So for context, I have no reason to believe I'm intersex. I've not dived deep into my biology, but based on my medical understanding, I'm just an average perisex individual with a few hormone swings. I am multi-gender, but obviously that's not the same.
I have not fully informed myself on what the recent UK Supreme Court ruling truly means for the queer community, but what I've heard is disturbing, and knowing JK Rowling is involved says nothing good to me.
Because of my lack of detailed research, I wasn't yet ready to make any arguments about said ruling, but a woman I know made a FB post about the ruling, and how it's not transphobic. She herself is cis and I don't believe has much experience within queer circles but like I said, I wasn't ready to argue with her on FB. I did point out, however, that regardless of whether or not the ruling targets trans folk (which even if it didn't isn't the point, the point is how people use the legislation to attack us) that in every ruling and decision like this, intersex people are forgotten, discriminated against and ignored. I didn't even put it that bluntly. We had a very good discussion about the differences in UK practices and mindsets regarding intersex rights versus those in the US, I talked about how my understanding is that DSD (which she used) is NOT an appropriate term, yadda yadda. It was reasonable and a quiet step forward.
But oh my lanta. Now I get it. The comments from other people, talking about how intersex people don't exist, how differences in chromosomes/hormones/etc don't make you not a woman (but refusing to define womanhood), how DSD is the term to use and intersex people don't like the term intersex.........There was one woman who genuinely, politely asked about XX and XY as sex-determining. You could tell that she genuinely was asking, "Wait, there's more to this than that? I didn't know!" But everyone else was determined to state that 1.7% of the population just doesn't exist.
And like. Long before I came out as multigender at 28, I was in the waters of gender non-conformity. I was dating a trans woman, my sister is trans, I was already GNC myself. But I'd never borne personal, firsthand witness (ignoring political attacks) to the social disappearing of an entire group of people. Yes, obviously I'm exposed to the genocides of queer folk, Palestinians, POC. I know we're being disappeared en masse. But I've never actually communicated with someone who just straight up said, "Those people don't exist."
And now I have had just a fraction of that feeling injected into my life, and I just - how do people survive? How on earth do intersex folk still wake up every day and make coffee and exist with joy? I had ONE bad conversation, and I'm so fucking upset. And I know nothing! I don't even feel super comfortable saying certain things because I don't want to speak for a community of which I am not a part! But I can't just not respond when people are telling me that humans aren't real.
Please, I am so open to feedback. I hope this all comes across the way I mean it to. I don't want to speak for anyone, or over anyone. I just - I'm isolated, and now I can appreciate so much more the reality of what all of us who are targets are fighting.
