October 26, 2018

Happy Intersex Awareness Day, everyone!

Selecting Intersex Positive: What We Love About Being Intersex as the theme for our inaugural issue was a concerted effort to encourage all of us to think about being intersex in unique, original ways. We knew it would be challenging for some of us to put aside all the harm they’ve experienced as a direct consequence of being born intersex, and this is indeed the feedback we got from some folks interested in submitting. Nevertheless, we’ve always felt that—just as learning to love the parts of ourselves that society tells us we shouldn’t is a critical component in ending oppression of all marginalized communities—learning to love ourselves as intersex people is critical to ending bigotry, intersexism, and oppression.

Little did we know just how important stretching ourselves would be right now, the very week intersex and trans Americans have learned that our nation’s administration is attempting to write us out of existence. As we said to each other in a dismayed phone conversation just yesterday, how could we have known these events would coincide with Intersex Quarterly’s unveiling?

In that vein, how could we have known that the writers who would submit to our inaugural issue would be some of our favorite intersex authors? Or that they would comprise a veritable who’s who along the Intersex Movement timeline? They are, in alphabetical order: Jim Costich, Georgiann Davis, Thea Hillman, and Dana Zzyym.

As we pondered what we love about about being intersex, it occurred to us that one of the many things we love about it is getting to know and write about such incredibly brave, dedicated, ethical, pioneering people. We feel truly, joyfully honored that we get to publish these talented and dedicated activists, educators, writers, and parents.

We hope our contributions to this inaugural issue of Intersex Quarterly will bring you joy, too.

Your dedicated editors,
Hida Viloria & A.J. Odasso

Hida Viloria is a Latinx writer, author of Born Both: An Intersex Life (Hachette Books, 2017), a 2018 Lambda Literary Award nominee in Non-Fiction, and the founding director of the Intersex Campaign for Equality. In 2013 he/r pioneering activism was acknowledged when s/he became the first intersex person to speak at the United Nations by invitation, along with Jason Collins and Martina Navratilova, on Human Rights Day.  S/he has advocated for LGBTQIA+ rights for over two decades as one of the first openly intersex and non-binary people in the world, and an openly queer lecturer, consultant (United Nations, Lambda Legal, Human Rights Watch, Williams Institute), and television and radio guest (Oprah, Al Jazeera, Tyra Banks, 20/20, BBC), and is one of the most extensively published writers in the field of intersex issues (The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, The Advocate, Ms., CNN.com, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, American Journal of Bioethics, and more).  Follow Viloria on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram at @hidaviloria, or on the web at HidaViloria.com.

A.J. Odasso is the author of two poetry collections from Flipped Eye Publishing: Lost Books (2010), which was a finalist for the 2010 London New Poetry Award and for the 2011 People’s Book Prize; and The Dishonesty of Dreams (2014), which had the honor of launching at the Grolier Poetry Book Store and Porter Square Books.  A.J.’s third collection, an expanded version of their BU MFA thesis, was shortlisted for the 2017 Sexton Prize under the title Things Being What They Are and will be published in Summer 2019 under a new title, The Sting of It, by Tolsun Books.  A.J. continues to serve as Senior Poetry Editor at Strange Horizons, where they have been part of the editorial staff since 2012.  A.J.’s recent prose publications include a short story, “We Come Back Different” (in the Winter 2018 & Spring 2018 issues of Pulp Literature) and a personal essay, “Being the Dictionary” (in Knowing Why: Adult-Diagnosed Autistic People on Life and Autism, an anthology from the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network launched this October).

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By Georgiann Davis

Hello, it’s me, #IntersexyFat. Earlier this year, while my fat and tall intersex body was crunched up in an economy class airplane seat, I decided to let my guard down and publicly claim my fatness on twitter @georgiann_davis.

Surely my fatness was, and continues to be, attributed to both my professional and personal identities—evident in the countless fat shaming comments I hear from people that emerge in unsolicited dieting and workout advice at academic conferences or family dinners, “compliments” by peers about how I am photogenic which, to translate, means I know how to work a camera angle to appear less fat—but I never publicly owned my fatness despite my fatness owning me (almost) every moment of my life.

