Confusing statement about treatment for intersex being a victory for trans community

[IwantToRetire]

I feel a bit bad about making this a thread topic as it is clearly quite something to win the Women's Prize for fiction with your first novel.

And I am not meaning or wanting in any way to make this a personal attack.

But surely calling this trans treatment isn't right? Or have I got it wrong?

Van der Wouden revealed in her acceptance speech that she is intersex. “I was a girl until I turned 13, and then as I hit puberty all that was supposed to happen did not quite happen, or if it did happen it happened too much,” she said. “I won’t thrill you too much with the specifics but the long and the short of it is that hormonally I am intersex.”

“This little fact defined my life throughout my teens until I advocated for the healthcare that I needed. In the few precious moments here on stage I am receiving truly the greatest honour of my life as a woman, presenting to you as a woman and accepting this Women’s prize and that is because of every single trans person who’s fought for healthcare, who changed the system, the law, societal standards, themselves. I stand on their shoulders.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jun/12/womens-prize-debut-yael-van-der-wouden-the-safekeep-rachel-clarke-the-story-of-a-heart

And this isn't the Guardian twisting her words, because other papers have posted snippets and this seems the fullest.

So my confusion is whether it is true that the treatment for a biological women with DSD has only become (more) available since medical intervention for men who want to transition has become more common.

If she wants to identify as part of the trans and queer community that's her right.

I am just hoping someone with the right medical knowledge can explain what she might be referring to.

Sorry if this is a really ignorant question.

Bernard Reed of GIRES was trying to co opt 'intersex' organisations years ago. He was trying to sell trans as a form of 'intersex of the mind' and speaking over and for DSD organisations who didn't want him to do so. This thread has a bit of background:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3463920-Lets-go-back-to-2007?page=5

I find this blog on how TQ+ has swamped DSDs helpful, the description of the least (or non) affected getting the most attention and funding is TQ+ in a nutshell:

https://differently-normal.com/

I think it's plausible that people who grow up with DSDs might identify as trans in adulthood at a higher rate than the general population. I've known at least one, probably two, people like that, which is purely anecdotal but feels significant given we're talking about a tiny minority of a tiny minority.

It's definitely plausible that some people with DSDs will want to be trans allies because they perceive they have something in common. Even if their objective situations are very different, they might feel that a certain dissociation from one's sexed body is the important thing. And maybe in a culture like the Netherlands there's a social pressure to be a trans ally.

But that's speculation on how individual DSD people might feel. The big push for forced teaming has all been from the other side, and it's all been based on how DSDs are useful for transactivist rhetoric, whether it's "sex as a spectrum" or whether it's the idea of trans identity as a kind of psychological/neurological DSD that a certain percentage of people are just born with. Anything to draw attention away from the Timothys who don't remotely pass and for whom there's an obvious element of fetishism.

Arguments based on the existence of DSDs have been remarkably successful from transactivists' point of view. I'm really struggling to see anything that transactivism has done for people with DSDs.

Your first sentence is exactly what I thought when I saw this story.

This thread is the first I've heard about the intersex/trans aspect though. And as for the term "intersex", we all know that that is the term the trans lobby prefer as it muddies the waters, and suggests that some people are actually between the two sexes and none of us can actually know what sex we are, so it's a win for trans people. If you use "DSD", with its expansion of "disorders", and the fact that people with DSDs are all actually male or female, that's not nearly so positive for the trans lobby.

Trans activists have used the ambiguity of some intersex conditions to further blur the boundaries and continue with the vagueness and lack of clarity that feeds trans ideology.

Everyone is either male or female....even if some have conditions ( DSDs) in which the under-lying actual sex is not evident to begin with. People who adopt trans identities are not a special category of human being, and people adopt trans identities for all sorts of reasons. Many also de-transition......because 'being trans' is not a fixed condition that has a physical reality...it only has a psychological reality for those that believe.

'Being trans' is a contemporary framing device to clothe one's feelings of discomfort or distress and so on. People have always struggled with gender expectations, and some choose to express that through a trans identity; others express or resolve it differently.

Actually the UK is always one of the most evolved when it comes to the recognition of civil rights...and it certainly recognises that female people have them too.

I can't imagine how hard it must be to discover as a teen that your sex is not what you thought it was. If she found out she was actually male but decided to have treatments to align with being female then I guess in her eyes she is trans and feels she benefitted from treatments available to trans people. It's not really possible to know what she meant or what she's been through from a short speech. There's also the point that without those treatments she wouldn't be receiving the Women's Award.

I'm wondering how often the Women's Prize goes to a debut novelist. I haven't read her book, and maybe it's really good, so perhaps I'm being cynical in wondering if an exciting identity might have helped.

