#igm cw

[gonyadaldysgenesis]

to people who have experienced IGM in any form: you are allowed to mourn your body. youre allowed to mourn what couldve been. youre allowed to mourn your loss of sensation, youre allowed to dislike your scarring, youre allowed to feel bitter and angry at the people who made the decision to change your body. even if the surgeries were deemed as "necessary," you are allowed to feel angry for cosmetic changes as well as medically necessary changes you never asked for. youre allowed to feel angry they didnt wait until they could ask you for your consent.

and if it makes you feel any comfort, for those who started ambiguous, they cant take your ambiguity from you. there will always be traces of who you were before they made those changes. there will always be marks to indicate the way you started out. you deserve to feel proud of what you had.

for those who received results you are happy with, im happy the surgeries went the way you wanted. my heart still goes out to you for not being given the choice to be asked first. my heart still goes out to you for the lack of care doctors seems to show at making sure you can still have full sensation. even if it went in the direction you wouldve picked, you still deserved better.

for those who dont know yet, or who may not ever know, if they went through IGM, please take your time. its a slow and heavy process to get through. listen to your body. youre not an imposter for trying to understand yourself and your intersexuality. i am here for you just the same as people who have confirmed IGM.

you deserved the autonomy to your body, and im so sorry that choice was taken from you.

you deserved better.

[bloody-bang]

I think people should be more mad at how often infants are mutilated despite being perfectly healthy and alive while being visibly intersex. I think people should be more mad at intersex kids being forced onto hormones without their knowledge or consent, to the point it makes them ill and suicidal. I think people should be more mad that intersex people are systematically harmed every day by the medical systems and society.

[intersapphic]

This is a reminder that regardless of their gender or sexuality intersex people are subject to conversion therapy, genital mutilation, assault and domestic abuse, lifelong medical abuse, social exclusion and discrimination, and we obviously have very high rates of mental illness and often other disabilities. We have history of being incarcerated for being intersex, dehumanized and seen as monsters, taken away and thrown out of our families. If you don’t take that seriously and say we’re “sucking the fun” out of things by telling you about the reality we live in, you’re not deserving of respect or decency because you’re a bitch.

[intersex-support]

it really drives me crazy that in the debate for trans rights, intersex people get completely forgotten by both sides. like, don't get me wrong, im a trans man and understand that the knee-jerk response to terfs saying 'they're transing kids genders' is to say that nobody's fucking doing that, because trans kids aren't getting access to puberty-blockers, even (they should be allowed puberty blockers tho but that's a whole other subject), let alone HRT or surgeries.

except for intersex kids. and i understand when trans people forget about us, it's usually not malicious ignorance, but it still hurts. and then of course there's the ridiculousness that is terfs claiming that kids are getting gender-affirming treatments while completely ignoring the realities of IGM. like. just say you hate trans people.

it feels like nobody cares about us except ourselves, and even then internalized intersexism is so pervasive that we barely even have that. it gets a little lonely. and im privileged enough to have a less visible intersex condition - i can only imagine what it's like for people who don't have that privilege.

What's fucked up is that there is evidence showing hrt saves trans kids lives, and igm puts intersex lives in danger. It's almost like taking autonomy away and dehumanizing people is a bad thing... because it is lol. Also to add to that, it's not just puberty blockers, hrt, and surgery that's being denied to trans people (AND intersex people for that matter, whether trans or not we often get denied essential hormones and affirming surgeries), it's also just the denial of being able to express ourselves in general.

Honestly, a lot of dyadic trans people often make it feel like they're the only ones suffering from the enforcement of gender, and that their experience is the epitome of all gender experiences. I'd like to say it's because they don't know any better, but some of them most definitely do. It's hard when intersex trans people are the only ones talking about it, it makes it feel like we're only collateral damage.

I would love to see more dyadic trans people think better about their wording, trans spaces need to start being safe for intersex people. We really do not have a lot of places we can go right now.

Edit: dyadic people, don't reblog this. We do not have the capacity currently to deal with discourse that always comes with things like this being shared. We're also not here to tell you how to be inclusive of intersex people unless we choose to.

