#notaterftip

While I was still in school I was taking a Sexuality course in the psych department. At one point embryo selection and IVF was the main topic of the class, and it dove into specifically avoiding embryos that are genetically disposed to disability.

Yes it was eugenics hiding behind a glass wall. After what happens in this story I continued to point out a lot of the readings were of eugenics. The class is just the context here though.

A student shared that their mother specifically didn't want to keep their autistic brother, and that he was adopted by relatives. That student then shares that they asked their brother if he was okay with being alive and the response was basically "uh, yeah I am."

I am pissed and want to yell "what the hell is wrong with you?!" At this person, but bite my tongue. If I'm hostile about this no one will listen to me, even if my reaction would be 100% warranted. So I wait.

When called on to add to the general discussion I basically gave a rundown of the social model of disability. I used myself as an example since I was born with club foot and that's a birth defect, the kind of thing that would be selected out, especially when mine was severe. I shared that yeah, I have chronic pain and struggle getting around due to my foot, but a lot of that wouldn't be an issue if things were wheelchair accessible and if people like me were thought about in designing... anything.

I get done talking, the class keeps going, and I see the student I mentioned earlier get up and leave the classroom. I'm immediately worried that I was obvious in saying what I said because of what they said. That they were pissed at me. But shook it off as "well I didn't do anything wrong. If that's the case then it's their problem."

Class ends and they come up to me failing to hold back tears. What I said made sense to them and they realized how fucked up they acted. This was years ago but I still remember them saying through tears: "How could I say that to my brother?"

They go into how they have a disability themselves and should've realized this stuff sooner. I am also crying at this point and am trying to tell them that they know now and can change. We end up hugging and they tell me that they planned to call their brother later to apologize.

I cannot share this story well verbally because I start crying. I had to stop writing it to keep from crying. Its a story that means a lot to me because it showed me that doing the stuff I do, as small as it is, matters. Its what I think of when someone insists that none of us can do anything.

I have been sitting in the dark at a desk in silence for hours. I am a madman and bystanders look at me in concern and horror.

That said, here are frequently cited things I've found. For the one's that are behind paywalls, I have a Google Drive folder set up to hold them for access. The only things I leave behind a paywall are books by individual authors. They are not organized at all, I'm sorry.

Intersex Variations Glossary by InterACT

Narrative Symposium: Intersex—Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics (NIB) Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 2015.— Trigger warning for intersex genital mutilation (IGM), sexual assault, and medical trauma—it's honestly a lot but incredibly important. (Drive)

A human rights investigation into the medical "normalization" of intersex people - A report of a public hearing by the Human Rights Commission of the City & County of San Francisco

Surgical Progress Is Not the Answer to Intersexuality - Cheryl Chase. - TW for IGM and images of genitalia (Drive)

The Intersex Roadshow, a blog of Dr. Cary Gabriel Costello - Costello is an intersex trans man and tries to bridge the gap between trans and intersex issues

Beyond Binary Sex and Gender Ideology - Cary Grabriel Costello - Chapter 12 of The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Body and Embodiment (Drive)

Transgender and intersex: theoretical, practical, and artistic perspectives (book/textbook) (Drive)

Intersex: Stories and Statistics from Australia (Book) (Open Access)

Fixing sex: intersex, medical authority, and lived experience (Book)

The harms of medicalisation: intersex, loneliness and abandonment (Open Access Article)

Intersex: cultural and social perspectives (Open Access Article)

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) - Technical Note on the Human Rights of Intersex People. Basically, if you want an easy way to say that doctors are going against human rights by performing IGM.

An experimental philosophical bioethical study of how human rights are applied to clitorectomy on infants identified as female and as intersex (Open Access Article) - People were more likely to support the same surgery on infants labeled as intersex than they were on infants labeled as female.

Caught in the Gender Binary Blind Spot: Intersex Erasure in Cisgender Rhetoric by Hida Viloria - About how cisgender often doesn't accurately express the experiences intersex people have. Costello, mentioned earlier with Intersex Roadshow, coined Ipsogender for this reason.

Introduction for Intersex Activism - A guide for allies

Sex, Science, and Society: Reckonings and Responsibilities for Biologists (Open Access Article)

Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis by Georgiann Davis - TW for medical trauma

Spectacles and Scholarship: Caster Semenya, Intersex Studies, and the Problem of Race in Feminist Theory by Zine Magubane (Drive)

Owning Endosex Privilege and Supporting the Intersex Community: WPATH, Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM), and Sex Variant Bodies by Margo Schulter

The Spectrum of Sex by Hida Viloria and Dr. Maria Nieto

A long way to go for LGBTI equality from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights - Before the UK left the EU

The material struggle to transition has given way to the concerns of a small transgender professional class who have popularized their own interests and values as if they were universally emancipatory: self-actualization, cosmopolitanism in style and language, and personal declarations of being above or beyond the gender binary.

This is about the Supreme Court upholding the ban of gender affirming care for trans minors.

Fuck I kept going there's transmedicalism staring me in the face:

Over time, the position has stretched into several of the core transgender claims that conservative justices took advantage of in Skrmetti: that one need not experience dysphoria or even try to change sex to be transgender;

Now I'm going to rant about why the judges decision was infuriating to me. Spoilers, its not because non dysphoric trans people exist.

You know what the Federal government did after Trump came into office? Stop considering gender dysphoria under section 504 and the ADA. Why? Well the states that were planning to take it to court were insisting its the same as gender identity disorder. They said that gendering people with gender dysphoria correctly and letting them wear clothes that match their identity was a burden on the state. This matters because that was purposefully made as an exception of what is not covered under the ADA. Us trannies were too disturbing to include.

The judges know about that. How much do they know that? Well, here's some of the dissent when the Supreme court refused to hear the case that ruled in favor of a Black trans woman abused in prison:

The panel majority sought to bolster its interpretation of the ADA by invoking the doctrine of constitutional avoidance. The majority argued that even if the ADA’s text did not require this interpretation, it would nevertheless be necessary in order “to avoid a serious constitutional question” under the Equal Protection Clause. Id., at 772. Citing Circuit precedent, the majority found that “the ADA’s exclusion of ‘gender identity disorders’ ” from the definition of disability was “evidence of . . . discriminatory animus” by Congress, and to support this conclusion, the majority pointed to “moral judgment[s]” expressed by legislators who backed the exclusion for “gender identity disorders.” Id., at 773.

The document sourced for trans people being excluded from the ADA due to malice:

Senator Helms asked rhetorically,

Do we really want private institutions, particularly schools and day care centers to be prohibited from refusing to hire a transvestite because some Federal court may find that this violates the transvestite’s civil rights to wear a dress and to wear foam, that sort of thing? Do we really want to prohibit these private institutions from making employment decisions based on moral qualifications? (Pg 528)

They. Don't. Care. They stared a cited document of legislator malice towards trans people before saying it never happened. They will bash in their skulls if it fucked us over.

If you're willing to put in the time to get to know someone and possibly make a new friend this would be great for trans prisoners especially. Even before Trump they were often denied GAC and placed in prisons that did not match their gender identity and/or were not safe because of their trans status. Now Trump has likely made their lives much worse when, to me, their situations were torturous. Many spend a lot of time in solitary confinement for their own physical safety.

This link should take you to the search results for trans prisoners: