The Intersex Roadshow Reports

A Tumblr Companion to the Intersex Roadshow (http://intersexroadshow.blogspot.com)

[intersexroadshow]

Gender Policing by Illustration AIs

These, according to MidJourney, are images of "a woman with impressive muscles."

A sad thing I have observed about the MidJourney AI is that as it has developed and learned people's preferences, it has become more stereotyped rather than less. Especially if you give it brief, simple instructions, it resists those that don't align with beliefs and ideas about what is beautiful, what is normal, and what sort of person should be pictured as a leader, as caring, as strong, or as intelligent. It is now reinforcing stereotypes emphatically.

One example of that is its insistence that you want to see a woman who is a young, thin, pretty, busty white femme with long wavy hair, probably blonde. When I ask MidJourney for a woman who is muscular, I am still handed the very same frame that is thin except for in the bosom, as if the AI assumes I don't really want to see what I've prompted it to draw. All it changes are the setting and clothing style, to evoke a fantasy adventure setting. I've tried asking for a very strong looking woman, for a woman with large muscles, for a woman with a big biceps, for a woman with large muscles from being an athlete--and I just get barbiedoll figures and looks over and over. Have another example!

The MidJourney AI just refuses to believe that you want to see big arms on a woman unless you show it an image of an actual photo of a woman with muscular arms and tell it you want the woman to look like that.

So, for example, I showed the Midge AI this image of fitness influencer Jasmin Nazarian:

I asked the AI to draw that woman, showing her muscular arms. And I got finally got actual visible muscular definition in the output, though a bit debulked in the arms and a lot inflated in the chest:

I then asked for a round of variations on that image and got this:

Note the background. The AI has "helpfully" made the arms of the illustration of the influencer look a lot less impressive by setting behind them some veiny Greco-Roman sculpture of a manly god with muscles of ten times the mass.

Just remember that AIs are a mirror for our culture. What they spit out is based on what we spit up into the internet. And it is really clear that one of those things is an extreme vision of binary gender in which men are huge, dominant and strong, and women petite, pretty and weak.

[intersexroadshow]

A.I. illustrators are still trippy.

I know a lot of visual artists are having a freakout about how quickly illustration AIs are improving. They’re worried they’ll be put out of work. Customers and patrons will just type a description of what they want into an AI app, and out will come the fulfillment of their desires.

As someone who has been using the MidJourney AI now for months, let me tell you that that day is not yet at hand.

Don’t get me wrong--the latest version of the MidJourney AI is amazing. It has a great sense of composition, is excellent at capturing stylistic vibes, and is capable of a photorealistic feel.

Ask it to produce something novel based on popular cultural figures, historical periods, and artistic styles, and it is gold. You want a painting of the Joker in the style of Rembrandt? You got  it!

But specify details that are less common, and the AI is just going to fudge it, in creative but often truly bizarre ways. So:

I asked MidJourney v4 to draw me an anthropomorphic cat version of Sherlock Holmes, in a Victorian street, smoking a pipe. This is probably the best image I got out of many rerolls and tweaks of the search, and a lot of it is great! The depth of field, the light, the fur textures, the Victorian feel. The steampunk detail of the top hat is a lot of fun. But. . . why is the smoke coming out of the hat, not the pipe? I suppose because the pipe entirely enclosed. . . not a very functional design. And look at the hand, eek. MidJourney is very agnostic as to the number of appendages a person or creature should have. And the text on the sign in the background--is that Cyrillic or Greek or the Roman alphabet?

Rerolling the search and hoping for a more plausible hand and pipe, I get this:

The clothing and setting are again excellent. But. . . what is up with the ears? Does the pipe end in a blob of solidified smoke? Of cotton wool? Of an abstract mouse sculpture? And oh ghods. . . the right hand. Does it have a dozen fingers? Let’s try again.

Ok, now the pipe is just a stick, and Sherlock the Cat holds some bizarre smoke-fuzz creature. Clearly we need to keep trying to tweak the prompt with descriptors of the pipe shape and how it is held. The result? 

