Fifteen Minutes To Fame

tal9000:

The Intersex Roadshow: Trans and Intersex Children: Forced Sex Changes, Chemical Castration, and Self-Determination

Children’s lives lie at the center of social struggles over trans gender and intersex issues. If you talk with trans and intersex adults about the pain they’ve faced, the same issue comes up over and over again, from mirror-image perspectives: that of medical interventions into the sexed body of the child. Intersex and trans adults are often despairing over not having had a say as children over what their sexes should be, and how doctors should intervene. Meanwhile, transphobes and the mainstream backers of intersex “corrective” surgery also focus on medical intervention into children’s bodies. They frame interventions into the sexual characteristics of intersex children as heroic and interventions into the bodies of trans children as horrific.

The terms and claims that get tossed around in these debates are very dramatic. Mutilation. Suicide. Chemical castration. Forced sex changes.

We need to understand what’s going on here, because it’s the central ethical issue around which debates about intersex and trans bodies swirl. The issue here is the question of self-determination, of autonomy. Bodily autonomy is the shared rallying cry of trans and intersex activists, though we might employ it in opposite ways. Refusing it to us is framed as somehow in our best interests by our opponents.

In this post we will look at how four groups frame the issue: intersex people, trans people, the mainstream medical professionals who treat intersex people, and opponents of trans rights.

Read the whole thing

Read the whole thing. The more I read of Intersex Roadshow, the more I love it.  The lack of respect for the autonomy of children is disgusting.  Though, it’s not like non-privileged people get much more respect as adults…

Lets talk “biological reality”

telegantmess:

This has been kicking around in my head for a while, mainly in response to things like the post from girlsandgifs claiming that sex categories that can be strictly organized into male, female and intersex are a reality that transcends culture, society and time.There tends to be a reference to reproductive organs, genitalia, and secondary sex characteristics. While there is a good deal of science that disagrees with that, there are a lot of people who believe it and have been throwing it around on tumblr lately.

Here’s the thing…by those rigid standards, I don’t make sense.

This post may be getting a bit TMI since I have to discuss my anatomy. You have been warned.

I have a beard. A goatee. It starts at the corners of my mouth, and spreads back to my neck if I don’t shave. I also have the beginnings of a mustache. It doesn’t grow out to be really bushy, but it is noticeable from a distance if I haven’t shaved in a few days. I have a lot of body hair. I have a deep voice and have from childhood. I was the youngest alto in my choir at 7, with a deeper singing voice than boys almost twice my age. I have a rather distinct clitoris, considerably larger than average, about the length of the first joint of my thumb.

I also have a body shape that, politely, could be described as “Venus of Willendorf.” H cup breasts, a size 16 butt, and what my mom calls child-bearing hips. I have given birth to and nursed a child who was conceived without any fertility assistance except for taking high levels of vitamins. I have a regular cycle, if a bit heavy. I have had an ultrasound that was not pregnancy related that has confirmed the presence of a uterus and ovaries.

But…but…hormones! Well…I have abnormally high testosterone production. If my genitals and voice are any indicator, that is a fact of my individual biology. BUT! I also have abnormally high estrogen production. High enough that taking standard birth control pills makes me physically sick. I throw up. Progestin-only pills make my cycle erratic. My hormones aren’t really sure what I am.

I have not had a medical professional “diagnose” me with an intersex condition, but I have had medical professionals tell me that exactly what constitutes intersex is not agreed upon in the medical community. We agreed that since I was not having physical health problems related to these ambiguities that a diagnosis was unnecessary.

I have never checked my chromosomes, so my karyotype status is currently unknown.

So based on all available evidence, and the apparently solid metric provided by the strict male-female-intersex categories (which are also social constructs, but that’s another post for another time) what am I?

“Scientifically” what am I?

“Biologically” what am I?

In this flawed categorization system…What..am..I? And which of my features are you using to determine that? AND, why that feature? What makes it the sole determiner of my reality as opposed to one of the others? All of these things are empirically observable facts about me, what gives one weight over the others, and why?

What is my “biological reality” and why do you think you know it and what it means to live it better than I do?

