Intersex man on gender critical feminists and surgery

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Another factor attracting intersex people to "gender critical" arguments is that they put the idea of accepting the natural body front and center. Instead of rejecting one's body as defective, embrace it! This exhortation has enormous appeal to intersex advocates whose central concern is stopping the imposition of "normalizing" genital surgery on intersex infants. If only parents, upon the birth of a child with intermediate genitalia, would look on them, not with dismay, but with the same tender appreciation that parents feel when seeing tiny little sex-typical penises and vulvas on their newborns! If only female-assigned intersex tweens weren't told they would have to have a vagina constructed soon, because otherwise they would never be able to have sexual relationships. If only so many American children born today and given an "M" on their birth certificates weren't given genital surgery for hypospadias, sometimes just because the urethra opens low on the penile head instead of the tip. Shouldn't the person possessing genitals be the one to decide if the risk of loss of sensation in their genitalia is worth the presumed benefit of those genitals looking somewhat more like the idealized binary?

Now, as a practical matter, it turns out that intersex advocates and gender critical feminists have very different end positions on medical interventions into the sexed body. Intersex advocates believe that no intervention should be forced--but also that once an intersex person is old enough to give full informed consent, that hormonal, surgical, or others interventions should be performed if that's what the individual truly wants. Any many, many intersex people do choose interventions of their own free will. Sure, an intersex person who has vaginal agenesis may have no desire whatsoever to have her pelvis dissected and a neovagina constructed from a section of cheek or intestines or labia. There are so many ways to enjoy sexual relations other than vaginal penetration. But many do want a vagina, to support female identities if they so identify, or because of the great social value placed on penetrative vaginal sex, or in the case of those with a substantial uterus and with ovaries, because they could become pregnant through sexual intercourse. Intersex people often seek hormone replacement therapy to masculinize or feminize their bodies, or surgeries to move their urethras to allow neater or standing urination, or any of a wide number of other interventions. And intersex advocates support all of these choices. We just wish them to be free choices, not forced by doctors or parents or social shaming.

Gender-critical feminists, on the other hand, turn out to hold a very different position: that all interventions into the sexed body are mutilations, not just those imposed without consent. Just as it is a mutilation to surgically alter the innocent bodies of intersex babies, they say, it is a pointless self-mutilation for an adult to choose to have their sexed body medically altered, because sex cannot be changed. Chromosomes can't be altered. A vaginoplasty cannot produce a real vagina, nor a phalloplasty a real penis, they say, and all interventions into the sexed body are motivated by patriarchy and thus counter to the interests of women. The only healthy and feminist response to unhappiness with one's body presented is to learn to accept it as it is. For intersex people, this just replaces the rigid regime of forcing medical interventions with a rigid regime of withholding them. Switching one constraint on intersex people for another isn't the motivation for this gender critical position--I don't know if they are even aware that intersex people desire some medical interventions. The main purpose of their argument that one must accept the natural body is to tell trans people that they must give up on the "delusion" that one can be born with a penis but really be a woman, or born with a vagina but really be a man, or born a human being and really be a member of some alternative sex.

What I think it is important for trans advocates to point out to intersex people is that trans-exclusionary radical feminists believe that sex is a natural binary, innate and immutable: men have penises, women have vaginas and uteri. The TERFs note that gender is a relationship of power, and frame this in an embodied way through binary sex: men seek to control women's uteri, reproductive capacities, and thus lives. The ultimate expression of patriarchy in this framework is the use of the penis to rape. As a result, "gender critical feminists" make the strong claim that anyone who denies that sex is a binary and that genitals determine gender is ignoring the terrorizing of "natal" women by rapists. ("Natal" is their alternative to "cis" to refer to a person who was born with the sex organs expected for someone of their gender.) This gender-critical feminist claim puts intersex people in a very bad place, positioned as supporters of rape if we argue that sex is not a natural binary.

Intersex advocates are interested in criticizing binary sex ideology--that's what makes the term "gender critical" sound appealing. But that's not what these transphobic feminists mean by it at all. As they use it, the phrase "gender critical" denotes being critical of (or more bluntly, rejecting) the concept of gender identity--most especially the fundamental precept of trans gender advocacy, which is that when gender identity and legal sex conflict, this provides pragmatic and ethical justification for a change of legal sex. But intersex people don't reject the concept of gender identity at all. Most intersex people in the contemporary West have a clear gender identity, often as women or men, or sometimes as genderqueer or as as identifying with the term intersex as a third gender category, and want their gender identities to be respected. Intersex advocates believe it is of paramount importance to center a child's gender identity in any decisions made about altering an intersex child's body, and have been famously fighting the legal case for M.C., a child who identifies as a boy, but whose doctors assigned him female based on their treatment protocols. The "gender critical" feminists' core belief--that gender identity is a myth or delusion that society should ignore rather than validate--would undermine M.C.'s case. Transgender people need to point this out to retain intersex individuals as allies--and make trans support for children like M.C. clear by supporting the rights of children and adults to refuse imposed medical transition procedures, not just to request desired ones.


