is-it-malgendering

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What does weird me out a bit sometimes is people acting like this backlash to trans men and transmasculine people discussing our oppression is a new thing. Literally I remember people in this tag talking about how this is ace and bi discourse 2.0 4 or 5 years ago.

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uvb76fan is posting in this tag talking about all the ways trans men have it “worse”, while misrepresenting the statistic she is citing. most likely banking on no one looking closer or reading the links.

this person is a terf. if you search trans on her blog it is immediately clear, i am not using terf loosely she is literally actually a terf.

we cannot let our weariness at not being heard by some of our community push us into the sick and malformed arms of transmisogyny and radical feminism, these people do not care about us at all, they are trying to harm every single one of us. our solidarity with trans women, men and people as whole should cause us to slam hard on the breaks. no matter how many trans women you see being antitransmasculine it does not mean that there are not so many more who are our genuine allies, do not let the algorithm pushing hateful person after hateful person your way skew your understandings. the transphobes want dissent, they want us to tear each other apart. we do not need to contribute to the harm to have ours lessened. (causing harm to a vulnerable minority is never morally correct no matter what got you there in the first place. also straight up trans women are easy to love and are inherently deeply deserving of community solidarity, and fascism (which terfs are) should not have any appeal whatsoever no matter how hurt you are but i digress.)

on another note: we cannot and must not reactively take on the mentalities of trans rad fems, no gender in the trans community needs to be the most oppressed to be taken seriously and given respect in our community, the equality in our suffering is immense and must be acknowledged without each group needing to prove we are the most victimized to get the care and community support we need. this is harmful no matter who is doing it. we absolutely must nip this kind of thinking in the bud.

push back on terfs in this tag everywhere you can, and if there is a reason you cannot comment or reblog to shut them down, block them on sight.

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it's been long enough since the original online transmedicalist wars that i think we, as gender criminals and binary perverters, could reapproach the possibility of re-incorporating two depreciated pieces of vocabulary:

trans*, with the asterisk representing identities that aren't transgender, but share certain experiences of violating the gender and sex binaries (i.e. intersex folks, crossdressers who go on hormones, drag performers, etc), and

genderqueer, not as a specific identity, but as an umbrella term for any person, whether trans or cis or both or neither, who queers gender.

the depreciation of this vocabulary was pretty bad-faith and wrapped up in the aforementioned online transmedicalist wars -- hell, dropping "genderqueer" as an umbrella term was specifically pushed by radfems (both trans-exclusive and -inclusive) on the premise that "queer is a slur."

any subsequent attempts to create or use new vocabulary to mean similar concepts has been met with ridicule and bad faith. many mainstream media outlets use "nonbinary" to replace "genderqueer," but are met with rejection because nonbinary is a specific identity, not an umbrella term, and calling someone who does not identify as trans, or who does identify with one or both binary genders, "nonbinary" is considered misgendering to many.

but it's a new decade. we are currently, right now, struggling to articulate our shared struggles as gender-variant peoples under this new wave of worldwide fascism. as a medically transitioning person who fits the oldschool use of "genderqueer," and who doesn't fit into either "trans" or "cis" categories, i've been struggling to articulate my experiences using any of the current popular trans vocabulary. maybe it's time to revisit these words and assess their use through new eyes.

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Fuck it I’ll say it: Transmisogyny is a useful way of understanding and analyzing the oppression transfems and people mistaken for transfems go through but as soon as you start treating it as a binary of oppression rather than a spectrum you start to get into really shitty territory. I say this as someone who is “TMA”, I’ve seen so many of my sisters spouting seperationist rhetoric and painting themselves into a corner by proclaiming they’re uniquely and exclusively the most oppressed there ever was and only capable of being understood by fellow transfems instead of acknowledging everyone is impacted by transphobia, transandrophobia, and transmisogyny to different degrees and trying to empathize with and understand their fellow trans people. I live in Florida, have lived here all my life, I’m transfem, but despite what the TMA/TME binary proponents would have you think I can guarantee most transmascs have been through worse, because the fact that I’m transfem doesn’t automatically mean I have it worse!!!! I have read so many horrifying stories from transmascs about the abuse and oppression they face and compared to what I went through where I was at the absolute worst of it mockingly deadnamed by a coworker and sir’d by random strangers I have gotten off incredibly easy. Because that’s the thing! Oppression and transphobia is a spectrum of abuse! Not a binary! Just because I’m “TMA” doesn’t mean I have it worse than “TME” people!!!!!! False binaries only hurt us and prevent us from understanding the true nature of our oppression, use transmisogyny as a framework, not a law of who always has it worse!

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Perhaps a slightly contentious take but I'm hoping it can be taken in good faith that I'm sincerely asking a question in order to understand and discuss a nuanced situation with regard to trans-intersex relations.

(Full disclosure that OP is a perisex trans man in the UK. I'd also like to point out for credential reasons I'm an academic queer historian currently studying for a postgraduate degree on historical queer terminology).

[Content warning for discussions of historical transphobia and intersexism in this post. It is also a long post. For much of the post I'm talling about perisex trans experiences when I use the term trans, but recognise that there are also intersex trans people]

I've seen a post recently where a perisex trans person was talking about how their (US) doctor removed references to their transness from their medical record and instead put something along the lines of "hormone disorder" (read: intersex) for the safety of that transgender person. I come from the UK where we don't have the insurance system like the US has - but presumably the doctor did this so their trans patient could continue to access HRT without being flagged up as trans.

