Showing posts with label genderqueer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genderqueer. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Cis Gender, Trans Gender, and Intersex
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Thursday, April 29, 2010
Five Myths that Hurt Intersex People
I've had conversations with some intersex acquaintances recently about painful situations in which (nonintersex) people have accused my friends of not "really" being intersex. Besides revealing how rude people in our society can be about policing sex and gender, what these conversations have illustrated are some central myths about intersex status that come up over and over again. It's these that I will address in this blog post.
Myth 1: Intersex people all have intermediate genitalia
Imagine this: you're an intersex person, nervous about dating and finding a partner. You work up your courage to disclose your status to people you're interested in, and after a series of them seeming polite but disinterested in dating, you finally meet a guy who expresses interest. You date for a while, and get to the point where the clothes come off. Your boyfriend gets a good look at you naked, accuses you of "making up that story of being intersex" because your body looks female to him, and breaks off the relationship, leaving you feeling misunderstood and ill-used.
Many people are intersexed in ways that are not visible to their partners. For example, an individual with AIS (androgen insensitivity syndrome) is born with internal testes but genitalia that look typically female. Intersex people born with visibly intermediate genitals are often subject to infant sex assignment surgery, another reason why our bodies may not appear visibly intersex to others.
What disturbs me about incidents in which a partner seems interested in dating an intersex person until the clothes come off is that it generally reveals that the partner was fetishizing the intersex person--only interested in them for their "exotic" body. In the situation described here, the boyfriend wanted to have sex with someone who looked genitally intermediate generally. I've also heard stories from intersex people whose genitals are visibly atypical about how a partner lost interest in them when the clothes came off because they didn't see the kind of "hermaphrodite" genitals they'd dreamt of, with a big penis and a vagina (a configuration almost unheard of in real life, but popular in pornographic fantasy). It's depressing to find out your date wasn't really interested in you, but in playing with some fantasy set of genitalia.
Myth 2: Intersex conditions are always diagnosed in infancy
Here's another unfortunate scenario: a person is having infertility problems, so they visit some doctors. They receive a diagnosis and turn in shock to an online gender forum to post "I was just diagnosed as intersex." Somebody responds, "Stop trolling this blog. You're not really intersex--intersex people all know what they are from childhood. You probably have sick fantasies or think saying you're intersex will give you an excuse to gender transition without controversy." The non-intersex person is accusing the intersex individual of being a non-intersex person exploiting intersex individuals, which is pretty ironic.
As noted above, many intersex conditions aren't obviously visible in external genitalia. That means that people may not find out about their intersex status until quite late in life. While the experiences of late-recognized intersex people are different from those of intersex folks diagnosed in infancy, they are not "less" intersex, and have to deal with physical and psychological ramifications for which they need support.
Myth 3: All infant sex-assignment surgery is aimed at creating "female" genitalia
Imagine this situation: you were born with intermediate genitalia but surgically assigned male at birth. However, you grew up hating your male sex assignment, and so you transitioned to female. Your experience has given you a lot of empathy for people viewed as gendertransgressive, so when you notice that a friend of a Facebook friend identifies as genderqueer, you write her a nice message and offer her friendship. She refuses your offer and writes you a nasty note back about how she knows you are lying about being intersex, since "all intersex children are made into girls." She accuses you of being a stalking, posing, creepy man-in-a-dress. Ironic and sad, isn't it--that a woman who identifies as breaking down the boundaries of sex and gender is policing those boundaries so rabidly and wrongheadedly?
It is true that intersex infants are disproportionately surgically assigned female, based on the appalling medical aphorism, "it's easier to make a hole than a pole." But some intersex infants are surgically assigned male--usually when they have at least one external testis, but sometimes under other conditions. The myth that this "never happens" leaves intersex people assigned male at birth open to constant suspicion and exclusion, increasing the difficulties they have to face.
Myth 4: Intersex people should be genderqueer
This myth comes up again and again in academic, activist and feminist circles: that intersex people, being neither male nor female in physical sex, must be genderqueer and androgynous. We're supposed to be standard-bearers for the fight to subvert artificial dyadic gender categories. Encountering an intersex person with an ordinary and "boring" masculine or feminine gender identity who doesn't look at all androgynous, these activists express puzzlement and disappointment--and in private, speculate that the person must have some minor, mild intersex condition, so they are not "intersex enough" to be insightful.