Another thing that may initially draw intersex people to TERFs is that they actively deny that they are transphobic, presenting themselves as reasonable women who are victims of slander. They often say they have compassion for "men under the delusion that they are women," which they present as equivalent to believing one is really a horse or a space alien. They only wish, they say, to help trans people improve their mental health and come to accept their bodies. Accepting one's body means accepting that one cannot call oneself a woman while having a penis. But participating in discussions with gender crits, it quickly becomes apparent that they are indeed transphobic--and apparently obsessed with penises. They talk about them constantly, and presume that all trans women have them (because they say even a trans women who has genital reconstructive surgery now simply possesses an "inverted penis"). And penises are always presented as dangerous--"natal girls" might see them in locker rooms and be traumatized, trans-protective laws would mean no woman could ever be sure the person in the next stall didn't have a penis, and thus pose a threat to her. This obsession with other people's genitals and validation of the idea that people should be upset by those with the "wrong ones" runs completely counter to the interests of intersex people. It's the very same binary sex essentialism and acceptance of gender policing that the medical profession uses to justify intersex genital reconstructive surgery. It is the logic used by doctors when they amputate or "reduce" the intermediate phalloclitorises of children they've assigned female: unless they do so, the child's body will inspire shock and repulsion. In painting trans women's bodies as deceptive, dangerous and disgusting, transphobic feminists paint those born sex variant with the same brush.

TERFs are not just binary sex essentialists, however, dividing the world into oppressors and oppressed through reference to binary genitals. They also have a theory of gender socialization. Their vision of gender socialization is bleak: boys are socialized to dominate, control, and rape women; girls are socialized to submit to this and embrace their oppressors and call this "femininity." Clearly this is bad, and feminism is a movement of "natal" women that teaches women to recognize and resist this programming. Men, however, are presented as inevitably and eternally shaped by their socialization into patriarchy, as it advantages them. Trans women are asserted to be men, and while they may claim they do not enjoy being treated as men, this is said just to illustrate their blindness to their own privilege. Trans women are inevitably socialized to try to control "natal" women, as evidenced by their belief they should be able to force "natal" women into "supporting their gender delusion" and treating them as sisters. Again, this rejection of gender identity conflicts with the interests of intersex people. It also paints a simplistic and binary picture of gender socialization, a process which is in fact quite variable and complex, shaped by one's gender identity and one's many social locations. Moreover, it is important to acknowledge the intersectional nature of marginalization and privilege, and speak not just of patriarchy but of kyriarchy, taking into account race, age, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, and other dimensions along which power is distributed. And one of these dimensions for nonintersex people is the axis of cis privilege and trans marginalization. Trans women--particularly those who are poor, of color, and/or have a disability--suffer huge levels of social stigma, violence, employment discrimination, etc.

There's a parallel thing that happens with respect to intersex people. Intersex people who identify as women get fetishized and scrutinized, and may in fact be misperceived as (nonintersex) trans women. On the other hand, those raised as men are mostly invisible to society--in fact, many people believe the old saw that "all intersex people are assigned female at birth." In fact, at least 1 in 125 children assigned male at birth is diagnosed as having hypospadiacal DSD (disorder or difference of sex development). But doctors carefully avoid the term "intersex" in describing most of them--calling them just "boys with hypospadias"--and very, very few men with hypospadias come forth to claim their intersex status. Fragile masculinity in our society discourages men from doing anything that makes them appear less than fully masculine in society's eyes. As a result, most, though not all, of the interesx individuals assigned male at birth who come out to claim their intersex status are those who have nothing to lose thereby, as they identify as women or with a nonbinary gender.

And those intersex children assigned male at birth who mature to identify as female face huge levels of scrutiny. Sadly, this is one of the things that my attract intersex people to "gender critical" rhetoric. That's because transphobic feminists claim that trans women are using the intersex community to try to force others to treat them with pity. They claim that it's not intersex people, but trans women who are always going on about intersex issues in public discourse on sex and gender. And they claim that most people presenting themselves as intersex are really trans women pretenting to intersex status. Unfortunately, when they hear this, a lot of intersex people nod their heads angrily.


I really have to say, as an intersex person, that TERFs did not make up the issue of trans gender intersex wannabes being a problem. I have spent many years in support groups and networks for intersex people, and they are often inundated by people either speculating that they are intersex, or flat-out asserting it, wanting to know how to access gender transition services. Now, there are a number of perfectly understandable reasons why people may believe they may be intersex, although this is not the case. There's so little information given to people about intersexuality in the course of education about biology and sex. And the idea that physical sex traits determine gender identity is widely held. So, if a person does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth, they are likely to be prompted to wonder if their reproductive organs or genes have caused them to trans-idenify. And there's so little understanding even of what sex-typical genitals are "supposed" to look like or do that people can misinterpret quite typical characteristics as strange. A person with a typical phallus may see a line on the underside and think it must be proof of childhood surgery, when all people have a perineal raphe, which extends up the underside of the typical penis. You'd be surprised how many people have asked me if the fact that their clitoris gets erect when they are aroused is proof that they are intersex. Similarly, a lot of people seem to be unaware that it's totally typical for women to find some darker hairs on their upper lips, or some whiskers spouting on their chins.

