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faerytattoodgirl -> RE: Transsexuals are Intersex? (4/18/2008 9:02:14 AM)
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its idiots like that which are trying to clump everything into trans catagory and causing confusion among the public and causing society problems for people who are intersexed or trans.
http://www.medhelp.org/ais/21_OVERVIEW.HTM#What
'Trans' Terms Intersex is not the same as a transsexual (gender dysphoria) or as a transgender state. Neither term is one that we recognise as belonging in any general discussion of intersex. We are not happy with the recent tendency of some trans groups/people to promote transgender as an umbrella term to encompass, for example, transsexuality, transvestitism and intersex. We object to other organisations/individuals putting us in categories without consulting us, especially categories that imply that interexed people, of necessity, have gender identity issues.
The problems this causes...
We are constantly trying to get away from the idea that intersex is necessarily to do with gender identity, a notion that others (including the press/media) like to impose on us. Moreover, the prefix trans- infers a "moving across" and although a few people with intersex conditions may choose to change their gender role, the vast majority never "go" anywhere in terms of their sex or their gender, but are happy to stay in the status in which they grew up.
People may suffer various problems on finding out their diagnosis.... problems such as confusion, anger at secrecy and paternalism (withholding of diagnostic information), shame, an existential type of identity crisis, low self-esteem, difficulty grasping how this biological phenomenon can come about, grief at being denied fertility and rites of passage (e.g. lack of menstruation), a feeling of freakishness and isolation compared to their peers, a fear that others might see them as 'male', a concern regarding their ability to function in a relationship (e.g. vaginal hypoplasia), the burden of keeping a secret or uncertainty over who to tell and how, a retreat from medical care leading to failure to take HRT with a risk of osteoporosis, etc., etc..... These are the issues that are of major concern to most of our members; and none of these issues necessarily means that their inner sense of being a man or a woman, or intersexed, is compromised. This trend towards 'muscling in' on intersex issues seems to be a initiative on the part of certain politically-minded people in the 'trans' community, to bring intersex under their banner (for whatever reason - it lends more credibility to their cause?) or even to actively interfere in clinical issues relating to intersex. See Announcements for an account of the problems we had in 2000 with a gender dysphoria/transsexual organisation trying to interfere in protocols for 'gender reinforcement' surgery in intersexed infants with so-called genital ambiguity.
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