#interphobia ment

If you deliberately and persistently use acronyms like QULTBAG, MOGA, and LGBTQA(+)/LGBTA(+)*, I am immediately skeptical of the idea that you have intersex people’s best interests at heart and have taken the time to actually listen to us (other than maybe the intersex people you already agree with). And I understand that some perisex people are worried about starting discourse that they have no place in anyway; they drop the I to avoid being confronted by an angry intersex person who doesn’t want to be included and feels like they’ve been spoken over. Whether or not that’s a thing intersex people actually do, the important thing here is to acknowledge that we’ve already had this discussion: “The I Doesn’t Mean You.”

But apart from that, we also have to recognize that “LGBTQ community” is not synonymous with “LGBTQ people.”

The LGBTQ community is a way for LGBTQ people to organize, feel included/validated/accepted, and work together to accomplish common goals (such as opposing & destabilizing cisheterosexism & cisheteronormativity). Not every individual LGBTQ person has to be a part of our community. Racists, ableists, misogynists, “MAPs,” and transphobes, for example, do not belong in our community. People who, for one reason or another, don’t want to be associated with the community should not be forced into it.

It is no different for intersex people. Or, rather, it should be no different, but the question continues to be asked: Are intersex people inherently oppressed under the specific institutions of cisheteronormativity/cisheterosexism? And the answer from intersex people has repeatedly been, “Many of us (especially those who are otherwise non-cis and/or non-het) feel that, yes, the institutions of perisexism and cissexism largely overlap in some places, and we are therefore marginalized on both axes of oppression (albeit likely to varying degrees case by case).” And this is often followed up by, “Hence, it is only natural that we are given our own space within the LGBTQ community to discuss our specific oppression, organize, feel accepted, and work with other members of the community to fight against our shared oppression.”

All of this should, by this point, be widely understood and accepted, as this conversation has been going on for years now, but I get why there are some perisex people who still haven’t quite got it yet (it’s mostly that they don’t want to end up speaking for us without knowing every nuance to this issue). Even so I really can’t help it that my first reaction when seeing a perisex person intentionally drop the I or make note every time they see the I that not all intersex people want to be included is to assume they have some perisexist tendancies (if they’re not outright interphobic).

I guess I don’t really have some sweeping concluding statement to tie this all together. I just felt like sharing that I’m tired of having to think of my identity as a point of contention within my own community. And I don’t care if, in your heart of hearts, you truly believe that intersex people deserve a place in the community. If you don’t show that with your actions by making us feel included and accepted—meaning those of us who want to be accepted and included; if you can’t even do something as simple as tacking an I onto the end of an acronym—then what is the point?

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*I don’t include LGBT(+) or LGBTQ(+) here since these are often used as shorter alternatives by even the most inclusive folks (as the ‘+’ is meant to be all-encompassing).

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