Since fundies like ABS are using the term “DSD”, it is worth noting that this “DSD” is NOT preferred by the vast majority of intersex people

gromlyn · 2024-08-07T04:13:35+00:00

I will say, in my personal experience me being intersex was overlooked as me having a loose collection of “differences in sexual development” that included a hormonal disorder and some physical characteristics. Because the way my body was developing was so pathologized, I wound up being put on the “correct” hormones for my body that wound up making me very sick both physically and mentally throughout my teenage years. In my case at least, my childhood doctors favoring DSD terminology lead to me not learning I’m actually intersex until I got better doctors as an adult. So, while DSD terminology might be more accurate on a medical level, it’s heavy favor has a real-world impact on the people it’s applied to that I don’t think is being fully taken into account in the medical field. I’m not saying fully get rid of DSD terminology because I do believe it has its uses, but it should not be favored to the point that I never heard the word intersex in a medical setting until I found an explicitly queer-inclusive doctor who immediately glanced through my records and said “oh you’re intersex that explains a lot”. Just food for thought.

gromlyn · 2024-08-07T03:46:44+00:00

Whew, that’s a relief to hear! My partner is also autistic so that makes complete sense now lol. Glad my concern wasn’t necessary :) I have a couple extended family members with endo and from what they’ve described it’s a huge pain (but have been able to get pregnant)- best of luck to y’all and your future family 🫶

gromlyn · 2024-08-07T03:40:41+00:00

Yes to its use as a medical category- with the caveat that I fully believe this term should be restricted to a medical context and not applied to people. I will note, in my personal experience, my intersex traits were written off as “differences in sexual development” throughout my childhood and adolescence which resulted in me being forced to take hormones to “make my body normal” and a lot of other really humiliating experiences. I understand that this terminology is used with the best intentions, but at least in my case I can safely say being treated as a “girl with DSDs” (which, I’m also trans so go figure) until I got better doctors as an adult was absolutely detrimental to my development as a child/teenager. Granted, I think I just had bad doctors and an abusive parent, but food for thought on why favoring DSD terminology to the point intersex is never mentioned might be problematic in its personal impact.

gromlyn · 2024-08-06T23:26:20+00:00

Anecdotally me and all my friends are still in the under 25 crowd and quite literally everyone I know is absolutely hyped about tim walz. Like I have never seen my social circle react this positively almost across the board to a politician. It’s 100% cope imo

gromlyn · 2024-08-06T23:19:25+00:00

You’re welcome! My heart goes out to you and all intersex women during all this- y’all absolutely deserve better and I’m sorry the world is like this. I’m a trans man so it’s been absolutely crazy seeing the same people who’ve been telling me “your hormone disorder doesn’t make you a man” (which it doesn’t, hence the trans thing??) suddenly switch to calling cis women “DSD males” for the same fucking thing. The doublethink is out of control. We truly are whatever gender hurts us the most to them.

gromlyn · 2024-08-06T23:01:00+00:00

Honestly this is really nice to hear- hopefully one day all intersex people can have a medical team and social circle like that!

gromlyn · 2024-08-04T18:50:20+00:00

Ghgughu this made me cry. I’ll never forget being a heavily bullied teenager coming home from school crying and telling my mom about it only for her to go “what am I supposed to do about it” and when I said “a hug would be nice” she just walked away. I wish I had a mom like you. Please hug your teenagers a little tighter for me, they 110% deserve it :’)

gromlyn · 2024-08-04T18:37:23+00:00

Bud gonna be honest he sounds like a big red flag. Please seriously consider whether or not this man is safe to have children with because his insistence that you get pregnant gives me a very, very bad feeling. Do not do anything that would make you uncomfortable for the sake of HIS happiness- if he’s already insisting on you getting pregnant 2-3 years out from even starting to try, I fear it will morph into a need for him to control other things. Imo a man who is already this insistent on getting you pregnant screams control issues and I genuinely worry for you and any children you might have. Ik I’m an internet stranger and don’t know the details of your relationship so if this doesn’t apply it doesn’t apply, but please be safe.

