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          Intersex and Trans/Nonbinary Issues:
Variant Sex Characteristics and/or Mixed Socialization
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                   by Margo Schulter

A recent article by Barbara Risman and Georgiann Davis, "Adding
third-sex option on birth certificates is a start," raises some
important issues for feminism as it pertains two groups of people
oppressed by patriarchal norms related to sex and gender. 

The first are intersex people, who may be defined as being born with
mixed or variant physical sex characteristics deemed outside the
"standards" of the male/female binary. The second are trans and/or
nonbinary people, who are mostly born endosex (nonintersex) but
include a substantial minority of the intersex community, and come to
identify and live as a sex/gender other than that designated or
assigned based on sex characteristics observed at birth.

In understanding the distinction between intersex and trans or
nonbinary, we are well served by the traditional feminist distinction
between physical sex characteristics and psychological and social
gender identity. For example, it is critically important to know, as
Risman and Davis rightly emphasize, that laws for the recognition of
third or nonbinary sex/gender categories cannot themselves address the
paramount demand of the intersex movement: the outlawing of Intersex
Genital Mutilation (IGM) inflicted in infancy or early childhood, long
before children can discover and articulate their sex or gender
identities, much less apply for a legal change of status.


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1. Intersectionality and the Intersex/Trans-Nonbinary Alliance
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As a Second Wave radical feminist and an endosex transsexual woman, I
would emphasize the importance of a lesson that Women of Color,
especially, have brought home over the decades: intersectionality.
Thus while sexism and racism are distinct forms of oppression, Women
of Color experience both. What's more, as African American legal
scholar Kimberle/ Crenshaw emphasized in formulating the concept of
intersectionality, being at the intersection of oppressions not only
means one experiences a special "double jeopardy" (a phrase used by
Frances M. Beale in the 1960's), but that one is in danger of
erasure. As Crenshaw discusses, Black women found it hard to win legal
claims of sex and/or race discrimination because they were not seen
either as typical "women" (assumed to have white privilege) or as
typical "Blacks" (assumed to belong to the dominant male sex).

Likewise, intersex people who also identify and live as nonbinary need
to have both or all sides of their experience recognized. My siblings
Hida Viloria and Dana Zzyym of Organization Intersex International
(OII) in the USA, or OII-USA, are outstanding examples. They share
intersex experiences and concerns in common with other intersex people
who have binary gender identities; and nonbinary concerns with such
endosex nonbinary or genderqueer activists as Leslie Feinberg and Kate
Bornstein. Thus OII-USA has taken a leadership role both in the
struggle to ban IGM, and in the struggle to win legal recognition for
nonbinary status both at the federal and state levels in the USA. 

Returning to the distinct but often intertwined concepts of sex and
gender, let us consider more closely the concerns of intersex people
and of trans and/or nonbinary people. Through the two last decades,
these communities can and often have joined in a harmonious alliance
that also promotes the liberation of all women and indeed all humans.

However, at times there has been conflict, often growing out of or
exacerbated by a failure of endosex people to understand the special
violence and lifelong physical and psychological trauma inflicted by
IGM, regardless of the sex or gender identity of the survivor in later
life. Also, intersex people have often been denied a knowledge of
their intersex variations by medical professionals, and only discover
the truth in adolescence or adulthood. This element of enforced
invisibility has made it more difficult for intersex people to share
experiences and organize together. Being aware of these barriers to
intersex self-knowledge and community is essential for those of us who
wish to be effective endosex allies.

From this perspective, intersex is indeed primarily a matter of sex
characteristics, while trans and nonbinary are primarily matters of
gender identity. As we shall see, however, in practice there is much
overlap and intersectionality. Thus a substantial minority of intersex
people identify with a sex/gender other than that assigned at birth,
whether binary or nonbinary; and a very substantial percentage of
endosex people in the trans and nonbinary communities have acquired
mixed or variant sex characteristics because of consensual medical
interventions, e.g. hormone therapy and/or surgery.[1]


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2. Intersex: Natal variant sex characteristics
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As intersex activists have often emphasized, intersex is itself
primarily a matter of physical sex rather than gender: it is defined
as being born with some natural variation from what patriarchy deems
the "standard" sex binary. In fact, most intersex people, at least in
modern patriarchal societies, grow up to identify with the binary sex
assigned at birth -- as do also most endosex people.

