it’s intersexism to benefit from IGM by lying about being intersex to access medical care btw. perpetuating and upholding intersex medical abuse for your own benefit is intersexist and claiming that intersex people (who can also be trans, mind you.) should support that and be okay with it is not only obtuse but dangerous for us.

it is not transphobic or infantilizing to trans people for us to say it’s dangerous and ignorant for perisex trans people to claim to be intersex. and I’m tired of the idea that intersex people are uniquely out to destroy trans people’s ability to transition comfortably.

I think everyone who calls themself cripplepunk should take a moment to listen to the voices of amputees and people who have spinal chord injuries. I so often see parapalegia and lower limb amputations specifically listed as like barely disabilities, people assume they cause minimal to no pain or impairment and that people with those conditions are endlessly supported. It’s really not difficult to find content creators who have these disabilities who talk about them in great detail and learn about the real barriers they create. I recommend Para Tara for learning about parapalegia, Sarah Todd Hammer for information about paralysis affecting the upper limbs, and while she’s not currently posting videos Footless Jo has some great videos about her below-the-knee leg amputation and living with phantom pain. Feel free to add more recommendations for resources, especially if you have experienced an SCI or amputation yourself. I personally don’t have either so my recommendations are based on limited knowledge.

I’ve had an SCI for 10 years (C3 incomplete) and I’ve noticed this belief among able-bodied and non-SCI disabled people alike, and it’s incredibly frustrating. Lots of people think SCI means you have an easy disability, which is easily understood and taken seriously. Paraplegics are barely even disabled. All people with SCI should be quiet and let other disabilities have attention because we’ve had all the attention for ages (yes, I have genuinely been silenced in disability support groups because having an SCI meant I was privileged over other disabled people). So here is a very brief overview of how SCI affects the body, because lots of people think paraplegia= barely disabling, that walking post-SCI= not disabled anymore, and most people have no idea what it’s like to have an SCI:

- Paralysis obviously: weakened or absent muscle function below the level of injury. It can be zero movement of any kind, or weakness. Incomplete SCIs are very common, so partial paralysis is common. Personally, all of my paralyzed muscles have some amount of movement and I can walk very abnormally and with mobility aids for short distances. Some of my muscles are 1/5, most are 2/5 or 3/5, and some are 4/5. I didn’t have complete return of motor function anywhere below my injury, but it does happen to some people. For reference, here’s a brief description of strength grading for SCIs: 1/5= flickers of movement (visible twitches or feeling a slight muscle contraction when touching the muscle), 2/5= movement but too weak to move against gravity, 3/5= movement strong enough to move against gravity, 4/5= markedly weak, 5/5= normal strength. If you’ve ever had a broken bone and been in a cast for 6 weeks, the weakness and stiffness you felt immediately when the cast came off is what a 4/5 SCI muscle feels like. Most people have never experienced muscle weakness equivalent to even 3/5 SCI strength.

- Paralysis of trunk and arm/hand muscles: this is poorly understood by many. Trunk paralysis makes balancing extremely difficult. I can’t sit up unsupported, so I need a supportive backrest all the time or I’m leaning on my arms. Quadriplegics can have total paralysis below the neck, or may have some arm movements but not others. Hand paralysis with working arms or only triceps paralysis is common. Any hand-related task is difficult. Triceps paralysis makes pushing a wheelchair difficult. Many disabled people talk about “pushing through,” “borrowing spoons from tomorrow,” “paying for it later,” and similar statements. With paralysis, we simply cannot do that. We cannot go to that place that our wheelchairs can’t go. We cannot get ourselves into that inaccessible car. I can’t count the times where someone has suggested I do something and just plan to rest later.

- Paralysis of the diaphragm and other breathing muscles: common in quads. Paralysis of trunk muscles (specifically those little muscles around your ribs) affects breathing as well. High-level quads (C1-C2) often need ventilators 24/7.

- Spasticity: involuntary contraction of paralyzed muscles. May be general tightness/rigidity, clonus, or other abnormal involuntary movements or posturing. It’s not painful for me, but I’m sure it can be for some. Spastic muscles move with an extreme amount of force. I’ve had a leg spasm and shoot out and hit something hard enough to break bones in my feet. Injuries above T12 typically cause spastic paralysis, while injuries below typically cause flaccid paralysis.

- Loss of sensation: below level of injury. For me, this is impaired but not completely absent sensation below C3 (base of the neck). I don’t always feel pain, so I’ve burned, cut, and bruised myself without realizing. I also have trouble with non-painful sensations, so I might not notice if I’ve bumped or dropped something or if my pants are sliding down or whatever.

- Temperature dysregulation: we’re really prone to heatstroke because we don’t sweat as much. We often feel extremely cold or hot when it’s just slightly cool or warm.

- Circulation problems: low blood pressure (orthostatic or all the time).

- Autonomic dysreflexia: occurs in people with SCIs above T6, due to any sort of below-injury stimulus (bladder full, need to poop, stubbed toe, etc.). Causes various weird autonomic symptoms like sweating, goosebumps, fast heart beat, pounding headache, flushing, and high blood pressure. Can cause extreme high blood pressure leading to strokes and death.

- Skin breakdown: common in SCIs. We have partial or absent sensation in our skin below our injuries. We don’t have that feeling to tell us if we’re sitting in a way that’s pinching something or if we’ve been in the same position for too long and need to adjust. Sitting in one position for too long reduces circulation and makes the skin breakdown, causing pressure sores. This is managed with special cushions, long periods (months, often) of bed rest, specialized wound care, and surgeries. People with SCI often die of pressure sore complications.

- Neurogenic bladder: people with SCI have bladder dysfunction. We almost always use catheters to empty our bladders. Intermittent cathing (inserting a single-use catheter for a few minutes several times a day) is common. Suprapubic catheters (permanent catheters surgically placed in the belly) are also popular. Some people (like me) have a Mitrofanoff channel, which is a surgical procedure to make intermittent cathing easier, where a tube is made to connect the bladder to the belly. Others have a urostomy. These are major surgeries. UTIs are common. It’s not unusual for someone with an SCI to have 10-15+ per year. Infections and kidney damage are common causes of death in SCI. Incontinence is common.

- Neurogenic bowel: people with SCI also have bowel dysfunction. We almost always do a daily/every other day bowel program. This may involve manual evacuation, digital stimulation, rectal suppositories, and/or transanal irrigation or large volume enemas. Some people get a colostomy or other surgical procedures. Incontinence is common.

- Sexual dysfunction: absent or reduced sensation, orgasms, erections, etc. The nerves that control bladder, bowel, and sexual function are all at the very base of the spine, so basically 100% of people with SCI have these issues.

