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. 💜
