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Intersexism - Blog Posts
i do just want people to be aware that, while "assigned sex at birth" has been widely reclaimed and generalized to general populations, it did not start through personal identification or as a positive term. it was coined between doctors to discuss what sex to surgically and socially assign intersex infants, children, and in some cases, adults. one example of a study using this term is here, mostly inspired by john money [its a heavy read if you decide to open it]. i do just want people to be aware of the history of this term before claiming that it is "coined by the intersex community"—it wasnt, it was forced on us by the medical community.
Dear fiction writers there is no such thing as an "intersex species", please stop telling me that your alien species is intersex rep.
That's not what intersex means. If your reasoning for a character being intersex is "they're a [insert species that has different sex characteristics from humans]", just stop.
If "all of them are intersex" then they aren't intersex. They just have different sex traits/reproductive organization from humans. If thats how they typically look, thats just what being perisex (non-intersex) looks like for that species. Intersex refers to an individual with sex characteristics atypical for their species.
This also goes for third sexes. That's not atypical if it's a commonly observed cluster of traits recognized as "a sex", that means that'd just be another form of being perisex (for that species). Intersex essentially means 'other' or 'neither', the point of the word is that we don't fit into the boxes provided for most of the population, not that we're a rare and magical third box.
Additionally shapeshifters (usually) also come off as bad rep for the same reason. If your character is intersex because they're a shapeshifter, they're not intersex. You don't become intersex, you're born that way. I don't like when characters have their bodies altered later in life and are called intersex for those modifications. And the idea that a character is becoming intersex by transforming their body just reinforces the idea that there is a certain type of way an intersex body looks, and that intersex is something you can 'become' via bodily alterations. We can look like anything. Sometimes our variations are only visible through chromosome or hormone testing. And often we have our bodies changed against our will to make our intersexuality less obvious. If you can become intersex via body alterations, does that mean medical abuse removes our intersexuality?
Yes, you can have a non-human character be intersex‐ if that individual has variant sex characteristics by the standards of their species.
Yes, you can write a species with bigenitalia (both parts)- just don't call them intersex or hermaphrodites (that is a slur). Some better terms are cosexed, monoecious, gonosimulites, dualsex
Yes, you can write shapeshifters as intersex- as long as you understand what intersex means and apply the actual definition of the word to the context of your story.
I will never stop saying the furry fandom is intersexist until they remove the slurs for us (herm & futa) from their art sites, and stop stereotyping us and actively spreading the idea ambiguous genitalia = both genitalia.
- A very tired intersex furry
the problem with being an intersex nonbinary person is that you have experienced both uniquely transmasc and transfem things, but because you are neither you can join neither conversation without being told “you’re afab you can’t have experienced this!” or “you’ve not medically transitioned so this can’t happen to you!”
intersex trans people exist. intersex nonbinary people exist. regardless of what our “agab” is, or whether we’ve taken hormones or not, we have experiences that need to be included in your conversations. by gatekeeping these conversations you’re leaving vital voices out of the narrative.
i cannot believe that in 2025
there are people on bluesky who proudly put on their profiles being "baeddel" like, that shit didn't work here in the 2010s tumblr (where it originated), so why the fuck are you trying to make it come back, lmao
actually i wouldn't be surprised if this-certain-group of trans ppl on bluesky are actually all baeddels but just not saying it out loud.
seeing them all still talking about "cissexual" privilege when refering to other TRANS ppl, the classic "you are trans but NOT REALLY trans like me", im just gonna say, be careful with this kind of thinking.
for context:
no, being "baeddel" is not good AT ALL. please, don't let anyone tell you otherwise bc, holy fuck, just read the whole thing and be wary. it's pretty much TERF rethoric, only trans version (also known as TIRF), lmao
i found out about this whole "baeddel" around the end of last year, and it was like "woah what the fuck??????" i had no idea this kind of shit happened. please, read it in full 😩😩
(edit: an updated version of this article is also here on tumblr!!)
I think at the end of the day, my opinion on all flavors of LGBT+ label discourse will always be: “If you do not belong to a community, you do not get to decide what words that community gets to coin and use.”
If you’re not ace, you shouldn't tell ace people they’re not allowed to use aspec or aphobia.
