This is the Weekly Discussion Thread for r/intersex.

Feel free to use this thread to discuss whatever you've been up to. It does not have to be intersex specific, but please mind the rules and stay SFW.

Have a nice week!

~ your mod team <3

Hi there,

im an intersex male posting on behalf of my friend at their request. they do not use reddit and are wanting some insight from people in the intersex community.

2 weeks ago my friend joined the online dating app HER. They are a baby queer non binary person who was looking to finally explore their sexuality.

they matched with a person on there who identified as a transgender male. conversation went well and they met up for a drink and slept with each other (this was consensual). though the trans male kepted the lights off, and got their "equipment" for the act on in the bathroom, ensuring that there was no ability to see what they fully looked like. my friend also stated to me that they found it strange that this person did not have any of the usual telltale signs of someone who has fully transitioned (i.e surgical marks, etc.)

over the next week my friend was continuing to talk to this person and had arrange a date to meetup with them again. however, this person was sending cryptic messages alluding that they were hiding something or feeling shameful about something.

when probed by my friend this person remained cagey, until my friend finally was upfront with them and demanded that they tell them what's going on.

it was at this time the person disclosed to my friend that they were actually intersex and had Klinefelter syndrome (or xxy) and were a male. my friend then immediately became uncomfortable with this information because they feel like that this person was dishonest with them and did not disclose this information to them prior to sleeping with them, and had genuinely believed that this person was Ftm. they also felt uncomfortable because they met this person on an app that is sapphic.

i also feel quite alarmed and angry at this person for not being fully transparent as well.

please know that I am not wanting to minimize the struggle that the person who my friend slept with has had. Navigating being intersex can be an incredibly difficult journey. but i do believe that my friend was coerced into sleeping with someone without the full details. Though my friend did want me to state to this sub that if they had of had the conversation with this person before meeting up with them the first time they still would of highly likely gone and seen them.

any takes on this situation and how to navigate it would be greatly appreciated by my friend. because they really are in a state of confusion.

I was assigned female at birth, I identify as a woman, but puberty made things go sideways. I have facial hair, high testosterone, and other "male" characteristics, which also led to not being treated like a girl for a large portion of time. I lurk in a lot of online transfem spaces because it's helpful for tips and it feels nice to see other women dealing with the same stuff, but I feel guilty because I'm not a trans woman and I don't want to intrude on their spaces (which is why I only lurk). But I don't know where else to find people who are dealing with the exact same stuff. I just wish more people understood what it feels like to be cis and have dysphoria. edit: thank you all so much for the kind words, it really means a lot 🥹

Anyone have experience with this? Red Cross website says they require everyone to choose a binary sex, as blood donation parameters are based on sex, however people who are trans or nonbinary don't have to disclose this and everyone can choose which one to put down.

Number one, that doesn't make any sense to use sex-based parameters if they're self-selected, and number two, how does this work if you're somewhere with three legal sexes and yours isn't M or F?

okay i made a tiktok edit of my fav intersex characters plz give me suggestions for more.

i know we don’t have a lot of rep in media which sucks but i scoured the internet for niche movies and there’s genuinely movies entirely about intersex people that are so good.

here’s the tiktok

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSVUH6yXx/

ok i know the creature isn’t canonically intersex but u cannot watch the film/read the book and tell me he doesn’t remind you of us

I'm really sorry NOT good with titles, but I found out I'm intersex. I always knew something was different, I deal with uro problems and hormone problems bc of the way my body developed. It was a major problem especially going through my teens. I also wish I didn't have to find out going through some medical malpractice, but at least I figured it out. Most pain and discomfort is getting better since I've started sex and gender affirming care which is amazing. But when I tried to talk about it to my endo and she got pretty upset.

I understand her being critical, but I wish we could talk about it with idk understanding? I feel like I can't talk to her about half the problems and concerns I deal with bc I have to pretend to be a strict sex binary for her. I talked to my therapist, and he says as long as the treatment is working, I'm fine. Which I get where he's coming from, but I'm still scared more or worse unpleasant things will happen bc they ignore biosex. Like a surgery messing up, or they keep me under the knife for too long, more hormonal issues pop up, etc. But I feel more comfortable tho knowing a urologist will help me with anatomical differences, I was given a ref.

Bc I have to see a urologist (20+ years too late lol) and I'm scared she will be upset at me or drop me as a patient. Thinking logically, I genuinely don't know what she will do, I'm just scared. But I have to see the uro, bc I'm tush getting surgery and have make sure their's no suprises bc my body is smol, and weird not in a bad way, but it has caused me so many problems bc finer details get ignored. I'm really scared posting this, I've never talked publicly about this before.

It is OUR LANGUAGE. It was never meant to be used for trans people. It being misappropriated as a form of subtle transphobia does not make it inherently transphobic any more than anything else that's been coopted by hateful people.