Sex =/= Gender

blackenedbutterfly:

girlsandgifs:

Sex: male/female/intersex (biological reality based on anatomy, hormones and chromosomes)

Gender: man/woman (social construction)

Many tumblr trans people mocking rad and cis scum are erroneously using these interchangeably. I do not understand how you can be so ignorant about the mechanics of your own oppression.

Biology is destiny!

Wait, that’s not what radical feminists said…

I always love how they state sex as unchangeable, even though anatomy is changeable as are hormones and chromosomes aren’t as deterministic as people seem to think.  Also not really loving the othering of intersex people as though they’re a monolithic category like ‘male’ and ‘female’ when the reality, it’s where people are pushed who don’t meet the false socially constructed binary of male/female.

(via iuwaehfoaiuwhefoiaulfjqn)

I hate the appropriation of intersex…

zerofailure:

Look, I understand that you don’t relate to your body as if it were female or male, but saying “I’m female to intersex” is fucking annoying as shit.

It’s horizontal oppression.  Also, it just makes me know you’re not a good person.

Medical Ethics, Janice Raymond, and the Modern Transsexual Woman

gcvsa:

Kiriamaya is reminding everyone tonight of the paper authored by Janice Raymond that was commissioned by the National Center for Healthcare Technology, titled “Technology on the Social and Ethical Aspects of Transsexual Surgery”, and I would like to offer some additional commentary and background, because this information is not as widely disseminated as perhaps it ought to be.

The National Center for Healthcare Technology (NCHCT) was a short-lived, quasi-governmental body funded by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that existed from 1979 to 1982, under the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. According to information provided by Dennis Cotter, the NCHCT had a staff of 20 and a budget of $4 million/year and was authorized in 1978 by Section 309 of the Public Health Service Act to conduct and sponsor assessments of health care technologies and to coordinate such efforts within HHS. The effect of this overview paper, as such documents were called by NCHCT, was the removal of governmental, and eventually, private medical insurance coverage of any and all medical treatments relating to cross-sex transition, and even in many cases, medical treatments which might have been efficaceous at treating other illnesses because they may have had some use in transition-related therapy.

At the time the paper was delivered to NCHCT, in June, 1980, Janice Raymond was credited as “Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Women’s Studies, Hampshire College/University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts”. There is no information listed for Raymond at the University of Massachusetts website, but according to her Wikipedia entry, she currently serves as Professor Emerita of Medical Ethics and Women’s Studies, having retired from her teaching duties in 2002. Also according to that entry, her academic qualifications include a Ph. D. in Ethics and Society from Boston College in 1977, a Master’s degree in Religious Studies from from Andover Newton Theological School in 1971, and her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Salve Regina College in 1965. It should be of note to readers that Salve Regina College and Andover Newton Theological School are both religious institutions, Roman Catholic and American Baptist/United Church of Christ, respectively. Raymond was also at one time a member of the Roman Catholic non-cloistered women’s religious institute known as the Sisters of Mercy.

You may find it curious that the person commissioned by NCHCT to produce an expert opinion on the necessity and efficacy of transition-related healthcare would come from a background of involvement with the Roman Catholic church, an organisation with a long-standing and publicly acknowledged antipathy to sexual and gender minorities, and that furthermore, this same person would not possess a single medical, let alone psychiatric qualification that would allow that person to serve as an expert on matters of medical concern.

It is not known to me at the present time who was responsible for the decision to select Raymond. I do not know who was in charge at NCHCT in the months and years preceding June 1980, but I do know that the Secretary of Health and Human Services serving during this period of the Carter Administration was Patricia Roberts Harris, an African-American woman, the first such to have served as a United States Ambassador. I don’t know if she had any influence on the selection, nor am I privy to any information about her personal politics.

