Intervex (main blog)

Intersex - ze/zer/zers - science nerd - science fiction nerd

[intervexual]

Pinned post

This blog:

Intersex stuff & queer stuff! 🏳️‍⚧️

Science stuff 🐌

Also me:

I'm posting flags/coinings on @intervex

Moi:

Pronouns: ze/zer/zers preferred, will also respond to she/her/hers and xe/xer/[xer|xis]. I do not use they/them.

Intergender intersex (specifically fluid/flux: interdemiagender + interdemineutrois + interdemiwoman + interdemiandrogyne)

Interqueer 🌈 and cripintersex ♿️

I picked the username back when I identified as ipsogender; I've since realized I'm too agender for that. I don't want to cause linkrot or confusion by changing the username though.

Intersex art on my profile:

Intersex snail avatar

Biology was never binary

Intersex pride in space

End intersex surgery

Why did I block you?

Probably because you tagged your sexy photos with the intersex tag. I want to be able to follow that tag without seeing porn. Please stop spamming the intersex tag.

I also block people who write posts along the lines of "intersex/trans people are sick/disordered", "there are only two genders", etc.

(edited 2026-01-25)

[bayesic-bitch]

Starting my speech at the Omelas city council with a child acknowledgement statement

[jurassicpeanut]

No bond stronger than a disabled girl and her disabled cat

[painedandconfusedsblog]

If you see this:

It’s okay to sit down while doing anything in the kitchen. You don’t even need to be disabled or chronically ill. Your feet do not need any excuses. Rest them

It’s okay to cut potatoes in front of the tv while sitting on the couch.

Abled folks could learn a lot from the measures disabled folks take to adapt to their conditions and hack their environment and daily tasks so it benefits them in all the possible ways.

And - it is an investment in future self to learn the skill of adaptation should one fall ill or disabled for any reason.

[crippled-peeper]

“Psychotic people aren’t homeless in the streets or psych wards!!! some of us are playing video games” some psychotic people ARE homeless in the streets and in psych wards and they don’t deserve to fucking die for it or be forgotten or swept aside because they aren’t a convenient poster child for your symptoms RAAAAHHH

[tearlessrain]

I really do think an important component of activism is to make sure your motivation is based on a desire to help/improve things for the people being harmed by a system, and not hatred for the ones doing the harm. both for mental health reasons, and because either way you're training your neural pathways and it's gonna turn out a lot better for literally everyone if the question on everyone's mind after achieving a goal is "how/which people can we help next, what's the next step for improving things" and not "who do we need to attack next."

I'm not saying don't be angry, there are a lot of good reasons to be angry right now and it makes for an excellent kick in the pants, just don't define yourself by it or it's gonna poison you and potentially do collateral damage.

[roach-works]

the easiest people to attack will always be whoever’s closest and whoever’s vulnerable.

if you’re training yourself to enjoy the thrill of righteous violence, your easiest, quickest joy is going to be from attacking someone in your peer group, not whoever’s actually got the social leverage to be oppressing you.

this is called lateral violence and is the absolute bane of activist circles everywhere.

[mx-macintosh]

they are estrogen and testosterone. they are estrogenizing and androgenizing hrt. stop fucking calling them transfem and transmasc hrt. stop fucking calling them mtf and ftm hrt. stop fucking calling them feminizing and masculinizing hrt. stop going out of your way to exclude non-binary and intersex people.

[jaubaius]

[nabi3000]

[narcissistcookbook]

the second eel at the end in its little cuck shelter 💜

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

eel deets from @whitefangthefightingwolf

[reikomakoto]

[invisiblebard]

[mammalianmammals]

