Closure is almost always something intersex people seek. Often our histories, our stories, and our differences have been erased through genital mutilation, medication, and the systemic practice of shaming and dehumanizing us. I wish you well, and whatever the outcome, I hope that you find people who are supportive and that you feel better.
Higher than normal hormone levels may or may not be intersex related. Sometimes levels of hormones are a bit above average, sometimes they are much higher for other reasons such as pituitary problems or cancer. Body shape also is not a clear indication of an intersex condition, even less so than with the hormones. Men and women come in all shapes and sizes, some women are more “masculine”, some have small breasts or no breasts, some men have breasts and are “curvier” than a lot of women. The way your clothes fit is definitely not a good indication of an intersex condition.
To find out if you’re intersex, you’ll need to find some medical records or get some tests. You may have scars from surgery on your genitals that you don’t know the origin of, or you may have “ambiguous” or “intermediate” genitalia. These would be two ways of being relatively certain that you have some kind of intersex condition without any medical tests, or medical records, but they are not “required” for you to be intersex.
Remember, many intersex conditions are not visible. Many people with intersex conditions look just like any other man or woman. Being intersex does not automatically mean you’re body type is “ambiguous” or “intermediate” or that you have a certain type of genitals.
Why do you feel you are intersex? What leads you to believe this?
“Telling” is a complicated issue, both in the intersex community, and in the trans community. I don’t believe it should be necessary or that you should ever have to tell someone. If you’re not an intersex person, or a trans person, you don’t say “Hey by the way, I was born with genitals that looks like this, and a body that looks like this, and I identify as dyadic (non-intersex) and cisgender (non-trans)” So why should an intersex person or a trans person have to go through all of that. Also, if you get to like a person and you’re to the point that you want to sleep with them, and then you change your mind just because their body or genitals look differently than YOU EXPECTED them to, it’s kind of fucked up, shallow, and discriminatory.
Unfortunately there are some practical concerns, and people are NOT that understanding or humane. People feel threatened by intersex and trans bodies. Our mere existence make people uncomfortable and make people question their sexual orientation and their identity and no amount of explaining or rationale or logic will ever get them to see how ridiculous and oppressive that is. So, many of us have to find ways to “tell” in order to protect ourselves and keep safe safe. Some people like to tell in a public place, because often men will feel threatened, deceived, and manipulated, and as though they’ve been “coerced or tricked into being gay”, and sometimes they get violent.
I personally have had partners make me feel guilty over my body, and tell me things that implied they were afraid of me simply because of the way my body looks and functions. I’ve had partners break up with me because they felt it threatened or contradicted their sexual identity. I’ve had people ignore it and pretend like it wasn’t real, which meant I couldn’t have conversations about my thoughts and feelings around being intersex and my experiences as an intersex person. I’ve had people date me for “cool point” within the lesbian community, so they could seem more radical and progressive.
I don’t have a strict policy for myself or others on when to tell, or even if one should tell. Like I said, I don’t think you should ever have to, and the whole notion that you’re being deceptive or dishonest if you don’t is completely oppressive and just another way of separating out those who aren’t “normal” or who challenge the sex and gender binary and heteronormativity.
There are also a lot of intersex conditions that are not “visible”, either because they’ve been erased by unnecessary and harmful “surgeries” or because they just aren’t a kind of condition that you can see. In these cases, most people don’t even believe we have an intersex condition. Or they might feel “let down” because we’re not the fetishized ideal “hermaphrodite” they thought us to be, and leave disappointed that they couldn’t fuck someone with a pussy and a dick.
I am fortunate to be with someone that’s known me for a long time, and who was friends with me for a while before we ever got together, and because of that, she already knew a lot about my body and my history and we never had to have any awkward difficult conversations about how my body works, what it looks like, or what it’s history is, although I suspect with her, it wouldn’t have been a very difficult conversation had we had it.
I’d say in general, people are reprehensible in this respect, and in my experience, cannot be trusted to handle it very well, so it’s safest to tell in a safe place, possibly a public place, if you’re not sure how a person will react.
I don’t I ignore them and try to get policies changed/enacted that protect intersex people, so that their opinions don’t matter.
More mix and match genitals! Keep in mind, ‘penis’ and ‘clitoris’ are binarist terms that imply no in between and that imply a vast difference between the two, which doesn’t exist. Not everyone calls there bits by the medical terminaology, so some of these smaller ones might be dicks/penises/cocks, and some of the bigger ones might be clits/clitorises.
