I’m Briar Piranian [link], a 30-something artist (they/them) and creator of the Nightblue Manga (a BG3 original available on my linked art blog).
Words That Describe Me: intersex, non-binary, pansexual, demisexual, autistic, multi-disabled (hsn), human trafficking survivor, and resident killjoy.
Please note: As a semiverbal autistic person [link] I struggle with tone. I sometimes come across colder than I intend and may not register jokes. Please provide context when you message me [link]. Thank you for your patience 🙏🏼
𝕿𝖔𝖕𝖎𝖈𝖘 𝕴 𝕻𝖔𝖘𝖙 𝕬𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝕳𝖊𝖗𝖊
Posts that directly include my commentary can be found under the tag #briar thoughts [link]. My most common post topics (mostly political) include:
Life as an intersex [link], nonbinary, queer person
Human trafficking [link], oea [link], & modern slavery*
Systemic oppression
Anti fascism (I also run @this-is-fascism if you're interested)
Comprehensive sex education
Transphobia, intersexism and other queerphobias
Abuse & sexual assault*
Mental health & trauma
Ableism, autism, chronic illness, & disability
Classism, anti-capitalism, & anti-AI
Occasionally, my art [link] & thoughts about creative processes
Gaming (for more BG3-centric content, see @briarpiranianart)
Caveats: I talk about my personal life on this blog, but am deliberately vague about certain details (or leave them out entirely) to protect myself and/or others. I also queue posts often because it feels safer than revealing my thoughts in real time.
Content Warning: This blog features a lot of political and potentially triggering content, so if you're not interested in that, either don't follow me or block specific tags in your tumblr filtering settings. I try to include relevant cws at the end of post tags.
*Many of my posts on this topic have been shadow banned, so they will not all show up in a search.
𝕽𝖚𝖑𝖊𝖘 𝖔𝖋 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖉𝖚𝖈𝖙
Refer to me with they/them pronouns.
Do not sexualize me.
Do not ask me invasive personal questions. Off limits: my ASAB, my diagnoses, specifics of my human trafficking experience, my experience with IGM/CIMI, my C-PTSD triggers, my IRL relationships.
Do not argue with me unless you read my entire post first.
Follow me to DM, and give context if you message me [link].
Do not follow me just to get financial donations. I live in poverty.
𝕿𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖎𝖘 𝖆 𝖘𝖆𝖋𝖊 𝖘𝖕𝖆𝖈𝖊
To keep it that way, I will block anyone who:
Exhibits bigotry [link].
Asks me invasive personal questions [link].
Harasses me (or others).
Steals/fails to properly credit my art [link].
Makes me feel unsafe (I block anyone I suspect is one of my ex-handlers/abusers or connected to them in any significant way. Again, as trafficking survivor, I don't mess around with safety).
Dividers: I credit dividers in the post tags. If I forgot to credit you or listed the wrong name (I have major brain fog), please let me know so I can amend my error!
People of any gender and sex can experience gender dysphoria. It is not exclusive to trans people.
Intersex people feel gender dysphoria because of a range of issues, such as having our bodies surgically altered against our wills and not being seen as masc/fem enough by others.
Non-binary people experience gender dysphoria! Why else do you think that many non-binary people wear breast forms, binders, hip pads, packers, and other foundational clothing intended to modify their silhouettes?
Even cis people experience gender dysphoria. Lots of cis men wear packers, and I personally have known a cis woman who felt gender dysphoria after losing her breasts to breast cancer. It bothered her so much that she had a gender affirming surgery to replace those breasts.
I'm not saying that cis people as a group suffer from gender dysphoria to the same extent as trans, non-binary, and intersex people. They don't, and cis people certainly get more community and medical support for their dysphoria, and that is not fair.
The point I'm trying to make is twofold.
Gender dysphoria is not exclusive to trans people and claiming that it is is overt erasure of nonbinary and intersex suffering. This claim is exorsexist and intersexist.
Because dysphoria is not exclusive to trans people, basing the definition of transness on the requirement of gender dysphoria actually collapses the definition, making it less likely that transphobes will ever take it seriously. It makes it easier for cis people to look at trans people and say, "well, we all feel that way sometimes. You'll get over it eventually" because these people won't be able to see past the milder gender dysphoria they've experienced to the identity part of transness.
3. Because cis people also experience gender dysphoria, they have no valid excuse not to exercise compassion towards those who experience gender dysphoria, regardless of how that gender dysphoria may be different from their own. Cis people have an ethical responsibility to try to understand and exercise compassion towards gender nonconforming people.
For Intersex Jam 2026, I made an informative zine. “Intersex Inclusion: A Crash Course for Creatives” is a quick primer on how to include intersex experiences in your creative works. The text-only version* is available for free, licensed under CC BY 4.0, and I encourage others to repost and use this zine in place of asking random non-activist intersex folks about how to represent our entire community with dignity.
