#ipso-gender

[beyond-mogai-pride-flags]

ITB Pride Flag

ITB (intersex to binary; I2B): transitioning or moving from intersex to binary; a term for binary folks who were assigned intersex at birth (AXAB/AIAB) or otherwise born intersex; an umbrella term for ITM and ITF. Can be used with any gender modality, not just trans or ulter.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

Republicans are finally starting to realize that half the nation is made up of women, and it’s making them nervous.  Not only do women register and vote at rates higher than men, they prefer Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to Donald Trump by a whopping 13 percentage points, according to the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll. Worse for Republicans, that difference has grown since before the Democratic National Convention, when women preferred Harris by 6 points. “I’m not sure I know what to tell Trump to do to stop that free fall,” a senior Senate Republican aide recently told The Hill. And a Republican pollster struck the same note, saying, “The real challenge right now for Republicans is whether they can perform sufficiently well among men to overcome the deficit among women. Given the prominence of abortion in this year’s race and Trump’s past statements about women, the traditional gender gap could become a gender chasm.” So far, Trump’s current 5-point advantage with men doesn’t seem to compensate for Harris’ edge with women. In the same poll, she leads him by 6 points among likely voters overall.

That women favor Harris should be expected when the Republican Party is putting forward a candidate who has been found liable for sexual abuse and who regularly brags about overturning Roe v. Wade, thereby eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.  It surely hasn’t helped that Trump picked as his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance, who seems to value women only by the number of babies they’ve produced. It’s easy to believe that a good amount of the shift over the past two weeks isn’t just because Harris gave such a sterling address at the DNC (though she did). It’s also likely due to the apparently endless stream of video and audio clips showing Vance’s obsession with controlling women’s bodies. But it’s not just Trump and it’s not just Vance. Republicans have spent years hardening the GOP into the party of toxic masculinity and “tradwives” (short for traditional wife and referring to women who participate in “traditional” gender roles). And Republicans seem unable to discuss the Democratic nominee without throwing in a big dollop of misogyny. It’s not like Republicans are keeping it a secret: In 2024, demeaning women is practically the Republican platform.

[...] This year features the first presidential election since Roe was overturned, and the guy who takes credit for that happening is on the ballot. And Trump won’t win women’s support by flip-flop-flipping himself or refusing to answer when asked about a national abortion ban. 

The gender gap is expected to grow this fall at the ballot box, with Kamala Harris (D) having the decided edge with women and Donald Trump (R) having the edge with men.

Trump’s pick of JD Vance as his running mate has done little to quell the GOP’s reliance on sexism to attack Harris.

This upcoming election is the first post-Roe Presidential election, so abortion access and reproductive health issues will be a key issue in mind, especially among women.

[gnc-culture-is]

Quick question to see what the audience of this blog is like.

I presume you know what a cis person is and what a trans person is, but the latter three can be found defined at the links below.

Ipsogender

Isogender

Cusper

[intersexbookclub]

Discussion summary: Left Hand of Darkness

Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness is a classic in science fiction that explores issues of sex/gender in an alien-yet-human society where the aliens are just like us except in how they reproduce. These aliens, the Gethenians, can reproduce as either male or female. They spend most of their lives sexually undifferentiated. Once a month, they go into heat (“kemmer”) and their sexual organs activate as either male or female (it’s essentially random).

Here's a summary of the discussions we had on 2023-08-25 and 2023-09-01 about the book:

HIGH LEVEL REACTONS

Michelle (@scifimagpie): even though it was written by a cis straight perisex woman there is a queerness to the writing that feels true and that she nailed. There is a queerness to the soul of this book that still holds up, that's true and good, and I cannot but love and respect that.

Elizabeth (@ipso-faculty): this book is such a commentary on 1960s misogyny. Genly is a raging misogynist. It takes a whole prison break and crossing the arctic for Genly to realize a woman or androgyne can be competent 👀

Dimitri: [Having read just the first half of the book] I wonder if it keeps happening, if Genly keeps going "woaaaah" [to the Gethenians’ androgyny] or if he ever acclimates. It's been half the novel my guy

vic: yeah a book where a guy is destroyed by seeing a breast makes me want queer theory

vic: [it also] makes me feel good to see how much has changed [since the 1960s]

THE INTERSEX STUFF

A thing we appreciated about the book was how being intersex is contextual. The main character of the book, Genly Ai, is a human from a planet like Earth, who visits Gethen to open trade and diplomatic relations.

On his home planet, and to Earth sensibilities, Genly is perisex - he is able to reproduce at any time of the month and is consistently male.

But on Gethen, Genly becomes intersex. On Gethen, the norm is that you only manifest (and can reproduce as) a given sex during the monthly kemmer (heat/oestrus) period. 

The Gethenians understand Genly as living in “permanent kemmer”, which is described as a common (intersex) condition, and these people are hyper-sexualized and referred to as Perverts.

At this point it’s worth noting that depiction is not the same as endorsement. Michelle pointed out the book is very empathetic to those in permanent kemmer. LeGuin does not appear to be endorsing the social stigma faced by these people, merely depicting it, and putting a mirror to how our own society treats intersex people.

Throughout the book, Genly is treated as an oddity by the Gethenians. He is hyper sexualized. He undergoes a genital inspection to prove he is who he says he is. 

When Genly is sent to a prison camp and forcibly given HRT, he does not respond “normally” to the hormones, the effects are way worse for him, and the prison camp staff don’t care, and keep administering them even if it’ll kill him. 

Two of us have had the experience of having hyperandrogenism and being forced onto birth control as teenager, and relating to the sluggishness of the drugs that Genly experienced, as well as the sense that gender/sex conformity was more important to authority figures (parents, doctors) than actual health and well-being.

Another scene we discussed the one where Genly is in a prison van en route to the gulag, and a Gethenian enters kemmer and wants to mate with him and he declines. He is given multiple opportunities over the course of the book to try having sex with a Gethenian, and declines every time, and we wondered if he avoided it out of trauma of being hyper-sexualized & hyper-medicalized & having had his genitals inspected.

We discussed the way he described his genital inspection through a trauma lens, and how it interacts with toxic masculinity - in vic’s terms, Genly being "I am a manly man and I have don't trauma"

Those of us who read the short story, Coming of Age in Karhide, noted that once the world was narrated from a Gethenian POV, the people in permanent kemmer were treated far more neutrally, which gave us the impression that Genly as an unreliable narrator was injecting some intersexism along with his misogyny

WHY IT MATTERS TO READ THIS BOOK THROUGH AN INTERSEX LENS

Elizabeth: I’ve encountered critiques of this book from perisex trans folks because to them the book is committing biological essentialism, and dismissing the book as a result. I think they’re missing that this book is as much about (inter)sex as it is about gender. I think they’re too quick to dismiss the book as being outdated or having backwards ideas because they’re not appreciating the intersex themes. 