If you’re not intersex, you shouldn't tell intersex people they’re not allowed to use intersexism or CAGAB.
If you're not a trans woman, you shouldn't tell trans women they can't use the word transmisogyny.
If you’re not a trans man or transmasc, you’re not allowed to tell them they can’t use transandrophobia. And you certainly can’t redefine the word to suit your arguments against it.
Hell, even if you are a part of a community, you don’t get to decide what words OTHER PEOPLE can use.
I’m agender. I don’t like it when people refer to me as an “enby” bc I’m not a huge fan of the word, but it’s not my place to tell other nonbinary people they’re not allowed to use it just because I personally dislike it.
You’d have to be a grade-a asshole to think otherwise.
The cycle of “invisible” oppression in the LBGT+ community:
You face sexual abuse, workplace discrimination, medical discrimination, and violence
It never gets reported, or is lumped in with the statistics of a different oppressed group.
Data and “proof” regarding your discrimination is spotty or nonexistent as best, so nobody advocates for you or talks about it in the media
Other LGBT+ people don’t personally hear about it, so they claim it doesn’t exist/they have it worse while dismissing and denying your personal experiences.
The discrimination continues to happen unopposed
This isn’t me arguing that hypervisibility is any better. It goes without saying that the hypervisibility of certain groups (Trans women, gay men, etc) contributes to their oppression, and has made things incredibly dangerous for them right now.
I just want people to acknowledge the dangers of invisibility as well.
Trans men, intersex people, nonbinary people, asexual people… There are so many groups in the LGBT+ community who get left behind and ignored while society tries to eradicate us.
You need to care about people like us, too. Please include other identities in your advocacy. We can't have trans/queer unity until you acknowledge and support ALL of us.
Would you consider the ridicule and degradation of people with micro penises a form of intersexism??? Cause ive been thinkin about it a lot and the opinion of an intersex person would be nice (and any other intersex people who see this if yall would like please!)
Yes, it's definitely a microaggression. (For those who don't know, a micropenis is enough to qualify someone as intersex given it is two standard deviations below average for their body size). I personally don't really care and make small dick jokes about myself with my friends all the time but I do believe it's just another form of body shaming that people find acceptable.
My general thoughts on small dick jokes are that yes it's intersexist but there's much worse forms of normalized intersexism to focus on. People are always gonna say mean stuff about other people's bodies, and in the grand scheme of things, making fun of guys in huge pickup trucks for presumably having a tiny penis doesn't hurt me any worse than those jokes about people with blue eyes being scary.
I am only going to respond to this once, because I’ve found it isn’t productive to argue with people online about what terms certain queer people are allowed to coin and use.
You clearly have some internalized transphobia you need to work out. You have an incredibly patronizing and dismissive attitude towards trans men and transmascs. You reblog from people who are actively hateful and bigoted, not just towards trans men, but nonbinary and intersex people as well. You reblog posts talking about how much you want to fuck trans men while dismissing their concerns, which comes of as fetishistic.
Being trans yourself does not give you a free pass to act this way.
It doesn’t matter if you think the term “transandrophobia” is valid or not, or if you claim it comes from problematic roots.
You are not a trans man. You are not part of their community. You do not get to say what words they get to use, and they do not need your permission to discuss their oppression. You do not get to say what they do or do not experience, because you do not KNOW their experiences, and you clearly aren’t willing to listen to the ones that disagree with you.
Look at the replies and reblogs here, how many people are saying your attitude towards trans men is insulting and demeaning. Regardless of your opinion on the word transandrophobia, you are behaving inappropriately. This much is clear.
Additionally, you are dismissing not just the struggles of trans men, but intersex and nonbinary people as well. The supreme court is actively hurting these groups, and your refusal to acknowledge this shows that either you are ignorant of the struggles of other LGBT+ identities, or you just don't care.
You are not immune to holding transphobic and bigoted ideals. Everybody in this society has them regardless of identity, and it’s your job to acknowledge your biases and unlearn them. Learn to support the rest of the LBGT+ community outside of the groups you belong to, or at least work on your own internalized transphobia before you try to join these discussions.
Fighting for your rights is not like sharing a pie. I promise you can care about transmisogyny and the issues trans women are facing without dismissing the concerns of your transgender brothers and siblings.
