man this blog is a mess lmfao. when I last updated it 4 years ago I wasn't employed and it was the height of covid and things were immensely difficult. I was younger and naive and spoke passionately -- sometimes too passionately -- about stuff that frankly I had not a lot of experience navigating. While there are still criticisms I have that I agree with back then a lot of my stances, the way I navigate my own life, and a lot of the perspectives I have are different.
I still take firm stances about people not identifying as intersex if they are transitioning nonbinary and dyadic, because being intersex is an inherent genetic sex variation -- it is literally embedded in your DNA -- it isn't something you can become. And I wish that people were more understanding of intersexness as a concept that is a material class in this sense and not something you can Become that has the same struggles and oppression. Some of the stuff I wrote about sexuality back in 2020 I no longer really care about. I don't definitively identify as a lesbian anymore, and in the past 4 years I became something of a bigender intergender intersex whatever -- my sexuality is still something I struggle with and I still can't narrow it down because I don't know what it is. I think in my life I really genuinely will never be able to tell what my sexuality is, and I think in my life while certain labels are inclusive enough that I could ostensibly call myself a "fucked up lesbian", I think that quite frankly there isn't a word for how I navigate sexuality, and that I shouldn't worry about it because I don't have any romantic or sexual relationships at the moment anyways. joke hashtag #Lonely #Workaholic #TooFuckingBusyNotEvenJoking
I started testosterone almost two years ago August 8th 2022. I couldn't take it anymore. I was having nightmares where I would be sexually assaulted and throttled and mutilated by a male alter self of mine -- my own reflection -- and screamed at in the mirror and told how much I hated myself. Then my sibling had started estradiol, and my emotionality grew -- I couldn't wait any longer to get an answer about my intersex variations without the influence of hormones because my soul was beginning to suffer without it. I was lucky to get in with a community health center and get the gel, but that was back when I had medicaid, and now I lack health insurance and have to pay for it out of pocket. I started low-dose.
I think truly whatever the hell was going on prior to me starting hormones reflected the fact that I really had nothing going on. My hormonal levels on exams prior to T were consistently all low. E, DHEA, Progesterone, T. I had hot flashes frequently, low energy levels, fatigue constantly. Whatever the hell was going on adrenally I have no idea anymore because I haven't pursued intersex investigation for myself since then. A hepatologist straight up told me that this state does not have the resources for the kind of genetic testing required to narrow down what intersex variation I have. So I gave up. I don't have the money to move or see a doctor in another state, and I was torturing myself by waiting to go on testosterone.
At the least, my endocrinologist that prescribes me T is respectful and understanding that I am intersex. So when I explained the symptoms that I have struggled with, he put it down as a diagnosis. I am officially diagnosed intersex, but without a specified condition.
I've been on low dose T gel for almost 2 years. Like many other intersex people my progress has been pretty accelerated considering everything. Fat redistribution was fast, bottom growth occurred quickly, hair began growing quickly, my voice dropped. But for me, it's not where I want to be just yet, and I want to further try to get to the sweet spot that would leave me comfortable.
I talked a bit about the process of reclaiming my masculine body, my suspected intersex variation being one that would've lead me to be born male if I had continued developing as such in the womb. 2 years into the journey of reclamation, I'm learning that my dysphoria compounds in the same ways it did before -- hating myself for looking too masculine, and then hating myself for looking too feminine -- I think only recently I realized that I'm only truly happy if I'm actually performing true androgyny, even though I want the options to perform feminine and masculine available to me.
Throughout it all, I've started feeling like and calling myself a eunuch. That is sort of the place that I occupy here. As someone whose situation was that I had parts at birth and now I don't, and I grew up in this way, with this body, I am essentially a eunuch. This is both a reclamation for me and sort of a self-degrading term, much like how we reclaim "faggot", since I've been called that many times too.
I'm blessed to work at the gayest and transest liquor store in my city, since I work with several LGBT coworkers, two of which are transfems as well, so at work I get to be out amongst company; for pride month a few years ago I submitted an excerpt about my identity as an intersex person to their monthly newsletter and got featured (probably because I linked Dionysus to Hermaphroditus, a hellenic syncretization that is somewhat well known). I'm still not openly anything. I don't really shave my face when I go to work most days unless I feel self conscious enough about it or whatever. My name tag says he/him. I go by Rose still. Generally everyone is respectful of that.
The only thing is that the further I go to reclaim my masculine body, as expected, the farther away I get from womanhood, and the sense of anguish I have about that increases. Because only recently I realized that my sense of womanhood -- as someone who now identifies as a manwoman/bigender person -- is based heavily in my experience of living in a domestic violence household and experiencing domestic violence myself -- the more I feel like there are not really any resources for the kind of woman that I am. I can't remember if I spoke before about IDing as transfemmasc (9/6/25 update: I now use the term interfemmasc). As I said before, because I essentially am a eunuch of sorts, my neutral upbringing and attempt to become any gender at all is why I identify as such as an intersex person. I grieve a lot recently because I feel that once again I will never get to be a woman, to be recognized as a woman in the way that I am. I think that's sort of a curse of passing while being a eunuch. Not that I particularly pass as a man either. It's sort of like a painful metamorphosis, becoming the person that I am, that I want to be. There should be something on the other side of this. I keep telling myself that, so I keep going.
I'm probably going to repost some intersex rants I've gone on before here if I post anything else, mostly about the intersection of intersexism and transmisogyny, and the way that some intersex people misinterpret what transmisogyny is and try to call themselves transfem/trans women in bad faith without understanding what transfemininity is, and not understanding what the material class that trans women inhabit is or what kind of privileges intersex people can carry over trans women. I would like to talk more about these things because I notice that a lot of intersex people are just... not listening, and talking in bad faith over trans women. I've noticed this before, and I'm noticing it again, and I think I have a responsibility to speak up.
Other than that, I don't genuinely really intend to post often on this blog again. I won't be interacting with others, I don't check intersex tags often anymore, I don't really... it's not that my identity as an intersex person has been eclipsed by everything else in my life, but I'm studying for wine exams and I'm busy and need to pass these exams so I can have money to afford my bills.
I'll probably go through my blog at some later point and figure out if there's things I want to delete or not, but I also appreciate archival efforts, so I'm not sure if I'll prune a lot if anything...