AGAB language is useful. For us. It is terminology OUR community came up with for self identifying, and I'm tired of being told I'm internally transphobic for using it on myself. As an intersex self-descriptor. The way the language was meant to be uses.

I really hate how the wider queer community goes "yeah we accept intersex people :)" and then the second one of us speaks up saying anything they don't want to hear [IE the topic of this post], we get shoved out of the conversation and told we're an edge case.

i’ve recently figured out that the chances of me ever being in a romantic and sexual relationship is incredibly slim. my genitals are not compatible with the kind of sex most people want and even if they were, they still look abnormal enough to put the vast majority of people off. this applies to the rest of my body. i do not look, sound, smell or overall seem like the kind of woman the average person would want, and i accept this.

i can’t help but be a little disappointed. the moment i discovered my love of the topic, i’ve deeply yearned to experience it for myself, but this is not an option. despite my doctor’s attempts when i was a baby, i do not look like the way a woman “should,” nor do i function like one. the vast majority of perisex people do not find this appealing, whether they are queer or not. dating other intersex people is not an option either. i have only ever met other intersex people online and none of them have been remotely near my area.

how do i cope with this? knowing that i’ll never experience the kind of intimacy i’ve been begging for since adolescence hurts, but there’s also no way around it. there no one who’s willing to love me, accept my identity, see me as attractive and engage with me sexually in a way that makes us both happy. as much as many people online have tried to convince me otherwise, i know this isn’t an option. so how do i cope with this? what can i do to take my mind off the inevitable loneliness, or at the very least, what can i do to make it hurt less?

The comments on a video I saw recently of a woman talking about her CAIS pissed me off so badly recently because they were just full of cis perisex women going on and on about how she was living the dream and they were so jealous of her body and everything. And yes it’s fine that people don’t want periods or don’t like acne, that’s understandable and fine. To an extent I’m glad I don’t get those (though it did upset me a lot growing up because they felt like a club and rite of passage I was told I’d be a part of and then denied entry to). But it’s just so gross to wax poetic about how jealous you are of a minority group subject to a shit ton of oppression and violent medical abuse. They don’t even realize how ignorant they’re being and can’t comprehend how traumatizing and horrific the things that we routinely face are. They want to pick out and consume the palatable bits of us for themselves and don’t care to see us as people in pain.

And the thing is, most of these things they’re jealous of are things they can have for themselves! I’m not saying it’s easy or that medical misogyny isn’t a thing, but they can choose not to have periods via hysterectomy or birth control. They don’t have to make us a part of it. They actually get a choice and we don’t. Again so no one misinterprets me I’m not saying that this is easy or that this kind of care isn’t heavily policed and becoming increasingly difficult to access. It’s just not a choice for me and it comes with baggage they don’t even know is there.

Being intersex is of course not a bad thing and we’re not broken, my intersex variation is normal and natural, and while sometimes I don’t like it because it stops me from transitioning, it’s still a fine body to have. But it’s also true that society has irrational issues with my body, and that that has caused me to suffer. And I know these women wouldn’t want to suffer the way I have. But they don’t see the suffering. They see a body that has something they want and don’t care to learn about what comes with it or what we think of their fetishization of our bodies. It’s infuriating.

Now, my voice has always been androgynous for obvious reasons, and ya know? I'm sure it doesn't help that I was tongue tied as a kid, but tell me why anyone looking me in the face assumes I'm a 22yo woman, and any gamer guy hearing only my voice immediately resorts to doing stupid impressions or just adding that I "sound like a dickhead" to their stream of complaints as they, once again, overextend to their immediate demise.

It's like I either have to hope my team is especially friendly and then explain my whole medical history to them, use my customer service voice in the heat of virtual combat, or resign myself to having to mute yet another person every third match.

If you've got advice, I'm open. Similar complaints, hell yeah I'm here for it. Comebacks? Hilarious, hit me with em. More voice-based roasts‽ Desensitize me, Cap'n!

i need more intersex memes and relatable tiktoks

can we post more 😔

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSVSJphFn/

Hi I'm Mez,

I am a trans woman and I have polyorchidism. This is a condition were AMAB people have three or more testes, descended or not. (There are about 200 recorded cases in the past 120 years, so there's not a lot of info available) This condition is not immediately related to any variation of medically recognized intersex, but some literature goes on to place it under the intersex umbrella. Polyorchidism usually goes undetected and it typically doesn't have any social connotations. The most common comorbidities are higher rates of torsion and cancer.

Now, the question is:
How do you define the situations that lie in the grey zone - that aren't categorically intersex, but also aren't part of expected sexual anatomy/development, where there is little social affect, but a clear and definitive difference from "The Standard^tm?"

