I am an Evil Intersex Acivist.

By Sophia Siedlberg.

22 Oct. 2008

I think a lot of people are going to be relieved that I am going to shut up now. I have had my rant about the Julie Bindel-Stonewall affair. In a way I wish Julie Bindel good luck at the Stonewall Awards. I mean, while she has written a few juicy things in the media, she has not gone out to destroy people or control their lives. I don't agree with her views on transsexualism, because I get the feeling that a lot of radical lesbian commentary on issues such as "Gender variance" is meaningless since the ISNA fiasco. The cold fact remains, and this has nothing to do with Julie Bindel, that a number of radical Lesbian activists invaded intersex space between 1993 and 2007. And they judged us on how we were surgically altered as children (Forgetting the fact that whatever "Sex" a child is surgically assigned, they don't consent to it).

I noticed while looking for stuff online that some blogs centered around the Michigan Women's Festival, while they were screaming with fury at transgender and transsexual folks trying to get into the festival, they were not discussing intersex people and they were not talking about "Evil intersex people who are not pure women" trying to get in. Actually as an "Evil Intersex who is not a pure woman", I would not want to get in. My birthright of being intersexed was taken from me, what sex I bias towards is really the consequence of being denied choices earlier on in life. All I really want to do, like the rest of the intersex community is get on with my life. And have it clearly understood what I am actually angry about. I am actually angry about the two sex system mutilating, shaming, stigmatizing and brutalizing intersex children.

I will be honest when someone picks on transsexual folks, I tend to feel intersex people are next on the hit list. That is why I react, and not only that, I don't have a gripe with transsexual people, and felt a bit irritated about the message I kept getting from ISNA between 1993 and 2007 that they regarded transsexual people as either the lowest form of life or a stick to beat dissent with. But hang on, the real issue was and will always be (while it goes on) the mutilation, etc. of intersex children from my perspective.

Do I hate gays and lesbians? No, I don't! I just think they don't have any insights into what it is to be intersex unless they were born intersexed.

I am wondering if we cannot all reach a reasonable compromise. Despite what I have said before now, I do think that Julie Bindel has said some interesting things. Her dislike of the "gender binary" and "the 1950's Doctors" is something I totally agree with, not so much in the context of transsexualism, because transsexual folks really have to ask to get their surgery. But I know Bindel would be truly horrified if she only knew the amount of medical abuse intersex children are forced to endure, even today.

And some of us have grown up not wanting to be judged on the basis of our "upbringing" (being lied to and brutalized) or what surgery we never consented to that was carried out on us. I have no truck with the two sex system. I do regard it as the ultimate and least questioned system of oppression and the most disgusting part of the human condition.

Perhaps my hatred of the two sex system is what unsettles the Gay and Lesbian community and commentators like Julie Bindel. I have this "Valerie Solanas" quality to my hatred of the two sex system. (It was also Solanas who coined the phrase "Two sex system"). It is absolute, the often expressed desire to attack the two sex system at the core, the two biological sexes themselves. However much Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender folks say they don't like the "Gender binary" the two sexes do form a part of their identity, not so with my identity.

So yes, a compromise. It is actually quite simple. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual and Intersex people are all different, not a part of a "Rainbow" but simply different facets of a truth the two sex system does not want to deal with. I do not know what it is like to be a lesbian or a transsexual, I only know what it is like to be born with ambiguous genitalia and be made to suffer because of it at the hands of the two sex system. Can we not just respect each other's boundaries? Like take that Michigan thing, the women's festival, they don't want to admit transsexual women.  Is that "transphobic"? Well no, if you see it from their point of view; but yes, if you see it from a transsexual woman's point of view. They also “exclude intersex women" as well. I don't care all that much, because I expect that. It is a part of the two sex system. I am not going to try to use them to legitimize something that is really imposed on me by society anyway. Why try to legitimize something I am ambivalent about? The only thing I ask is they don't invade my space and start claiming I am "male", because that would be legitimizing the actions of "1950's doctors" (Well mid 1960's actually but I know what Bindel means). And I would resent that. I was born intersexed and that is all I would seek to legitimize given the choice. My argument is with the two sex system, not where I was born within (or without) it.