Intersex people face pressure from doctors and families and society at large to genderconform. Facing the opposite pressure to gendertransgress--subversivism-- is just as unfair. Yes, most intersex people open enough to disclose our sex status agree that it is damaging for our society to insist that everyone must identify as male or female. But we live in a society that understands gender dyadically, and like non-intersex people, we commonly identify as masculine or feminine.
Myth 5: "Real" intersex people are not genderqueer
Frustrated and upset by pressure from gender activists to gendertransgress, as descibed in Myth 4, some intersex people have created a reactionary opposite myth: that "real" intersex people have no interest in subverting dyadic gender understandings of male and female. These genderconservative individuals often don't actually identify as "intersex" but as "people with DSDs (Disorders of Sex Development)." And they go around arguing to institutions that "real" intersex people don't identify as genderqueer--that people who say they are intersex and argue for third gender categories and the like are posers, probably crazed feminist zealots or deceptive trans people.
What makes the myth that intersex people are never genderqueer particularly painful to me is that it is spread by members of our community. To undermine your own intersex siblings and deny their identities is counterproductive, pathetic, and cruel. Many intersex people identify as typically masculine or feminine people, but there are plenty who do not do so, and like all genderqueer people, they face a lot of social bias. We have no duty as intersex people to be genderqueer, but I see a strong moral imperative for us to support people who do have genderqueer identities and manners of selfexpression. There are enough hurtful myths circulating about intersex people already. We don't need to add one of our own to the mix.
Myth 1: Intersex people all have intermediate genitalia
Imagine this: you're an intersex person, nervous about dating and finding a partner. You work up your courage to disclose your status to people you're interested in, and after a series of them seeming polite but disinterested in dating, you finally meet a guy who expresses interest. You date for a while, and get to the point where the clothes come off. Your boyfriend gets a good look at you naked, accuses you of "making up that story of being intersex" because your body looks female to him, and breaks off the relationship, leaving you feeling misunderstood and ill-used.
Many people are intersexed in ways that are not visible to their partners. For example, an individual with AIS (androgen insensitivity syndrome) is born with internal testes but genitalia that look typically female. Intersex people born with visibly intermediate genitals are often subject to infant sex assignment surgery, another reason why our bodies may not appear visibly intersex to others.
What disturbs me about incidents in which a partner seems interested in dating an intersex person until the clothes come off is that it generally reveals that the partner was fetishizing the intersex person--only interested in them for their "exotic" body. In the situation described here, the boyfriend wanted to have sex with someone who looked genitally intermediate generally. I've also heard stories from intersex people whose genitals are visibly atypical about how a partner lost interest in them when the clothes came off because they didn't see the kind of "hermaphrodite" genitals they'd dreamt of, with a big penis and a vagina (a configuration almost unheard of in real life, but popular in pornographic fantasy). It's depressing to find out your date wasn't really interested in you, but in playing with some fantasy set of genitalia.
Myth 2: Intersex conditions are always diagnosed in infancy
Here's another unfortunate scenario: a person is having infertility problems, so they visit some doctors. They receive a diagnosis and turn in shock to an online gender forum to post "I was just diagnosed as intersex." Somebody responds, "Stop trolling this blog. You're not really intersex--intersex people all know what they are from childhood. You probably have sick fantasies or think saying you're intersex will give you an excuse to gender transition without controversy." The non-intersex person is accusing the intersex individual of being a non-intersex person exploiting intersex individuals, which is pretty ironic.
As noted above, many intersex conditions aren't obviously visible in external genitalia. That means that people may not find out about their intersex status until quite late in life. While the experiences of late-recognized intersex people are different from those of intersex folks diagnosed in infancy, they are not "less" intersex, and have to deal with physical and psychological ramifications for which they need support.
Myth 3: All infant sex-assignment surgery is aimed at creating "female" genitalia
Imagine this situation: you were born with intermediate genitalia but surgically assigned male at birth. However, you grew up hating your male sex assignment, and so you transitioned to female. Your experience has given you a lot of empathy for people viewed as gendertransgressive, so when you notice that a friend of a Facebook friend identifies as genderqueer, you write her a nice message and offer her friendship. She refuses your offer and writes you a nasty note back about how she knows you are lying about being intersex, since "all intersex children are made into girls." She accuses you of being a stalking, posing, creepy man-in-a-dress. Ironic and sad, isn't it--that a woman who identifies as breaking down the boundaries of sex and gender is policing those boundaries so rabidly and wrongheadedly?
