Choosing intersex

Cartesian dualism led to a way of thinking about things that separated the body and the mind. As a result, when we think of the “self”, we tend to ignore that the brain is part of the body, and treat the mind as if it is some kind of separate entity, This way of thinking gave us all sorts of ridiculous things, Freud’s “unconscious” being a notable example, with Money’s “gender identity” being a more recent absurdity.

It is this dichotomy which lies at the heart of the disagreements between some trans activists who talk about “brain sex” and those radical feminists who do not accept narratives that can be reduced to the “wrong body”. A psychological state is posited that is somehow biologically driven, and yet overrides biological phenotype. The opposing position is that the original phenotype is what matters, and that any psychological state that fails to accept this is a delusion based on a social construct called gender.

The problem with both of these positions, which are the extremes, is that they are both deterministic. On the one hand, we are determined by what our “gender identity” is, and so the story goes that trans people have no option other than transition; the alternative is stress and the risk of suicide. On the other hand, there is no “gender identity”, there is biological sex, and through therapy people can override the signals that conflict with this, and learn to live in their biological sex.

Whatever our brain or biology might be telling us we are, or should be, the only choice within the deterministic paradigm that traditionally leads to a specifically transsexual outcome is of acceptance or denial. That entailed more choice than that afforded by those who deny there is a choice to make, that we are the way we were born and the only coherent response is to remain so. Yet neither give hope for freedom. Transgender options muddy the waters, except they still often rely on the same paradigm that transsexualism relied on. In practice, the hostility towards transgender transition can seem even more pronounced than towards transsexual transition. Anything short of full realignment, which ends up with a mixed phenotype, retains the spectre of retained male characteristics which are seen as a threat by some people. That may seem irrational to those who are that way, but not to those for whom it is a concern.

I have struggled with this issue for as long as I can remember, ever since I was first introduced to radical feminism by my then partner back in the early 1980’s. It is what led me to try and find some other way of dealing with my own dysphoria and dysmorphia. In the 1990’s, I found these so overwhelming, that eventually I gave in. For me, this millennium was the time I chose to affirm rather than deny this awkward truth about myself, only to discover that underlying it all was a deeper, darker, truth that had been denied me from a very early age.

Interestingly, it was at the GIC I attended that the bombshell was dropped, gently, obliquely, that my history suggested a lack of masculine development from an early age. My experience at the GIC was not at all what is characterised in some quarters – people seemed to go to great lengths to avoid facilitating a transition. At the time this was frustrating, but with hindsight, I wonder whether they were trying to do me a favour. What I learned about myself was devastating, given my supposed intelligence and the length of time I had blithely lived my life unaware that I was never what I had been raised to believe – a man.

Even though my “mind” reeled against what I learned over the next five years, I eventually learned to accept that I was intersex. I cannot express how grateful I am to those few intersex people I got to know at that time, and how they encouraged me, and how they helped me accept what was so obvious, yet had entailed a web of denial throughout my adolescence and adulthood.  Eventually I came to understand that being intersex gives me a third option – I can step outside these binary choices that confront trans people, or lack of choice, and just be myself. So, instead of making the choice to transition to a different binary option, I can choose to be myself – even if that option was denied me from birth. Accepting intersex as an option is a choice, however, it is only open to people who were born between the sexes.

I resisted the temptation to get official recognition of my intersex state through diagnosis – not wishing to seek a pathologising confirmation of what had happened to me as a child. However, without any effort on my part, my intersex state is now medically recognised.

It was very liberating to step outside of the dichotomy of male and female, and yet because of my experiences I can feel empathy for those locked into it in the way many trans people are; I also feel empathy for those who reject reassignment as the answer in the way many radical feminists do. My own development as an intersex-identified person goes back to over a decade ago, things have moved on a lot since then. Trans now incorporates what are now called non-binary options, so for trans people who are not intersex, there is the option to position oneself in a location that is outside the dichotomy. I have to celebrate that, because I know from my own experience, for some people being male or female just doesn’t work.