The notes of that post were really varied, but one thing kept coming up from intersex people, namely that it was inappropriate for a perisex transgender person to recieve this designation (note: it's unknown if the person specifically assked for this) for safety reasons on a few grounds. E.g. that being designated intersex on medical papers won't necessarily make someone safer, or might make them even less safe. And (rightly) brings up how much intersexism is ignored in the queer community and society in general. To be absolutely 100% clear I don't think in a majority of cases, being labelled intersex incorrectly by your doctor (whether you asked for it or the doctor attempted to do this to "protect" you) is going to help you avoid discrimination or problems. I do think that the intersex people in the notes of that post were right in pointing out that in these times, this is not necessarily the most ideal solution for that perisex trans person.

However, I'm familiar with a lot of trans history in which perisex trans people have had to claim to be intersex to avoid very real persecution, with some success. There are examples of this with individuals from the 18th to the 20th centuries that I'm aware of - and possibly many more.

Part of the problem is that transgender people and intersex people have been, at various points, considered one and the same by the medical establishment and society. Often, both of the above groups were grouped under and referred to by the h-slur (which is primarily associated with intersex people, but sometimes applied to other groups conflated with intersexuality). Transness was historically incorrectly posited to be an intersex variation which happened entirely in the brain (a presupposition which is obviously wrong in the modern day, but this viewpoint prevailed until the late 1960s).

There's three historical trans men I know of who were either presumed intersex or consciously presented themselves as intersex to avoid discrimination. There's likely examples of trans women doing the same, but I'm most familiar with transmasc history.

James Barry was an Irish trans man born in 1789 and lived his life as a man until his death, after which point he requested that his body be buried without inspection in the clothes he died in. This was disregarded by the charwoman who came to attend to his body, who attempted to tell Barry's superiors in the military that he was, in her view, "actually a woman". She had tried to tell Major D. R. McKinnon, who issued Barry's death certificate. But he wouldn't listen to her, instead, he speculated that Barry was intersex instead (note: we have no evidence which points towards this being the case):

(Cw for historical intersexism)

"Amongst other things she said Dr Barry was a female & that I was a pretty doctor not to know this & that she would not like to be attended by me. I informed her that it was none of my business whether Dr Barry was a male or a female – that I thought it as likely he might be neither, viz. an imperfectly developed man... my own impression was that Dr Barry was a [h-slur]"

- Major McKinnon, in a letter

In this case the presupposition of being intersex was done post-mortem, but to me, McKinnon's position that Barry must have been intersex when it was revealed he wasn't a perisex cis man like he thought seems to stem from wishful thinking that he wasn't mistaken about Barry's agab for years and that the only reason he didn't twig Barry was not a perisex cis man was because he must have been intersex. Meaning, to McKinnon at least, it was perfectly acceptable to have not noticed anything unusual about Barry as his physician. Obviously, McKinnon's viewpoints are directly informed by both intersexism and transphobia - and it is not to say *at all* that intersexuality was better recieved than possible transness in this period (both intersexuality and transess were severely frowned upon) - but that on an individual level, McKinnon would have preferred a scenario where Barry was intersex rather than transgender (to use our modern terms) because to him he could justify his ignorance of Barry's agab as being a result of Barry being intersex. If McKinnon viewed Barry as not intersex he would have considered himself to have been tricked or deceived by Barry, which was unfathomable and shameful to most well-to-do British people of the period. In Barry's case - him being presumed intersex post-mortem (when he was likely perisex) spared his memory from being tarnished further. The British Army certainly felt perturbed enough to attempt to seal away his records for the next 100 years to prevent scandal.

Society does not value non-perisex or non-cisgender individuals in this world. Both trans and intersex people are routinely targeted by horrific amounts of bigotry. But that's on a societal level. On an individual level, it's a bit different. You may get a bigot who doesn't really care about intersex people, because they believe that it's just something that happens that can't be helped (with the caveat that they endorse IGM). But that same person may vehemently hate trans people because to them, transness "can be helped" (I.e. they may view being trans as a choice). The same can occur the other way around- a bigot may tolerate trans people if they're transitioning to "correct" themselves, but doesn't tolerate intersex people because they believe the political identity of intersex is invalid and they believe intersex people to be "disordered". Does this make sense? I hope I'm managing to be be clear in that depending on the individual, passing as trans or as intersex might be useful if a certain individual is against one but not the other. It's entirely circumstantial.

To give two more examples of historical perisex trans men, Andrea's Bruce, a Swedish trans man, was born in 1808. His family were tolerant of his masculinity to a degree and he was able to live as a man. In order for the family to justify their "daughter" living as a man, they took him to a doctor and had him declared intersex (note: they used the h-slur in those times). So that fron that point onwards, Bruce's masculinity was not seen as masculinity on a "woman" but as a result of being intersex, which made it more permissible to some (emphasis on *some*). Again, there is a heady mix of transphobia and intersexism at play, but like with Barry's case, the presumption of being intersex spared him from transphobia and harassment he might have experienced without the false diagnosis to back him up. But it goes without saying this did then open him up to intersexism, too.