What I do know is that the paper produced by Raymond contained highly controversial language concerning transsexuality, language that is not only long deprecated, but was certainly not settled opinion even in its day, with the possible exception of within the small, but vocal, circles of academic radical lesbian feminism. In this paper Raymond:

• Uses inflammatory positioning of sexual reassignment surgery as “mutilation”.
• Dismisses established medical and psychological practice in favor of her own, personally developed but uncritically challenged, version of ethics.
• Compares the desire of transsexual women to access transition-related healthcare to hypothetical desire of people of color who may have imagined changing the color of their skin to avoid the stigma assigned to people of color that is common to the oppressively racist cultures.
• Asserts, despite any medical or psychiatric certification whatsoever, that the challenges posed by transsexual lives are not medical or psychiatric concerns, but more properly concerns of sociology.
• Positions medical and psychiatric assistance to transsexual people as actually detrimental to the health of transsexual people.
• Portrayed falsely inflated fears of gender clinics being used as mechanisms of societal enforcement of behavioral norms.
• Invokes fears of predatory medical practice for the purposes of obtaining profit at the expense of transsexual people.
• Conflates sex with chromosomal type, reproductive capacity, and falsely claims that recognition of the need for transition-related healthcare amounts to reification of the argument that gross biology is the sole important determiner of gender.
• Falsely claims pre-eminence of an experiential basis for gender based on an individual’s position within society, rather than on that individual’s own psychological and physical makeup.
• Equates transition-related therapies with heroin abuse and addiction.
• Derides surgical therapies for an inability to necessarily affect psychiatric conditions, as if this were ever a concern in the first place. This flies in the face of all previous research, particularly that developed by Harry Benjamin, who advocated only the employment of such therapies as were sufficient to alleviate the symptoms of dysphoria in each individual case.
• UNETHICALLY misrepresents previous research relating to sexual reassignment surgery and its possible effects on post-transition happiness.
• Claims that transition-related therapies are experimental and dangerous, and have led to causation of disease, without any significant evidence to back up the claim aside from two cases reported by a single source in which it was speculated by the treating practitioner that cross-sex transition-related hormone replacement therapy was responsible for causing breast cancer in the two patients
• Calls for the “elimination of transsexualism” via attritive legislation.
• Insists that feminists who do not experience transsexualism be given authority to help restrict and regulate the right of transsexual people to access appropriate healthcare.

In the wake of this paper, the federal government removed all support for funding access to appropriate cross-sex transition-related healthcare, and in short order, private insurance firms followed suit. It has been an uphill battle ever since for us to regain that access, an uphill battle that has now stretched into a fourth decade.

That such a paper was ever allowed to be commissioned from a person who had absolutely no medical or psychiatric credentials, let alone clinical experience treating transsexual patients is utterly appalling, and a travesty of justice on scale which I cannot even begin to assess. It is not hyperbole to suggest that untold thousands of deaths have been caused by the removal of healthcare options and the subsequently reinforced societal stigma that this paper succeeded in pursing.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that people who purport to provide medical and psychiatric advice, especially at the policy-making level, be required to demonstrate direct competence in that field, rather than hiding behind to aegis of “medical ethics” or “bioethics”, as does Raymond’s younger replacement, Alice Dreger, who holds a Ph. D. in “History and Philosophy of Science” from Indiana University, yet dispenses psychiatric and medical advice concerning transsexual and transgender people, and intersex people even more prominently, in the same vein. I think most rational people would agree.

Hope remains, and springs eternal, as well. People such as Janice Raymond and Alice Dreger are not the entirety of those in positions of power over the provisioning of healthcare for trans people. Progress may be slow, but it inexorably grinds away at the tombstones Raymond and her compatriots, such as Adrienne Rich, prepared for us and for our sisters so long ago. Eventually, they will wear down to sand and be washed away, forgotten in the flow of time, and we will stand tall above the graves of our lost sisters, never again to bow to the hatred of woman upon woman. So say we all.

Some day, cis people will no longer be seen as the experts on trans people.  Trans people will be the experts on trans people.  Some day, only intersex people will be seen as the experts on intersex people.  We are that now, of course, but some day we will be recognised.  We will endure.

(via widdershinsgirl)

transfeminism:

[Trigger warning, transphobia and heterosexism] Germaine Greer glitter-bombed for trans comments

justlikegmpavalentine:

Feminist writer Germaine Greer has been glitter-bombed at a book-signing today in New Zealand for her comments about trans women, including a 2009 column which said they ‘seem to us ghastly parodies’ and claimed being trans was a ‘delusion’.

The Queer Avengers group took exception to Greer’s brand of what it termed “transphobic feminism” and delivered the glitter in a move more often seen deployed on homophobic politicians in the US.