Oh, better! Kind of. Our Sherlock-cat is now smoking a demitasse espresso cup, but the pose is right. Six fingers on the right hand and seven or eight on the left, but it feels like we are getting close. I like the detail of the mirroring quadrupedal cat in the corner of the image. Let’s try again!

This looks great initially. Then you notice that the quadruped cat in the corner is some kind of small eldrich horror. And Sherlock’s left ear and hat are a single item, with what appears to be a bonus third ear in the place of a feather in the hatband. And what is going on with the bicycles in the background? 

Once more unto the breach!

Great outfit here, and I love our Sherlock’s coloring. But. . . now the cat in the corner has morphed into something Sherlock is smoking. I presume that the AI was exposed to a few meerschaum pipe images, while tripping on the entirety of Google Images. And we get six fingers on the right hand and an earhat again. Are we getting any closer to a ten-fingered, pipe-smoking Victorian detective cat--an image that won’t make human viewers tilt their heads and feel vaguely woogy inside?

No. No we are not. What the heck! Sherlock smokes a cat tail, while a bonus tail frolics by itself on the Victorian cobblestones. Dare we try again?

Uh oh. MidJourney’s definitely gone Lovecraftian. 

Now instead of the pipe being a small cat, the corner-cat is a pipe.

The pipe is a tophat! The anthro Sherlock-cat and the corner quad-cat have merged into a single entity! The fur is a suit! And the entity’s eyes are multiplying. . .  

For sake of our sanity, it’s best to stop.

At least our journey has brought us some understanding. Illustration AIs are becoming better and better at doing what we want them to do. But they are also very, very high, and they insist on putting their own vision into what they produce. 

And that, in the end, is what makes them fun for me! But I don’t think they’re going to drive human artists to extinction any time soon. 

And remember, similar hand-wringing claims were made about the end of human artists when photography was invented. The camera did empower ordinary non-artists to generate all the self-portraits their hearts could desire. And artists were freed thereby to do other things.

[intersexroadshow]

These are some intersex children in a medical archive, defaced and depersonalized as "birth-defected pseudohermaphrodites," whose humanity I'd have us restore.

[intersexroadshow]

Today I'd like to talk to you about something possibly Not Safe for Work, but hey, it's Sunday. What I want to discuss is the baculum--that is, the penile bone. While humans, despite much rib-elbowing about "boners," lack a penile bone, most animals have them. It's just not something you are likely to learn about at school in Western societies. If you go to a museum of natural history and look at all the skeletons assembled there, you're unlikely to see a baculum anywhere, due to a Victorian sensibility that there's something inappropriate about putting copulatory bones where children can see them. However, in this post-Victorian display of a dire wolf skeleton, the baculum has been included.

Actually, Victorian gentlemen were obsessed with collecting bacula, particularly of animals they had hunted. They often had them mounted for private display in their male-only hunting clubs, or in the case of particularly large specimens, such as that of a walrus, had them set with gold for use as gavels to call their secret societies to order. Nutty folks, those Victorian gentlemen. The Western gentleman's fetish for the baculum as a symbol of secret male power explains why the female baculum (AKA "os clitoridis" or "baubellum") went ignored and unstudied until the 1960s, and remains little studied today. But the female genital bone is a correlate of the male, and is found throughout the animal kingdom--in tigers and seals and bats and bears and rats. Speaking of rats, scientists in the 1960s found that injecting female rats with testosterone made their os clitoridis grow, becoming indistinguishable from a penile baculum, causing a minor sensation in the endocrinological world, as it provided further proof that sex is a spectrum, not an impermeable binary of male and female. Still, in the 21st century, most research on genital bones remains confined to studies of the baculum in the male--evidence of an entrenched commitment to an ideology of binary sex, and of a tenacious sexism. That said, the baculum continues to be viewed as a sort of silly curiousity rather than a topic of serious study, and that's got to be due in part to human chauvanism and a sour-grapes attitude. Humans don't have bacula, and we spend a huge amount of medical resources addressing "erectile quality" in men. (Medical science couldn't care less about "erectile quality" in those assigned female, and rarely even mentions that clitoral erection is a thing.) Anyway, what we have is a society full of men anxious about their erectile quality, while other animals get to breeze through life with literal boners--apparently it doesn't bear contemplating. But it should bear contemplating. Because one of the things you can see in the primates is that the Great Apes have much smaller bacula than in typical monkeys. And it appears that in the course of evolution, the Homo line saw the bacula dwindle and vanish, and that is a fascinating thing--and a phenomenon barely studied at all, due to prudery and sexism in a field--Science--that is supposed to be free of either.

