[Note: In honor of LGBTQI Pride month, this post’s title is a riff on the old Queer Nation slogan, “We’re Here! We’re Queer! Get used to it!” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Nation.]

 

There’s a line in Golden Boy, the excellent, recently released novel featuring a 16 year-old intersex protagonist, where he says that you have to choose one or the other, boy or girl. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15803173-golden-boy. When I read it I thought about how some might disagree. Then I thought about the fact that we don’t even have an accepted noun to call those born outside the binary.

People who are born male or female, biologically speaking, are socially labeled boys or girls, even though they might reject these labels later. But what about people who aren’t born male or female, but intersex? The fact that there’s no social label to correspond to our bodies displays just how deeply in denial society is about us.

Wait, actually, there is a label. As Plato wrote, way back in 385 B.C., “The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature….” http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html. I know a few older intersex folks who had this “name” written on their birth certificates, and it even had a brief heyday in the ‘90’s before being labeled un-pc.  The word I’m talking about is “hermaphrodite”.

When I first found out I was intersex back in ’96, and joined the organization ISNA (defunct since ’08, fyi), I was thrilled to see that their newsletter was titled, Hermaphrodites with Attitude . I got a “Hermaphrodites with Attitude” t-shirt and appeared in the first intersex documentary, Hermaphrodites Speak. But shortly after I left the organization in ’98, ISNA started saying we shouldn’t use “hermaphrodite” because it was inaccurate and some found it stigmatizing. I wish I’d asked, “What people?” because everyone I knew had been happy with it, but I just went along with the request, wanting to be respectful.

Today, even though I still always point out that “intersex” is our preferred label, I have to admit I kind of miss “hermaphrodite”. Intersex is a clinical term — like “male”, “female” or “homosexual” — and clinical labels aren’t usually used socially. Instead we use “men” and “women” or “gay” and “lesbian.” Some have improvised by calling us “intersexuals,” but that sounds just as clinical as “homosexual,” and I’ve yet to meet an intersex person that likes it.

“Hermaphrodite”, however, has a lot going for it:

1.    It’s the label that most people are already familiar with.

2.    Because it’s not medical/scientific in origin, it doesn’t sound medical/scientific.

3.    It means that I can say what I am without trying to decide if I feel more like an “intersex man” or an “intersex woman”.  (A decision, btw, that tortured me for years, because I felt alternately like both and/or neither.)

4.    It comes from Hermaphroditus,  child of Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, and Hermes, god of transitions — how cool is that?

On the flip side though, I know some intersex people – maybe a lot of intersex people — dislike the label, usually for the following reasons:

1.    Hermaphrodite is inaccurate: humans don’t have both fully functioning sets of male and female organs, like Hermaphroditus in the Greek myth.  But aren’t many labels are inaccurate? White people are not the color white, gays are not all “cheerful,” and most lesbians are not residents of the Greek island of Lesbos.

2.    Most intersex people identify as men or women, so another noun isn’t necessary.

But don’t the rest of us count? Why deny us a label that fits? Also, while it seems currently true that most of us identify as men or women, or intersex men or women, what choice do we have when there’s not an alternative label available?  It’s kind of like saying — before the terms “gay” and “lesbian” came into use –that most homosexuals didn’t identify as gay or lesbian.

3.    Hermaphrodite sounds like some weird third sex creature, and it’ll scare parents into having their intersex kids operated on.

Operations have continued, some say even increased, during the time we’ve played nice and non-confrontational by not using the words, “hermaphrodite,” or even “intersex” (some saying they are just men or women with medical conditions/DSDs). Trying to stop “normalizing” surgeries by claiming that we’re all gender normative hasn’t worked. As with all people, it’s just not true, and the approach also caters to homophobia and transphobia rather than denouncing them. Not cool.

4.    Hermaphrodite is just so long.

True: that’s why I use “herm.”

All that said, I’m not saying that people should use the words hermaphrodite or “herm” to describe us: they shouldn’t. That’s our turf, our decision. I don’t even call myself a herm at all times, because the feminist in me still sometimes loves representing for the “F.”

What I am saying though, is that I’m sick of having to always linguistically lump myself into a binary that doesn’t exactly fit, because of current cultures’ discomfort with openly acknowledging that intersex people exist. We do and always have.

7 Comments

  1. Lianne Simon on June 8, 2013 at 7:46 pm

    Hermaphrodite appears in a number of medical dictionaries as a human who has both testicular and ovarian tissue.
    http://www.merriam-webster.com/medlineplus/hermaphroditism
    http://www.medilexicon.com/medicaldictionary.php?t=40500

    Since I have Mixed Gonadal Dysgenesis, the term hermaphrodite would seem accurate. I find it sad and a bit frustrating that not even we who have such conditions are allowed to use whatever label we think appropriate.

    http://www.liannesimon.com

    • hida on June 9, 2013 at 12:46 am

      Hi Lianne– yes, I agree, & obviously I totally support you using hermaphrodite, or herm, if you want to! Best wishes. 🙂

  2. Kailana Alaniz on June 8, 2013 at 11:19 pm

    Awesome article Hida. You make me proud to be a hermaphrodite. Well I was already a proud hermaphrodite but hey you know I am feeling better today just reading your article.

  3. buy instagram on June 17, 2013 at 2:22 am

    i definitely agree about that. but sometimes it really feels good when someone calls you feminine and not herm. it makes you feel more accepted but we cant really decide for people 🙂

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