Indeed the immediate problem that intersex infants face relates not to
whatever sense of sex or gender identity they may develop, but to the
threat of IGM, a human rights violation which, like Female Genital
Mutilation (FGM), needs to be universally outlawed. Fear of physically
variant bodies expressed through IGM, and fear of independent and
autonomous female sexuality expressed through FGM, are related aspects
of patriarchy that manifest in these two forms of sexualized violence
visited upon infants and children.

In discussing intersex and physical sex in humans generally, it is
vital to recognize that while reproductive gametes (ova and
spermatozoa) are rather clearly dimorphic, with not much evidence for
"intermediate" forms, the bodies of humans and other mammals show a
range of variations in primary and secondary sex characteristics. Thus
intersex is itself a matter of natural variation, not of pathology. 
Anne Fausto-Sterling and OII-USA have estimated that about 1.7% of
people are intersex -- a frequency comparable in the USA to that of
red hair.

As a Lesbian feminist, I find it important to emphasize that while sex
differentiation and variation evolved in connection with reproduction,
which is still of course relevant, nonreproductive sexuality in humans
and other primates can serve various purposes such as conflict
resolution and social bonding. The prevalence of female-to-female
sexual contact and friendship among bonobos, who are among our closest
primate relatives, is a very notable example.

In fact, some intersex people are fertile -- and some endosex people
are not. But IGM, in the name of patriarchal and heteronormative
conformity, harms intersex people both by assaulting their bodies at a
stage when sexual structures are very small, with the risk of nerve
damage and impaired sensitivity and pleasure greatly heightened; and
by denying them the autonomy to make decisions at an age of reason and
informed consent about their own bodies.

When allowed this basic bodily autonomy, most intersex people are
happy with their physical state "as-is," and feel no need for surgery
to bring their bodies closer to the sex binary. A few may opt for such
surgery as adults, on the basis of self-knowledge about their body
image and gender identity, and a weighing of possible risks and
benefits. Just as the difference between loving sexual partnership and
sexual assault is enthusiastic consent growing out of free desire
rather than coercion, so the difference between IGM and consensual
Genital Reconstruction Surgery (GRS) is informed choice and consent.

In addition to the scars, physical and psychic, inflicted on FGM and
IGM survivors, these nonconsensual acts of violence send a negative
message about intersex and female bodies in general, reinforcing
prejudices that also affect intersex and/or female people who are
spared these mutilations.

Since the origins of the current intersex movement in the early to
middle 1990's, and the germinal event of a demonstration in Boston on
26 October 1996 outside a convention of pediatricians to protest IGM
(whose anniversary is celebrated each year as Intersex Awareness Day),
intersex activists and organizations have thus repeatedly stressed
that the central issue is IGM and related forms of childhood medical
abuse, rather than "gender identity." At times, tensions have arisen
when organizations focusing on trans issues have sought intersex
support without showing an understanding of the unique nature of
intersex issues and the special priority of the struggle against IGM.

Although IGM reflects a patriarchal fear and loathing of "ambiguous
genitals," it is also important to know that not all intersex
variations involve such intermediate or "different" genitals. There
are many intersex patterns of chromosomes or karyotype, and primary or
secondary sex characteristics, which are indeed natural variations
present from birth, but which may not be noticed until puberty or
later.

One good example is Complete Androgen Insensitivity (CAI), often known
as Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS) -- although many
intersex people challenge "syndrome" terminology as pathologizing and
marginalizing. People with CAI present at birth with "standard" female
genitals, and are routinely assigned female and raised as girls, with
most going on to live as women. For them, "gender identity" is not an
issue -- but the medical interventions and disinformation that many
have experienced during childhood or adolescence very much is! These
women have a 46-XY karyotype shared with natal endosex men as well as
some other intersex people, and internal testes rather than ovaries,
but have a complete insensitivity to the androgens which would have
led to fetal development along more male lines.

A leading intersex advocacy group, the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome
Support Group (AISSG), thus has traditionally consisted mostly of
women who were assigned female, raised as girls, and continue to
identify as binary women. They have been premier advocates and
educators over the years, responding when necessary both to efforts of
certain trans activists to view intersex also as mainly a matter of
"gender identity"; and to misguided perspectives in the name of
feminism seeking to define AIS women as "male" because they have 46-XY
karyotypes and cannot menstruate or bear children.

At the same time, AISSG has highlighted the diversity of its members
with CAI or Partial Androgen Insensitivity (PAI, often known as PAIS
when the "syndrome" terminology is used) by inviting them to share
their experiences of embodied sex and gender identity. Thus a
significant minority of the CAI and PAI community do experience trans
and/or nonbinary identities, either seeking to shift socially and
sometimes medically from the binary sex assigned at birth to the other
binary sex, or affirming a gender identity varying from that of a
binary woman or man.

While all intersex people are affected by the actual or possible harm
of IGM, those who live or identify as trans and/or nonbinary people
also have a direct interest in trans and/or nonbinary rights,
including the right to change legal sex/gender status, and for
nonbinary people to be legally recognized as such, with "X" as the
international gender marker for this purpose.

In short, intersex is primarily a matter of natal or natural
variations in physical sex characteristics, with the abolition of IGM
as the top priority of the intersex movement. What intersex people
seek above all else is the right to be left alone by the medical
profession in infancy and childhood so that they may develop and
discover their own sense of embodied sex and gender identity and enjoy
their sexuality unscarred by the violent harm of IGM.

While this uniquely intersex concern applies to the overall intersex
community, including those who identify and live as the sex/gender
they were assigned at birth, intersex people who are also trans and/or
nonbinary additionally face the same issues as endosex people sharing
these identities, sometimes with extra complications. For example,
intersex people who wish to change physical sex characteristics or
social and legal gender have often faced incomprehension or rejection
from medical professionals who perform or promote IGM, and have a
vested interest in the conviction that children subjected to such
surgeries can never "really" develop a gender identity different than
what the surgeon expected. It is always important to remember, of
course, that IGM and FGM are harmful regardless of the gender identity
of sexual orientation that survivors may experience as adults.


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3. Trans and nonbinary: Gender identity
---------------------------------------

In contrast to intersex, trans or nonbinary people are defined
primarily as experiencing a gender identity which differs from the sex
designated or assigned at birth. Here a fine point of language is that
for intersex people, the phrase "assigning a sex" has often meant not
merely choosing a female or male designation for an intersex infant,
but performing IGM to "implement" this binary assignment. 

As we shall shortly see, there is no reason why tentatively
designating an intersex infant as "female" or "male" need involve IGM;
and in fact there are many endosex trans people who live binary gender
identities as men or women while having mixed or variant sex
characteristics acquired through consensual medical interventions. 
However, the traditional use of "assigning a sex" as a euphemism for
IGM has led to some members of the intersex community urging a
distinction between the "assigning" of a sex at birth to intersex
people, and "designating" a sex for endosex people (who are not at
risk for IGM).

Trans people who are not also intersex -- or in other words are
endosex -- do not face the special intersex oppression of IGM. What we
do face, as we discover that our sense of embodied sex and/or gender
identity differs from that designated at birth, is the problem of
transitioning to a social identity and legal status consistent with
our inner sense of self -- whether the other binary identity
(male-to-female or female-to-male) or a nonbinary identity.

At this point, those of us who are endosex in the trans and nonbinary
community and choose medical transition will come to share some common
ground with our intersex siblings, trans or nonbinary or otherwise. In
the process of bringing our bodies more into line with our internal
sense of embodied sex, we will through hormone therapy and often
surgery come to have mixed or variant physical sex characteristics.
Since there is no way, at least at present, for a trans person who
identifies as a binary woman or man to transition so as to have sex
characteristics identical to those of a natal endosex female or male,
to choose medical transition is to live with mixed or variant
characteristics.

We might describe this condition as one of having acquired variant sex
characteristics through consensual medical transition care -- in
contrast to the natal or natural variant sex characteristics that
define intersex. A critical difference is that our mixed sex
characteristics acquired by our free and enthusiastic consent do not
subject us to the risk of IGM or other nonconsensual interventions on
our bodies of the kind faced by intersex infants and children.

However, while only intersex people face the violence of IGM, binary
or nonbinary trans people with acquired variant sex characteristics
face some other manifestations of patriarchal oppression against those
whose bodies do not measure up to the sex binary. Thus either an
intersex woman with PAI who cannot reproduce and has a vulva without a
full vaginal canal, or an endosex woman who has acquired somewhat
similar sex variations through hormones and surgery, may face
prejudice under patriarchy both simply for being a woman, and for
being (to borrow Margaret Atwood's term from _The Handmaid's Tale_)
an "un-woman" who defies heteronormative tests of "real femaleness."
 