[silver-and-ivory]

>If you are looking around for information about intersexuality, one of the first things you’re likely to read is that “most intersex children are assigned female at birth.” This is in fact false.

>In the U.S. today, according to the CDC, one in 125 children assigned male at birth is surgically modified to fit that binary sex status. The percentage of children assigned female at birth who are genitally altered in infancy to feminize their genitalia seems to be lower. Exactly how much lower is very difficult to determine, since nobody is gathering the data we’d need to have. The reason we know the 1-in-125 figure is because these children assigned male are all given the same diagnosis: hypospadias. Hypospadias is the diagnosis given to most children born with intermediate genitalia who have external testes. Rates of hypospadias have been increasing, and the CDC is collecting data due to concern about that.

>The reason people continue to say that few intersex individuals are assigned male is that doctors term hypospadias a “penile malformation” rather than an “intersex condition.”

>I’ve written about this before in this post. I noted there, “medical diagnostic categories are not logical, despite our ideology that they should be so. The majority of individuals born with intermediate sexual anatomies [and surgically assigned male] are not given an intersex diagnosis. I believe that what underlies this is gender ideology. And that gender ideology is this: masculinity is fragile, especially when it comes to what a man has in his pants. To live as a man with an inadequate penis is seen as intolerable. To have one’s status as a ‘real man’ challenged is viewed as psychologically crushing. Thus, doctors feel, if they were to categorize someone as intersex and then assign them male, they would be acting cruelly. Women, on the other hand, are perceived as more gender-flexible. After all, it’s reasoned, a woman isn’t shamed by wearing pants or taking on a power career. [Doctors view] female-assigned people as more comfortable with androgyny and as better at dealing with emotional challenges.” Because of assumptions about fragile masculinity and flexible femininity, doctors feel more at ease assigning children they designate as intersex female. Those they regularly surgically alter to conform to binary male sex norms, they wish not to label intersex.

[intersex-support]

hi, i hope it's okay to ask tmi questions haha.

in short, do you think it's possible that i (34 afab, born in oklahoma if that make a difference) could have been operated on as a newborn without my parents' knowledge?

a bit longer: i've never been able to orgasm. i'm ace and on an SSRI so i don't have much urge, but any time i've tried, i've found that i just don't have a lot of sensation in my clitoris. it's not remotely like what other afab people describe.

i'm diagnosed with PCOS, tests have shown i have elevated testosterone and i have a number of secondary male sex characteristics. it wouldn't take much of a logical leap to imagine that i was born with intersex genitals and operated on, but i've talked to my mom about my hormones and everything, and i absolutely believe that if she knew i'd been operated on she would tell me. my father is an ass i don't talk to and don't trust, so it's feasible he could know.

sorry for the rambling ask, but the idea that i could have been operated on as an infant and had my capacity to experience sexual pleasure destroyed is... a bit upsetting. appreciate your time, thank you.

Hi, so I think it is totally possible that this could be the reason for being unable to orgasm, but it is only one of many reasons that could exist. I would say it's not unheard of that someone could experience surgery as an without the full consent of parents/guardians, but if they saw absolutely no signs of it while you were younger then it seems unlikely (if they changed you as a child they may or may not have seen something, I can't be sure, but surgery is surgery and it needs to be taken care of so it doesn't become infected and heals properly).

Inability to orgasm can have multiple other reasons, it's not unheard of for intersex people to have pelvic floor dysfunction, generally pelvic floor issues. The use and strength of your pelvic floor muscles affects the arousal/blood flow of the clitoris.

You mentioned being on an SSRI, that definitely affects ability to orgasm as well, but anxiety and depression themselves can also be a factor because they may cause tension, or create a mental blockage.

Basically, I would not stress too much about possible operation if lack of orgasm is your only clue. I would say generally looking into pelvic floor health is good for EVERYONE, so looking into it might be helpful for you. Understanding how muscle strength/stretching, nervous system issues, digestion, breathing/diaphragm strength affects the pelvic floor can help a lot of people long-term.

Surgery could be a possibility, and an extremely distressing one at that, but even if that is the case it might be helpful for you to understand the health and needs of your body in general, and know what capacity for pleasure you do have.