It is true that intersex infants are disproportionately surgically assigned female, based on the appalling medical aphorism, "it's easier to make a hole than a pole." But some intersex infants are surgically assigned male--usually when they have at least one external testis, but sometimes under other conditions. The myth that this "never happens" leaves intersex people assigned male at birth open to constant suspicion and exclusion, increasing the difficulties they have to face.
Myth 4: Intersex people should be genderqueer
This myth comes up again and again in academic, activist and feminist circles: that intersex people, being neither male nor female in physical sex, must be genderqueer and androgynous. We're supposed to be standard-bearers for the fight to subvert artificial dyadic gender categories. Encountering an intersex person with an ordinary and "boring" masculine or feminine gender identity who doesn't look at all androgynous, these activists express puzzlement and disappointment--and in private, speculate that the person must have some minor, mild intersex condition, so they are not "intersex enough" to be insightful.
Intersex people face pressure from doctors and families and society at large to genderconform. Facing the opposite pressure to gendertransgress--subversivism-- is just as unfair. Yes, most intersex people open enough to disclose our sex status agree that it is damaging for our society to insist that everyone must identify as male or female. But we live in a society that understands gender dyadically, and like non-intersex people, we commonly identify as masculine or feminine.
Myth 5: "Real" intersex people are not genderqueer
Frustrated and upset by pressure from gender activists to gendertransgress, as descibed in Myth 4, some intersex people have created a reactionary opposite myth: that "real" intersex people have no interest in subverting dyadic gender understandings of male and female. These genderconservative individuals often don't actually identify as "intersex" but as "people with DSDs (Disorders of Sex Development)." And they go around arguing to institutions that "real" intersex people don't identify as genderqueer--that people who say they are intersex and argue for third gender categories and the like are posers, probably crazed feminist zealots or deceptive trans people.
What makes the myth that intersex people are never genderqueer particularly painful to me is that it is spread by members of our community. To undermine your own intersex siblings and deny their identities is counterproductive, pathetic, and cruel. Many intersex people identify as typically masculine or feminine people, but there are plenty who do not do so, and like all genderqueer people, they face a lot of social bias. We have no duty as intersex people to be genderqueer, but I see a strong moral imperative for us to support people who do have genderqueer identities and manners of selfexpression. There are enough hurtful myths circulating about intersex people already. We don't need to add one of our own to the mix.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Transphobia and Intersex Experience
I woke up this morning to a set of transphobic comments on my last blog post. Rather than mope (OK, I did mope, but rather than continuing to mope), I thought I'd use this as a teaching moment.
Transphobia 101
Transphobia is the disrespecting of people who are transgendered--considering trans people to be pitiable or disgusting or evil or deluded or just plain weird. It is usually expressed by cis people--those whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. (Note that my definition of cis sex treats an intersex person assigned female at birth in the same sex category as a person with normative-appearing female genitals and gonads.)
Like all biases born of privilege, transphobia assumes that the marginalized identity needs explaining while the privileged identity does not. For example, homophobia works this way. Homophobic people often ask where queer identity comes from ("How do you know you're gay? Are you sure? What made you gay?") without asking where straight identity comes from ("How do I know I'm straight? Am I sure? What made me heterosexual?") Transphobic people expect trans people to have to explain and prove our gender identities when they cannot do the same for themselves.
Transphobes usually assume that our transtitions are about them: that we are doing this to gain access to their spaces. The favorite bugaboo here is the idea of "a man in a woman's bathroom, horrors!" But the fact is that if some male-assigned creep wants to harass and assault women by peeping at them in bathrooms, he can just walk in and do it for free. To medically transition from male-assignment to female status, a person must invest thousands of dollars over a period of years, endure social stigma, violence, employment discrimination, etc.--and be vetted by a series of medical professionals, all of whom are constantly ready to slam down the gate and stop the process if they catch any whiff at all of the transition being related to kink rather than identity. That's not a plausible route for peepers.
There is a transphobic double-bind that relates to how well trans people "pass"--that is, whether a trans person looks to observers like hir sex of assignment or hir sex of destination. When transphobes recognize a person as visibly trans, they mock hir: "Look! An ugly chick with mascara on her moustache HAHAHA!" or "OMG--dude in a skirt!" If they encounter a person they cannot assign to binary sex categories, they confront the person and demand a binary identification: "Hey! Are you a guy or a girl? What's wrong with you?" And if they take a trans person as their identified sex after a "successful" transition, and then discover the person is trans, they read this as deception, especially (it all being about them) as some attempt to sneak into their pants.
