I think I wasn't clear with what I meant in my post the other day about the word "hermaphrodite." To be fair I don't think I fully understood it at the time because I was exceedingly tired from being out with my gf and friends like all day, and drunk because my friend pours strong drinks and I take a med that makes alcohol hit like 3x harder than it has any right to.
I'm a little particular about the specific meaning of words, especially when they have important meanings. Recently what is and is not a slur has come up quite a bit with the stupid "clanker" meme, and people talking about how we need a slur for people who use chatgpt for everything. Basically what I've gathered is that clanker isn't a slur, but the meme around it is still exceedingly racist. Also, you don't need a slur for people who use chatgpt, you can just insult them normally. Basically people think mean word for a specific group = slur, and they're wrong, and them insisting on it waters down the meaning of the word. For the record, cracker is not a slur.
So when I say "hermaphrodite isn't a slur" I'm not saying people should be able to use it to refer to intersex people. I'm saying that people don't know what a pejorative is. You can be offensive and insult someone without it being a slur. Slurs are very specific kinds of words, and I don't think hermaphrodite counts. You still shouldn't use it or call someone it, because it's mean.
Hermaphrodite is an outdated medical term for intersex people, and according to the Intersex Society of North America, it's use is offensive. It was originally used to (inaccurately) categorize different intersex conditions as male/female and pseudo/true hermaphroditism. Additionally, the ISNA never calls hermaphrodite a slur. In fact in my research (I did research on this btw) I didn't find a single source that called it a slur prior to 2021. So some people considering it a slur is a new thing, why?
A while ago (6-18 months, I don't remember) there was this weird transmisogynistic push from some intersex accounts on here, saying that "baeddel" was an intersexist slur, when it's pretty verifiably not. So from the outside it seems like some intersex people want a slur for themselves. I get it though, oppression is, in the eyes of our modern society, pretty linked with the concept of slurs. Intersex people have to work very hard to even convince people that their oppression is real (it is) and having The Slur For Intersex People legitimizes their oppression.
Ultimately my opinion on hermaphrodite doesn't really matter. It's either an outdated and offensive medical term, or it's a slur. I'm simply a massively pedantic english major and care about the specific meaning of words. Either way, you shouldn't refer to intersex people using it. I think intersex liberation, trans liberation, and youth liberation go hand in hand, people being granted the autonomy to govern themselves down to what physical parts of the body they want. I have other things to talk about irt the intersex community on tumblr, but I'm not going to do it here. That's all for now.
PS: I'm going to edit the original post to point here. Apparently it was screenshotted and reposted by some prominent intersex accounts, and there's a decent amount of people giving me hate in the comments for it. Hopefully pointing them here will reduce that.
