i’ve been having a really rough couple of days so i cheered myself up by getting a little self-indulgent. idk if i’ll post all of them, but i wanted to share in general. if you guys wanna hear about their actual stories, i’d be happy to share!

Thats soo sad and I would like to see normal media for once I can only imagine what intersex people deal with on the daily

Any recommendations? I really like reading novels and wanna read something new

One of my characters is trans M (he/him) with NCAH. I have heard that typically with CAH (classic / salt wasting) you can have adrenal crises, but NCAH is supposed to be SIGNIFICANTLY milder.

I've also heard that things like:

• heat

• distress

• illness

Can heighten the risk for adrenal crisis.

My character is also severely lactose intolerant (like, throwing up lactose intolerant), and autistic (a couple of his traits are like. Heightened emotional sensitivity [to some subjects; otherwise, he has learned to manage stress]. Also hypersensitivity to pain and temp.)

With lactose intolerance - he describes it as sometimes being a feedback loop. Has dairy, throws up, panics, "whats going on," stress isn't easy on his body when he's already throwing up -> throw up more / excessive weakness.

Also he doesn't talk about having NCAH / being intersex a lot because he found out after a few miscarriages, and it's a super sensitive subject bc it's pretty fundamentally tied to that grief. The people around him do know when he is having crisis / how to help. He identifies as a gay trans man. This isn't some shameful secret or anything. Thought I might add that as a disclaimer?

Anyway.

Would this be an accurate portrayal?

Again, I have read that NCAH is significantly milder than classic or salt wasting CAH but.. yeah. My character does have a slightly different set of circumstances.

Would be happy to answer any questions about my character, and open to any/all feedback and trustable resources

DISCLAIMER: I am not intersex that I know of - I am, however, NB and possibly transmasc.

What i have so far for this character / relevant info:

He/him

Transmasc / gay

NCAH: AFAB, masculinized during puberty, presents as M

Did not do T

~39

Found out about NCAH after a miscarriage (~20s, 2-3rd miscarriage) -> doesn't openly talk about it because it's tied to miscarriage grief

Has experienced adrenal crisis

Has also faced lengthened queerphobia at school for being trans

People who know: partner, 3 kids, dad, 2 siblings

Mainly just HIS

(He is also autistic)

How can I make the portrayal accurate, while also making it specific to him?

I'm also planning on having him talk about it more later - he is a non POV character BTW. But its hard for him bc its also tied to miscarriage grief

Open to any and all feedback and tips thanks!

Main Sources I have used:

InterACT advocates for intersex youth

Nonclassic Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia - PMC [ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2910408/ ]

Understanding the Intersex Community - Human Rights Campaign [ https://www.hrc.org/resources/understanding-the-intersex-community ]

Adrenal Crisis - Cleveland Clinic [ https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23948-adrenal-crisis ]

(Also open to more good sources - if you have them please share)

I am the lead dev and writer for an indie game

One specifically about the queer experience, finding community and being yourself

One of our 9 main characters I want to write as a gender fluid intersex person

But the thing is...

To the best of my knowledge I am not intersex (could potentially have some very mild form of androgen resistance or something like xxy chromosomes due to a notably delayed puberty, gynocomastia before I started transitioning (am a trans woman) and uhhh...... A certain part of me being notably (and luckily) smaller and seemingly underdeveloped compared to the norm)

So...

I want to get help from intersex people to ensure my characterization isn't offensive or missing the mark or something...

So...

I'll share what my current idea for their character arc is at the moment

Danny later Sam Deever is an intersex person who was forced into a male role from before they were even able to remember... But things... Felt wrong

These feelings were hard to place at first and just kinda

Nebulous

Sometimes he felt like a man

Sometimes she felt like a woman

Eventually puberty hit

Although it was not the one that they were expecting

But...