A final example I know of is Baronet Ewan Forbes of Craigievar, born in 1912. He was a Scottish trans man known for his previously hidden court case in which his right to male primogenture (for the right to inherit the baronetcy) was challenged by his cousin, because Forbes was not a cisgender man. Forbes had transitioned as a young man in Weimar Germany, leaving just as the Nazis began to crack down on queer communities there. By 1952, he was able to re-register his birth as male and marry his wife. A lot of string pulling went on to enable this. His cousin's challenge threatened not only to remove Forbes' right to the baronetcy, but also to make his marriage void (since, if Forbes was declared a woman his marriage to his wife would be illegal) and Forbes' profession as a male doctor would be ended. In 1965 he was able to win his cousin's lawsuit by the skin of his teeth after convincing the judges he was intersex (being a doctor, Forbes was uniquely positioned to argue convincingly he was). Being declared intersex instead of trans was the only way to prevent his life from crumbling down around him. It bears repeating that this in no way suggests intersex people had it easier back then - or that it was safer to be intersex than trans. That's not the case at all. But to some individuals, passing as intersex was the only way to avoid transphobic discrimination.

It's also something that occurs in other queer identities. E.g. I'm bisexual and in some situations, just saying I'm gay is easier than saying I'm bisexual because some people are fine with monosexual gay men and lesbians, but are less fine with bisexual people (see: biphobia and the AIDS crisis). Notwithstanding that I consider myself both gay and bisexual, sometimes passing as a monosexual gay man is preferable to being openly a bisexual man. Not a 1:1 to the trans/intersex relationship I'm talking about in this post, but hopefully you get my point. I can also envision other members of the queer community needing to pass as a gender/sexuality they're not for safety reasons. While I don't know any any examples (if you know any please tell me) but if an intersex person needed to pass as trans in order to avoid intersexism, I'd be 100% fine with that. It'd be correct of me to point out that this would theoretically open them up to transphobia, but if the benefits of avoiding intersexism outweigh the potential risks of transphobia, then I trust that individual to make that judgment for themself.

The point of this post really is that I don't see much discussion of the historical relationship (and conflation) between the trans and intersex communities, which is a real shame because we share so much history. The dearth of trans-intersex discussions and lack of knowledge of our shared history means that people aren't aware of how and why historical trans people had to pass as intersex sometimes (and presumably vice versa, depending on the situation).

Which leads me to wanting to make this post because I feel that some of the arguments against perisex trans people asking for their documents to say "hormone disorder" (or any other medical euphemism for an intersex condition) ignore of the ways in which the trans and intersex communities have long had an intertwined history and should have a strong allyship between them. Some of the backlash against perisex trans people considering this has been unsympathetic to the perisex trans people who feel terrified at the rise in transphobia occurring globally. Like I said at the beginning of this post - I agree doing so would open up said trans people to intersexism and not necessarily save them from all bigotry, but might possibly save them from a big chunk of transphobia. But I do feel some of the responses from intersex people on the post I'm talking about were a bit knee-jerk and while I wouldn't go far as to say were transphobic, they were at the very least a bit dismissive of the reasons why trans people might have been considering doing the action in the first place.

So, to conclude, this leaves me with a few things.

If other members of the queer community can be trusted to know themselves and their needs best if they conclude that passing as a different gender/sexuality might make them safer (even if that brings a risk of experiencing a different kind of bigotry) - then why can't we trust trans people to do the same with (in often very limited senses) passing as intersex? If you wouldn't condemn a bisexual person for passing as gay to avoid biphobia (notwithstanding the risk of homophobia), why would you condemn a trans person for passing as intersex to avoid transphobia (e.g. potential loss of HRT) (notwithstanding risk of intersexism)?

If you believe trans people are the only group who should not pass as another group for safety, why do you believe that? /gq. As I've said, I think it'd be perfectly fine for an intersex person to pass as trans for safety from intersexism if they deemed it necessary (I'd trust their assessment of the situation). If you believe this is fine but the reverse isn't, why is that? /gq.

Additionally, if you believe that trans people should never pass as intersex for any reason (notwithstanding all the reasons I've listed where it has been the only thing shielding a trans person from transphobia) - in what way should we perceive historical trans people who have done so for safety (or had the term intersex retroactively applied to spare the feelings of bigots)? People like Barry, Bruce and Forbes? How should we perceive such people if the practice of trans people passing as intersex for safety is condemned? Do we condemn them also? Or do we take a measured approach and understand that the nuances of their situation (and indeed the situations of many living trans people) demand an unsatisfactory means to a legitimate end? /gq

Genuinely, I ask all of these questions because I want to establish more trans-intersex dialogue about these things and actually explore the ins-and-outs of these situations. I feel like the trans and intersex communities sometimes talk at each other instead of with each other - and I think we have a lot to gain by discussing together on nuanced topics like this! I'm asking in good faith and I really, really hope that has come across. But I'd like to respectfully ask for other trans people and intersex people to weigh in if you'd like. What do you think about any of the issues I've raised here? How do we move forwards as trans and intersex communities together?

If you got this far, thank you for reading this post, I know it turned into a long one.

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Something I really hate in this trans insighting discourse is how many people will swear up and down that transmasc and transfem communities have been entirely exclusive to each other. Of course there are spaces that are predominantly one or the other but if you act like the trans community as a whole doesn’t and hasn’t often overlapped with each other, I’m going to assume you either don’t know trans history or you hang out in this focused areas and think that’s universally how it is.

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When talking about oppression *in general*, there's no such thing as "suffers more from".

This might sound strange, but bear with me:

Repeatedly, I've seen people declare that trans women face more transphobia than other trans people. And this is incorrect - but when you challenge this, its assumed you must be arguing that some other group must be more oppressed instead. This is also incorrect.

I've said it before but when speaking in the generalest of senses (i.e. talking about umbrella term oppressions like transphobia, queerphobia, ableism etc.) it's genuinely unhelpful to use terms like "more" or "less", because it's legitimately impossible to quantify.