There are particular feminist-transphobic tropes as well. The second-wave feminist transphobic line is well-encapsulated by my morning commenter: "In case you forgot, the majority of transgender people are males to begin with. They still have their male power, male privilege, male upbringing and male experience. Even though they are trying to claim female, womanhood and female privilege, when in reality, they are still male." This transphobic vision imagines a cabal of men whose goal in life is to infiltrate the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival by any means necessary. Trans men are the dupes of this cabal, as my commentator states: "[Y]ou have been taken and hijacked by the tranny (male) mentality."
There is a third-wave feminist transphobic alternative reading of trans people. In this vision, gender is not an essentialist dichotomy that cannot be altered, but a repressive socially-constructed binary that must be subverted to liberate people. (The language is very High Theory, I know, I know. . .) Here the "crime" in transitioning is subscribing to gender stereotypes and strengthening the myth of dyadic gender, opposite sexes. If you were female assigned at birth, not believing that you are "really a woman" is great, but believing you are "really a man" is regressive, unenlightened, idiotic. You should subvert gender and be genderqueer but not transition.
Intersex Transphobia
To many people, the fact that intersex people can be transphobes comes as a surprise. If you are born obviously neither male nor female, people reason, any identity you have must make you an ally of trans people. You could identify as intersex, which is a very odd thing to do since it queers dyadic sex, and which puts you (in their minds at least) in the same box with gender transgressors like trans people and genderqueers. Or you could identify with your sex of assignment, which usually involves surgical assignment, and so you should approve of people having surgery to live in the sex with which they identify. Or you could be assigned to one sex and identify with the (binary) other, in which case you are trans gendered by definition.
However, intersex people can be quite transphobic. The dynamic is very similar to that of lesbian, gay and bisexual cis individuals who hate trans people and blame homophobia on the transgendered: "When I came out to my mom, she panicked and thought it meant I was going to start/stop wearing skirts to church and humiliate her--it's all your fault!" Intersex transphobes believe that they are treated as freaks by society because society thinks they are trans people. They see trans people as making a perverse choice while intersex people's misfortune is biological and "not their fault." If they could just purge the world of trans people, society would finally be nice to intersex people. It's a sadly common dynamic in all sorts of marginalized communities: instead of uniting to fight oppression, people direct their anger at some other marginalized group they see as nastier.
Another way in which intersex transphobia emerges is in relation to a myth held by some trans people. That myth is the belief that society must be kind to intersex people (since it's a biological condition), which leads a good number of trans individuals to wish for intersex status. Society is not in fact so kind--take a walk in my shoes, please--and I empathize with interfolks being upset at the denial of our pain implicit when trans people want to claim intersex status. But this doesn't justify transphobia. Consider a parallel dynamic: in the 1980s a lot of (white) gay men and lesbians said "Society is fair to black people because it's biological and not their fault, so we need to find the gay gene so homophobia will disappear like racism has." This totally denies the pervasive continuing racism that African Americans face, and is stupid and wrong--but this fact doesn't justify homophobia.
My commentator of the morning subscribes to this practice, and taught me a new slur. Zie says, "You see intersex as a 'blame free' group. It's fairly obvious that your a trans and your just another one of those transjackers, who want to hijack the intersex community for your own perverted gain." Transjacker, woo. Well, I am trans gendered, but I am also intersexed, and I can't see how one can hijack oneself.
Who's Erasing Whom?
It seems that my morning commentor believes that no intersex person is trans gendered. Maybe zie is asserting that all intersex people identify with the sex they're assigned at birth. Or maybe zie means that whatever sexes intersex people are living in, and whatever medical interventions they employed to arrive there, this does not constitute "transitioning," and hence thay are not trans gendered. I'll quote what zie says:
"I also find that by you claiming that intersex has a link with trans, you are in effect erasing the history, upbringing and experience of those who are born intersex and intersex born intersex people. You are erasing not only my intersex experience, upbringing and history, but you are erasing every other intersex person's experience, history, and upbringing as well. So I hope you like what you did, by erasing mine and every other intersex person's shared experience, upbringing and history because you and every trans out their are doing that to women, lesbian and intersex people out their."