Germaine Greer unsuccessfully opposed the election of a trans woman to the staff at the women-only Newnham College, Cambridge in the 1990s and the group highlighted her opposition to regarding trans women as women.

In her 1999 book, The Whole Woman, she wrote: “Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex.

“No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant; if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight. The insistence that man-made women be accepted as women is the institutional expression of the mistaken conviction that women are defective males.”

Germaine was left showed in glitter. (Photo: Alastair Reith for Newswire.co.nz)

In 2009, Greer wrote in the Guardian that being trans was a “delusion” and that trans women “seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn’t polite to say so”.

She said: “We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man’s delusion that he is female.”

The feminist writer was unimpressed by the glitter-bomb. (Photo: Queer Avengers)

Stacey of the Queer Avengers said: “Transphobic feminism is so 20th Century.

“It wasn’t okay then and it’s not okay now. Women’s liberation must mean the right to refuse imposed gender roles, to fight for diverse gender expression.”

The Queer Avengers also handed out leaflets saying “transphobia is bullshit”, a reference to Greer’s 1972 arrest for using the swearword in a speech in New Zealand.

Greer is not only hateful, but also extremely dishonest and a misogynist. Take for instance her comment above claiming that “No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant.” OK, first, there is no such person known as a “sex change,” so-called or otherwise. This is a hateful, dehumanizing objectification used (much like the misogyny that is the basis of her disparaging and stereotyped remarks about the appearance of to trans women) to devalue trans women. But more than being hateful and misogynist, it’s simply not true. The fact is Lili Elbe, a Danish artist at the beginning of the 20th century, recieved transplants for both ovaries and a uterus. Elbe body rejected the transplanted ovaries, which had to be removed. In 1931, she died due to complications related to transplant rejection sortly after receiving her uterus. This is a significant reason trans women are not seeking transplants. A mandatory transplant requirement would in fact be a death sentence for many trans women.

Trans people don’t get transplants because even nearly 100 years after Elbe’s death, transplant rejection is still a serious problem. In order to reduce rejection, patients receiving organ transplants are required to take immunosuppressant drugs that literally inhibit the patients own immune system. This makes transplants ill advised in those cases that are not life threatening. This is why existing procedure for trans people use the patient own tissue. Furthermore, the vast majority of trans people can’t even access these existing treatments, even when they are deemed medically necessary for those who need them. (See the previous post on self-castration.)

Also, there is no need for a woman (cis or trans) to have a uterus unless she wants to become pregnant. While many trans women would indeed like to become pregnant and give birth to a child of their own, many would rather not. Many cis women also don’t want to have children. It’s not hard to see where Greer’s argument for a “mandatory” uterus transplant, if it were to be taken seriously, would begin to erode the very foundation reproductive justice which opposes similar policies that would force women to carry a pregnancy to term and/or forces women to under go sterilization.

Then there is the reality that many cis women are either sterile or lack a uterus because they have an intersex condition like CAIS or had it removed due to cancer or other illness. Would these women be required to under go dangerous transplant procedures to satisfy Greer reductionist world view that equates women all women with a fully functioning uterus? I wouldn’t think so. Obviously then making a uterus mandatory for trans women would be a ridiculously unjust burden on them. Even the requirement that trans women have reconstruction surgery to construct a vagina before being legally recognized as women is an unjust invasion by the state into a woman’s body. Again, the vast majority of trans women do not even have access to these procedure when they are deemed medically necessary. 

TL;DR: Germaine Greer is a trans-misogynist who is even willing to throw other cis women under the bus if she believe it would further her own genocidal hatred of trans women.

Greer also hates intersex women.  She has asserted that all women who have any form of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (whether PAIS or CAIS) are actually men because of their chromosomes and believes they should be treated as such.  Apparently, chromosomes are magical things that erase the social construction of gender and actual bodily realities.  Basically, Greer is an awful excuse for a feminist and a thinker.

(Source: librarybear)

misohead:

xanderbander92:

materialworld:

The Intersex Roadshow: Five Myths that Hurt Intersex People

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.  …

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. …

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? …

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. …

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. …

Lots of cuts, to tempt you all to go read the whole thing.

