By Thea Hillman
What I love about being intersex is that it gave me a sense of not belonging.
In 4th grade, I’d hang out with the art teacher after bus drop-off, before school started. At the 6th grade slumber party while the other girls read the sex part in Forever, I hung out with the girl’s mom. I’ve never been and am not currently part of any clique. I can talk to lots of different people; I’m equally awkward with everyone.
What I love about being intersex is that it gave me a sense of both and neither, but not the way you think.
When I had few friends and was picked last on teams, I was asked out by the most popular boy in school. I was never butch or femme, though I’ve been mistaken for the latter. Being confusing was a liability, as being recognized as one or the other was requisite for getting laid in queer SF in the ’90s. Not a lesbian or straight, though mistaken for both.
Magenta. Teal. Gray. Grey. Stone, a nail polish color simultaneously gray, brown, and purple. Khaki as multi, not military.
Totally normal, except all the trappings and wrappings of normal feel like drag. And the benchmarks of marriage and money and home have seemed ever-elusive, almost but not quite, out of reach. At once present and out of touch, always outside myself and looking in.
I’m a member of a club whose members don’t meet the—or any—criteria.
For us, lack of trust is the default, and for good reason. Trusting those outside the club is treacherous. Trusting those inside the club is both a given and subject to the highest levels of scrutiny and heartbreak. I’ve nearly had my security clearance revoked due to my own missteps and others’ questions about my meeting the club’s criteria—which, as noted above, are variable, subjective, and non-existent.
And I love this.
I love that nothing can be taken for granted, whether a welcome, a rejection, or a connection. It takes a long time to know us. The groundwork for forgiveness was laid long ago: a garden of blameless wounds, long before words, when betrayal had a face, but not a name. Before sorry.
No one can apologize enough. Everyone is doing their best, and yet that phrase strikes fear into our hearts. Just say yes or no; don’t tell us you’ll do your best. We’ve suffered your best already.
Our bodies know the difference between intention and impact. We knew this first, and we know this difference better than anyone. Those closest to us clumsily and lovingly confused the two, doing everything in their power to fix us when we were already perfect.
The secrets of my body have taught me to question everything. I delight endlessly in the lack of answers. For some of us, definitions have led to freedom. For me, nothing ever fit, every name and label uncomfortably tight. Or just downright uncomfortable.
And therein lies the gift.
Being borderline, undefinable, unable to be pinned down, is also being free. And being everything. This, I wouldn’t trade for the world. I don’t have to. I contain the world.
Thea Hillman is an activist and author of the Lambda Award-winning book Intersex: For Lack of a Better Word and Depending on the Light. For recent work, check out her short stories about knocking herself up and the perils of single parenting in MUTHA magazine. theahillman.com, @theadhillman.