Intersex and trans

[PerverseConverse]

I've read a couple of times on here that the intersex community (if that's the correct phrase, sorry if not ) have stated, possibly in an official statement, that they do not wish to be used in any way in the trans argument. I can't remember which threads I have read this on or exactly what was said.

Does anyone know more or even better have a link they could share with me please?

It was in an open letter to GIRES who repeatedly pressurised the intersex society (charity?) into collaborating with them on trans children.
They refused repeatedly partly because obviously trans and intersex are completely different but also they are against genital surgery of people (especially children) who are intersex unlike GIRES who think genital surgery is a good idea.

Sorry can't link but that's the info from my recollection.

twitter.com/mrkhtake2

This person on twitter is worth a read/follow.

She talks an awful lot of sense......

There was a link posted earlier to an essay (about trans activism and misogyny) which had a very good quote from someone regarding intersex being used for the trans agenda.
I’ll see if I can find it...

This is the thread

The essay which is a very very good read btw.

And the relevant part:
These men often capitalise and misappropriate the struggles of other marginalised demographics, such as intersex people, to advance their own agenda with seemingly no regard for how the individuals they’re “defending” actually feel about it. For instance, intersex advocate Claire told me:
“It’s really hard to put into words what it feels like to have your complex and quite traumatic medical history paraded to validate someone else’s identity. The questions I see being asked; “Which toilets should intersex people use then?”, “If we accept women without wombs as women, then surely someone born male can be?”, “Where do intersex people fit into your regressive binary?”, “How do we know this child molester, with a beard, isn’t intersex?”.
The implication being that we’re not real women and that our medical histories can be used like a prize in a game show. It’s like being back in the Victorian era where intersex people were exhibited like freaks in a side show for the edification of others. In answer to those questions; we use the toilet that corresponds with our birth sex; yes, a woman without a womb is female and; no, she isn’t just like a man that was born with a fully functioning male reproductive system.
We fit into the binary fine, we’re male or female like everyone else, and to answer the last one; why is it so hard for people to believe that male pattern abuse and criminality exists that they’d rather blame women with a medical condition? To say this is offensive is an understatement. My inbox is full of intersex people talking about how the current debate, and our unwilling place in it, has reopened trauma they have spent years repairing and coming to terms with. The social stigma we have always avoided and feared is now a fun talking point for people that have never met us, never talked to us, never taken the time to learn about us and our conditions. It’s abusive and nasty. Apparently the womanhood of transwomen isn’t up for debate but mine is being put up for sale by people that do not care about me and apparently do not care to learn.”

A member of my family has a recognised intersex condition but only ever refers to her specific syndrome. I asked her if she ever used the word 'intersex' and she didn't, and didn't feel it applied to her at all.

The idea that all of these disparate conditions somehow are part of a community is a myth, I think.

There's no reason really why a woman with Turner's syndrome should feel she has any commonality with a man who has Klinefelters. They are completely different conditions affecting two different sexes, with entirely different health implications.

Dragging them under the same banner simply because they are disorders of sex development is as pointless as telling me my cervical smear gives me commonality with a man's prostate exam because they both involve stuff below the waist.

The term intersex is being used as political collateral by those with an agenda, and not only does it make no sense, it isn't with the consent of the people it relates to.

I agree, intersex is being used as a gotcha by trans allies I've found. I've stopped arguing with people on social media about it now as I feel like I'm trying to teach them science and they are going la-la-la but the moon is made of cheese, Little green men live on mars and chromosomes do not differentiate sex. Delusions by their very nature are resistant to logical argument and reality.

An American association or support group or something released a statement asking for it not to be drawn into the trans debate, I’ll see if I can find it.

I won’t engage in any discussion conflating the two.

We fit into the binary fine, we’re male or female like everyone else, and to answer the last one; why is it so hard for people to believe that male pattern abuse and criminality exists that they’d rather blame women with a medical condition?