* (it's supposed to be in comic form, but due to rampant computer crashes, I wasn’t able to assemble the artwork into a screen-reader accessible PDF in time for the deadline.)
Overwhelmingly, the most common question I see from allies to random bystanders who just so happen to be publicly intersex is “how do I include intersex people?”
I know they mean well, but it gets tiring. I hold no enmity for them in my heart; in spite of that, I’m tired. I want to see folks like me being considered at all—without having to see random, non-activist intersex folks awkwardly struggling to rehash the same three points again and again because well-meaning but ignorant allies keep asking the same question of non-activists while prostrating and flagellating themselves over how they didn’t spawn into existence as a perfect ally. It’s such a demanding task that thinking about it makes me want to roll over and take a nap.
Fortunately, I am an old dog incapable of learning new tricks; hence, I am back on my bullshit to provide a bunch of infographics loosely assembled into a zine. I made sure to pack it with resources and citations good for your nutrition, all with love from the universe.
Take my hand. Let’s be inclusive of intersex experiences in our creative works, together.
This is a zine specifically focused on creating and developing intersex characters, how to handle intersexuality in a variety of genres and creative project types, how to worldbuild while conscious of intersexuality, and common pitfalls for uninformed allies new to writing intersex folks. For references more specific to writing, see versegm’s “An Intersex Writing Reference” and Hans Lindahl’s “Tips for Writing an Intersex Character with Grace.”
[Content warning: in order to respectfully but realistically talk about intersex history, this zine contains brief, undetailed discussions of topics such as medical gaslighting and abuse, sexual harassment and assault, and medical and sexual abuse against children. These are included strictly for the purpose of educating on intersex history and experiences. Slurs and bigoted or discriminatory language towards intersex folks and traits are included without censorship, also to educate on their history and meaning. Full content warnings are available within the zine itself.]
today I’ll be dropping v0.3 which includes actual section headings and more of the 12+ originally scrapped citations I didn’t have the time to correctly format before the deadline 🌞 it is still $0 and freely sharable with credit!
People of any gender and sex can experience gender dysphoria. It is not exclusive to trans people.
Intersex people feel gender dysphoria because of a range of issues, such as having our bodies surgically altered against our wills and not being seen as masc/fem enough by others.
Non-binary people experience gender dysphoria! Why else do you think that many non-binary people wear breast forms, binders, hip pads, packers, and other foundational clothing intended to modify their silhouettes?
Even cis people experience gender dysphoria. Lots of cis men wear packers, and I personally have known a cis woman who felt gender dysphoria after losing her breasts to breast cancer. It bothered her so much that she had a gender affirming surgery to replace those breasts.
I'm not saying that cis people as a group suffer from gender dysphoria to the same extent as trans, non-binary, and intersex people. They don't, and cis people certainly get more community and medical support for their dysphoria, and that is not fair.
The point I'm trying to make is twofold.
Gender dysphoria is not exclusive to trans people and claiming that it is is overt erasure of nonbinary and intersex suffering. This claim is exorsexist and intersexist.
Because dysphoria is not exclusive to trans people, basing the definition of transness on the requirement of gender dysphoria actually collapses the definition, making it less likely that transphobes will ever take it seriously. It makes it easier for cis people to look at trans people and say, "well, we all feel that way sometimes. You'll get over it eventually" because these people won't be able to see past the milder gender dysphoria they've experienced to the identity part of transness.
parental abuse is having a second set of ears and eyes able to accept the realities of what going on as opposed to just denying it is useful. Not saying every family needs two parents but my mom needed another set of eyes and ears when I was teen and struggling expressing myself to her. Sometimes you need another person their to act as a go between. Hear out the unheard party. Open to working through hypotheticals. Slightly more capable of having tough conversations.
This is a way to help prevent parental abuse.
The more the responsibility of a child is shared between a group of people, the greater chance they have to turn to someone for support or identify mistreatment.
Regarding this post, I feel the need to reiterate my framework of cultural appropriation for people who’ve been following me for a while. Cultural appropriation is a useful but often misapplied concept, and you have to think about it dialectically.
Problem: Drawing a firm line between “good” cultural exchange and “bad” cultural appropriation is impossible.
Because that line is constantly evolving and a site of conflict and negotiation.
Because the very definition of “culture” is constantly evolving and a site of conflict and negotiation.
Because establishing a debate on the level of such heavily reified concepts as “cultural appropriation” discounts lived experiences and is ultimately pointless.
Solution: draw provisional, contextual lines based on real people and their lived experiences. Who benefits, financially and emotionally? Who hurts, financially and emotionally?