Trans men I love you. Trans-androphobia is not real. Putting ‘trans-‘ on a phenomenon that doesn’t exist does not describe a new thing. What you’re facing is overlapping transphobia and misogyny. I’m sorry people online got mad at you for saying it’s that, but it’s that.
. You are men, regardless of if you dress fem. Bigots and sexists don’t see you as the man you are, or even as trans. It’s not in a “transgender” way they hate you; they see us as bad men or women, to correct however violently the group finds. Which is misogyny. It’s obvious to me, a trans woman who doesn’t easily pass, that misogynists see trans people simply as bad male/females.
Cis women who don’t do femininity (at least the patriarchy’s standards) are treated the same BY THESE PEOPLE as trans men; as something to correct into an incubator. Lesbians, hairy and fat women, racialized women, strong and confident women receive these same things. Women whose muscles are visible are told that their strength makes them ugly. Which is misogyny. And the disgusting things people say about T’s effects on you is rooted in that.
Trans men I love you. I’m sorry that everyone parrots that men are also affected by patriarchy, yet you feel unease at using the word misogyny. Misandry and androphobia are words for League of Legends players though.
Trans men I love you. You do not want your issues to be a Supreme Court decision removing specifically your personhood, nor do I. What you face is misogyny. Let’s call it that, and face it together 💖
With my issues having been ignored for 21 years, I’d rather it than at very best, everyone around me debating how much I should exist in public.
Being part of a marginalized group does not give you a free pass to say bigoted things about another marginalized group.
The same system that oppresses intersex people oppresses perisex trans people. I don't understand why whenever intersexism is mentioned perisex people lose their shit..
These people act like the road to trans liberation is paved by stepping on the voices of intersex people, but if you don't care about us then you care about none of us. The same system oppressed us. Ignoring that is counteractive to any activism you try and do. There will be no liberation if we do not learn to fight for one another.
This sinking vessel has many holes, if you only care about the one under your feet, you will still drown.
why does every queer turn into a redpilled anti-woke far-right comedian fan the moment you tell them they're intersexist like 'stop inventing new terms 🤡🤡 why is everything a slur now 🤡🤡🤡 that one friend that's too woke 🤡🤡' like it's actually surreal how often it happens. i desperately want to know what makes them think that shits okay.
Trans people are not inherently intersex.
Medical transition does not turn a perisex person intersex.
Your brain is not a sex trait, you do not have an "intersex brain", you are not "neurologically intersex" because you experience gender dysphoria.
If you believe any of this you are being intersexist.
Do you have an observable (including through testing or otherwise) genetic/natal variation in the way your sex traits developed? If the answer is NO, you are NOT INTERSEX. You are perisex.
Perisex refers to anyone who is not intersex, elaborated, does not have a natal variation in their sex traits. This term does not invalidate your transition. It refers to a bodily starting point and it's only purpose is to differentiate you from those with a different bodily starting point. If you were born in Detroit you can't say you were born in Baltimore because you live in Baltimore now. That's not how this works.
Why is this important? Because the only other terms for our bodily differences are the pathologizing disorders & syndromes we are diagnosed with. I am not a person with a DSD, I am intersex goddammit. If that word is watered down, then I'll be forced to refer to myself as disordered if I want to talk about how my body and my issues are different from yours, exactly like what cisnormative society wants me to do. Congratulations for helping reify intersexist pathologization that gets us killed! How #inclusionist of you!
You can be sex variant as a perisex person through transition, but you cannot "become intersex", please stop saying fucking this. There are more of you than there are us. You are speaking over us. We are already invisible and you are NOT helping.
Intersex people: Please don't use these words, they are slurs against us.
official-penis-posts: Uh, that's too complicated... I'm scared... why are you all so mean to me...
Here we have, yet another intersexism train wreck involving a gimmick blog!
Our saga starts here. This original ask was tagged with "#intersex appreciation" for context.
Next we have, how not to respond to being corrected on your intersexism!
Imagine if someone used literally any other queerphobic slur & stereotyped a group of queer people. Now imagine someone took the time to clarify why this is bad and that alternative words exist - and then their response was "ok whatever block me".