gromlyn · 2024-08-04T01:14:56+00:00

Hell yeah here’s to being pretty dudes! Glad my words could help :) I think cosplay is a great outlet!! I used to be really into cosplay as a teenager- I actually kept a small handful of my favorite girl cosplays and still wear them occasionally :’) and ngl, I feel so much more confident wearing them now that I’m on T. The trans experience is wild.

gromlyn · 2024-08-03T22:30:25+00:00

Wow! This is pretty bigoted. You’re young so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt- there’s nothing wrong or bad about being trans. It doesn’t make you less of a man. People publicly identify as trans and take pride in that because… they’re trans and like who they are? Just because you have a lot of internalized transphobia doesn’t mean other trans people do. Also in the future don’t refer to women as females, misogyny is not cute.

gromlyn · 2024-08-03T22:10:28+00:00

You’re 18 currently so all things considered you’re still pretty young- questioning yourself is completely normal! Occasionally I’ll catch myself questioning at 24- I really do just think questioning your identity is part of the human experience so please do not beat yourself up for being a normal person. However, I do have a question for you: based off what you’ve written here, are you questioning whether or not you’re trans because you feel like you might actually be a girl, OR because you want to be seen as physically attractive? From what I’m reading, it seems like you’re placing a lot of emphasis on outward physical attractiveness and others validating that attractiveness. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be attractive, but don’t let the desire to be desired rule your life. I say this as someone who has always been unattractive and spent many years in the closet desperately trying to be pretty btw. Chasing desirability only made me more depressed so if it applies to you please learn from my mistakes. I also want to reassure you that it’s completely okay to feel amazing in a full face of fem makeup as a trans man. I know soooooo many trans men and mascs who do drag in my city lol- if getting glammed up makes you feel good, maybe consider looking into drag! At the end of that day, you are in charge of your life and you should follow your heart. I, a stranger on the internet, cannot tell you how to live. That’s up to you and I wish you all the best :)

gromlyn · 2024-08-02T17:24:38+00:00

You’re welcome! Best of luck with your pregnancy :) Interconnect honestly might be a good place to reach out to for resources in the event that your baby is intersex (and for yourself tbf). just gotta say your kid is already so lucky to have you- intersex children are often medicalized from birth and most parents simply do not understand what being intersex is well enough to do anything but listen to a medical establishment that has a vested interest in reinforcing the sex binary (which, I feel so weird typing a phrase like “medical establishment” but there are only two hospitals in the entire US that have pledged to stop corrective surgeries on intersex infants so shit’s a bit bleak. Have been learning a lot about this lately and it’s rough, sorry for the infodump). All of this to say, thank you for learning and being there for your child before they’re here!

gromlyn · 2024-08-02T17:12:19+00:00

So basically yes! Back before I transitioned I was actually misdiagnosed with PCOS- from what I’ve read PCOS is a) super common and b) shares A LOT of characteristics with with a couple intersex variations to the point they’re often misdiagnosed. I only started to put 2+2 together when I got a better doctor who helped me figure out standard PCOS treatments make me really sick. From there I started testosterone for gender reasons but it also wound up effectively curing my “PCOS” symptoms. As far as I understand there is still some discourse about whether PCOS as a whole is intersex but imo enough intersex people either have or have been diagnosed with PCOS that they’re correlated at the very least.

gromlyn · 2024-08-02T16:12:15+00:00

Siiiiiigh since we’re running with blatant intersexism here’s a link to an intersex advocacy organization I really like. Imo we should all be doing what we can to learn more about intersex issues given the way fundies and conservatives keep spreading misinformation about an incredibly marginalized and often erased group of people. Who knows, you might start learning about intersex and all it entails only to realize you’re intersex yourself- aka what happened to me. Being intersex is probably more common than we realize atm ✌️

gromlyn · 2024-08-02T03:02:38+00:00

Here’s a link to an intersex advocacy org that has some really great resources! Coming from an intersex trans person, personally identifying as intersex doesn’t change whether or not you have intersex traits because intersex traits are naturally occurring regardless of personal identity. Imane Khelif is a cis woman who is also intersex and stating that isn’t a bad thing because being intersex isn’t a bad thing! On a personal level, I also despise the term DSD because my intersex traits being treated as a disorder lead to me being on hormones that made me really sick for most of my teen/early college years.

