Anick

Hi All! I used to speak a lot about being intersex here. Then I stopped. But I never stopped reflecting, questioning, or writing. I’ve moved my voice to Medium, and I’m exploring things I never could say in a single post. Here’s what you’ll find 🧵

Intersex people should not be used as supporting evidence in culture-war arguments. We are not boundary markers. We are people.

Reducing sex to “egg or sperm” may describe a reproductive model at species level. It does not meaningfully capture every individual life.

I read the BBC explainer on “biological sex” and trans rights today. As an intersex person, I want to respond to one specific part of it.

We spend a lot of our lives being “sorted” by ideas of sex and gender. My essay is not a hot take or a manifesto. It is my experience that gender is a chaotic, multi-layered mess. And how embodiment still matters even when identity shifts. anickwrites.medium.com/gender-everywh…

9/ The essay does not offer a neat “how to fix your masculinity” guide. Instead, it sits with questions like: •How do we honour our genuine preferences without turning them into hierarchies of worth? • How do we notice our snap judgements without letting them drive the car?

4/ One of the ideas I explore is the “gender see saw”. In many queer relationships, when one person leans into softness or campness, the other quietly stiffens into “the man”. No one agrees to it. It just happens in the space between you.

12/ If any of this resonates, or irritates you in a way that feels interesting, I would love you to read the full essay and share it with someone who thinks about this stuff too. 🔗 Too Gay, Not Man Enough? Rethinking Masculinity as a Brown Intersex Man anickwrites.medium.com/too-gay-not-ma…

11/ Masculinity, for me, is no longer a test to pass. It is a set of questions I am learning to ask with more care: Where did my ideas of “too much” or “not enough” come from? Whose safety were they protecting? Whose freedom did they limit?

1/ “Too gay.” “Not man enough.” I wrote a new essay about the quiet moments where those phrases still flicker through my mind, even though I know better. It is about masculinity, queerness, race, and the shame that lives under our politics. 🔗 anickwrites.medium.com/too-gay-not-ma…