Elizabeth: The intersex themes aren’t exactly subtle, so it kind of stings that I haven’t seen any intersex analyses of this book, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of perisex trans analyses that all miss the huge intersex elephants in the room.

Also Elizabeth: I’ve seen this book show up in lists of intersex books/characters made by perisex people, and I’ve seen Estraven listed as intersex character, and it gets me upset because Estraven isn’t intersex! Estraven is perisex in the society in which he lives. Genly is the intersex character in this story and people who misunderstand intersex as being able to reproduce as male & female (or having quirky genitals smh) are completely missing that being intersex is socially constructed and based on what is considered typical for a given species.

WHAT THE BOOK DOESN’T HANDLE WELL

The body descriptions. As Dmitri put it: “ Like "his butt jiggled and it reminded  me of women" ew. It was intentional but I had to put the book down. It reminded me of transvestigators and how they take pictures of people in public.” 🤮

Not pushing Genly to reflect on how weird he is about other people’s bodies. We all had issues with how Genly is constantly scrutinizing the bodies of other humans to assess their gender(s) and it’s pretty gross.

vic asked: “how much of this is her reproducing violence without her knowing it? A thing I didn't like was how he always judging and analyzing people's bodies and realizing others treat him that way. And I wish there was more of his discomfort about this, that it made him feel icky.”

Dimitri added: “I really wanted him to have a moment of this too, for him to realize how much it sucks to be treated this way. As a trans person it's so uncomfortable. What are you doing going around doing this to people?”

Using male pronouns as default/ungendered pronouns. Élaina asked why Genly thinks a male pronoun is more appropriate for a transcendent God and pointed out there’s a lot to unpack there.

OTHER POSITIVES ABOUT THE BOOK

Genly’s journey towards respecting women, that he still had a ways to go by the end of the book. vic pointed out how “LeGuin was straight, and she loves men, and is kinda giving them the side-eye [in this book]. Her writing about how Genly is childish makes me really happy. It’s kind of hilarious to watch him bang his head against the wall because he’s so rigid.” 

To which Dmitri added: “I agree with the bit on forgiving men for stuff. I don't know how she [LeGuin] does it but she really lays it all out. She gives you a platter of how men are bad at things, how they make mistakes that are pretty specific to them. She has prepared a buffet of it.”

Autistic Estraven! As Michelle put it: “autistic queer feels about Estraven speaking literally and plainly and Genly not getting it”

The truck chapter. Hits like a pile of bricks. We talked about it as a metaphor for the current pandemic.

The Genly x Estraven slowburn queerplatonic relationship

The conlang! Less is more in how it gets used

MIXED REACTIONS

The Foretelling. For some it felt unnecessary and a bit fetishy. For others it was fun paranormal times.

Pacing. Some liked how the book really forces you to really contemplate as you go. Others struggled with a pace that feels very slow to 2023 readers.

WORKS WE COMPARED THE BOOK TO

Star Trek (the original series) - we wondered if LHOD and Genly Ai were progressive by 1960s standards, and TOS came up as a comparison point. We were all of the impression that TOS was progressive for its time but all of us find it pretty misogynist by our standards. The interest in extra-sensory perception (ESP) is something that was a staple of TOS that feels very strange to contemporary viewers and also cropped up in LHOD

Ancillary Justice - for being a book where characters’ genders are all ambiguous but the POV character is actually normal about how they describe other characters’ bodies.

The Deep - for being another book in a situation where being able to reproduce as male and female is the norm. The Deep was written by an actually intersex author, and doesn’t have the cisperisex gaze of scrutinizing every body for sex. But oddly LHOD actually winds up feeling more like a book about intersex people, because it features a character who is the odd one out in a gonosynic society. In contrast, nobody is intersex in the Deep - everybody matches the norms for their species, which makes the intersex themes in the work much more subtle.

Overall, as vic put it, “there's something to be said about an honest depiction that's not great, especially when there's no alternatives”. For a long time there weren’t many other games in town when it came to this sort of book, and even though some things now feel dated, it’s still a valuable read. We’d love to see more intersex reviews & analyses of the book!

[crossdreamers]

The great majority of people support gender affirming care for teenagers

The new  30-Country Ipsos Global Advisor Survey shows that in most countries people support transgender health care for youth.

60 percent agree that “with parental consent, transgender teenagers should be allowed to receive gender-affirming care (e.g., counseling and hormone replacement treatment”. 27 percent disagree.

Figure: Views on Teens’ Access to Gender-Affirming Care By Country.

Globally, 67 percent say that trans people face at least a fair amount of discrimination, compared with 19 percent who say they face little or no discrimination. Perceptions of discrimination are highest in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries, and lowest in Switzerland, Germany, and Japan.

Majorities in each of the 30 countries surveyed (76 percent on average) agree that transgender people should be protected from discrimination in employment, housing, and access to businesses such as restaurants and stores.

it is interesting to note that when the British newspaper The Guardian presented the figure above, the headline was “Less than half in Britain back gender-affirming care for trans teenagers”. Britain has indeed become a a haven for transphobes, but the truth is that more Brits support health care for trans youth (47 percent)  than opposes it (35 percent).

Here are some other key findings:

The average share of the LGBT+ population averages nets to 9 percent. Brazil is at the top with 15 percent. 18 percent of Gen Z identifies as LGBT+.

LGBT+ visibility is up, but still differs widely across countries

Majorities support same-sex marriage and parenting in most, but not all

Support for protection from job and housing discrimination is broader than for other measures for transgender people countries

3 percent identify as some shade of trans (including non-binary/gender non-conforming/gender-fluid. 6 percent of Swiss people belong to this category. 6 percent of Gen Z belongs to this category.

Photo: sasirin pamai

[ipsogender]

Mesosex

EDIT 2023-11-23: the term has been revised to:

Mesosex: a person who has an intersex variation, but one which does not conform to perisex (non-intersex) ideas of what intersex is. For example, people who have intersex traits that are considered "mild", or who have variations such as PCOS Hyperandrogenism and Poland Syndrome.

Meso- for middle/in between, to refer to the state of being in between what the intersex community accepts as intersex and what the broader public (mistakenly) thinks intersex is.

