#but this is the shit im experiecning in trans community in very particular ways

[trans-axolotl]

i am so sorry if this is the most ignorant shit you’ve ever heard—that long post about how the trans community isn’t inherently safe for intersex ppl—can you outline the harmful, like, ideas? phrases? intersexist talking points that you’re referencing? again i’m rly sorry, for some reason your intersex questions tag won’t show up for me but if you’re willing i’d love to maybe know what phrases or words i should look for to call ppl out on. obviously feel free to tell me to eat shit. i appreciate ur time thank you v much

you're totally fine anon, I'm usually open to most questions when I can tell that people have good intentions :)

So I'm gonna list out a lot of shit but I do want to clarify that it's not only trans people who do this stuff; cis people are horribly intersexist as well. I'm just going to be talking about some specific intersexist things I see more often in trans spaces and also because my audience online is a lot of trans people.

A huge thing is I see a lot of trans people saying that they "want to be intersex" or "wish they had an intersex body." This is an issue for a lot of reasons, because it feels fetishistic, is ignorant of what intersex actually is, ignores the fact that being intersex means you're going to face a lot of oppression, and generally contributes to stereotypes that intersex is like some mythical third sex where you perfectly have a mix of all your characteristics in a gender-affirming way.

Faking being intersex. I haven't seen this shit as much online in a while but this honestly was a kind of big issue in some of my online circles like 5 years back and I still see it popping up every now and then. I don't think I need to explain why this is bad.

Literally just using slurs. I see wayyy more dyadic trans people than I should saying "hermaphrodite" when that is not a slur that dyadic trans people can ever reclaim.

Saying stuff about "AFAB bodies" or "AMAB bodies" or generally talking about sex assigned at birth and assuming that means people have certain body parts or experiences. Not all people who were AFAB have a uterus, not all people who were AMAB have a penis. Generally, I see a lot of trans people making generalizations about the "transmasc or transfem experience" in a way that doesn't leave room for intersex trans people who have different experiences with transition or different ways of understanding their trans identity. Acting like AGAB tells you anything more than what is assigned at birth is a problem, because it excludes intersex people who have different bodies, sex characteristics, lived experiences, all that.

Saying really harmful shit about our bodies, whether that's about body hair or genitalia or our voices, or anything. I've had a lot of dyadic trans people say weird shit to me that I think they think is complimenting me but is just really fucked up. People make weird offensive comments about my body hair and will just say a lot of invasive stuff about my body that is not their business. Asking invasive questions about my genitalia, demanding to know what's in my pants, that sort of stuff.

Specifically harassing a lot of intersex people of color and saying racist shit to them when they speak about intersex topics. This is something I've seen a lot irl and also on tumblr, and people specifically have targeted intersex poc on here and said really racist shit to them if they call people out for saying intersexist stuff.

Getting involved in intracommunity discussions about whether or not intersex is LGBTQ and ignoring intersex people when we speak on it. Our relationship to the LGBTQ community is intersex people's business and we all have a lot of different thoughts on it, and too many trans people speak over us on that.

On the flip side, always leaving us out of conversations where we are relevant (like reproductive rights, lgbtq bills, some types of discrimination, medical abuse, stuff like that)

Only bringing up intersex people when they're arguing with transphobes. Way too often i only see people bringing up intersex issues when its like "Take that transphobes! People with XXY chromosomes exist so you're wrong!" And it's like yeah, that's true, but it's shitty when y'all only bring us up when we're a convenient talking point and then don't know shit about what our activism is, what issues are important to us. It feels exploitative to only use our issues when convenient for you and then not pay attention to us the rest of the time.

Currently a lot of people are ignoring the way transphobic bills are also intersexist. People don't realize that all the things they're saying about "It's so easy for cis kids to get hormones, why is it so easy for cis kids but it's hard for trans kids!!!" is ignoring the fact that most of the cis kids who are "easily" getting hormones are intersex kids who are put on hormones in a way that is often coercive and is trying to "cure" being intersex. All these transphobic bills have specific exceptions to enable intersex medical abuse and it isn't cis people being lucky, it's intersex people being abused.