I thiink that my commentator believes that I was not born intersex. Either that or zie's saying that since no intersex people are trans, and since I identify as trans gendered, I am by definition (no longer) intersex. Whichever is the case, my commentator is projecting hir desire to erase onto me. Zie is saying I don't exist. I am not part of the "every intersex person out there" who is being destroyed by my saying that intersex and trans gender experiences have a lot in common.
I'm Not Going to Disappear
Sorry, my lived experience as a female-assigned-at-birth "true hermaphrodite" who is transitioning to somewhere on the male side of the spectrum is not going away.
My commentator says, "Their is no one within the science, medical and academic community who will back your warped logic and claim [that there is a linkage between intersex and trans experience]." Well, I am a professor, I study medical sociology, and I used to work at a genetics lab, and I can assure you that my commentator is incorrect.
The Moral of Today's Post
My conclusions are simple. Intersex people suffer from transphobia. Intersex people can be transphobes. And trans people who think that they'd be safe from bias if they had intersex status are sadly wrong. But none of that is going to stop me from speaking my mind.
Transphobia 101
Transphobia is the disrespecting of people who are transgendered--considering trans people to be pitiable or disgusting or evil or deluded or just plain weird. It is usually expressed by cis people--those whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. (Note that my definition of cis sex treats an intersex person assigned female at birth in the same sex category as a person with normative-appearing female genitals and gonads.)
Like all biases born of privilege, transphobia assumes that the marginalized identity needs explaining while the privileged identity does not. For example, homophobia works this way. Homophobic people often ask where queer identity comes from ("How do you know you're gay? Are you sure? What made you gay?") without asking where straight identity comes from ("How do I know I'm straight? Am I sure? What made me heterosexual?") Transphobic people expect trans people to have to explain and prove our gender identities when they cannot do the same for themselves.
Transphobes usually assume that our transtitions are about them: that we are doing this to gain access to their spaces. The favorite bugaboo here is the idea of "a man in a woman's bathroom, horrors!" But the fact is that if some male-assigned creep wants to harass and assault women by peeping at them in bathrooms, he can just walk in and do it for free. To medically transition from male-assignment to female status, a person must invest thousands of dollars over a period of years, endure social stigma, violence, employment discrimination, etc.--and be vetted by a series of medical professionals, all of whom are constantly ready to slam down the gate and stop the process if they catch any whiff at all of the transition being related to kink rather than identity. That's not a plausible route for peepers.
There is a transphobic double-bind that relates to how well trans people "pass"--that is, whether a trans person looks to observers like hir sex of assignment or hir sex of destination. When transphobes recognize a person as visibly trans, they mock hir: "Look! An ugly chick with mascara on her moustache HAHAHA!" or "OMG--dude in a skirt!" If they encounter a person they cannot assign to binary sex categories, they confront the person and demand a binary identification: "Hey! Are you a guy or a girl? What's wrong with you?" And if they take a trans person as their identified sex after a "successful" transition, and then discover the person is trans, they read this as deception, especially (it all being about them) as some attempt to sneak into their pants.
There are particular feminist-transphobic tropes as well. The second-wave feminist transphobic line is well-encapsulated by my morning commenter: "In case you forgot, the majority of transgender people are males to begin with. They still have their male power, male privilege, male upbringing and male experience. Even though they are trying to claim female, womanhood and female privilege, when in reality, they are still male." This transphobic vision imagines a cabal of men whose goal in life is to infiltrate the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival by any means necessary. Trans men are the dupes of this cabal, as my commentator states: "[Y]ou have been taken and hijacked by the tranny (male) mentality."
There is a third-wave feminist transphobic alternative reading of trans people. In this vision, gender is not an essentialist dichotomy that cannot be altered, but a repressive socially-constructed binary that must be subverted to liberate people. (The language is very High Theory, I know, I know. . .) Here the "crime" in transitioning is subscribing to gender stereotypes and strengthening the myth of dyadic gender, opposite sexes. If you were female assigned at birth, not believing that you are "really a woman" is great, but believing you are "really a man" is regressive, unenlightened, idiotic. You should subvert gender and be genderqueer but not transition.