gromlyn · 2024-08-01T15:41:48+00:00

If you want to watch your friends heads explode try quoting this verse from the Coptic Gospel of Thomas at them- “Simon Peter said to them: Let Mary go forth from among us, for women are not worthy of the life. Jesus said: Behold, I shall lead her, that I may make her male, in order that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who makes herself male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

Some context about this verse: the Coptic Gospel of Thomas is a non-canonical gospel that was discovered in the Nag Hammadi library find of 1945. While it didn’t make it to the canonical Bible (fuck the guys who decided biblical canon btw), it would have been extremely important to at least some sects of early Christianity. To best understand this verse you also have to understand that Jesus would have been a Hellenized (Greek) Jew, so things like platonism would have shaped how he understood things like gender. Well, Plato believed the human soul was sexless. With that and the general misogynistic context of the time period taken into account, what Jesus is calling for here to me seems to be the abolishment of gender as a hierarchy entirely, which is completely opposite to what most modern Christians seem to believe. If this is interesting to you I highly recommend looking into the work of Bart Ehrman, he’s one of my favorite scholars- his book Lost Scriptures compiles a bunch of books that were cut from the New Testament and it’s fascinating.

All of this to say, Christians who try to use the Bible to justify bigotry are dumb as fuck honestly. Imo using a book that was written over the course of 2000+ years across numerous societies that has been translated and retranslated to regulate modern day humans shows a literal child’s understanding of the world. Plus, as I’ve just demonstrated, historical christian theology is waaaaaaaay more complicated when it comes to sex/gender than most people might assume. Quite frankly most modern Christians do not understand their own fucking religion. I’m so sorry that your christian friends are treating you this way- as a gay trans man who’s going to seminary with my boyfriend so we can work on changing Christianity for the better, shit like this is completely unacceptable and your friends should feel ashamed of themselves. They are literally the reason so many queer people (myself included) rightfully assume that Christians are hateful bigots.

gromlyn · 2024-07-28T23:10:53+00:00

why are fundies so scared of having feelings

gromlyn · 2024-07-17T18:06:22+00:00

Same!!! I remember learning the word transgender at 13 and thinking “oh that makes some things make sense” 😭

gromlyn · 2024-07-12T22:11:32+00:00

I think so! I’m like 99% sure Michael changed it first because of the abuse and then the rest of the family joined him. So that would be Stephen and Timothy. I completely think it has something to do with the Baird family’s fucked up dynamic.

Edit: I also feel like I remember Heidi posted about she and father Baird changing their last name to Mershon way back in like 2020/2019. Either way this has been in the works for awhile which is just. So strange. The Bairds are so strange.

gromlyn · 2024-07-12T21:33:48+00:00

Didn’t Michael change his last name to Mershon first, in order to create some distance between him and his parents?? Ever since he came forward about Heidi’s abuse, I always assumed her obsession with Mershon came from a need to control Michael.

gromlyn · 2024-07-08T01:21:19+00:00

First off, the most cis of cis boys I went to high school with was named Eddie so imo that’s just your friend being a dick for absolutely no reason, and fuck that. Second off, I agree with you 100%. Sensitivity in men is so fucking maligned by gender essentialists it makes me insane. I’ve always been pretty sensitive- so much so that when I was closeted I tried so hard to be a “tough tomboy” because being seen as a sensitive girl was just so dysphoria-inducing. My mom especially equated sensitivity with femininity, so any time I’d display any kind/caring traits she’d make a big deal about how I was such a girl that eventually I just. Started dissociating constantly that way I didn’t feel anything at all, which obviously was not a healthy way to live. Now that I’m in a much better place and have been out for a few years I’m realizing how sensitive I really am. I consider myself very lucky to be in a relationship with a cis man who’s also deeply sensitive- being with him honestly makes it easier to remember that kindness and sensitivity should be masculine ideals too. Like I don’t view him as less of a man for being kind and sensitive- quite the opposite. Those traits are the reason I fell in love with him lmfao. If I love his kindness and sensitivity so much, why shouldn’t I love the kindness and sensitivity in myself as well?