A critical distinction, again, is that only the woman with PAI was at
risk during childhood and adolescence for IGM and other forms of
medical abuse and disinformation -- for example, telling a young woman
of 12 or 13 that she has "ovarian cancer" and must have surgery, when
the operation is actually to remove internal testes. Endosex people
must understand how in the patriarchal war against intersex people and
their bodies and reality, truth is often the first casualty, and more
specifically the precious truth of self-knowledge that is the
foundation for individual choice and collective action.

While not all trans and nonbinary people, intersex or endosex,
medically transition by altering physical sex characteristics, many of
us do: and, as mentioned above, those of us who are endosex thus
acquire mixed sex characteristics, so that those of us who are binary
women or men are now "mostly female" or "mostly male" -- but outside
the sex binary. For some binary and nonbinary trans people alike,
medical options such as metoidioplasty as opposed to a full
phalloplasty for those moving in a male-ward direction, or
vulvoplasty without vaginal depth as opposed to a full vaginoplasty
for those moving in a female-ward direction, can nicely harmonize body
image and embodied sex outside of heteronormative standards.

For intersex trans and/or nonbinary people who have been at risk for
and often survived IGM, the question of medical transition can take on
on aspects outside the range of endosex trans experience. Dana Zzyym,
who was assigned male at birth and subjected to IGM, has sought and
received medical transition care as a nonbinary person who uses the
pronouns "they/them/their" in order to transition, as best possible,
back to their natural intersex condition. At the same time, Dana has
struggled for an "X" or nonbinary marker on their passport in ongoing
litigation where a federal court ordered the State Department to
provide such a passport, but the agency has so far refused, with the
case still proceeding through the federal system.

As Dana teaches us, abolishing IGM is a paramount imperative, which
would have prevented the many physical and psychological injuries that
they courageously survived. However, Dana's struggle for a passport
with an "X" marker -- and the successful campaigns in Oregon,
California, Washington, and other States for a nonbinary option on
identification documents -- serves in its own way both to make life
more liveable for nonbinary people, intersex and endosex, and to
challenge the patriarchal sex and gender binaries alike.

Those of us who are endosex and celebrate Dana's struggle need to use
the campaign for nonbinary recognition as an opportunity to be good
allies by shouting from the rooftops that States ready to recognize
nonbinary status must also be ready to end the war against naturally
sex variant bodies by outlawing IGM!


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3. Some feminist issues in context: Mixed socialization
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The fear of bodies with variant or mixed sex characteristics is acted
out on intersex infants too young either to consent to or resist IGM,
who are thus the primary and vulnerable targets of the patriarchal sex
binary. Additionally, this fear and the patriarchal sex binary account
for some of the prejudice experienced by endosex trans people who
medically transition at an age of consent. The question of whether or
how to "assign a sex" for intersex children raises larger feminist
issues about whether or how any child should be so designated or
assigned before an age when they can articulate their sense of
embodied sex and gender identity.

Intersex activists have emphasized that if it is considered
appropriate to assign or designate a sex/gender classification for any
infant, the process need not involve IGM. As happened with Hida
Viloria, an activist who tells he/r story in _Born Both: An Intersex
Life_, an intersex child may, for example, be assigned female at birth
and have variant genital or other sex characteristics while growing up
as a girl -- finding it curious in an interesting way that other girls
and women are a bit different. Hida's parents, when s/he was born in
1968, had the courage and gumption to reject IGM and let he/r grow
into he/r body and identity in he/r own way. Ultimately s/he
discovered and affirmed he/r nonbinary identity, having lived at times
as a woman or a man.

What Hida's experience shows, for one, is that assigning an intersex
infant a tentative sex/gender need not involve violent medical
interventions: the child grows into their body, discovers their gender
identity, and at an age of reason and consent makes decisions based on
autonomy and self-knowledge. It also reveals that such tentative
binary assignments are not infallible: while most intersex people
remain in their sex/gender assigned at birth, some are trans or
nonbinary.

