I have a DSD and am fed up.

[DSDFury]

A DSD (Disorder/Difference of Sexual Development) is a congenital medical condition, usually resulting in sterility, as it does in my case. Broadly, it means there is chromosomal or other genetic anomaly which has resulted in the foetus not developing along typical lines for a male or female. Not all the resulting abnormalities are external, and we are certainly not hermaphrodites.

I am sick to death of DSDs being co-opted by the trans movement as "proof" that sex isn't binary. I am not some weird third sex, I am not part of a spectrum, and I don't feel the need to tell everyone about my condition.

I am sick to death of DSDs being misrepresented as an identity (looking at you, Fife NHS). It comes with some shitty elements such as infertility, but that is just one of many, many things that makes me who I am. I am a very ordinary middle-aged woman who shops in M&S and doesn't have blue hair.

I don't want to be in the sodding rainbow, I don't want to be on a flag and I absolutely don't want to be seen as synonymous with trans (looking at you, Women's Institute).

To (possibly) coin a phrase, I have "gender euphoria". I have never doubted for a second that I am female and I was delighted to finally go through puberty once I had been diagnosed. I don't believe that my spirit has been fortuitously put in the correct body or any such nonsense; I am female because I embody a body which has a womb and a vagina rather than a penis and testicles. I look, and sound, entirely female in every respect.

I do want our existence to be acknowledged, as in certain situations (mainly medical, but some legal) it is important to recognise this group of conditions. However I think conflating us with trans hinders this far, far more than helps, as it obfuscates the issue.

I am not particularly concerned about the implications of the Supreme Court ruling, certainly don't regard it as genocide (ridiculous hyperbole) and think it would have been insane for it to go any other way, although I fervently hope that anyone in charge of policy has sufficient knowledge of these conditions to be aware that there will be people whose chromosomes do not match their phenotype/appearance because of a medical condition rather than because they are trans.

People on the Feminism board seem to be extremely knowledgeable, but I bet a sizeable sector of the general population would be surprised by more than one thing I have written,

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for this. I am endlessly irritated by all the smug, helpful idiots who spout inanities about DSDs in support of trans ideology — as if they have some superior knowledge about biology than us ill-educated (PhD-having) hags. And I don’t even have a DSD, so I can only imagine how irritating it must be to you, or to anyone else who does.

Posted this on another thread today. It’s Claire Graham responding to something from the Judge in the first Forstater ET.

Here’s the thing…the judge goes out of his way to talk about the need for dignity for trans people. It’s important, we’re told, that we all pretend that the categories of male and female are nebulous and unimportant. That the feeling in someone’s head should override reality for the rest of us. That we all pretend that because someone doesn’t like the sexist stereotypes associated with their birth sex that they can actually be the opposite sex, and we must all accept this about them too, despite what our senses tell us. The vehicle used to achieve this is, as ever, DSDs.
Where’s the dignity for people with DSDs in all of this, as our complex and often emotionally difficult medical conditions are trotted out and prodded by the ignorant, discussed with morbid fascination by people who have no idea about the reality of them? Who gives a shit about what is being done to us?

https://mrkhvoice.com/index.php/2019/12/18/what-is-dignity/

Thanks. Is just as endlessly infuriating to me, although unfortunately the DSD community itself is rather split on the matter.

My hunch is that some of these conditions (especially ones where the phenotype is more ambiguous) can cause gender dysphoria, although that is a by-product rather than a symptom.

I still don't think it does us as a group any favours to be lumped with the rest of the rainbow.

Agreed - you don't have the option of identifying out of your medical condition.

Amen OP. Me too, as a fellow person diagnosed with a DSD I agree with you.

But may I also say that I am getting fed up with the endless essentialism of many people here on these pages. FWIW I agree with the phrase "Biological sex is a multidimensional variable with various components" - and find the insistence of the XX/XY divide tedious and tiring. As this idea of big gametes/small gametes - sounds scientific but useless. I just have no will to engage with that thread however... I wish the otherwise sensible women here would just stop responding to the TRA lines with their own ignorant misinterpretations of what having a DSD means for the person involved.

Thank you for sharing this with us. I think it's very important to hear your voice. To often in this world, people are spoken for instead of their own voices being heard.

Excellent post OP I’m not surprised you are exasperated, the whole thing is maddening.

My peeve is that DS has one of the conditions they have co-opted to increase the %ge of people with DSDs as part of the obfuscation.

He absolutely does not have a condition of any significance, that merits the ‘you never know’ approach. As an adult he may well have forgotten it. There’s no doubt he’s male. It’s a total non event, yet is used to bolster the confusion about sex being binary.

Totally disingenuous of them to use conditions like his and PCOS to undermine the physical reality of all people, including those with DSDs.

I’m sorry you feel dragged into it, OP. I appreciate your irritation.

the phrase "Biological sex is a multidimensional variable with various components" is being used to justify men without DSDs being considered female on those threads

If you're referring to mammals, biological sex is not "a multidimensional variable with various components". Biological sex is binary. No exceptions.

I wondered about how people with DSDs would feel if they had to go to NHS Fife.

Thank you for sharing, OP. It is maddening because we have someone in my family with MRKH which also gets co-opted.