- Osteoporosis: typically below level of injury due to lack of standing/walking, but milder bone weakness also occurs in walking SCIs.

- Chronic fatigue and chronic pain: lots of reasons and presentations in SCI. Positioning issues, weak muscles poorly supporting joints, overuse injuries, and lots of other stuff. All extremely common for us.

- Neuropathic pain: this occurs due to the nerve damage from SCI. Can be mild or extreme and totally debilitating. Can improve with time, but may not completely resolve or improve at all.

- Psychological consequences: PTSD is common among people with acquired SCI. Acquiring an SCI is a near-death experience.

Like I said, I’m a walking quad. For me, this means I walk inside my home with a marked gait abnormality and I fall often. I walk short distances (<1000 feet total, usually) outside of home with leg braces and crutches. I primarily use a manual wheelchair for mobility. I catheterize my bladder 6 times per day with an intermittent catheter via my Mitrofanoff channel, which takes about 5-10 minutes each time. I do my bowel program daily using a combination of manual evacuation and transanal irrigation, which takes about an hour every day. I depend on lots of expensive special equipment to stay alive- manual wheelchairs (primary and a backup), AFOs, forearm crutches, a special mattress topper to prevent pressure sores, a standing frame to stretch my spastic legs, 200 single-use catheters per month, bowel irrigation system, the list is endless. Neurogenic bladder and bowel alone are seriously disabling, and paralysis even more so. I’m quite severely disabled even as an ambulatory quadriplegic who doesn’t have the same degree of accessibility limitations due to being in a wheelchair 100% of the time. This isn’t to say that SCI is the most disabling disability ever or to otherwise compare SCI to others unfairly, just to provide accurate information about a poorly-understood disability.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. SCI is not well understood by non-SCI folks, and I appreciate it every time someone decides to learn about us.

Example number bazillion of a perisex trans person being intersexist

For context for non reddit users- “circlejerk” subreddits are parody/satire/joke subreddits. They’re for the in-group to make fun of themselves and their own subreddits (jokes about cringy post trends etc). This particular sub gets a lot of shit from non-users who think it’s a transphobic sub, and there’s probably a lot of internalized transphobia there but they actually ban cis people from the sub. The “joke” in this post is about trans men with internalized transphobia to the point that they’d fabricate this ~completely absurd and impossible~ scenario, with no awareness of the fact that this is just life for intersex people

And an extra special fuck you to this commenter:

What you are feeling is so very normal. I went through the exact same thing. The first 2 years after a spinal cord injury are your most vulnerable in terms of mental health. Disability Tumblr is not a good place to be during that time. You need likeminded friends and community more than ever, who will treat you with compassion and understanding

You can’t make the anger you are feeling simply go away. It is a healthy reaction to being put in this terrible confusing position. but you can grow around it. It does get easier. I promise.

I suggest you surround your self with the words and the company of other paralyzed people and additionally, critically and terminally ill people. I don’t mean people with hEDS on tumblr or tiktok. I mean find (online or offline) support groups SPECIFICALLY for people with spinal cord injuries. You are not simply “disabled” or have “chronic pain” in the vague sense, you have a very specific condition and your entire lifestyle is now structured around it. These people can show you that a comfortable and a content life is not only possible, but within reach.

I really hope you are able to find comfort somewhere. Remember you are not alone

I want to share some additional advice based on my personal experiences, as someone who’s 10 years post-SCI and got hurt as a teenager:

- look for irl SCI community. Adaptive sports and rec is the go-to recommendation for irl connection. My area has pretty active programs. Look for an adaptive gym as well, these tend to be connected to your city’s hospital system or the rehabilitation hospital. Look for an irl SCI support group. My city has a monthly support group facilitated by OTs and social workers, and we have occasional social meetups as well. Check out adult SCI camps/retreats like Possability, and the Abilities Expo.

- assuming you did inpatient rehab in a specialized rehab hospital (e.g. Craig, Shepherd, Brooks, Shirley Ryan, various university medical systems’ rehab units/hospitals, etc.), you can contact them for specific info about local resources. If you were in a rehab unit of a smaller hospital, you can probably get in touch with them for the same resources, but I stayed in one of the big hospitals so I can’t speak to other places’ openness to following along after discharge. Look for vocational rehabilitation and other agencies for disabled people. You may be able to connect with a peer mentor- my city’s rehab hospital has a program that coordinates this.

- if you can’t find irl groups, or as a supplement to irl groups, look for online groups. United Spinal I think coordinates some. If you have specific questions about something, r/spinalcordinjuries can be helpful. I think they have a discord server, which is pretty active iirc.

- there are lots of people talking about various experimental SCI treatments. Stay critical of any claims about treatments not currently being offered to the general population, like NervGen or Neuralink, as well as treatments not available under insurance coverage like stem cells and epidural stimulators. If keeping up with the news on them isn’t upsetting to you then research away, but know that we are not actually getting a cure anytime soon. They’ve been telling us we’re “5 years away from a cure” for literally decades (I had a rugby coach who was told this during his inpatient rehab stay in 1985). You’re not pessimistic for not uncritically buying into claims about experimental cures. Do consider signing up for SCItrialsfinder if you’re interested in participating in research though.

- limit time in general disability spaces online. Personally, I completely ditched tumblr from shortly after my injury until I started this blog sometime within the last couple of years. It’s better now than it was at that time, but I used to see endless posts about how [x chronic illness] is worse than being a quadriplegic, how people with SCI are lucky to be “taken more seriously,” etc. I still avoid specific online places like r/disability and r/chronicillness, and I’m wary of r/wheelchairs (Reddit is easier to curate than tumblr so that’s why those are my examples). I look for SCI-specific spaces, as well as other specific spaces that are relevant to me (ostomy communities because I have a Mitrofanoff stoma, incontinence communities, etc.).

- I’m personally also cautious about irl communities that are for anyone with a disability in general. I’ve been burned by those consistently. I went to a queer disability group in undergrad a couple of times, and I was largely silenced because of the immense privilege of having an SCI (because that means doctors take you more seriously apparently). When I was allowed to speak, it was only to answer questions like “how did you convince your doctor to prescribe a custom wheelchair? I want one but my doctor doesn’t want to order it” and “do you know a doctor in our city who manages long-term opioid medication?”

- have healthy boundaries with people. You don’t have to talk about your injury or other personal things if you don’t want to. Especially have good boundaries with any irl friends who might be leaning toward the “my chronic pain is worse than paraplegia” side of things. No, I don’t think it’s funny that you went out of your way to get here before we had planned to meet up so that you’d beat me to the one accessible parking spot that this bar has.