Members or friends of the intersex community who argue for such
tentative binary assignments -- and it must be remembered that sex
designations for endosex infants are also ultimately tentative, since
some reveal themselves to be trans and/or nonbinary -- make two
arguments. The first is that since abolishing IGM and its irreparable
harm is the first priority, society may be more ready to outlaw IGM if
this is not seen as a threat to the gender binary of boy/girl or
man/woman itself. The second is that imposing a nonbinary status (or
leaving sex undefined) for intersex children, while endosex children
continue to get binary sex designations as usual, could be viewed as a
kind of social experiment with a great risk of marginalizing the
intersex children without their consent.

A truly radical feminist position might question whether any child
should be assigned or designated a sex/gender status. However, most
discourse about the immediate task at hand of outlawing IGM, and
challenging some of the worst forms of prejudice and ignorance
sustaining the patriarchal sex binary, has preferred to avoid what
might be taken as a frontal assault on the gender binary as well. 
Growing legal recognition both of nonbinary status and of sex/gender
transitions of various kinds may change the terms of this dialogue.

The primary oppression of intersex people, through IGM and other forms
of childhood medical abuse, focuses on variant sex characteristics
rather than gender identity or roles, which infants cannot yet
express, although they are indeed already subject to the forces of
patriarchal socialization. From this perspective, IGM is no more of a
"gender identity" issue than FGM -- a child will be harmed by either
form of sexual violence whatever that child's future gender identity
or sexual orientation, etc.

The same patriarchal sex binary, with its fear of people with variant
sex characteristics, also directs that fear against endosex trans or
nonbinary people whose bodies acquire such variant or mixed
characteristics in the course of medically transitioning. However,
anti-trans prejudice in patriarchal society at large, and sometimes
also within the feminist community, often focuses on an issue relating
directly to gender identity and status: the fear of people with mixed
socialization.

The majority of intersex people are assigned to a binary sex at birth,
and grow to identify as and live in that sex/gender for the rest of
their lives. In contrast, and by definition, trans or nonbinary people
(endosex or intersex) who transition as adults live in a sex/gender
status different from that in which they were placed at birth and in
which they were socialized as children. 

Thus a trans female such as myself who transitioned at age 22 and is
now 67 will have experienced male socialization and privilege for
about the first third of her life, and adult female socialization for
the latter two thirds. A trans male, conversely, will have experienced
childhood female socialization and oppression, and then male
socialization and a measure of male privilege. For nonbinary people,
beyond the problems of transition there is the extra burden of sex and
gender binarism in patriarchy, where the idea of a full and complete
human being who is both or neither "woman" or "man" -- or for some
nonbinary people, something else again quite outside the "man-woman"
continuum -- seems almost unthinkable.

Two unfortunate reactions within the feminist community to this
reality of mixed or variant socialization are either to downplay or
outright deny it; or to use it as a ground for rejecting and excluding
trans people (especially trans women) rather than having a sisterly
and intersectional dialogue which seeks unity in diversity.

Feminists of the "gender critical" school quite rightly observe that
the experience of a trans female with mixed socialization will
inevitably be different from that of a natal female assigned or
designed female at birth and socialized as a girl. Both groups include
some intersex women, who are most commonly in the situation (like
other natal females) of being assigned female at birth; but sometimes
are assigned male and nevertheless identify as women and often seek
medical procedures to acquire more female sex characteristics.

Thus the experience of a trans person who socially and medically
transitions as an adult may be comparable in a very rough way to that
of an immigrant who moves to a new country and becomes a naturalized
citizen. A critical caution about this analogy is that there are
people who are literally immigrants and also trans or nonbinary -- and
some doubtless also intersex -- who face sexual assault and other
human rights abuses in detention centers in the USA. It is vital that
a metaphor not obscure the toxic realities of xenophobia in its
classic sense, especially at a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric and
attacks by the federal government on immigrant rights are endemic in
the USA.

With that caution, we may say that a sex/gender transition, like
immigration, often involves two aspects. One is physical relocation
or transformation: moving geographically from one country to another,
or medically in the direction of more female, or male, sex
characteristics -- or, in the case of a nonbinary intersex person like
Dana Zzyym, the restoration of natal intersex characteristics which
should have never been altered by IGM in the first place.

