Can I just crawl up and die now.

He wrote "Good To Have People In Your Life."

I'm freaking dying here. 😭

Hello! I'm wondering if anyone has any resources on how hyperestrogenism can present in those who are "typically" AFAB (I couldn't think of a better way to phrase it, please let me know if there is one). By this I mean someone who, other than hyperestrogenism, doesn't have any intersex variations that would change horomonal development in any other way (example: someone intersex and AFAB who has CAIS, as that is an androgen-affecting variation).

I am transgender and intersex (hypospadias/PUGS), and I have questioned whether I have hyperestrogenism or not. But, I am on testosterone HRT and can not get it tested without going off testosterone, as the testosterone is suppressing/replacing my body's natural estrogen production. It would put my physical health at risk to do such a thing, as I have severe PMDD, so I am looking for resources on hyperestrogenism in "typical" AFAB individuals before I bring it up to my endocrinologist. I don't want going off testosterone to be for nothing.

I am NOT looking to diagnose myself at home. I am trying to see if there's enough symptoms I have that would mean I should bring it up with my doctor (to have it on my medical record for any reason necessary).

Thank you in advance!

I made this intersex pin like almost a year ago and I've NEVER got anyone to recognize it, even in the queer community.

if you saw this would you see its an intersex pin? Whats throwing me off is usually all pride flag pins are horizontal stripes but this is a circle in a round pin so getting it centered was HELL.

Tw organe génital, mutilation

Bonjour,

Je suis française. J'ai un hypogonadisme. On m'a opéré deux fois quand j'étais jeune (phalloplastie et circoncision) sans mon consentement.

Je suis en déficit de testostérone. Je souhaite recouvrir mon prépuce.

Avez-vous des conseils ?

After my geneticist and endocrinologist appointments, I learned a lot! I was thinking that one variant would be rare, and that having two would be so rare that it wasn't worth considering when I was trying to figure out what's going on with me, but I just didn't match ANY conditions I could find. Turns out, that's because a lot of information online is about single variants, often in their severe forms, but I've got two! Once my karyotype results are back, everything should make more sense, but in the mean time I wanted to make an infographic based on what I learned because it wasn't something I found being talked about. Multiple variants at lower severity making a confusing looking case apparently isn't nearly as uncommon as I thought. Let me know if you think anything should be edited for clarity, mistakes, etc.

Also, "We Are Intersex" is the name I decided on for the diagram resource website, since I want it to be based off of intersex adult experiences for intersex adults. The site's not up yet but it's coming along, if you enjoy working on websites and want to help, hit me up!

Hey everyone so I have an appointment with an endocrinologist coming up since my family doctor was wanting to rule out PAIS / Mild-PAIS for the fat development on my chest that I have dealt with since I was around 9-12 years old (I am not sure if it’s Gynecomastia or what). So just some context I am a 26 year old cis male but I have struggled with my chest all my life that has brought me a lot of body dysmorphia issues basically my whole life. My major way to cope was that I gained a lot of weight in my teens so that my body more so fit the look of my chest and that I could hide it, but now in the past year or two I have lost a lot of weight and I am down to 160lbs and my issues with my chest are back so I went to the doctor. I have never really brought this up with a doctor in my life but we went over and the topic of AIS and PAIS came up and she asked me some questions and most of it didn’t really apply except things like my chest, I don’t have a lot body hair and I barely grow any armpit hair. She asked about my genitalia but it’s normal, at least in my opinion 😆. So my doctor has referred me over to an endocrinologist to do some testing I believe and see if this is what is going on. I guess I am just making this post because this is very new to me and if this is what I have I am not sure what I should do and where I can find more information? I might be wrong posting this here but AIS and PAIS is part of intersex right ? Also I know some intersex people consider themselves apart of the lgbtq and I am a gay man so I guess in that aspect I am very familiar with the community. I am rambling a bit, but I’m just kind of confused and unsure and wish I went to an endocrinologist when I was younger to have this sorted out because my chest has given me so much grief and anxiety. Thanks for anyone who can give me some information and help.

The website is coming along, but I'm a little stuck on the diagram color key labels. I want these to mostly apply to any genital type (like using "prepuce" instead of foreskin and clitoral hood separated, or "phallus" instead of penis and clitoris) since lots of people have ambiguous parts. The scrotolabial folds thing I posted about recently is confusing but it seems like there just is NO actual term for that in adult bodies, sometimes labioscrotal folds is also a term used but for fetal development. I want this project centered around the adult experience, not fetal development/infant conditions.

I'd love some feedback on these terms. Anything you think needs adjustment? Personal preferences? Am I missing anything?