Firstly: obviously you're entirely at liberty to feel how you want to about your condition.

The "insistence on the XX/XY divide" comes from the fact that these are the only two viable sets of sex chromosomes - by viable I mean able to reproduce. This is not a value-judgement on someone's worth, but in evolutionary terms an organism is redundant if it can't propagate the species. Also, it's not really meaningful to talk about "insistence" when it's a statement of scientific fact rather than a matter of opinion - you don't "insist" on the existence of gravity, for example.

In terms of sex being a "multidimensional variable" I think it's important to clarify the distinction between "healthy" variables which are typical in the population: height, hair colour, eye colour, penis size, hip:waist ratio, deepness of voice, skin colour, etc., some of which are associated with a particular sex; and variables which are the result of a medical anomaly: Downs syndrome, dwarfism, albinism, progeria, spina bifida, etc. Most of the latter require accommodations and/or medical intervention.

DSDs which result in an unusual chromosome pattern such as X0, XXY, XXXY are not just versions of a healthy human body, they are conditions which require treatment and which result in sterility. Sterility means something has gone wrong.

As for this idea of big gametes/small gametes - sounds scientific but useless.

Sorry, but this sounds a bit conspiracy theorist-esque. It "sounds scientific" because it is, not because it's designed to be willfully misleading or to make a political point.

Indeed.

As a heterosexual cis woman who doesn't identify as "queer" or alternative in any way, it's an utter head-fuck to be told you have XY chromosomes. And having experienced an extremely delayed puberty (you can imagine how much fun that is as a teenager) and been told at the age of 16 that I couldn't have children, the last thing I need is to be told I'm not a real woman or I'm in the weird bit of a so-called spectrum, or that I'm a third sex, or that I'm actually no different from people who are trans (many of whom, I'm afraid to say, present as completely detached from reality and generally batshit).

I think the general awareness of intersex is far less than the awareness of trans, and the awareness of intersex not being the same as trans is even lower.

Then of course people feel compelled to demonstrate that they are real women to push back at all the men muscling in on women's spaces. How do they do this? Usually by referring to menstruation or pregnancy, or how many children they have, or having ovaries etc, etc. All things which don't apply to me, not because I identified out of them but because I have a medical condition.

Even disregarding any trans rhetoric, women are typically valued and celebrated in society for producing and raising children, for mothering, then for being grandmothers. That was off the table for me from the age of 16.

So it's a bit shit sometimes!

I disagree though that only people with DSDs should be "allowed" to talk about these conditions, although I do think people should do their research and not spout bollocks.

I'm thoroughly bored with the idea that "lived experience" trumps everything else: having a vagina doesn't make you a gynaecologist.

Can completely understand your frustration. DSD’s are a medical condition, not a feeling.

This must be a tough thing to experience, and even tougher when your situtation used for other people's ends.

Have you been following the Sandie Peggie tribunal? Where on Friday afternoon Upton's team bring up DSDs as a gotcha for "sex is not binary", even though a) sex is indeed binary, people with DSDs are not some mysterious third sex, b) there is no suggestion that Upton has a DSD and c) even if he had, it is irrelevant to the changing room situation. But it's so predictable, they drag DSDs into trans discussions just to try and bolster their very feeble case.

Thank you OP. I’ve generally tried to avoid discussing DSDs because it’s not a subject that I know much about. I will lurk here and be pleased to learn more. Thanks for starting this thread

I’m really sorry, I can absolutely imagine it’s a total headfuck. My husband has a DSD (he does call himself intersex but I realise many people don’t). He has XX chromosomes but male genitalia and has developed as a man. He has known since puberty that he’s infertile and told me a similar story to yours about how devastating it was to find this out. He’s not trans, he’s a man.

At the same time I do feel it so unhelpful reading on here things like “chromosomes never lie” when…well yeah, they can, when something went wrong!

Regarding your second paragraph, yes, that's really a kicker. Sometimes the chain of events that chromosomes set in motion malfunctions, as you say. You need not only XY chromosomes to be male but also a functioning SRY gene. I'm no more male than any other woman - my Y chromosome is something of a red herring.

I'm so sorry that you have been and continue to be so horribly appropriated and exploited by bad actors who will spread misinformation and do anything to enable men to get their knobs out in women's spaces.

I've been following it, although not closely.

You have summed it up nicely. I'm certainly fed up with DSDs being used as a gotcha, and it's in fairly poor taste to do that when BU doesn't have one anyway.

The thing is that humans are organic and so sometimes things go wrong. There are still only two sexes and two types of gamete.

You're a woman, female. Your body is built around the formation of large gametes, even if it doesn't actually produce them. Your DSD affects only women. You're a woman.

If you had been born with extra digits, you'd still be human and humans would still be pentadactyl.

Thank you.

The other head-fuck is that there is not a version of me without the DSD. If I didn't have a DSD I would be a man. It's mind-blowing to think how different my life would have been.

It irritates me that medical professionals profess not to know what sex they are born as when there are genuinely people who do not know what sex they are and need tests to find out.

It’s such a mess isn’t it. I do feel sorry for people with dsd who get dragged into this debate against their will.

i know someone ( a man) with xxy chromosomes. Afaik only men are affected by this syndrome and he certainly grew up being told he was male.