When ranchers in Utah's Rich County found eighteen sheep killed in March 2022, they assumed coyotes. USDA Wildlife Services flew a plane over the kill site and found something feeding on the carcasses that had only been confirmed in the state eight times in forty years. It was a wolverine. Utah sits at the extreme southern margin of the wolverine's North American range. The animal is built for the deep snow and high alpine of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, country above ten thousand feet where the winters last eight months and the terrain rejects everything that is not specifically engineered to survive it. A wolverine showing up in Utah's ranch country was not a routine predator complaint. It was a biological event. State wildlife managers had no protocol for it because they had never needed one. Biologists set specialized barrel traps near the sheep carcasses. Catching a wolverine in a live trap is considered one of the most difficult captures in North American wildlife management. The animal is trap-smart, solitary, covers enormous distances daily, and operates almost exclusively in terrain that humans struggle to access on foot. The odds of a wolverine walking into a barrel trap were close to zero. The next morning, a sheepherder found one of the trap doors dropped. Inside was a healthy, twenty-eight-pound male, estimated at three to four years old. It was the first wolverine ever live-captured by biologists in Utah's history. The team sedated him, packed his body in ice to keep his core temperature stable during the examination, fitted him with a GPS tracking collar, and released him into the deep snow of the Uinta Mountains. For researchers who had spent careers studying an animal they almost never got to see, that collar was the first real-time data source on wolverine movement the state had ever produced. The data that came back over the next twenty-five days confirmed what wolverine biologists in other states had documented but Utah had never been able to verify on its own ground. The animal logged over 195 miles of travel in less than a month. He did not drift south toward lower elevations or leave the state. He locked into the high peaks of the Uintas above ten thousand feet and ran massive looping circuits through avalanche chutes, rocky ridgelines, and snowfields deep enough to bury a man standing upright. The daily distances he covered would qualify as an endurance event for a human athlete on flat ground. He was doing it through the most physically punishing terrain in the state, in winter, alone, at elevation, without stopping. The eighteen dead sheep that started the whole sequence were never repeated. The wolverine moved into the high country and stayed there, operating in a landscape so remote and so hostile that the only evidence of his existence was the GPS signal pinging coordinates from ridgelines that no person had visited in months. The collar proved what the forty years of scattered sightings could only suggest. The wolverine was not passing through Utah. It was living there, quietly covering nearly two hundred miles of frozen alpine rock in less than a month, completely invisible to every human being in the state.

Source: Utah Division of Wildlife Resources / USDA Wildlife Services

[plain-flavoured-english]

As a Greek, in response to the current controversy about Matt Damon being cast as Odysseus, I'd just like to share that one of the moments that changed my brain chemistry as a kid was reading a novelized version of the Odyssey and coming across the following description of Odysseus when Circe sees him for the first time and thinks he's hot: "his hair curled like a clematis and his eyes were very brown".

So may I present my own casting choice for Odysseus:

[plain-flavoured-english]

Excuse me???

[ruffboi-mags]

you are right and you should say it.

[instantduckninja]

Is this the face of a man who would put his own infant in front of a plow to avoid going to war?

Absolutely not

You know who would try that shit?

Is this the face of a man who would defy the very gods to get home to his wife?

You know who would defy the gods just to show he could get away with it?

[fluffmugger]

The last thing Penelope's suitors ever see:

[one-hell-of-a-sheep]

why does oscar wilde take 150 pages to write something he could literally say in a paragraph

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

gay

[yurious-george]

compelling argument

[mossadspydolphin]

what does this say about victor hugo

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

no he was just french

[jam-the-hologram]

R.R Tolkien?

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

autistic infodumping

[elden-12]

Put this together and I dread to think how long a novel by an autistic gay Frenchman would be. :p

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

[darknymfa-art]

Marchosauria day 28, Nqwebasaurus thwazi. Had a little fun with the long wispy feathers on this one. Plus a little iridescence on the black for funsies.

[lifesgrandparade]

I want you guys to all start making a bigger stink about Tumblr's Age Verification Horseshit.

[lifesgrandparade]

Like they tried to change Reblogs and people rightfully got up in arms, this is a LOT worse. In order to have access to any sort of thing dubbed mature, and We haveALL seen what they think is mature, Everything from a black and white photo of a black woman's arm, to posts about IUD recalls, to a nude painted by a 17th century artist, to anything involving the word Trans; you have to send your personal information to a third party site that WILL get hacked, and you will be doxxed. And they can say "Oh shit, well it wasn't us who sent your name address and gender identity to Moldovan teenagers, here's a couple extra minutes in the ball pit.

That's bad enough!!!!!!!! But the entire idea of needing permission from state authorities to access anything labeled mature by our friendly AI overlords is some fucking Boll shit. Die Gedenken Sind Frie baby. This is all a reaction to people getting uppity about their lowly lowly rights and is being propped up by the same bad actors tht have made life unlivable. Fuck that shit.

