The Difference Between my Biological Sex and My Gender.

Many people get Biological Sex and Gender mixed up.  So I am writing this in hopes of making this make better sense to people.

Our Society Teaches us that all people are born with either the male sex or the female sex.

That is wrong.

The TRUTH is that, naturally, people are born with a wide variety of biological sex and it is on a spectrum.   There are babies born with genitals, and reproductive organs, chromosomes, and hormones that are all typical and all fall into categories of either the male sex or the female sex.

But sometimes a baby is born with genitals, reproductive organs, and chromosomes, and hormones, that are not typical, and lie on that spectrum.  That baby is born INTERSEX.

And a baby whose sex is intersex is born as often as a baby who is born with RED HAIR, about 1 time in every 2000 births.  That means that in America alone, that 10,000 babies are born each year who are intersex.  Okay, that is what I have to tell you about sex.

Now let me teach about GENDER and how it is different from biological sex.   Gender is NOT  directly tied to our GENITALS, REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS, CHROMOSOMES, or HORMONES.

Gender is a PERSONAL THING, and is how one feels INTERNALLY  about themselves.  Gender is  how we experience ourselves, much like we feel or experience our own PERSONALITY.

Now let me share how this relates to me.  I was born with an intersex body.   My HORMONES, my ANATOMY and CHROMOSOMES,  did not all match in a way that allowed my doctors to declare that I was either of the male sex or the female sex.   That’s because I’m an INTERSEX PERSON.   Back when I was born, as is still the case in the United States today, the healthcare system had no provision  for marking my birth certificate with my actual sex, which is intersex.

It was a dilemma.   The authorities exercise their authority and marked the female sex box on my birth certificate.  My parents and my therapists, exercised their job to teach me how to conform to society’s female gender rules.

That was ugly and I do not want to write about it all in this blog.   So I’ll  fast forward to the outcome: the medical and psychological  manipulations required for me to conform to society’s expectations for living fully  as a female person nearly destroyed me.  By 2014, having endured a lifetime of interventions designed to erase my intersex body, so that I could be a proper female, I was in a WHEELCHAIR, OVERWEIGHT, DEBILITATED, and SICK  and I was DYING.

As you can see, I didn’t die.   I’m no longer in a wheelchair.   In fact, I can now, bike, weight lift, walk, and run again; and most of all my relationship with my husband has never been better.

In the aftermath of a series of events that I think of as GOD-INCIDENTS, I quieted the CULTURAL STORM that was pushing me farther and farther and farther down into SUBMISSION.

And I STOOD UP.

I finally realized it was my HUMAN RIGHT! I made a decision to EMANCIPATE my true self and COME HOME to my own body: I’m an INTERSEX MAN.

What all this means is that my SEX is INTERSEX.   My GENDER is MALE. And I am a NON-BINARY man.  My personhood is HUMAN. I am valid. I EXIST.  

~.V.~