It is not difficult, but the thing is, if the radical lesbians want to "deconstruct the gender binary", they can start by seeing the two sex system for what it is rather than cherry picking the bits that serve them well and discarding the rest. But that is just my own opinion as someone outside the two sex system. I have no right to tell them to do that. Like they have no right to tell me that what I may think or do as an intersex person is "anti feminist". I will take that as the two sex system trying to pick on me again.

It does not mean people cannot work together though. While I don't like what Julie Bindel here in the UK comes out with sometimes, and I find the two "Trans" representatives she has been talking to a bit odd in some respects. Like I find Christine Burns a little too preoccupied with legitimizing being a woman. As far as I am concerned, she is a woman. Why bang on about it? "Am I a woman? Am I a woman?" (Change the record). As for Whittle, I just wish the guy would grow up. He is like a little boy with a new water pistol and lots of bottle top medals. Having said that, they have been talking with Julie Bindel, while claiming to represent people like me under this "Trans" umbrella they invented. (They don't) and yes their debates have given me a few positive insights. Had I not heard Bindel explaining her stance on "the 1950's doctors", I think I would still have a very negative view of her, rather than simply spending a few days typing out my questions about her views in my usual style. (The Rotrings and drawing board would have come out were I really angry with her.)

Perhaps people should look at the common ground. Perhaps Bindel's talking of ending sexual abuse (I am all for that), undermining the "Gender Binary" (I am all for that), and bringing "Old School doctors" to account (Yep I am all for that, very much so), is something that should be discussed more. Perhaps Whittle and Burns nominating Bindel for the Award was a bit of a bad move, but I can understand the motives behind that, trying to find common ground.

I just hope that when the protagonists read this summation (If they don't come out with anything even dumber in the meantime) and understand that I really don't have any grievances about Julie Bindel getting her award from UK Stonewall, I think Stonewall were a bit dumb about it and hope that however they pick a nomination, it is not a case of them  giving a prize to someone else because the transsexuals don't like Julie Bindel, or give the award to Julie Bindel because the lesbians want that. It would be nice to think that Bindel either wins or loses on her own merits.

I really would like to see the days when those communities such as the transsexual and lesbian community don't keep ripping each other to pieces. I would also like to see the day when I can surf the internet and not read those "Michigan Blogs" and feel like another bunch of norm borns have people like me listed next for some "Special mistreatment".

This is where my being a nasty evil intersex activist comes in, the admitted more or less separate issue of the Michigan Blogs. I saw one article of mine quoted once in that general cloud of chat. It was an article I posted onto Scientific Blogging about how absurd some evolutionary psychologists are beginning to sound when talking about the absurd notion that women will "eventually evolve back into traditional gender roles". This is never going to happen. The whole point of human evolution seems to be about becoming self aware on a collective level rather than reverting to swinging in trees.

But it seems I never went far enough. I was supposed to denounce the scientist in question (Why bother, it was obvious he was talking like an idiot).  But hang on. If that was floating around under "Actually this is not so bad, this critique of sexist science", perhaps then I won't have such women telling me what to do in my own intersex space?

Perhaps a two way conversation can be had instead of the sense of "They talk, I obey" that characterized the ISNA days. As I said on the 20th of October 2008 in the Stonegate Commentary, all these communities could be best of friends if they actually bothered to talk to each other. I don't mean the cucumber sandwiches and "Am I a woman? Am I a Woman?" types of "conversation". (OK, it is a start I suppose.) I mean I know that Bindel wanted to avoid answering that because she would have to face the shrieks of "Bigot, Bigot" ringing in her ears. (She clearly seems not to see Christie Burns as a woman, well not from the discussion that was on the interview they did and put on the internet).

But wouldn't it be nice, if everyone was unanimous about Christine Burns being a woman, or Julie Bindel got her award purely on her own merits, and if the lesbians didn't keep sniping at the transsexual folks. Perhaps next year that may happen.

I notice that Stonewall have not followed up that suggestion I made about creating a forum where people can settle their differences amicably. Well, I am a mad bad and dangerous inter-thing. So I am not going to get listened to, and if they do set such a thing up, they won't give me any credit. That is the natural order of things. Actually that is the problem. The two sex system strikes again. It will be nice when people see both the wood and the trees.