- know the signs of someone who is in any way not interacting with you in good faith, like devotees, people with diaper/incontinence/ catheter fetishes, etc. A bad friend might be rude or dismissive if you talk about SCI stuff, bombard you with personal questions, or compare themselves to you.

- YouTube has lots of great SCI info. Paralyzed Living is a guy that I’ve followed since I got hurt (literally since I was inpatient). Empowered Para is great as well. There are several other folks I follow but don’t remember their usernames off the top of my head. UW Spinal Cord Injury posts recordings of lectures about all things SCI and have been hugely helpful to me in terms of learning about medical aspects of SCI.

- if you feel like therapy would be beneficial, consider looking to see if your local rehab hospital/unit has rehabilitation psychologists. I currently see one as an outpatient. Otherwise, a therapist who specializes in trauma can also be helpful. Therapy is not a must- anger is a completely normal and logical way to feel- but if you’re interested and your anger and other SCI feelings are making it hard to live your life, it can be an option. Personally I find peer support to be much more helpful, but I thought I’d acknowledge it as an option.

That’s all I can think of right now, hopefully my rambling was helpful anon. You’re never alone in this.

hate how afab and amab have become the woke male and female, instead of language to help us dismantle inherent arbitrariness of the sex binary

Super disappointing to finally see artwork accurately representing my body and realize it’s being reposted on subreddits like “awful taste but great execution” and “diwhy” :( Like this is so cool

(Note- none of the people reposting it to make fun are posting a source and I haven’t been able to find one after an hour of searching, so I can’t say for certain what the artist’s intentions are/if it’s intended to be about intersex genitals or embryonic genital development or both)

intersex rights & responsibilities

there’s a lot of people who have recently realized they are intersex, who have variations that aren’t considered “traditionally intersex” (partially my doing lol). & many people who realized they had a variation that counts as intersex, have spent much of their life passing as and seeing themselves as perisex, and are very new to the intersex community and intersex activism.

to try to mitigate inter-intersex intersexism, i felt it would be good to write up a list of rights & responsibilities we all have as intersex people, towards each other. i think this format works well bc it reminds us that caring for ourselves & caring for each other are two sides of the same coin. we ask a little more of ourselves, in how we treat other people, so that we can receive a little more from others, bc we are all in this together.

this isn’t meant to be a super formal complete thing, but i felt like it would do people some good to explicitly state these values & put them out there to be considered. especially since many ppl on this site (& in general) are autistic/neurodivergent & may benefit a lot from explicit advice on how to engage w others!

1. all people with sex trait variations outside of what is typical for “males” and “females” have the right to find their place in the intersex community, and use the label without explanation or apology. there is no intersex hierarchy, no “you must suffer This Much to ride,” no giving the authority to decide what intersex means to perisex doctors before sex variant people themselves.
2. we have the responsibility to keep our most vulnerable siblings at the center of our community, like penguins in a huddle. that means people (esp children) who have been or are being targeted by CIMI due to their intersex traits. it also means multiply marginalized intersex people, especially intersex people of color and non-western intersex people. those who intersexism strikes first and hardest deserve the most community support.
3. we have the right to make sense of our lived experiences through the framework of intersexuality, and to talk about our experiences using that language. we should be able to expect the community to hold space for our stories, our experiences, our needs as intersex people.
4. we have the responsibility to educate ourselves on other intersex people, to hold space for their stories and experiences and needs. we should educate ourselves on intersex terminology and history, and we should have a basic understanding of other intersex variations and what people with different variations experience.
5. we have the right to call ourselves intersex, even when people w internalized intersexism or who use the medical model (like doctors) do not believe we have a right to the term. we have a right to use the language & framework of intersexism to make sense of our experiences with discrimination, abuse, pain, alienation, etc.
6. we have the responsibility to identify & deconstruct our own internalized intersexism. we have a responsibility to educate ourselves on forms of intersexism we do not personally face, and to understand how all forms of intersexism are connected & uphold the same oppressive system. we should treat every act of intersexist violence as if it happened to one of our family members, being outraged and taking action while centering the needs and voice of the actual victims.
7. we have the right to be frustrated, furious, depressed, anxious, traumatized about our experiences with intersexism and to be deeply affected by those experiences. we have a right to be imperfect, messy, problematic, and to struggle to do better and have that effort recognized.
8. we have the responsibility to show compassion & understanding to other intersex people when they are affected by their experiences with intersexism, and to put effort into navigating our own intersex pain & trauma consciously. other intersex people being imperfect, hurt people are not our enemies, nor does being an imperfect hurt person give you a free pass to treat others as your enemies.

the most powerful antidote to imposter syndrome is community and connection. so if you are just realizing that your body counts and struggling with doubt? the best thing to do is to practice being in community w those people and recognizing our shared experiences, struggles, and goals. not talking over or develop any kind of complex around more visibly or traditionally intersex people.

let me make this very clear: the expansive definition of what “intersex” means has to come as a result of being dedicated to resisting intersexism. hypospadias is able to be intersex because intersex activists make the choice to reject the perisex medical model and define the word as an umbrella term for sex variance, so people can unite under shared experience without a doctor’s scrutiny of if they “count.” that cannot be separated from the wider fight against intersexism, especially directed at ambiguous genitalia & “obviously intersex” variations.

i consider my hypospadias/H-VCV intersex not just because it fits my personal experiences (altho it does) but bc I see the direct line between the idea of “intersex traits can be common, they can be minor, they can be mild, it all fits under the umbrella” & the goal of truly dismantling the sex binary and all rules and boxes we draw around how bodies Should Look and Should Act and Should Identify. my indiv identity as intersex is part of a much larger picture & i identify as intersex as an active choice to connect my experiences with my sex variant traits to that goal, that dream. i do this rather than understanding my body the way perinormativity would like me to (as a disordered female), by choosing to create solidarity w other sex variant people in how we’ve been hurt by the sex binary. to identify as intersex is a personal choice but it’s also a deeply social one. once i decide to take it on, that label cannot be separated from the context of community & our shared place in society.

when you enter this shared space, remember to wipe your feet, take off your shoes, and hold the door open for the next person looking for shelter. and when you share your story with the people who welcome you in, be ready to listen to theirs in return.