Intersex Transphobia
To many people, the fact that intersex people can be transphobes comes as a surprise. If you are born obviously neither male nor female, people reason, any identity you have must make you an ally of trans people. You could identify as intersex, which is a very odd thing to do since it queers dyadic sex, and which puts you (in their minds at least) in the same box with gender transgressors like trans people and genderqueers. Or you could identify with your sex of assignment, which usually involves surgical assignment, and so you should approve of people having surgery to live in the sex with which they identify. Or you could be assigned to one sex and identify with the (binary) other, in which case you are trans gendered by definition.
However, intersex people can be quite transphobic. The dynamic is very similar to that of lesbian, gay and bisexual cis individuals who hate trans people and blame homophobia on the transgendered: "When I came out to my mom, she panicked and thought it meant I was going to start/stop wearing skirts to church and humiliate her--it's all your fault!" Intersex transphobes believe that they are treated as freaks by society because society thinks they are trans people. They see trans people as making a perverse choice while intersex people's misfortune is biological and "not their fault." If they could just purge the world of trans people, society would finally be nice to intersex people. It's a sadly common dynamic in all sorts of marginalized communities: instead of uniting to fight oppression, people direct their anger at some other marginalized group they see as nastier.
Another way in which intersex transphobia emerges is in relation to a myth held by some trans people. That myth is the belief that society must be kind to intersex people (since it's a biological condition), which leads a good number of trans individuals to wish for intersex status. Society is not in fact so kind--take a walk in my shoes, please--and I empathize with interfolks being upset at the denial of our pain implicit when trans people want to claim intersex status. But this doesn't justify transphobia. Consider a parallel dynamic: in the 1980s a lot of (white) gay men and lesbians said "Society is fair to black people because it's biological and not their fault, so we need to find the gay gene so homophobia will disappear like racism has." This totally denies the pervasive continuing racism that African Americans face, and is stupid and wrong--but this fact doesn't justify homophobia.
My commentator of the morning subscribes to this practice, and taught me a new slur. Zie says, "You see intersex as a 'blame free' group. It's fairly obvious that your a trans and your just another one of those transjackers, who want to hijack the intersex community for your own perverted gain." Transjacker, woo. Well, I am trans gendered, but I am also intersexed, and I can't see how one can hijack oneself.
Who's Erasing Whom?
It seems that my morning commentor believes that no intersex person is trans gendered. Maybe zie is asserting that all intersex people identify with the sex they're assigned at birth. Or maybe zie means that whatever sexes intersex people are living in, and whatever medical interventions they employed to arrive there, this does not constitute "transitioning," and hence thay are not trans gendered. I'll quote what zie says:
"I also find that by you claiming that intersex has a link with trans, you are in effect erasing the history, upbringing and experience of those who are born intersex and intersex born intersex people. You are erasing not only my intersex experience, upbringing and history, but you are erasing every other intersex person's experience, history, and upbringing as well. So I hope you like what you did, by erasing mine and every other intersex person's shared experience, upbringing and history because you and every trans out their are doing that to women, lesbian and intersex people out their."
I thiink that my commentator believes that I was not born intersex. Either that or zie's saying that since no intersex people are trans, and since I identify as trans gendered, I am by definition (no longer) intersex. Whichever is the case, my commentator is projecting hir desire to erase onto me. Zie is saying I don't exist. I am not part of the "every intersex person out there" who is being destroyed by my saying that intersex and trans gender experiences have a lot in common.
I'm Not Going to Disappear
Sorry, my lived experience as a female-assigned-at-birth "true hermaphrodite" who is transitioning to somewhere on the male side of the spectrum is not going away.
My commentator says, "Their is no one within the science, medical and academic community who will back your warped logic and claim [that there is a linkage between intersex and trans experience]." Well, I am a professor, I study medical sociology, and I used to work at a genetics lab, and I can assure you that my commentator is incorrect.
The Moral of Today's Post
My conclusions are simple. Intersex people suffer from transphobia. Intersex people can be transphobes. And trans people who think that they'd be safe from bias if they had intersex status are sadly wrong. But none of that is going to stop me from speaking my mind.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Intersex Roadshow: A Personal Introduction
Intersex by birth, honest by choice.
I'm Cary, and my sex is neither male nor female; I'm intersexed. I was born that way. Because my nonstandard set of parts included an ovotestis, which is a gonad that's in between an ovary and a testis, I'm classified medically as a "true hermaphrodite." But doctors don't get to decide who I am.
