An Intimate Introduction To An Intersex Life (Part 1/3)
Apr 06, 2024
This is part one of three articles about L originally published in 2022. This first article explores how L was navigating their own journey around sex and gender, and what it means to be intersex.
“If I can play my part in talking about my labels, then people like me can demonstrate you actually can have a gender that is outside of male and female, and that is outside of the binary.”
L said this to me in our recent conversation about her life as an intersex person. Keep reading to find out about how she feels in relation to her identity labels, her body, and her hormones.
Meet L
L wants to remain anonymous and, at the same time, to share some of her personal and intimate experiences of being intersex. L has signed off on this article and I feel very lucky and honoured to be able to share this with you.
For context, L is an attractive, forty-something, highly successful entrepreneur and business person. Most people who know L know her as a woman. But when I asked what her pronouns are, this was her response:
“I’m going to be fun and use ‘him’ and ‘her’. ‘They’ feels like too many people to me, even though I am non-binary.” L laughingly added, “I’m not confused - but I expect that this is going to confuse a lot of people who know me.”
So, in the rest of this article, I use ‘he’ and ‘she’ interchangeably to refer to L. If one person having multiple pronouns confuses you or you don’t see why pronouns are worth discussing, I invite you to read this article.
Being Intersex
L is intersex, which means he has hormones and genetics that fit outside of the accepted gender binary of male and female. There are currently around 40 different recognised intersex variations, which you can find out about here.
I learned there are approximately as many intersex people as there are ginger people, from Mx Anunnaki Ray, a leading American intersex advocate. The chances are, you have already met at least one intersex person, even if you didn’t know it. For another personal exploration of intersex life and art history, I invite you to listen to this compelling podcast episode.
L’s variation occurs in around 1 in 150,000 people. His chromosomes are XY (typically male) and his body shape is, in his own words, “very androgynous”. But, he generally looks female, for reasons you’ll discover shortly.
Physical presentation in the intersex community can be internal, external, or both. L’s phenotype (the way his body physically presents itself) is both female and male.
L's Labels
L was assigned the gender of female at birth and didn’t find out she was intersex until her forties. Her gender expression is androgynous. L’s gender identity is non-binary but she adds, “I’m still finding my way with it as I’m still working this out”.
In relation to L’s sexuality, she is attracted to, and dates, women, and has called himself a lesbian most of her life. However, she’s now questioning her sexual orientation label as either a lesbian or possibly something else, as she very much identifies as non-binary or at least not female. L was excited to share that she’s also trying out demiboy, as that currently feels like a good fit. (A demiboy is the gender identity of someone who is partly a boy or male and partly something else, which can be female, non-binary, metagender or agender).
L is of the opinion that, now that all the emotions and confusion about who she is are in the past, she feels she can drop all these labels and just be herself. That said, she understands that she’ll probably need to wheel the labels out to help other people understand who she is.
Sex Vs Gender
Sex and gender getting a bit confusing? Let me clarify things. Someone’s sex is separate from their gender. The two don’t need to overlap, although they do for many people. So intersex people can be male, female, non-binary, or some other form of gender, or feel genderless (agender).
Some intersex people are trans. For others, like L, trans feels like a meaningless term for someone born containing both genders, as they feel they can’t transition anywhere within the gender binary. In summary, someone’s trans-ness is separate from their intersex-ness.
Read about L's horrific healthcare experiences and medicalisation of their body in the second article. In the third article, read about L's further adventure in their identity journey.