[edit: turning reblogs off since TERFs have found this post. no one is forcing you to identify as intersex or saying you’re not really a woman. yes, PCOS is painful and i know this because i have it and it’s landed me in the ED. this post was not about the pain from PCOS, but the features it gives you from having increased androgens and how it’s instilled in you to hate those characteristics. this is not saying there is no point to treating PCOS, that it makes someone less of a woman, imply anything about transgender people (???), or that it isn’t painful. holy shit.]
Something that’s always really sad to see when I talk about intersex activism is the clear grief, misogyny, and internalized intersexism a lot of people jump to when I bring up PCOS.
PCOS, especially if you have hyperandrogenism, is an intersex variation. It can cause “male” body and facial hair, infertility, “bottom growth” during puberty, having a deeper voice, and countless other intersex traits. The World Health Organization estimates anywhere from 6-13% of women have PCOS worldwide, and over 70% of them are undiagnosed. Mainly people are put on hormones or birth control to “help,” all without being told they’re intersex. It’s merely a thing to fix, and that if they take a pill or injection they’ll look like a “real woman.”
I bring this up, and the first thing someone always says is usually along the lines of “well I’m not half man!” We have created a binary system that is so violently determined to put people in two bullshit boxes that the immediate response isn’t “maybe I’m something beyond, maybe there is more to this,” but to fight tooth and nail for the system that brought them so much suffering to begin with.
And that person has gone through so much pain and dysphoria their entire life because of this beyond the other symptoms of PCOS. Everywhere you go, you see picture perfect women with no hair, flat stomachs, soft voices. In porn, you never see anyone with genitals that are like yours–you’re ashamed, you might not even tell your doctor you look different or go to check. You have to shave daily to cope with facing other’s bigotry or your own gender dysphoria, either with how you personally identify or what has just been imposed on you by society, what you think is “wrong.”
I see influencers sell the “PCOS diet.” I see intersex people give themselves eating disorders because not eating food will surely “fix it” as they desperately try to get into the box they simply can’t fit into. Thousands of dollars spent on treatments to hack one’s inherent biology. Dealing with the nightmare that is birth control in an attempt to look smooth and perfect and everything that justifies the “F” on their birth certificate.
And then at the end of some posts about PCOS positivity, you’ll see things like “don’t worry, you’re still a woman despite X!” You are Sisyphus pushing a rock up a mountain. You are not a woman in spite of something, you are not a man because of something. You are human and you are complex and you are you.
All because we label people at birth and sort them into one of two boxes that tell them everything they are meant to be. As many as 13% of women in the world could have PCOS, and we still fucking push for biological sex being the basis of who we are.