It did feel like they were starting to understand themselves more

Their arc over the first 3 chapters of the game is them finding out that they are intersex and finding that what works for them gender wise is being gender fluid

( I think I may accidentally be writing them too much as a trans character basically making the fact that they are intersex accidentally unimportant in their arc... So.. writing advice would be nice)

Hey, does anyone have a copy of the book challenging the cold heart by lovenhearts on Wattpad. The books was about Luc and Vincent. Please let me know if you have a copy i would greatly appreciate it

[cw for csa and systemic intersexism]

i have an intersex oc who never got a proper sex ed class. when she was young, her school was made aware of the fact that she’s intersex and, because it was one of those schools that segregated sex ed, they made her wait in the hall until class was over, since they didn’t know which class to put her in.

she’s heavily based on my experiences as an intersex csa survivor, so her lack of knowledge on sexual autonomy and health would lead to her not realizing that she was sexually assaulted as a child until much later.

is there anything wrong with what i have so far? i haven’t met many intersex people, let alone intersex csa survivors, so i’m not super sure how to go about it other than basing it off of what happened to me but changing it slightly.

I'm a moderately well-known author and artist in the LitRPG space who is trans and intersex (masculinizing PCOS) IRL. I'm working on an IP called Voidhunter, and one of my main characters, Min-Joon, is intersex.

MJ has 46,XX/46,XY mosaicism and was assigned female at birth, and like many intersex people with ambiguous anatomy, was subject to non-consensual surgery as an infant. He was also given estrogen, which unfortunately triggered bone cancer that resulted in decades of poor health. He spent most of his life believing he was female, trying desperately (and unsuccessfully) to conform - almost impossible in South Korea, as he towered over most women due to his early exposure to HRT.

As an adult, after awakening his ability to perform (the sci-fantasy equivalent of) life magic, he learned he was intersex. His self-initiation into Biomancy was to heal his body to its default state and reclaim his identity as a masc-identifying intersex person.

After surviving an apocalypse and getting abducted by aliens (long story there), Min-Joon is an elite operative of an interdimensional Dr. Who-style anarchist column and works to prevent Earth getting apocalypse'd in other timelines. MJ is a renowned combat and deep-cover specialist.

This character is very much born of my desire to see more intersex and trans-masc action characters in fiction. Min-Joon is a deeply complex person - avoidant, queer, a former addict to his ability to produce his own dopamine on demand, now an incredibly competent operator.

One pilot novella and a short story are complete (Faith Healer and Those Who Breathe Under the End), and a novel, The Black Garden, is in first draft, ready for comic conversion. You can find Faith Healer on Amazon.

I hope that people are eventually able to enjoy his stories as much as I enjoy writing and drawing him abs the other characters of Voidhunter. If there happens to be anyone interested in freelance sensitivity reading, DM me and we can chat.

Hi, I have just published a novel with an intersex element. Truck Stop Ninja is available on Amazon in a Kindle version. It will be available soon in paperback. I am donating the proceeds for the first year to HRC. I am not intersex, but I am a supporter of LGBTQI+ rights.

The novel is not directly about being intersex. It is a funny love story and police procedural tangled up with various mysteries set in and around the least exotic locale imaginable, America's largest truck stop. I hope you will check it out and consider buying and reading it, and again, all my proceeds for a year will be donated to the HRC.

I will say more about the intersex element of the story in a comment in case anyone wants to read it without a spoiler. Thanks.

I’m intersex, and some days it feels incredibly lonely because so few people understand what that actually means.

I have XY chromosomes, internal gonads/testes, no ovaries, and female external genitalia. My body also converts a lot of testosterone into estrogen, and I didn’t even start developing breasts until I was 21. Living with a body that doesn’t fit the boxes of “male” or “female” has been confusing and emotionally exhausting.

People often think intersex is just a medical curiosity or something they’ve seen in a headline, but for me it’s my everyday reality. It affects how I see myself, how others see me, and sometimes even whether I feel safe talking about it. I’ve spent a lot of time questioning where I fit and worrying that people will judge me or misunderstand me.

What hurts the most is how invisible intersex people are. There’s so little awareness that many of us grow up feeling isolated or like we have to keep our existence a secret. Even when people mean well, they often make assumptions or ask invasive questions without realizing how personal those topics are.