If, say, you're being more specific (i.e. specifically talking about transmisogyny, acephobia or saneism) then comparatives like "more" or "less" start to make sense to be used in this context. E.g. trans women suffer more from transmisogyny than other groups, asexual people suffer more from acephobia than other groups, people with mental health conditions suffer more from saneism than other groups etc.

But saying that a group suffers more or less than another when talking about umbrella term oppression is not only inaccurate but often erases others within that group. E.g. it would be ludicrous to imply that asexual people faced the most queerphobia, or mentally ill people face the most ableism (both at the expense of the rest of the queer community and mentally ill people respectively). Likewise, it's ludicrous to say that trans women face the most transphobia. It's not quantifiable! Wrt transmisogyny yes, of course trans women will face that the most. But when talking about transphobia in general all trans people face transphobia! Believing trans women suffer the most from transphobia erases the impact of transphobia on other trans groups.

The words "most", "least", "more" and "less" have no business in general discussions of bigotry. None at all.

If you argue trans women suffer the most from transphobia and I counter it, I'm not then implying a different trans group actually suffers the most. I'm arguing that comparatives are useless in this situation and erase other people's experiences.

[is-it-malgendering]

Perhaps a slightly contentious take but I'm hoping it can be taken in good faith that I'm sincerely asking a question in order to understand and discuss a nuanced situation with regard to trans-intersex relations.

(Full disclosure that OP is a perisex trans man in the UK. I'd also like to point out for credential reasons I'm an academic queer historian currently studying for a postgraduate degree on historical queer terminology).

[Content warning for discussions of historical transphobia and intersexism in this post. It is also a long post. For much of the post I'm talling about perisex trans experiences when I use the term trans, but recognise that there are also intersex trans people]

I've seen a post recently where a perisex trans person was talking about how their (US) doctor removed references to their transness from their medical record and instead put something along the lines of "hormone disorder" (read: intersex) for the safety of that transgender person. I come from the UK where we don't have the insurance system like the US has - but presumably the doctor did this so their trans patient could continue to access HRT without being flagged up as trans.

The notes of that post were really varied, but one thing kept coming up from intersex people, namely that it was inappropriate for a perisex transgender person to recieve this designation (note: it's unknown if the person specifically assked for this) for safety reasons on a few grounds. E.g. that being designated intersex on medical papers won't necessarily make someone safer, or might make them even less safe. And (rightly) brings up how much intersexism is ignored in the queer community and society in general. To be absolutely 100% clear I don't think in a majority of cases, being labelled intersex incorrectly by your doctor (whether you asked for it or the doctor attempted to do this to "protect" you) is going to help you avoid discrimination or problems. I do think that the intersex people in the notes of that post were right in pointing out that in these times, this is not necessarily the most ideal solution for that perisex trans person.

However, I'm familiar with a lot of trans history in which perisex trans people have had to claim to be intersex to avoid very real persecution, with some success. There are examples of this with individuals from the 18th to the 20th centuries that I'm aware of - and possibly many more.

Part of the problem is that transgender people and intersex people have been, at various points, considered one and the same by the medical establishment and society. Often, both of the above groups were grouped under and referred to by the h-slur (which is primarily associated with intersex people, but sometimes applied to other groups conflated with intersexuality). Transness was historically incorrectly posited to be an intersex variation which happened entirely in the brain (a presupposition which is obviously wrong in the modern day, but this viewpoint prevailed until the late 1960s).

There's three historical trans men I know of who were either presumed intersex or consciously presented themselves as intersex to avoid discrimination. There's likely examples of trans women doing the same, but I'm most familiar with transmasc history.

James Barry was an Irish trans man born in 1789 and lived his life as a man until his death, after which point he requested that his body be buried without inspection in the clothes he died in. This was disregarded by the charwoman who came to attend to his body, who attempted to tell Barry's superiors in the military that he was, in her view, "actually a woman". She had tried to tell Major D. R. McKinnon, who issued Barry's death certificate. But he wouldn't listen to her, instead, he speculated that Barry was intersex instead (note: we have no evidence which points towards this being the case):

(Cw for historical intersexism)

"Amongst other things she said Dr Barry was a female & that I was a pretty doctor not to know this & that she would not like to be attended by me. I informed her that it was none of my business whether Dr Barry was a male or a female – that I thought it as likely he might be neither, viz. an imperfectly developed man... my own impression was that Dr Barry was a [h-slur]"

- Major McKinnon, in a letter

In this case the presupposition of being intersex was done post-mortem, but to me, McKinnon's position that Barry must have been intersex when it was revealed he wasn't a perisex cis man like he thought seems to stem from wishful thinking that he wasn't mistaken about Barry's agab for years and that the only reason he didn't twig Barry was not a perisex cis man was because he must have been intersex. Meaning, to McKinnon at least, it was perfectly acceptable to have not noticed anything unusual about Barry as his physician. Obviously, McKinnon's viewpoints are directly informed by both intersexism and transphobia - and it is not to say *at all* that intersexuality was better recieved than possible transness in this period (both intersexuality and transess were severely frowned upon) - but that on an individual level, McKinnon would have preferred a scenario where Barry was intersex rather than transgender (to use our modern terms) because to him he could justify his ignorance of Barry's agab as being a result of Barry being intersex. If McKinnon viewed Barry as not intersex he would have considered himself to have been tricked or deceived by Barry, which was unfathomable and shameful to most well-to-do British people of the period. In Barry's case - him being presumed intersex post-mortem (when he was likely perisex) spared his memory from being tarnished further. The British Army certainly felt perturbed enough to attempt to seal away his records for the next 100 years to prevent scandal.

