Did you know that this past week, October 21st to today, October 26th, is also Intersex Awareness Week? I haven't seen a peep about it that wasn’t directly from intersex organisations I follow on Tumblr. It’s the sort of thing that makes me feel small. But I suppose no attention is better than negative attention, than the months spent this southern hemisphere summer diminishing the medical abuse we face as just gender policing, something that comes free with being assigned a gender, and not something we’re especially the targets of at a much higher rate and severity than perisex people. (That’s people who are not intersex, by the way. The word is this way because it only says that you are closer to the sex binary’s ideals, not exactly it. We are very thorough with our terminology.)
I’m tired of being discourse. I’m also tired of being nobody, of being completely alone, of being a monster and a freak, by myself.
I’ve been, since I was a child, treated like I was inexplicably more masculine than other girls, - my strength, my way of moving, my general disposition? -, despite having mostly feminine interests, which made me a target of literally all kinds of queerphobic jokes they have in the book. I was frequently compared to drag queens and transformistas which are similar artists in Brazilian culture. I was generally perceived as unnatural and exaggerated, as well as too man-like. Soon, in middle school, I was getting called sapatão and in high school I was getting called a hermaphrodite in an elaborate public humiliation scenario in theatre class by some white boy who hated me a lot!
But I guess the whole thing is, when I went to look for help with the complaint “people act like I’m not a real girl” people will respond “maybe you’re not a girl then!”, which I suppose is the solution for most people facing this problem! But was not mine, and caused me a bit of mental suffering while I attempted using that as a solution for a while. I could be a girly boy if I wanted to. But after a while, after I realised that I liked women, I realised I really didn’t want to. But it still took forever for me to work my way back to girl because… if I am just a cis woman… What is wrong with me? Why do people not treat me like I am a real girl? Why am I a fake girl?
I discovered that answer when I started BALDING at age 23 and feeling absolutely horrible. I thought I simply hit discourse poisoning level maximum and was malding, but blood tests confirmed I have hyperandrogenism and likely have had it since puberty! Which explains my fucky periods and horrible, horrible acne.
Upon this, I was started on a combination of oestrogen and cyproterone (yes, this is that same GOOD T-blocker y’all take) medication and it did wonders for me! But I had very strong migraines because I was treating them around the same time and the medications lessened each other’s effects, so my doctor took me off of it and put me on another medication that had the very lowest dose of oestrogen in the market and a progestin with no anti-androgenic effect at all and… my body started feeling not mine again.
It’s been over a year since then and I’ve changed doctors, but even she has only been willing to up my medication to the next strongest, which is still extremely weak and my skin still looks like Godzilla’s in terms of lumps and scabs AND I AM STILL BALDING!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is something people seem to just not want to be aware of when it comes to intersex people. They don’t give us the hormones we want either. Not even when it’s hormones associated with our “cis” gender if they’ve decided you’re a “difficult” patient for saying you had a side effect. You complain once? You deserve to suffer.
The “monster” and “freak” class of people is a socially enforced class. For every one of us that gets “fixed” just enough to show, there’s those of us that are forced to remain “ugly” as a reminder that if you stray too much, there’s always those guys.
Of course, this is not me advocating that the natural states are “ugly”, I’m citing the societal motivation behind withholding hormones and procedures as punishment.
The ideal state of things is that we can all live our lives however we’re comfortable, and even my “comfortable” is not fully typically “female”, probably because my body is wired by testosterone and likes it that way. I just need that testosterone to stay where it’s relevant instead of turning my skin into the surface of Io.
But the greater question of it is that it’s lonely and isolating.
I have a much higher expectation of conformity to hegemonic femininity thrust upon me by pericishet women. I work IT in the backrooms of a government building. All my coworkers are college-aged men who just wear whatever. I’m expected to dress business casual, clean girl chic by my mother, and I am forced into it, despite having to take the bus downtown at 7am like everyone else. As I’ve mentioned, I like dressing feminine, but my femininity is seen as transgressive and exaggerated when done by a big bodied, bad skinned freak like me. I’m supposed to pretend I don’t exist, remember?
Among other queer people, people very much want that masculinity from me that I don’t. Every time other sapphics remember intersex women in their positivity posts they only do so to slobber over “natural butches on T”, as if all intersex conditions cause hyperandrogenism (many cause hypoandrogenism, actually), and as if all of us who have it: 1. keep things natural, and/or 2. even are butches. Other intersex women have talked about how we are compulsorily expected to be tops and doms, as if by being intersex we are supposed to play the “man’s” role even in places that are supposedly past that bit of prescriptivist bullshit. To be honest, I have a very difficult time being an aggressive dom - I can only do manipulative mommy, sorry -, precisely because I’ve been taught I am an aggressive out of control monster because of my rage issues which are, yes, related to my testosterone spikes.
And just generally, it’s really hard to connect with anyone, even if you lower all your standards and let yourself be stepped on, you’re never really understood and nobody seems to spare you the slightest thought.
Perisex cis women think I’m disgusting. Perisex trans men and transmasc/neutral nonbinary people find me completely alien to them. Perisex trans women and transfem/neutral nonbinary people do not want me to relate to them. These are neutral observations. It simply is the matter of fact that intersexism is an axis of oppression like any other! Complaining that I’ve called you perisex is the same as alleging that cis is a slur! It’s literally the same kind of word!
And the sad thing is! I can’t really get along with other intersex people either. Because most other intersex people were forced on oestrogen and don’t want to ever be on it ever again even if they control it. Because when the cisheteropatriarchy sees an infant that fails too many requirements to be a male, they just surgically make that child female and then keep that up with hormones for the rest of their life, because in our society that’s the lesser value kind of human. And honestly, all power to them for not wanting to touch the stuff. It just makes it difficult when you do want to be a girl - kind of the same thing that makes it impossible to share identity-related discussion spaces with transmascs; we just want very different things - and your intersex variation causes you physical pain from the part that makes you intersex.
And this brings us back to monsters. I am one of my own kind. There’s no one else like me. I enjoy writing stories where characters are strange creatures and their bodies are wonderful things to explore just as are their minds and their insecurities because I feel strange, I know I am. I have to go through as much theorising about what the hell is happening with my inner chemistry as I usually go through with my speculative biology alien porn. It’s corny to identify as non-human, but I know I am a woman who is a monster, and that is what makes me feel some degree of comfort. I like monsters. I can dig this.
I hope one day I can feel less afraid of just… being intersex. That I can be myself without fearing I will be the discourse topic of the day or a fetish tag on a fanfic or that I’ll be put on yet another punishment dose. Please remember that October 26th is Intersex Awareness Day! Put it on your calendar along with the other queer holidays! We would be very happy to be remembered.