Quote from: Kvall on July 27, 2011, 04:26:21 PM
They may be free to, but it sure is ->-bleeped-<-ing rude to actual intersex people. Just because someone is "free to ID" a certain way doesn't mean they're not oppressing or hurting someone in the process. What you're suggesting is akin to a cis man saying he can identify as a trans man because he wants to have a vagina.
That's on the basis of changing bodily anatomy, anyway. If you consider transsexuality to be an intersex condition of the brain, I'm not sure if there's necessarily anything wrong or appropriative about that. There may be. I don't know. I don't like that the conversation is centered around a supposed "mismatch" with the biological essentialism implied in that, because bodies in general--not just intersex bodies--are varied upon a massive spectrum of different sexual phenotypic traits. That society ignores this disproportionately harms trans and intersex people, and while that doesn't make them the same thing, it does mean that both communities need to be sensitive to the other's bodily reality... which isn't happening very often, IME.
Culturally I think trans & intersex people face similar challenges, but often in different or even opposite ways. For example, both groups are frequently abused by the medical system--intersex people sometimes having medically unnecessary surgeries and hormones forced upon them as minors, and trans people often having medically necessary surgeries and hormones denied or delayed, especially if they are minors (of course, both could happen in the same person if they're both trans and intersex). Both are forms of restricting bodily autonomy and enforcing cissexual norms, but the differences are important. Saying trans = intersex without consulting intersex people erases that difference and as a result erases the specific challenges faced by intersex folk.
I'm with you on almost all these points.
Having been born with ambiguous genitals and being lucky enough to not have parents who opted for any surgical corrections, but not lucky enough to escape what I lightly call "medical persecution" by having hormones foisted on me at an early age, I can definitely attest to the differences in how the two groups are treated. It probably is one of the reasons why I'm so anti-medical intervention (aka "transition") for
myself as well. That aside, many intersex people have to face serious health conditions. I'm certainly not making light of any transsexual identified person who is not physically intersex. Their "condition" however is mental, not physical (even though as I said in my first response above that I do believe things that happen in the womb before birth can effect the brain as well as body and potentially cause that which becomes what is labeled transsexualism). I always felt while someone with a serious intersex condition without medical treatment might die from a direct result of the condition, transsexual people could not - unless of course they take their own lives, which unfortunately does happen if they don't get the medical treatment to make them feel more comfortable in their own bodies. Intersex people are treated like freaks by a portion of the medical world, transsexual people are treated like freaks by a portion of the psychological world. Neither of which is right imo.
Regardless of the debate, I'm in agreement with Kvall that the communities at large are not coming together on the issue. Both sides feel the persecution from all the so-called "normal" people who believe there should only be two models, etc. Unfortunately that's the society we live in. And much like there have been gay people all throughout history that have hidden that fact about them just to blend in with the "normal" society, there's been intersexual people who have hidden their body differences to blend in with "normal" society. Seriously, you think I let people in on the fact I haven't got the typical set up downstairs? It's a huge secret in my life, compounded by the fact that they also stamped an "F" on my birth certificate and I grew up feeling very much "M", but unaware there was anything I could do about it because I'm about 20 years behind most everyone else on this board, and by this point in my life am pretty much just, "eh f**k it, I'm me".