More info on why the revision has happened: https://www.tumblr.com/ipso-faculty/734822362966540288?source=share

For archival purposes, this was the original post:

Mesosex: somebody who identifies with intersex people but not as intersex, and also feels perisex does not quite apply to them either. Meso- from Greek mesos (middle), to indicate that one feels in between having the intersex experience and the perisex experience. For example, people with reproductive disorders who feel they have common ground with intersex people but not so much common ground as to feel they are intersex.

There are conditions like PCOS and Poland Syndrome that exist on a spectrum from definitely intersex to perisex-ish, and I hope this term gives people on the perisex-ish side of the spectrum more useful word for themselves than the current language of "intersex-adjacent".

I want to be clear that people with conditions like PCOS and Poland Syndrome are completely entitled to call themselves intersex and that there is broad agreement within the intersex community that anybody with these conditions who feels they are intersex is intersex.

In coining this term I am hoping to validate and connect people who would otherwise call themselves perisex yet not feel it is quite accurate for them.

Mesosex people can have any gender, similar to how intersex people can have any gender.

In designing the flag our goal was to give an impression of something in between the intersex flag and cisperinormative gender colours whilst also including nonbinary people. The salmon background is chosen as a colour that is not quite pink, and the periwinkle ring is chosen for being not quite blue, but still reminiscent of the purple ring of the intersex flag. The white centre, put inside the purple-ish ring, is chosen to reflect how the nonbinary flag has white and purple in its middle.

The term and flag were workshopped with @scifimagpie. I had been thinking for a while that it would be useful to have a term for people who feel in between intersex and perisex, and these recent posts by @queercripintersex on identifying with rather than as not only convinced me there is actually an audience for such a term but also inspired me to get this done! PS. If you are questioning if you are intersex, check out this post by @intersex-support with a big list of intersex media, which you can use to get a sense on whether you resonate with intersex experiences. (Also check out their FAQ! And their past posts! They're really great!)

[gender-jargon]

Gender-Jargon GIN Terms Masterlist

[pt: Gender-Jargon GIN Terms Masterlist ./. End PT]

I said I would do it, so I went ahead and did it.

[PT: I said I would do it, so I went ahead and did it. ./. End PT]

Tagging @imoga-pride and @in-nature-archive.

Here is a list of GIN ([Gender]-in-nature) terms that I used on my old blog (Gender-Resource) for tagging. I have also included more recent GIN terms that either I have coined or has been coined by others that I currently use or likely will use in the future for tagging.

If anyone has any questions about the terms here, just let me know and I would be happy to answer them :-)

Enjoy!

Fin: (Feminine-in-nature)

Unfin: (Unfeminine-in nature)

Troin: (Troinine-in-nature)

Min: (Masculine-in-nature)

Droin: (Droxinine-in-nature)

Unmin: (Unmasculine-in-nature)

Lin: (Androgynous-in-nature)

Unlin: (Unandrogynous-in-nature)

Femain: (Femasline-in-nature)

Ambiguin: (Ambiguine-in-nature)

Altrin: (Altraeninine-in-nature)

Nin: (Neutral-in-nature)

Unin: (Unneutral-in-nature)

Neuin: (Neutrine-in-nature)

Epin: (Epicene-in-nature)

Trinin: (Trinterine-in-nature)

Amin: (Ambiguous-in-nature)

Perin: (Peraine-in-nature)

Ilyin: (Ilyagine-in-nature)

Mvin: (Mavriquine-in-nature)

Auin: (Autonomous-in-nature)

Othin: (Other-in-nature)

Nuin: (Null-in-nature)

Vin: (Void-in-nature)

Agin: (Agender-in-nature)

Glin: (Genderless-in-nature)

Gein: (Generic-in-nature)

Kein: (Kenochoric-in-nature)

Luxin: (Luxine-in-nature)

Inbin: (Inbissiec-in-nature)

Enmin: (Enmitiec-in-nature)

Shocin: (Shocking-in-nature)

Uin: (Undescribable-in-nature)

Din: (Describable-in-nature)

Apin: (Apathetic-in-nature)

Usin: (Confused-in-nature)

Main: (Male-in-nature)

Fein: (Female-in-nature)

Lein: (Femache-in-nature)

Buin: (Butch-in-nature)

Sobin: (Soft Butch-in-nature)

Fuin: (Futch-in-nature)

Femin: (Femme-in-nature)

Bufin: (Butchy Femme-in-nature)

Genoin: (GNC-in-nature)

Qin: (Queer-in-nature)

Ain: (Aporine-in-nature)

Ouin: (Outherine-in-nature)

Diasin: (Diastine-in-nature)

Xin: (Xenine-in-nature)

Oriein: (Orientation-in-nature)

Lexin: (Lexcial-in-nature)

Gsrin: (Gesneriad-in-nature)

Aesin: (Aesthetic-in-nature)

Coriin: (Coric-in-nature)

Whilin: (Whilom-in-nature)

Roin: (Neuroine-in-nature)

Iin: (Intersex Exclusive-in-nature)

Altin: (Altersex-in-nature)

Yin: (Yonderine-in-nature)

Cuin: (Culturally Exclusive-in-nature)

2sin: (Twospirit-in-nature)

Amplin: (Amplusian-in-nature)

Chin: (Changing-in-nature)

Plasmin: (Genderplasmic-in-nature)

Cinn: (Choice-in-nature)

Idin: (Fluid-in-nature)

Uxin: (Flux-in-nature)

Flin: (Fluix-in-nature)

Aporin: (Nonspecific-in-nature)

Porin: (Specific-in-nature)

Unrelin: (Unrelated-in-nature)

Relin: (Related-in-nature)

Plin: (Partial-in-nature)

Poin: (Polygender/Omnigender/Pangender-in-nature)

Antin: (Antigender-in-nature)

Novin: (Novel/New-in-nature)

Infin: (infinite-in-nature)

Doxin (Paradoxical-in-nature)

Oposin (Opposite-in-nature)

Contrin (Contradictory-in-nature)

Vain: (Vague-in-nature)

Vasin: (Vast-in-nature)

Win: (Weak/Disconnected-in-nature)

Reclin: (Reclaimed-in-nature)

Rin: (Rejected/Repulsed-in-nature)

Contrin: (Contraversial-in-nature)

Polin: (Political-in-nature)

Sucuin: (Subcultural-in-nature)

Cocuin: (Countercultural-in-nature)

Quesin: (Questioning-in-nature)

Virin: (Virine-in-nature)

Lierin: (Eraine-in-nature)

Commin: (Commidine-in-nature)

Ithin: (Itherinine-in-nature)

Andin: (Anderine-in-nature)

Diphin: (Dipherine-in-nature)

Umbin: (Umbinine-in-nature)