Reblogging for later reading and because today I’ve been feeling all sorts of upsetness about the fact that I might have an intersex condition. I have my suspicion, but I have no idea what to do next and the more I think about it, the more distressed I become… so I’m just gonna leave this here for me later.

This blog is really awesome.

Read it.

misohead:

Intersex Day of Remembrance, November 8, 2011

oiiusa:

November 8 is Intersex Day of Remembrance and Herculine Barbin’s birthday.

Organisation Intersex International would like to invite others to join us each year by commemorating November 8 as Intersex Day of Remembrance. All human rights organizations and allies are invited to show their solidarity by organizing workshops, lectures, discussions and other activities which deal with any or all of the following topics:

• The life of Herculine Barbin.
• Intersex genital mutilation.
• The violence of the binary sex and gender system.
• The sexism implicit within the binary construct of sex and gender.
• Human rights. Intersex issues are feminist issues.

Brief biographical note about Adélaïde Herculine Barbin

Adélaïde Herculine Barbin was born November 8, 1838 in Saint-Jean-d’Angély (Charente-Maritime) and officially registered as female. She spent her childhood in an orphanage and later at the Ursilines convent of Chavagne.

Between 1856-1858 Herculine Barbin studied at Oléron’s Normal School and received her degree. At 21 she became a school teacher and met Sara, the youngest daughter of Mrs. Avril, the headmistress of the school. Gradually, the friendship between the two girls turned to love. But, when acting on their feelings for each other, Sara realized that Herculine was not made like most girls. Herculine was forced to resign from her job and after a medical examination required by the authorities who became involved in the matter, she was then forced to live as a man. Herculine became Abel but when he returned to the village, Mrs. Avril refused to let him see Sara. On a cold February day in 1868, Abel Barbin’s dead body was discovered, the victim of an apparent suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning from the small stove in his apartment.

Herculine Barbin, one of the most famous intersex persons in history, makes us question whether we can live as we are with our difference. Her life also forces us to question this world which has created standards which we are obliged to try to meet or otherwise face rejection. The individual can exist only by assimilation into these norms and being like everyone else. She lived a life of absolute fear. The agony of seeing her terrible secret revealed. The terror of having to pay for a mistake that she did not make and of the shame for being who she was.

Suffering, endless suffering. He had to leave everyone he loved to plunge into the cold depths of isolation. Her life is a great story of pure love, fatally destroyed by ignorance and intolerance.

FAAB, MAAB, CAMAB, FAMAB and Intersex Erasure

transdyke:

transkari:

christina-taylor:

intersexunicorn:

It’s been a terrible erasure of intersex identities with these labels.

First, ‘assigned.’ 
This is (*was*) a word for intersex children.  A child was born ambiguous and was assigned a sex with scalpels and sutures.  ‘Assigned’ is a verb, meaning something physical happened.  Someone did something physical to you.

Second, ‘coercively assigned.’
So at birth you popped out of the womb and had a lengthy discussion about your gender that your doctor wouldn’t listen to?  Your birth doctor was coercive in convincing you at birth that you weren’t what you are?

The problem is that intersex people have been trying repeatedly to drop the term Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM) and just go with the gentler term ‘assigned.’  But with trans people taking this away from us, now we have to go back to it.

We’re trying to be subtle and just blend in to society but if trans people keep trying to take our traumatic experiences as a fun label, then we just keep finding ourselves buried deeper and deeper as ashamed people who should never be spoken about.

What was done to me should be something that no human should never be subjected to, and is why I lobby that it should never happen to any person ever again.  I will never get over what is in my head.

For someone to just come along and say, “O I AM CAMAB 2 LOL” just hurts beyond belief.  It actually did hurt beyond belief and I cried at every exam and every hormone injection and every blood test.

Wanna try a different label?

I’ve been guilty of using those labels too.  I’m not sure I’d say that it’s a “fun label”, but it certainly is intersex-erasing and appropriative.  There is, unfortunately, a lot of that in the mainstream trans community.  Which is terrible because the intersex and trans communities do have some things in common, and we should be natural allies, but too many in the trans community appropriate intersex labels.  (And then turn around and complain when the cisgender LGB community appropriates trans identities!)

