I am not Dissing you

By Sophia Siedlberg.

5 April 2008

Over the past eight months I have not really had much opportunity to write about much other than a certain clique of people when in all honesty there are other things I could be discussing. One article caught my attention called "Don't diss my community to build pride in yours" by Monica Roberts. What she was talking about seemed to be the way certain people have used transsexual and transgendered people as the "bogeymen" in certain debates. And in particular how a sort of "pecking order" emerged where intersex people were "ranked" as more "legitimate" than transsexual folks.

I find myself in agreement with Monica Roberts on this, because I have more often than not bucked the trend by saying that I do not like this pecking order myself. As an intersexed person I have been regarded with some suspicion before now simply for doing that. I will say that the behavior some intersex people in the past (We all know who) has left me feeling cold because it seemed that they were about everything but intersex activism.

Firstly, they would claim that "intersex is a feminist issue" (And by default be sniping at transsexual folks because feminism and transsexualism and transgenderism have never really been the best of friends). Myself I do not consider intersex activism to be a feminist issue. It is an intersex issue. While I am not entirely comfortable with past statements from the LGBT community where "intersex was a subset of transgender" (That was another appropriation of intersex for other causes). I do not see any reason for people not making constructive alliances. I think the sticking point between intersex and transgenderism is that transgenderism was quite a vague entity. Starting life as an alternative term to "Transvestite" (usually meaning a man wearing women's clothes) A number of transsexual folks rejected it because it sort of implied they were "men in dresses" (Often such descriptions being used as an accusation against transsexual folks). When certain intersex activists (Mainly connected with ISNA) started claiming that transsexual folks were all "transgendered" (Meaning cross dressing men), and started to introduce Blanchard taxonomies. It does not surprise me in the least that a number of transsexual folks in particular were unhappy about that.

The problem I have encountered which I actually believe to be more damaging seems to be the adoption of the attitude that someone who is not "Classically Intersexed" (According to ISNA) Is a "Transsexual" and thus "Transgendered". It is almost as if the two terms were used as a punishment to keep rank and file intersex activists in line.

When OII gained some ground one of our policies was to say we are "Trans friendly". What that has come to mean is that we do not use another minority as a scapegoat. Especially a minority that has been forced into a situation where they are not allowed to answer back to those who attack them, nor do we say things like "They call themselves intersex in order to gain legitimacy". (I found that quite offensive because it made me look as if I was looking down on an entire group of people just because I am intersexed).

I suspect a lot of transsexual folks have come across the online discussions where "intersex" is some ever-so mysterious status, that represents the ultimate in oppressed feminism, and transsexual people can never understand it because they are "Men who had male privilege who had surgery to pretend to be women". That was ISNA not the intersex community as a whole. I have a profound problem with this "male privilege" business because it erased a lot of intersex people's experience as well. (Those originally assigned male for example).

I also think the mystifying element surrounding intersex has done more damage than good to intersex people themselves. I do not feel comfortable knowing that my life as a human being has to be shrouded in mystery, or confusion; that is what most intersex people are trying to get away from. But no, there was always that "Hey you trannies, you don't know what it is like to be intersexed" and "You are not experientially intersexed".

I consider that comment: "You are not experientially intersexed" to be a bare faced lie, because the people who most often said it when ISNA ruled the roost were themselves not intersexed, they were predominantly radical feminists who wanted to re-enforce sexual dimorphism. Their "mystery" lies in the fact that while they would spout ideas like "deconstructing the gender binary" (And appear to be in opposition to sexual dimorphism) and yet they were savage in their attacks on transsexual folks, especially when surgery was involved. "Surgery a woman does not make" (You will notice that the main targets were male to female transsexual folks) being a common statement.

So the obvious question has to be: "What made a woman then?" and then you would hear a lecture about how men and women are fundamentally different, which is hardly "deconstructing the gender binary" is it? When they decided they were going to "speak for" (Control) intersex people, what they did was co-opt intersex people for the "Feminist cause". So by that very act they would paint intersex as transphobic. But what they were really doing was propping up sex dimorphism. To the radical feminists intersex people are awkward, when they start talking about "the essential differences between men and women" intesex people would represent the contradictions in a way transsexual folks could not. That is they were born with physically diagnosable differences to the ideal.

So what the Radical feminists did was to make this little ghetto to put intersex people in and keep "The trannies" out. If they could control the intersex community and keep the dissent silent there, then they could continue hammering transsexual folks with little or no opposition.

I often say "As an intersex person I resent norm borns controlling my life" and these radical feminists were just one example. I have myself often been on some online discussions when the "Hit Squad" have appeared "Bashing trannies" and given them a taste of their own medicine. I am not transsexual, or transgendered, so what vested

interests did I have in doing that? Well it was simply that I objected to these people saying they were intersexed when in truth they were just norm borns claiming to speak on my behalf. They did nothing of the sort. They spoke on behalf of the two sex system, and they did not like me because when I said: "It is the two sex system I have problems with not the gender binary". They knew exactly what I was driving at. "The gender binary" and "Gender is a social construct" were little more than statements about what people were and were not allowed to do in society. They did not and do not address the actual differences between men and women. I said the actual biological differences are not as clear cut as it happens" and then the truth came out, the radical feminists who claimed to be the vanguards against "The gender binary" were perhaps as bad as the phalocratic men and maleists when it came to defining what makes male or female in terms of biology.