I see no problem with people who are questioning or exploring their gender identities to have questions about how typical or atypical they are in their bodily sex characteristics--though it can be frustrating to try to run an online intersex support board and have people posing questions like these overrunning them. But what is really damaging to the intersex community is when nonintersex people wishing to gender transition decide they are intersex, while knowing nothing about actual intersex bodies--and then run around telling eveyone they meet strange stories about what being intersex means. I've encountered dozens of such people, and some of the stories they tell are frankly bizarre. Often these stories involve being born with two sets of genitals and reproductive organs, one male-typical and one female-typical, and one of these sets somehow being removed. (One person said his mother forced him to take birth control pills as a child, which caused him to absorb his penis into his abdomen, leaving just a set of female genitals behind. Another told me his uncle had hated his atypical genitals, so had ripped off his testicles and cut a hole for him to menstruate through, and now he just looked like a normal girl. A third told me she had a penis and scrotum in front, but a clitoris and uterus attached to her rectum, and regularly menstruated rectally. And several have told me that they were born with a uterus that doctors removed when they impregnated themselves.) These are not plausible stories because intersex people are born, not with two sets of sex organs, but with one intermediate or mixed set. And a person cannot impregnate themself, even in the extraordinarily rare situation where a person has both an ovary and a testis and a small vagina and uterus and a small phallus, because a sex hormone balance that allows producing viable sperm will not support a menstrual cycle, and one that will support a menstrual cycle will not support spermatogenesis.

Intersex people who identify as women get fetishized and scrutinized, and may in fact be misperceived as (nonintersex) trans women.

This gender-critical feminist claim puts intersex people in a very bad place, positioned as supporters of rape if we argue that sex is not a natural binary.

I think trans people are intersexed.

I guess you would argue that gender is determined by physical characteristics e.g. brain structures, and so trans people have physical sex characteristic which do not neatly align with either binary sex (e.g. a penis and testicles and a "woman's brain"). However, I believe there is still some overlap between cis male brains and cis female brains, even in areas of function in which the average male and female brains are different.

I also object as someone who is intersex by birth to the framing of trans identity as an intersex condition. The difficulties faced by intersex people can indeed relate to gender identity, since children born intersex today are forcibly assigned a dyadic sex at birth, and often subjected to sex reassignment surgery to which they cannot consent. If the child grows up not to identify with the sex to which ze was coercively assigned, gender dysphoria results. But no test has ever been developed that can determine what the eventual gender identity of an intersex person will be—not in the brain, the chromosomes, the gonads or the genitals. And the issues intersex people face center on forced sex assignment in childhood--something which advocates of the intersex brain thesis tacitly support when they argue that since trans status arises from an intersex brain, it "must" be treated medically. Like many intersex people, I boggle resentfully at the idea held by some trans people that intersex people are “lucky,” have a privileged relationship to the medical community, or are free from stigma in our lives. The belief that being categorized as intersex would lead to advantages, which causes some trans people to frame trans identity as an intersex condition, is deeply flawed.

Finally, I would argue that this entire issue is a distraction. Remember that it was not the discovery of a brain area “causing” homosexuality that led to the relative successes of the LGB community in gaining civil rights. It was activism that led to those gains. The belief that if differences could be shown to be inborn, liberation would result, seems hopelessly naïve to me. Bear in mind that for many decades, scientists argued that women should not be permitted to vote or attend college because their brains were too small. More starkly, consider the Holocaust, which was founded on a belief in inborn racial inferiority. Some intersex conditions can be detected prenatally, but this has not led to more widespread acceptance of intersexuality. When these conditions are detected, doctors typically offer to terminate the pregnancy.

LNH,

Can you quote some research on the subject?

What you cited doesn't say anything about the "anatomical mapping" of gender in the brain.

Anatomical mapping appears to be binary: either your brain is mapped to expect a penis or a vagina.

I have never heard of a person saying "my brain is mapped to expect both a penis and a vagina", or "my brain is mapped to have neither". There is no overlap , or underlap apparently.

Thus, back to my original point, it seems inherent that there is a brain structure difference between these two different mappings.

Sapolsky cites the Danish research of 0% of MTF trans people reporting "phantom penis" as evidence that MTF trans people have a female mapped brain structure.

I know little about phantom limb, but I doubt the body image is truly "hard-wired" in that respect, because there is evidence that it changes. This study supports that assertion, which came out a couple years after the one above:

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/44/18798.abstract