Pretin: (Preterine-in-nature)

Bin: (Binarine-in-nature)

Nobin: (Nonbinarine-in-nature)

Enbin: (Enbinine-in-nature)

Midbin: (Midbinaraine-in-nature)

Nomidbin: (Nonmidbinarine-in-nature)

Abin: (Abinarine-in-nature)

Noabin: (Nonabinarine-in-nature)

Trin: (Trinarine-in-nature)

Midtrin: (Midtrinarine-in-nature)

Atrin: (Atrinarine-in-nature)

Noatrin: (Nonatrinarine-in-nature)

Tin: (Trans-in-nature)

Cin: (Cis-in-nature)

Trisin: (Tris-in-nature)

Ipsin: (Ipso-in-nature)

Ultin: (Ulter-in-nature)

Iptin: (Ipter-in-nature)

— Gent (link)

[PT: -- Gent (link) ./. End PT]

[rollerska8er]

On Imane Khelif

While we are right to feel joy at Imane Khelif's victory and to support her in her legal action against the people who libelled her, I fear that a lot of people are going to take the wrong lesson from the scandal.

The lesson is not "Imane Khelif is a Biological Woman™ who was mistaken for a trans woman by idiots on the internet".

There is no such thing as a "biological woman", as opposed to a "non-biological woman". all women are biologically women because women are, by necessity, alive. A cisgender woman is not a "biological woman", she is a type of woman.

The lesson is that "There exists no definite parameter which can differentiate all cisgender women from all transgender women, and attempts to assert any one indicator as a definite differentiator of the two will result in misogynist attacks on women, regardless of their assigned sex at birth."

If Imane Khelif was a trans woman, it would not make the indignity she suffered at the hands of commentators like J. K. Rowling and Logan Paul somehow right. The attacks on her were specifically transmisogynist in nature, including people looking at stills of her matches to see if they could spot her supposed external genitals, "proving" she was "really a man".

I have seen several well-meaning people talk about stupid transphobes not even knowing what Real Biological Woman™ is when they see one (implying that trans women are pretenders to womanhood, which they are not), and not the rather more salient point that it doesn't matter if you are "Born A Woman" (that is to say, assigned female at birth), because gendered perception of the sexed body has nothing to do with your birth sex or chromosomes, and everything to do with socially constructed ideas, especially around the inherent female inferiority to men in terms of strength and athletic ability, which is not at all reflected by observable reality.

The harassment inflicted upon Imane Khelif at this year's Olympics was not a case of mistaken identity so much as it was transmisogynist society working as it should. The purpose of a system is what it does.

Women of any gender assigned at birth can be victims of transmisogyny, if the way they present to others is perceived as too masculine. It is for that reason that trans liberation and bodily autonomy is, ipso facto, a feminist position.

Remember: The issue isn't that transphobes don't know a Real Woman™ when they see one. It's that the gender is not something you can determine with scientific testing. It's that many people assume their faulty observations of gender presentation and so-called "Biological Sex" can be extrapolated into a narrative of gender identity and duplicitous conduct on the part of cis female athletes whose bodies happen to produce more testosterone.

In short, transphobic culture can hurt anyone if they deviate from its precepts. This can and will happen again.

We have to be ready to counter it with better narratives than merely pointing out the fact that the target of a transmisogynist attack is a cis woman, as though it would somehow be okay if she was a trans woman.

The sustained attack on trans women is an attack on all women. What Imane Khelif has endured proves it.

[intervex]

Extergender

Extergender: an intersex person whose gender feels independent of being intersex. This the opposite of intergender, where an intersex person feels their gender is connected or influenced by being intersex.

Extergender people can have any gender -- they can be cis, ipso, ulter, or trans; male, female, nonbinary, or other -- it just means that their gender isn't connected to being intersex.

I've made this flag by taking the intergender flag and de-colouring it. Black and white represent how one's gender is clearly separate from being intersex. White represents all possible genders, black represents the absence of the influence of being intersex. The ring indicates this is still an intersex-specific label.

Exter- is used as a contrast to inter-, inspired by the term extersex being a contrast to intersex. (Extersex: someone who is not certain if they are intersex or perisex.)

I am not myself extergender. I coined the term last year for thinking through some internal divisions amongst intersex people. This flag design came together as I was thinking through what a demi-intergender flag would look like. If an actually extergender person creates a different flag for extergender I think that should be prioritized over my design. 💜

Tagging @intersexflags for archiving

[beyond-mogai-pride-flags]

AMAB Man Flag

A flag for men who were assigned male at birth, regardless of gender modality or sex traits.

[hex12345678910]

So a few months ago I decided to make a list of genders and sexualities

Here it's under the cut. Please tell me what to add!

Lesbian/Libidoist Asexual/Lithosexual/Lithromantic/Libragender

Gay/Genderfluid/Genderflux/Graysexual/Gynosexual/Gynoromantic/Genderqueer/Gender Nonconforming/Gender Neutral/Gender Diverse/Gender Gifted/Genderfae/Genderless/Graygender/Gemigender/Genderblank/Genderflow/Genderfuzz/Gender Witched/Girlflux/Grayromantic/Gynesexual/Gyneromantic/Glassgender/Glimragender/Genderfaun

Bisexual/Bigender/Bakla/Bissu/Butch/Biogender/Blurgender/Boyflux/Bicurious/Biromantic/Butchfluid/Butchflux/Burstgender

Transgender/Two Spirited/Transexual/Travesti/Trigender/Tumtum/Turbogender/Tragender

Queer/Questioning/Quoigender/Quadgender

Intersex/Intergender/Ipso Gender/Imperigender

Aromantic/Asexual/Agender/Abrosexual/Abromantic/Autosexual/Androsexual/Andromantic/Androgynous/Ambigender/Aporagender/Autigender/Abimegender/Adamasgender/Aerogender/Aesthetigender/Affectugender/Agenderflux/Alexigender/Aliusgender/Amaregender/Ambonec/Amicagender/Androgyne/Anesigender/Angenital/Anogender/Anongender/Antegender/Anxiegender/Apagender/Apconsugender/Astergender/Astral.Gender/Autogender/Axigender/Allosexual/Autoromantic/Aroace/Aroflux/Aceflux/Allosexual/Alloromantic/Allotroposexual/Allotroposexual/Alloromantic/Allosexual/Autoromantic/Akoisexual/Aliusgender/Amaregender/Aegosexual

Polysexual/Polyromantic/Pansexual/Pangender/Polygender/Polyamorous/Polygamy/Panromantic/Pomosexual/Pomoromantic/Paragender/Perigender/Proxvir