Is taking this position, as awkward as it is socially, selfish? I don’t see it. Claiming my identity as an intersex person who is naturally, physically, androgynous is no more selfish than the gender reinforcement I was subjected to in my youth, where without ever consulting me about what I might want, my body and my “mind” were disciplined into conforming to other people’s expectations of masculinity. Since when can reclaiming and oneself be selfish? Liberation involves dismantling oppressive structures, both within one’s own life and within society at large – and the compulsory assignment and reinforcement of gender is part of a primarily oppressive structure. It is only through reflection on my own lived experience at the receiving end of this that I have become aware of just how oppressive it can be. It is that which drove me to try and challenge this for a decade. Trying to live out my truth, openly, and working towards dismantling this structural oppression, was initially driven by my affinity with liberation theology – and it is a struggle that I cannot see is in any way selfish. It is about liberation. The struggle is not just for me, nor for people like me, nor for intersex people, nor for transgender people, nor for feminists; it is for all people, men as well as women, who are oppressed by this social convention we call “gender”.

The reason I choose intersex is because I can, when for so long this was denied me. Nobody can deny me this. It is my act of resistance.

What makes a “transsexual man”?

Recently, somebody called me a “transsexual man”, and I think this was meant to be insult: that I was biologically male, and transsexual, and therefore still a man. There is an element of truth in this, although by strict definition, I don’t think I am a man, because whatever my biological sex might have been, my legal sex is female. I don’t think I can be described as “transsexual” either. At least, that is what quite a few transsexuals have told me anyway, insisting I am not transsexual, and that intersex people cannot be transsexual (usually accompanied with something about me not being allowed to say anything about transsexualism, or the trans community, they don’t like on that basis).

My understanding of a “transsexual man” is of somebody who was biologically female, and who transitions and becomes legally male. I have met many transsexual men, and they are some of the nicest and self-aware people I have met, many having themselves come through radical feminism, although a few are still quite angry about how they have been treated. So, I don’t mind being called or taken for a “transsexual man”, as I admire and respect them. I am over gender pronouns – they are not that important; they are important to people who go along with and support the maintenance of an oppressive binary gender system which is mainly of benefit to men. But this mistake does kind of speak to aspects of my own experience. As an infant, I had genital surgery, which was part of my experience of social gender reinforcement as a child, and while this was not sex assignment, or sex reassignment, it was what is best called sex confirmation surgery, and part of my masculine gender reinforcement. It was surgery intended to reinforce my masculinity as a male. So, there are similarities to some of the surgeries some transsexual men have. I had further surgery later in childhood, which was also more sex confirmation surgery, in part carried out in order to to reinforce my masculinity as a male. That and the psycho-social reinforcement didn’t work, my masculinity was not reinforced. But, there is a point of similarity between what I experienced, albeit without consent, and what transsexual men experience out of choice.

So, yes, I do see myself as having had some similarities to a “transsexual man”, for part of my adult life. I didn’t ask to be treated that way, I would have preferred if I had not been. I rejected it. If I could make a wish and snap my fingers, I would be the way I was before that, only grown up naturally and without interference. I am quite clear that is not a possibility, just as making me a man was never going to work, or anything else really. I am stuck with the way I ended up, and I try to work with that as best I can, and live my life in a way that reduces the dysphoria that followed me into adulthood as much as possible. I cannot buy into these gender stereotypes that a heteronormative society presents,  so now I am “gender non-conforming and queer”.

Repeat after me “queer”, “batty boy”, “faggot”; this is the sort of abuse I and other people tend to be more familiar with – and if abusive people want to be accepted within the mainstream, they really need to target their abuse in a way bigots in wider society can understand. “Transsexual man” might be a bit long too long-winded for normal bigots – to them it is just another type of queer.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Here I stand – or make a start to anyway.

This is a working document, where I am trying to work out my own views on a range of issues affecting FAAB & MAAB intersex people, FAB women, MAB & FAB transsexual & transgender people, and FAAB & MAAB intersex people who are gender nonconforming. I would welcome any constructive feedback.

Some terms

FAB = female at birth

MAB = male at birth

FAAB = female assigned at birth

MAAB = male assigned at birth

MtT = male to female transsexual

FtT = female to male transsexual

I undertake this as somebody identified as a MAAB gender non-conforming woman-identified.

