《The strong association of PCOS with cis womanhood, the defining of it as a disorder or syndrome, and its framing as a “women’s health issue” obscures the fact that PCOS is a natural hormonal variation, an endocrine difference that is illustrated through secondary sex characteristics.
During my initial search for resources and community, I also learned that PCOS, given its characterization as a hormonal variance, falls under the intersex umbrella. This intersex umbrella covers a wide range of “individuals born with a hormonal, chromosomal, gonadal or genital variation which is considered outside of the male and female norms,” and PCOS meets that definition.
This is not an attempt to sway every person who has PCOS to identify themselves as intersex—though it is an acknowledgment that we have the option and the right to do so if it rings true to us. Rather, this is to say that shifting my perspective on PCOS and viewing it through an intersex lens allowed me to better understand it as a natural human variation rather than an affliction causing my body to do the “wrong” thing.
“I believe that someone with PCOS has every right to use the term intersex for themselves if they want, but I also understand it if they don’t,” said writer and intersex advocate Amanda Saenz.
“As an advocate and an intersex person, I opt to use a definition of intersex that is open ended and expansive,” Saenz explains. “The experiences that a term like ‘intersex’ hopes to define include differences in hormonal production and hormone reception, and the phenotypic effects these differences have on the body. To me, this is inclusive of things like PCOS.”
Discussing PCOS in this way is often met with indignation and resistance. Our society has a hard time separating gender from sex. This has resulted in a widespread misunderstanding of intersex identity as equivalent to transgender identity. Many who vehemently resist the idea of PCOS being under the intersex umbrella do so because they categorically link “female” with “woman,” and therefore misinterpret any acceptance of intersex identity as a denial of womanhood. Moreover, the stigma around and marginalization of intersex communities prevents many people from feeling comfortable with embracing it.
“You can be intersex and cisgender, transgender, or nonbinary. The ‘opposite’ of intersex is endosex, not cisgender,” explained Eshe Kiama Zuri, founder of U.K. Mutual Aid. As a nonbinary intersex person, Zuri approaches these ideas with a clear understanding of how the bodies of intersex individuals as well as many people with PCOS interrupt binary thinking about both sex and gender.
“The resistance to PCOS falling under the intersex umbrella is due to a white supremacist society’s desperation to cling to binary genders, which we know [have been] used as a colonial tool of control,” they offer.
The same medical and surgical interventions that legislators seek to ban trans and nonbinary people from accessing—which would be gender-affirming, life-saving care for them—are often forced on intersex infants and children who are unable to consent. This is done in efforts to align intersex bodies with social expectations of female and male, man and woman; the same logic undergirds the societal and medical pressure to “feminize” the female-assigned bodies of PCOS patients.
PCOS is “shockingly common [and] the most frequently occurring hormone-related disorder.” However, according to Medical News Today, “up to 75% of [people] with PCOS do not receive a diagnosis for their condition.” If we were to understand and accept something like PCOS as intersex, considering how “shockingly common” it is, the dominant idea of binary sex, with intersex being thought of as nothing more than a fringe occurrence, would be shattered.
“PCOS is only one of many conditions that could fall under the intersex umbrella, and care for people with PCOS would be considerably better if it wasn’t for the forced gendering and resistance to providing actual support for people with PCOS, even if it challenges society’s ideas of gender,” says Zuri.
Combating myths built around the gender and sex binaries would create more space to understand PCOS traits as part of normal human variation, rather than inherent problems to be fixed, symptoms to be eradicated. As Zuri so beautifully put it, “When we start to accept that this is not a body behaving ‘wrong’ and it is just a body, we stop blaming and punishing people for how their bodies work and start challenging societal expectations.”》
Antis, you do realize your favorite creator of dark content is likely a proshipper, or at least likely okay with the creation of dark, fucked up content.
If someone writes 3 incest plotlines, they are presumably fine with fictional incest else they would not have wrote that. Right??
You know, reflecting on the “#pokephilia” tag ban in relationship to tags like #girls also being banned, I have stumbled across a forbidden realization I don’t want to share with the world, lest it be used for evil.
Pubic hair removal naturally irritates and inflames the hair follicles, leaving microscopic open wounds. Frequent hair removal is necessary to stay smooth, causing regular irritation of the shaved or waxed area. When that is combined with the warm, moist environment of the genitals, it becomes a happy culture media for some of the nastiest bacterial pathogens.
Dr. Gibson says that whatever method is used on pubic hair – razor blades, electric shavers, tweezers, waxing, depilatories, electrolysis – “hair, like crab grass, always grows back and eventually wins.”
In her practice it is not unusual to find patients with boils and abscesses on their genitals from shaving as well as cellulitis, an infection of the scrotum, labia or penis from shaving or from having sex with someone infected.
Herpes is also an increased risk “due to the microscopic wounds being exposed to virus carried by mouth or genitals.”
“It follows that there may be vulnerability to spread of other sexually transmitted diseases as well,” she says.
“Pubic hair does have a purpose, providing a cushion against friction that can cause skin abrasion and injury, and protection from bacteria. It is the visible result of adolescent hormones and certainly nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about.”
“It is time to declare a truce in the war on pubic hair and allow it to stay right where it belongs.”
Honestly amen
okay but any time I read stuff like this I wonder if the person railing against it has ever met anyone with a sensory aversion like ever in their life
thick curly hair that gets full of goo is a nightmare. can someone at least acknowledge this and explain why all people everywhere regardless of neurotype are better off putting up with it than not
The take in OP leaves out nuance.
Whether or not to shave/wax etc is, like all things in life, a risk vs reward scenario.
If the sensory reward of having the hair removed outweighs your personal worry about the risk of disease and injury caused by removing the hair, then you should remove the hair.
If your sensory reward of removing the hair does not outweigh your personal worry about the risk of disease and injury caused by removing the hair, then you should not remove the hair.
Exactly. I am so confused about the idea that everyone who likes smooth skin heard about it from porn. What.
For me personally the physical pain and irritation of the area is too much to make it worth removing, but I absolutely believe there are plenty of people for whom the opposite is the case.
So many people assume that everyone’s motives (for everything) are based on sex or appearance.
