Intersex Archives - iCounsellor.co.uk

Thought this might be a worthy exercise to define this poster’s terms… corrections & suggestions are welcome in the comments section 🙂

21-25 Oct 2013 - Ally Week — 21-25 Oct 2013 – Ally Week

Gay: men who are sexually attracted to… and wishing intimate relationships with men. Often doesn’t include MWHSWM (“Men who have sex with men”).

Lesbian: men who are sexually attracted to… and wishing intimate relationships with men. Often doesn’t include WWHSWW (“Women who have sex with Women”).

Bisexual: a person who is sexually attracted to… and wishing intimate relationships with … people of any gender.

Transgender: A person who has changed their physicality to a different gender from birth. May not include intersex. May not have any reference to the person’s sexuality.

Intersex: A person with genitals of either gender, sometimes in different states (eg a person with a greater penis and a lesser vagina may be intersex but has been nominated (or has chosen to be) male)

Pansexual: A person who does not limit or inhibit themselves in sexual choice with regard to gender or activity.

Asexual: A person who has no (or little) evidence of sexuality (but who still has gender).

Not included on this poser is:

Genderless/Androgyne: a person whose gender does not fit in (nearly) with female/male definition.

There is a discussion going on LGBT Equality Worldwide’s Facebook page about the photo: “Some men have vaginas… Some women don’t have vaginas… get over it”.

This photo stretches many people’s thinking – particularly those who are used only to thinking about gender as being either ‘female’ or ‘male’.

On Facebook, some people are commenting about this photo being about ‘transvestisism’ … which others are suggesting is a misunderstanding of the word transvestite (i.e. dressing in the clothes (vest) of a gender other than one’s own (trans)).

Image © http://somoslgtbareae.wordpress.com/231/otros-cuerpos-existen/

Some people are arguing that this is as photograph of transgenderism (ie the surgical or otherwise intervention to physically change gender to match ones mentally/emotionally-identified gender), which others are pointing out the lack of visual surgical evidence.

Let me add another thought for you … intersex.

Intersex is where a person’s physical gender is not clearly definable as either male or female. Whilst a single gender would have all the physical bits match up, Intersex is another kind of physical gender-state; sometimes with both sets of genitals, sometimes with one main one and a secondary other one.

It has been known for doctors to assign an infant’s birth gender simply based upon visual judgement. Some infants have been physically altered (read: have their malformed penis removed) in order to be assigned a female gender … and their parents told to bring up the child in the guise of the newly doctor-assigned gender. Gender (and sexuality) are not as easily assigned as the medical profession used to think … but then, perhaps when someone concerned with how their own ‘expertise’ comes across is faced with a new unrecognised condition, no matter of expertise will make up for, perhaps, a lack of wisdom.

Back to the photo… I’m not saying that this is a photo of intersexed couple or a partially-transgendered couple. It is, however, a clever photograph that challenges many people’s thinking about single-assigned gender.

Oh – and despite the Facebook comments on sexuality, notice how this photo actually shows nothing about the models’ sexualities 😉

Warning – the source website contains an uncensored version of the photo.

http://somoslgtbareae.wordpress.com/231/otros-cuerpos-existen/