a term for people with moral OCD who feel like they have to consistently make up for their misdemeanor or personal idea of bigotry in a sisyphean manner. they may feel like making a mistake equals regression or going back to the start, or like theyve never atoned enough.
this doesnt have to do with making up for actual bigoted behavior or being responsible for your actions and is mainly focused on exaggerated self punishment as a form of compulsion or self harm.
exclusive to people with moral OCD, I wont move on this, if you relate to this enough to ID with it please check moral OCD symptoms. its more common than youre lead to believe.
name comes from the greek myth of the Danaïdes, the 50 daughters of Danaus who murdered their husbands on the night of their wedding and got punished for it by being instructed to carry water in jugs to a bath to wash away their sins with, except the bath itself has no bottom or otherwise has a hole, thus they will never be clean of their sin.
1) a d/Deaf/HoH person who enjoys presenting feminely.
2) a d/Deaf/HoH person who is trans.
It was meant to be the first definition only but when I made the flag I realised the colours were white, pink, and blue so I thought "why not give it two definitions?"
[ID: a white flag. It has the outline of fluff on the bottom left and right corners, and a cat mouth and nose in the bottom-middle. There are blue and pink sparkles around the flag. End ID]
I chose siberian cats bc I think they're beautiful and I love them. With the flag I just did what I thought was pretty :3 [cat smile].
Teratical: a coining for people who want to resist/subvert ideas of "monstrosity"
Teratical: an individual whose appearance is stigmatized in a way that society frames as "monstrous", who is critical of this framing and seeking to reject/resist/subvert ideas of "monstrosity". A solidarity-building term for liberation-seeking minorities that are the subjects of teratology: intersex people, disabled people, fat people, people with disfigurements, etc.
The term rhymes with "emphatical". The word teratical is presently an obscure word in English which means “incredible, marvellous” and shares the root terato- (monstrous) that is used in medicine. 😯
Speaking back to teratology
This is a backdoor way of reclaiming of the root terato- (monstrous) that is used in medicine. Teratology is the study of congenital “defects” and continues to be an active subfield of biomedical research. Some related terms include: teratosis (having such a congenital difference), teratogenesis (the development of a teratosis), and teratogen (an environmental substance which causes teratogenesis).
The scope of teratology as a discipline has long included intersex people, people with disfigurements, and a large variety of disabilities. It includes environmental teratoses (e.g. fetal alcohol syndrome) and genetic ones (e.g. Down syndrome). It’s worth noting that teratology has consistently included the study of people whose “monstrous” traits emerged over the course of their life span. Intersex variations which first become apparent at puberty have reliably been within the scope of teratology: congenital means you were born on this path, not necessarily that it was visible at birth.
While fatness, madness, and acquired disfigurements (e.g. burn survivors) haven't consistently been within the scope of teratology, the point here is for us teratical folks to reframe the conversation. I don't see a need to limit ourselves to the traditional scope of teratology. Fat people, burn survivors, mad folks, and anybody else who feels the spectre of monstrosity can use the term.
Why coin this term?
Because I want a way to talk about the shared history of intersex, disfigurement, and disability. I want a way for us to talk about our common political struggles. And I want a way to do it on Tumblr without invoking the Discourse around the term crip. 👀
There’s an academic niche which takes a critical disability lens to the concept of monstrosity (monstrosity studies), and I think it’d be nice to be able to tap into that while working to build solidarity between the intersex, fat, mad, disability, and disfigurement communities.
@scifimagpie contributes a verb form, teraticalizing: to subvert notions of monstrosity in ways connected to disability/intersex/fat/etc justice/liberation. In the same vein of how queering and cripping are verbs used to subvert binaries and ideas about ability.
Flag details
The flag is inspired by the Disability Pride Flag and the Crip Pride Flag. Its stripes represent:
Yellow: the affirmation model of disability. Our existence is not a tragedy. Our lives and our unique viewpoints are valuable. Our bodies are beautiful.
Blue: the social model of disability. It’s not us who are the monsters: the monstrosity we face is the oppression we face.
Olive (yellow-green): the eco-social model of disability. The social model focuses on how the interactions we have in our daily lives disable us. The eco-social model winds back the clock to point out that we can be disabled by social decisions made long before we were born. For example, lead pollution in POC communities is a social cause of disability. I think of this model as “social determinants of health” meets environmental justice meets disability studies.
Purple: the social construction model of disability. “Disability”, “intersex”, and related categories are created by humans, and who is and isn’t included in the categories changes over time and across cultures. Beauty is also socially constructed.
