Intersex and Transgender people are often pitted against one another. The arguments used by the intersex community are twisted to condemn the trans community, arguments in the trans community are twisted to condemn the intersex community. Despite both movements often working together to fight against medicalization and fight for civil rights, the two are seen by outsiders as opposed. This view is changing in an era dominated by legislation against transgender people, specifically involving gender-affirming care.
Gender-affirming care includes any medical practices meant to help a person feel more like theirself in their body in terms of gender expression. This can include hormone replacement, genital surgery, and plastic surgery among other things in the case of trans people, but many of these same techniques are applied to cisgender people to affirm their gender, though they may not recognize it.
Many of the practices known as gender-affirming care in the trans community and that are so demonized by the legislature at the moment are, in the context of the intersex community and medical community, called “gender-normalizing care.” This refers to any medical practices used to make an intersex person more definitely fit the socially constructed binary of sex. These can include hormone replacement, genital surgery, and vaginal dilation among others. See any similarities?
Consenting trans people are denied these treatments and yet on unconsenting intersex babies these treatments are not far off from mandatory. This is at the heart of the confusion in the intersex community regarding anti-trans legislation.
Until recently, an unintentional byproduct of anti-transgender legislation has been bans on medically unnecessary surgeries and treatments for intersex children as many of the laws simply refer to “children under 18.” This side-effect is now being noticed by legislatures around the country and amendements to these bills are being rolled out just as fast as the anti-trans bills did in the first place.
The amendments being proposed would make intersex babies an exception to these bans, reinstating the ability of doctors to prescribe these medically unnecessary treatments. The intersex and trans communities have been fighting against these developments, but the is still much to do.
I myself had a vaginoplasty and clitorectomy within a few months of my life to make me look more like a “typical female.” On the other hand, I have trans friends in Texas who have sought these surgeries I underwent without my consent but these trans people are being told that they can’t possibly know what their bodies are supposed to look like. How was I, a 3 month old baby, more deserving of those surgeries than people who have lived their lives in a body that is not their own?
Article:
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/11/1169194792/some-states-that-ban-gender-affirming-care-for-trans-youth-allow-intersex-surger