ESSAY: This Dog is a Tiny Dog

Since I pointed out that there is a fundamental distinction between having and not having a disorder of sexual development - or more accurately, having THE typical or AN atypical developmental path - I have encountered some hysterical opposition. As predicted, these dishonest folx immediately warped my argument into saying the opposite of what it explicitly said. The false allegation is now that I stated that MRKH women are not “real women” due to their disability. Some have even defended the misrepresentation by claiming that it may not been what was said, but it was how my essay “made them feel.” What would they have said about “A Modest Proposal?” This essay was penned in response to colonization of Ireland and the potato famine that resulted in a million deaths and a quarter of the country leaving, including a branch of my family. It horrified people at the time. How could this callous and loathsome character as Jon Swift really suggest selling babies for the meat!

Situational definitions are not how language works for pro-reality people. We believe that words say what they say regardless of how it makes you feel to hear them. We believe they should line up with reality so that we can come to a consensus about what is and is not real. A sense of dysphoria in response to reading an article - phantom uterine pangs that never fully materialized or were dissolved by a wayward testicle - cannot actually alter the reality of what I said. It is right there in black and white. I stated that a person without a typical female reproductive system cannot directly relate to the experience of having a typical female reproductive system - and further, that denying that the experience of having a typical female reproductive system was its own, unique, valid circumstance, is misogyny. It is the hatred of femaleness.

What is the hatred of femaleness? Well… how do you treat things you hate? Do you look at them a lot? Do you talk about them? Do you make sure everyone understands that it is important to know how these things work? Or do you treat it like a dirty, shameful secret that you hope no one notices is predictably affecting you again this month? Do you pray you just hurt a lot for no reason because risking an early demise is better than telling the doctor how bad the cramping is lately? When you told him, were you dismissed or otherwise mistreated? Is all this because you got hateful messages in general that that’s what other people expected females to do in response to menstruation?

This should not be controversial, but to a misogynist, women are not allowed to have anything that cannot be taken away. That includes our experiences of our own bodies, our body parts themselves, and our functions. If there is something only we can have, we are taught to feel bad for having it, and oppressed on the basis of that ownership, in a patriarchal culture.

In my previous essay, I further stated that a man who has a uterus and cervix due to a rare disorder known as persistent Mullerian duct syndrome - which results in some or all of the Mullerian structures, including uterus, fallopian tubes, and the upper portion of the vagina, being retained in a male - has more of a capacity to directly empathize with my physical experience of having a uterus, than a woman who never formed any Mullerian structures. I certainly still stand by that statement. A man with legs also knows more about my experience of having legs than a woman who was born without legs.

In response, @mrkhvoice is now hair-splitting having a womb. Again we come back to whether whatever remnants might reside constitute a typical or atypical structure. Did it genesis or agenesis. The atypical do not experience the typical and vice versa. Most of you do not have any actual sense of what it feels like to have Eagle syndrome, either, while we’re on the subject. You can only imagine. Interestingly, Claire Graham has repeatedly denied that men with cervixes exist, even though several hundred PMDS cases have been reported in the literature at least.* But basically, if you cannot see it, is it really in the store?

I do not know, nor do I particularly care, about the alleged ins and outs of her specific equipment, given her demonstrated capacity to warp and misrepresent, but rest assured: she arguably has more in common with a man with PMDS than I do, on the axis of what it feels like to have a uterus that’s very underdeveloped, since my reproductive organs developed normally and function as expected. #Humblebrag. I’ll concede that she knows more about what it is like to be a person with an undeveloped uterus than I do, given that my uterus is normal (extra, even), and therefore, my experience has been different from both people with PMDS and MRKH. Our experiences are simply distinct, and we all have a right to compare and contrast - not just people with certain variations on sexual development. All of us.

