Unless the queer community stops using "cis" as a synonym for "person who can never have complex feelings and experiences concerning their gender or sex" intersex people like me will never fully feel welcome or safe.
I am cis. I was assigned one gender and then re-assigned another, all within two hours of my birth, after which I then suffered igm.
The surgery disabled me. I cannot have penetrative sex without severe pain. I cannot urinate normally at times.
When my teenage body did not want to conform to the gender I had been assigned and surgically mutilated into, I was put onto hormones. Which gave me breasts and a higher voice, but my build always stayed 'mannish' and I was brutally bullied and sexually assaulted for over four years because my 'weird body' made me an acceptable target.
I had to go the same way a trans person has to go, to be allowed to remove all the parts that were forced onto me, because there is no other way of handling cases like mine in our system. And I know that there are some people who will argue that I am not actually cis but trans. I find that argument to be very transphobic, actually. I am returning my body to the state it was before I was forcefully altered by others. That is not transitioning. Unless you want to equate transitioning to a violent act.
"Cis" is used in queer circles as a synonym for "malicious transphobic person who could never related to our issues" and it tires me. "We should be meaner to cis people." "We can't trust cis people." "Cis people do not belong in queer spaces." "Cis people should not be at pride." You are saying this stuff and you are including people like me, who are also openly harmed and discriminated against, who have to get the same surgeries as you, who have to go the same legal way as you, who are seen as trans, because people (including queer people) know jack shit about intersex experiences.
This is not about privilege. As I have pointed out in another post, I am aware of what privilege I have. That privilege I have now does not undo the medical and psychological trauma I suffered through. This damage will stay with me forever.
"Cis people getting HRT" isn't a privilege. Cis intersex children getting their genitals mutilated isn't a privilege, even if they are mutilated into a facsimile of the genitals you would like to have. The representation of cis intersex bodies in art is not transphobic or a caricature. We are not a just the concept of a person that you can point to, when arguing with transphobes. We are real people.
"Stop pretending that you are opressed for being cis!" I am not opressed for being cis. I am opressed for everything else. And me being cis is weaponized to disregard my experiences. I am denied safe spaces and community resources, I am denied a voice to talk about my issues, I am ridiculed when I dare to say that I have a complex relationship to my gender.
I am very open in my support of trans men and transmascs fighting transandrophobia. But everyday I have to read certain people in their tags make generalizations, while fighting their own generalization as men. You know that being a man does not stop you from being opressed because you are trans. Do you get angry when people say "all men are xyz"? Then also get angry when people say "all cis people are xyz". You talk about intersectionality not being a math equation, but then behave as if the word "cis" acts as multiplying by zero when it comes to oppression and a multiplying by a hundred when it comes to transphobia.
I sometimes feel like I exist in a dead space, where I am not cis enough to be accepted by cis people and not queer enough for queer people. In the end, one side openly hurts me and the other denies me help, ressources and support. And that hurts me as well.
With "you" I do not just mean perisex trans people. Intersex trans people do this shit too.
I will be taking a hiatus on this blog. I came to tumblr in hopes of finding community and found myself pushed to the side again, with one of the most present intersex bloggers on this site indirectly claiming that people like me are inherently transphobic and intersexist due to us also being cis. That we are less worth than trans intersex people. With so many trans (intersex) people agreeing with that. Including people claiming that we are less capable of being compassionate and open-minded. Because of how we are born. It might have been "just a vent post", but it sure revealed a lot about what others think when they are not "just venting".
You can claim how you are against binaries all you want and how you understand intersectionality and how you hate bioessentialism, but in the end a lot of people in this community are doing the same thing as any other bigoted person; just looking for an acceptable target they can punch, not caring who actually catches the fists they throw. And it happens again and again; aphobia. Biphobia. Currently transandrophobia and intersexism. And of course the racism. You love generalizations just as much as any cis bigot, but you abuse your queer identity as a shield whenever you get called out for it.
I am sick and tired, that the most popular people in this community often are also the most bigoted, who wish death upon other minorities, because so many queer people just fall for fascist and bigoted rhetoric as long as it is another queer person spewing it.
And I am sick and tired of seeing this community eat itself from the inside out.
Fuck you and, genuinely, stay safe.