Cerise (pink-red): the radical model of disability. Disability is socially constructed, but in practice we disabled people don’t actually get to control the definition of disability. So let's focus on who experiences ableism. Ableism does not act alone: it shares a deep history with racism and cisheteroperinormativity.
You can learn more about these (and other) models of disability on their Wikipedia page! (Full disclosure: I created and wrote the bulk of the text in the article 😅).
Sub-coinings
While I'm in term coining mode, I thought I'd get the ball rolling on some subtypes:
Interteratical: teratical in a way that is linked to being intersex (e.g. “bearded lady” presentation of hyperandrogenism, Klinefelter’s)
Neuroteratical: teratical in a way which is neurological, such as tremors, paralysis, seizures, dyspraxia, autism, etc.
Musculoskeleteratical: teratical in a way which is musculoskeletal (e.g. brachydactyly, hip dysplasia, kyphoscoliosis)
Syndesmoteratical: teratical in a way connected to a connective tissue disorder (e.g. EDS, Marfan’s)
Dermoteratical: teratical in a way which is dermatological (e.g. albinism, vitiligo)
Fat-teratical: teratical in a way which is linked to being fat
Mad-teratical / psychoteratical: teratical in a way which is mad/mental
Enviroteratical: teratical in a way which is linked to environmental causes (e.g. lead)
Genoteratical: teratical in a way which is genetic (e.g. Down Syndrome, CAH)
Cryptoteratical: teratical in a way which is unknown or unclear (credit: @scifimagpie)
Racioteratical: teratical in a way which is amplified by being racialized
Flags and additional subcoinings on demand. 💜
Tagging for archival: @disabilityflagsarchive @disabilityflags @mad-pride @varsex-pride @radiomogai @liom-archive @interarchive
Spider, or Deaf Spider, is a term for d/Deaf/HoH people who choose to use hearing devices. Coined by me! The choice part is very important!
Flag:
[ID: a flag with 4 stripes. The colours are, from top to bottom: beige, white, grey, and black. There is a brown spider hanging from the top. End ID]
I chose the colours because they're often the colours of hearing devices. I chose spiders because they can't hear (well) and they sense vibrations through their webs, like humans use their hearing devices.
[ID: 2 Flagpole Sitta Disabled flags. Both flags have 4 stripes; a brown one at the top, and a black one at the bottom. The first flag's second stripe is a medium-dark green, then the third stripe is a dark brown-green. The second flag's second stripe is lime green, then the third stripe is dark forest green. End ID]
A term for disabled people who identify with the song Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger. Intended for disabled people whose experience of disability/disabilities are aligned with the lyrics of Flagpole Sitta.
Survey: flags & coinings for combinations of intersex and disability
SURVEY URL: https://forms.gle/d6fUWH7jXBTmEBdS9
In the survey I specify ten different ways that intersex people can identify with disability. I show you 13 different flags which play with disability & intersex visuals in different ways, and I ask you to rate which use cases are most suitable for each flag.
The second page then does the same deal, but with proposed terms. If flags aren't your thing you can skip the first page and go straight to the coining section. 💛
Based on how long it took a friend to do the survey, it will probably take about 15 mins to complete.
EDIT TO CLARIFY: you do not have to be both disabled and intersex to fill in the survey! I ask you on page two if those terms apply to you, so just be clear if you're not disabled/intersex. 💜 I think flags & terms should be ideally legible to out-groups, so the feedback is appreciated! But if there are ties I will prioritize the data from people who are both intersex & disabled.
Yesterday, I posted three flag designs for ways that intersex and disability can go together, and I put up two polls on coining terms. And I got really constructive feedback! Thread is here, also see replies. People had suggestions for alternate coinings and use cases that I have incorporated into the survey.
The survey does not ask you for personal information and I am not collecting emails. If you're logged in with Google it will hopefully save your progress. I turned on the options for people to edit their responses after submission (you'll need to save the special url!) and the option to see other folks' responses.
You can answer the questions in any order. You can skip questions as you desire. You don't have to justify any of your answers.
At the end of the month (September 2024) I'll post the results on this tumblr. If you want a reminder to look for the results, I recommend adding a reminder to your calendar on Oct 2 to come back here. 💜
These are the 13 flags in the survey. In order of appearance, they are:
And under the cut I'll list out the nine use cases. If you have Long Covid like me you might want to have this tab open beside the survey so you can refer to the different use cases.