I am unclear exactly where this taxonomy originated, but it is extremely helpful to me in unpicking some of these issues, and I will give credit if I can figure out where it comes from originally.

One source is here: http://twanzphobic.wordpress.com/fab-speak/

Who refers to here: http://noanodyne.com/2011/03/pro-faab/ for a fuller explanation of what “pro-FAB” means

The statements

I start with where I am coming from – skip everything that starts with ‘I’ if you want to get to the meat, or start here if you want to avoid picking through the rest of my posts in order to deconstruct my narrative.

Ego

I was assigned male at birth, and although I had certain anomalies that required medical attention and surgery, I was raised male. That was not a mistake, it was the most sensible assignment in my situation.

I was not comfortable with my assignment, nor the treatment of reinforcement of my social gender, but I appreciate that it gave me more privileges than I would have had otherwise.

I would have preferred not have been treated medically, unless absolutely necessary; I consider most of the treatment I had was not, it was about trying to make me physically and behaviorally conform to a male gender role.

I was never very good at, however hard I tried to perform it.

I was not born in the wrong body, I was born in the body I had, that is the only body I will ever have, and thinking there was something wrong with it is nonsensical to me.

I did not have a deformity, I was different from most males, and that was the reason for medical intervention; the only body I would like is the one I would have had if I had not been interfered with. I can never have that, I have the body I have now.

I struggled with gender dysphoria from when I was a young child (not understanding what it was, and in denial), and eventually changed my gender identity as an adult.

I could ‘pass’ quite easily, and worked on the shop floor of a major retail chain serving mostly female customers, and my gender performance was never an issue.

I have never sought to hide my transitioned status, nor to make an issue of it, in day-to-day.

I do not live in ‘stealth’ or actively try to ‘pass’, although I do make an ‘effort’ when going out for dinner and stuff, just like anybody.

I am biologically male, legally female, live as a woman, and am usually seen as a woman, I do not believe I can ever be ‘female’ in the biological sense of the word, just as I was never really ‘male’

I have difficulty performing female, because much of the female gender role is as meaningless to me as the male gender role.

I don’t understand men really, but I think a lot of their behaviour is governed by testosterone.  I never had that much, and if I had, I doubt I would be the way I am now.

To be honest, I don’t understand a lot of women either – especially women who run around after men.

I believe I am/was intersex, because I don’t know what else would explain my childhood surgeries and experiences.

I might be wrong, but I have met and got to know quite a few intersex people, who I usually like and get along with, and often they are people I do understand better than I do most men, women and trans people. Intersex people I have met have tended to accept me as such, and encouraged me to accept this about myself. I did try to deny this for quite a long time, and at first thought I must be a transsexual, but I cannot believe a lot of the things it seems you have to in order to be a transsexual.

I cannot consider my life before transition was a lie, although I eventually found out I was not quite who I always thought I was. Although I tried, I could not see any point in swapping one deceit for another. I try to live somewhere between male and female, as far as I can within the constraints of a society that expects people to be one or the other. I would like to see the end of these socially constructed gender roles completely. They are absurd.

I recognise that I am in a very priveleged position which allows me to do this, and to see things the way that I do.

I have been told by medical specialists that I show/showed three symptoms of male underdevelopment, but my records were truncated when I was discharged from medical care at around 16, and nobody has been able to access any hospital records apart from the dates of admissions. The only evidence I have are the scars on my body, which I keep to remind me of how I came to be the way I am now; I do not display them,  and I will not describe the procedures that took place. Some things are private. I have done, but I feel no need to validate myself any more.

I have had no DNA tests as an adult that I am aware of, because the endocrinologist at the intersex clinic I attended insisted there was no point – in his words, too much water had passed under the bridge, and most of the damage was done when I was treated as a child anyway. A karyotype test was carried out, which I am told was XY, but I never got to see the result, and a negative fertility test. I think that this was a trustworthy doctor (I still find it hard to trust people in the medical profession, including women), although I don’t really understand why I couldn’t see the results of the test I had to pay for. I now no longer care why I was treated as a kid, although I still get pissed off at times that I was treated, and am quite angry that nobody told me the implications of my treatment when I discharged myself at 16 – because of the consequences for my adult life, and potential problems that I was completely unaware of (osteoporosis in my 40’s, for example). I discharged myself because I was sick of being prodded and poked, and having impromptu genital examinations by complete strangers wearing white coats during visits to the hospital.