An incisive comment.

Everyone with an intersex condition is Male or female - they just have various developmental pathway errors which cause a variety of physical issues. They are still men, or women. They are not a lever, or a ‘gotcha’ argument and they are not some kind of halfway house between male and female. They do not show sex is a spectrum.

The TRA interest in people with intersex conditions is not benign.

Slightly OT. My autocorrect keeps capitalising Male but not female (see?)

Anybody else getting this because I noticed it in the comment above.

This quote from the post above stands out

“Apparently the womanhood of transwomen isn’t up for debate but mine is being put up for sale by people that do not care about me and apparently do not care to learn.“

That’s a very powerful statement and should be taken into consideration every time someone says “but intersex-aaaah!”

I was in a conversation where this comment was posted:

Comment in response to the intersex flag with "The Sex Binary is a lie" on it
" I disagree with this because my intersex disorder (Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia) is not a different sex. My diagnosis is specific to the presentation and symptoms expressed in a female body. Many intersex diagnoses - including Klinefelter’s, Turner’s, and hypospadias - continue to resemble our birth sex without confusion.
If you disagree with this, you’re denying how variations on human sexual dimorphism cause significant problems to our health and fertility.
Disorders of sex development reveal variation, not deliberate and distinct categories. If you read the archives of intersex advocacy organizations like OII or ISNA, we strongly reject being othered as fake males and females. Your ableist approach to erasing our chromosomal and phenotypic abnormalities to mark us separate but equal is not shared by the intersex community, medical professionals, or intersex activists.
Dr. Leonard Sax wrote, “This type of extreme social constructionism is confusing and is not helpful to clinicians, to their patients, or to their patients’ families. Diluting the term intersex to include “any deviation from the Platonic ideal of sexual dimorphism” (Blackless et al., 2000, p. 152), deprives the term of any clinically useful meaning. The available data support the conclusion that human sexuality is a dichotomy, not a continuum. More than 99.98% of humans are either male or female. If the term intersex is to retain any clinical meaning, the use of this term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. The birth of an intersex child, far from being ‘a fairly common phenomenon,’ is actually a rare event, occurring in fewer than 2 out of every 10,000 births.”
The Intersex Society of North America rejected raising intersex babies as a third sex with this statement: “Sorry, gender warriors… We believe there are two problems with trying to raise kids in a ‘third gender.’ First, how would we decide who would count in the ‘third gender’? How would we decide where to cut off the category of male and begin the category of intersex, or, on the other side of the spectrum, where to cut off the category of intersex to begin the category of female? Second, and much more importantly, we are trying to make the world a safe place for intersexed kids, and we don’t think labeling them with a gender category that in essence doesn’t exist would help them.”
Your flag is a lie."

I absolutely hear what intersex people are saying on this. And I know that what I am about to say is probably not going to go down well. But here goes anyway:

I think calling transpeople intersex could be a way out of the hellish fight that we are in. And I think that it is problematic if we can't.

There is clearly no conceptually coherent (let alone politically acceptable) definition of the word "female" under which a transwoman can be female. And yet they find it intolerable thinking of themselves as male. How on earth can we get anywhere while we are at this impasse?

But if they have changed their bodies significantly they surely ARE a bit in the middle. A eunuch is not straightforwardly the same thing as a man.

In the case of most things called “intersex conditions” there is no ambiguity about what sex we would think of someone as anyway. But there are a few where there is some ambiguity.

The fact that most people born with such conditions like to think of themselves as one or the other doesn’t mean that everyone who is a bit in the middle needs to – it is a grey area.

I know that many people’s answer is to say "transwomen are transwomen". But I find this really difficult to get my head round as it just sounds like a weird tautology, like being asked what snow is, and replying "snow is snow". It just sounds like you aren't answering the question.

