Tuesday 17 September 2024
Wednesday 11 September 2024
I don't pass as any gender. People can't even decide what direction I'm trans. If I grow out my hair I'm ma'am until they see my beard. If I cut my hair then I'm sir. Or ma'am. Or sir. If I shave my face or body they assume I'm a trans woman. If I wear a mask but they hear my voice they call me ma'am first then switch to sir in a panic when they decide I'm a trans man. People have seen me naked, my genitals, and asked me about my experience with a bottom surgery I've never actually had. Depending how I dress on any given day I'm either a dyke or a fag to the bigot driving past but it's always one or the other (derogatory). The one consistent thing is I'm Queer.
I have to rant a little about what's happening at the Olympics because I'm feeling ashamed as an Italian and angry as a queer person. For those who don't know, there is an Algerian athlete competing in women's boxing named Imane Khelif, who just today had a match against her Italian competitor Angela Carini. Khelif is a cisgender woman who allegedly* naturally produces more testosterone than the average. She was previously disqualified from the IBA World Boxing Championships for failing an unspecified medical test but was cleared by the IOC to compete in the Olympics (side note, the IBA is currently unrecognised by the IOC for internal governance issues and ties to the Russian government). Fast forward to today, Carini decides to withdraw from the match after only 40-odd seconds because Khelif hit her on the nose and apparently it hurt too much. Unsurprisingly Khelif has become the target of a massive shitstorm, including the press mistakenly calling her transgender (which she isn't) and many people, including members of the Italian government and the elongated muskrat himself, spreading misinformation and disgusting transphobic and racist rhetoric. It was so bad that even the Algerian government intervened, and pictures of Khelif as a young girl have been publicly released. I know that the participation of trans people in sport is a thorny conversation, but this whole shitshow isn't helping anyone and the facts are just being weaponised to attack intersex and trans people by the same far-righters who don't give a rat's dick about actual women's rights. So I'm sad about Carini's loss because she's my compatriot, sure, but I'm even angrier at both those people who use Khelif, an innocent athlete who has all the right to compete against other women, as the target for their campaigns of hatred, and those who don't bother finding proper information and remain content in their prejudices.
To someone who truly deeply believes that sex is natural, being intersex will always be disordered or defective. they insist on continuing to label us (intersex folk) as "men with DSD" or as "women with DSD" in order to reinforce the sex binary. they will not let intersex people be proof of the truly social nature of sex as a category, because they will not even see us as intersex. delete "sex is biological, gender is social" from your vocabulary.
Yes, absolutely dismantle the gender binary. BUT dont forget to dismantle the sex binary too. Intersex people exist and they regularly get ignored in both queer and non-queer spaces. There are NOT only two sexes, and us perisex trans people CAN NOT forget that or else we will become like our oppressors, people who say there are only two genders and that what you are born as is what you must stay as. Intersexism must be stopped.
"All intersex variations are sex specific" "Intersex people are male or female" "there's no third gamete"
It's true, you can categorize intersex people onto whichever sexual mode they are 'closest to' in most cases. We are not a third sex.
However, this does not mean it's in our best interest to sort us into the male/female binary. The only way we can be categorized as male or female, is if we are denoted as being a 'wrong' kind of male or female, because we don't actually fit. It's just the closest approximation.
Many intersex people may be happy with considering their sex to be intersex in addition to male/female (or in addition to being mtf/mtx/ftm/ftx/etc), but I believe a third social category, would be so very beneficial for intersex people, especially growing up visibly intersex. I know so many intersex people who would've rather grown up as something else other than a 'wrong girl' or a 'wrong boy'. I know it's just wishful thinking but, I wish I wasn't seen as 'wrong'.
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