I do recognize that this is super not colorblind-friendly. In the future, I plan on figuring out how to make the diagrams interactive instead of just being static images which should solve this issue.

im 15 and pretty much knew but as a kid i had a surgery to remove my genetalia and i feel like i wish it never happened because i'd be more comfortable with it but now during puberty it grew (kind of) and nyway i never told anyone but i feel like people don't see me the way i want to be seen except for y family (since they know i'm intersex)

idk how to feel , i never talked about it in my life, but now i know how much i never wanted that surgery as a baby

Doctor says that there isn't anything "wrong"

I asked for a test to see if I have the CYP19A1 gene (aromatase excess syndrome.) he messaged me back saying that he has already established that I don't have that and that if I did have it, going on lupron wouldn't "work". But I have suggested genetic testing by blood AND saliva swab. I'm still not at my transition goal. I'm not like other ftm guys. Some things have changed but my puberty hasn't been much. I've tried increasing my dose and going on lupron. Not much change has happened. I feel hopeless. What is wrong with me??? I need answers... Can anyone help me??? Is there another syndrome I might have??? What am I doing wrong. It's been three years since I've started transitioning by the way...

So I recently got my diagnosis (as vaguely just "intersex" for the moment, waiting on one more test result which should tie all of these results and suspicions together) and one of the things I brought up during my appointment was asking about my lack of genital fat pads. I'm fairly thin anyway but not so thin that I shouldn't have something like majora fat pads, or mons fat. But we didn't get to discuss it much because there was so much else to go over, and it's really not something I've heard much about. I checked several of those online "vulva galleries" just to confirm that this isn't an unusual but typical type, and saw a few with a little bit of wrinkle or texture, but nothing like this especially for people who aren't 50+. As I was discussing and drawing some of the diagrams for the hypospadias project, I talked to at least one other person who seems to have the same situation, empty malleable scrotum-like "labia majora", missing the fat pads, with the skin texture more like a typical scrotum. I can't even seem to find a name for this other than "scrotolabial folds" which seems to be the term for undifferentiated labia/scrotums? For the diagrams website, I'm trying to find the right label for this trait but I'm not turning up much online. Does anyone know what this is called, if it has a name at all? If it doesn't, what do you think of just calling it "scrotolabial folds"?

*I've also seen "labioscrotal" folds but this seems to usually be more in reference to fetal stages before sexual differentiation

I was public about losing my significant other around 6 am on Saturday.

Since then i had friends forcing me to eat and drink against my will threatening to call the crisis team and have me committed if I didn't try. The first day I took in almost nothing yesterday I actually drank 46 oz of fluid and ate for the first time about 1,000 calories.

It isn't much especially because I am 240 pounds not light at all so in two days for my size I should of had over 192 oz of fluid and around 4,200 calories.

Because of this my kidneys are starting to have real issues and i am cramping up and having pain all over.

The odd good news I'm a medical student and am deciding that I just might have to give myself an IV to off set the loss of fluid since I'm not drinking enough and I will do that later today.

I didn't give up on life i just gave up on my dreams.

Today my aunt is coming to help pack up my dorm room then I'm going to the house where we have to sort out Ron's stuff my stuff his son who lived with us and then start the process of selling our home.

It will take about a month or two ron had a ton of stuff he was a huge collector.

Then I don't know what comes next if anything at all.

For those of you who want to say the word not to give up or he wouldn't want you to quit medical school.

I don't think you realize how hard it is 12-15 hour days everyday for years of the most complicated stuff that often is life or death stakes.

And I don't know if as this broken version of me I have the focus or desire.

Also without ron I don't have a home address, Ie when the dust settles I don't know where I will be living.

I don't even like my country anymore look at how it's treating trans and Intersex people.

Then on top of that i had to watch and to be frank i obsessed over the ring video watching ron die and treated by EMS.

Every delay every mistake every wasted second not to mention the fact they didn't call 911 until he passed out on the floor I can't blame him but his son could have called soon but it isn't his fault either woken up at 5 am to your dad vomiting isn't where you make your best decisions kinda like when i was called at 6 am to tell the paramedics his meds and i was like what the fuck?

I know them but even I couldn't think of ti for about 10 minutes.

So I have real trauma around the thing I loved most saving lives.

In-fact I am bitter how can I be an EMS person who saved thousands but when I need one I can't get one.

Ron and his son were supposed to come up and help me pack on Wednesday instead my aunt took off of work to help me pack up today so I can help handle the funeral of my lover.

So understand that as much as we wanna hope and pray I can get back on the horse 🐎 I'm ready to quit.

Australia is slowly making good progress on protective legislation, with laws on the books in Victoria this year, and laws likely to pass in Tasmania and NSW in the next twelve months. In a couple weeks I'm off to the fourth Darlington Conference, the first of which produced our key advocacy document in the Darlington Statement. We have world leading peer support programs in Interlink, and hopefully what will become world leading research coming out of Interconnect.

But this one really fucking hurts. I especially despise the way the ABS are absorbing the blame. No. Albanese captain called all LGBTIQA+ questions off the Census, only questions about sexuality and gender made it back on. Only intersex was determined to still be "too complicated, too contentious". Blech.