Society does not value non-perisex or non-cisgender individuals in this world. Both trans and intersex people are routinely targeted by horrific amounts of bigotry. But that's on a societal level. On an individual level, it's a bit different. You may get a bigot who doesn't really care about intersex people, because they believe that it's just something that happens that can't be helped (with the caveat that they endorse IGM). But that same person may vehemently hate trans people because to them, transness "can be helped" (I.e. they may view being trans as a choice). The same can occur the other way around- a bigot may tolerate trans people if they're transitioning to "correct" themselves, but doesn't tolerate intersex people because they believe the political identity of intersex is invalid and they believe intersex people to be "disordered". Does this make sense? I hope I'm managing to be be clear in that depending on the individual, passing as trans or as intersex might be useful if a certain individual is against one but not the other. It's entirely circumstantial.

To give two more examples of historical perisex trans men, Andrea's Bruce, a Swedish trans man, was born in 1808. His family were tolerant of his masculinity to a degree and he was able to live as a man. In order for the family to justify their "daughter" living as a man, they took him to a doctor and had him declared intersex (note: they used the h-slur in those times). So that fron that point onwards, Bruce's masculinity was not seen as masculinity on a "woman" but as a result of being intersex, which made it more permissible to some (emphasis on *some*). Again, there is a heady mix of transphobia and intersexism at play, but like with Barry's case, the presumption of being intersex spared him from transphobia and harassment he might have experienced without the false diagnosis to back him up. But it goes without saying this did then open him up to intersexism, too.

A final example I know of is Baronet Ewan Forbes of Craigievar, born in 1912. He was a Scottish trans man known for his previously hidden court case in which his right to male primogenture (for the right to inherit the baronetcy) was challenged by his cousin, because Forbes was not a cisgender man. Forbes had transitioned as a young man in Weimar Germany, leaving just as the Nazis began to crack down on queer communities there. By 1952, he was able to re-register his birth as male and marry his wife. A lot of string pulling went on to enable this. His cousin's challenge threatened not only to remove Forbes' right to the baronetcy, but also to make his marriage void (since, if Forbes was declared a woman his marriage to his wife would be illegal) and Forbes' profession as a male doctor would be ended. In 1965 he was able to win his cousin's lawsuit by the skin of his teeth after convincing the judges he was intersex (being a doctor, Forbes was uniquely positioned to argue convincingly he was). Being declared intersex instead of trans was the only way to prevent his life from crumbling down around him. It bears repeating that this in no way suggests intersex people had it easier back then - or that it was safer to be intersex than trans. That's not the case at all. But to some individuals, passing as intersex was the only way to avoid transphobic discrimination.

It's also something that occurs in other queer identities. E.g. I'm bisexual and in some situations, just saying I'm gay is easier than saying I'm bisexual because some people are fine with monosexual gay men and lesbians, but are less fine with bisexual people (see: biphobia and the AIDS crisis). Notwithstanding that I consider myself both gay and bisexual, sometimes passing as a monosexual gay man is preferable to being openly a bisexual man. Not a 1:1 to the trans/intersex relationship I'm talking about in this post, but hopefully you get my point. I can also envision other members of the queer community needing to pass as a gender/sexuality they're not for safety reasons. While I don't know any any examples (if you know any please tell me) but if an intersex person needed to pass as trans in order to avoid intersexism, I'd be 100% fine with that. It'd be correct of me to point out that this would theoretically open them up to transphobia, but if the benefits of avoiding intersexism outweigh the potential risks of transphobia, then I trust that individual to make that judgment for themself.

The point of this post really is that I don't see much discussion of the historical relationship (and conflation) between the trans and intersex communities, which is a real shame because we share so much history. The dearth of trans-intersex discussions and lack of knowledge of our shared history means that people aren't aware of how and why historical trans people had to pass as intersex sometimes (and presumably vice versa, depending on the situation).

Which leads me to wanting to make this post because I feel that some of the arguments against perisex trans people asking for their documents to say "hormone disorder" (or any other medical euphemism for an intersex condition) ignore of the ways in which the trans and intersex communities have long had an intertwined history and should have a strong allyship between them. Some of the backlash against perisex trans people considering this has been unsympathetic to the perisex trans people who feel terrified at the rise in transphobia occurring globally. Like I said at the beginning of this post - I agree doing so would open up said trans people to intersexism and not necessarily save them from all bigotry, but might possibly save them from a big chunk of transphobia. But I do feel some of the responses from intersex people on the post I'm talking about were a bit knee-jerk and while I wouldn't go far as to say were transphobic, they were at the very least a bit dismissive of the reasons why trans people might have been considering doing the action in the first place.

So, to conclude, this leaves me with a few things.

If other members of the queer community can be trusted to know themselves and their needs best if they conclude that passing as a different gender/sexuality might make them safer (even if that brings a risk of experiencing a different kind of bigotry) - then why can't we trust trans people to do the same with (in often very limited senses) passing as intersex? If you wouldn't condemn a bisexual person for passing as gay to avoid biphobia (notwithstanding the risk of homophobia), why would you condemn a trans person for passing as intersex to avoid transphobia (e.g. potential loss of HRT) (notwithstanding risk of intersexism)?

If you believe trans people are the only group who should not pass as another group for safety, why do you believe that? /gq. As I've said, I think it'd be perfectly fine for an intersex person to pass as trans for safety from intersexism if they deemed it necessary (I'd trust their assessment of the situation). If you believe this is fine but the reverse isn't, why is that? /gq.

