Facebook allows us to see your memories. I am not so sure it is good to look back at times. A HUGE number of my “friends” vanished, or had to be blocked as they were revealed as uneducated about intersex, haters, bigots, and simply unable to accept me. Even educating them that I was an intersex person, and about intersex natural bodily variations, made no difference.
I heard a talk, not so long ago, comparing what happened to me, in losing these friends, to when Saliva turns to Spit!
Saliva is something that is wonderful, wanted, accepted and necessary. We need it to chew, swallow and digest our food. Spit that saliva into a cup, and ask the person to drink it…. It now becomes GROSS!
Saliva is 99.5% water, and the rest, only 5%, consists of mucus, electrolytes, glytcoproteins, enzymes, antibacterial and bacterial compounds. No matter where it ends up, it is the same stuff. But somehow it is perceived differently when out of our mouths.
I had magically turned into SPIT when I let my friends know I was an intersex man, and would no longer be taking testosterone blockers or extra female hormones. That I would be transitioning with even more testosterone than my body already created, to appearing my true gender, a man. It breaks my heart still; I miss some of them.
I had turned from saliva to spit, by doing one simple thing. I saved my life by reclaiming myself! But now my husband and I would appear a gay couple. Our three children would have two dads.
Before I reclaimed my gender, I appeared a woman, was asexual, very sick, used a cane, and was in a wheelchair even. I was sleeping in a reclining hospital bed, due to autonomic dysfunction being so severe, I could not lay flat. My life consisted of over 14 pills a day.
I must have been very innocent in thinking all my friends would embrace my truth. This innocence vanished fast. In one short year, I went from appearing a cisgender, heterosexual person, of privilege, to becoming a visible sexual minority.
One by one, I lost friends and many family members. Even strangers felt it their duty to judge me now. I now magically had become an abomination to the church.
It was even assumed, by most, that my husband would leave me. They would worry more about him and how my children were taking it than ask how I was surviving the hate of it all. Most baffling, I lost a few good friends, and was accused of deception, and “lying” about being a woman!
All this happening at a time when I wanted to end my life.
Worse, the government doesn’t even protect me, or my family now. Plus, several doctors have refused to treat me. I have been patient abandoned by many. The simple act of going to the bathroom is now a political ordeal! Holding hands, with my husband, no longer an unconscious act! I could go on…..it is simply overwhelming.
Our Heterosexual, Cis Privilege is gone now.
And no, my husband, of over twenty-seven years, is not leaving me.
♥
We simply need
HUMAN RIGHTS.
To read more about how us intersex people have our human and civil rights violated please go to:
United Nations’ Intersex Fact Sheet
I dedicate this blog post to Foster the People – CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT
~.V.~
If I used words that you have never heard before please visit:
Mx. Anunnaki Ray Marquez 