The ten use-cases I specify are:
"Any reason": Intersex person who identifies as disabled (for ANY reason). Would include ALL of the following cases.
"Variation-specific": Intersex person who considers their specific intersex variation to be a disability. May or may not view other intersex variations as disabilities (e.g. "CAH is a disability but Klinefelter's is not"). Does NOT imply this person accepts the medical model of disability.
"Personal case(s)": Intersex person who considers their personal intersex variation to be a disability. May or may not view others with the same variation as disabled. (E.g. "My CAH is disabling but not everybody has the same experience"). Does NOT imply this person accepts the medicalization.
"Intersex as part of disability community": Intersex person who considers the intersex community to be a member of the broader disability community and/or that intersex rights/justice should be considered part of the disability rights/justice movements. Again, does NOT imply a medical model of disability.
"Debility by intersexism": Intersex person who has a disability caused by intersexist violence. Would include chronic pain from IGM, PTSD from medical trauma, PTSD from bullying, mobility limitation from surviving a hate crime. The term "debility" is used in disability studies for disablement that is caused by structural violence, often implying a slow wearing out from perpetual minority stress.
"Iatrogenic disability":
Intersex person who has an iatrogenic disability. Iatrogenesis is when medical intervention causes disease/disability - such as chronic pain caused by surgery. The term applies regardless of whether the surgery was consensual or involuntary. Somebody who *chose* to get genital surgery that wound up causing chronic pain would fall under this category, but *not* the previous category (debility).
"Commonly correlated disability": Intersex person with a disability which is commonly correlated to their intersex variation. Like Deafness and MRKH. ADHD and EDS are known to be more common amongst intersex people.
"Unrelated disability": Intersex person who has a disability that to them is clearly unrelated to being intersex. Like they acquired a disability through being a combat veteran, and so to them there's no link between this disability and being intersex.
"It's complicated": Intersex person who is disabled and the connection between the two identities is complex and not easy to pin down. Maybe they have a disability where it /might/ be linked to being intersex but they don't know. Or they can't draw a neat distinction between disabling and non-disabling parts of their intersex variation. Or they read the last seven cases and are like "wow I have none of that clarity about how my intersex variation relates to being intersex".
"Any-linked-reason": Intersex person who is disabled and they see *any* kind of link/connection between being intersex and being disabled. The link can be vague/messy! Umbrella category that would encompass #2-7 and #9 (everything except the "unrelated disability" group.)
Tagging @queercripintersex @posting-stuffies @headpainmigraine @intersexflags @daydreamerdisease @interachive since you all chimed in with feedback on the original thread. 💜
Intersex-disabled survey results part 5 (out of 5)! Term coinings
This is the final post in my series of analysing the results of a survey I put out asking people to rate possible flags and term coinings for 10 different ways that intersex people may identify with/as disabled.
All flags are now available here on Wikmedia Commons.
While it was reasonably straightforward for me to match candidate flags to different use cases, matching candidate terms turned out to be not so straightforward 🙃
I'll talk in detail about process under the cut, but to make a long story short, I am coining:
Intersex-disabled: having an intersex-linked disability
Disabled-intersex: intersex and disabled in any way
Allodisabled: disabled in a way that is different/unrelated from what you might expect given other nearby words
Allodisabled-intersex: disabled in a way that is unrelated to being intersex
Codisabled: having a disability which is commonly correlated or co-incident with another nearby word. A non-pathological way to say comorbid.
Intersex-codisabled: intersex and disabled in a way which is commonly correlated to one's intersex variation
Intercomplicated: intersex and having a complicated and uncertain identity with regard to related identities like disability or queerness
Interdiscomplicated (inter-discomplicated): intersex, disabled, and the connection between them is complicated or unclear.
Interqueercomplicated (inter-queercomplicated): intersex, queer, and the connection between them is complicated or unclear.
Intergendercomplicated (intergender-complicated): intersex and the connection between one's gender and being intersex is complicated or unclear.
Sociodisabled: identifying as part of the disability community
Intersex-sociodisabled: an intersex person who considers intersex part of the disability, or who thinks it should be
Politicodisabled: identifying as part of the disability rights/justice movements
Intersex-politicodisabled: an intersex person who considers intersex rights/justice to be part of the disability rights/justice movements, or who thinks it should be
Fat-politicodisabled: same idea with fat liberation
Results and Process
The consistent feedback was that people were underwhelmed by the candidate terms in the survey. 😭 Generally people favoured "intersex-disabled" and "disabled-intersex" and rated them highly for several use cases. Too many use cases really just had the same two terms as being highly rated. 😯
In the survey I asked people to rate how much utility they'd get out of coining a term for every given use case. I then put the weighted averages into a ranked order. The use case with the greatest demand for a term was "intersex as part of the disability community", which I talk about in Part 4.