Neither she nor a male can relate to the subjective experience of having typical female anatomy and function, nor can I directly relate to the experience of having a syndrome that I do not have. There must be mutual humility and open discussion for the benefit of all. Instead, I and @xist_tsix have been subjected to overt threats against our livelihoods and reputations, simply for being perceived to be normal females while voicing an opinion Claire Graham disagrees with. I refuse to bend the knee. I refuse to go along. I refuse to make the environment worse for other women and girls who commit the original sin of being normal females. Claire may think she’s not like other girls, so this climate of economic terror aimed at silencing women won’t affect her, but I care about typically-developing girls and women, too, who are being silenced - even when they agree with the hacktivists!

My knowledge of typical female biology is a positive state. It is not a lack of knowledge of what it is like to have a disability. It is not a lack of hardship or a lack of fetishization or a lack of stigma. It is not a lack of testosterone or a lack of maleness. It is not any sort of lack, to be a typical female. It is never a strike against you, in advance. It is not a lack of difficulty interacting with the medical establishment. It is certainly not a lack of suffering or a lack of risk.

Unadorned femaleness is the presence of knowledge of what it is like to be female, without impairment or malformation - knowledge that people without our specific anatomy cannot have, and yes that includes some females who lack typical female anatomy. They are still women. They understand some aspects of womanhood. But there are aspects they do not have direct knowledge of. Many have suggested I do not understand what it is like to have direct knowledge of some aspects of womanhood, such as giving birth. They are probably right!

I do not have any difficulty acknowledging that very true fact. Why would I? That is incredibly valuable lived experience-derived knowledge that ONLY women, but not ALL women, can claim. My knowledge of that state of standard femaleness entitles me to talk about what it means to be in such a state and how I came to embody it. I have no right to speak for experiences I have not had, simply because I am a woman. Any denial of that, of the unique knowledge held by women, especially mothers, is misogyny. It is saying I must be silent on the basis of being a typical female - a basic batch, as the kids say. To that I say: no.

She has also discussed misunderstanding her diagnosis, which resulted in a futile attempted pap smear that seemed to last for “hours” as they looked for anatomy she did not have. Whatever anatomy she does have, underdeveloped or not, it is clearly far from a typically-developed female, and was unrecognizable to a medical care provider at one point. That does not make her ‘less of a woman.’

The only requirement to be a woman is to be an adult, a female, and a human, all at the same time. This disability makes her one kind of woman and not another kind. Her standpoint (“standpoint theory”) limits her to the same extent my standpoint limits me. It is misogyny in its purest form to deny that typical females have a uniquely female experience that cannot be experienced by those without whichever aspect of female biology is under discussion. Obviously, we do have a unique experience, same as a cat has a unique experience from a dog, by virtue of being a cat. Typical female biology exists and people with it have a right to speak on that biology without coercive control tactics being applied, in an attempt to teach us not to speak. That includes speaking on what would be atypical, theorizing, and even being earnestly incorrect at times.

All of us, even typical females, have a variation on sexual development. All of us, even typical females, have a right to voice our opinions in a free society. Women will not be threatened and intimidated into exulansis about our many uniquely female experiences. When women stop talking about femaleness, the result is dead and maimed women and girls through cultural lack of knowledge of female biology and female medical needs, which extend to the needs of children. Female biology is not going to go away. This knowledge cannot be acquired directly by people with significant physiological and anatomic differences, especially men. I refuse to pretend otherwise, simply so some can feel more in control of their social reality. Fundamentally, there are two categories involved here, which would be living with and without a pathology, which in this case would include congenital malformations, such as the one I live with (Eagle syndrome**). There is, tragically, no straddling those worlds. You either get what it is like to have the syndrome, or you get what it is like to be normal. It is about the lived experience, and some twain shall never meet. No amount of womb-splitting will allow any of us to enjoy the view from everywhere, unconstrained by limitations of anatomy - an omniscient, male gaze.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tWr6PIwzyVA

*https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5117982/#:~:text=Persistent%20Mullerian%20Duct%20Syndrome%20(PMDS,males%20with%2046%2CXY%20karyotypes.
*https://jmedicalcasereports.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-1947-5-586
**https://radiopaedia.org/articles/eagle-syndrome?lang=us