You'd be dragged and publicly derided as a queerphobic bigot if this was about any other group in the queer community. But not when it's intersex people. We are considered an acceptable target, and our voices are seen as "tumblr level reading comprehension", and people love to "correct" others using more slurs.
You are right, official-penis-posts, that is another slur. And how did you respond?
Not well. To say the least. "Because everything's a slur" you sound like an anti-woke podcast guy.
"I live in the real world"? Seriously? I do too, @official-penis-posts, and my real world involves being called a fucking hermaphrodite in an urgent care by an actual medical professional who very rudely questioned why my genitals were weren't (typo) "corrected" (mutilated) when I was a child. It involves people calling me a futanari in high school. It involves people being disgusted at what "a real hermaphrodite's" genitals look like when I decide share that as a sexually active adult.
And for the record the anon correction is wrong here too, hermaphrodite is a slur in every context and has referred to intersex human beings long before it was ever used for cosexual animals. Stop saying fucking slurs.
Hello person who runs the penis gimmick blog, as an intersex person who used to follow you and thinks dick jokes are funny; I'd like you to apologize for your intersexism and the way you responded to intersex people correcting you. Intersexism is an incredibly widespread form of bigotry, most people have intersexist ideas and worldviews unless it is corrected. What I dislike is the way you have dismissed intersex people's concerns as overdramatic whiney nonsense and chose to just delete your posts to save face instead of apologizing.
It’s funny how so many of these proudly transandrophobic blogs are just. Blatantly intersexist and exorsexist as well. Literally just blocked a binary trans person who had four posts in a row whinging about nonbinary people and their “esoteric non-man genders”
And if they're not doing that, they're saying intersex individuals shouldn’t speak up about the casual intersexism rampant in the LGBT+ community, because it makes queer perisex people sad :(
Sometimes these dumbasses even go for triple, and call every transfem whose even vaguely supportive of trans men “pick mes” or “brainwashed puppets” or even “trans men in disguise”, because nothing says you’re supportive of trans women like a dose of transmisogyny!
I guess anyone who is proudly a bigot towards one group is probably gonna be a bigot to others, even if they try to pretend otherwise.
Makes em easy to block, though. One less dumbass on my dash, hope they figure their shit out bc god damn, it’s embarrassing to witness.
friendly reminder that intersex trans people exist and they arent your fucking business and telling us "thats impossible" when we share an experience is entirely unhelpful
im a trans woman with enough of a uterus/ovary to menstruate occasionally. "trans women cant have periods" is not only invalidating to perisex trans women/trans women who can't menstruate but still have a hormonal cycle that causes some symptoms of periods (cramps, mood swings/shifts, etc.) but also invalidates intersex trans women who do have the ability to menstruate
and i shouldnt have to hide the fact i do menstruate to be seen as "valid." i shouldnt have to hide that i used medical bias against intersex people to get my transition surgeries covered and done at a younger age. i shouldnt have to hide the fact i had to go on testosterone because my body only produces miniscule amounts of both hormones but i have severe reactions to estrogen/progesterone that fucks with my body more than testosterone while still needing some sort of sex hormone to be able to live my life normally. yes, this has given me privilege in some areas. yes, it is different from the experience of a perisex trans woman. no, this does not make me transmasc or not actually trans. i do not feel comfortable identifying as transmasc because i am not a man, and even if i was, i presented as primarily male most of my life and was percieved as such. perhaps if i'd had my "female" sex characteristics removed instead, i would identify differently, but my reality is that i live my life as a trans woman, even if i am currently indistinguishable from a cis woman and many people percieve me as such.
people on here will brag about how awful they are to AFAB trans people ("""TMEs""") like they're somehow getting back at the cishet queerphobes. i don't know how to break it to you that cishet queerphobes also hate AFAB people. you're not being progressive by doing the exact same thing but because AFAB trans people aren't "acceptable" trans people, or whatever. singling out and bullying and abusing AFAB trans people isn't helping society accept AMAB trans women any faster. admitting that you don't view them as trans is literal transphobia. it's the exact same shit you were taught by cisheteronormative patriarchy. you're not coming up with something new by finding even more ways and reasons to treat AFAB trans people like shit.
cisheteronormative patriarchy already discredits AFAB people and tells them they can't be reliable narrators and that they have no idea what they're talking about, especially with regards to their own identities and the decisions they make. this isn't feminism. this isn't gender or sex liberation. it's the opposite. you don't get to treat AFAB people like shit just like literally everyone else and try to put some kind of fake radical liberal spin on it to make it acceptable.