Things that I personally feel like should be talked about more regarding intersexuality:

-Not knowing whether you’re technically closer to either perisex sex

-What sex and masturbation is like being intersex, particularly with any sort of differences in genitalia

-How different forms of HRT can affect you when you’re intersex

-Having no fucking idea what your chromosomes could possibly be

-How it feels if you have a rare trait/variation, or how it feels when you don’t know of anyone else with your combination of traits/variations, or how it feels to have an unnamed/unidentified trait/variation

-Literally everything surrounding urethral intersex traits

Considering most transgender terminology was simply not made with intersex people in mind I think we deserve to get a little funky with them if we want to

Do you guys ever notice that when trumpie babies cry about “forcible gender transitions on kids” its only when it concerns transgender people but when it comes up about intersex children who are literal BABIES to TODDLERS to CHILDREN to TEENAGERS having their genitals REMOVED and REPLACED suddenly they dont give a single fuck? Its almost like they’re more concerned about getting “non-normal” people to shut the fuck up instead of protecting kids 🤔🤔…

People circumcising their children (especially babies), having their ears pierced (especially the daughters, because “we want people to be able to tell that she’s a girl”) 😐😑

Thats not what I was talking about at all. I wasn’t talking about people circumcising their babies or giving them ear piercings. I’m talking about the fact that intersex children are literally being mutilated against their will so they look normal. Don’t derail posts like this.

Does it not all fall under the same issue though? I wasn’t trying to derail the post; I was just trying to expand on the conversation.

Because whether it’s piercings or surgeries; it’s all mutilation, because they’re making permanent changes to the children’s bodies without their consent.

Cool but I’m talking about intersex children. I am talking about something that will literally harm a child for life and could possibly fucking kill them if the surgery is performed too young. Sure circumcising or ear piercing is weird but it’s not as fucking harmful as goring up a baby because their genitals don’t look “correct”.

You have no idea how much blood loss can occur from circumcision and piercings. It can be fatal too. Yes, with piercings too. Because most parents like this take their kids to get botched piercings (by someone who’s unlicensed and their tools aren’t even clean).

If the child survives, the damage (a lot of times, an illness) can also last the rest of their lives. Like genital dysfunction, HIV and/or Aids and any other illnesses that other clients had.

I’m not by any means diminishing what intersex kids’ parents put them through. It’s fucking horrible. Nobody should be doing that to their kids.

All I was doing, was pointing out that the harmful ideology of “fixing your child’s genitals” has a ripple effect that impacts other groups of people too. Parents should just stop modifying their kids all-together.

It doesn’t “have a ripple effect”. I don’t understand why you’re not seeing my point. This is strictly a thing that happens to intersex children. My post was not about perisex gender roles or body modification. It was about the fact that society cares a whole lot more about a babys genitals than the safety of the baby itself. It was about intersex children being mutilated. It was about intersex children. It was about intersex. Get off my blog.

@thisis-intersexism :/

This is intersexism.

hello perisex people of any kind, yes even trans perisex people, especially white ones. before you is an intersex asian politely explaining that “futa/futanari” is herm/hermaphrodite and is used as such. it is a slur towards asian intersex people. perisex people can not reclaim it. your job is to not demand that you should be allowed to call yourself a hermaphrodite or call others one, because it’s intersexist and the intersex community is already silenced by everyone too much as is. thank you

⚠️ Do not use they/them if talking about me to others in reblogs/comments. I have neopronouns in my pinned post ⚠️

If you are trans and you want to be more than a fair-weather ally to intersex people, you will have to learn to accept that there are people who do not identify as trans, who may onöy identify as intersex, who may even identify as cis, who may even be men, who have

-struggled with their gender identity just as much as you

-who are just as queer as you

-who have as much of a complex relationship with their gender and sex as you

-who have suffered and have been discriminated based on their sex and/or gender as much as you

-who have faced physical violence as much as you and often much earlier in their life than most perisex trans people

-who need surgeries and HRT just as much as you

-who are dysphoric just as much as you (with the added potential trauma of having being surgically raped)

-who are also raped and forcefully impregnated, to “fix us” and to “see what happens”

And you need to accept that while also understanding that we are not “accidental targets” of your own discrimination. We have been murdered, aborted and sacrificed since humans existed.

You also need to accept that you can’t continue using AGAB terms, “our” terms, and then try and gatekeep “trans” from AFAB transfem/ trans women and AMAB transmasc/ trans men.

You also need to accept that you were not coersively assigned a gender at birth unless you suffered IGM. You having a cross put on a piece of paper, or an “f” or an “m”, comes no where near to being castrated, having holes cut into you, having holes forcefully widened or sewn shut. And you need to understand that accepting this does in no way negate or downplay the violence you face later in life.

You need to accept that it is not about whether intersex people or trans people have it harder. For the person who is choking on their trauma, who was severly hurt and can’t deal with it, who is legislated out of existance, it does not matter. At the end of the day, they die.

You can’t keep using “cis” or “cishet” as synonyms for “not actually queer” or “unaffected by the discrimination of queer people”.

And yes, trans intersex people, I am also talking about you.

i think its good that more people are being empowered by the intersex label actually. i think its good that intersex experiences are being viewed as “normal” experiences that not just a rare few have. i think its good that people are questioning their own bodies and questioning the sex binary. i think its good that our community can find common ground and more support than we had before. i think its good we’re questioning the barriers between perisex and intersex. i think its good that we’re not relying on doctors—a group of people that have been notoriously oppressive to us—to be the determiner of intersexuality. i think its good we’re not relying on medicine to tell us who we are. i think its good to have more happy, comfortable intersex siblings. i think its all good.

Corrective Gender-Based Violence and Coercively Controlled Gender

[pt: Corrective Gender-Based Violence and Coercively Controlled Gender in a larger size /end pt]

Corrective Gender-Based Violence (CGBV) is a form of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) aimed at “correcting” a person’s gender expression or identity, with corrective rape operating within CGBV as an extreme form intended to punish or “fix” individuals who do not conform to perceived social norms regarding human sexuality or gender roles. Corrective rape lies at the crux of CGBV, paralleling how rape anchors the apex of the rape culture pyramid, illustrating the minor everyday social enforcement mechanisms that enable, uphold and sustain the violence.

While CGBV can affect everyone, it disproportionately affects individuals across marginalizations, particularly Marginalized Orientations, Gender Alignments, and Intersex (MOGAI) identities, also referred to as LGBTQIIA+ or, more broadly, queer individuals. It acts to uphold patriarchal gender roles through force, threat, and the weaponization of gendered expectations. For racialized individuals, CGBV is often shaped by layered forms of gender regulation: first, through culturally specific gender expectations enforced within their own communities—frequently in response to colonialism and survival under white supremacy—and second, through additional punishment for failing to conform to dominant white-coded patriarchal ideals of manhood and womanhood. These forms of correction are shaped by both racial and cultural contexts, affecting individuals differently depending on how their identities intersect with dominant patriarchal demands. The impact and expression of CGBV further vary depending on (dis)ability, class, and other intersecting social factors.