But it is the biology that is fluid. I am intersexed and thus I am someone who was visibly born in contradiction to the lies of both radical feminists and phalocrats. As an intersex person I have no intent to diss the transsexual or transgendered communities, the only people I have issues with from those communities would be the "Ginnie Prince set" who say that "Transsexuals must not have surgery". Because they use the same biological arguments as the radical feminists and the phalocrats.

On the issue of surgery, I may as well, again, clarify that there is no conflict of interests when it comes to surgery. A lot of people seem to say something along the lines of "Infant genital surgery is bad, so therefore transsexual surgery is also bad". You will tend to find the people who say that are not universally opposed to infant genital surgery, they are lying. They are only opposed to feminizing infant genital surgery, and that is only when it suits them in order to bash male to female transsexual folks.

Ask them about surgical masculinization of a child and they will either deny it happens or even claim that it is more routine and less invasive. (A female to male transsexual will tell you that masculinizing surgery is in truth far more complicated). It was all spin to avoid the brutal truth that they, the radical feminists and phalocrats, are control freaks.

What they actually say is that surgery when conducted on children who do not consent to it is something they are indifferent about and when it comes to surgical masculinization they even support it. "This brings male privilege" they often say. Put someone who rejected being assigned male surgically in front of them and see how "opposed" they are to infant surgery then. "Ohh no, you were assigned male and were given male privilege" Or they may even deny it all happened and claim the person rejecting childhood surgery to male is lying.

They support non-consensual surgery on children, and oppose adults seeking surgery on themselves who both pay for and consent to it. Want proof?

Why do we always hear them moaning about Dr John Money, the doctor who formulated a policy of blanket feminization of all children born with any difference form the "norm" and even children who were injured by accident (Such as David Reimer of "John-Joan" fame)? They wheel what Money did out at every opportunity, and yet they seem to agree with him. Why? Well the one thing the radical feminists cannot worm out of is the awkward question about "Gender and social constructs". If as they say "Gender is a social construct" then they are agreeing with Dr John Money. Because Money claimed that you could condition a child to any "gender role" after surgery because "Gender is a social construct". That did not work as we all know. People rejected what he did to them in a number of cases. (Not all but enough to bring him into question).

So the radical feminists were lying. If they believed what they were publicly saying about social constructs, etc., then they would be believing in what Money was doing. Because had Money succeeded, then Money would have proven their case. As it happens Money failed to do this, and I wonder what all these radical feminists who spoke of "Social constructs" were doing talking about "XY chromosomes make men" (Actually they don't; it is more complex than that, biologically speaking) when beating up on male to female transsexual folks, they even cited the Reimer case as proof that XY chromosomes make men. But that was a load of spin because they initially claimed (As Money did) that "Gender is a social construct".

They shouted me down every time I pointed that out. Some of you in the transsexual community probably saw this happening. I would point it out, the Radical feminists would scream about how I was bad for the intersex community and still to this day they have not answered my question.

So tell me, as an intersexed person how am I dissing your community? I am one of the few who stood against the tide and defended you because I felt that the radical feminists were lying and contradicting themselves. And using my situation as a means to lie.

Finally: "Are transsexual folks really intersexed"

Try "Are people biologically motivated to change sex". Milton Diamond would say that this constitutes a form of intersex. He is right in one sense because biology is involved. I would say that people should not have been brutalized and driven to such levels of self hatred where being transsexual was regarded as the lowest of the low. The people who said "Transsexuals call themselves intersex to gain legitimacy" were the same people who slammed transsexual folks so badly they made "Transsexual" into a swear word. They actually made "intersex" into an attractive proposition, and then slapped any transsexual person who took the bait. I am biologically someone with 5 alpha reductase-2 deficiency, the medical profession (The Phalocrats) chose to define that as "intersex" I never fully liked the term, but biologically that rendered my sex uncertain. I prefer "intersex" to "Disorder of Sex Development". In the same way some transsexual folks prefer "intersex" to Transsexual". But it is a word, not a life lived. Transsexualism is a biological thing and even the Transsexual's worst nightmare himself, J Michael Bailey admits that. (Why else would he be looking at genetics etc were it not the case?). Bailey is wrong about AGP and HSTS but that is another debate really.

Let's stop talking about breaking down "Gender binaries" and "social constructs" and start talking about the truth with regards sexual dimorphism itself. What society calls "Transsexual" and what society calls "intersex" are both biological situations. No different to the color of someone's skin or anything else. It is not about using biology to justify ones own position in life. It is about looking at the biology of prejudice. And that is the real challenge no one has faced yet.

We all differ from this intangible "ideal" that those biologically pre-disposed to hate any difference hold up as a standard. It is those who are predisposed to hate you and me who are the problem, not u