A very, very common response when my intersex status comes out, is you should see a doctor about it! I already mentioned before that it is infuriating because even if people don't mean any ill, it's still a form of policing my body and my looks, and I've had enough of this shit for the next five decades. But another aspect of it is that... historically, doctors have been woefully incompetent when it comes to my intersex body.

When I hit puberty, I grew tits and a beard. The first doctor I saw about it looked at me and immediately prescribed various (painful and invasive) procedures to remove the "wrong" traits. He did not try to understand why those traits had appeared, or if they were harmful to me at all. He saw symptoms to treat, and he went off to treat them, whether I wanted it or not. This was months of this stuff.

In a way, I'm lucky; the procedures didn't work. I still have the body I had as a teenager, which is great, because I do so like this body. But that also means I went through months of pain, which my parents paid for... for nothing.

When my parents got fed up at how 1) this shit didn't work and 2) it consistently left me in tears, they concluded the current doctor sucked, and brought me to a new one, who was appaled to hear what the first doctor made me go through. This is the guy who actually went off to get my hormones and reproductive system checked. He then concluded that my condition was not harmful to my health. He asked me if I wanted to keep my intersex traits (can you fucking imagine!! Asking the patient what they want for their own body!! Groundbreaking!!) And when I said I did, he let me go.

Doctors don't know jack shit about intersex bodies. Which is fine, I guess; we are quite rare, I'll admit that, and if the doctor in question has never seen anyone like us before, I can't blame them for being ignorant. But I will blame them for wanting to stay ignorant. That first doctor never tried to understand me (neither medically nor my wants.) He never looked any further than "ok there are symptoms how do I treat the symptoms." I was put on pills which I dutifully took thinking it was for a real health reason, only to learn much later on this was HRT to normalize my body and somehow no one thought to inform me.

"Go see a doctor" doctors don't know jack shit about my body, and have actively lied to me to get me to do what they thought was "good for me." My story isn't a one-off case either; every single time I meet an intersex person, I'm met with a variation of "yeah my doctor tricked me into doing xyz thing that made me sick." I know a guy whose reproductive system was messed with as an infant, and he has no idea what exactly was done to him because they just didn't keep any record of this shit, which is still impacting him now as an adult in his thirties.

Even now, when I go to the med for stuff unrelated to my intersex condition, I have to brace myself to explain that no, I'm not on hormones, yes, I'm healthy in that regards, no, please stop telling me the problem is my hormones it's been established multiple times my problem isn't the hormones can we PLEASE focus on the reason why I actually went to the med today. It's infuriating. It's exhausting. Stop asking me to go to the doctor. I know my body.