Green eyes shouldn’t actually be considered an eye color. It’s just not common enough, it’s a VERY SMALL percentage of the population, 1-2%. Green eyes are also caused by an irregular mutation. Most people have blue or brown eyes, so those are the two eye colors.
All the “green eyes” positivity is actually a bad thing, by the way. Having green eyes is linked to higher rates of retinal melanoma. You’re celebrating something dangerous that can cause suffering.
And besides, most people with “green eyes” lean closer to blue or brown anyways. They should just make up their minds and be brown eyed or blue eyed. And if it’s too hard to tell, they should get corrective surgery (because green eyes are dangerous, and associated with more difficult medical care!) or at the least wear contacts so they don’t confuse people. But also they should be required to
I hate to sound like this, but green eyes are a far more recent development than blue eyes in the mutagenic history of humans. So humans weren’t created to have green eyes.
And hazel eyes? Those are just a variant of brown eyes—come on, they’re far closer to brown than green. They just have a couple greenish traits. And there’s no way there’s that many green eyed people, or a wide variety of eye colors… It’s just not natural.
I don’t have a problem with green eyed people, they didn’t ask to be born that way—but there’s just too few of them for it to be an actual eye color. We don’t need all this “green eye positivity” or putting green eyes in media. The internet is making people delude themselves into thinking it’s more common than it really is.
‼️ THIS POST IS ABOUT THE TREATMENT OF INTERSEX PEOPLE ‼️
✅ I HAVE GREEN EYES THIS IS SATIRE ✅
⚠️ PLEASE DON’T SEND ME ANY MORE THREATS OF VIOLENCE IN DEFENSE OF PEOPLE WITH GREEN EYES?? ⚠️
💧 THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT EYE COLOR?? IT’S ABOUT INTERSEXISM AND BIGOTRY 💧
A study just came out from Harvard about how gender affirming surgeries are more commonly performed on "cisgender men/boys" than transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people.
But these men/boys have gynecomastia which, if they were born with it (and the study doesn't specify), they're not just "cisgender".
They're intersex.
How many times now have intersex people told us perisex (non-intersex) people to stop using the statistics of their surgeries just as trans talking points, while erasing intersex people on the whole?
We have no idea how many of those surgeries were forced, or coerced, onto these intersex people. Either from doctors, parents, or even societal pressure.
Perisex trans people need to do better. We have to be better allies to intersex people than this. It disgusts me just how much we have failed our own community, time and time again.
UPDATE
The study actually specifically excluded intersex people.
"Importantly, all surgical procedures among patients with indications of differences in sex development or patients with other medical indications for surgery (eg, cancer, injury) were excluded..."
I'm happy to see this particular study has taken care to exclude intersex people, since surgeries done on them cannot be compared to transgender surgeries, but please bear in mind that this is still just one study.
The horrible truth is that medical abuse against our intersex siblings is still heavily normalized within the medical industry. From using terms like DSD, to forcing kids and even BABIES into sexual binaries with non or dubiously consensual surgeries or HRT, these horrors that intersex people have to go through are all too normal for them. That's unacceptable.
If you have reblogged this post without this update, I urge you to delete that reblog and reblog this version instead. We can fight for intersex rights and (if you're also perisex) show our solidarity without spreading misinformation.
I feel so... down whenever I want to watch queer or trans videos because I know in the back of my mind that none of the current large queer content creators' content or community is safe for people like me, intersex people.
I love their work otherwise, but it hurts badly to hear them toss around casual intersexism in their videos constantly when discussing queer and trans issues and nobody ever mentions it.
And because these are large, popular creators, nobody has ever listened when I've tried to ask they adjust their language. My dms go ignored or unseen and my public comments get drowned out by fans defending their intersexist comments. It's emotionally draining and exhausting, I just want to be included in my own community.
ok quick question
why does shinigami eyes (browser extension that tells you who is trans-friendly and who is anti-trans) mark people who LITERALLY deny that transmascs and intersex people are oppressed as trans-friendly? since when transandrophobia and intersexism are a trans-friendly thing to spread?
if that's what's going on then this extension is very much useless. maybe it always has been useless.