Additionally, if you believe that trans people should never pass as intersex for any reason (notwithstanding all the reasons I've listed where it has been the only thing shielding a trans person from transphobia) - in what way should we perceive historical trans people who have done so for safety (or had the term intersex retroactively applied to spare the feelings of bigots)? People like Barry, Bruce and Forbes? How should we perceive such people if the practice of trans people passing as intersex for safety is condemned? Do we condemn them also? Or do we take a measured approach and understand that the nuances of their situation (and indeed the situations of many living trans people) demand an unsatisfactory means to a legitimate end? /gq

Genuinely, I ask all of these questions because I want to establish more trans-intersex dialogue about these things and actually explore the ins-and-outs of these situations. I feel like the trans and intersex communities sometimes talk at each other instead of with each other - and I think we have a lot to gain by discussing together on nuanced topics like this! I'm asking in good faith and I really, really hope that has come across. But I'd like to respectfully ask for other trans people and intersex people to weigh in if you'd like. What do you think about any of the issues I've raised here? How do we move forwards as trans and intersex communities together?

If you got this far, thank you for reading this post, I know it turned into a long one.

[is-it-malgendering]

Transandrophobic arguments don’t hold up, not even in Western contexts. But for one second, can we talk about how much worse it is for trans men in non-Western countries?

[is-it-malgendering]

It's Juneteenth yall. And I'm not letting this day go unmarked.

Black people fight for everybody. We stand in solidarity with women, lgbt people, poor people all over the world of every skin color and background. Every religion and nationality.

Today, stand with us. Be with us. Tell a black person you love them. Hug a black person (with consent). Ask that hot black girl out today. Make a black person smile. Black lives matter to everybody and you matter to us.

Stand with us on Juneteenth like we stand with you all year round, and I hope a happy Pride month continues for all of us

💝

[is-it-malgendering]

one "compliment" that women give us trans men that i actually really hate is any variation of "i would've felt uncomfortable seeing you at night". yes i understand that they imply that we pass as cis and cis men are uncomfortable to be around at night. no i still don't like that as a marginalized group of men we're called predatory. i especially don't like it as a trans man of color and i think it's especially odd when it's directed towards another trans man of color/a Black trans man. call me too woke if you have to but there are better ways to be supportive of our manliness without implying that you'd view us as predatory.

[is-it-malgendering]

Perhaps a slightly contentious take but I'm hoping it can be taken in good faith that I'm sincerely asking a question in order to understand and discuss a nuanced situation with regard to trans-intersex relations.

(Full disclosure that OP is a perisex trans man in the UK. I'd also like to point out for credential reasons I'm an academic queer historian currently studying for a postgraduate degree on historical queer terminology).

[Content warning for discussions of historical transphobia and intersexism in this post. It is also a long post. For much of the post I'm talking about perisex trans experiences when I use the term trans, but recognise that there are also intersex trans people]

I've seen a post recently where a perisex trans person was talking about how their (US) doctor removed references to their transness from their medical record and instead put something along the lines of "hormone disorder" (read: intersex) for the safety of that transgender person. I come from the UK where we don't have the insurance system like the US has - but presumably the doctor did this so their trans patient could continue to access HRT without being flagged up as trans.

The notes of that post were really varied, but one thing kept coming up from intersex people, namely that it was inappropriate for a perisex transgender person to recieve this designation (note: it's unknown if the person specifically assked for this) for safety reasons on a few grounds. E.g. that being designated intersex on medical papers won't necessarily make someone safer, or might make them even less safe. And (rightly) brings up how much intersexism is ignored in the queer community and society in general. To be absolutely 100% clear I don't think in a majority of cases, being labelled intersex incorrectly by your doctor (whether you asked for it or the doctor attempted to do this to "protect" you) is going to help you avoid discrimination or problems. I do think that the intersex people in the notes of that post were right in pointing out that in these times, this is not necessarily the most ideal solution for that perisex trans person.

However, I'm familiar with a lot of trans history in which perisex trans people have had to claim to be intersex to avoid very real persecution, with some success. There are examples of this with individuals from the 18th to the 20th centuries that I'm aware of - and possibly many more.

Part of the problem is that transgender people and intersex people have been, at various points, considered one and the same by the medical establishment and society. Often, both of the above groups were grouped under and referred to by the h-slur (which is primarily associated with intersex people, but sometimes applied to other groups conflated with intersexuality). Transness was historically incorrectly posited to be an intersex variation which happened entirely in the brain (a presupposition which is obviously wrong in the modern day, but this viewpoint prevailed until the late 1960s).

There's three historical trans men I know of who were either presumed intersex or consciously presented themselves as intersex to avoid discrimination. There's likely examples of trans women doing the same, but I'm most familiar with transmasc history.