I was hypo-gonadal, from what i can make out, which meant I was hypospadic, cryptorchid and infertile. I will not go into more detail, other than to say that the first two were why I had the surgeries, one of which was abdominal. The first has been confirmed by a urologist, the second I can remember the procedure involved in trying to rectify this, graphically, and the ten days spent in hospital, mostly in recovery.

I don’t know why I was that way, but these three together are symptomatic of intersex in their own right, whether going by ISNA’s definition of intersex, or the more recent taxonomy of DSD.

I reject the disorder in DSD, preferring variations or differences in sex development to disorder; however, I support having a clear value-free taxonomy. I do not consider the signs of intersex to be deformities, although I acknowledge that some symptoms manifested through the syndromes and conditions that give rise to intersex may require medical interventions. I do not believe that purely cosmetic genital plastic surgery is necessary for intersex children, because that is all about reinforcing gender conformity on the body.

I do not know whether my intersex history is connected to my gender dysphoria or not, all I know is that one of my earliest memories are of my first surgery around four, a few things that happened before that, and the sense of discomfort about being a boy that developed after (obviously, I had no concept of gender dysphoria, the distress was in some way connected to what had happened to me physically through the surgery, and realisation I was a boy). I’m pretty sure the surgery was for the hypospadias. It could be that the dysphoria was an iatrogenic reaction to the surgery and the way that changed me, or is could have been connected to the underlying hypogonadism, or independent of both – I have no idea.

I do not like videos or images of genital surgery, these are triggers for me. I attended intersex and transsexual/transgender (HBIGDA/WPATH) medical conferences during my research, observing the proceedings as a social anthropologist, but eventually had to stop attending such meetings, because I found the images disturbed me, and they triggered suppressed feelings.

I resist the determinism inherent in the pervasive belief that  reassignment and/or transition is the only thing that can be done about gender dysphoria.

Assertions

Gender dysphoria is not a mental illness, lots of people have it, not only transsexuals and transgenderists. It is time it was removed from DSM & ICD.

People cannot have the wrong body, it is meaningless to say that a male can have a female brain, or a female can have a male brain, or that a male can know how a female thinks, or that a female can know how a male thinks.

This is because people think like themselves, and nobody can know how another person thinks – it is closed to them. You can get an idea of how other people think through their writing, and listening to what they have to say, but that’s about it.

People might be more dominant or submissive, aggressive or gentle, considerate or inconsiderate, talkative or reserved, caring or uncaring, nurturing or detached – but the association with gender identity is synthetic.

In the experiments on foetal rats brains to produce ‘reverse lordosis’, nobody has ever produced a male rat who has a liking for heels, or a female rat who likes sports-jackets! 🙂

However, in humans, the libido should not be underestimated as a factor in the desire for reassignment. Humans do gender, rats do not.

The hormones we produce, or don’t produce, and the ones we replace them with, affect our emotions, which affect the way in which we think, and how we behave. That is biochemistry, not gender.

Sex/gender reassignment surgery is cosmetic plastic surgery, and access to such procedures should not be related to gender in any way, or require psychiatric supervision, and be available to anybody who chooses them.

Who pays is not an issue I feel the need to address, it does not interest me; but as opting to undergo cosmetic proceedures that are not part of a diagnosed medical condition is a choice, there will be consequences.

People who have a history of mental illness should be discouraged from undergoing these sorts of treatments.

People who want reassignment should have the opportunity of counseling first, with neutral and independent counselors, so that they can be clear about what is involved, and what alternatives there are in dealing with gender dysphoria.

Adult transsexuals are free to do whatever they want with their bodies on that basis. It is their responsibility, their informed choice and if they make a mistake, they make a mistake.

It is healthier for people to choose to do these things, rather than being led to believe that they have to do them because there is no alternative.