The other aspect is cultural relocation or resocialization: learning a
new culture, whether a national culture or a culture related to one's
new social gender status. Here, as a feminist, I should emphasize that
for a trans woman, female (re)socialization does not necessarily mean
conforming to patriarchal stereotypes and expectations -- any more
than immigrant resocialization necessarily means either acting out
stereotypes or embracing an uncritical "patriotism" of a militaristic
variety. To me, adult female resocialization means feminist
resocialization, a lifelong process and struggle in which natal and
trans women -- including intersex women in either category -- can and
should be mutually supportive sisters.

Part of this sisterhood is a recognition by trans females that indeed
people assigned or designed female at birth -- whether endosex women
(as far as I know) like the great radical Lesbian feminist Rita Mae
Brown, or intersex women like many members of AISSG who likewise live
their entire lives as female (with or without the ordeal of IGM), or
nonbinary intersex people like Hida Viloria -- have directly
experienced the oppression of childhood female socialization as we
have not.

Also, endosex trans females cannot become pregnant or give birth, and
thus do not experience what becomes under patriarchy the oppression of
reproductive vulnerability. This statement is likewise true of some,
but not all, intersex women. For those of us who do not ourselves
experience this vulnerability, feminist solidarity means supporting
the struggle for women's reproductive rights which do directly affect
a large majority of our sisters -- and, additionally, some nonbinary
people and trans men, intersex or endosex.

Likewise, endosex trans females do not have uteri, and thus never
experience menstruation -- a statement also true of some, but not all,
intersex women. This does not make menstruation any less of a women's
issue that affects a very large majority of our sisters, and which
under patriarchy is a topic for negative attitudes and images that
degrade all women and female bodies -- including those with natal or
acquired variant sex characteristics. Awareness that menstruation is a
feminist health concern that overwhelmingly affects women need not be
diluted by awareness that some women (natal or trans) never experience
it, or that certain other people do -- again, some nonbinary people
and trans men, intersex or endosex.

A danger both of patriarchal reaction against trans and nonbinary
people, and of a similar kind of reaction within the feminist movement
sometimes associated with the term "gender critical," is that concerns
about mixed socialization (e.g. a trans female who was raised as a boy
and enjoyed at least a measure of male privilege) get "biologized"
into the language of the sex binary. Thus it is argued that trans
females are "not really females or women" because they cannot give
birth, and that a medically constructed vulva is not really a female
sex characteristic because it cannot serve the purpose of bringing
forth a child. Note that this argument would also attack the "real
femaleness" of many intersex women who may have vulvas but not uteri
or ovaries, although they were assigned female at birth and have lived
their entire lives as female.

While any feminism worth its salt will, of course, take a critical
view of gender categories and roles under patriarchy, a truly radical
or truly compassionate feminism will also be "sex critical," likewise
challenging the sex binary. Marginalizing many intersex and/or trans
women because we cannot reproduce or do not have the "right" gonads or
chromosomes is to reinforce, not challenge, the patriarchal attitudes
that reduce the intricacies of human sex characteristics and sexuality
to a crude question of male power and female subjection to forced
reproductive and domestic labor. These attitudes manifest in concrete
violence, ranging from street and domestic violence against women and
"honor killings" to IGM against intersex people to the murder of trans
people, especially Trans Women of Color.

As Cary Gabriel Costello has stated, intersex people, including the
majority who are not trans or nonbinary, become "collateral damage" in
anti-trans campaigns aimed at defining "biological sex" by crude tests
such as birth assignment or designation, or chromosomes, in order to
exclude trans people from sex-segregated spaces such as restrooms.
Such transphobic measures also reinforce interphobia -- the fear of
people born with mixed sex characteristics -- as well as harming
endosex people who are not trans or nonbinary, but are judged by
others, typically male vigilantes of the most sexist variety, as not
having the proper body profile or gender expression for "a real
woman." Natal women who are judged "too Butch" -- whether Lesbian or
otherwise -- are a prime target.

Understanding the special realities of intersex oppression (based on
natal mixed sex characteristics) and of trans and nonbinary oppression
(based on gender identity and social transition, and often also on
acquired mixed sex characteristics) will help not only to liberate the
2% or more of the population directly affected, but in confronting the
patriarchal sex and gender binaries that oppress women generally. 

As the feminist Ruth Herschberger demonstrated in her classic book
_Adam's Rib_ (1948), "Society Writes Biology." For intersex infants,
as with the victims in Kafka's _Penal Colony_, this writing is
inflicted on human flesh with horribly wielded instruments -- here,
surgical instruments used to impose sex binary norms on a body whose
innocent owner cannot yet speak, much less speak the language of
self-knowledge and informed consent or refusal.