I think calling transpeople intersex could be a way out of the hellish fight that we are in. And I think that it is problematic if we can't

That's as ridiculous and wrong as saying 'Transwomen are female'

Trans identity is purely psychological. It is not a physical medical condition. Trans people should not appropriate the term intersex any more than they should appropriate male or female.

It is not a physical medical condition

It is if they've changed their bodies. I'm not talking about the ones who just self-ID. I mean SRS, which I presume means that they can no longer reproduce as either sex

It doesn't matter what any of us think of ourselves, if our thoughts are delusional.

A eunuch is 100% a man.
Just as a woman with a hysterectomy is 100% a woman.
Body modifications change nothing of a person's fundamental, immutable sex.

How we feel about our sex has no bearing whatsoever on the unchangeability of that sex.

Being intersex is all about chromosomes and absolutely nothing to do with transgender issues. It was wrong for the Government to include it in the GRA consultation - they (thankfully) didn't suggest/imply that those born with other chromosome syndromes (eg Down) were transgender, so why include intersex? Because of pressure from Stonewall?

Well, it’s not our choice. Intersex people are entitled to lead the conversation on this, and they have. The word they use to describe themselves has a definition that does not describe transgender people, post-op or not.

Aren't chromosomes just the instructions/ the plan? A plan can fail to come to realisation.

Eg. your DNA may have planned for you to have two hands, but if you lost one in an accident, we wouldn't say that you are still a two handed person

• The fact that most people born with such conditions like to think of themselves as one or the other doesn’t mean that everyone who is a bit in the middle needs to – it is a grey area.

Wtf? Everyone who is a bit in the middle - have you read the posts above yours explaining what DSDs are? THERE IS NO-ONE WHO IS A BIT IN THE MIDDLE. No grey area at all.

Maybe we should start calling trans people disabled? After all many have suggested they use disabled people's facilities...

In every fella that wants to be a woman those DNA plans HAVE come to fruition, though, making him every inch the unambiguous biological male he is.

So, my take, would be:

ALL concepts are slightly fuzzy around the edges. That does not mean that anything can mean anything - that is the false leap that the TRAs make. But it does mean that there are always a few grey areas around the edges.

In most cases the sex classes are very clearly defined. But there are a small number of people for whom whether we consider them to be a bit in the middle or not depends on where we decide to draw the conceptual lines. Sure, you can always put people on one side or other if you want to, but you don't have to.

Eg. CAIS women, for an example.

Also Titchy -

I get that you are upset by this whole insane area (as am I) but is it possible we could have this discussion without being really aggressive? I'm not some weird TRA troll. I'm just trying to make sense of this sodding thing like you are.

Pleasing - why are you posting about 'fuzzy around the edges', 'people in the middle' etc. There is NO FUZZY OR MIDDLE. There is a binary: Male or female. Women with CAIS? Clue's in the first word: women. In all cases the sex class is defined.

I'm not being aggressive - it just appears you haven't bothered to read the links to DSDs that other people have posted. Educate yourself, then come back to the debate.

You know what? I’m just going to tell people that my youngest has a head injury, because a lot of her behaviour is similar to the patients with head injuries that I nursed. She actually has SNs, but sure that doesn’t matter does it? sarcasm 😒

It’s fucking disgusting the way the TRAs are bleating about their ‘rights’ while trying to bully those people that are intersex! Their blatant hypocrisy is sickening.

But there are a small number of people for whom whether we consider them to be a bit in the middle or not depends on where we decide to draw the conceptual lines.

No there aren’t. There really isn’t. This is a profound misunderstanding of what the medical issues actually are. Nobody with any condition is any sort of ‘in the middle’. We are talking about people with one of a range of developmental and medical conditions - not a gotcha, not a spectrum, nothing fuzzy.

And playing devils advocate for a moment - even if this mythical ‘in the middle’ human existed, they still wouldn’t say anything about being trans.

PleasingFungusBeetle

Perhaps it would help if you describe the specific conditions you are talking about that appear to be fuzzy or a grey area to you.