"Well it's only being rolled out in Brazil and UK" Yeah, to start. "Well they're being forced to do this by laws." YOu know it's always really funny when these tech giants (Or whatever you call owning tumblr dot com) get really antsy about laws considering they pick and choose which ones they abide by.

This is a breaking point and it's going to be very interesting to see how we proceed from here.

[teh-nos]

i get this now and it won't let me click through to any 'mature' blogs :(

[herpsandbirds]

Urubamba Antpitta (Grallaria occabambae), family Grallariidae, order Passeriformes, southern Perú

photograph by Lev Frid 

[intervexual]

Hey hey! I just wanted to say thank you so much for the wiki. I know it may not be perfect, but I hope folks catch on and are able to help with any issues it comes across.

I’m like half awake and only just read up on stuff, so I may be a little groggy on the situation. But I do just want to notate for the baby queers that it’s an unfortunate importance to include sources and histories of harmful, bigoted shit. Anyone who’s familiar with the early waves of feminism knows how utterly exclusionary and racist that Shit was and continues to be. Mad Pride is an infamous yet staple part of early disability advocacy. Sanitization of our history is literally going to perpetuate the issue; acknowledging how far we’ve come is a vital and powerful part of activism. Putting down the history is not endorsement of the methods. You’re doing fine. ❤️

Thank you 💜

[intervexual]

Regarding criticisms of Intersex Wiki

Ursinefutchass has kindly unblocked me so I can see his criticisms of Intersex Wiki and I'd like to address them each.

First issue: there are some citations to radfems on the wiki One of the difficulties of making a wiki like Intersex Wiki is that so many sources on intersex and intersex-relevant topics come from sources that are intersexist and/or transphobic.

Alice Dreger is a significant figure in intersex studies. While I personally shy away from citing her, she can't be avoided entirely, she's had such a large impact on the field.

Many of the medical sources on intersex variations literally describe how to do IGM, and more often than I'd like, they're the only sources around 🤮. If we limited sources on the wiki to only those we find palatable, we'd be losing out on a lot of useful information.

Citation is not endorsement. It indicates the provenance of information. That does not mean I (or any other editor on the wiki) approve of the people we are citing. In the specific case of the degendering article, it was mostly radfems I could find who were writing on the topic 😩. It is a wiki and you can improve it by making edits - if there are sources on degendering that you'd like to see incorporated, it'd be awesome for you to add them! 💜 Second issue: slurs are typed out Wiki policy is that all pages that contain slurs should have content warnings. Generally, we try to keep slur usage minimal. But this is an educational resource, and unfortunately sometimes slurs do need to be typed out in order to educate people that they are slurs.

Yes, the two-spirit article spells out the slur that the term two-spirit was coined to replace. I did this because many white settlers do not even know it's a slur. 🫤 The word is explicitly described as derogatory, and there is a content warning for slurs at the top of the page.

You can help improve the two-spirit article too! I would welcome the help! 💜

It is news to me that a certain Jewish word has been used as a slur. I am not Jewish and I'm afraid my knowledge is limited to the sources I could find on the matter. So far, one person other than myself has corrected information on that page and I really appreciate it and hope more people will help out! 💜

While I'm at it, you can also improve the hirsutism article! The point of a wiki is that other people can edit it to improve the article. I do my best with the sources available to me, but this is not my area of expertise. When my sources are wrong, I can't always realize it. The best I can do is cite my sources so at least you can hopefully realize where the error comes from. 😥

Third issue: prioritization of intersex variations I am one volunteer with limited time and energy. I wish I had so much more time and energy to write more articles, but I don't. 🫤 So I have to prioritize. Thus far, when it comes to writing articles on intersex variations, I have loosely prioritized based on commonality, so that the wiki can be useful to more people more quickly.

Just because a variation is rare doesn't mean it's invalid. EIS is literally on the todo list of pages that should get created. Yes, it got deprioritized because the sources available to me indicated it was rare. But it is still on the list of things to do. 💜

If you would like a variation to get an article, the fastest way to make it happen is for you to create it!

