#cw intersexism

CW for sexual medical abuse, dysphoria, intersexism

And like, people don’t get how I lost my teenage girlhood and most of my 20′s to dysphoria and self hate. I would take two hour long showers as a teenager where I would meticulously make sure to shave every single inch of my body. I would cry if I ever missed anything. I would cut the moles under my lip all the time, and they’d bleed for a literal hour and mess up my ability to put on my full-coverage foundation that I wore to hide any instance of stubble. This started when I was ELEVEN YEARS OLD. I had to teach MYSELF how to shave. EVERYTHING. After kids started abusing me for it. I didn’t tell my mom or ANYONE that this was happening, or that I had started a period then they stopped and never came back, until I was FIFTEEN.

So that’s four years of me knowing I’m a freak, thinking I’m turning into a man, knowing I’m not anything like any other girls around me, knowing I couldn’t ever tell anyone otherwise they’d be disgusted and probably abuse me, going through a high-testosterone puberty while also being an undiagnosed autistic child in an abusive household and like. Once I did tell my mom, she was just mad at me, and it took another year for doctors to stop genuinely MAKING FUN OF MY BODY and genuinely attempting to slut shame me for shaving my body, despite me telling them I’d never had sex. Nobody ASKED why I was shaving. They made assumptions.

My first ever visit to a gyno was when I was 15. I remember being in a dark and cold room, no lighting other than the bright one they had pointing between my legs. The doctor asked why I shaved, while she was lubing up her tools, and I was petrified and couldn’t respond. She went on with the examination, and I fucking swear to you. She called the nurse over urgently, pointed out something, and whispered, “she IS a virgin!” and they both giggled. I know that sounds like total fucking bullshit, no doctor would think hymen = virgin, yea? This was a military hospital, my dad was in the military. The doctors are NOTORIOUSLY scummy there. I used to tell people this story like it was a joke and laugh it off, but it’s fucking traumatic. All that was needed was a blood test. I didn’t need a pap, it was done to humiliate me.

These people did no bloodwork. They did an ultrasound, but not on my ovaries, on my uterus, trying to prove I was pregnant, despite my piss coming back negative. They sent me home with no diagnosis. THE DOCTOR CALLED ME AT HOME. She THREATENED TO TELL MY MOM I WAS SEXUALLY ACTIVE. BECAUSE I WAS SHAVING. LMAO. Eventually another year goes by of shitty doctors and one of them slaps me with “PCOS” after noticing discoloration on my neck consistant with insulin buildup. (Which is also a NCAH symptom) Also no bloodwork, just diagnosed it, and put me on metformin, which made me SUUUPER sick.

My teenage life and early 20s consisted of experiences like these, of not wearing clothes I wanted to avoid showing how masculine I look, of wearing specific things to alter my body shape. I OBSESSED over getting my entire face feminized. I didn’t know what facial feminization surgery was at the time, but as early as 14 I wanted my nose, chin, jaw, and forehead all reshaped to look more girlish. My breasts have always been smaller and saggy, and I fantasized about implants. Around 16, I started fantasizing about hip and butt implants too, and labioplasty to make me look more “normal” and feminine.

I spent an entire year extremely sick with a huge kidney stone because every time I went to the doctor for the nauseating, debilitating pain I was experiencing, they wrote it off as my PCOS and suggested I take birth control.

I’ve had MULTIPLE serious conditions and issues written off as my hormones.

My blood pressure has been dangerously high for most of my life as a result of my condition, but no doctor ever even attempted to medicate me until 2018. Before that, they all told me to lose weight and use birth control to manage my hormones. Birth control RAISES blood pressure. People diagnosed with PCOS put on birth control without any other consideration of their medical health have gone into stroke before.

Even when I was working to “pass” as a woman, there are multiple instances of me getting “clocked” by people who think my intersex features mean I’m amab. I have been called transphobic slurs while actively trying to pass as a woman. I have been threatened violently by these people.

I just genuinely feel like I have to air out my entire life like this in order for people to believe me, cuz as it is a lot don’t and it’s just fucking traumatic being told you’re lying or making up something when you’re being vulnerable and honest in an attempt to find understanding in others lmfao. I know it shouldn’t matter but I’m autistic and I have PTSD and every invalidation weighs more than every hundred nice people for whatever fucking reason in my brain!!! And it’s evil!!