I am intergender.  This is a term which describes my gender experience as accurately as can be hoped for, far more accurately than any other existing term I have encountered.  Using it to describe myself makes me happy in its accuracy.  Unfortunately, there is a subset of intersex people who gatekeep the use of the gender term intergender, because they want to be solely used by intersex people.  These individuals will loudly and aggressively “protect” the term intergender from being used by anyone dyadic (not intersex) any time they see it, inflicting harm and erasure onto dyadic people like myself who are best described by that term.

I have also called myself trans intersex, but at the time I wrote Transgender Awareness and Living Personal Truths I had not found the term intergender.  Since intergender is a relatively widely known term, and it works just as well or better, I have been preferentially using that term.

Gender Experiences Transcend Sex Traits

One of the concepts frequently expressed in transgender and nonbinary circles is that gender is in the head and/or heart, not the genitals.  The fact that cisgender people are the overwhelming majority of the human race, and for them their genitals and gender line up perfectly, can give the impression that sex and gender are intrinsically linked. However, that is a false equivalency. There might frequently be correlation between gender and sex, but there is not causation. Gender exists independently of sex traits and the physical form, as proven by the existence of transgender and nonbinary people.  Gender is limitless, and for transgender and most nonbinary individuals, gender specifically defies the expectations of the physical form.

Opinions differ on the importance of gender at all, with some people crying for abolishment of all genders, and others (like me) happily indulging in their very strong sense of gender, but it is generally agreed that a person’s gender is not dictated by their physical form.  I consider those individuals who disagree with this principle to be transphobic.

Gender Terms Transcend Sex Traits

Since gender transcends sex traits, gender terms must also transcend sex traits.

I think of male, female, intersex, AFAB, and AMAB as describing the sex or sex traits a person was born with.

Male and female can not only be a person’s sex, but also are gender terms.  Male is an accepted way for trans men to refer to themselves, and female is an accepted way for trans women to refer to themselves.  In addition to those two gender terms, you have masculine, feminine, woman, man, various permutations thereof, and the dizzying array of nonbinary terms to choose from.

The nonbinary terms that describe gender experiences include the contentious term intergender.  Even those who want to gatekeep the term solely for use by those with intersex bodies admit that it is a descriptor for a gender experience that is between male and female, containing elements of both yet being neither. Intergender is not accurate to all intersex people, because their sex traits do not determine their gender any more than it does for anyone else.  Intersex is the term for their sex, and amalgagender is a relatively new term that specifically refers to an intersex person who also identifies as intersex.  Since both intersex and amalgagender specifically relate to a person’s sex, unlike with the purely gender descriptive term intergender, it makes sense to limit them to use solely by intersex people.  Honestly, it would be nonsensical for a dyadic person to try and use those two.

Not all gatekeeping is bad, but gender terms should never be gatekept on the basis of sex. Gender terms have meaning to the people who feel they accurately describe their experiences of gender, no matter what their physical form is.  It can be confusing and othering to have no idea how to describe your experience to others, especially when everyone around you seems to know exactly what their own and each other’s gender is, and their assumptions about your gender make you feel bad.

Finding a term that fits with your gender experience can be euphoric, as finally you have a word, an agreed upon word that other people know, that you can use to identify something fundamental to your experiences in this world.  It lets you know that you are not alone and makes it infinitely easier to discuss such things with others.

Cultural Gender Terms

There are also gender terms that are directly related to specific cultures.  The most widely known is two-spirit, but there are cultural gender terms found throughout the world in colonized cultures.  These terms are gatekept by members of those cultures for damned good reasons, and should be respected as such.  That is because they do not solely describe gender and/or sexuality – they describe specific cultural roles, responsibilities, and/or meanings that are erased and dismissed when members of colonialist cultures reduce them down to just gender and put them on like a hat.  It is an act of appropriation to use them when you are not a part of the term’s originating culture.

Intersex is not a culture, and intergender is not a cultural term.  Intersex and intergender people are born in, and a part of, every culture and ethnicity in the world.

Gender Terms and Me

I understood my gender within myself my entire life.  I knew since I was a child that I was not a boy or a girl, but very much felt gender that contained elements of both, and a sadness that I only had female sex traits.  Being a girl never made sense to me.  Being a boy also never felt right.  I knew who I was, but I did not have the words to describe it easily until very recently.  That meant I would talk about it with good friends if the subject came up and I had time to describe in full what my gender was, but I never talked about it with strangers. I did not fight being misgendered as a woman, and instead accepted female wording as a description of the role I played in society, rather than an expression of my gender.