The patriarchal fear of intersex may at some level stem from the same
impulse that many feminist believe gave rise to patriarchy thousands
of years ago: the impulse to reduce the continuum of human sex
characteristics, and the vast range of consensual sexuality, to a
crude male-female dichotomy. The feminist anthropologist Paola Tabet,
for example, asserts that humans under the natural conditions that
obtained before patriarchy actually had quite low birth rates -- a
situation changed by the patriarchal imperative to treat women as
breeding machines, much like domesticated livestock. The enslavement
of women, and marginalization of intersex people and their bodies
which did not fit neatly into this sex binary, as well as other people
transgressing the new sex/gender system, should be seen as different
aspects of the same sexist oppression.

Thus the intersex struggle against IGM, and the struggle by trans and
nonbinary people, endosex or intersex, for gender recognition and the
right to access medical transition care altering sex characteristics
on the basis of fully informed consent, both tie in with the feminist
struggle against the oppression of women in general, and for women's
reproductive rights.

A harmonious alliance between these feminist struggles must take shape
in two ways. First, as intersex activists such as OII-USA have been
urging for years, it is critical that endosex trans or nonbinary
people understand and support the intersex struggle against IGM and
other forms of childhood medical abuse. This is especially important
when the "I" for Intersex in acronyms such as LGBTI or LGBTIQA has too
often stood instead for "Invisible." True alliances must be
reciprocal, and the devoted initiatives of intersex activists such as
Hida Viloria, Dana Zzyym, and Cary Gabriel Costello for trans and
nonbinary rights (also relevant to them as trans or nonbinary people)
have too rarely been reciprocated by endosex trans people like
myself.

At another level, the concerns of intersex people and trans or
nonbinary people about the sex and gender binaries must be connected
and harmonized with the oppression experienced by a numerical majority
of society: women, including those who are endosex and live their
entire lives as female. A mutual appreciation of our different aspects
of privilege and oppression, our diverse vulnerabilities and
immunities, may lead to a higher sense of sisterhood that advances all
of these feminist concerns while challenging patriarchy at its very
roots.

As an endosex person, I should conclude by cautioning against the
danger that intersex people may be reduced to convenient arguments in
debates mostly about other issues: whether theories of how gender
identity develops, or of why the sex binary is invalid as a reason to
oppress trans people, presumed to be endosex! Intersex people are,
above all, human beings who only by their own collective mobilization
in the 1990's brought some of the rest of us to recognize the
outrageous evils of IGM.

Indeed, few people can confirm more than intersex people, many of them
IGM survivors, that "The personal is political, and the political is
personal." Those of us who are endosex allies should support this
struggle as waged by OII-USA and other organizations, along with the
distinct but intersecting struggles of intersex and nonbinary people,
as an end in itself, as well as an integral aspect of the feminist
movement for women's liberation and human liberation.


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Note
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1. In describing intersex as involving "natal variant sex
   characteristics," and endosex trans people who medically transition
   as having "acquired variant sex characteristics," I am indebted to
   the organization GATE, an international organization addressing
   trans and intersex issues, and its _Submission by GATE to the World
   Health Organization: Intersex codes in the International
   Classification of Diseases (ICD) 11 Beta Draft_ (June 2017),
   pp. 14-15. While this GATE report proposes to describe intersex in
   terms of "congenital variations of sex characteristics," one
   intersex activist disliked the use of "congenital" because it is
   often associated with diseases and thus might be read to
   pathologize intersex people. I have preferred the word "natal,"
   which may avoid such connotations. 

   The GATE report proposes that "congenital variations in sex
   characteristics" should be used in clinical settings rather than
   either "intersex" (preferred by a wide range of intersex people and
   organizations) or the current clinical term "Disorders of Sex
   Development" (DSD) coined in 2006, and strongly objected to by
   intersex people and organizations. As an endosex ally, I urge that
   intersex people should decide which term is best for use in medical
   settings. "Intersex" is very widely although not unanimously
   preferred within the intersex community, while the "Disorders"
   terminology is rightly seen as not only pathologizing the community
   and its members, but more particularly as promoting the continuing
   human rights violation of IGM.

Margo Schulter
15 February 2018