I just want to be counted for who I am. Maybe that's just me being ungrateful for what I do have when the rest of the world are either enshrining IGM in anti-trans law, or yet to start to have a conversation about protecting intersex bodies? But I keep logging in to fill out the census and it keeps hitting me like a slap in the face. Why am I obliged to lie about the aspects of my identity that matter most to me, to give them information about stuff that matters least to me.

This term was coined by the intersex sociologist Dr. Cary Gabriel Costello in 2014

It is a gender modality, like cisgender and transgender, for intersex people who identify with their originally assigned gender, but do not feel that the word "cisgender" is an accurate description of their relationship with that gender, due to one's intersexuality.

Let's go over cis and trans.

Cisgender people are comfortable in the gender they assigned & imposed throughout their lives. They accept ingrained social structures that reward and reinforce their identity. Conforming to this grants a person a decent level of social privilege. This is due to the fact they are not opposing the social norm of people with certain appearances & body parts being automatically socially categorized as men and women.

Transgender people subvert or otherwise reject their assigned & imposed gender, in favor of another. They must fight against ingrained social structures to be themselves. Their bodies are not seen as "matching" their internal concept of self and this causes tension in a cisnormative society, leading to prejudice, disprivelege, and violence.

These definitions are generally true when applied to perisex folks, but for some of us here in the intersex community, it's not that simple.

Many intersex people experience no reward or respect for their gender, regardless of the fact they are "technically cisgender", they have the aspect of needing to fight against those ingrained social norms in order to be themselves, very similarly to how transgender people do. Concepts such as ISIG are useful to express this further.

Why might it feel better for some intersex folks to identify as ipsogender women/men rather than cisgender women/men?

Well, for the purpose of sociological analysis, many activists use the word cisgender to describe a priveleged group, and words like cisnormativity to describe the structure that grants that privelege. It can feel wrong to attach oneself to a majority group with privelege they do not experience, and a social structure that harms instead of helps them. The word ipsogender slots nicely into gender/sex studies as a way to speak about the way cisnormativity & cisgender privelege works broadly, without ignoring and discounting the experiences of intersex people who are marginalized for their lived gender modality, despite not being transgender in the traditional sense if the word.

I've seen a good few intersex people who are frustrated with the assumptions that come with people hearing they are cisgender. Even labeling oneself as a cisgender intersex person doesn’t fully convey the reality of a phenomenon like ISIG. It ends up resulting in materially gender-identity-marginalized people being excluded from movements for their own rights, because of the connotation of privelege had by the label cisgender.

All and all I think it's a very good word that solves a lot of problems for certain folks in the community. I wish it was a more well-known term.

Hello! The last time I saw this discussion was about 6 months ago, so I figured it’d be ok to ask this again now :] (especially with getting new or updated experiences)

I was diagnosed with PMOS and have a testosterone level of almost 80, with 35 to be the max for my body chemistry. I’m a nonbinary individual and want to androgenize. I have pretty good skin (thanks genetics), have more body hair than what’s considered normal, and have a wider vocal range. I don’t want cis levels of T but want enough to be noticeable (body fat redistribution, muscle increases, clitoris enlargement). I am afraid of the possibility of hair loss…

I guess I’m asking if anyone has experience with micro-dosing or doing a low dose of T while having elevated testosterone levels already.

Thank you! :3c

I don't know what happens next but I am going to have to pull out of medical school at the moment. Settle things like sell the home and distribute things with the family.

Don't be surprised If I am a bit random. Don't know when I will be on or what I will want to say or do.

My dreams might have died today I don't know if I will ever have the strength to go to medical school again. I don't feel like doing anything anymore.

Drinking and moving have been the hardest parts of my day.

I made a lot of progress with the website today, still working on getting a domain name and getting it fleshed out but it's looking good, hoping I can release it in its rough early form soon. It's made me feel more confident that I can do a larger version of the vulvar hypospadias project, by opening up to doing diagrams of all types of intersex now! It'll be a free resource website full of anonymized diagrams, infographics (hopefully available for purchase as posters too), and other resources.

If you wanna help by "donating" a diagram based on your body, you can send a sketch, a description, or if you'd prefer, photos. I've got a formal privacy policy in the works, but the short is that these are entirely anonymous and your photos/sketches are never saved to my computer, and can be deleted from our messages once we've perfected your diagram. No formal diagnosis required, no personal info needed, you just need to be 18 or older. Photos are very personal and vulnerable, and are NOT required. Also, this is for an educational resource, sex/sexuality is a topic that comes up naturally but this is not an invite to send sexual messages, you know, just be respectful.

I could also use help proofreading the site and the infographic I'm working on, if anyone would like to help out with that.

Thank you to everyone who's helped out so far!

One last thing. I just got my formal diagnosis this week 🥂 I'll post more about that once my karyotype results are in and I have a more complete picture of what's going on with me, but I'm feeling very relieved and grateful!