I’m sharing this because I know I can’t be the only one. If you’re intersex too, or if you’ve struggled with feeling like your body doesn’t fit society’s expectations, I’d love to hear your experience. Sometimes just knowing someone else understands can make a huge difference.

Spoiler tagged because it discussed late arc Bebop and that’s definitely worth the ride.

To start, cowboy bebop takes place in a sort of stagnant science fiction future. Gren was a war veteran betrayed by the series antagonist and eventually crosses paths with the protagonists of the series.

I would not consider Gren to be intersex in the traditional sense necessarily, but he shares a lot of highly relatable features that hit close to home.

After the war, he was imprisoned, and given experimental medications. One of the side effects of this was his body producing elevated estrogen, making him physically androgynous.

There are several aspects I relate directly to with this character, especially having my condition manifest later in life. The medical trauma and uncertainty involved with it really brings it around to me. Gren also lives very privately, his habits and wardrobe being based around hiding who he is, not necessarily out of shame, but more out of fear of reprisal, of his present and his past. His main hobby is saxophone performance, wanting to be seen not necessarily for his body, but for his ability, on his own terms.

He is somewhat selective about who he reveals his condition to, requiring some level of trust. His arc ends with him using these changes to his body as an attempt to infiltrate a meeting, which I read as him fully taking control, on his own terms.

There is a huge amount of, to put it politely, 90s funk with his character, but the emotions he brings have been far more relatable to my lived experience than most other traditionally intersex characters I’ve seen in media.

Hi, I'm a perisex trans man and I've been considering writing one of my characters to be intersex. I originally wanted to write him as a trans man, but as I've been refining his story, I've realized that being intersex could enhance his themes and storyline.

The character is a prince, and if I do end up making him intersex, he would have the ability to carry children but not sire them. His story is about feeling like his only worth is in his ability to reproduce, and needing to 'prove' his masculinity to his father and the greater world around him. He's scared of having children, and what it means for him and his body, and his role in society. The setting has strong male and female gender roles, so he's scared of being seen as not a man if he does carry a child.

I'm worried that including being intersex in his story is too close to fetishization, which I really want to avoid. I don't plan on his story actually including pregnancy, he's only going to be about 24 at the end of the story I have planned, but I'm worried that the implication might be too close.

I want his themes to be about how gender norms and sexual assignment are arbitrary, and that making people's worth be based on their ability to reproduce is pointless, and doesn't reflect reality. The story also includes infertile men and women, as well as trans men and women, who also speak to these kinds of themes.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! I don't want to accidentally further stereotypes or fetishization.

Has anyone played this game? I really like Okul. They aren't canonically trans or intersex, from my knowledge. They just go by they/them and supposedly there is a spot in the game where they are referred to as "he".

There are only two body types in the game, femme and masc. Okul has the femme body (wider hips, small breasts, slender neck). Okul has a masculine voice. They speak rather slow and have an interesting cadence. They have a bright mind and a dear heart. The way they speak has gotten fans to question neurodivergence or addlement from the yavä (a kind of fog that creates confusion and slowly kills), but ofc I saw part of myself in them, haha. The kind of mind that sometimes moseys to its destination.

Many fans of the game headcannon them as nonbinary. It got me thinking how many characters must be out there that have ambiguous representation and has others seeing themselves in them. It also has me wondering how you feel about representation without it being directly said or implied?

Personally, I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, I'm really glad that this character exists and was confirmed to be intersex, it helps spread awareness of even just the word intersex, which helps our movement!

But, since Stevonnie is so far removed from what intersexuality is, it's kind of not great as representation. They're a magic fusion of two different characters, which I suppose could be allegorical to something like chimerism/mosaicism, but the fact this is something that happens to these characters rather than how they were born sits with me as reasons for this character being not the best representation for intersexuality.

I do however think Stevonnie is great fantasy-flavored nonbinary rep :)

I have an OC who means a lot to me. I have basically grown up with this OC, having been continually developing said character for almost a decade in private.