Unlike my intersex trait, I don’t have the ability to hide my fatness, not that anyone should want to hide being intersex or fat. But I’m also not outside the internalization of the “ideal” body which is real for all of us who are constantly bombarded with its message that the “ideal” body is healthy, able, white, not too thin but definitely not fat, straight, gender conforming, and more. And capitalists around the world profit off of countless products they’ve created, and we buy, to make us think we can get closer to achieving the “ideal” body they’ve helped fuel: skin bleaching creams, diet pills, energy drinks, detox diets, and so much more.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hate my fat body, not because my fatness directly harms my health (it doesn’t—my last physical and lab workup confirmed I am healthy), but because society repeatedly sends a loud message that fatness is unhealthy (wrong) and universally ugly as if attractiveness isn’t subject. We hear lots of things about fat bodies from all corners in our lives, but rarely do we hear that fatness is profitable. For example, the diet industry is a gold mine, and bariatric surgeons, those who perform gastric bypass procedures, insert lap bands, and more in the United States where I live, have some of the best working conditions across all surgical specialties. They are rarely, if at all, called into the hospital to perform emergency surgeries like their surgical peers in orthopedics, cardiology, or urology. And their office staff don’t have to struggle with insurance reimbursement, as you aren’t even allowed to make an appointment with a bariatric surgeon until you go through months of tedious steps to obtain preapproval from your insurance company—that is if there isn’t a bariatric surgery exclusion in your insurance policy. And for those who don’t have insurance, well, never mind.

For those of you that made it this far reading my reflection, I imagine you might be thinking why is she writing about fatness on intersex awareness day? My reason is three-fold.

First, while flying that afternoon when I came out as #IntersexyFat, I asked myself if it is possible that owning my fatness could positively transform my life in a similar way that being out as intersex has improved the love I have for my intersex body. Is it possible that identifying as fat can assist me in learning to love the fat that surrounds my intersex body?

Second, it was becoming increasingly obvious to me that people I admire and respect for their pursuit of social justice in the world, be it through scholarship and/or activism, regularly perpetuate fatphobia in what they say (or don’t say) and what they do (or don’t do). By calling this out, will my fellow social justice warriors more deeply reflect on their past, present, and future actions?

Lastly, and the focus of my exploration here, aside from the inability to hide my fatness, being intersex and fat aren’t all that different for they overlap in the shadows of the “ideal” body which I will attempt to show below. While I’m still really struggling with my fatness, I’m hoping that I will someday look back on this piece as the beginning of the next chapter of learning to love a part of my body that I continue to hate.

5. Clothes

I wear what I like despite the clothes being labeled “men’s” or “women’s.” But as difficult as it is too find clothing that fits my gender queer and openly intersex identity, it’s even more difficult to find clothing that fits my fat body. Plus size (what does that even mean) women’s clothes are way too feminine for me, and men’s clothing of all sizes usually leaves little room for my breasts. I’m sick and tired of finding myself in hidden aisles or sections of stores searching for clothes that will fit me, just like I’m sick and tired of buying shirts labeled for men and underwear labeled for women.

4. Airplanes

I find flying stressful. My fat and tall body is always crammed into a seat that is too small for many people, not just me. The armrests painfully constrain and confine my body, sometimes leaving small bruises on my hips and thighs. But even before I begin to wrestle with the seat and the tight seatbelt, I am emotionally forced into an arbitrary sex box while making my flight reservation. Am I “male” or “female”? It’s sometimes laughable, especially when I’m making a reservation to (painfully) travel (in economy) to a city to deliver a talk on what it’s like being intersex in the U.S. More often than not, it’s emotionally taxing and a harsh and visible reminder of one of the reasons why I feel compelled to continue to travel to conferences, both professional and personal, to discuss intersex issues.