CGBV encompasses acts like threats of violence for noncompliance, for instance, if the perpetrator claims things such as “just be a man” while initiating fights against “nonconforming” individuals. For transmasculinized individuals, this is a form of malgendering, often intended to traumatize them by imposing a painful, damaging, and restrictive idea of what it means to be a man while punishing them for not meeting expectations. For transfemininized individuals, it is a form of misgendering, often functioning to belittle or delegitimize their womanhood, reinforcing the idea that they’re “really” men and deserve punishment for not meeting expectations. For non-binary individuals, it is both exorsexism and transphobia—an expectation to “pick one” or not transition at all.

For butch sapphics, it is used to frame their masculinity as an imitation of patriarchal manhood and their attraction to women as inherently manly—denying both their gender and their sexuality. For achilleans (men or masculine aligned people who are attracted to men or masculine aligned people), it often implies that masculinity must be heterosexual and emotionally restrained, casting any deviation—whether in sexuality, presentation or affection—as a failure of manhood. For disabled men, their disabilities are treated as an inadequacy that strips away their masculinity, reinforcing punitive ideas of what it means to be a man. This single phrase can be used both to Coercively Control Patriarchal Manhood (CCPM) and Coercively Control Patriarchal Womanhood (CCPW).

A Coercively Controlled Gender (CCG) is a pattern of CGBV characterized by coercive control, which is defined by the NHS (link) as a pattern of “assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim” into complying with a Socially Imposed Gender (SIG) (https://intersex.miraheze.org/wiki/Consistent_socially_imposed_gender). While CCG is not the same as Coercively Assigned Fe/Male At Birth—as the former 1) takes place during one’s life rather than around infancy, and 2) is about the enforcement of gender(ed characteristics) and expression rather than the nonconsensual sex characteristic manipulation that intersex individuals face—CCG is proposed as a more accurate replacement for these terms when used by perisex trans individuals.

The conceptual problems motivating new terminology—the epistemological origins, its failures, and conceptual appropriation underlying CAFAB/CAMAB—are addressed in detail here (link).

That is 100% absolutely what I am referring to. This line of thinking also completely erases things like MDSA (mother-daughter sexual abuse, which I have my own gripes w, I think Maternal Sexual Abuse would work better but I digress) where mother’s aren’t “being sexual” when they abuse their children via body checks to “see if they’re developing” (there’s a lot more to it, but just as an example).

Not to mention all the trans people who are groped to “check” if they’re “really their gender” and such. The violators aren’t doing so to sexually please themselves

The line of thinking enforces the idea that rape is about sexual pleasures, completely separated from power. Rape can be about it, yeah, such as some Drug Facilitated Sexual Assaults, but it’s completely dishonest to try and divorce sexual abuse from power.

In the past, hysteria was “cured” by doctors performing “pelvic massages” which induced force orgasms that they called “hysterical paroxysm.” That was a “medical procedure” that was 100% prescribed rape

I’m so sorry you’ve had to live through that, not to mention the people who tried to limit your power in naming the abuse. What happened to you is absolutely sexual abuse

Though you didn’t ask about the incest part specifically I will also clarify—a lot of the procedures (such as what you underwent) would be performed by parents (usually mothers)

I can’t understand why perisex trans people can’t understand intersexism as its own axis of oppression and intersex as its own identity separate from gender identity. At this point I rarely see people ignoring that white trans people are privileged on the racial axis or that able-bodied trans people are still privileged on the ability axis, yet anytime we as intersex people tell a perisex trans person that they are being intersexist by erasing intersexuality we’re transphobically intentionally erasing their transness. When we’re talking specifically about an intersex issue. Intersex experiences are independent of trans experiences. We are a unique community with unique experiences of oppression. Intersexism is an independent axis of oppression from transphobia or misogyny. Perisex people, regardless of trans status, are still privileged on the axis of intersexism. I do think that the intersex and trans communities should ally with each other, but that doesn’t mean intersexism and transphobia aren’t separate issues.

A response to is-it-malgendering on the topic of intersex animals.

[pt: A response to is-it-malgendering on the topic of intersex animals.]

Context [link] (Ty’s original post)

Okay, I just want to start off by saying please do not send any sort of harassment, or bad faith arguments of any kind to Ty, that is not the goal of this post. This post is just responding to some of his points in regards to the conversation about intersex animals.

How I’ll be formatting this post: I will take something he directly said (provided with screenshots) and respond to them individually. I don’t think Ty is in any way trying to be mean, malicious, or harmful with this post or any of his posts on intersexism and the (rightful) calling in of transmisia within the intersex community, but the way he is going about it is an issue that I need to discuss.

This post is definitely out of the usual topics I discuss on this blog, but it’s something I felt was important to discuss. After his post goes live, I will be taking a small hiatus so I can enjoy my holiday and rest.

This post will be long, so I will put it under a cut.

Keep reading

I feel so… down whenever I want to watch queer or trans videos because I know in the back of my mind that none of the current large queer content creators’ content or community is safe for people like me, intersex people.

I love their work otherwise, but it hurts badly to hear them toss around casual intersexism in their videos constantly when discussing queer and trans issues and nobody ever mentions it.

And because these are large, popular creators, nobody has ever listened when I’ve tried to ask they adjust their language. My dms go ignored or unseen and my public comments get drowned out by fans defending their intersexist comments. It’s emotionally draining and exhausting, I just want to be included in my own community.

Genuinely asking if you are comfortable sharing, but what are some examples of “casual intersexism”? I’m honestly less read up on it than I should as someone who is intersex. Feel free to ignore this though should you not feel like it or anything.

(Note from 2025: This is an older post! You may have to give some of the points made here some extra wiggle room for Nuance.)