These days I can say I am nonbinary, and most people have heard of it.  I do not need to exhaust myself explaining what that is, and I can generally be accepted for who I am without a lot of fuss.  I can say I am intergender, and fewer people will have heard of it, but I can use the jumping point of nonbinary to more easily explain without giving a dissertation.

Since I and others can more easily and accurately label ourselves, it is also easier for us to find each other, and I have been able to connect with people who can directly relate to my gender experience.

I was strong in my knowledge of my gender my entire life.  I am lucky that way.  But, it still feels damned nice to know I am not alone.  I am, after all, a social creature, and connecting with other people is essential for my mental and emotional health.  So, I am delighted about the expanding discussion of gender and proliferation of gender terms.

Why Not Just Use “X” Label Instead?

I can go anywhere I want to go online and have people accept me as nonbinary without question.  When I specifically mention intergender, though, things have the potential to get ugly.  It entirely depends upon whether or not a gatekeeper sees it and steps in.

I know this can happen, because I am aware of those gatekeepers.  I ran into them for the first time a couple years ago, very soon after finding gender terms to accurately describe my experience.  The main arguments thrown my way asserted that I was not allowed to use intergender because intersex people are subjected to intense erasure and trauma by society (very true), and so they need terms they can use to talk about themselves without being erased by dyadic people, especially those of us who happen to be nonbinary.

I will admit, it sounds extremely reasonable, but entirely denying a gender term on the basis of sex is an overreach.

I was told in no uncertain terms that I should call myself by a different label.  Androgyne was the typical suggestion, “because it is equivalent”.

I heartily disagree that androgyne is equivalent to intergender, and I suspect those gatekeepers would not be any happier to have someone dismiss their understanding of their own gender experience and be told that they should use a term they had already looked at and dismissed as inaccurate.  Androgyne has strong connotations of indistinct gender, and is usually favored by nonbinary individuals who delight in androgyny, or who emphasize blending masculine and feminine over embracing neither, which is pretty much antithetical to my experience of gender as distinct and neither male nor female even though it incorporates aspects of both.  Other people may not be able to easily identify my gender, but I sure do.  It is not the least bit vague.

The overreach of those gatekeepers led them to tell me that I should use a label that is even less accurate and more uncomfortable to me than being called a woman (a term I accept as the role I play in society, even if it is not my gender).  They drew in their minds a false equivalency between two terms that are superficially similar, but vastly different in undertone, and assumed anyone could just use one instead of the other.

Them demanding that I change my label was as futile as telling bisexual people they need to stop using that word and instead use pansexual, and vice versa.  Sure, some people are fine with either term, but for many people one term or the other has deeper, more accurate meaning, and that matters even if no one else can see the difference.

Telling me in absolute terms that I should use androgyne instead of intergender denied and erased my understanding of my own gender experience.  It was a way of telling me that they know more about me than I do, and that they should be able to dictate to me how I refer to myself.

Their comfort mattered more to them than my truth.

That’s transphobic, and a hurtful erasure of my experience.

Self-Censorship

I do not like hiding, and have never considered myself to be in the closet, because I was always willing to talk about my gender if the subject came up.  But, decades of generally not mentioning my gender made it easy for me to self-sensor in online groups.  After that first reaming I received, I primarily used the safe umbrella term of nonbinary instead of the more accurate label of intergender, since the accurate label would potentially bring out the gatekeepers who would blatantly deny and erase my reality.

This self-censorship allowed me to delude myself into believing that I was fully accepted and included in transgender and LGBTQ+ communities.  But that was not true, and part of me knew that, or I would have been using the accurate label.

I knew that if I used that accurate label, I was opening the door to potential erasure, chastisement, and abuse, courtesy of bullying gatekeepers.

Since I am naturally opposed to hiding who I am, of course it was just a matter of time before I stopped censoring myself for the comfort of others and again used the more accurate term.  As was predictable, it did not go well.

Acknowledging Traumas

I understand where gatekeeping of the term intergender is coming from.  I just do not agree with that gatekeeping because intergender is the most accurate term for my experience, so I more intimately understand the issues at play than a casual observer is likely to.