Omnisexual/Omnigender/Omniromantic /Oneiragender

Demigender/Demisexual/Demiflux/Dualgender/Deliciagender/Demifluid/Domgender/Duragender/Demiromantic

Nonbinary/Nuerogender/Neutrois/Neptunic/Ninsexual/Ninromantic/Nanogender

Homoflexible/Heteroflexible/Hijra/Homosexual/Homoromantic/Heterosexual/Heteromantic

Calabai/Calalai/Caelgender/Cassgender/Cassflux/Cavusgender/Cendgender/Cloudgender/Collgender/Colorgender/Condigender/Cupiosexual/Cupioromantic/Ceterosexual/Ceteromantic/Ceterofluid/Ceterogender/Commongender/Cisgender/Cisgender

Eunuch/Egogender/Esspigender/Exgender/Existigender/Epicine

Fa'afafine/Femme/Femfluid/Femgender/Fluidflux/Finsexual/Finromantic/Femflux

Kathoey

Māhū/Maverique/Metagender/Multigender/Muxe/Mirrorgender/Monosexual/Monoromantic/Minsexual/Minromantic/Multisexual/Multiromantic/Magnoxgender/Magigender/Mascfluid/Mascgender/Molligender

Sekhet/Stem/Sapiosexual/Sapioromantic/Skoliosexual/Skolioromantic/Spectrasexual/Spectraromantic/Sapphic/Satturnic/Subgender/Surgender/Systemgender/Straight

Vakasalewalewa/Vapogender/Venngender/Verangender/Vibragender/Voicigender

Waria/Winkte

X-gender/Xenogender

Uranic

Reciprosexual/Recipromantic

Healgender/Heliogender/Hemigender/Horogender/Hydrogender

Jaxura

[antiterf]

Trans and intersex rights regarding healthcare are usually framed as if they're polar opposites. Makes sense in basics, trans people often are denied gender affirming care while intersex people have medical procedures forced onto them (intersex genital mutilation, for instance).

But they seem more similar when you realize that both are specifically aiming for bodily autonomy. Both are for being able to deem when you want to alter your body and when you don't. Trans liberation includes trans people who do not want to alter their bodies at all. It fights for trans people to be able to change their gender legally without needing to go through medical procedures. And while I am not nearly as knowledge of intersex justice and liberation as I am with trans, I don't see condemnation of transition from intersex rights groups or gender affirming care for trans, ipso, or cis intersex people.

What's valued is bodily autonomy. That should be the focus much more than seeing medicine as good or bad.

[female-malice]

the majority of males support feminism and equality :) look - https://www.ipsos.com/en-au/majority-men-support-gender-equality-ipsos-global-study

Good! Now it's time for them to actually do something about it. It's time for men to stop harboring sociopaths in their social circles. And it's time for men to demote the men among them who are holding them back. Refuse to follow sadists and sociopaths and refuse to recognize them as leaders. Stop listening to their podcasts and repeating their ideas to teenage boys. And in their place, promote men who excel at feeling empathy towards women and children and plants and animals. And give them a podcast mic and share that empathetic podcast with teenage boys.

And then help us dismantle porn, prostitution, and other industries that sell the bodies of women, marginalized men, and children.

It's easy for men to check supportive boxes on a survey. It's much more dangerous for men to stand up to sadistic men and take their power away. Men need to hold on to at least one traditional masculine trait. They need to overcome their fear of other men and have the courage to do what's right.

If they can't do this, us women will figure something else out. We're resourceful. However, men have an opportunity to make a colossal gesture of solidarity towards women on a historically unprecedented scale. And that gesture would humanize men in the eyes of history. So men should take the opportunity to do this for the sake of their own historic legacies. Aren't they horrified to look through history and see so many rapists and violent men representing male power? Don't they want to show history a different side of men?

[neontrashman]

I think I’ve figured out why people ship people who are straight allies together (specifically in bandom spaces)

I think a lot of the reason is just how rampant homophobia was/is, or just indifference to queer struggles. As a queer person (and especially as queer youth), it’s very rare to find that heavy/unwavering support from straight people in the real world like there is from people in bandom spaces. (At least in my experience)

I’m a sense, I think it conditions a lot of queer people to believe that kind of support doesn’t exist outside of the support of other queer people/in queer spaces. And also a lot of these band members were expressing support for the LGBTQIA+ community and not expressing the same ignorance around queer topics at a time where it wasn’t typical for straight people to say/show that support.

(Too lazy to find the videos but insert here the clips of that interview from 2007 where Gerard Way and Frank Iero are talking about homophobia (which is a whole other can of worms to unpack w/ Gerard’s expression of gender queerness/fluidity and his distaste for labeling his gender/orientation), and the interview with Pete Wentz and Joe Trohman where Joe asks the interview ‘what’s wrong with gay?’)

ipso facto, (not full blown fact but whatevs), the thought process for a lot of queer people in bandom spaces becomes “this person has shown support for the queer community, and they have before it was really socially acceptable, they must be queer themselves.

This is also muddled by stage gay and the jokes about being gay that at some point don’t feel like 100% jokes after they’re made so many times (I’m looking at you Pete Wentz)

It could also just be that these lil guys act gay asf idk lemme know what you think

[intersexbookclub]

Summary: Chapter 4 of Critical Intersex

For many of us, Chapter 4 of Critical Intersex (2009) turned out to be a particularly rich source of information about intersex history. So I (Elizabeth) have decided to give a fairly detailed summary of the chapter because I think it’s important to get that info out there. I’m gonna give a little bit of commentary as I go, and then a summary of our book club discussion of the chapter.

The chapter is titled “(Un)Queering identity: the biosocial production of intersex/DSD” by Alyson K. Spurgas. It is a history of ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America, and how it went from being a force for intersex liberation to selling out the movement in favour of medicalization. (See here for summary of the other chapters we read of the book!)

Our high level reactions:

Elizabeth (@ipso-faculty): Until I read chapter 4, I didn't really realise how reactionary “DSD” was. It hadn't been clear to me how much it was a response to the beginning of an organized intersex advocacy movement in the United States.

Michelle (@scifimagpie): I could feel the fury in the writer's tone. It was a real barn burner.

Also Michelle: the fuckin' respectability politics of DSD really got under my skin, as a term! I know the importance, as a queer person, of not forcing people to ID as queer, but this was a lot.

Introducing the chapter

The introduction sets the tone by talking about how in the Victorian era there was a historical shift from intersex being a religious/juridical issue to a pathology, and how this was intensified in the 1950s with John Money’s invention of the optimal gender rearing model. 