In general, trans community will ignore intersex exploitation when it's convenient. This one I'm less mad about because I don't think that even a lot of intersex people know this, but the history of how gender-affirming surgery and transgender clinics have been created in the US is really not great. Like obviously gender-affirming surgery is great and I want gender clinics to exist and trans healthcare to be easily accessible, but a lot of transgender healthcare was borne out of intersex medical exploitation. Look up John Money and the John Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic for a particularly bad example. This isn't trans people's fault at all, of course, but what is an issue is when I see trans people unquestionably celebrating doctors who invented trans surgeries, or celebrating the birth of gender clinics without critically understanding the horrible history some of these places have.

Acting like being intersex makes it easier to be trans, or would make it easier to get hormones or be respected by cis people. Most of the trans and intersex people I know have gone through so much shit. I went through hormonal conversion therapy because i was trans and intersex, which was literally so fucked. Because I was both trans and intersex, they did a lot of fucked up medical abuse to try to turn me cis and dyadic, and it did not make medical transition at all easier, it made it harder. That's why it can hurt so much when trans people say that being intersex makes being trans easier, because it fucking doesn't.

Also, I've seen a lot of dyadic trans people lately acting really hostile towards intersex organizations that are advocating for an end to intersex surgery because they think it's going to limit access to trans surgery. Dyadic trans people do not get to fucking say that we should stop advocating for ending intersex genital mutilation because it's "not the right time politically." It's always fucking necessary to be advocating to end IGM, and if there was a specific issue with a specific policy that intersex orgs were advocating for that would make it difficult for trans people to get surgery, that would be important to bring up, but most people I've seen saying that stuff are just saying that we shouldn't talk about it at all.

Not educating themselves on intersex issues. Most trans people I know have no clue what intersex is, what our major activist issues are, what the major intersex org for their country is, what the legal landscape of intersex rights is in their country, stuff like that. I'm not saying that trans people all have to be experts on specific intersex intracommunity debates, intersex history, intersex politics, but I do think that dyadic trans people do need to do the bare minimum of education.

Honestly? This is a little more personal but I know so many intersex people who have had bad experiences in their relationships. A lot of dyadic trans people can get weirdly jealous of their intersex partners, which is fucked up when you consider the fact that the things they are jealous of are things that cause us systematic exploitation and abuse. I know a lot of dyadic trans people who also just...trying to think of how to put this. Who are really not considerate partners during sex for some unique needs that intersex people have during sex. Again not a issue unique to trans people but something that I know happens in like most intersex people's relationships so it's good for trans people to be aware.

In general, the way a lot of trans people talk about and think about biological sex is counterproductive to intersex justice. Biological sex is a social construct. Sex isn't real, in terms of there's no reason sex is tied to gender, and also no reason that we've decided some body parts are now all linked together in a specific way that for some reason is going to be sorted into two categories. Chromosomes and genitalia are not some special body part that is entirely different than like, your kidney or your stomach. Biological sex is not real and the sex binary is not real and I see a lot of people talking about stuff like "male" or "female" is a real category that means anything. There is so much diversity and variation of sex even within dyadic people, and I see a lot of trans people clinging to biological sex in a way that is really apparent and also pretty harmful.

This got kind of long but these are some things that really bother me. I also left out most of the overt stuff like actual hate crimes and assault because I think that most people can recognize that as intersexist when that's happening. Again, I don't want to make it seem like it's only trans people doing this shit, but this is the stuff that I am seeing a lot specifically in trans community and some stuff that has some unique dynamics from trans people. And I think that trans people a lot of times will say things about "how close our two communities are" and "how much our issues overlap" when in reality they don't, and most dyadic trans people aren't putting in the work to build solidarity with trans intersex people. Cis intersex people also aren't putting in the work to build solidarity with trans people either, to be fair, and I'm really mad at them too, but I'm talking about this from the perspective of a trans intersex person who's already existing here in these spaces. other trans and intersex people feel free to add on.

okay to reblog.

#asks #actuallyintersex #intersex #trans #okay to reblog #again i dont want you all to feel like im shitting only on trans people #but this is the shit im experiecning in trans community in very particular ways #i could also make a long post with all the htings i hate about cis people and their intersexist stuff #but they don't follow me on tumblr lmao so what's the point. #also cis intersex people i kind of dont want u to jump onto this post #bc half of you all are transphobic in a way that im like i dont trust u