I think the term “male-/female-gendered-at-birth” would be an ideal term as it basically indicates a person who had “male/female” put on their birth certificate, whether intersex, transgender, or cisgender, and leaving the “assigned” language to intersex.

I think this is very important to spread! I was taught different definitions of FAAB/MAAB/CAMAB/FAMAB and you are right (intersexunicorn), it completely erased intersex people. I also vote for christina-taylor’s suggestion of “male-/female-gendered-at-birth”.

I apologize for my ignorance around this subject matter, and I appreciate both of you for taking the time to educate others.

Oh fuck.

I always thought “assigned” was just like, a mental thing? “I assigned them that job”, etc.

But, if it isn’t, then damn.

Let’s look at this shall we?

‘Assigned’ is a verb, meaning something physical happened.  Someone did something physical to you.

This is correct.  What happens to everyone at birth is that they are placed into a coercive sex/gender binary encoded in things like birth certificates.  Also, when I am assigned to, say, a group in a class, that is still an assignment. That someone did not use medical instruments on me does not make it any less an assignment.  Claiming that coercive surgery on children is the only form of assignment going on at birth is disingenuous to say the least.  It also completely misses the point about why that surgery is being done.

So at birth you popped out of the womb and had a lengthy discussion about your gender that your doctor wouldn’t listen to?  Your birth doctor was coercive in convincing you at birth that you weren’t what you are?

Why does a coercive assignment require any discussion?  All it requires is that the person doing the assignment force the person being assigned into it without any consent.  Which is exactly what is happening.  That a baby can not consent is the very point being made.  No one can say what a child’s sex or gender is because a baby can’t tell them.  Which is why genital surgery on children is wrong as is trying to tell them what sex and gender they are.

The problem is that intersex people have been trying repeatedly to drop the term Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM) and just go with the gentler term ‘assigned.’  But with trans people taking this away from us, now we have to go back to it.

Why?  One term can refer to discrete elements of the same phenomenon of sex/gender assignment at birth.  Or trans and intersex people can talk about how to resolve this without one side deciding that the other side sucks and aren’t worth talking to.  Especially as there are, you know, people who are on both sides because they are both trans and intersex.

We’re trying to be subtle and just blend in to society but if trans people keep trying to take our traumatic experiences as a fun label, then we just keep finding ourselves buried deeper and deeper as ashamed people who should never be spoken about.

Anybody who’s claiming trans people are using ‘assigned’ as a ‘fun label’ is hard to take seriously as anything but a troll because trans people are trying to be able to talk about just how unfun such a thing is and speak their truths about how cissexism and transphobia is enforced before we can even start to fight it.  If you think that’s fun, you either have issues that have nothing to do with any labels or you’re a troll.  Pure and simple.

For someone to just come along and say, “O I AM CAMAB 2 LOL” just hurts beyond belief.

Trans people do not find being assigned to a wrong sex/gender funny at all.  That it is being suggested that it’s just a joke to us makes me think this person can’t be taken seriously.

I think the term “male-/female-gendered-at-birth” would be an ideal term

No, it wouldn’t.  It suggests that you can separate sex and gender in our culture and you can’t.  As Lisa Harney at Questioning Transphobia has pointed out, it’s gender all the way down.  Sex is how we gender the body.

Look, trans and intersex people can have a discussion about ‘assigned’ but no matter the terms, both intersex and trans people are being done harm at birth and beyond by society’s imposing sex/gender on them non-consensually.  These truths need to be spoken and not silenced nor do they need to be made ‘nicer’ and more palatable for the culture doing us harm.

(Source: intersexunicorn, via angrytranschick)

cydne-should-be-sleeping:

Some femmes are dominant and some butches are submissive. Some men have vaginas and some women have penises. Sometimes what you call a clit is called a dick by it’s owner, and sometimes a dick is really a clit. Some straight men want to be penetrated and some straight women want to do it. Sometimes people aren’t men or women at all and sometimes genitals aren’t a black and white issue. Sometimes people are different to you, and always, we need to accept this.

Oh, this, so much.  If I could get people to understand one thing, this would be it.

(Source: inflateablefilth)