Another intersex activist on issues raised by Kiira Triea (aka Denise Tree) |
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Intersex activist Peggy has contacted me about the ongoing problems with posers and fakes in both the transsexual (TS) and intersex (IS) communities. ("Peggy" is the pseudonym of a woman with grade 5 PAIS who grew up as a boy but changed to living as a woman in early adulthood. She has been active in the AIS support group USA.) Both groups occasionally encounter people who self-diagnose as TS or IS because they see these demographic groups as more socially acceptable. Others pose as TS or IS people because of a fixation or fascination with these groups, often of a sexual nature. These troubling trends are exacerbated by two things:
1. medical privacy, which means these self-diagnoses are rarely confirmed by a disinterested party
2. the internet, where some people abuse its anonymity to create a fake persona or fabricated biography
These two factors have led to a lot of headaches for activists in both groups, but the problem is worse in the intersex community. The trans community has reached a size and political maturity that the fakes and wannabes are usually ferreted out quickly, but in the intersex community, that has been slower to happen.
In many ways, this is a generational issue. Older members of the TS and IS communities lived in a climate of secrecy and shame, one encouraged by their physicians and families. Many members of both groups have done as much activism as they can without compromising their privacy, but they do not wish to be outed after spending so much energy building a quiet life that distances them from the pain of transition or traumatic childhood interactions with the medical profession.
The fabrications in Denise Tree’s biographical details have led a number of intersex people to come forward to address this issue. One of the many problems with leadership at the now-defunct Intersex Society of North America was their attempt to downplay the many intersex people who transition at some point in life. They also pushed for a re-medicalization of cosmetic variances in genitalia through the problematic concept of “disorders of sex development” or DSD, which conflates issues of function and cosmesis. The group Organization Intersex International (OII) has been instrumental in challenging this troubling trend.
Peggy welcomes comments: “If this generates response from persons who want to contact me, you are welcome to forward their messages and/or contact information to me and I will write to them.”
1 December 2008
Dear Andrea,
My interest in your web pages on “Kiira Triea” is due to the apparent large numbers of intersex posers, persons who pretend to have a physical intersex condition who do not. This has been a problem for those seeking support, and especially for genuine intersex transitioners. Ms. Denise Tree has had an especially large impact on the intersex movement, so it is very relevant if her claimed biography is a fabrication.
I have a longer discussion of posers on my web page on intersex gender transition:
See: http://mysite.verizon.net/isgt/
Where I’m concerned about non-IS persons posing as IS, you’ve mentioned non-TS persons (as you said, mostly crossdressers) posing as TS. I think this comes about because of the demographics of these conditions.
Crossdressers may be up to 3-5% of the (American) population. (Source: Amy Bloom’s essay Conservative Men in Conservative Dresses. Atlantic Monthly. April 2002)* Even revising that downwards to 1% yields a very high absolute number.
*See: http://www.helen-hill.com/pdf/xdress/consmenconsdresses.pdf
Transsexuals (SRS completed) are about 1/2,500 (Source: Lynn Conway’s web site.* (She notes that other sources say it is around 1/30,000.)
*(See: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TSprevalence.html#Article)
Intersex Transitioners are only about 1/300,000. (My own rough estimate, deliberately erring on the high side, see note below.)
So, no matter whose numbers you use, if only a small percentage of transsexuals claim to be intersexed when they are not, their number will be comparable to the number of genuine intersexed transitioners. (The same applies to crossdressers claiming to be transsexual.)
Please note that I am not a moralist and do not feel that sex reassignment is more “legitimate” or “justified” for the intersexed, although often the tradeoffs in terms of advantages and disadvantages may be different and a different treatment program may be needed.
Yours sincerely,
“Peggy”---
Note:
The most common intersex diagnoses that involve ambiguous genitalia and the possibility of gender change are less common than transsexualism. CVAH is around 1/15,000, PAIS and conditions with a similar phenotype are around 1/100,000; and most persons with these conditions do not seek gender transition.Here’s my own back-of-the envelope calculation. AIS is reported at 1/40,000 to 1/65,000 in the medical literature and PAIS and related conditions are about 1/5 of that. (Based on medical literature and AISSG-USA membership list.) In a paper by Milton Diamond,* he says that one third of those responding to his survey on AIS with a diagnosis of PAIS changed their gender role. That sounds high to me but I’ll use the number. My impression is that half or more of the intersex transitioners I hear about say they have PAIS and the rest some other diagnosis. So, my rough estimate is that at most 1/300,000 persons is an intersex transitioner, or less than 1/100 Lynn Conway’s estimate for non-IS TSs.
*See: http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/online_artcls/intersex/AndrogenInsensitivity.htm
