But, Daski, you say, we know that!

Except there’s this nagging part of people’s brains that involves itself with respectability politics to the point that they forget this fact.

People hear “hermaphrodite” and get their feathers in a ruffle on behalf of the intersex community due to it’s historic use as a slur. But they also forget that hermaphrodite is a legitimate biological description of genital configurations.

We’re a community that talks a lot about blurring that of being animal and being person. We’re also a community that is on the cutting edge of understanding parts of human psyche that science hasnt caught up to studying on a large scale yet.

Thus, when someone in our community mentions they (as a kintype) had or currently wish to have hermaphroditic genitals they’re not saying they want to be intersex. You cant become intersex, and intersex is a human diagnostic criteria. Conflating ANY USAGE of the words deriving from “hermaphrodite” to intersex is doing an enormous disservice to the intersex community by muddying the waters of their terms and definitions.

Humans have wonderful terms such as salmacian and bigenital to describe the current technology level of having more than one genital attached to a body. However, remember we’re talking about being animal people. Not everyone’s wants or goals or dysphoria can be described by these terms. So we turn to the correct word of Hermaphroditic: having two complete and fully functioning sets of genitals. (Which I must remind readers: intersex does not include this definition. This is not a possible genital configuration in humans by birth.)

Hermaphrodite and it’s derivatives are not bad words worthy of knee-jerk reactions. Think critically before policing others’ terminology usage, especially if you’re not a part of the perceived aggrieved group.