It is nowhere near all, but instead a very vocal minority of intersex people who aggressively advocate for their sex by gatekeeping anything and everything they associate with intersex experiences, as belonging solely to intersex people.  It is born out of very valid and understandable trauma that comes from being in a group of people so marginalized that governments deny their existence, the general populous often does not know they exist, the medical community and others often see them as “aberrations” that need to be “fixed”, when intersex is obvious at birth it is typical for the infant to be subjected to involuntary sex reassignment surgery, and more.  The traumas inflicted on intersex people are both appalling and disturbingly common.

Intersex people are marginalized by marginalized standards, and some reclaim their power by gatekeeping the gender experiences of dyadic nonbinary people like me.  The traumas endured by so many intersex people are held up as proof that dyadic people are not worthy of the terms they use, just as TERFs deny the validity of trans women because they did not grow up experiencing sexism.  These gatekeepers see the two stances as vastly different, but the logic is the same. In both situations, societal traumas are used as justification to inflict personal trauma by gatekeeping and denying what are inherent and immutable personal experiences.

Bystanders in the trans and LGBTQ+ communities are normally hands-off in such disagreements, or side with the gatekeepers, because it can be incredibly difficult to objectively determine if the intersex person is rightfully advocating for their minority, or being the asshole. Compassion usually encourages siding with the marginalized minority over the single person, as individuals are more likely to be the asshole than a minority.  It has taken me a long time to come to terms with exactly why they are out of line, because it does sound very reasonable.

But there is no amount of reasonable wording that can erase the fact that gender terms transcend sex traits, and cannot be gatekept on the basis of sex without causing transphobic erasure and harm.

I cannot help but feel entirely alone in making this stand, because I see no one else doing so, but intellectually I know I am not alone. If I was alone, intergender would not be a contentious term. If I was alone, intergender would not have been in use before some intersex people tried to claim it exclusively for their use. If I was alone, the gatekeepers would be shocked at my use of the term, not be ready with ammunition to rally bystanders and bully me into denying my reality and hiding in the closet.

Valid Hurts Can Go Both Ways

I am certain their reasons for gatekeeping are irrefutably reasonable to those advocates.  I do not expect to be able to change any of their minds, any more than I can change the mind of a TERF.  From their perspective, they are being as reasonable as reasonable can be, and advocating for recognition and respect of their sex against careless oppressors, a category I get yeeted into in their minds.

I understand it, and I sympathize with their motivations, but it does not excuse inflicting harm on others and attempting to erase the validity of their experiences. My experiences are valid and real, and despite their discomfort, on a fundamental level my existence does not harm them in the slightest.

I do not want to be thoughtless and messed up to a minority, any minority, and the only way to accomplish that is to listen when they tell me that I am fucking up.  The vast majority of the time, I will go with whatever I am told by a member of a minority group, even if I do not understand it, because on a fundamental level it does not hurt me to respect their wishes.

In this case, though, their attitudes and gatekeeping hurt me very much, on a deeply fundamental level.

It truly sucks that their hurt and my hurt exist simultaneously, because both are valid.  But, I must live with myself, so I will not closet myself or deny my reality for their comfort.

Dysphoria is an Experience, not a Choice

In my most recent kerfuffle in a very large online transgender support group, I responded to gatekeeping criticisms by explaining myself and describing my dysphoria to them. I gave them that courtesy because I understand where they are coming from, and I hoped that in explaining myself, they could understand where I was coming from.

Dysphoria is a thing that most transgender people have, as well as some others who do not identify as transgender.  It can be managed, but attempting to “cure” it was the false premise of treating gender identity disorder in previous decades, the goal of which was usually to make the GID go away so the person could be cisgendered instead of transgendered.  The modern term dysphoria recognizes that the disconnect we feel between our sex and our gender is a fundamental part of who we are.  We do not choose it.  We cannot choose or change it even if we wanted to.  We can only work with it to find things that create gender euphoria and ease the dysphoria, so that the disconnect happens less often or less severely, and instead we connect with our true gender.

I consider my dysphoria to be mild because it leaves me with a sense of sadness that I do not have sex traits that I should have in addition to the ones I do have.  Even though I do not have panic attacks or feel the need for medical transition, the desires it imparts are very specific and strong, and have been consistent since childhood.  I know exactly what I wish my body had, and I also know that even if I had been born male or intersex, there would still be sex traits missing, because no one has everything, and I wish I had everything.  I would still have dysphoria, no matter the shape of my body.  In my youth I arrived at a melancholy acceptance that the physical form I have is good despite glaring omissions, so I might as well appreciate it for what it is.