For example, Hormone autoimmunity is in the "rare" bucket, yet has a whole article because somebody other than me wrote it. I honestly would not have prioritized it on my own. But Pusheenthenerdcat took initiative and now it exists! That's awesome! 🥳

(edit to add: I could have done a better job of wording this prioritization and I'm sorry it came across as invalidating.)

Fifth issue: I have cited Tumblr posts without asking first I am citing public information. The posts are on the public internet. I am trying to cite intersex sources and give credit to intersex individuals for their contributions.

Sixth issue: I made some Native intersex flags and I'm white Those flags were specifically requested by ladyimaginarium, who is from the First Nations in question. The post in question literally opens with me replying to an ask from ladyimaginarium. We actually went through multiple rounds of mockups and I got feedback from ladyimaginarium before posting the flags. (edit to add: going forward I will no longer be accepting flag requests for culturally-specific flags.)

Seventh issue: I described Alec Butler as "sus" on a WikiProject page (i.e. not in a wiki article) One of the things we've been trying to do on the wiki is, for each intersex variation, to feature a couple of real people who have this variation. This means I've been trying to keep track of which intersex public figures have disclosed their variation and what it is. Alec Butler is an intersex public figure. A while back I ranted that Middlesex gets all the attention with regard to intersex literature, and that intersex authors like Alec Butler do not. I was promptly informed both in reblogs and DMs that many Native people think that Butler is a pretendian. 🙃

I am not qualified to assess if Butler is a pretendian! But it did get me suspicious of Alec Butler as a source of information.

Alec Butler implies that his intersex variation is progestin-induced virilization (PIV). All the sources I found on PIV described it as something that affects foetal development but not pubescent development.

So it was strange when Butler, who describes his puberty as getting a period and growing a beard, implies (but does not outright state) that his intersex variation is PIV. If Butler had said PCOS or NCAH no alarm bells would go off. But everything I have read about PIV is that it would not affect hormone balance in puberty.

I don't doubt that Butler is intersex, but yeah, I am a bit skeptical that PIV is his (only) intersex variation. For example, it may be that he has PCOS and is nervous about being openly intersex on that basis, and so is using a less controversial variation as cover. 🤷

That may also be why he doesn’t actually say he has PIV, but instead implies it. Look carefully at how he words it: “Like other girls, I got my period and grew breasts, but I also sprouted facial hair. Decades later, I would learn about an intersex condition called progestin-induced virilization, which causes fetuses to develop both male and female sex characteristics in the womb. But this was the early ’70s in a village of fewer than 1,000 people. The word “intersex” wasn’t part of anyone’s vocabulary.” – notice how he never says *he* has this variation, only that he learned about it, and that learning about PIV led him to identify as intersex. 👀

(edit to add: I have removed the Alec Butler comment from the WikiProject page. It was the wrong place to voice my skepticism and it set an inappropriate tone for the page.)

Some final notes Intersex Wiki, like pretty much every wiki out there, is a volunteer effort. I’m not the only editor, but there aren’t a ton of editors other than me, and I’d really like that to change.

In all honesty, I feel overwhelmed by how much there is to do on the wiki. There are so many intersex variations that still don’t have pages. Many of the pages that do exist are missing important information. There’s so much biology content that needs better and clearer exposition. There are whole topics like HRT that haven’t even been touched yet.

I’m learning a lot about intersex studies as I work on the wiki, but I’m still a long way from being an expert. A lot of the best sources available on intersex topics contain errors or assumptions, and sometimes I can spot the errors, and sometimes I can’t. This is one reason I really appreciate it when people edit pages to improve them! 💜

Another reason I kind of desperately want more people editing the wiki is I’m burnt out. Researching different intersex variations has caused me to read a lot of articles explicitly advocating IGM (often with pictures of surgeries of babies 😭) and it is soul-destroying to read 😭. I’ve had to take a big break from creating articles on intersex variations for my own mental health. 

Our community deserves accurate, non-pathologizing information. But I can’t do it alone. If you see errors on the wiki, fixing them (or at least reporting them to me or on the wiki's discord) goes a long way towards improving the wiki. If there’s content you want to see on the wiki and it doesn’t exist yet, be the change in the world you want to see. 💜