I don't think I'm being at all cynical in wondering whether the Women's Prize would have got half as much coverage if the winner didn't have an exciting identity.

Well it's got people talking and I dare say reading the book so if that's the case it's achieved it's aims.

I'm not going to criticise (for the hypothetical actions of the judges) someone who has won an award for writing. There isn't the physical advantage that makes some male dsds unfair in female sport. I think I'll read the book.

In which case she should have refused the prize. And I think, re-reading what she says that this is the case (the opposite of the condition in 'Conclave').

No, writing isn't affected by physical differences between men and women (unless psychologically). But if this is a prize for women and if the person in question has a male DSD that made them present as a girl until puberty then they should have refused the prize because they have taken it from an actual woman (and we don't have that many prizes). This is the same problem as we have with Caster Semenye et al - they present as 'not male' and are brought up as girls, but they are male. It's another prize that has not gone to a woman because a man has taken it (even if he has had surgery to feminise him because he has a DSD and was brought up as a girl).
But whatever the truth of this situation, he/she is not trans and trans ideology has nothing whatsoever to do with it - except possibly the feminising of her genitals.

I would agree except that, of all the writing awards in all the world, the one in question is The Women's Prize for Fiction.

Edited to add that this was in answer to @JuneJustRains post

Pressed post to soon: feminizing of his genitals.

It's difficult to know, because she hasn't really given us enough information to tell. And she appears female...

It's just that (again, cynicism) if I see an article about a woman winning a women's prize, these days I want to be sure that it actually is a woman, and if the woman in question describes herself as "intersex" and goes out of her way to big up transactivism, that also sets an alarm bell off.

Yes, I know, it's not like physical sports, but sometimes representation is the whole point of fairness. I sometimes mention chess, where we don't quite know why it's so male dominated, but there are 2000 grandmasters in the world and only 40 of them are female. When female representation is very low (this might be chess competitions or literary prizes) you need a separate female category simply to ensure fairness, and it doesn't take many males blagging their way in to undermine the purpose of the category.

I think it's plausible that people who grow up with DSDs might identify as trans in adulthood at a higher rate than the general population. I've known at least one, probably two, people like that, which is purely anecdotal but feels significant given we're talking about a tiny minority of a tiny minority.

The gender clinic in Melbourne checked the karyotype of its patients and found no DSDs.

Regarding the argument that male writers have no physical advantage, it's worth remembering that The Women's Prize for Fiction, originally the Orange Prize, came about after the 1991 final Booker Shortlist didn't feature a single woman writer. You might argue that 30+ years on, there is no longer a need for the award. I'd listen to such an argument. But, if that's the case, then the correct course of action would be to open it to both sexes and to be transparent about it.

I'm aware of that. Any overlap is, by definition, going to be a tiny minority of a tiny minority. And since DSDs are rarer than trans identification, a survey of trans identified people could very easily turn up no DSDs.

Of course the waters are muddied by a large number of trans people who claim to have unspecified DSDs, or who say they might have a DSD, when that almost certainly isn't the case.

What are you on about? How do people with DSDs (intersex is a very outmoded term) not have “rights” in the U.K.?

You’re talking absolute bollocks.

Over the years TRA have used DSD to further their cause id different ways.

As you say, the idea that trans is a form of DSD of the brain, but also to justify why surgical and medical treatments are not a prerequisite for 'transitioning', and to justify treatments being available on demand. The idea that patients with dsd can choose their pathway, and so can trans people.

The idea that medical progress for trans has led to improved care for patients with DSD is a shift. Its suggesting that they are not the same and the money is in trans care, not the dsd medicine.

I read the article this morning and was confused by the conflation of trans and DSDs too. I don't know what surgery or hormones the author has had or whether she (he?) was born female? Very confusing.

“I was a girl until I turned 13, and then as I hit puberty all that was supposed to happen did not quite happen, or if it did happen it happened too much,”

Vague and confusing enough to be meaningless, but it means that she has garnered sympathy in certain circles.

Also how old is she? Many DSDs become apparent in utero during routine antenatal scans. How likely is it that her mother didn't have any scans during pregnancy? Would her parents have been aware of this DSD and kept it from her? Or are we no talking about a DSD after all?

Internal testes aren't visible on fœtal ultrasound. NHS website says problem may only become apparent at puberty.

No that was how I interpreted her speech as well. Androgen insensitivity, or something along those lines.

Routine 20 weeks scans started in the mid-80s, and I’m not sure how good they were back then. The machines I was using 20 years ago were a pile of shit compared to the ones we have now.

Depending on the DSD and whether it is mosaic in nature, it may not become apparent until puberty, or until someone is trying to start a family.