Spirit System

Wilson's Plover (Anarhynchus wilsonia), chicks, family Charadriidae, order Charadriiformes, FL, USA

this is going to be a very short post today. j am very sorry to anyone who was looking forward to i but i am going through some shit rn (not trying to make excuses just giving a reason as to why). anyways for today we are doing INTERSEX!

intersex refers to someone who is biologically not a male or a female. commonly, when people are born, they either have 2 X chromosomes or one X and one Y, in addition to other characteristics that make them biologically male or female, like hormones. however people who are intersex are born with either a different number of chromosomes that lead them to be biologically in between male and female or have about equal levels of estrogen, testosterone, and other hormones in their bodies. what matters is that they are not in any way unnatural, just like the rest of the lgbtqia+ community.

this

is the intersex flag.

there's a more complex discussion to be had about "biologically male and female" (the sex binary isn't real lol) but i'll focus on the main parts.

being intersex is an umbrella term for people who have a variety of mixed sex characteristics. sex characteristics include hormones, chromosomes, genitalia shape and placement, and even uretheral and anal placement. "different number of chromosomes" is hyperspecific and does not include every chromosomal variation.

examples include pmos (a poorly understood condition that causes an estrogenized endocrine system to present some androgenized traits), hypoandrogenism (a condition experienced by both people with estrogenized and androgenized endocrine systems, where the body does not produce enough androgens), and turner syndrome (a variety of changes to the second x or y chromosome leading to a variety of differences from expected development in the individual).

while medical terms are interwoven in the community, it's important to not medicalize intersex people or see them as medical anomalies. this leads to the isolation and ostracizing of intersex people, as well as leading to the belief we can and should be "fixed", the main justification for intersex genital mutilation in childhood.

An interesting game where you are presented with 10 artifacts from the MET. You have to place where the artifact is from and what time period it is from. Each artifact scores up to 10,000 points, and you lose points the further away your guess is and how far off in time you are. You can only play once a day. Thanks to @baebeylik for showing this to me.

Today I scored really well. Yesterday ... not so much.