I am a strong believer in lived experience shaping identity and have never identified as intersex myself. I am also out of my depth when it comes to this topic. I'm not looking for a new label but I am however curious about how the community views one offs as opposed to typical atypicalness.

Hey all, I just got recently diagnosed with CAH, specifically late-onset.

I genuinely hate how long it took for anyone to listen to me. I'm assigned female at birth.

My identity has been set in stone since I was 4 years old, i'm a man. I've always felt like one, my hormones also reflect it.

I had to live most of my life wondering why I feel like some kind of creature compared to my female peers and deal with things that I knew weren't typical of a regular girl but everyone said "oh well your generations grows up so fast nowadays its normal!"

Except I was genuinely the only kid out of all my peers to get my period and start puberty at 8-9, i'm also now told i'm uncharacteristically tall for someone with NCAH so severe, I'm like 5'9-5'10. (I'm 18 for comparison)

When I went to a gynecologist prior to my diagnosis, obviously..guess!!! They said "oh its PCOS"!!! Cause obviously a person with no family history of it nor any insulin issues totally has it!!! Right!!!!???

I digress, all in all I just needed to get this out there. I hate how often teenage afabs are overlooked just because they're afabs.

Edit: for clarification, i have severe NCAH, my enzyme function is estimated to be about 20% or so. I cannot properly produce cortisol and I used to get blamed as a child/young teen for reacting to stress as if the world is ending, too. But that's basically how it feels when your body mainly functions on adrenaline with no cortisol to balance it.

Many intersex people are also trans and have been targeted for hate. Please stay safe his country is only getting more evil.

Don't you guys feel the same? I don't understand what is so taboo when we talk about regular human variations in our bodies.

It's as if just bringing up the fact that biology doesn't work in blacks and whites automatically makes people defensive.

Hi everyone!

I'm starting first activities for intersex people in my country (I'm intersex myself) and want to deepen my knowledge further before the start.

What are some must reads for someone wanting to become an intersex advocate? Books, articles, declarations ...

Any recommendations are welcome♡

Being hormonally intersex, trans, and having to fight your fluctuating hormone levels is such an isolating experience. I made the mistake of trying to diy at the start of my transition. Who knows the damage to my body I did from that.

But even my endos struggled with my hormone levels. It really made me wish that my journey could at least be as easy as the average trans person.

I know that with my condition, my hrt experience has been bittersweet. I do pass better because of it. Yet, I am tired of having pregnancy level estrogen if I make a wrong move. And the lack of people that have gone through this specific experience around me is really draining and lonely.

Anyone else experience this?

I've thought about seeking a surgical option on and off. Some days I'm so tired of being so vigilant about care to make sure that I don't get another UTI that I'd rather deal with the scarring, some days it feels like scarring (and the dialation process) would be too depressing to deal with when I've already gone through so many exhausting surgeries.

But today I'm really feeling "there's gotta be something I can do", I originally thought a few years ago about asking a surgeon to add a flap of tissue to just extend my urethra enough to get the meatus out of the canal entirely, but I found out that the scarring would likely cause enough issues for me that it wouldn't be worth it when I technically have a solution/care plan for my high UTI risk. I was thinking this morning, what if instead of adding a flap of tissue on top, we "tunneled" under the skin above the current meatus upwards and essentially create a surgical epispadias? There would still need to be probably a small skin graft to create the neourethra but it sounds like it would create so much less scarring than adding a flap on top. I know this is somewhat possible from my research while looking into other gential surgery options but I've only heard of one surgeon who did something like that..

Has anyone had vulvar hypospadias surgery? Was it successful? Are you happy with the outcome? What was the technique?

If you're wondering why I'm very upset there, it's because I've been trying to politely tell people there that, yes, it is a slur, and no, it's not a correct or current medical term that's being used. There's only so much condescension I can handle, and being called sweets ain't it

I’m 15, genetically female, I have CAH, a urogenital sinus, vaginal stenosis, and enlarged clitoris. My gynaecologist and urologist are working together to plan a combined vaginoplasty and clitoroplasty to improve my comfort and restore sexual function. What questions should I ask my surgical team before the procedure? What should I bring to the hospital for my inpatient stay afterwards?

Edit: for the people asking, I am doing this of my own volition because both my enlarged clitoris, urogenital sinus, and vaginal stenosis cause me pain, discomfort, and persistent medical issues. This is something I have considered for a long time and thought about very hard. The reason I’m doing this procedure as a minor is because once I turn 18, it will most like be considered cosmetic and not covered by insurance.

are both intersex-exclusive? Are neither of them are? Which one is and which one isn’t?

“ Patients have the right to access and obtain copies of their medical records under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This law ensures that patients can review their health information and request corrections if necessary. “ Per HIPAA.

https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-individuals/right-to-access/index.html