This actually means listening to people.
And people are flawed and communicate imperfectly because that’s our nature.
And racism and other power structures also frame our thoughts in such a way that we listen more to some people than other people.
So listening is very difficult, but a project that ultimately makes us more human and empathetic.
If I hear “engaging in such and such a cultural practice makes a certain group unhappy” then I have a simple decision to make. Do I respect that group enough in order to listen to them? If I respect them, I’ll take them seriously. If I’m not sure whether to respect them or not, I’ll keep it in mind and wait for further information but not take any action. If I don’t respect them, I’ll ignore them or make fun of them. I might make a wrong decision (and we all will at some point) I need to accept responsibility for that wrong decision and not blame something else.
The extremes are pretty easy. For example, many Native Americans have explained, at exhausting lengths, that outsiders wearing ceremonial headresses is hurtful. I understand why, but I really don’t need to understand why if I’m trying to respect them, I shouldn’t need a million Purple Heart allegories, I just need to listen to them.
On the other hand, if someone tells me not to wear pointy teeth because it’s disrespectful to vampires, I’m going to ignore them with a prejudice, because I don’t respect them or their opinion.
The problem with all these goddamn weeaboos is that they don’t respect Japanese-Americans. They don’t respect Japanese in Japan either (they claim they do but they just fetishize them) but they explicitly disrespect Japanese-Americans and other diaspora Japanese and other diaspora Asians. When I bitch about weeaboos I’m not making claims about “who owns culture”. I’m complaining about the lack of respect, the silencing, the propagation of stereotypes that made my life hell as a child, the direct hostility, the yellowfacing, the whitewashing, the insults, their entitlement to judge our authenticity and score us on a dehumanizing Good Asian vs. Bad Asian scale, their sexual assaults and rape threats and pedophilia complexes, a list of a million things that I’ve directly experienced.
I’d planned on summing this up more intelligently but in conclusion, fuck weeaboos. I hate you all.
people really fail to see the physical violence behind the hyperinvisibility of intersex people.
we are erased in legislation and society broadly but we are also victims of an extermination campaign.
our invisibility doesn't come from people just failing to recognize us it comes from the fact that we are mutilated at birth and if we are not mutilated at birth we are mutilated at puberty. people without variations that can be changed by surgery are put on hormones against their will. it is rare to find an intersex person who hasn't experienced medical violence!
so many intersex people don't even know that they, themselves are intersex! some people have their intersex variation hidden from them, being outright lied to by parents and doctors about their own body. other people are never given the word intersex, they are told they have a DSD (disorder of sexual development), that they have a medical problem. almost no intersex person is told that they are intersex by a doctor.
our lack of visibility is written in literal blood. so when someone tries to say "well, intersex people don't have it that bad, no one is thinking about them" they're saying that all this "isn't so bad" that an effective extermination campaign "isn't that bad" because they can't see it happening.
the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.
btw this is maybe the single most key distinguishing feature of the terfy strains of radical feminism, the seed all the rest of it springs out of: they have absolutely no faith in the ability of feminism to actually destroy patriarchy. they do not think feminism can truly build a better world. they cannot really even imagine that possibility. they think patriarchy is an inevitable natural consequence of unchangeable biological facts, and therefore the goal of feminism can only be to mitigate the worst effects of patriarchy, not to get rid of it.
they can imagine a society where women get some designated safe spaces without men around. they cannot imagine a society where the presence of men is not inherently a danger to women.
A feminism that works must also involve men and masc people. Without involving them, there is no changing the patriarchy. You can't change another demographic's behavior exclusively from the outside. To get rid of the patriarchy, you have to involve the patriarchy.
Need it be said real feminism must also involve trans, non-binary and intersex people. If it's really sexism that you're trying to destroy, you must acknowledge all forms of sexism. That includes sexism against men. It includes exorsexism, varsexism, intersexism, transmisogyny, and transandrophobia.
If you don't include all forms of sexism in your activism, it becomes clear that ending sexism isn't really your goal. Equality for all is not really your goal. Your goal, whether you acknowledge it or not, is to raise your demographic above others in the exact same way that the patriarchy does. It is to put others down just like they put you down.
Bioessentialism and open hatred for other demographics will not solve any problems in our society, and it will not create equality.
When you exclude gender nonconforming people from your feminism, you are insisting that femininity fits into a narrow window of experience and expression, which is exactly what the patriarchy does to you. You are reenacting injustice done to you and ultimately serving the patriarchy. Isn't the whole point of feminism to create more freedom for feminine people? If it is, that's not what you're doing.
Do you really want to encourage the patriarchy to gender and control all feminine people the way that they did in the 1950s? That is the direction you are headed (whether you can see it or not) when you exclude gender nonconformimg people from your activism.