My dysphoria is mild and managed, but it still exists.  I cannot change it, even if I wanted to.  It is an experience which is part of the fundamental underpinning of my reality in this life.

The fact that I have dysphoria is no more harmful to intersex people, than the dysphoria of a trans man is harmful to cis men, or the dysphoria of a trans woman is harmful to cis women. It has the potential to hurt the person who has dysphoria, but no one else.

The transgender community knows that dysphoria is not a choice, so I mistakenly believed that if I explained my dysphoria, they would understand that I was not hurting or dismissing or “fetishizing” anyone.  I thought they would understand that I was simply acknowledging my reality and personal truth, same as any other transgender person.

Instead, I was misconstrued, chastised, berated, and accused of monstrous harms at every turn.  Of course, they worded things as nicely as possible so the bullying and erasure was not obvious (perhaps even to themselves), but my attempts to answer their concerns were ignored or twisted into the worst possible conclusion, and I found myself increasingly defensive and anxious.

I ended up in a tailspin of anxiety and depression because they were attacking experiences core to who I am that I have had my entire life, things that I could not change if I wanted to.  They were telling me that having those innate experiences made me a monster who was a blight to intersex people.  They acted like my fundamental experiences were something I chose to put on because I thought it was a fad or cute or attractive, and in doing so, they transphobically erased who I am and denied my existence. They acted like I was a liar who did not and could not know who I was, and they clearly believed I was at best ignorantly discriminatory, or at worst maliciously mocking them.

I finally turned off notifications and exited the conversation because I realized it was an exercise in futility. They had no interest in understanding my point of view.  The last comment I read was undeniable proof of that. They informed me that my discomfort was entirely my fault, and that I should have behaved better.  They insisted that my dysphoria was not being denied, but instead it was my wording that was creating the problem.  But, I am certain there was no wording I could have used to describe my experiences which would have satisfied them. My innate experiences made them uncomfortable, so they were only going to find offense, and picked on my wording so they could justify their offense without recognizing their erasure of my experiences.  They used very gentle and kind wording, while I was clearly upset, which was held up as proof that I was in the wrong.

But gentle wording does not negate erasure and bigotry and transphobia, any more than it negates racism, ableism, antisemitism, or any other hateful aggressions and microaggressions.  It actually makes it worse, because gentle wording pretends to be compassionate and reasonable while stabbing you in the back and asking you why you are hurting yourself.

No matter what volume of gentle wording they can conjure, it does not change the fact that gender transcends sex, so gender terms must also transcend sex. The entire premise of their objections is not trauma or marginalization – those are just excuses and justifications for the gatekeeping. The real premise of their gatekeeping is the idea that a gender term, intergender, can be denied to someone on the basis of their sex. It is a premise that is patently false, and patently harmful, because it results in gatekeeping gender experiences, not just gender terms.

Their hurt may be real and valid, but that does not give them the right to lash out and hurtfully marginalize and deny someone else.

Where do I Go from Here?

Thank you for taking the time to read my words.  It helps me a great deal to write out my thoughts when I am struggling to understand, as in this case I have struggled to come to terms with exactly why this kind of gatekeeping hurts me so deeply and personally.  I hope that you can see my point of view, but I also know it is unrealistic to expect everyone will.

I am currently debating whether or not to back entirely out of the transgender community online.  It is a place where I should be able to be myself, without hiding or censorship, and yet I cannot.  I greatly valued the idea that I could be accepted there, but I was wrong, and that hurts even more than the erasure doled out by a handful of individuals.  Still, that erasure does not change the fact that the majority of the transgender community does welcome me, and I have enjoyed being a part of that community.

At the same time, I know that no community is entirely free from assholes, and it is nice to not be alone.

If I do stay active in that community, I will need to take my own advice and be more aggressive about Unfriending, Blocking, and Banning on Social Media.  I had been reluctant to do so before now, because I had not put my finger on exactly why I felt the way I do about the situation.  I did not want to dismiss those gatekeepers out of hand.  Their perspective is valid, but so is mine, and I am not going to put myself through their abuses or be bullied into feeling like a terrible person for having my gender, which is an inescapable part of who I am and my experience in this life.