• Stripping our intersex status when it fits an argument, ex. “Cis kids get put on hormones no problem while trans kids are denied them” (While they ignore that these are intersex children forced onto hormones)
• Using us when it does fit an argument, but ignoring us entirely outside of that context, ex. Using intersex people existing to validate trans people existing, but never doing any sort of intersex advocacy unless it directly benefits/includes trans people as well
• Erasing intersex issues while attempting to argue trans rights, ex. “No child is getting forced sex changes, that’s not a thing that happens” (It doesn’t happen to trans people, but happens all the time to intersex people)
• Saying that sex is binary but gender isn’t (Neither of them are binary)
• Reducing intersex people down to cis people with disorders, ex. “Cis people born without uteruses” or “Cis people with gynecomastia”
• In addition to the above point, generally acting as if intersex people are not oppressed or as though we have it better than trans people do, often by calling us cis and disordered rather than intersex, ex. “Cis women with high testosterone levels are allowed in sports but trans people aren’t” (Which is not even really a true statement) or by wishing that they were intersex or openly admitting to calling themselves intersex in their personal life in an attempt to avoid discrimination
• Casual use of the word “Hermaphrodite”
• Calling intersex animals trans/nonbinary
• Ignoring blatant intersexism, never calling it out (can have nuance, ex. for safety reasons)
• Calling bills/laws or other issues which directly impact intersex people “trans bills” instead of “trans and intersex bills”, such as the recent Kansas bill directly targeting intersex people being called a “trans bill” - making these bills aiming to exterminate intersex people solely about trans people and ignoring the bills’ direct attack on intersex people
• When these issues are brought up, saying that intersex people are “just caught in the crossfire/unfortunately affected by mistake but not intentionally, it’s about trans people not intersex people”
• Saying that intersex people are not LGBT/queer (Not all intersex people identify as queer, but we have always been part of queer community and should not be pushed out)
• Reducing intersex people down to a statistic
• Common misinformation, such as saying that being intersex means “being born with both parts”
• Using afab and amab as equal to “perisex female” and “perisex male”, ex. Talking as if all people who were afab/amab have or are born with the same hormonal, genetic, or reproductive profiles (this is also frequently transphobic - “afab anatomy”, for example, excludes both transfems and transmascs with bottom surgery.)

Problems with CAGAB’s Epistemology

[pt: Problems with CAGAB’s Epistemology in a larger font /end pt]

The (trans)gender of who coined CAGAB is irrelevant, it doesn’t exempt the terms from critique, especially when the foundational theoretical framing is flawed.

According to Mahdialynn, the trans woman who came forward to dispute false claims about its origins in 2015 (link), the coining was focused on “trying to find a way to talk about gendered experience,” continuing with how she was “trying to make sense of trans ppl’s relationships to birth assignment.” She explained that “[what began as] ‘non-consensually assigned X at birth’ became ‘coercively assigned X at birth’, probably just for the sake of an easier-to-pronounce acronym,” prioritising linguistic convenience over theoretical accuracy.

The issue lies not in authorship but in epistemology: the way CAGAB was conceptualized reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the language it draws from, a language born out of a system in which coercion is not conditional or occasional, but inherent and structural. The concept of sex assignment at birth originates from intersex contexts, where it names a specific regime of biopolitical control often enshrined into law. This regime is defined first and foremost by violations of bodily autonomy, where consent is structurally impossible and harm is retroactively justified as medical necessity. Including, but not limited to, irreversible, non-consensual medical interventions, prescribed rape, and mutilation, rather than the medical neglect, gatekeeping, coercive control, and social conditioning trans people also face.

Framing coercion as a way to make sense of trans experiences isolates trans trauma as uniquely coercive, suggesting that non-coercive assignment exists. It overlooks how gender roles are forced onto everyone (especially queer individuals) and that perisex trans people face the enforcement of gender throughout their lives, whereas intersex individuals face both the enforcement of gender and the construction of the sexed body itself from birth. The phrase claims to address gender, yet conflates it by re-encoding sex categories as if they were gendered experiences. The terms originated from a conceptual misunderstanding of AGAB that equated multiple distinct axes of gendered experience, and their meanings have long since collapsed through perisex misuse. The conflation of coercive control, Socially Imposed Gender (SIG - link), rearing, and birth assignment into a single concept seen as indistinguishable and one and the same is driven by the majority perspective.

It is not just misuse—it reflects a broader pattern: a majority misapprehends a framework originally shaped around minority experiences, repurposes it for themselves, and erases its original connotations in the process. A member of the relative majority took an inherently coercive system, misunderstanding and unaware of its depth; treated it as something that needed changing, and reshaped it to fit her own experience because she didn’t grasp what it meant in the first place. I can’t help but be reminded of the similar phenomena regarding “racist Karen"—as if "Karen” didn’t originally mean a racist white woman weaponizing her white privilege against racialized (particularly Black) people. The terms have been appropriated to such a degree that their original meaning has been obscured—so much so that people now treat what was already inherent as if it were a distinct, additional feature. For these and further reasons, many intersex individuals consider the terms inherently intersexist. On a separate note, as a species, we are required to eat to sustain ourselves, but we understand being “forced to eat” to live is different from someone being forced to eat by being force-fed.

She didn’t develop it from a place of reckoning with the medical system’s coercive control over bodies; she borrowed the language of intersex trauma and reformatted it to describe her own, without grasping its original weight. Her goal didn’t seem to be about illuminating systemic violence, but to make describing trans experiences linguistically convenient.

When used by perisex trans individuals, these terms function as misnomers, category errors, and forms of conceptual appropriation (borrowing a concept and applying it to another context in a way that changes and distorts its meaning). Under this framing, “coercively assigned” misrepresents a system in which coercion is not incidental, but both foundational and systematic—a rule, not an exception—by portraying coercive assignment as unique to trans individuals, rather than acknowledging how coercion disproportionately targets them. Perisex trans people are not coerced into “correcting” their sex characteristics to be assigned a sex systematically in the same way that intersex people are coercively subjected to nonconsensual sex characteristic manipulation. Medical intersexism is rarely used to impose sexual characteristics onto perisex individuals—cases such as botched circumcisions resulting in vaginoplasty are nearly unheard of outside of David Reimer cited as the sole example. There have been perisex trans individuals with developed uterovaginal structures—particularly those transmasculinized—forced to take birth control in an attempt to feminize them, however, such events occur after infancy and target the enforcement of characteristics rather than the erasure of sexual characteristic nonconformity.

While the experiences are very real, more often than not the abuse described aligns with established patterns of coercive control. Using CAFAB/CAMAB to convey violence that occurs later in life and unrelated to nonconsensual sex characteristic manipulation obscures the specific language needed to describe distinct forms of violence intersex individuals face, such as forced, coercive, or “corrective” manipulation of their sex characteristics. If these terms are generalized, what remains—“surgically assigned”—leaves behind those who were subjected to forced exogenous hormone treatments to explain their trauma in explicit detail rather than having a colloquial shorthand. For some survivors, the shortest is: medicalized violence, medicalized rape, prescribed rape, being raped with medication, and legalized incest.

These conceptual failures and problems with CAGAB’s epistemology underscore why more precise terminology is needed to describe experiences of enforced gender, which I refer to as a “coercively controlled gender”—a framework I’ll explain in detail in the following discussion (link).

Intersex people are continuously harmed, killed, objectified, used, and reduced to nothing more than a hypothetical or statistical anomaly, something to be violated and then discarded. Supposedly, at best, we can expect to be treated as something a little less than human. Often, we are put far below that.

