an important conversation initially hosted on twitter.
intersex trans, intersex nonbinary, and intersex trans nonbinary people!
what is one (or more) thing(s) you wish perisex trans nonbinary people like me knew?
(feel free to DM me if you’d prefer to remain anonymous).
first up, Roo B (paypal link).
It’s one of those things where I hope you understand the wariness considering how often we’re used as talking points by both sides but never with the point of helping in our liberation just as a tool to prop up whatever arguments they’re having.
That isn’t to say btw that I disagree with the generally used point that intersex folks prove that even the “sacred binary of sex” 🙄🙄🙄 isn’t a binary.
But like if as trans folks the only time you talk about intersex folks is to point out to terfs we exist therefore you can exist you’re weaponising our trauma and doing nothing to help us fight the fights we face that are ultimately tangential to yours. So to have someone reach out wanting quotes a lot of us have had bad press experience and are overly cautious.
from anonymous:
This isn’t anything I’d aim at you directly, but as a generalized endosex trans thing…
It’s hard/endlessly frustrating when we begin posts about intersex issues and have them taken over by trans people who start talking over Intersex people.
It happens a LOT, and it makes Intersex people afraid/uncomfortable speaking up.
Hell, I just straight up block endosex trans people who start doing it now.
We need to be allowed to tell our own stories without being talked over with “I read this random fact” from endosex people.
You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you.
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger,
You’ll learn things you never knew, you never knew.
Stephen Laurence Schwartz / Alan Irwin Menken, Colors of the Wind.
oh! and just for clarification, i added “like me” to my initial tweet so intersex people would know that an endosex person was tweeting this thread! but if i have fallen into interphobia at all, let me know! i want to grow in my advocacy, (part of why i’m making this thread).
my main goal is for this to pass y’all intersex people the mic so that us endosex people will listen and learn to do better by you. intersex people are often ignored by not only the queer community as a whole, but by endosex trans and nonbinary people too.
which is a shame because n-bphobes, transphobes, and interphobes often end up shouting the same points. we are stronger together. but in order to access that strength, we need to be together. and that means learning from each other.
from anon:
I grew up in a baptist home. Very strict, God only made male/female… And have had to dissect and work through this my whole life… Even before I came out as trans, because I was rejected first based on my body.
It’s why the “hermaphrodite” jokes are always “funny”… Because we’re the born losers/jokes/wastes of the universe. We get included in laws and such, but only by mention to be able to keep harming us.
(and don’t get me started on the whole florida mess… I got my genitals inspected every year for gym class, many Intersex people have, and everyone is acting like it’s something new).
Just new to the common view.
Unwanted, non-consent medical photography, I wasn’t allowed to use the bathroom in one school because of an interphobic parent who felt I shouldn’t he allowed in with her daughter.
as a girl, living as a girl in elementary school, I looked like a boy, and one parent went to the principal and demanded I use the teachers’ bathroom because I was somehow inherently evil.
My parents would have yearly meetings with my gym teachers, and one of the biggest discussions, especially in high school, was which locker room I used.
In high school, I ended up not being allowed to change clothes or shower, because the teacher couldn’t let me in the boy’s locker room (for obvious “she’s a girl! What are you doing??” reasons), but then also didn’t feel “comfortable” letting me in the girls locker room, either.
from Snow Kelleher (tip jar):
Intersex is already an exception to an established rule, and is full of its own internal exceptions. Just because the extreme cases are like X doesn’t mean they all are, and a lot of people may never learn they’re intersex just because of that.
from tumblr anon:
I need perisex trans people to realize that so much transphobic rethoric and ideas (ie: predators in bathrooms, people mutilating their bodies, there only being two sexes/genders) also directly affect intersex people. Intersex people are targeted with transphobia fueled intersexism of all kinds constantly. Your experiences with these types of bigotry are not unique and you all need to do a better job of actively including intersex people (yes, even cis ones) in your conversations about gender and sex based oppression.
You can view more replies here. Some people don’t like moving from site to site, and that’s understandable. Also reread Roo B.’s comment.
But you also need to be prepared for the worst case scenario on the internet. I own HFEpro.com, but twitter could ban these sorts of conversations at any time.
See also the tumblrpocalypse. The rules can change at any moment. Nobody thought tumblr of all places would be so foolish as to ban half the reason why anybody used it. But they did. Just like that.
“The tumblrpocalypse won’t happen to twitter!”
Yeah and so many people never thought the tumblrpocalypse would happen to tumblr, or that we’d ever lose roe v wade, so…
You gotta be as best prepared for the worst case scenario as you can. That means backing up your work, even if you don’t think it’s “important work”. I didn’t think I was doing important work either. I just thought I was doing what a truly good person is supposed to do: use whatever power I’ve got to help others who need their voices heard by people who aren’t like them.
If you have anything on any electronic device, back it up on google drive or a flash drive or something. Devices can be stolen, lost, user error, etc. That’s what happened to my high school / college non-fanfiction by the way. I was trying to delete something else and I ended up erasing years of original fiction instead. So much of my life and writing, gone forever because of a mistake. Be prepared.
“HFE, thank you for creating and sharing so much art and writing for free. How can we help turn your passion and skills into a full-time gig?”
I’m glad you asked!
If you can give me a one-time tip, head over to ko-fi. I’ve also got emotes and icons you can buy.
If you can commit to a monthly tip, you can set that up via twitch or patreon. Twitch also lets you set up alternate payment schedules: every three months and every six months. Ko-fi lets you set up monthly payments now, too!
You can also buy some characters and critters I’ve designed on toyhouse.
And if you have no money to spare (understandable), one way you can help me out is by commenting and using as many share buttons as possible. Commenting gives me feedback on what works y’all are passionate about. Sharing helps expose my works to new people. The bigger my audience grows, the more audience members with money will encounter my works.
Thank you for taking time to read this. I hope you enjoy what you’ve found here.
- Homework (links in this piece).
- HFE productions:
- Twitter.
- Roo B Boy.
- Snow Kelleher.
- Ziksua: Eliza Final song – Animatic.
- The Amber Ruffin Show:
- Petrana Radulovic, Polygon: Tumblr will purge most NSFW content under new guidelines.
- Les Mis movie clip: Javert’s Apology.
- HFE productions:
HFEproductions 