Spurgas briefly discusses how the OGR model is harmful to intersex people, and how it iatrogenically produces sexual dysfunction and gender dysphoria. “Iatrogenic” means caused by medicine; iatrogenesis is the production of disease or other side-effects as a result of medical intervention.

This sets scene for why in the early 1990s, Cheryl Chase and other intersex activists founded the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA). It had started as a support group, and morphed significantly over its lifetime. ISNA closed up shop in 2008.

Initially, ISNA was what we’d now call interliberationist. They were anti-pathologization. Their stance was that intersexuality is not itself pathological and the wellbeing of intersex people is endangered by medical intervention. They organized around the abolition of surgical intervention. They also created fora like Hermaphrodites With Attitude for the deconstruction of bodies/sexes/genders and development of an intersex identity that was inherently queer. 

The early ISNA activists explicitly aligned intersexuality in solidarity with LGB and transgender organizing. There was a belief that similar to LGBT organizing, once intersex people got enough visibility and consciousness-raising, people would “come out” in greater numbers (p100).

By the end of the 90s, however, many intersex people were actively rejecting being seen as queer and as political subjects/actors. The organization had become instead aligned with surgeons and clinicians, had replaced “intersex” with “DSD” in their language.

By the time ISNA disbanded in 2008 they had leaned in hard on a so-called “pragmatic” / “harm reduction” model / “children’s rights perspective”. The view was that since infants in Western countries are “born medical subjects as it is” (p100)

Where did DSD come from? 

In 2005, the term “disorders of sexual differentiation” had been recently coined in an article by Alice Dreger, Cheryl Chase, “and three other clinicians associated with the ISNA… [so as] to ‘label the condition rather than the person’” (p101). Dreger et al thought that intersex was “not medically accurate” (p101) and that the goal should be effective nomenclature to “sort patients into diagnostically meaningful groups” (p101).

Dreger et al argued that the term intersex “attracts the interest of a large number of people whose interest is based on a sexual fetish and people who suffer from delusions about their own medical histories” (Dreger et al quoted on p101)

Per Spurgas, Dreger et al had an explicit agenda of “distancing intersex activism from queer and transgressive sex/gender politics and instead in supporting Western medical productions of intersexuality” (p102). In other words: they were intermedicalists.

According to Dreger et al, an alignment with medicine is strategically important because intersex people often require medical attention, and hence need to be legible to clinicians. “For those in favor of the transition to DSD, intersex is first and foremost a disorder requiring medical treatment” (p102)

Later in 2005 there was a “Intersex Consensus Meeting” organized by a society of paediatricians and endocrinologists. Fifty “experts” were assembled from ten countries (p101)... with a grand total of two actually intersex people in attendance (Cheryl Chase and Barbara Thomas, from XY-Frauen). 

At the meeting, they agreed to adopt the term DSD along with a “‘patient-centred’ and ‘evidence-based’ treatment protocol” to replace the OGR treatment model (p101)

In 2006, a consortium of American clinicians and bioethicists was formed and created clinical guidelines for treating DSDs. They defined DSD quite narrowly: if your gonads or genitals don’t match your gender, or you have a sex chromosome anomaly. So no hormonal variations like hyperandrogenism allowed.

The pro-DSD movement: it was mostly doctors

Spurgas quotes the consortium: “note that the term ‘intersex’ is avoided here because of its imprecision” (p102) - our highlight. There’s a lot of doctors hating on intersex for being a category of political organizing that gets encoded as the category is “imprecise” 👀

Spurgas gets into how the doctors dressed up their re-pathologization of intersex as “patient centred” (p103) - remember this is being led by doctors, not patients, and any intersex inclusion was tokenistic. (Elizabeth: it was amazing how much bs this was.)

As Spurgas puts it, the pro-DSD movement “represents an abandonment of the desire for a pan-intersexual/queer identity and an embrace of the complete medicalization of intersex… the intersex individual is now to be understood fundamentally as a patient” (p103)

Around the same time some paediatricians almost came close to publicly advocating against infant genital mutilation by denouoncing some infant surgeries. Spurgas notes they recommended “that intersex individuals be subjected (or self-subject) to extensive psychological/psychiatric, hormonal, steroidal and other medical” interventions for the rest of their lives (p103).

This call to instead focus on non-surgical medical interventions then got amplified by other clinicians and intermedicalist intersex advocacy organizations.

The push for non-surgical pathologization hence wound up as a sort of “compromise” path - it satisfied the intermedicalists and anti-queer intersex activists, and had the allure of collaborating with doctors to end infant surgeries. (Note: It is 2024 and infant surgeries are still a thing 😡.)

The pro-DSD camp within the intersex community

Spurgas then goes on to get into the discursive politics of DSD. There’s some definite transphobia in the push for “people with DSDs are simply men and women who happen to have congenital birth conditions” (p104). (Summarizer’s note: this language is still employed by anti-trans activists.)

The pro-DSD camp claimed that it was “a logical step in the ‘evolution in thinking’” 💩 and that it would be a more “humane” treatment model (p105) 💩

Also that “parents and doctors are not going to want to give a child a label with a politicized meaning” (p104) which really gives the game away doesn’t it? Intersex people have started raising consciousness, demanding their rights, and asserting they are not broken, so now the poor doctors can’t use the label as a diagnosis. 🤮

Spurgas quotes Emi Koyama, an intermedicalist who emphasized how “most intersex people identify as ‘perfectly ordinary, heterosexual, non-trans men and women’” (p104) along with a whole bunch of other quotes that are obviously queerphobic. Note from Elizabeth: I’m not gonna repeat it all because it’s gross. In my kindest reading of this section, it reads like gender dysphoria for being mistaken as genderqueer, but instead of that being a source of solidarity with genderqueers it is used as a form of dual closure (when a minority group goes out of its way to oppress a more marginalized group in order to try and get acceptance with the majority group).

Koyama and Dreger were explicitly anti-trans, and viewed intergender type stuff as “a ‘trans co-optation’ of intersex identity” (p105) 🤮

Most intersex people resisted “DSD” from its creation

On page 106, Spurgas shifts to talking about how a lot intersex people were resistant to the DSD shift. Organization Intersex International (OII) and Bodies Like Ours (BLO) were highly critical of the shift! 💛 BLO in particular noted that 80-90% of their website users were against the DSD term. Note from Elizabeth: indeed, every survey I’ve seen on the subject has been overwhelmingly against DSD - a 2015 IHRA survey found only 3% of intersex Australians favoured the DSD term.

