Introduction

In preparation for outing myself at church this is one more fill-in-the-gaps blog, this one mostly a combination of FAQ and vocabulary/conceptual introduction. Feel free to read my blog in whatever order you wish, although the recommended sequence for a newcomer would be this one first then jump back to "Coming Out (in a way)" and read in sequence of posting from there.

---

Staring with vocabulary:

"Sex" is the physical anatomy that somebody has. Unless they happen to have changed clothes in front of you at some point, you really have no idea what sex the people around you are; you're just making an educated guess. Even if you have seen another person completely naked, you've still only seen half of their sexual anatomy because there are a number of internal organs that display sexual dimorphism (male/female differences).

"Primary" sexual characteristics are the ones that are determined through genetics by the fewest developmental links, such as whether one has testes or ovaries and whether one has a penis or a vagina.

"Secondary" sexual characteristics are the ones that are developed in response to active hormone levels during puberty, such as breasts, facial hair, and voice pitch. Note that the degree to which secondary sexual characteristics are present varies widely in both men and women, so interpretation of observed secondary sexual characteristics is highly subjective.

An "intersex" person is someone in whom the organs that have sexual dimorphism don't all follow the same male/female pattern. How common this is depends on which organs one considers as valid for comparison and what range of variation is defined as "normal", but I'll cite 1 in 100 as the number of modern humans who have some type of intersex condition. Intersex conditions that involve ambiguous genitalia are generally diagnosed at birth. Intersex conditions that involve a conflict between primary and secondary characteristics are generally diagnosed when the secondary characteristics appear during puberty. Intersex conditions that involve a conflict between external and internal organs generally go undiagnosed until some type of dysfunction (such as infertility) is noticed. Until the invention of modern medical imaging technology, intersex conditions of this type were rarely discovered except during autopsy. Even with modern imaging technology, there is no standard screening process and the multitude of possible intersex conditions makes it impossible to confidently rule out all intersex conditions in a given individual... one can only test for and confirm the presence or absence of specific conditions.

"Presentation" is which of the social standards related to the theoretical male/female binary a person follows, such as clothing, hair style, and jewelry.

"Gendering" is the practice of assigning a male/female identity to somebody that you have just met. Because primary sexual characteristics are rarely exposed, this is generally based on a combination of presentation and secondary sexual characteristics. We live in a culture that puts a lot of emphasis on correctly gendering others, so tend to obsessively observe a stranger's presentation and secondary sexual characteristics until we are confident in our assessment.

A person's "gender" is whether they consider themselves to be male or female. An intersex persons might see themselves as male, female, or non-binary (both, neither, etc) and their gender does not necessarily agree with the visible external sexual characteristics. Scientific study of both cadavers and fMRI imaging of live persons has found a very strong correlation between gender and sexual dimorphism of the brain, even when all other sexual characteristics indicate a sex that is different from that person's gender. This specific type of intersex condition is commonly referred to as "transgender" or "transsexual" (there is a difference in definition between these two terms, but for now I'll treat them as interchangeable and use 'trans' as the shortened version of both).



Ok, that should give you a reasonably solid vocabulary related to intersex/trans issues. FAQ time!

"Blasphemy! God doesn't make mistakes!"
I never said that he did. Birth defects of more types than I want to take the time to list are an undeniable reality of this mortal existence. Some of them we can point to an environmental cause for, some of them the individual receives personal revelation related to the reason for the condition, but most will remain a mystery for the duration of this life. Acknowledging intersex and trans conditions is no more of a challenge to God's divinity than acknowledgement of any other birth defect.

"Are you gay or straight?"
None of your business, and completely irrelevant... but I'll answer the question anyways. I am attracted to men, not women.

"That's not a legitimate condition! It's a sexual perversion!"
Pull your head out of your ass and look at the facts. Most of the logic that connect trans issues to sexual perversion derive from Sigmund Freud's theories on human sexuality, which have about as much relevance to modern understanding of psychology as the Levitical law does to modern Christianity. Modern science has done an amazing job of demonstrating that the trans experience has a legitimate biological base, and the claim that "God only made man and woman, not anything else in between" is conveniently overlooking the very real occurrence of visibly intersex conditions. I make no claims as to which persons have male spirits and which have female spirits because that's a personal matter for each individual, nor do I suggest that the percentage of people whose spirits don't match external appearance is large, but the commonly held belief that one can always correctly gender another's spirit based off of secondary sexual characteristics is completely absurd.

"But you LOOK perfectly female! Wouldn't there be some visual evidence of testosterone if you were really intersex?"
I've been taking synthetic estrogen (in the form of birth control pills) for almost a decade now, in order to prevent my body from producing its own estrogen (which I have some impressively negative physiological reactions to). That's enough externally applied estrogen to make a normal man grow breasts, and it's certainly made some changes to my body too. I'm sorry that I don't have the ability to show you what I would look like without the effect of synthetic hormones, but please factor that unintended deception into your assessment of my appearance.


"How can we know you're not just making up this intersex claim for personal benefit? Where's the evidence?"
What do I stand to gain from a false claim? Is Priesthood a secret society that I would find out the dirty secrets of by infiltrating the ranks of men? Would pretending to be a man get me a higher social status than simply being an honest woman? Check your own assumptions as to what might be gained by a false claim.
I am advertising myself as a freak of nature, of a type that will probably lead to further ostracism. Why would I do such a thing, unless the pain of living behind a false mask is even worse?
As to evidence... I am the expert on myself. I know my own thought patterns and instincts, and have a lifetime of contrasts between my own inner being and those of the men and women around me. Just like you don't need to take a standardized test in order to know your own skills and challenges, I don't need a medical test to tell me that I'm something other than what my external appearance suggests. External tests are for those who don't have the time to get to know the individual, or who don't believe the individual's self-descriptions.


Now go read the rest of my blog before you ask more questions, because a lot of the answers are already there.