so

again sorry about all these thoughts i'm about to jettison into the universe. but

so

i keep thinking about a rather interesting thing i read while looking up resources for someone awhile back - a tumblr about intersex advocacy. one of their posts was about how they - and thus the blog - did indeed consider PCOS to be a condition in the intersex header, if the person with PCOS thought it so.

and i was like: huh, interesting!

they rather reasonably said that this was something where it is available to people to self-identify. so i've been mulling over that.

and to be honest, i don't think i really feel that pull. massive respect for those who do, but i'll be blunt, that mantle doesn't sit on my shoulders so well. it just feels like me, personally, reaching and trying to feed a line of bullshit to people to get into places i shouldn't be in.

to equate my "sometimes i get annoyed about having to shave" to the suffering of, well, actual intersex people, would just be insulting to them. people can certainly have it a lot worse than me, just with PCOS, or even have it lighter than me in symptoms and still feel like the label of intersex fits them!

but when i think of myself using it... idk, it feels scummy? it doesn't feel right and fitting.

so i've been trying to think about what i can do outside of that label to still be - again. i'm so sorry everyone. - a decent ally.

i think i might actually be able to have a better effect if i just own up to being solidly cishet and keep on keepin' on, as it were. i feel like perhaps i can make more of a difference in some ways there.

like, despite being cishet, i'm rather bad at many aspects of girl-ing so to speak, and i feel like maybe talking frankly about what i've learned - and being excited to share with people what i've learned - is something that's going to be an experience more people will resonate with. like i may be cishet, but i can still offer tips to trans femmes about, say, facial hair removal, from what i've learned as i experienced it.

and maybe just normalizing these things *as* someone who is solidly cishet is going to be the greater social action.

like: yeah, some girls have to shave in the morning. yeah, some girls have to remove facial hair. yeah, some girls have acne that comes from too much testosterone on the skin. it's just a thing, no big deal.

so maybe in that avenue, i can sort of help open up something for trans femmes. like, if it becomes more of a thing to go "oh! yeah, my great auntie had to get her beard lasered off haha, sometimes bodies are weird" - if i can help make some things less of an indicator for 'hey i'm trans' - that might be a welcome shelter for somebody when they're in a situation where they don't feel safe outing themselves as trans.

or even that they're just fucking tired of explaining the trans experience over and over and are totally ok with that not being on the table. which is also extremely valid.

i figure if i can help ease that burden, just a tad, it's useful work to do, y'know?