[interactyouth]

Inter/Act has been working with MTV’s Faking It on building a (more) true-to-life intersex character, Lauren (played by Bailey Buntain). We anticipated a few new people to our page, wondering what exactly intersex is. The following intersex FAQ was compiled by the members of Inter/Act. It is intended to be a living document that we will continue to tweak, change, add-to and subtract from. Please feel free to reference it, re-blog it, and ask us questions (at [email protected])

What is intersex?

Intersex is an umbrella term that describes people born with intersex conditions or DSD (Differences of Sex Development). There are over 30 different conditions that cause intersex people to have physical differences inside and/or outside their bodies, making their sex neither purely male or female. Biology class has always taught us that sex is merely black and white, “male” or “female,” but now we know that’s not true. There are a lot of awesome gray areas in the middle!

What are some intersex conditions?

There are over many conditions that fall under the intersex umbrella including, but not limited to: Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, Klinefelter Syndrome, Hypospadias, Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome (MRKH), Swyer Syndrome, Turner Syndrome, 5-Alpha Reductase Deficiency. Please see the ISNA (Intersex Society of North America) website for more information on specific conditions.

How common are intersex people?

Intersex people are about 1-2% of the population, or 1 in every 2,000 people. That’s as common as natural born redheads! We’re not rare, just invisible.

So how come I’ve never heard of intersex before?

The intersex community has a long history of shame and secrecy, for so many reasons. For starters, many doctors have told patients that they’ll never meet anyone like themselves. Sometimes they’ll even tell them not to talk about their conditions to anyone! On top of that, doctors and parents often try to “fix” intersex kid’s bodies with unnecessary surgeries, trying to make them fit into their idea of “normal.” Not to mention each condition is different, so educating the general public is hard when there is so much information to talk about.

It sounds like intersex conditions can be hard to care for!

They can be. Finding a good doctor that you can really connect with is so important for intersex people. Sometimes doctors don’t know the best way to handle each specific person. We all need to be informed about our bodies, our options, and the research that’s been done so we can make the best decisions possible. Making an informed decision is the most important thing an intersex person can do, so please don’t rush into anything.

How does gender fit into intersex?

Not quite as simply as you might think! Intersex relates to biological sex and a person’s genetic traits, internal and external reproductive organs, hormones, and secondary sex characteristics. Gender is more about the way somebody feels or identifies. This means intersex individuals identify as female, male, man, woman, or a multitude of identities just as non-intersex individuals do. Some examples include genderqueer, agender, third gender, two-spirit, and the list doesn’t end there.  It’s important to remember that gender is fluid, not stagnant, possibly alternating its course during a person’s journey

How does intersex differ from transgender?

Intersex is often confused with transgender, but they are actually very different things. Intersex is when your biological sex doesn’t neatly fit into the male/female binary, but transgender is when you feel as if your assigned sex does not match your gender identity. Someone can be both intersex and transgender!

What terms can I use to talk about intersex people?

Intersex and DSD are the two current terms that most people use interchangeably. However, they both are controversial for different people.  Some of our youth feel more comfortable with DSD as it might be the only term they are familiar with, while others prefer intersex over DSD. All intersex folks have the right to self define themselves at any particular point in their journey. It’s better for people to come to their own conclusions about how they want to identify, rather than be told or pushed into identifying a certain way. If you don’t know how someone identifies, feel free to ask!

