The Reality of Intersex Erasure

I’ve talked a lot about how Executive Order 14168’s attack on transgender people was also trying to erase intersex people from the national conversation. For a quick recap, it’s because if intersex people exist (we do!), then most of the conservative attack on transgender people falls apart. We prove that sex is not binary. Neither is gender.

Now, we’re seeing this in action in our higher education facilities.

Not long ago, a Texas A&M professor was fired for teaching about gender ideology and kicking out a student who argued with her about the existence of transgender people. Yep, a bigot tried to vilify the existence of transgender people, and this professor was fired for refusing to argue with a bigot.

Now, Georgiann Davis, an intersex professor at the University of New Mexico, has written an op-ed pondering the question: Am I supposed to lie by teaching ‘only male and female’?

Give that article a read. Seriously. It’s a good and deeply thoughtful one. Davis is also the author of the forthcoming Five Star White Trash: A Memoir of Fraud and Family. She is an intersex woman born with CAIS. A vagina but not uterus. Undescended testicles. I don’t know her full story, but I’m looking forward to her book to learn more.

How are intersex and transgender educators supposed to speak about gender and sexuality? For that matter, how is anyone to speak truthfully about gender and sexuality without facing backlash? The answer probably shifts from state to state, from institution to institution. For those in southern states (like Davis), it’s not just challenging. It’s terrifying. They have to fear for their jobs and careers. They may have to fear for their safety. With political violence on the rise and free speech under attach from the highest levels, these fears are very real.

I wish I had easy answers for you. I want to tell everyone to stand up and keep fighting. I am and I will. But I understand the fear. Some people have children they need to protect. Some people are more vulnerable, they don’t walk through life with all of the privilege that I have. I’m not going to say that it’s easy for me to fight without fear. That’s not true. The more I fight, the higher my profile goes, and the more I need to be cautious. But I choose to keep fighting in the face of that fear.

All I can do is ask you, dear reader, to keep fighting. Please. Protect yourself. Do what you must, but don’t shut down if you can help it. We need every voice we can get in this fight. If our educators cannot speak freely about the truth of gender and sexuality, then others will have to outside of the hallowed halls of higher education.

I fight here in my newsletter.

I fight on social media.

I fight with every word that I write, every memoir and book and story and poem.