3. Doctors

Fat-positive doctors are as rare as doctors who don’t medicalize intersex. I find it quite depressing that doctors regularly grab for their scalpels to fix intersex bodies by mutilating our genitals, just like they regularly recommend I seriously consider a surgical solution to what they’ve classified as my morbid obesity. It makes me wonder if surgeons would have offered my parents a 2 for 1 price when I was younger: “We can take out her testes, and 80% of her stomach at the same time for a discounted price!”

2. Parents

I’m not a parent, at least not to the human kind, but I can respect that parents want their children to be happy, healthy, successful, and more. However, these (even if well-meaning) desires for “ideal” children are intertwined with the “ideal” body that is either female or male. Most parents don’t hope for an intersex child when they learn of their pregnancy or plan for adoption. They usually (hopefully?) learn to accept their child’s intersex trait especially after connecting with intersex adults and other parents of intersex children, but they can struggle getting to that place. Similarly, most parents don’t want a fat child, and understandably so, for parents are often scrutinized for their child’s body as if they are doing something wrong as parents because their child is fat. I wonder what it’s like to be a parent who questions both the need for the “ideal” child and the assumption that it involves an “ideal” body.

1. Love

Years ago, when I was first experimenting with sexual intimacy, I worried my partners would leave me if they knew I was intersex. Like many other intersex people, I wondered if they could tell something was different about me because of the shape, feel, and appearance of my vagina, areolas, and more. Did they know I was intersex? Or, more importantly, would they still find me sexually appealing if they knew I had a vagina but no uterus, have XY chromosomes and had testes before they were surgically removed without my consent? My fat body has left me with many of the same concerns and questions. Will I be loved with my clothes off and the lights on? These days, when I’m sexually intimate, my intersex doesn’t get in the way of how I feel in bed, but my fatness does, figuratively and, yes, sometimes literally. And I’m sickened by it. How can I learn to love all aspects of my fat intersex body?

Ten years ago I wouldn’t dare to publicly identify as intersex, let alone say I’m proud to be intersex. But I got here by owning, personally and professionally, that part of my body. And now I wouldn’t change being intersex for anything in the world. Today I end this piece hoping it marks the beginning of a similar self-liberatory project where I ultimately learn to love being #IntersexyFat. Admittedly I’m not sure I will ever get there, but without owning #IntersexyFat, I can’t even begin to try.

Georgiann Davis is an intersex scholar and activist originally from Chicago, Illinois. She joined the Sociology Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the fall of 2014 after spending nearly ten years studying the intersection of the sociology of diagnosis and feminist theories. Among other scholarly contributions including co-editing a special issue on intersex for the journal Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, she has written numerous articles on intersex in various venues ranging from Ms. Magazine to Gender & Society to the American Journal of Bioethics. In her first book, Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis (2015, NYU Press), Davis explores how intersex is defined, experienced, and contested in contemporary U.S. society. She is currently working on a second book about the unique experiences of intersex fat people.

Back to Issue 1 Table of Contents

James Diaz
This Light Always Hurts A Little

Yes, I will stay nearby
I’m listening deep
I know
the breathing routine
I watch the shallows
the dip in the water
when it comes up
against the intangible
the broken stone
what it means to be tossed
to be caught
to be loved

I’ve seen what stitches
torn out become,
blood on the wall
real ones, tiny threads
pulled with one’s teeth
because you can only crane
your neck so far when you’re in the jacket
and I don’t think that boy survived
he never came back to the ward
and the nurses had a deep sadness
in their eyes the next day
and I knew
he was gone
though they didn’t say it

that was long ago
and I am ready to admit
that I still don’t know much about my own body
what light does to a room
drenched in darkness
I’ve done to others
but I’ve also
taken the sun
out of the sky
sometimes
I am dual
that way
good
and bad
depending on
where the wind
is coming from
and how fast

but from you I learn
how much our pain
is related
we are cousins
of our experience
and I trust, no, strike that word-
which is only a word
and not deep enough-
I feel that we are sometimes the same
different but not so different,
both struggling for air
and water and
when the sky goes dark
we do too

and yes,
these poems
are bigger than light
I’ve measured it
oh intangible thing that it is
I am not so far from you
I am listening
to every move the wind makes
I am counting the blessings
even the ones that are in disguise.