Can I use the word hermaphrodite?

No. Hermaphrodite is a harmful term that is widely considered a slur, please don’t use it. It’s a stigmatizing word that people associate with having both sets of working genetalia, which is rarely possible in humans, if at all. Some intersex folk have started reclaiming the term, but that is for them to decide and use, not for you.

What are some other terms I should know?

Ambiguous Genitalia - Genitalia that doesn’t look clearly “male” or “female.” However, no genitals look the same, and nobody’s genitalia is “ambiguous.” It’s all just genitals!

Dyadic - Some intersex people have started using dyadic to describe those who are not intersex (meaning, they fit the “male” or “female” binary)

Cisgender- When a person’s gender identity matches their assigned sex. For example, a person assigned female at birth and identifies as a woman is considered cisgender. This term can get confusing with intersex individuals - some use it, some don’t.

HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy)  - This is an important tool in an intersex person’s tool box. HRT ensures that an intersex person’s physical and emotional health needs are properly maintained. If someone’s hormone needs (for things like development, body regulation, or bone growth) aren’t being met, they may go on HRT to figure out the best hormone levels for their bodies.

Informed Consent - This term gets thrown a lot, especially when talking about surgeries of intersex people. Basically, it means that nobody should be operated on without their full knowledge of circumstances, repercussions, reasoning, etc. For example, babies and children are too young to fully understand and give informed consent.

Preferred Pronouns - Many people (intersex or otherwise) don’t identify as a binary gender, especially when their bodies don’t line up in a typical binary box. Ask someone what their preferred gender pronoun is. They’ll love you for it!

What are some other intersex resources?

We have an ever-growing list of resources on our page. Please check there for more information on support groups or legal help.

What can you do as an ally?

Call out others when they say harmful things. Be our advocates where you can, but also give us a chance to educate. Don’t speak over an intersex person, as chances are we’re a lot more familiar with these issues than you are. Listen and try to understand our stories, as we’re pretty incredible people. :)

[genderqueermke]

[intersexroadshow]

I made some signs, because it's 2014 and Milwaukee Pridefest still doesn't have a policy of making gender inclusive restrooms available.

[intersexroadshow]

I just read the entire archive of Intersex Roadshow over the last few days (I'm reading Trans-Fusion now) and I wanted to thank you, because it was brilliant. I've rarely come across someone with such a sensible and well articulated discussion of the facts of human diversity. Definitely recommending your work to just about everyone.

Why, thank you, transponderer!  I'm honored.

[intersexroadshow]

How do you feel about transgender people using the term 'assigned at birth' to describe their socialization as male/female when they identify as neither or as the opposite. I've seen this a lot and I'm quite glad that the genderbinary is being challenged but I worried that a terrible crime (surgically altering the genitals of intersex babies) is being erased from the conversation if 'assigned at birth' takes on such a broad meaning.

Hi there!

I don't have any problem with using the language of "assigned at birth" being used by nonintersex trans* folks.  But I really do wish that trans* people, and everyone else, would acknowledge the big difference between a surgical assignment at birth and a nonsurgical one.  And I would absolutely take offense if a nonintersex trans* person implied that they were intersex to "excuse" their transition.  Nobody needs an excuse--and people who do this don't acknowledge the terrible problem of infant intersex genital mutilation, and often spread misinformation about intersex people along the way.

My personal opinion is not necessarily that of other intersex folks, mind you.  But I'm a believer in sex/gender autonomy.  We're all assigned to binary sexes at birth without asking our opinions.  It's just that this process is generally way more physically coercive for intersex children.

[intersexroadshow]

What I wanted to ask about is a certain configuration - is it possible for an individual to have ovaries, a well-developed uterus, a penis and male secondary traits (i.e. flat breasts)? It's a configuration often found in pornographic fiction, used mostly to justify men getting pregnant. Does it happen in real life?