I'll explain more about the sorts of bodies that get one classified as intersex in a later post. I'll also go into more detail about how we get treated by doctors, institutions, families, and people on the street. The simple story is this: we live in a society that acts as if there are two sexed flavors of people--male and female--but reality is more complicated and more interesting. Intersexed people are all around you, though often you'd never notice us. We live in a culture that treats intersex status as shameful, and most of us born this way have been told all our lives to hide it. I'm not hiding anymore.
I am not defective. I am not disordered.
It is a simple fact of nature that sex is not dyadic, not black-and-white, not limited to two categories. Real bodies come in a rainbow of possibilities. But our medical establishment today insists on allowing for only two, male or female. Intersex conditions are deemed "birth defects" that must be "corrected" surgically, as soon as possible--even though the surgery leaves us with scarred genitals that don't look typical and have limited or no sensation. The idea is that somehow the surgery will make us have "normal" identities as men or women, and that this is vital for everyone's wellbeing.
The power of the medical establishment is so great that what limited intersexed advocacy there is focuses on doctors. The aims of advocacy are basically two: one, to stop infant genital surgery, and two, to get access to medical resources to undo earlier medical interventions. To try to reach these goals, our advocates have been forced into bizarre postures. Again, I'll explain more in a later post, but in brief, doctors dismissed intersex advocates' calls to end infant genital surgery, saying, "What?! You want to keep us from doing surgery so these poor infants will grow up to be some third-sex intersexed freaks? Never!" To placate the doctors, these advocates said, "Oh no! We just want to delay surgery a bit, but we'd never want people to grow up to be unsexed freaks! In fact, we'll never use the name 'intersexed' again. We're just people with Disorders of Sexual Development who are a bit miffed because you cut off the parts we wanted, so please give us more surgery and hormones so we can be normal men and women living with well-managed DSDs."
Well, I am not defective. I am not disordered. I am an intersexed person. And if both doctors and people who speak in my name recoil in horror when I say that I don't indentify as a man or as a woman, too bad for them.
United we stand.
A couple of years ago, something happened to me that changed my life: I met my partner, Beta. I was doing research on embodiment in virtual worlds and was interviewing people with gendertransgressive avatars. In the course of interviewing Beta, I found myself in the presence of someone smart and appealling. . . and openly intersexed. As I've said, most intersexed people have been well-schooled in stealth, so this was a rare treat. One of the joys of having Beta in my life is how things that seemed implausible in isolation became possible in tandem. Like coming out, and being honest about my birth status, or using neutral pronouns (like the pronoun "ze" instead of "he" or "she"). Like being able to assert my masculine gender identity, my intersex sex status, and a femme flair to my style of gender expression all at once, unapologetically.
Lots of people live genderqueer lives, though it' not easy for anyone, given the gender role policing commonplace in American society. Oddly enough, though, it's particularly hard for an intersex person to step outside the confines of dyadic gender, and it wasn't until Beta entered my life and lent me hir support that I was really able to do it myself.
Don't fence me in.
Something that really frustrates me is hearing advocates tell the world that "real people with DSDs" almost always identify as male or female and conform to gender norms. They say that exploitative academics want to use the idea of intersex to subvert gender, against the wishes of "real people with DSDs." They say, "Of course we have nothing against transgendered people who don't want to go all the way and like confusing others with their odd gender presentations, but really. . . people with DSDs are usually quite happy with normal male and female labels."
I was female-assigned, female-reared. I never identified as a "real woman" and wanted out of that box, but it just seemed implausible for me to do anything about it. When you're facing not only the usual transphobia, but the voice of Intersex Authority saying you shouldn't attempt to escape the dyadic gender boxes, it's hard. All I can say is that when I finally, finally came out, it was such an extraordinary relief.
So, I'm an academic, and I do think acknowledging intersexuality presents a strong critique of dyadic gender ideology. I'm not going to keep quiet about that just because it freaks out doctors with regressive gender beliefs. I am profoundly concerned that those doctors are performing lifealtering cosmetic genital surgery on unconsenting infants, but I don't think my keeping silent and closeted helps matters.
The intersex roadshow. . .
What I think will help is just the opposite. I want to take my intersex, androgynously masculine, gendertransitive self public. I want to talk about things I've been thinking about for many years, personally and academically. I want to reach out to my intersex sibs, and to genderqueer folk, and to thoughtful, interested people of every stripe. Hence this blog . . . Hope you enjoy.
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