Trying to belong to a binary-only​​ world: My Biological Sex, My Legal Sex, My Gender Identity, ​My Gender Expression, ​and My Sexual Orientation.

How the government and I define my existence: 

My Biological Sex: Intersex

My Legal Sex: Intersex. As proven with medical documentation after going to Florida Court to prove I was born intersex, and now as documented accurately on my Colorado Birth Certificate: Intersex. At this time, my driver’s license and social security both legally say male right now, after legally changing it from a female to male in 2015. I do not have a passport yet.

My Gender Identity: Nonconforming man. My gender identity is in my heart and it is my very personality, and how I understand myself in relation to how our society constructs gender roles. For me personally,  I do not use the word “non-binary” to describe my existence.  I know Non-binary people exist, and this is their right to use this label.  For me, it does not work because I feel the male/female binary is a social construct that tries to not include my existence.

My Gender Expression: Androgynous. I have many outward characteristics of both man and woman in the way I dress, my facial features, the tone of my voice and the way that I act. All are mixtures of what our social constructs declare is that of a man/boy or woman/girl, so I am androgynous. Intersex born, Tiger Devore, Ph.D., calls gender expression our “gender performance”.

My Sexual Orientation: Gay. When strangers look at my husband and me, we are automatically assumed simply to be two gay men. Again this is due to a social construct of how our society views sexual orientation. I do identify as being a gay man, even though I gave birth by c-section two times, and suffered 4 pregnancy losses. I call myself a Seahorse Dad or a Gestational Father, and our kids call me “Vader” for dad.

My Problem Fitting into this Male and Female ONLY Binary World When I was NOT Born with a Binary Body:

I know that some well-intentioned organizations are fighting for the human rights of non-binary people and I support this. Like other transgender organizations, many are hoping to change social understandings and legal frameworks that presume genitals determine gender by flipping it to one that says our gender identity is what determines our legal sex.

However, as you can now clearly see, I have invested a lot of time and effort into ensuring that my legal sex is recognized as intersex, and this does not match my gender identity. In order to fight intersex erasure and stop surgeries from being forced on intersex kids, we have to recognize that physical sex is a real thing. The sex binary is a socially constructed way to view the sex spectrum, but physical sex exists and we have to acknowledge it. What we should fight is the idea that physical sex characteristics determine your gender identity. They don’t.

I know many intersex people who do consider themselves non-binary, or queer though so they would not have a problem with gender identity becoming our legal sex because they match. But the majority of intersex people in our society identify as men and women. Their identities are not “wrong” because they are intersex.

I simply am an intersex man and a non-conforming man born intersex. This solution of making gender identity what controls how we determine our legal sex will not work for me nor respect my human right to exist as my authentic self. I was not allowed to exist when they assigned me and raised me female in 1967, and if this were to happen that gender identity controls my legal sex it would erase my existence again as an intersex man.

My Solution for all Legal Documentation:

I believe that the best solution is to get rid of legal sex!

There is no easy answer. However, the way I see it, we can stop putting legal sex markers on documents like birth certificates and drivers’ licenses. Instead, we can put down people’s lived gender identities; while at the same time our culture no longer conflating biological sex with gender identity.

If we do have to keep legal sex on everything, both categories as seen below might be necessary to be added to all legal documentation. Otherwise, people are at risk of not being respected for their true gender identity:

1) To categorize our physical bodies as:

Endosex (male or female body), Intersex, or Altersex (had surgical alterations)

2)  Gender Identity:  Man/Boy, Woman/Girl, Both or Neither; and all the other many ways a person can describe their gender identity

The problem with my above solution is that the medical complex defines what intersex is, and what it is not. This is a very big problem.

There is no gold standard at this time and most doctors diagnose us and will not call this our biological sex yet. It is not going to be easy for every intersex person to prove they are intersex. I was able to prove I am an intersex person after convincing the Florida government by going to court and with the help of my hospital’s board of ethics, my doctors and councilors medical letters. With all this said and done, I then proved to my birth state of Colorado, with my certified court letter that I was born intersex. What doctors define as “intersex” therefore is very subjective and typically based on a list of over forty medical diagnoses. Not all medical doctors are going to agree with each other too.

For social reasons, doctors also conceal intersex statuses all the time. Their own biased belief that it would be terrible to be known as intersex leads to this. They may conceal our intersex status from us, and from our parents. Or they fan the fears of parents that our lives will be ruined and make parents keep us in the dark about our intersex bodies, or make us keep it secret.

Doctors have been enemies instead of allies to too many intersex people. We need to take away the power they have over our sexed bodies because they have abused it. The best way to do this is to take sex markers off of birth certificates and other legal documents.

Respecting Everyone’s Gender Identity

The way that I see it, I feel that our Gender Identity needs to be how we are always socially respected, seen by people and addressed by society. I feel that our pronouns should always be respected and never challenged. I believe that our Genitals, Reproductive Systems, Hormones, and Chromosomes do not create our gender identity.

It is time to stop conflating biological sex with gender identity. For millions of people they do not, and will never match this social binary, male and female only construct of what describes biological sex and gender identity.

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Here is the United Nations’ Intersex Fact Sheet

My Autobiography:  Mx. Anunnaki Ray Marquez.

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To understand the terminology used above please go to this glossary: Helpful LGBTQIA+ Definitions of Human Sexuality

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You might also want to read: 

I am Proudly the First in Colorado to get an Intersex Birth Certificate

These Ten Human Rights Organizations and many more say it is time to Stop IGM.

Seven Names for the SAME thing: Penis, Phallus, Clitoris, Phalloclitoris, Micropenis, Microphalus, and Clitoromegaly.

Why I don’t like saying “Non-Binary” gender anymore.

~.V.~

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My thoughts on Facebook September 25th, 2018:

My thoughts for the day and my life experience.

A birth certificate only documents our medically provable biological sex and does NOT always reflect our true gender identity.

When my birth certificate was “female” my gender identity did not match, and guess what? Now that it is “intersex” my gender identity still does not match. I am ok with this!