Intersex

[Tootsurly]

Bit of a thought experiment, plus curious as to how much people know about intersex conditions / DSDs.

This is slightly Black Mirror, although not totally beyond the realms of possibility. If there ever came a point where anything specifically related to being male or female required a DNA test to determine your sex before participating, what would happen to intersex people whose chromosomes didn't match their outward appearance (i.e. genotype and phenotype don't match)?

Of course they did. It was written specifically to appeal to them.

Even the author herself says that there are only 2 sexes.

https://x.com/ClaireAinsworth/status/888365994577735680

I can't say what she was meaning to express in that article, but she hasn't redefined sex in any way. So even if you have 'feminine characteristics' you are still one sex or the other.

No, in the UK.

I am purely going by the terminology that everyone I know uses, which is almost exclusively "intersex" rather than "DSD". The organisation which facilitates gatherings where I met most of these people uses the term intersex, everyone uses it informally, people who are "out" use it in their bios and even the WA group has "intersex" in the title.

There is a very vocal core group who like not being considered "normal" and don't like being considered "disordered", so I'm sure that has a lot to do with it.

I'm not that bothered, but I am very bothered indeed by being conflated with trans.

That is brilliant! Thank you for sharing.

The Sex Redefined article and the infographic which many of us have seen before are mentioned, as is Dr Emma Hilton (dear God, I hope I've got her name and title right this time, unlike last night!) in this article -

https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/sex-is-not-a-spectrum

What is wrong with what I said?

The DSD campaigners I know often prefer ‘Difference’ or ‘Variation’ to ‘Disorder’.

I am somewhat sympathetic to the psychological aspect of being a person with a disorder but at the same time it’s a medical descriptor, not a value judgement on the person who has it.

Disease
Disorder
Condition
Syndrome

https://www.verywellhealth.com/disease-vs-disorder-5092243

’Intersex’ is meaningless medically and meaningless socially, because so many transgender identifying people claim to be ‘intersex’.

Whereas the conditions grouped together as DSDs have medical definitions and cannot be meaningfully claimed by individuals without the physical traits that lead to the various diagnoses.

Both of my kids have diagnosed ‘disorders’ btw (one has ADHD and ASD, the other has an extremely rare Immune Disorder, so rare that naming it is practically a self dox) but neither is intrinsically less valuable as a person due to that disorder.

Renaming their conditions to take the disorder bit out wouldn’t improve their lives, so I personally believe it’s better to explain the medical meaning of disorder and work on emotional resilience skills.

Fannying about with language makes it seem like something is being done whilst disguising a lack of actual action.

@Tootsurly

I obviously don't know how old you are but you come across as as a wonderful young woman.

Haha! Thank you.

Personally I'm really not bothered by the "disorder" part of the term DSD. I mean it is a disorder, patently, and I wish I didn't have it, but calling it something different isn't going to change anything.

One of them, despite being a heterosexual, cis man whose disorder doesn't make him female in the slightest, is practically wetting himself with excitement at the prospect of being his own special sex.

I realise I sound a bit disparaging, but it's honestly relentless and I'm fed up of the TRA rhetoric.

‘Cis’ is offensive, it relegates men and women to subsets of their own class and infers that women or men are defined by regressive sex stereotypes.

I understood that skeletal feminisation is possible if the exposure is started at a young-enough age

That's interesting. I would struggle to believe this happens.

I was partly basing this on CAIS individuals, who have feminised skeletons (under the influence of aromatised endogenousT). But I don't think boys should be given œstrogen deliberately, so the point is moot.

I’m sure most of us have encountered this ‘special’ sort of bloke online!
Thankfully there are lots of thoughtful people with DSDs posting online as well, some activists, some not.

A while back we had a regular poster who had a DSD and who had served a prison term, I forget the particulars of their story but it was clear that they a) supported rules that exist for the safeguarding of women b) had not had an easy time coming to terms with the reality of their condition/fitting themself into society.

I wonder if any current Mumsnetters remember the poster’s username? You might find their posts (and the responses) interesting/informative.

The DSD Families Charity is much more sane than the average ‘Intersex’ activist!

www.dsdfamilies.org/charity

This.
You are confused on many counts OP. Foetuses are sexed at the moment of conception. Males with DSD do not have complete female internal organs.

Personally, I ignore it. People are welcome to call me "cis" should they wish. It means nothing to me as I don't believe I have a gender identity. It's a word of no relevance to my life.

It has as much of an impact on me as a Christian calling me a sinner.

If genderists find it helpful to call me cis and Christians find it helpful to call me a sinner, so be it.

I am aware of my misapprehension re. foetuses, but am certainly not confused about which organs I have in my own body.

Ah OK. Interesting.

There is a very vocal core group who like not being considered "normal" and don't like being considered "disordered", so I'm sure that has a lot to do with it.

This sounds remarkably similar to the autism parents' group that I left. There was a lot of focus on autism as an identity... and a lot of crossover into gender identity as a result of this... and as a superpower. I mostly just listened. I quite like the superpower idea when it's tempered with reality as well.
One thing that really struck me was how I ended up seeing the phrase "my mask is for you". Initiallly I saw it as very empowering but I also realised it easily became very much the opposite of empowering - like a "it's me against a hateful world" thing. I appreciate it's a derail so I won't go into more on his but the principal is similar to what you've described I think.

I'm not that bothered, but I am very bothered indeed by being conflated with trans.

This sounds like a healthy approach to things. I guess if some people like the term intersex, and aren't using it as a tool with which to wedge in gender identity, fair enough. I'll stick to DSDs given I'm on the outside looking in.

I've nothing to add, but I'm posting to say that this has been a very interesting discussion, thank you OP for starting it and staying with it. It feels as if there is real exchange and learning going on here, potential derails not taken, a lot of openness, occasional heated words followed up with movement towards mutual understanding..
Thank you to the OP and everybody who has participated.

OMG, there's a lot of the "me against the hateful world", or at least "me against the hateful medical profession who operate on people with DSDs purely for their own nefarious reasons rather than because they genuinely believe that will give the best outcome." And heaven forbid anyone should use the word "normal", even in a medical context.

There is definitely a fair whack of wedging in gender identity ("we're all on a spectrum", etc., etc.), but my only point was that people with DSDs don't seem to find the term "intersex" offensive - I wasn't hypothesising as to why this might be.

like not being considered "normal"

I forget whose it was, but it was either in Nature or Scientific America that there was an obituary which stated what a terrible person the deceased was because they compared people to the normal distribution curve, and who were they to decide what was normal!!!

That was when I realised how far these once scientific magazines had fallen.

It's ridiculous. I did point out that doctors spend a huge amount of time comparing people to the norm (or normal range, at least) in order to do their job, every time they weigh you or take your blood pressure or pulse or measure your cholesterol or bone density or a thousand other things. It's not a value judgement on your worth as a human being.

Could be worse. Imagine if the variable took the form of a poisson distribution.

How dare you compare me to fish!