Hi there.  Yes, I am aware that this is a staple of mpreg fiction.  Some children with congenital adrenal hyperplasia are born with typical ovaries and uterus, a typical-looking phallus, and a scrotum that is empty.  These children have atypically high levels of testosterone at birth.  If they are not altered medically, they will have a feminizing puberty--i.e., grow breasts, and develop a menstrual cycle.  Generally, the period would not exit the body but be retained in the pelvis and gradually reabsorbed.  There would be no way to get sperm to their uteri, which makes pregnancy not possible naturally.  With their higher than average testosterone, they would have more body and facial hair than is typical in females--if high enough, it would suppress the menstrual cycle.  

Almost always in contemporary developed nations, such children are raised as girls, and surgically altered at birth.  The phallus is "reduced" and restructured to appear more like a typical female, and testosterone-suppressant drugs given.  At puberty, a vaginoplasty is performed and these individuals, under medical care, can become pregnant.  But they will will have breasts, hips, and, if continuing their testosterone-suppression, pretty much female patterns of facial and body hair.

In theory, a man could have an embryo implanted in his pelvis and have an ectopic pregnancy (the placenta would attach to the intestines or some other organ).  This would require lots of progesterone and estrogen to be administered, and testosterone suppression.  Most ectopic pregnancies, however, are fatal to the parent.

In any case, to be pregnant, you need a lot of progesterone and fairly low testosterone.  This means breasts, unless you have chest reconstructive surgery.

Short answer: no, this mpreg fantasy is indeed fantasy.

[intersexroadshow]

Sarah or Sartjie Baartman was a Khoisan woman who was enslaved and shipped from South Africa to Europe for exhibition. She was promoted as the "Hottentot Venus," depicted as having savagely sexual features. Advertisers made much of her elongated labia, which they advertised as the "Hottentot curtain." After her death, her genitals were removed from her body and preserved in a jar to be goggled. The truth is that labial stretching was and remains a common cultural practice among peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. In youth, girls undergo years of such stretching, by their hand or by the hands of sisters or female friends, because having long labia is a beauty standard, believed to enhance sexual pleasure for future husbands, to increase the girls' beauty, and to make them more marriageable. Europeans viewed this practice, when they became aware of it, as "savage" and deforming. Today, American and European women are getting surgery to embody the opposite ideal: tiny labia.  Western girls worry that their labia are too big, and render their bodies ugly. All of which goes to show that genital modification is a widespread practice with a very long and varied history--and that cultures treat their body modifications as normal, necessary, and beautifying, but those of Others as abnormal and disfiguring. I think of this every time I hear somebody exclaim in horror over the idea of genital surgery for trans people, or assert the "necessity" of surgically altering the genitals of intersex infants.

[intersexroadshow]

Let me tell you about bluebanded gobies.  In this hermaphroditic species, the greatest number of offspring are produced when most of the fish are laying eggs.  So they form mating groups or families, typically of 3-7, in which one of the gobies’ bodies shifts to sperm-producing mode, and the rest shift to egg-laying mode.  The fish that takes on the inseminating mode needs to be robust, because it must continuously mate with the rest of the fish.  When mating groups form or change, the members all swim about actively, zipping toward one another.  (Actually, this behavior is quite common, and regularly occurs between all of the bluebanded gobies, including the egglaying ones in established groups.)  What determines which goby in a new group will take on the sperm-producing role is the behavior of the other fish.  A goby being zipped at by a zippier fish will dodge out of the way.  This gets called “submission” by scientists, but could just as well be termed “peacekeeping,” and would most accurately be simply called “getting out of the way.”  By engaging in this dance of zipping about, a new group of gobies determines which of the fish is the most energetic and robust.  Often it’s a large fish, but that’s not always the case.  That fish shifts to sperm-producing mode (unless it is already in that mode), and the others shift to egg-laying mode (unless that is already the case).

This story is sadly distorted in most sites and articles about the bluebanded goby.  To find out more, see my full post here.

[intersexroadshow]

Can you speak to the differences between the the term "hermaphrodite" and "intersexed"? Is the former considered rude in general?

