A few days ago on social media there was a bit of a kerfuffle about biological sex on account of someone apparently having made the statement that people cannot change between (binary) biological sex. The resulting lawsuit and online drama resulted in a number of people with anti-intersex views venting their spleen as well, such as in one particular Twitter post where an individual insisted on using the anti-intersex term 'Disorder of Sex Development' (DSD), also referring to intersex as a 'less accurate term'. This particular post being about discounting intersex as of any relevance in the debate on biological sex as it's a mere fluke.
Suffice it to say that reading such a statement, and the resulting feedback to the response I posted to said statement was quite upsetting. Not only is one's existence discounted as a statistical fluke and one's biological relevance erased, but in addition it is hammered home that one is a tragic sufferer of a medical disorder, so why hasn't a caring surgeon yet 'normalised' all that is so clearly wrong with your genitals and the rest of your body?
Maybe it's just that over a decade of attempts by doctors and psychologists of trying to convince me that I should normalise my body, whether it was by outright denying my intersex condition, or by attempting to convince me that I was the tragic sufferer of gender dysphoria and that I actually really wanted to have them turn me into a beautiful woman, removing those unsightly 'male' bits. This could have made me somewhat sensitive and conceivably slightly traumatised when it comes to this subject.
Over the past years I have learned very well that my body is exquisitely healthy. I have no genetic disorders, no allergies, nothing worrying in my family that could come haunt me later in life. And here I have a bunch of cretins insisting that there is something wrong with my body. Not just those cretins on social media, but those medical 'professionals' equally so. Can I please love my body without their blathering?
This obsession with binarism, of this imaginary division between some illusionary 'male' and female' element in genetics, the human brain and the human phenotype in general is rather worrying. It's a kind of obsession that goes beyond an every day obsession straight into a 'delusional disorder' [1] diagnosis. Those affected persist even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence that the brain is unisex, that genetics do not dictate even physical sex (e.g. in the case of CAIS) and that the overall complexity of genetics and the resulting phenotypes make any attempt to categorise it as either 'male' or 'female' is foolhardy at best.
And meanwhile intersex individuals like yours truly feel like they're being hunted down on social media and in society, because one side claims us to be the absolute, One True Proof that somehow legitimises things like transgenderism, while some feminists and others push hard to make it clear that intersex is an aberration, that just proves that binarism is the One True Religion. For the rest of society... intersex is so poorly understood that it seems to be mostly associated with things like pornography and cross-dressing actors in those flicks. Oh, and nobody ever talks with us.
I guess that after years of this, combined with my own experiences in the medical system, along with the sickening awareness that intersex genital mutilation (IGM) of infants is still a daily thing, it's hard to feel like being intersex doesn't somehow dehumanises you. Do I feel invisible? You bet. Do I feel like anyone is free to attack me and others in the most cruel way possible for being intersex without repercussions? Absolutely.
There's no punishment for calling intersex an aberration, a disorder or abnormality. Not the way that other minorities are protected. While society cheers on the binarist conversion of children (because they want it), the non-medical 'normalisation' surgeries (IGM) on intersex infants continue unabated, with nobody caring about their views, opinions, or the large number of them who (oddly enough) later turn out to feel unhappy with the choice that was forced on them by those adults. Because we intersex individuals are apparently less than human and our views, feelings or opinions do not matter.
This most recent confrontation with the traumatic part of being intersex has made me realise just how horribly sick society is. That I can have a body that is healthy and yet I end up being traumatised like this. That a healthy infant can be born, yet only to have it receive genital mutilation before it's old enough to speak its first words. That somehow being born intersex means that society will do its utmost to shame, humiliate, normalise and ostracise you. Just because.
It shouldn't be me who has the therapist to work through these traumas and somehow learn to trust doctors again despite all the abuse that I have suffered. It shouldn't be me, or all those others who are suffering needlessly. So many millions of individuals who could have lived happy, carefree lives, but who got crippled and marked like this, simply because society refuses to acknowledge that it has a problem. Why are we even trying to please the rest of society when all we get is this kind of wanton cruelty in return?
I'd really like that restraining order against this delusional part of humanity at this point. I'm not into that kind of abusive relationship, even if they're still convinced that people like me should be okay with it.
Maya
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_disorder
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