Intersex Peer Support::Bodies Like Ours

Gender variance is what gets us into trouble and the more visible the gender variance the worse the trouble. Hence, really butch women or really femme men are at far greater risk for harassment, assault and worse from those who have internalized phobias over gender variance, than those who appear gender conforming. Non-heterosexual orientation is a type of gender variance because part of the gender "should list" is heterosexuality. The gay community recognizes this now and is educating itself about this issue. It's a buzz topic from the papers to the magazines to the websites to individual conversations.

Gender phobia from within the community (the Michigan Womyn's festival is the most common example I hear held up as a negative example) is being addressed. I'm actually trained to teach a course in this to a MIXED orientation audience that reaches 2000 people a year to help create GLBTI - Straight allies. This course started to help develop Gay-Straight allies by educating the straight community, offering "sensitivity training" to groups from churches, to social worker's, to industry, to the police. But as it evolved it became evident that gender variance, more than sexual orientation was the top item and heterosexual people suffered every bit as much as gays from strictly enforced gender limitations. Suddenly there was a common ground - the bridge was found. One of the exercises in this program helps ALL the people in the audience locate how fear of gender non-conformity influences almost everything they do and say. Quickly transgender and transsexual were sought out to help exemplify more ways this makes people suffer and for about 3 years they'd been looking for the intersexed to include in the story but found no one until I came out. They couldn't find me until I stepped out of the shadows, and although I'd been out in the community as gay forever, I have only come out as intersexed in the last 4 years. We hide in plain sight. There is a growing movement within the GLBT community to educate and integrate Queer AND Straight communities. We, as intersexed can plug into already existing, functioning, trouble shot, FUNDED (!!) GLBT programs far more easily than re-inventing the wheel all on our own for just us. One good way to reach straight people FAST is PFLAG, or the growing number of Gay/Straight alliances in high schools. Offering speaking engagements to college sociology/psychology classes is really easy but we have to have OUR homework done and be able to speak ABOUT intersex - not use it as a personal confession, sympathy seeking opportunity. I was taught how to do this around gay issues and apply it to intersexed ones as well using coming out resources.

The intersexed body is a physical affront to "girls & boys only" rules because you CAN'T avoid a mix with us even if you cut us up to look like something else. Surgery and hormones don't turn intersexed people into males or females. The result is intersexed people who have been altered to look something like males or females. With, or without surgery we are still men and women who are not exactly male or female, and this flies in the face of the binary paradigm.

The transgendered (including Butch/Femme lesbians, drag Kings, Effeminate men, Drag Queens, Cross dressers, Gender Fuck people, Androgynous etc.) are a psychological mix of masculine/feminine. The transsexual are an identity mix, sometimes a psychological mix and if they choose become a physical mix of man and woman, male and female. We're at least a physical mix of male and female and often a psychological or identity mix of man and woman as well. I think this is why we are often placed together under the umbrella term of transgendered. (It's not much of a stretch to open that umbrella wide enough to put ALL Queer people under it) That's not a bad thing, and it's not entirely inaccurate. BUT, I always assert the differences as much as the unifying factors. I use the example of the rainbow - all the colors are together and the lines between are blurry but you still see each color - we don't stir it until they all disappear! People can't be allowed to get lazy and be allowed to think we're all exactly the same - being mistaken for being something we're not is a very bad thing. We don't celebrate diversity by homogenizing it. Lazy minds have to be gently prodded, or kicked soundly in the frontal lobes - keep your boots on.

Ultimately every single person is confined, conflicted, marginalized, and minimalized in some way by the arbitrary, unreasonable and impossible artificial gender expectations of our society. Whenever we show them how parts of their story are like parts of our story and vice versa we knock another brick out of the gender wall. Not all of us can take on huge projects but that's good because personal one-on-one experience of real live friends and neighbors make the biggest impact. Don't forget the pond ripple effect of coming out. You touch them and they touch others. We never leave a positive, lasting impression on just "one" person.

Reprinted with permission of the author. Originally published in The Empty Closet, a publication of the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley, NY