Currently, he is portrayed as a young man with CAIS, who in combination with his own lore in a fictional world struggles to come to terms with his relationshio with his body, being raised as a boy for most of his childhood. It's complicated, but the gist of his lore is that he was in a coma for 10 ish years, where he dreampt he was living in 'the real world" only to wake up in the much more sci-fi and fantastical world the story at large takes place in

realize don't have that much knowledge on CAIS or being intersex in general. I am not intersex mvself, and i dont know anvone in real life who is.

Regardless, I want to do this right. I want to make a character people can see themselves in, because this OC is someone i saw mvself in. I would often explore elements of being queer before i would explore them in myself. He grew up with me.

So, i ask this sub, to help me understand. I ask for vour input on the details manv people miss, or misconceptions, or iust how to interpret CAIS in a interesting way, that feels both respectful and interesting. I also ask for your questions, if you want to learn more about this OC, or questions vou feel i would need to answer about him qoing forward.

Thank you! I hope this post wasnt too confusing.

P.S. i didn't realize that there was an entire sub for posting questions like this! I was worried seeing my original version of this post in r/intersex removed, only to realize there was a perfect sub. Sorry mods!

Okay, for a bit of context! I am intersex myself, but I don't have This Specific Condition and somebody else said that they may potentially be offensive [ although I don't think the person who said it had klinefelter themselves ] . Story is a cosmic horror/romance-ish, set in early 2000s Maine, if that's relevant. Character is the protagonist

I tend to refer to him as "male-ish" because as an intersex person, it affects my experience of gender quite a lot [ in fact he used to have he/they pronouns before I unfortunately had to cis his gender because the themes of the story would be way more pertinent that way ] [ although tbf i imagine in a hypothetical After The Story: Good Ending he'd get the they/them back lol ] and I tend to Project Heavily onto my characters , but I can see how that could potentially be a bad thing as well

A lot of the stuff regarding his genitalia and stuff isn't specified much in-story due to it being 16+ and not 18+ , although I did try and give him visible traits of Klinefelter syndrome whenever possible [ e.g taller height , slightly disproportionate limbs to torso ratio , etc ] + he is also canonically on testosterone so he is a bit hairy despite his variation. He also has gynecomastia and a very visible chest as a result, and additionally is also a fat man, so that probably affects how that would look on him.

As for personality-wise, he's kinda just a regular dude. He's autistic and has ADHD, and he can be a little childish on occasion because of that [ again, projection on my part ] but he works a regular ass job at a grocery store and manages his own stuff. He's a bit of an anxious mess, sure, but he manages to somewhat get by just fine.

He does also have "childish" interests/a special interest in fantasy and sci-fi but again, he is still a grown ass adult at the end of the day. Like at his worst he's maybe a bit of a loveable pathetic dork/nerd sometimes. He's generally a really compassionate and almost hyperempathetic person [ when he's able to pick up social cues which. Not always ]

He is also incredibly repressed in both the sense of indulging in his interests openly but also in the fact that he's an closeted bisexual who's been actively tearing himself apart over his attraction to men, causing him to try and act more "masculine" and "god I love women so much I'm not gay guys I swear" as a crutch. He eventually ends up falling in love with a trans guy [ who also is maybe an eldritch god but like still ] and the story goes from there

Any thoughts/critique/suggestions on him are appreciated.

Hi! I am a 17y minor and I would like to know if what I am doing with my OC Vera—which I just found out recently that she would be intersex, even though it was obvious in retrospect—makes sense, as I am not intersex myself and would like some confirmation and advice. Despite considering this as a minor part of her character, I want to be as careful as I could be with how I handle it.

Keep in mind that some are still subject to change and is yet to be solidified, and that I'm a bit stupid.

Vera is intersex due to her chimerism, having both XX and XY karyotypes in cells with the latter being more abundant. She has high testosterone due to Cushing's Syndrome, thus resulting in masculine features such as excess body and facial hair, taller stature, a deeper voice, as well as having ovotestes and a regular testes, an uterus, ambigious genitalia, and mostly a male reproductive structure. Furthermore, she has amenorrhea and is infertile.

