Hey. Stop fucking talking about our oppression like this. It erases us and contributes to our marginalization. Intersex people are not collateral damage or side targets. The oppression we face is not misdirected and meant for someone else. We are targets. There’s a reason gender affirming care bans carve out specific exceptions for intersex people. There’s a reason they are sex testing the way they are, because these regulations are largely specifically directed at intersex women. Intersex people are not unfortunate misdirected targets in their crusade against trans rights, we are targeted too. They hate us too.
It’s one thing to talk about the commonalities of the oppression faced by both trans and intersex women. It’s one thing to find solidarity and talk about the ways intersexism and transphobia and transmisogyny work together and overlap. That is good and contributes to a more complete understanding of all of these forms of oppression. To be clear, I do not and will never have an issue with solidarity and genuine discussion between two marginalized groups with similar goals and significant overlap. Trans people and intersex people should always stand together.
This is not that. This is erasing intersex people from the oppression we face for being intersex. Please understand that we are not hated out of perceived proximity to trans women. We are hated because society is violently intersexist and hates intersex people in our own right.
I need you to understand that this is happening not just because of the current horrific levels of anti-trans rhetoric and policy, but also because intersex women (and a women that may not even be intersex but is simply speculated to be by mobs online because she dared to be good at boxing and beat a white woman while not being white and not being ‘feminine’ enough for societal standards), especially Black and brown intersex women, dared to succeed and be good at sports and that was unacceptable to a deeply intersexist society. The horrific levels of hatred and discrimination that Caster Semenya, for instance, has been subjected to were not just a byproduct of transphobia, it is rooted in racism and misogyny and intersexism.
Is it intertwined with transphobia and do transphobia and intersexism intertwine and support each other? Yes! But I also need people to call it for what it is (intersexism/anti-intersex bigotry) and center intersex people in the oppression we face.
Let me repeat that again: when we talk about the discrimination faced by intersex people, perisex people, and even people in general, including intersex people, need to center intersex people. Because we’re not going to fight intersexism if we refuse to recognize it for what it is.