Tme this, tma that.
I'm intersex and i want you to stop being transphobic (yes, using these terms seriously is transphobic, even if you are trans) and intersexist
And stop saying someone talking about issues they are facing shouldnt happen cause you are facing issues. We are all in this together. Or do you want the bigots to win?
A study just came out from Harvard about how gender affirming surgeries are more commonly performed on "cisgender men/boys" than transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people.
But these men/boys have gynecomastia which, if they were born with it (and the study doesn't specify), they're not just "cisgender".
They're intersex.
How many times now have intersex people told us perisex (non-intersex) people to stop using the statistics of their surgeries just as trans talking points, while erasing intersex people on the whole?
We have no idea how many of those surgeries were forced, or coerced, onto these intersex people. Either from doctors, parents, or even societal pressure.
Perisex trans people need to do better. We have to be better allies to intersex people than this. It disgusts me just how much we have failed our own community, time and time again.
UPDATE
The study actually specifically excluded intersex people.
"Importantly, all surgical procedures among patients with indications of differences in sex development or patients with other medical indications for surgery (eg, cancer, injury) were excluded..."
I'm happy to see this particular study has taken care to exclude intersex people, since surgeries done on them cannot be compared to transgender surgeries, but please bear in mind that this is still just one study.
The horrible truth is that medical abuse against our intersex siblings is still heavily normalized within the medical industry. From using terms like DSD, to forcing kids and even BABIES into sexual binaries with non or dubiously consensual surgeries or HRT, these horrors that intersex people have to go through are all too normal for them. That's unacceptable.
If you have reblogged this post without this update, I urge you to delete that reblog and reblog this version instead. We can fight for intersex rights and (if you're also perisex) show our solidarity without spreading misinformation.
My experience with transness is a really good example of how transandrophobia does not target just transmascs.
I identified as transmasc, then transfemmasc, and finally transfem (I am also nonbinary) after getting my intersex body confirmed. When I am able to, my transition will not include estrogen. It will include testosterone. My body literally cannot take excess estrogen because I have tried before and the side effects were horrible.
I cannot even risk any attempt at DIY HRT for my own safety due to my proximity to law enforcement in my personal life and the fact that testosterone is a controlled substance. I might not get it perscribed even if I lied and claimed I was cis- because my age and hormone levels lead doctors to try to raise my estrogen levels to basically make me fertile despite my hypoestrogenism and the side effects of trying to directly raise my estrogen. I'll be subject to "You might change your mind" constantly.
But the people who use "transmasc" to mean "Trans people who take testosterone and have gendered experiences that are masculine or are men" leave out people like me when I am very much impacted by the same problem- I just have a different label I use for myself.
Use "People who take testosterone" if you are specifically talking about groups that take testosterone or plan to. Not all of us are transmasculine or trans men.
Seeing the recent bigoted comments by transgender Olympian Hergie Bacyadan, it's past time for the perisex trans community to address the normalized intersexism/interphobia that so many of us spread.
The intersex community is constantly used as a prop by the trans community. The most frequent way you see trans people speak about intersex issues is just to remind transphobes that sex isn't binary, which is meaningless when the trans community still strictly enforces intersexist binaries like AMAB vs AFAB and TME vs TMA and Transfemme vs Transmasc, all categories that many if not most intersex people, trans or cis, cannot fit neatly into. The trans community uses the intersex community to win arguments and than makes next to no effort to make our intersex siblings feel welcome.
When talking about HRT and gender affirming care for minors, the trans community almost never uplifts the voices of the intersex community who are often forced to undergo HRT as children and surgery on their genitalia as actual babies against their will. It is important for HRT and gender affirming care to be available to transgender children, it is just as important to keep these same things that can be life saving for trans children from being forced onto intersex children who do not consent.
I implore all perisex trans people to do some reading into the history of intersex activism, and the sad reality of life for intersex people today when so many governments and health systems are still bigoted against intersex people. Uplift intersex voices, always.