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and editor of the forthcoming anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma (Anti-Heroin Chic Press, 2018). In 2016 he founded the online literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic to provide a platform for often unheard voices, including those struggling with addiction, mental illness and Prison/confinement. He resides in upstate New York, in between balanced rocks and horse farms. He has never believed in anything as strongly as he does the power of poetry to help heal a shattered life.

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By Stephen S. Mills
Poet and author of He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices and A History of the Unmarried

The first image I associated with HIV was Judith Light in the ABC television movie The Ryan White Story, which aired in 1989. Light played the mother of the young boy in Indiana (Ryan White) who became the face of the AIDS crisis after contracting it through a blood transfusion and being kicked out of school. I was seven in 1989 and also a boy in Indiana. For me those early years didn’t have the face of a gay man (like the stereotype that can still persist today), instead it had the face of a kid who had a background similar to mine.

For many of us who grew up in the 1980s and early 90s, HIV/AIDS had a profound effect on how we came of age (especially sexually). We grew up with talk of HIV all around us from misinformation and fear to prevention discussions. Many of us didn’t directly witness friends dying (as we were too young), but we saw the stories on the news, we saw the movies, and we witnessed the fear of our parents and friends when we came out as gay men.

Because of this, many gay men in this age group have a large amount of anxiety and paranoia around sex. We’ve been hounded about condom use our whole lives and taught to associate sex with fear. This has led to sex shaming and negative thoughts regarding one’s sexuality. This has long been a concern of mine and one I’ve touched on in my own creative work as a poet.

Last fall I turned that concern and interest into a career choice. In November of 2015, I began working for a program called Men’s Sexual Health Project that provides HIV and STI testing in sex venues that cater to men who have sex with men in New York City. I now spend many hours a week at sex parties or in bathhouses testing men of all races, ages, and sexual orientations (sexual orientation does not always dictate sexual behavior).

My job is funded through a grant that focuses on priority population testing, which means groups that are at higher risk for contracting HIV. I had never worked in this field before, but I had experience on the other side (getting tested myself). I’ve often been amazed at the lack of skill, information, and professionalism from testers. This is partly what drove me to take on this role that is outside of my educational and professional background.

I wanted to provide people with a sex positive experience where they could truly ask the questions they wanted to ask and not worry about judgment. Shouldn’t this be the norm for testing? Sadly, it’s not. The job is solo, so I’m responsible for a lot, and it is important that I fit into the environment (this is partly what got me the job). The majority of people I test are attending a sex party or bathhouse. Many test with little to no clothing on. I often test people with the sounds of fucking in the nearby rooms or spaces. If you aren’t comfortable, your patients won’t be either.

The service my job provides is unique even in New York. In fact my program is one of the only programs that provides free testing on a regular basis (3 to four times a week) in sex venues. The program is also one of the few that provides free testing after 5 PM on a consistent basis (which is kind of mind-boggling for a city like New York). It is also difficult to find free STI testing. While many places provide free HIV tests, tests for more common infections like syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia are harder to find, which means fewer people get tested for them. My program is also run out of a Mount Sinai clinic, so I have a direct link to getting people care and treatment should they test positive for anything.

I test a wide range of men, from those married to women in the suburbs who use this service because they don’t want to test with their regular doctors, to young men who regularly attend group sex events, to men without insurance, to men who work regular hours and can’t always get tested during business hours, to 70 year old men who have never been tested before. The men I test range in risk factors and education.

A lot of barriers are already broken down for me by testing in sex venues. It isn’t a clinic setting. I wear very causal clothing, I’m easygoing in my approach and almost immediately people feel comfortable and start asking questions. I’m able to address sexual practices, risk factors, PrEP (which is becoming vital to our fight against new HIV infections). I also have personal knowledge of gay sex practices and PrEP, so patients don’t have to worry about my not understanding. I come to them as a peer.