Fuck that. We deserve so, so much better than that.

Intersex people have always, always, always existed, and we will always, always, always fight to exist and breathe in the world, present and future. We will create a path forward for ourselves, no matter what. We will live to hug, scream, kiss, laugh, cry, run, and be free. Dressed in flowing yellow and purple, we will be loud, passionate, and whole.

I need to see a future where intersex kids are celebrated. I need to see a future where intersex bodies are made divine. I need to see a future where intersex voices are glorious music, blasted on every speaker for all to hear.

No longer beaten into invisibility, no longer made small behind closed doors, surgical tools, and shame-ridden conversations. We will be open, joyous, and so, so loved.

I do not wish to assimilate, to be seen as “just like everyone else”; my soul yearns for so much more.

When I dream of an intersex future, when I participate in being one of a countless number working towards its creation, there is nothing neutral about it; It must be, by necessity, an act of resistance, an act of community, an act of care for each other and ourselves.

I need to see a future where the wonder and beauty of intersexuality is celebrated in everything.

If you are intersex, know that you bring so much to this world, so much more than you know. Keep going, keep pushing forward, keep uplifting your community and keep being yourself. You are so, so important.

We will continue to live on, now and always.

💛💜

Definitions

Troon/troons: Transmisogynistic slur

There are a variety of reasons an intersex person may not label themselves as trans. Many of them don’t transistion in any way, medically or socially. Others just feel like they label doesn’t fit them. It’s a matter of their own feelings about how they see themselves, and not a reflection of how they see trans people. I noticed the OP only refered to trans women, not men, which doesn’t surprise me as 4tran tends to only talk about trans men to insult them. They seemed to forget that not all trans people are women, or just pretend that they aren’t.

There are lots of intersex folks who are transgender, but being intersex is about sex, not gender. Many intersex people are even assigned a gender at birth, and a lot of those still feel connected to that gender, thus not feeling trans. Their identity is theirs to decide, not yours.

Intersex person: my experiences as an intersex person aren’t the same as trans people’s because I am intersex and I’ve faced a lot of struggles that are different from trans people’s specifically due to my status as an intersex person, so I prefer to use language that matches my specific lived experience

Intersexist trans person: your inability to fit into the box that I personally like is inconvenient and you’re transphobic for that

Also when I talk to perisex trans people, I’ve found a pretty even mix between “you’re transphobic for saying you’re not trans,” “you’re transphobic for saying you are trans,” “you’re transphobic for saying I’m not also intersex because I’m brain-intersex/I transitioned,” and actual decent allies. Like get everyone together and decide if I’m supposed to be trans or not and then get back to me

I’m intersex. I was born intersex. I will die intersex. I have been and will be intersex every minute in between. “Intersex” is the term I use and is the term I want others to use to describe me because “intersex” is what I am. For my entire life I’ve been a hypogonadotropic hypogonadic adult of indeterminate sex or a severely hypospadic sit-to-pee boy or a girl with unwanted boy parts disease or a hermaphrodite or a eunuch or defective or a really interesting case. I’m just intersex and this is the only term I want to use.

So no, I’m not cis or trans or TMA or TME or AFAB or AMAB or more male or more female or whatever other binaries I’ll be questioned about and forced into next. I’m all of those and none of those. I’m intersex, my body is intersex, my gender is intersex, my experience of oppression related to sex and gender is intersexist oppression before anything else.

Some intersex people find all kinds of gender-related language useful or accurate, and some don’t. I’m not saying that no intersex person can use any additional sex- or gender-related terms, but I am saying that we don’t have to. “Intersex” is adequate to describe myself and my body and my experiences, and it is in fact the most and only accurate term for me. It’s intersexist to deny that we have unique experiences that demand our own language or to claim that our chosen language is inadequate. My body and my life are defined by a total and persistent defiance of gender and sex binaries and can only be understood as intersex.

something is weird with your baby’s genitals!! this might cause some slightly awkward hookups 30 years from now. as such it is imperative that we operate while its body is as small and prone to spontaneously dying as possible before it has the chance to form ANY OPINIONS

happy new year i wish everybody who lies about being intersex because “it makes them safer” a very become a better person

I am unfortunately, not able to answer this. I’ll leave it here for the community to respond to.

Intersex conditions are defined by atypical sex differentiation, i.e. inborn (naturally-occurring, not done by choice such as HRT for transition) combinations of biological sex characteristics that are outside of traditional male/female binary, which endometriosis is not (in my intersex opinion, which is just mine and not authoritative). I’m not aware of any intersex self-advocacy group that feels that endometriosis is an intersex variation, nor any medical organization, nor am I aware of any way endometriosis would fit the definition of intersex. I’m not able to just declare yes or no, but my opinion is no. Not every medical condition related to the reproductive organs is an intersex condition.

Endometriosis can affect intersex people- an intersex person with PCOS or NCAH or another intersex variation including a uterus, so if anon has other symptoms of an intersex condition like hyperandrogenism then the intersex label may fit, but endometriosis without any atypical combination of biological sex traits wouldn’t be intersex, from my admittedly limited perspective.

Additionally, I can see why someone with endometriosis might relate and find support with intersex people and potentially form a connection with us as an ally- chronic illnesses, especially chronic illnesses involving the reproductive system, often involve medical trauma that intersex people can likely relate to. I think intersex medical trauma is a very specific type of medical violence and abuse that’s separate from chronic illness and disability stuff (again in my opinion, as someone with both intersex and non-intersex disability-related medical trauma). That doesn’t mean every person with medical trauma is automatically intersex, just that I feel that there’s a relationship between the intersex community and the chronic illness and disability communities.

Like I said, just my two cents as one intersex person.

I’ve heard that endometriosis falls under altersex but not intersex, idk enough to verify but that term is harder to misuse in this way imo

My understanding of altersex was that it referred to intentional changes to sex characteristics I thought? Like trans people who medically transition are altersex because they altered their sex characteristics. I feel like anon is just misunderstanding the difference between a diagnosis affecting the reproductive system (endometriosis) and a variation of biological sex traits resulting in being outside of the male/female biological sex binary (intersex for inborn variations and altersex for intentional alterations). Endometriosis affects the reproductive system, but that doesn’t mean it’s a variation in sex characteristics in the sense of variation from male/female.