And while you waste your energy expressing hatred for men and masc people, you are losing precious time you could be using to actually facilitate change. More effective ways to do this might include:
Teaching your children not to reenact the sexism around them.
Intervening in real world situations involving sexism and advocating for victims rather than simply pointing fingers.
Learning about the sexism experienced by other demographics (including pericishet men) so that you can have more mutually productive conversations about sexism.
Holding people accountable for sexism while also offering a degree of room for them to grow / change their behavior.
Hi everyone! I thought I'd make a guide of basic intersex vocabulary and definitions. I will link to sources when relevant!
intersex: "A difference in sex traits, that happens on its own, and is noticeable enough to cause stigma or violence for breaking an anatomical expectation. " -Hans Lindhal, intersex activist.
"Intersex is an umbrella term for differences in sex traits or reproductive anatomy. Intersex people are born with these differences or develop them in childhood. There are many possible differences in genitalia, hormones, internal anatomy, or chromosomes, compared to the usual two ways that human bodies develop."- InterACT
Intersex variation: A specific variation and diagnosis such as Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, Turner's Syndrome, or Klinefelter's Syndrome. Here's a link to a glossary of many common intersex variations!
Intersexism/dyadism/interphobia: A term to describe intersex oppression. Intersex oppression is rooted in ableism, and manifests through things like medical abuse, harassment, sexual violence, stigma, and pathologization. Here is one working definition for intersexism: "Intersexism is a type of ableism; ableism that is influenced by and rooted in the cisheteronormative idea of how a man or woman needs to function. This “function” is a construct of what settler-colonialism and capitalism see as the most effective way to use gender as exploitation and extraction of profit."-written by Mod Stev of @intersex-support.
Intersex Surgery/Intersex genital mutilation: A term to describe a category of genital surgeries that happen at birth. These surgeries are cosmetic and not medically necessary, and are focused on "normalizing" ambiguous genitalia and sterilization. Here's a report on intersex surgery and interviews with intersex adults. Intersex surgery is legal is almost every country.
Non consensual hormone therapy: A lot of intersex teens and adults are coerced or forced into taking hormones that they do not want to be taking. This happens to both cis and trans intersex people.
Dyadic/Perisex/Endosex: All words that mean someone who is not intersex. Whichever word people use is basically up to personal preference and community norms.
Intergender: Intergender is a gender identity for use by intersex people only. It doesn’t have one specific definition-it is used by intersex people to mean a whole variety of things. It’s used to describe the unique ways our intersex experience intersects with and influences our gender. Some people use it as a modifying term, such as calling themselves an intergender man or woman, as a way to explain the way being intersex affects their identity. Other people identify solely as intergender, and have that be their whole gender. A lot of intergender people consider themselves to be trans, but not all. Here is the intergender flag.
Ipsogender: A gender identity used by intersex people who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth, but feel that being intersex plays into their gender identity and that their experiences are not adequately described by cisgender.
Outdated terminology:
DSD: DSD stands for disorders of sex development, and is the medical term for intersex. DSD terminology was created at the intersex consensus meeting in 2005 by 50 medical experts and two intersex activists, one from ISNA. The DSD terminology shift was also created with the input of a dyadic transphobes who were involved in the shift in ISNA's intersex activism where they distanced themselves from trans and queer politics and instead allied with doctors and medicalization. Some intersex people still do use DSD terminology for themselves, but dyadic allies should avoid it.
Derogatory Language:
Hermaphrodite: This is probably the most common slur used against intersex people. It should never be said by dyadic people, and should never be said to refer to humans. Only intersex people can reclaim hermaphrodite. There is a scientific meaning to hermaphrodite when referring to animals, and dyadic people should only say it in that context and also be considerate if posting things with that word on social media. Hermaphrodite has a very violent history and is a very painful word for many intersex people. If you see someone referring to the "h slur," this is probably the slur they are referring to.
He-she: This is a derogatory term that a lot of intersex people and trans women are called. Similar to the h slur, there is a history of violence and harassment with this term, and a lot of intersex people have been negatively impacted by this term. Dyadic people should never call intersex people a "he-she." It's good to avoid typing out he-she whenever possible, and if referring to someone who uses both he/him and she/her pronouns, saying "she/he" or "him/her" pronouns is a better option.
Futanari: This is essentially the Japanese translation of the h slur. It is used with a lot of fetish content that primarily targets intersex people. Dyadic people should not call real life people "futa" and need to understand that this is an incredibly offensive term. Futanari is also not the Japanese word for intersex; a Japanese intersex activist website uses インターセックス.
other intersex people feel free to add on, or offer alternative definitions!