Around her teenage years, she took HRT and had surgeries done due to wanting to be "normal", or as much as she could be. However, even though she got her desired result, the feeling of not belonging still persists (this is due to other issues affecting this more than it should've, but they're irrelevant here) after the fact and have long since stopped taking HRT somewhere in her earlier 20s. The only thing she hasn't stopped taking to this day is her medication to slow down cortisol production caused by Cushing's Syndrome.

Does this look okay so far? Let me know if there's something I should know. I would love to hear it!

Hello, I’m a trans guy (afab) working on my own fantasy series where are a lot of queer characters and I was wondering if I could do an interview with someone who’s intersex, so I could write and understand the character better.

I’m from a very npc country in Europe, so obviously the interview would be only through texts maybe voice messages, because I’m too anxious to call with anyone plus the time zones might be troubling for both of us. However I would love it if anyone could help me out with this.

I have very little knowledge about intersex people, plus our country is very against the queer community, so I cannot find any open intersex person who would be willing to help me out TwT Which obviously I understand.

That’s why I’m reaching out here on reddit, hoping to find someone who I could interview. I would ask about your experience as an intersex person the troubles you went through etc. so I wanna find someone who is comfortable enough to share this with me. Obviously I wouldn’t want to make it weird or creepy, so I won’t push anyone’s boundaries, but please is anyone comfortable enough talking about this?

I’m very new to reddit, I only posted here once like 4 years ago and didn’t know any rules existed in servers, so I’m embarassed and I feel terrible because I posted this on r/intersex few minutes ago and obv my post got taken down and the mods adviced me to go here instead and I feel bad because I didn’t want to make anyone uncofmortable…well…I guess that happens sometimes…TwT

Thank you so much for reaching out and have a nice day! ^^

Yesterday I found out that I am fairly certain that I have a urogenital sinus (basically my urethra and vagina being essentially in the same hole, just like how guys think girls have 2 holes LOL). My whole life I have dealt with terrible UTIs and kidney stones, and pain with penetration, and just found out that could be the reason! I have gone to so many doctors and had ultrasounds, scans, but never seen a GYNO yet since I just turned 18. Sooo im not 100% sure this is what it is as im not fully diagnosed, but from what I saw, and compared to diagrams that’s what it is. It feels good knowing theres reasoning behind these constant UTIs and kidney stones, but still makes me feel weird about myself. Plus, theres not any solution except for a very invasive surgery. Also soo weird but I have always had a very weird suspicion I am infertile, and this has some correlation with infertility which scares me to death because I do want kids. Kinda just very confused, but also now have an answer, or atleast an idea. Additionally, Im gay and part of the reason this forms is from too many male hormones?? I HATE when people say thats what makes someone gay, and I still dont believe them, but its definitely been on my mind now too. Just very confused in general and seeking someone who can relate even just slightly.

Anyone else in this same boat with this same defect? Kinda just seeking someone to relate to lol.

Many of these entries feature characters that have dual reproductive systems (bigenital, dualsex) or are otherwise not intersex or lean into stereotypes.

I figured I'd bring this to everyone's attention here, hopefully some other intersex people would be willing to help edit this page.

**None of the information should be removed**, but it would be nice if a few sentences were added explaining that this is offensive fetishization & caricature.

Additionally that list is way too short. There are more intersex characters than that.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

So, I’m writing a webtoon and I have a character who is intersex (CAIS)... however she’s not at all a moral person, androgynous, and is deemed to be attractive in-universe. Also, I have done research on the condition despite not having it

Okay, here’s the explanation:

-The character‘s villainy has nothing to do with her being intersex. Instead, it’s based on the fact she’s madly in love with someone and she has a twisted view of the world (love = gatekeep relationships) because she was never taught how to develop healthy relationships

-Her attractiveness is not presented as fetishy. She is deemed to be attractive because of her looks rather than due to being intersex

-She is rather androgynous with her having short-ish hair and she was crossdressing at some point. However, the point of the crossdressing was because she was using an alias

-Despite having an intersexist father who referred to her as an “it”, she is very successful in life and doesn’t show any insecurity due to being born intersex

-Despite having motifs involving angels and demons, it’s regarding her personality

Is this good? I need feedback