James Barry was an Irish trans man born in 1789 and lived his life as a man until his death, after which point he requested that his body be buried without inspection in the clothes he died in. This was disregarded by the charwoman who came to attend to his body, who attempted to tell Barry's superiors in the military that he was, in her view, "actually a woman". She had tried to tell Major D. R. McKinnon, who issued Barry's death certificate. But he wouldn't listen to her, instead, he speculated that Barry was intersex instead (note: we have no evidence which points towards this being the case):

(Cw for historical intersexism)

"Amongst other things she said Dr Barry was a female & that I was a pretty doctor not to know this & that she would not like to be attended by me. I informed her that it was none of my business whether Dr Barry was a male or a female – that I thought it as likely he might be neither, viz. an imperfectly developed man... my own impression was that Dr Barry was a [h-slur]"

- Major McKinnon, in a letter

In this case the presupposition of being intersex was done post-mortem, but to me, McKinnon's position that Barry must have been intersex when it was revealed he wasn't a perisex cis man like he thought seems to stem from wishful thinking that he wasn't mistaken about Barry's agab for years and that the only reason he didn't twig Barry was not a perisex cis man was because he must have been intersex. Meaning, to McKinnon at least, it was perfectly acceptable to have not noticed anything unusual about Barry as his physician. Obviously, McKinnon's viewpoints are directly informed by both intersexism and transphobia - and it is not to say *at all* that intersexuality was better recieved than possible transness in this period (both intersexuality and transess were severely frowned upon) - but that on an individual level, McKinnon would have preferred a scenario where Barry was intersex rather than transgender (to use our modern terms) because to him he could justify his ignorance of Barry's agab as being a result of Barry being intersex. If McKinnon viewed Barry as not intersex he would have considered himself to have been tricked or deceived by Barry, which was unfathomable and shameful to most well-to-do British people of the period. In Barry's case - him being presumed intersex post-mortem (when he was likely perisex) spared his memory from being tarnished further. The British Army certainly felt perturbed enough to attempt to seal away his records for the next 100 years to prevent scandal.

Society does not value non-perisex or non-cisgender individuals in this world. Both trans and intersex people are routinely targeted by horrific amounts of bigotry. But that's on a societal level. On an individual level, it's a bit different. You may get a bigot who doesn't really care about intersex people, because they believe that it's just something that happens that can't be helped (with the caveat that they endorse IGM). But that same person may vehemently hate trans people because to them, transness "can be helped" (I.e. they may view being trans as a choice). The same can occur the other way around- a bigot may tolerate trans people if they're transitioning to "correct" themselves, but doesn't tolerate intersex people because they believe the political identity of intersex is invalid and they believe intersex people to be "disordered". Does this make sense? I hope I'm managing to be be clear in that depending on the individual, passing as trans or as intersex might be useful if a certain individual is against one but not the other. It's entirely circumstantial.

To give two more examples of historical perisex trans men, Andrea's Bruce, a Swedish trans man, was born in 1808. His family were tolerant of his masculinity to a degree and he was able to live as a man. In order for the family to justify their "daughter" living as a man, they took him to a doctor and had him declared intersex (note: they used the h-slur in those times). So that fron that point onwards, Bruce's masculinity was not seen as masculinity on a "woman" but as a result of being intersex, which made it more permissible to some (emphasis on *some*). Again, there is a heady mix of transphobia and intersexism at play, but like with Barry's case, the presumption of being intersex spared him from transphobia and harassment he might have experienced without the false diagnosis to back him up. But it goes without saying this did then open him up to intersexism, too.

A final example I know of is Baronet Ewan Forbes of Craigievar, born in 1912. He was a Scottish trans man known for his previously hidden court case in which his right to male primogenture (for the right to inherit the baronetcy) was challenged by his cousin, because Forbes was not a cisgender man. Forbes had transitioned as a young man in Weimar Germany, leaving just as the Nazis began to crack down on queer communities there. By 1952, he was able to re-register his birth as male and marry his wife. A lot of string pulling went on to enable this. His cousin's challenge threatened not only to remove Forbes' right to the baronetcy, but also to make his marriage void (since, if Forbes was declared a woman his marriage to his wife would be illegal) and Forbes' profession as a male doctor would be ended. In 1965 he was able to win his cousin's lawsuit by the skin of his teeth after convincing the judges he was intersex (being a doctor, Forbes was uniquely positioned to argue convincingly he was). Being declared intersex instead of trans was the only way to prevent his life from crumbling down around him. It bears repeating that this in no way suggests intersex people had it easier back then - or that it was safer to be intersex than trans. That's not the case at all. But to some individuals, passing as intersex was the only way to avoid transphobic discrimination.

It's also something that occurs in other queer identities. E.g. I'm bisexual and in some situations, just saying I'm gay is easier than saying I'm bisexual because some people are fine with monosexual gay men and lesbians, but are less fine with bisexual people (see: biphobia and the AIDS crisis). Notwithstanding that I consider myself both gay and bisexual, sometimes passing as a monosexual gay man is preferable to being openly a bisexual man. Not a 1:1 to the trans/intersex relationship I'm talking about in this post, but hopefully you get my point. I can also envision other members of the queer community needing to pass as a gender/sexuality they're not for safety reasons. While I don't know any any examples (if you know any please tell me) but if an intersex person needed to pass as trans in order to avoid intersexism, I'd be 100% fine with that. It'd be correct of me to point out that this would theoretically open them up to transphobia, but if the benefits of avoiding intersexism outweigh the potential risks of transphobia, then I trust that individual to make that judgment for themself.

The point of this post really is that I don't see much discussion of the historical relationship (and conflation) between the trans and intersex communities, which is a real shame because we share so much history. The dearth of trans-intersex discussions and lack of knowledge of our shared history means that people aren't aware of how and why historical trans people had to pass as intersex sometimes (and presumably vice versa, depending on the situation).