The word hermphrodite comes to us directly from ancient Greek mythology, in which the god/dess Hermaphrodite was the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite.  Today, the word hermaphrodite is used by scientists to mean having reproductive capacity as both male and female, either simultaneously (as in snail procreation), or serially (as in many fishes).

In the U.S. today, few people who are born sex-variant use the word hermaphrodite to describe themselves, because it seems to them to imply that they are creatures of myth, or that they have duplicated instead of intermediate sex characteristics.  In America, people use the word intersex, or refer themselves as people with DSDs (Disorders of Sex Development).

In Europe, there are a larger number of people who call themselves "herms" instead of intersex, but in the U.S., it's generally considered rude or clueless by most.

I, personally, don't mind the word hermaphrodite at all, while I would never call myself "disordered" and dislike DSD terminology.  But my position isn't typical of U.S. folks born sex-variant.

[intersexroadshow]

So I wanted to ask you what you think about something I saw on 9gag, but apparently I can't put links in here. So, just go to 9gag and search for "Nobody will ever know". What I'm talking about is a Sudden Clarity Clarence meme that says: "No one will ever know whether it's more painful to give birth or ti get kicked on the nuts". Anyways, what do you think?

That's easy: giving birth.  Unless someone kicks you in the nuts for an average of 12-36 straight hours, of course.

[intersexroadshow]

Am intersex, that c.a.h classic term, am an 80s baby. I reside in the Midwest and am Mexican. Am glad I found your blog, oh so very glad :) I didn't ask a question, just wanted to say hi.

Yay, everythingamnot!  Hello to you :).

[intersexroadshow]

Intersexuality happens.  It happens all the time, in all species, including a lot of birds.  But if you click the link above, you'll get the impression that scientists have discovered the first-ever gender transitioning bellbird.  Er, no.  They just incorrectly assigned this bird female at hatching, when ze's not.

The gender binary is not "natural," people.

[intersexroadshow]

Hey, it's probably kind of late (by a couple months), but welcome to Tumblr! I just read every post on your blogspot blog, and it was ridiculous how much of it was relevant to issues I've been thinking about lately (medical necessity of gender dysphoria treatment, the normative sex/gender typology, how I should view/approach intersex issues as a trans person, and also how best to ask about gender/sex/sexuality on surveys). Anyway it was pretty much brilliant/informative and yeah. :x /fangirl/

I never thought I'd encounter a fanstingray!

Thanks for your support, and I'm glad my Blogspot posts relate to what you've been thinking about. 

[intersexroadshow]

As someone who is intersex by birth and who has gender transitioned, I object to the framing of trans identity as an intersex condition. Hoping to diffuse transphobia, some trans people today are looking for a brain structure housing gender identity. They argue that people are born with a “brain sex,” and that if this “brain sex” differs from the individual's genital sex, they suffer from an intersex condition that must be treated via gender transition.

The difficulties faced by intersex people can indeed relate to gender identity, since children born intersex today are forcibly assigned a dyadic sex at birth, and often subjected to sex reassignment surgery to which they cannot consent. If the child grows up not to identify with the sex to which ze was coercively assigned, gender dysphoria results. But no test has ever been developed that can determine what the eventual gender identity of an intersex person will be—not in the brain, the chromosomes, the gonads or the genitals. And the issues intersex people face center on forced sex assignment in childhood--something which advocates of the intersex brain thesis tacitly support when they argue that since trans status arises from an intersex brain, it "must" be treated medically. Like many intersex people, I boggle resentfully at the idea held by some trans people that intersex people are “lucky,” have a privileged relationship to the medical community, or are free from stigma in our lives. The belief that being categorized as intersex would lead to advantages, which causes trans people to frame trans identity as an intersex condition, is deeply flawed.

In any case, trying to find the cerebral structure that "houses" gender identity is as silly as Descartes' claim in the 17th century to have found that the soul was located in the pineal gland of the brain.  It's not that simple.

Trans people will win our rights though political activism, not neurology.

For more, see here.