of hyper visibility outside of the community). Later on at 16 I was medically forced into a male puberty, and basically had the experiences of a trans guy starting T at 16. The body changes, how it affected my periods, etc. And then when I was able to, I transitioned to my actual gender (woman) and started fixing all the incorrect medical stuff I was put through, and having many typical trans fem experiences.

i’m not a trans man so i’d never speak on their behalf when talking about these experiences, and i’m very aware that my framing of these experiences was negative rather than the massive positive it is for trans masc people- but these experiences are constantly disbelieved, ignored, or used to exclude me from trans spaces. it’s a fairly unique set of experiences that theoretically should make me relate to many more people, but honestly just ends up making me feel more isolated 😅

the problem with being an intersex nonbinary person is that you have experienced both uniquely transmasc and transfem things, but because you are neither you can join neither conversation without being told “you’re afab you can’t have experienced this!” or “you’ve not medically transitioned so this can’t happen to you!”

intersex trans people exist. intersex nonbinary people exist. regardless of what our “agab” is, or whether we’ve taken hormones or not, we have experiences that need to be included in your conversations. by gatekeeping these conversations you’re leaving vital voices out of the narrative.

[definitelymaddy]

you're bi and ace? i'm bi and ace! wow! thats so cool!

yeah! i’m biromantic & asexual, and shorten it down to bi & ace 😌

[definitelymaddy]

to be intersex is to be aggressively misinterpreted all the time. to be intersex is also to have those misinterpretations doubled down on when you correct them because clearly that person knows what you were saying better than you do. duh. why would an intersex person know what their own sentences mean?

[definitelymaddy]

i’m generally fairly open about my assigned sex as an intersex person, because i feel it’s very strongly tied to a lot of the issues affecting intersex people that i’m most passionate about.

i don’t necessarily regret making that information public etc, but i do wish that the kinds of things i post about / am passionate about didn’t require disclosing it (or making it very obvious at the very least) in order for it to all make sense

[definitelymaddy]

Okay so. I see a lot of uninformed people in the intersex tag so here's a little bit of information about being intersex.

We are not 'biologically nonbinary', it's actually fairly rare for us to be assigned X at birth, the majority of us are given an assigned sex.

Intersex is a catch-all for a huge number of variations, so there is no singular 'intersex body', in fact a large number of us do not have ambiguous genitalia.

You cannot transition to become intersex. You can transition to have a mix of sex characteristics. The current most accepted word for this I've seen is Salmacian. Because intersex is an umbrella term for many many variations and conditions, saying this is similar to saying you'd like to transition to being autistic or having EDS.

A lot of us go through medical abuse in childhood, including forced hormone replacement therapy and gender reassignment surgeries, often as infants. I, for example, was forced onto estrogen as a teenager. This is something we are still fighting to make illegal without impacting trans youths access to treatment.

Not every intersex person is trans. Just like everyone else, we can be cis or trans or feel a mix of the two. Some of us are just intersex and aren't interested in further labels.

Being intersex is not really that rare. Most estimates put it about as common as red hair or green eyes. Some estimates even higher.

And finally, because I am genuinely stunned by the amount of people that don't know this. Hermaphrodite is an intersexist slur. You should not be using it if you are not intersex.

That concludes my post. Good faith questions are welcomed, and it's easy to find more information through places like interACT and the (albeit outdated) ISNA website.

[definitelymaddy]

this trans day of visibility, i want to highlight and celebrate intersex trans people.

society ignores intersex trans people and tries to erase this overlap. and also ignores complex intersex experiences around gender. society denies our intersexuality, or our transness, or both. even in queer circles we are often seen as "basically cis" or "basically trans" or "intersex aka own separate species that can have nothing in common with other queer people."

intersex trans people are often denied gender affirming care. intersex trans people get their bodily autonomy attacked both as intersex and trans. even in trans accepting circles like gender clinics, we often face ignorance and incompetence.

people feel entitled to know and question our anatomy, physiology, transition goals, identities — everything about us.

our bodies belong to us. our identities belong to us. our experiences belong to us.

we deserve bodily autonomy. we deserve representation. we deserve recognition. we deserve celebration. we deserve pride.

intersex trans people, i love you.

[definitelymaddy]

Being sensitive to changes in barometric pressure is crazy what do you mean my problem is that the wind changed direction. What do you mean it's the fuckin clouds

[definitelymaddy]

i do just want people to be aware that, while "assigned sex at birth" has been widely reclaimed and generalized to general populations, it did not start through personal identification or as a positive term. it was coined between doctors to discuss what sex to surgically and socially assign intersex infants, children, and in some cases, adults. one example of a study using this term is here, mostly inspired by john money [its a heavy read if you decide to open it]. i do just want people to be aware of the history of this term before claiming that it is "coined by the intersex community"—it wasnt, it was forced on us by the medical community.

[definitelymaddy]

really not sure when it happened or why but personally I'm pissed that the queer community at large seems to have given up ground on the "people with penises/vulvas/testes/ovaries" language to sex & gender essentialists in exchange for the much less precise, much more demeaning "AGAB" language.

is it because you're scared of the word vulva? of acknowledging out loud that some people have penises? of recognising that many many people, including but certainly not limited to trans people, have mixed sex characteristics that cannot be accurately summarised by "afab/amab" as shorthand for "female/male"?

"in [GENITAL RELATED] situation AFABs will need to do X and AMABs will need to do Y" there are "afabs" with penises and "amabs" with vulvas. Saying this shit makes you look so unserious & honestly transphobic (given the ongoing erasure of post-op trans people within broader community). Intersex people and GRS have both existed for long enough (fucking forever and, decades, respectively) that we should well past making this basic fucking mistake.

quit referring to people by a vague & often violent event that happened at their birth as though it defines ANYTHING about how they & their body currently operate, and start using precise language so you at least look like you know what you're fucking talking about.

[definitelymaddy]

so much this. doctors mostly work by very cookie cutter approaches, and intersex bodies don’t necessarily fit that well.

like i have PMDD and some general menstrual issues, and doctors just don’t know how to deal with it properly in my case. Due to chimerism I metabolise medications weirdly too, so antidepressants and most oral pills don’t work too well for me and i get way more side effects than average. plus other conditions making it even more problematic.

due to my intersex condition, any IUD-type stuff won’t work for me, and that seems to be the front line treatment a lot of doctors try for.

it’s so easy for intersex people to exhaust all treatment attempts without any that actually work, due to inability to use some types, and different reactions to others.

People who aren’t intersex do not seem to grasp how uneducated Doctors are about intersex people. They usually are completely uneducated about the topic. Which is pathetic and sad of them. A lot of us continue to live with many medical problems we cannot be helped with because these idiot Doctors do not know what to do other than prescribe hormone pills to “FIX” us.