"What do you have? How do you 'do it'? Draw me a picture?"

[Matthew]

ARGHHH!

People at school have been massively frustrating me lately. I've been getting questions about my genitals in lessons, most aren't wanting to provoke or be malicious, but it's ridiculous.

Having lessons interrupted but people who want to be educated on intersex isn't a huge sweat if I can educate someone in 5 minutes, but being constantly pestered with:

'What's it actually like?'     'Yeah but are you actually a boy or a girl?'
'Can you just draw me a picture I don't get it?'     'How do you have sex?'


The most frustrating thing is when I tell them to drop it I end up being called out for being closed off and aggressive usually met with

'You can here about mine if you want to!'


Seems like it's a 'lose-lose' situation - I'm not going to give people I hardly know intimate details, but if I don't I'm in the wrong.

The teachers here are pretty useless also, recently in a science lesson our supervising teacher heard someone shout transphobic slurs at me and when I asked them if they noticed, they blatantly ignored me and walked away.

ARGHHH!


</rant>

[Dena]

I am sorry but CIS often have a fascination with sex. It's the reason why people often experiment with more than 10 toes up and 10 toes down. CIS males may be worst about this because a T driven sex drive know no boundaries. It is good that you are comfortable enough with your body that you can talk about it but for some people a snappy reply is the best solution because they don't know where to stop. Consider something like "That's personal", "That's between me and my SO", "Its adequate" or in some cases "It's a work in progress". Kick around come back lines before you need them so you can draw one from memory when you need on.

Be careful who you tell your status to because once you do, people may consider it an invitation to ask more questions that are clearly personal.

[FTMax]

Agree with Dena, especially the last bit. Tell somebody one small thing, and they suddenly think it's okay to ask about everything.

If it were me, I'd do my best to ignore them and just not engage.

[Matthew]

If it were me, I'd do my best to ignore them and just not engage.

I think it'd be best to do this in the future - people can be persistent and if they don't know why their questions are appropriate they're not wanting to leave it.

I am sorry but CIS often have a fascination with sex.

I didn't expect the response I saw, I had no idea how fascinated cis people are with sex anywhere outside of what they know. My usual crowd is queer people, so we're all pretty open with sexuality and sex, whereas a lot of my peers are cis het and are very poorly educated on queer issues.

[suzifrommd]

Please keep in mind that anyone who persists with a topic when you ask them to drop it is RUDE.

If they are not aware that they're being rude, you'd certainly doing them a service by pointing it out each an every time it happens. E.g.

Rude person: Why won't you just tell us about your junk.

Matthew: You're being rude.

Rude person: But it's only fair. I'd tell you about mine

Matthew: You're being rude.

Rude person: <Some other anti-social comment that doesn't respect your boundaries.>

Matthew: You're still being rude.

I bet the give it up after a while.

[FTMDiaries]

You're not in the wrong - you have every right to have your privacy respected.

The problem is that a lot of cis people are generally comfortable with the configuration of their bodies, and they played "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" with their friends when they were younger, so they don't realise that their behaviour is intrusive and inappropriate... or that some of us might need our privacy more than they do.

My favourite responses to those sorts of intrusive questions are as follows:

• You know, they are called 'private parts' for a reason - and that's because they're private, so you can't go around asking people about them. If you're curious, just google it!
• Why do you want to know: are you interested in trying them out? 
• If you want the answer to that question, you have to be very cute and you have to at least buy me a drink first... and I'm sorry, but you're just not that cute! 

Yeah, I can be a bit full of it, but adding a bit of humour can often turn things around. It also helps to disabuse them of the notion that they're somehow in a position of superiority in the conversation and that you therefore 'owe' them an explanation because you're coming from what they perceive to be a weaker position. Always challenge that assumption.

[Midnightstar]

Tell them what you just told us that you're not going to give out intimate details about yourself
and when they say something like i'll tell you about mine say "That's just as inappropriate" or "No, thanks lets drop this subject" And if they continue that's when you either walk away or maybe get someone you know involved who you trust to help/back you up if needed. I'm sure with other kids its hard though because they really like trying to continue something even when you proceed to say no. At that point sometimes saying things a little more harshly is needed even if the teachers get mad. It's about what you're comfortable with nothing else so forget the people who don't understand that.