Listening-andor-learning - Call Me Kri

“Female-assigned intersex kids’ vaginal canal size is also assessed by doctors, to ensure that it’s long enough to fit a penis inside of it. Doctors might surgically construct or re-construct vaginas, which can result in a host of health problems and necessitate multiple, multiple surgeries. This is especially the case since most intersex kids have these surgeries very young, and when their bodies grow into their adult forms, more surgeries are necessary to keep their vagina size in proportion. Non-surgical methods are also used to increase or maintain vaginal length by regularly using medical dildos to stretch the vagina over months and years. (It’s kind of like braces for your vagina, but much, much worse.) Just like there are no standards for how long a clitoris “can” be before it’s classified as a penis, there aren’t absolute standards as to how long a vagina is for it to be of “normal” length. I had a dilation procedure performed for almost every exam I had with intersex doctors from the time I was 8 until I was 16, so that they could check how long my vagina was as I grew. I absolutely hated these procedures. I mean, imagine a man as old as your father or your grandfather, who you don’t know, inserting a medical dildo into you each time you saw him, knowing that you can’t question the doctor’s orders and just accept that you have to undergo these uncomfortable procedures for your health. Imagine a decade or so later, realizing that these procedures did nothing to track your health, and had everything to do with grown men feeling good about the fact that you could fuck some dude someday like a “normal girl”. That all those traumatizing procedures weren’t actually medically relevant at all, and it actually was within my right to refuse those examinations. I didn’t know any of that at the time. I also had no idea that I wouldn’t want to ultimately have the kind of sex they assumed I’d be having, adding yet another layer of this-was-totally-unnecessary/messed-up to my history. Other kids shouldn’t have to go through this. Other adults shouldn’t have revelations some day far into the future that what was happening to them WASN’T okay, and their traumatic feelings ARE valid, and the whole system of how intersex people are conceptualized and “treated” IS entirely fucked. And it’s gotta change. We’ve gotta change it.”

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—-Claudia at Autostraddle

I just read this article and was reminded once again how invisible the intersex community often is… we need to signal boost this shit to let people know that this kind of “medical treatment” is NOT okay.

(via bossybussy)

Felt straight-up ill reading this. This is the institutionalized rape of children. It’s beyond unconscionable that procedures like this are normalized and considered “treatment”.

(via thaxted)

jfc

(via stammsternenstaub)

Revolting and repugnant.

See why intersex folk don’t like their medical issues being used as a rhetorical gotcha?

(via appropriately-inappropriate)

Okay last post for the night.

A person recommended on a post to look up the white supremicist concept of ‘the right to comfort’, so I look it up and find that it’s kind of irrelevant to what they were talking about (No actually, thinking wearing a ball gag in public as an exhibitionist kink without making sure everyone there wants to be a part of said experience isn’t related to this) BUT it is relevant to other things. The right to comfort is about people with power (specifically white people in America) disliking conflict. It’s more important to keep the peace than to actually discuss or fight for any of our rights. Everyone should just calm down and be nice, no one can take you seriously if you come across as too mean. It’s about tone policing, dishonesty and silencing of victim’s voices because their experiences make you too uncomfortable to think about.

…

Anyway.

”Feminists think the goals of Tra’s and MtFs are unconnected-“ and you spent an entire book giving me really good reasons to continue to think that. This book says that the reason males are misogynistic is their fear of being perceived as feminine, therefore feminism should focus on helping males out of that brain hole. And the thing is… Feminism has tried that. Libfem bullshit has BEEN babying men and blaming women for males cruelty for supposedly being the people who won’t let them hold purses or whatever the fuck.

Has it worked? I wouldn’t say so. I look around and still see women suffering. I think the reason males are misogynistic is because they benefit from a hierarchical system that treats women as property. I think this happens regardless of any secondary factors. I’ve seen too many feminine males defend pornography to think defense of pornography comes from some place of self loathing instead of their desire to get off no matter what. The goal of radical feminists is female liberation from a system that sees them as the property of males. The goal of ‘trans feminism’ is the liberation of femininity from the shackles of masculinity. I can say that’s a fine goal, but they are so fundamentally different that they require different movements.

"We're Planned Parenthood, and we approve this message."

I rarely bring this up because it feels like fairly silly and low-stakes compared to all the other effects of american imperialism, but one of the funniest things when Americans deny that living in the imperial core and the center of global cultural hegemony confers them any sort of privilege over people from the imperial periphery is that like. In order for this conversation where you tell me you have no privilege over me to even be able to take place one of us had to learn the other's language, and it wasn't you.

I think the fact that by default the onus of learning the other's language to enable communication is always put on the other side is a pretty significant privilege on the cultural front.

I mean. 150 years is a long time from now- everyone on this site would be dead for sure. The average human lifespan is about 70 so it’d be I guess another 3 generations? 3 generations where women who were silenced by the Taliban can speak, where no one is forced to give birth and every child is wanted, where significantly less people are raped (as rape is seen akin to torture), where no girls undergo genitalia mutilation, no girls are forced into marriage, women around the world are free to pursue education and no assumption is made about their competence. The death of the Quiverfull movement and no girl ever again told she exists to be a helpmeet, nor that she is the cause of the world’s ills or that her body tempts males who do not have the ability to control themselves.

And that’s the shit I’m thinking of now- the shit that matters to me personally. The world could end in 3 lifetimes anyway at least this apocalyptic scenario makes less people suffer before the end.

if you could automatically delete all misogyny in the world: like it never existed in the first place, from all cultures and across all aspects of life, but at the cost of human life existing only for the next 150 years, would you? You get rid of no more issues, capitalism and racism still exist, but misogyny doesn't, from the most violent to the most banal, but in 150 years humanity will cease to exist, not painfully or violently, just cease to exist, would you do it?

-🐌

Are you?

Yea, next question.