I also posted some pictures multiple times for a couple of reasons. One, these pictures are rare because they usually get erased through surgery and stigma, and people need to see that it exists and that is isn’t in fact as uncommon as society makes it out to be.
Love your body!!! There are all shapes and sizes and they’re all beautiful and healthy and wonderful!!!
Just had to reblog this.
Sex and body positivity are loving and appreciating ALL bodies. People are born at all staged “in between” male and female. And all of these bodies are beautiful and sexy.
-Zane
We recently entered into a private conversation with Tumblr user tranzfat and some of their followers regarding whether or not ‘hypospadia’ should be counted as an intersex condition; some of this conversation has been made public on their Tumblr, but without the full text of our responses. We would like to publicly correct some vague and incorrect statements we have made, as well as highlighting what our actual stance is.
Below we have reproduced some of the messages we received, and our exact response/full statement will be published right after.
We haven’t accused you of that and have deleted those comments from our original post. We genuinely thought that you had when we looked at your page, but that was our mistake. We just want you to know that we didn’t think we were accusing you of something that you hadn’t done, but we recognize now that we were and have changed that. We don’t want to be accusatory.
AnonymousOKAY so I’ve talked to various learned Catholics and the consensus is that we love them and we understand the predicament if they were born that way but one gender is almost always supreme over the other and with technology today, a DNA test is quite simple in order to find out the true sex of the person. So you’d go with that sex and decide on your sexuality accordingly and if it played out to be in accordance with Church teaching you could get married in the eyes of the Church.
I hope this helped! I have never been asked this question before!
If you have any resources/references to provide that would be great! I’ll be happy to post them and keep it anon if you like.
thecsph answered you:So who get’s to draw that line? You? The doctors? Society? Also, it’s more common than half the stuff on your accepted intersex list. What kind of sense does that make guys? Come on.Just because something is more…
I do agree with your comparison being completely ridiculous, and no, the logic is not the same.
I will educate you and “explain to [you] exactly why you feel that every hypospadia case should be counted under the intersex categorization, so that we can discuss this fairly?”
(1) “as it stands, many hypospadia cases do not actually involve any significant difference in the genitalia” Well, unfortunately you don’t get to draw that line. Well actually you and every other cis person does and has, but you shouldn’t. It’s inevitably arbitrary and based on someone’s opinion. There is no clear line, so stop trying to draw it.
(2) “Many, if not most people with these kinds of cases do not consider themselves to be intersex.” Says you. And so what? Just because someone else doesn’t consider themselves to be intersex doesn’t mean you get to erase me.
(3) “For those who identify themselves as intersex, we are willing to make that consideration and not police their identities to great extent;” Well, hmm. You don’t intend to police “to a great extent.” So how much policing is ok?
We definitely agree that there are many variations of hypospadias, some of which classify as intersex. However, we think that using the term as a general classification of a type of intersex designation is misleading; some hypospadias are intersex, but the existence of a hypospadia does not…
So who gets to draw that line? You? The doctors? Society? When am I “not intersex enough” to get kicked out of a club that gets defined about intersex people, by a bunch of cis people?
And so, not enough of us exist, therefore we don’t exist at all? Hmm. Sounds familiar.
AnonymousAnd you have proof of “intersex brains” existing? Intersexuality is a physical birth defect, it affects your body during pregnancy. That’s why a lot of intersex people end up transitioning too, because they also have a regular male/female brain that doesn’t match up with their body. Not all intersex bodies are very obviously intersex, but they often end up realizing “something’s wrong”, much like transgender people. If intersex brains existed, during pregnancy their brains would be as much affected as their bodies and they would be born with intersex brains, and none of them would want to transition, and yet this is quite common. Now how would this happen if your little theory was true? Sometimes the brain is magically affected, but other times with the exact same birth defect it’s not?
Human beings are supposed to be born as male or female. Being born intersex is a “mistake” of nature. To say your brain is intersex and you /want/ your body to be “wrong” is just the most stupid thing ever to say. It’s like saying you’re born healthy, but you wish to have cancer, or you wish to be blind.
There are some theories on brains being able to be intersex too, as they are sexually dimorphic. Typical of course that these always come from people who are intersex themselves or support this or your genderqueer crap to the extreme; not really the most unbiased people.
I just want to say that I feel truly blessed having found this blog! I wanted to know what does the scriptures say on hermapherdites (I’m not sure that’s how you spell it)? I get it about gays, etc. but if a person is born with both genitals or…So essentially, you have no answer other than, “God has a plan.” And you imply intersex people are a result of sin which in turn caused our genetic degradation?!?!