One thing a lot of testers are bad at is thinking they can tell people what to do. You can’t. All I can do is provide education and be open to the people sitting in front of me. You are often put in difficult positions. But I’m not there to tell someone they have to use condoms or have to get on PrEP or have to inform their partners. I’m there to meet people where they are and provide the information they need to make their own educated decisions. In the end, it may or may not be the decision I would personally make, but it is theirs.

While programs like this one are rare, they are vital to our ongoing fight to end HIV. Providing sexual education and testing in sex venues helps create positive connections between sex and sexual health (something many people don’t have). It helps break down years of paranoia and fear. At least once a week, I have someone sitting in front of me truly riddled with anxiety over sex to the point that they aren’t enjoying sex at all for fear of HIV (they typically fall into the age group I mentioned earlier). By being there with information and not fear, I am sometimes able to move them in a better direction. In other situations, I am able to give people real information about PrEP (about which there are frequent misconceptions) and how it can be a great tool for prevention.

In a short amount of time, I’ve been able to see the profound effect of my program. Many men count on our testing and become regulars. I’ve had the opportunity to help a lot of men deal with new diagnoses and get more educated. There are many pieces to helping end HIV and I’m honored to be one of those pieces.

Stephen S. Mills is the author of A History of the Unmarried (Sibling Rivalry, 2014) and He Do the Gay Man in Dif­fer­ent Voices (Sib­ling Rivalry Press, 2012), a final­ist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry from the Publishing Triangle and winner of the 2012 Lambda Lit­er­ary Award for Gay Poetry. His poems have appeared in The Anti­och Review, The Gay and Les­bian Review World­wide, PANK, The New York Quar­terly, The Los Ange­les Review, Knock­out, Assara­cus, The Rum­pus, and oth­ers. Stephen won the 2008 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Poetry Award for his poem entitled “Iranian Boys Hanged for Sodomy, July 2005,” which appeared in the anthology Poetic Voices Without Borders 2 (Gival Press, 2009), edited by Robert L Giron. He lives in New York City. Learn more at stephensmills.com.

Lucy Sheen
Grief

Dark
Deep
An emotional duvet
A patched work
Stitched with frayed time
Worn out thread-bare excuses
Guilt woven in and out of the feeling weft
The centre did not hold
The synapse fractured
Flaying the fabric of sensation
Allowing the deep abyss to perforate the cover
Haemorrhages through
Staining the quilt
Spreading
Creeping
Crawling
Over, in, under and out
Variegating the patches
Tinting the needlework
Until the original colour is lost
Sinking
Pulling
Enveloping
Smothering

Lucy Sheen is an actor whose appearances include the films Ping Pong, Business As Usual and Secrets & Lies. Born in Hong Kong and raised by an adoptive white family in the heartland of conservative England—next to the cucumber sandwiches, church spires and cricket on the village green—Lucy seeks to write and make sense of identity issues that may be unfamiliar to British audiences. Her essays appear in the anthology The Dance is New (Mardibooks, 2013) and Perpetual Child: Dismantling the Stereotype (CreateSpace, 2013).

Trivarna Hariharan
Answers

EDITOR’S NOTE:
To preserve the complex formatting of this poem, we have included it as a PDF that will open in a separate tab when you click on the title below:

Trivarna Hariharan “Answers”

Trivarna Hariharan is the author of Home and Other Places, forthcoming from  Nivasini Publishers (2016). Her work appears or is forthcoming in Textploit, Writers Asylum, Literature Studio, TheOriginalVanGoghsEarAnthology, A Penny for a Thought, Orange Almonds, The Bougainvillea Lit Road Magazine, Mad Swirl, Tuck Magazine, Life In 10 Minutes, The Quail Bell Magazine, CultureCult, Tangerine Heart Lit Zine, Vigilante Publications, Germ Magazine, Paper Lens Zine, The Criterion, and On The Rusk, among others. She is editor in chief at Inklette, the poetry reader for Sprout and is the Head Officer for Journalism at Redefy.

This poem is not previously published.