Proponents of “intersex” over “DSD” testified to it being depathologizing. They called out the medicalization as such: that it serves to reinforce that “intersex people don’t exist” (David Cameron, p107), that it is damaging to be “told they have a disorder” (Esther Leidolf, p107), that there is “a purposeful conflation of treatment for ‘health reasons’ and ‘cosmetic reasons’ (Curtis Hinkle, p107), and that it’s being pushed mainly by perisex people as a reactionary, assimilationist endeavour (ibid).

Interliberationism never went away - intersex people kept pushing for 🌈 queer solidarity 🌈 and depathologization - even though ISNA, the largest intersex advocacy organization, had abandoned this position.

Spurgas describes how a lot of criticism of DSD came from non-Anglophone intersex groups, that the term is even worse in a lot of languages - it connotes “disturbed” in German and has an ambiguity with pedophilia and fetishism in French (p111).

The DSD push was basically entirely USA-based, with little international consultation (p111). Spurgas briefly addresses the imperialism inherent in the “DSD” term on pages 118/119.

Other noteworthy positions in the DSD debate

Spurgas gives a well-deserved shout out to the doctors who opposed the push to DSD, who mostly came from psychiatry and opposed it on the grounds that the pathologization would be psychologically damaging and that intersex patients “have taken comfort (and in many cases, pride) in their (pan-)intersex identity” (p108) 🌈 - Elizabeth: yay, psychiatrists doing their job! 

Interestingly, both sides of the DSD issue apparently have invoked disability studies/rights for their side: Koyama claimed DSD would herald the beginning of a disability rights based era of intersex activism (p109) while anti-DSDers noted the importance in disability rights in moving away from pathologization (p109).

Those who didn’t like DSD but who saw a strategic purpose for it argued it would “preser[ve] the psychic comfort of parents”, that there is basically a necessity to coddle the parents of intersex children in order to protect the children from their parents. (p110) 

Some proposed less pathologizing alternatives like “variations of sex development” and “divergence of sex development” (p110)

The DSD treatment model and the intersex treadmill

Remember all intersex groups were united that sex assignment surgery on infants needs to be abolished. The DSD framework that was sold as a shift away from surgical intervention, but it never actually eradicated it as an option (p112).  Indeed, it keeps ambiguous the difference between medically necessary surgical intervention and culturally desired cosmetic surgery (p112). (Note from Elizabeth: funny how *this* ambiguity is acceptable to doctors.)

What DSD really changed was a shift from “fixing” the child with surgery to instead providing “lifelong ‘management’ to continue passing” (p112), resulting in more medical intervention, such as through hormonal and behavioural therapies to “[keep] it in remission” (p113).

Cheryl Chase coined the “intersex treadmill’: the never-ending drive to fit within a normative sex category (p113), which Spurgas deploys to talk about the proliferation of “lifelong treatments” and how it creates the need for constant surveillance of intersex bodies (p114). Medical specialization adds to the proliferation, as one needs increasingly more specialists who have increasingly narrow specialties.

There’s a cruel irony in how the DSD model pushes for lifelong psychiatric and psychological care of intersex patients so as to attend to the PTSD that is caused by medical intervention. (p115) It pushes a capitalistic model where as much money can be milked as possible out of intersex patients (p116).

The DSD treatment model, if it encourages patients to find community at all, hence pushes condition-specific medical support groups rather than pan-intersex advocacy groups (p115)

Other stuff in the chapter

Spurgas does more Foucault-ing at the end of the chapter. Highlight: “The intersex/DSD body is a site of biosocial contestation over which ways of knowing not only truth of sex, but the truth of the self, are fought. Both intelligibility and tangible resources are the prizes accorded to the winner(s) of the battle over truth of sex” (p117)

There’s some stuff on the patient-as-consumer that didn’t really land with anybody at the book club meeting - we’re mostly Canadians and the idea of patient-as-consumer isn’t relatable. Ei noted it isn’t even that relatable from their position as an American.

***

Having now summarized the chapter, here's a summary of our discussion at book club...

Opening reactions

Michelle (M): the way the main lady involved became medicalized really made my heart sink, reading that.

Elizabeth (E): I do remember some discussion of intersex people in the 90s, and it never really grew in the way that other queer identities did! This has kind of helped for me to understand what the fuck happened here.

E: It was definitely a very insightful reading on that part, while being absolutely outraging. I didn't know, but I guess I wasn't surprised at how pivotal US-centrism was. The author was talking about "North American centric" though but always meant the United States!!! Canada was just not part of this! They even make mention of Quebec as separate and one of the opposing regions. I was like, What are you doing here, America? You are not the entirety of our continent!!!

E: The feedback from non-Anglophone intersex advocates that DSD does not translate was something that I was like, "Yes!" For me, when I read the French term - that sounded like something that would include vaginismus, erectile dysfunction - it sounds far more general and negative.

M: the fuckin' respectability politics of DSD really got under my skin, as a term! I know the importance, as a queer person, of not forcing people to ID as queer, but this was a lot.

E: it was very assimilationist in a way that was very upsetting. I knew intellectually that this was going on. There was such a distinct advocacy push for that. The coddling of parents and doctors at the expense of intersex people was such a theme of this chapter, in a way that was very upsetting. They started out with this goal of intersex liberation, and instead, wound up coddling parents and doctors.

Solidarities

M: I feel like there's a real ableist parallel to the autism movement here… It dovetails with how the autism movement was like, "Aww, we're sorry about your emotionless monster baby! This must be so hard for you [parents]!" And it felt like "aw, it's okay, we'll fix your baby so they can interface with heterosexuality!" [Note: both of us are neurodivergent]

E: A lot of intersexism is a fear that you're going to have a queer child, both in terms of orientation and gender.

E: You cannot have intersex liberation without putting an end to homophobia and transphobia.

M: We're such natural allies there!

E: I understand that there are these very dysphoric ipsogender or cisgender people, who don't want to be mistaken as trans, but like it or not, their rights are linked to trans people! When I encounter these people, I don't know how to convey, "whether you like it or not, you're not going to get more rights by doing everything you can to be as distant as possible."

M: it reminds me of the movements by some younger queers to adhere to respectability politics.

E: Oh no. There are younger queers who want respectability politics????

M: well, some younger queers are very reactionary about neopronouns and kink at pride. they don't always know the difference between representation and "imposing" kinks on others. In a way, it reminds me of the more intentional rejection of queer weirdos, or queerdos, if you will, by republican gays.

E: I feel like a lot of anti-queerdom that comes out of the ipso and cisgender intersex community reads as very dysphoric to me. That needs to be acknowledged as gender dysphoria.