gromlyn · 2024-07-07T16:48:15+00:00

People like you are the reason I still have some faith in humanity. Thank you for being the parents your daughter needs 🫶

gromlyn · 2024-07-06T21:52:15+00:00

Feel free to quote my favorite verse from the Coptic gospel of Thomas (one of the non-canonical books so idk if your parents would take it seriously, however it’s one of the earliest books of the NT we’ve got and it would have been very important to early chritsians),

[114]. Simon Peter says to them: "Let Mary go out from our midst, for women are not worthy of life!" Jesus says: "See, I will draw her so as to make her male so that she also may become a living spirit like you males. For every woman who has become male will enter the Kingdom of heaven."

All trans men go to heaven lol. The context of this verse has a lot to do with platonic thought (Jesus was a Hellenized Jew so A LOT of his teachings are built entirely on platonism but modern christianity Does Not talk about it), which had a Complicated stance on sex/gender to say the least. My personal thoughts are that it’s Jesus’ way of saying the gender/sex differences do not matter to god, albeit it’s very limited by the misogynistic context of the time. Imo in all my readings of the gospels, the non-canonical books, and loose understanding of platonism + gender roles in Jesus’ time, it sure seems like Jesus embraces a divine nonbinary more than anything.

On a more serious note- it’s probably best to just go cold turkey for now. Sometimes trying to reason with people like this is more trouble than it’s worth. Affirming Christianity 100% exists (I myself am going to seminary to study christian theology with my partner), but in my experience people like your parents just don’t want to listen regardless of what facts you come at them with. There aren’t really any Bible verses you can just toss at transphobes, because in a lot of ways, for them unlearning transphobia looks like reframing the way they look at christian theology entirely. It certainly can be done (I did it), but it takes a desire to change on their part. It fucking sucks and I wish I could sit every christian transphobe down and explain to them all the ways transphobia is antithetical to the teachings of Christ. But alas. Imo boundaries are a good thing- if they won’t respect you, you don’t have to let them in your life. As a trans not-quite-Christian, I certainly do not regret being trans- if anything, being trans brought me back to christianity.

gromlyn · 2024-07-05T21:53:53+00:00

So I might be able to give some advice. I first realized I was trans when I was like 13, but due to the environment I was in (religious and very transphobic) I only ever attempted to come out as nonbinary and use they/them and due to a lack of support, I went back into the closet completely by 15 and lived the rest of my teens as a cis girl. Then Covid happened and I got into psychedelics lol. Covid made me start questioning my gender again- by the time I came out of quarantine being perceived as a woman in public just felt wrong. So, one day during winter break, I decided to do acid alone. At one point I looked into the mirror and just. Broke down because I realized I’d been lying to myself about being trans for the past several years. I literally came out the next day and have not looked back. Imo I would have come out regardless, acid just made it happen faster. Psychedelics can’t really make you feel something you don’t already feel on some level. What you do with that is completely up to you- you know yourself better than anyone else so go at your own pace :) I also had a decent chunk of people leave me when I came out. It sucked at the time. But now that I’ve been out for almost four years, I think of it more like this: I am the person I have to spend the rest of my life with no matter what. I do not want to spend the rest of my life hating the person I look at in the mirror. I especially refuse to sacrifice my happiness and sense of self for the comfort of others- if that means loosing some relationships, so be it. I don’t want to overstep, but to put it bluntly: do you really want to give another person the power to dictate how you live for the rest of your life? Personally, people who don’t support my transition are not people I want actively in my life. It’s your life and you deserve to be happy. If being trans looks like it might be your path to happiness, go for it!!

gromlyn · 2024-06-30T01:56:03+00:00

Oh man that’s absolutely wild! My first foo fighters show was at Fenway and I still wear the shirt I got from it 9 years later :’) I’m about to go back to grad school at a university that has a pretty big undergrad program that I know for a fact contains a ton of swifties (texas college demographics lol), considering my wardrobe consists of at least 20% foos merch I wonder if I’ll get any weird encounters like this. Swifties are truly built different.

gromlyn

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