Intersex-Disabled: Having an Intersex-Linked Disability
The second most-in-demand use case to have its own term was the use case for being intersex and having a disability that is linked in any way to being intersex. This would include people who have iatrogenic disabilities from IGM, people with commonly-correlated disabilities, and folks who personally understand their variation as a disability. Its flag was posted in Part 3 of the series.
Intersex-disabled was the most popular term for this use case, with a rating of 4.3 out of 5.
It follows a pattern that things which are linked to being intersex start with Inter- (e.g. Intergender is one's gender is linked to being intersex). Interdisabled already has an unrelated meaning, so intersex-disabled avoids ambiguity about what "inter" could mean.
Disabled-Intersex: Intersex and ANY disability
This was another highly-in-demand term, coming in fourth in the rankings. Its flag was posted in Part 1 of this series.
The term "Disabled-intersex" was the highest rated term for this use case, with a weighted average rating of 4.4, substantially higher than any other term for this use case.
"Disabled-intersex" was also highly rated for the use case of intersex and having an unrelated disability (4.5). This left a question of which use case to assign "disabled-intersex" to. A suggestion in the open-ended part of the survey suggested adding prefixes to the candidate terms to differentiate them.
I decided it made most sense to give the more concise term to the more general use case, and use a derived term (allodisabled-intersex) for its subtype.
Allodisabled-Intersex: Intersex and Unrelated Disability
Allo- is a prefix used to mean distinct or other. I ran a bunch of potentially suitable prefixes past @scifimagpie and xe immediately perked up for this one given how allo- is already used in the queer community for terms like allosexual. Flag posted here.
Some disabilities are known to be more frequent in intersex people, like EDS and ADHD. Some specific intersex variations have known correlations, like MRKH and Deafness. Flag posted here.
Once again, the highest rated terms for this use case were intersex-disabled (4.2) and disabled-intersex (4.1), and I prioritized these terms for other use cases.
This use case is a subtype of what I've called intersex-disabled (an intersex-linked disability). So, following feedback from the open-ended part of the survey to use prefixes to expand the lexical space, I got to thinking about what prefixes would be most suitable.
I quickly landed on co- because it's used for indicating things go together. "Codisabled" reads to me as a non-pathologizing way of saying comorbid. So: intersex-codisabled.
Inter-discomplicated: It's complicated!
Not everybody has an easy time identifying/articulating what relationship their disability identity has to their intersex disability. Sometimes things are just unclear. 💙 (flag posted here)
The most highest rated terms for this use case were "disabled-intersex" and "intersex-disabled", and those terms were now off the table.
"Disintersex" and "interdissex" came in third and fourth. Feedback from the open-ended responses was that these terms are awkward to say (disintersex sounds like "disinterested" and interdissex sounds like a kind of dissection). I also received feedback that disintersex would likely be understood as a short form of disabled-intersex, so I found myself rather hesitant to assign "disintersex" to a meaning.
Since participants were underwhelmed by the candidate terms offered in the survey, I spent some time trying to brainstorm new terms.
Eventually I landed on "intercomplicated". Workshopping it with @scifimagpie and another disabled intersex person, the feedback I got was it could be interpreted as a gender/queerness thing. So "interdiscomplicated" could be intersex with a complicated disability identity, and "interqueercomplicated" could be intersex with a complicated queer identity, and "intercomplicated" could be an umbrella category for these two varieties
Sociodisabled and Politicodisabled
I talked about these in the last post in the series, but for people who are avoiding a certain word that starts with c, I'm coining these terms!
Sociodisabled being for identifying with the disability community, and politicodisabled for identifying with the disability rights/justice movements.
Groups experiencing ableism can use these terms, such as Intersex-sociodisabled for an intersex person identifying with the disability community, or Fat-politicodisabled for a fat person who sees fat liberation as part of the disability justice movement.
Closing thoughts
Thank you, once again, to all the survey respondents and people who have been voting in my tumblr polls! 💜 Thank you to folks who gave me direct feedback, especially @scifimagpie who helped me get through analysis paralysis on the term coining issue.
Thank you all for reading, and to the archival blogs who archive and share this sort of stuff 💜
Tagging for archival: @interarchive @varsex-pride @disabilityflagsarchive @radiomogai @liom-archive