I hate how easy it is to find csem/csam (child sexual exploitation/abuse material) by just looking up anything about being intersex and how absolutely no one talks about it or cares about it. The amount of times I’m just trying to do research on my own body and I have to see horrible fucking images of children as the first thing that pops up. People treat it like it’s less harmful because it’s “medical.” I don’t give a shit If it’s medical it’s pictures of naked children sometimes in the middle of surgery. Does no one see the problem with this? I feel like I’m fucking crazy being angry about this. The only people I ever see talking about it are other intersex and it’s just so isolating. People talk about how bad csem/csam is but they treat it like it’s some crazy hard thing to find when all you have to do is look up the word intersex and you’ll find endless pictures of naked babies and children. I need to see more people talking about this

“Cis privilege is when trans minors/trans people of all ages are being targeted with gender affirming care bans while those bans carve out special exceptions for cis people to receive the same care”

1) yes trans minors should be allowed access to gender affirming care. Trans people of all ages should have access to gender affirming care.

2) you are talking about the medical abuse of intersex children. You are talking about babies being surgically mutilated to fit a binary gender role. You are talking about kids being forced to take hormone treatments they didn’t ask for. You are talking about teenagers being manipulated into unneeded interventions. You are talking about sexual abuse in the form of repeated intrusive genital exams and dilation and genital procedures and photos of babies pre-IGM. You are not talking about cisgender perisex children, you are talking about a marginalized population.

3) you are talking about the continued medical abuse of intersex adults. You are talking about the long-term effects of unneeded medical interventions (such as pain, disability, lifelong need for HRT following unnecessary gonadectomy, and repeat surgeries to fix iatrogenic issues). You are talking about continued pressure to submit to IGM in adulthood. You are talking about denial of chosen medical interventions that don’t align with the coercive sex assignment at birth in favor of interventions aligning with an original coercive sex assignment.

I’m an intersex adult with intact ambiguous genitals from birth. It was not gender affirming care for my parents to be hounded to consent to surgical sex assignment throughout my childhood. It was not gender affirming care for me to be coercively reassigned in childhood via nonconsensual hormone treatments. It was not gender affirming care for me to be socially reassigned throughout my childhood without my input. It was not gender affirming care for me to be put in therapy to learn how to correctly perform appropriate gender roles. It is not gender affirming care for me to be continuously harassed to have surgeries as an adult. It’s not gender affirming care that every time I see a doctor I’m encouraged to have my urethra moved to the tip of my penis, to have my penis enlarged to a more traditional size, to have my UGS closed, or to have my hypoplastic gonads removed. It’s not gender affirming care to have to fight to keep my natural, healthy, and functional sex characteristics.

This is what the exceptions in gender affirming care bans are about- it is the other side of the same oppressive coin. You are not talking about gender affirming care or other wanted or consensual medical interventions. You’re not talking about a privilege afforded to cisgender people and taken from transgender people. You’re talking about nonconsensual, unwanted, damaging medical interventions being done to force us into a binary gender role selected by people who aren’t us and don’t care what we want. They are affirming the genders they want us to be and the genders that are convenient for them and they don’t care even a little what we want, and you are playing into their intentional erasure and oppression of intersex people by ignoring this.

A very large chunk of intersex women and girls aren’t allowed to be pro athletes in track or running anymore and I wish more people were talking about it or hell, even just knew about it. I wish there was more of an outcry. I wish people cared more about defending intersex people in sport because why does it seemingly only fall on intersex athletes themselves to fight this shit at great cost to their privacy and safety.

I hope World Athletics rots in hell.

Hey. Stop fucking talking about our oppression like this. It erases us and contributes to our marginalization. Intersex people are not collateral damage or side targets. The oppression we face is not misdirected and meant for someone else. We are targets. There’s a reason gender affirming care bans carve out specific exceptions for intersex people. There’s a reason they are sex testing the way they are, because these regulations are largely specifically directed at intersex women. Intersex people are not unfortunate misdirected targets in their crusade against trans rights, we are targeted too. They hate us too.

It’s one thing to talk about the commonalities of the oppression faced by both trans and intersex women. It’s one thing to find solidarity and talk about the ways intersexism and transphobia and transmisogyny work together and overlap. That is good and contributes to a more complete understanding of all of these forms of oppression. To be clear, I do not and will never have an issue with solidarity and genuine discussion between two marginalized groups with similar goals and significant overlap. Trans people and intersex people should always stand together.

This is not that. This is erasing intersex people from the oppression we face for being intersex. Please understand that we are not hated out of perceived proximity to trans women. We are hated because society is violently intersexist and hates intersex people in our own right.

I need you to understand that this is happening not just because of the current horrific levels of anti-trans rhetoric and policy, but also because intersex women (and a women that may not even be intersex but is simply speculated to be by mobs online because she dared to be good at boxing and beat a white woman while not being white and not being ‘feminine’ enough for societal standards), especially Black and brown intersex women, dared to succeed and be good at sports and that was unacceptable to a deeply intersexist society. The horrific levels of hatred and discrimination that Caster Semenya, for instance, has been subjected to were not just a byproduct of transphobia, it is rooted in racism and misogyny and intersexism.

Is it intertwined with transphobia and do transphobia and intersexism intertwine and support each other? Yes! But I also need people to call it for what it is (intersexism/anti-intersex bigotry) and center intersex people in the oppression we face.

Let me repeat that again: when we talk about the discrimination faced by intersex people, perisex people, and even people in general, including intersex people, need to center intersex people. Because we’re not going to fight intersexism if we refuse to recognize it for what it is.

Like idk it feels like some of you can’t conceptualize that intersex people are a marginalized and oppressed group on our own and that our oppression isn’t just piggybacking off of the oppression of other marginalized groups sometimes. And that sucks.

Perisex trans people will really be like “nooo me lying about being intersex to random strangers on the street isn’t intersexist. It’s about safety. I’m trying to avoid discrimination. What do you mean that implies I don’t think intersex people experience discrimination? Of course intersexism is real, it’s just safer for trans people to label themselves as intersex than it is to label themselves as trans!” and then not see the problem with it

Like, I’m sorry but the cis perisex person that you lied about being intersex to doesn’t see you as “more of a man” because you claimed to be a cis guy with gynecomastia/a “hormone disorder” or whatever. They now see you as a deformed failed-male worthy of pity and mutilation. And you’re just confirming their intersexist world view by playing the “pity the poor cis boy with a DSD” card.

Not to even mention that this doesn’t make you safer.

I cannot stress this enough, intersexism is real and terrifying and if you tell the wrong person that you’re intersex then you will be assaulted. You will be hurt. You are going to get yourself and other trans people killed or worse by engaging in and encouraging this behavior.

Stop

Trans children being deprived of gender affirming care whereas intersex children are routinely suffering medically violent gender enforcing care that may be called “gender affirming” really makes one sick