People will kill themselves if they believe they have to transition and have SRS, and the trope that it is inevitable is potentially harmful.

Support

I support feminists who seek to maintain spaces as exclusively FAB.

I do not support the idea that a MAB trans person has any right to insist on access to sensitive areas designated as being for FAB women, although I support trans people’s right to ask for access to certain services on the basis of need.

If such access is denied, there needs to be alternatives, as trans people can be victims too.

I support people who, with full information and disclosure at their disposal, choose freely and without compulsion, to transition from one gender role to another, for whatever reason, and/or to undergo whatever cosmetic plastic surgical procedures they feel they need or do not need to undergo in order to help them do so.

I support the autonomy of trans people in making their choices out of free-will, as long as those choices are not based on the flawed logic that such an outcome is pre-determined, in which case I am constrained in my support.

I support people who feel that they are uncomfortable with their birth sex or assigned gender, and who feel unable to conform to gender roles or stereotypes, to live and identify as they wish; including not identifying as either male or female.

I support intersex people who are happy with their assignment to live as the men and women they have always felt comfortable being.

I support intersex people who are unhappy with their assignment to live as the men and women they feel the most comfortable being.

I support intersex people who do regard themselves as having some form of disorder, or disfunction, and support them in seeking out whatever medical assistance they feel will help them with that.

I support intersex people who do not see their situation as being part of a disorder, and who reject medical approaches that would seek to put right something that they feel was never wrong in the first place.

I support FAB-activists in their pursuit of radical feminism, and acknowledge I have much to learn; I realise that for them, what needs to be done must seem overwhelming; because of my own background, there is little I can contribute.

Finally

I consider it important and necessary for there to be gender-neutral facilities and spaces for people who feel unable, unsafe, or uncomfortable using gender-specific facilities, such as the sex-segregated spaces that currently exist. In the same way that spaces are set aside to accommodate people with disabilities, facilities could be extended as specifically unisex facilities for people who are uncomfortable with sex-segregated facilities, available to whoever needs to use them.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Odd bedfellows and misrepresentations

In what world do radical feminists and abusive men get along and find ground to work together? When it comes to expressing their mutual dislike of transsexuals, it would seem:

twanzphobic since forever: Tootsies of the Week: Bridal Edition!

In the discussion that follows this article Nicky, a man who hates transsexuals and threatens intersex people who stand up to him, and has already had one blog closed down by the host as being deemed a hate-site, seems to have become an ally to lesbians and feminists – nice.

So, Dave Squirrell, aka Davina, says:

“Most importantly, are the ‘groomness’ and ‘bride’ still packing? YES! Both are still packing.”

Daily Mail:

“But the couple decided against surgery due to the associated risks at their age until last year – when Jenny-Anne went under the knife for a gender reassignment op… Father-of-two Jenny-Anne went on to have a breast augmentation procedure this January followed by facial feminisation surgery.”

So, Jenny-Anne had gender reassignment last year (2010), went on to have BA & FFS this January (2011). This blogger needs to try reading what she reproduces from a tabloid newspaper of dubious reliability if she wants to maintain any credibility beyond “bigot”. But, as the general tone is up there with bigots like Fred Phelps and David Bahati, this little bit of of misinformation probably won’t bother her.

Other little problems with the misinformation in the blog…

They cannot have a civil partnership, because Helen has a male BC and Jenny Anne has a female GRC (as post-op). Under current UK law, they cannot get a civil partnership, they can only get ‘married’; that is all that is open to them. This would seem to make them more a heterosexual couple (if you really feel you need to categorise anybody else’s sexuality), where one is male, cross-dresses and identifies as female, where the other is registered as female because she is a male to female transsexual. As for the lesbian content in the paper, I’m with you there Davina, and agree it seems odd – but the clue is that it’s in the Daily Mail, not a proper newspaper; the Mail even fails Wikipedia’s criteria of what constitutes a reliable source. A lot of the men who read it are fascinated by lesbians, so they have to get that in there somewhere, eh? That’s in there for the guys, Davina, not your team.

BTW, if you are reading this Jenny-Anne and Ellen, congratulations. I hope you all had a nice day…

Nicky Matters

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.