questingqueer:

“Imagine knowing that every aspect of your physiology, from your height to your cup size, was chosen off a menu — not by nature but by doctors and family members.

From the second I was born, decisions were made by medical professionals about which of two gender categories my body should fit into. For me, surgery to remove my gonads as an infant was the first stop on the track to female — but the train didn’t stop there. My family was consulted about how 5 feet 8 inches seemed like an optimal height, and informed on how hormone levels and sequences could be measured to achieve just that. The ideal breast size for my frame was also discussed; I can still remember the male doctor nodding approvingly. I was also given a dilator before even hitting my teens, so my vagina would be ready for penetrative sex.

“Disconcerting” would be one — euphemistic — way to put it.

I was born intersex, with XY chromosomes but Complete Androgen Insensitivity. If you’re not sure what that means, I don’t blame you. By some estimates, almost 2 percent of the world’s population is intersex like me but is still living in the shadows because of societal stigma and shame. Stigma knows no borders, and neither did my body, apparently: I didn’t respond to androgen hormones in the womb, and thus stopped developing at a certain point — a point between what we consider to be the binary sexes, hence “intersex.” I was ultimately born with female anatomy on the outside but with internal testes instead of ovaries. As a result, doctors, alongside my parents, decided when I was still a baby that I would be raised as a girl. This decision has shaped the course of my entire life but was made without my consent.

I woke up Sunday morning to the news that the Trump administration is planning changes to federal civil rights laws that would define sex “as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals a person is born with,” and that any confusion would be clarified through genetic testing. Most people have interpreted this effort as a blow to transgender rights — and it is. But amid all this, the fate of intersex people seems to have been forgotten.

Where would such a change leave me? My body would throw this Trumpian test for a loop — my naturally occurring genitalia don’t match the “correct” genetic code in this forced-binary paradigm that seeks to override biology.

Here’s another curveball: What Trump’s memo defines as “unchangeable” is anything but. I know this because the process of realizing a gender via hormones and surgeries, analogous to the process the administration is seeking to marginalize and discourage among trans people, is one imposed on intersex children all the time — but in our case, it’s done before we can understand or agree. It’s not just the government that is forcing an unnatural gender binary; medicine has been doing so for ages.

The gonadectomy surgery performed on my body was internal but opened the floodgates for a sequence of physical alterations that would affect my appearance and identity. Any subsequent decisions made about my body that involved me, at an age of informed consent, were constrained by this first choice: to render me traditionally female. Regardless of my liminal genetic code — or rather, regarding it as a threat to societal norms — the train to my idealized gender presentation had already left the station. Why were all these decisions fast-tracked onto my body? Not because they were medically necessary — I would have been perfectly healthy just living and growing as little old me — but because they were vital to “normalize” me.

The desire to force-fit people into societally conditioned boxes has led to sterilizing children and enacting medically unnecessary surgeries on them. These surgeries are irreversible, lead to physical and emotional scarring, and their subjects are un-consenting. They are, to put it bluntly, the coercive application of Western cultural ideals to everyday human bodies.

Now the Trump administration wants to make these ideals the official preferences of the state.

I’ve experienced firsthand the consequences of the gender binary in what’s often a non-binary world. It isn’t good for anyone. Certainly not trans people, but also not for a population that’s larger than many think — and that has spent years trying to convince people that our bodies are good enough as they are.

Even though the administration is calling for clearer lines, we can use this as an opportunity to explore the beauty of the blur. And while our current administration proactively works to enshrine a false binary in our laws, we too can take action and give agency to those whose bodies don’t adhere to it. Until this point, we’ve lived in a state of defense — fielding constant assaults on our existence. This is our opportunity to mount a strong and overdue offense, rooted in love and understanding. One day, maybe soon, they will give up the game of trying to erase us.”