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Are Queer Maps Part of the LGBTQIA+ Community?



Content warning: mention of sex, genitals, and pedophilia

I’ve shared a lot of very personal things on this blog over the years, and today I’m going to share another personal piece of news: I’m intersex.

Most people think that there is a rigid binary between people who are born with vaginas and people who are born with penises, but the truth is that there are a lot of people who have genitals that just don’t fit into this binary. There are also people who don’t have the expected corresponding internal organs, hormones, and/or chromosomes that generally fit with their genitalia.

The truth is that I don’t know much about being intersex. I’m in my 30s, and I just now found out that I’m intersex. At the risk of being TMI: my genitals aren’t that different than those of a dyadic (or non-intersex), cisgender (or non-transgender) woman. At least, they never seemed like that to me.

I was an early bloomer. I started having sex as a very young teenager, when I was ignorant about what typical women’s bodies looked like, and even about what my own body looked like. I spent as little time thinking about my genitals as I possibly could. I had a cis, dyadic female partner for four years as a teenager, and neither of us realized that my body was a little different than hers.

After that, I only slept with dyadic people with penises until recently. Now, I’m dating a trans man: a man who was assigned the gender of female at birth. Immediately, I noticed how completely alien his genitals seemed in comparison to mine.

“I was born prematurely, so I think my genitals never finished developing,” I explained.

“Does that mean you’re intersex?” he asked.

I paused. I’d never once in my life entertained the notion that I was intersex. Not even when I’d read the entire 500-something pages of the novel Middlesex, which details the fictional life of an intersex person.

“I don’t know,” I said.

But I started researching, and quickly found out that yes, my genital configuration is one that is typical of intersex people.

Why do I mention all this? Because I’m proud to be intersex. Some intersex people want to distance themselves from the LGBT+ community, while others feel that they fall squarely under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. I fit into the second category.

Even if I wasn’t intersex, I’m also a bisexual and genderfluid woman. I’ve known that I wasn’t straight since I was 12; I had my first crush on a girl when I was in fourth grade. Being part of the LGBTQIA+ community is incredibly important to me, and an integral part of who I am.

So that’s why it stings so much when people tell me that I’m not allowed to be part of the LGBTQIA+ community just because I’m also a minor-attracted person. When I tell people that I belong in the community despite being a map, I’m met with extreme vitriol, which doesn’t make sense to me.

Being attracted to minors doesn’t cancel out that I’m also attracted to men, women, and non-binary adults. It doesn’t cancel out that I identify with a gender different than the one I was assigned at birth. And it doesn’t cancel out that I’m intersex, that I have different genitals -- and likely hormones and/or chromosomes -- than the ones I was expected to have.

As a former anti-map, I understand where the sentiment that maps can’t be part of the LGBTQIA+ community comes from, even if I now vividly disagree. Maps are universally hated and assumed to be sexual predators; accepting us as part of the LGBTQIA+ community makes the community look bad in some people’s eyes.

But it’s hypocritical to say that someone who is legitimately queer can’t be part of the LGBTQIA+ community just because they’re widely seen as being a “bad person.” There are all kinds of queer people who aren’t perfect queer representation -- including queer rapists and abusers, who are far worse than anti-contact maps -- and they are all allowed to identify as being part of the community. Let LGBTQIA+ maps be part of the community, too.

Stop telling queer maps that we can’t be part of the LGBTQIA+ community just because we happen to be attracted to minors. We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not going away anytime soon.

 

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