M: That resonates to me. When I heard about my own androgen imbalance, I was like, "does that mean I'm not a real woman?" And now I would happily say "fuck that question," but we do need an empathy and sensitivity for that experience. Though not tolerance for people who invalidate others, to be honest.

E: The term "iatrogensis" was new to me. The term refers to a disease caused or aggravated by medical intervention.

M: So like a surgical complication, or gender dysphoria caused by improper medical counselling!

The DSD debate

ei: i think the "disorder" discussion is really interesting. in my opinion, if someone feels their intersex condition is a disorder they have every right to label it that way, but if someone does not feel the same they have every right to reject the disorder label. personally i use the label "condition". i don't agree with forcing labels on anyone or stripping them away from anyone either.

M: for me, it felt like a cautionary tale about which labels to accept.

ei: i'm all around very tired of people label policing others and making blanket statements such as "all people who are this have to use this label”... i also use variation sometimes, i tend to go back and forth between variation and condition. I think it's a delicate balance between being sensitive to people's label preferences vs making space for other definitions/communities.

We then spoke about language for a bunch of communities (Black people, non-binary people) for a while

E: one thing that was very harrowing for me about this chapter is that while there was this push to end coercive infant surgery, they basically ceded all of the ground on "interventions" happening from puberty onward. And as someone who has had to fight off coercive medical interventions in puberty, I have a lot of trauma about violent enforcement of femininity and the medical establishment.

ei: i completely agree that it's psychologically harmful tbh…. i was assigned male at birth and my doctors want me to start testosterone to make me more like a perisex male. which is extremely counterproductive because i'm literally transfem and have expressed this many times

Doctors Doing Harm

M: for me, the validation of how doctors can be harmful in this chapter meant a lot.

E: something that surprised me and made me happy was that there were some psychiatrists who spoke out against the DSD label. As someone who routinely hears a lot of anti-psychiatry stuff - because there's a lot of good reason to be skeptical of psychiatry, as a discipline - it was just nice to see some psychiatrists on the right side of things, doing right by their patients. Psychiatrists were making the argument that DSD would be psychologically harmful to a lot of intersex people.

ei: like. being told that something so inherently you, so inherently linked to your identity and sense of self, is a disorder of sexual development, something to be fixed and corrected. that has to be so harmful

ei: like i won't lie i do have a lot of severe trauma surrounding the way i've been treated due to being intersex. but so much of my negative experiences are repetitive smaller things. Like the way people treat me like my only purpose is to teach them about intersex people …. either that or they get really creepy and gross. I’m lucky in that i'm not visibly intersex, so i do have the privilege of choosing who knows. but there's a reason why i usually don't tell people irl.

M: intersex and autism have overlap again about how like, minor presentation can be? As opposed to the sort of monstrous presentation [Carnival barker impression] "Come see the sensational half-man, half-woman! Behold the h-------dite!" And like - the way nonverbal people are also treated feels relevant to that, because that's how autism is often treated, like a freakshow and a pity party for the parents? And it's so dehumanizing. And as someone who might potentially have a nonverbal child, because my wife is expecting and my husband and she both have ADHD - I'm just very fed up with ableism and the perception of monstrosity.

Overall, this was a chapter that had a lot to talk about! See here for our discussion of Chapters 5-7 from the same volume.

[penguicorns-are-cool]

got this picture from a post about the intersex definition but I want to make another post just going through them, especially the asexual one

an infographic showing the acronym "LGBTQUIA+" with definitions from left to right +: and more A: "Asexual They are uncomfortable with sexual contact with anyone. They have no interest in relating sexually with their partners" I: Intersex These are people who were born with genital organs of both sexes (male and female) it is a genetic condition Q: Queer Identify people whose sexuality goes beyond the heteronormative and what is accepted by society T: Transgender Tehy identify with the sex opposite to the one they were born with. This has no relation to sexual preferences B: Bisexual People who may experience attraction to people of multiple genders G: Gay People who like people of the same sex. Often used to refer to men who are attracted to men. It is a concept valid for all genders L: Lesbian These are women who are attracted to women

So I'm gonna go through all of these really quick but the asexual part will probably be longest

Lesbian and Gay: very simplified but like yeah that's it. That's the 101. very gender binary terms but whatever this is an introductory infographic and it's not false

Bisexual: not bad, props for saying multiple genders instead of both genders

Transgender: very gender binary terms. like yeah that's true for a lot of trans people, but also in this context it would be better described as an umbrella term for anyone who doesn't identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. This definition of identifying as the opposite sex is a bit misleading in that sense.

Intersex: I'm just gonna link the @ipso-faculty post go read that it's very important especially cause chances are you have never been properly taught about what intersex means yourself

Asexual:

one: the A stands for more than just asexual. please don't forget the aromantics and agenders. the A is just for everyone who doesn't experience either sexual attraction, romantic attraction, or gender in the same capacity as others

It is so so so important to include all three to at the very least remind people that there is a population of people who don't experience the thing at all and you shouldn't act like it's a universal experience

two: that definition, asexuality is not feeling uncomfortable with sexual contact and not all asexuals are uninterested in having sex with their partners.

that is such an extremely ignorant definition considering that the very first link when I look up "what is asexuality" is this and it says

"Considering that asexuality has often been assumed to be a human impossibility, it is sometimes confused with celibacy. Celibacy is the conscious decision to forgo sexual activity, regardless of one’s level of desire. Celibacy is usually undertaken for religious purposes, either until marriage, or lifelong in the case of Catholic priests and some Buddhist monks. Celibates refrain from sexual activity with other people, and sometimes even with themselves, however much they may long for it. Asexuals, meanwhile, exhibit a distinct lack of desire for partnered sexual activity, although they may have sex."

and like, that last sentence is still a bit off mark but it's a whole lot better than "uncomfortable with sexual contact." Honestly, I haven't seen all that many definitions of asexuality that don't either use the term "attraction" in place of "desire" or make the distinction between celibacy and asexuality. That's a pretty important part, like Asexuality 101 first thing you've ever read should absolutely make that distinction.

but no, instead of describing asexuality this has successfully described celibacy + sex aversion

And it would be one thing if this were some instagram infographic someone made, but this is an infographic in the definition section of a peer-reviewed paper

like, I would hope you are doing a teensy bit more research about definitions before writing an entire study about lgbt+ students. This paper is being cited in other papers, it's being used for other research and they seem to have not even done a google search to figure out that asexuality does not mean discomfort or that intersex includes way more than people with both genitals. and you might think "oh it's probably just an older paper" but no, it was published in 2021

like this is why there are so many misconceptions about the IA+ and why aromantics and agenders always get left off when people talk about it, because research papers like this can't do a google search