Which leads me to wanting to make this post because I feel that some of the arguments against perisex trans people asking for their documents to say "hormone disorder" (or any other medical euphemism for an intersex condition) ignore of the ways in which the trans and intersex communities have long had an intertwined history and should have a strong allyship between them. Some of the backlash against perisex trans people considering this has been unsympathetic to the perisex trans people who feel terrified at the rise in transphobia occurring globally. Like I said at the beginning of this post - I agree doing so would open up said trans people to intersexism and not necessarily save them from all bigotry, but might possibly save them from a big chunk of transphobia. But I do feel some of the responses from intersex people on the post I'm talking about were a bit knee-jerk and while I wouldn't go far as to say were transphobic, they were at the very least a bit dismissive of the reasons why trans people might have been considering doing the action in the first place.

So, to conclude, this leaves me with a few things.

If other members of the queer community can be trusted to know themselves and their needs best if they conclude that passing as a different gender/sexuality might make them safer (even if that brings a risk of experiencing a different kind of bigotry) - then why can't we trust trans people to do the same with (in often very limited senses) passing as intersex? If you wouldn't condemn a bisexual person for passing as gay to avoid biphobia (notwithstanding the risk of homophobia), why would you condemn a trans person for passing as intersex to avoid transphobia (e.g. potential loss of HRT) (notwithstanding risk of intersexism)?

If you believe trans people are the only group who should not pass as another group for safety, why do you believe that? /gq. As I've said, I think it'd be perfectly fine for an intersex person to pass as trans for safety from intersexism if they deemed it necessary (I'd trust their assessment of the situation). If you believe this is fine but the reverse isn't, why is that? /gq.

Additionally, if you believe that trans people should never pass as intersex for any reason (notwithstanding all the reasons I've listed where it has been the only thing shielding a trans person from transphobia) - in what way should we perceive historical trans people who have done so for safety (or had the term intersex retroactively applied to spare the feelings of bigots)? People like Barry, Bruce and Forbes? How should we perceive such people if the practice of trans people passing as intersex for safety is condemned? Do we condemn them also? Or do we take a measured approach and understand that the nuances of their situation (and indeed the situations of many living trans people) demand an unsatisfactory means to a legitimate end? /gq

Genuinely, I ask all of these questions because I want to establish more trans-intersex dialogue about these things and actually explore the ins-and-outs of these situations. I feel like the trans and intersex communities sometimes talk at each other instead of with each other - and I think we have a lot to gain by discussing together on nuanced topics like this! I'm asking in good faith and I really, really hope that has come across. But I'd like to respectfully ask for other trans people and intersex people to weigh in if you'd like. What do you think about any of the issues I've raised here? How do we move forwards as trans and intersex communities together?

If you got this far, thank you for reading this post, I know it turned into a long one.

[is-it-malgendering]

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.

[is-it-malgendering]

Are you calling me a man in a positive way or are you calling me a man so that you can be an asshole to me without feeling bad?

[is-it-malgendering]

I saw someone say lately that one potential reason that some TRFs push back against the concept of 'malgendering' (despite the fact that it impacts all trans people) as something made up by trans men to 'create problems where there aren't any' and 'demonise using your correct gender so you can always be the victim' is because they're only familiar with it within the context of 'ew-phoria'.

Ew-phoria being when one feels validated (gender euphoria) because someone gendered you correctly when saying something negative or even bigoted about you.

However, it's important to realise that not everyone experiences 'ew-phoria' and 'well they clearly hate me/my gender but at least they refered to me as the correct gender' isn't the reaction most people have and isn't healthy to continue to validate within yourself or let people get away with.

I really believe that these TRFs assume everyone gets ew-phoria and will take any kind of validation and that it's healthy to settle for malgendering. Therefore, if they're malgendering a trans man it's fine because that trans man should be feeling euphoric about it because they were called a man regardless of the actual content of the message. And like, no, just no.

I'm not saying you're bad for feeling ew-phoria because it literally cannot be controlled. I understand that sometimes you ache so badly to be refered to as the correct gender you will literally take anything.

But I really do think it's clouded some minds to what is really happening. Malgendering is the name of the transphobic act, ew-phoria is what you might feel from it but it's still a transphobic act and needs to be treated as one.

People simply are not allowed to get away with saying bigoted and predjudice stuff about a trans person just because they're gendering that trans person correctly. Nobody gets to exploit that 'loophole' and get away with it.

Even if you feel 'ew-phoria' you need to call out anyone who is clearly disguising some kind of predjudice behind malgendering. Again, do not let them escape through the loophole of 'well, I didn't misgender you so clearly if you're upset I said this it's because {cue excuse}'.

[is-it-malgendering]

✨Helpful tips for cis allies getting involved in intra-community trans discourse✨

Don’t

Do not do it

Stay in your lane

Shut the fuck up

I don’t care what your trans friend said

I don’t care which direction your trans friend who said you can is transitioning in

Ask yourself: given that this does not affect you and the people it does affect are doing just fine talking about it without you, what do you have to contribute?

Be wary of other cis people who try to get involved; a lot of cis people do this because they want to see which trans people they can be transphobic towards and still count as allies

If you suspect your cis friend is getting involved in order to see which trans people they can be transphobic towards and still call themselves a cis ally, the most trans supportive thing you could possibly do is shut that shit down immediately

There are enough problems facing trans people in the world right now, including where you live, that you have so many options for more productive and helpful things you could do to support trans people. This is not one of them.

Hope this helps ☺️

[is-it-malgendering]

ngl im too into discourse ima step the fuuuuuck back byebye lmao

EVERYONE IN THESE TAGS GO LOOK AT SOMETHING POSITIVE GO DO SOMETHING NOT DISCOURSE RELATED JUST FOR A MINUTE AT LEAST LET URSELF BE HAPPY THEN DO WHATEVER I GUESS.