Aimee,

I don't really see it as two camps.  In fact, I wouldn't want to see it as that because it is divisive.

Of those that I have met that use intersex, they use it as a qualifier.  For instance, I am a female that is also intersexed.  It also means I am an intersexed female because I was born with a sexual anomaly.  It doesn't mean I am confused, it doesn't mean I have a little boy and little girl parts.  But it can.  There are many conditions beyond CAH that cause sexual anomalies.  In fact, some are born true herms as opposed to us wanna-bes or pseudo-herms as the medical community calls us.

It's no different than anyone using a qualifying adjective...I am a black woman, I am an asian women...you get the point.  And I am sure that there is an english teacher reading this thinking I got it all wrong...it's a noun, it's a verb, it's a whatever...

That's okay, because discussion is key.  Maybe we will find a better word in the process, but in the meantime, we are stuck with intersex.

We don't run around saying we are intersexed to anyone who listens.  We choose our audiences.  If you have someone with diabetes, they don't include that in first introductions.   But in trying to further educate those who may be confused, we will use the statement.  In teevee, we call it the money shot...the qualifying statement that brings every thing together.

Let me share with you a bit about the people with CAH that I have met.  Granted my sampling is quite skewed, but it is what it is.  Some use the adjective intersex, and others don't:

Of the CAH salt-wasters I have met in person, 5 out of 5 are lesbians, one of them spent a chunk of her life trying to be what she thought was 'normal'---hetero, married, with kids. Recently she realized she was living a lie and that she is lesbian.  It took years for her to come to terms with what she felt her whole life.    5  out of 5 women...lesbian.  4 of the 5 have come to terms with the adjective intersex.  I write with others but do not know their sexual orientation and we don't necessarily discuss the term intersex.  It makes no difference, because the core of the matter for us isn't a word, it's the surgery.

Of the simple virilizers, 4 of the 4 I have met were raised as girls and transitioned to male.  Each at one point before transitioning considered themselve a lesbian.  Some still do.  Each one uses the adjective intersex to describe themselves.

I suspect that Max, who is in the program I linked to is in the above group.  If I am wrong, I trust I will be quickly corrected.  But seeing that CAH is statistically the biggest group in the intersex spectrum, I think I am right on this one.

I have not met you Aiimee, so I can't put you in either group.  It is my understanding from all that you have written that you are a simple virilizer and consider yourself hetero.  Statistics lose their meaning when an anomaly is thrown into the mix. Good for you, Aimee, for mixing up the pot some.  I mean that, because there will come a point that all us lesbian CAHers will need to be proven wrong.  Be that one.

But what is not an anomaly is that you are a girl.  So am I.  I am reminded of that every month when the cramps come on.  I have a rhythm in my life...cramp, bleed, have fun...repeat every 4 weeks.  Some months I get cramps that are debilitating. And it sucks that I feel the need to use that example to prove my womanhood.  But it is a constant reminder that yes, I am a girl.  And it is a reminder, that yes, I like being a girl, despite the inconveniences.   

But many of our CAH sisters do not like that they were deemed a girl at birth.  So when they get old enough, they find their place, and sometimes it is as a male.

Best I can tell, they all transition by simply not taking their replacement hormones.  They stop taking their prednisone or dex, and without any other drug intervention like testosterone, they transition into boys and men.  Those of us with salt-wasting can't do that; we would die.  Nor do I think any of those that I have met want to.  We are all girls, and to the best of my knowledge, happily singularly so.  But I gotta tell you, it is wild to meet men who where once girls and they simply stopped taking that prednisone or whatever hormonal replacement they were given.  It's the best damn reason I have seen to continue that 7 mgs of prednisone I take each day.  That's because I like being a girl. I don't want to be a boy, just like I think most of the CAHer's I meet don't want to.

But if one wanted to, I would be supportive.  I would help them work through the withdrawal from the drugs we are given to make sure we stay girl.  No other drugs would be needed.

We were all born  girls who caused a number of people great consternation at our moment of coming into this world.  Instead of congratulations, 'you have a boy, or you have a girl', instead our parents heard "oh s***".  And then we were whisked away from our mothers for sex determination.

We were whisked away because we were what the medical community calls an intersex condition.  Again, a qualifier. An adjective. Adjectives don't describe me, they only enhance it.  Nor do they describe you, Aimee.  They only clarify it.  To use your own terms, it is no diffferent than hetero, or homo, or whatever sexual you choose to attach to yourself.

The medical community uses the term 'formerly intersex' to describe those of us that were subjected to surgery.  For those on this board that don't believe, I beg of you to question your physicians on this...if they are honest, you will hear this, "Your baby is no longer intersex because we fixed her"  Tell her that in 20 years when she asks about what happened to her.  And try to tell her that she isn't intersex.  She'll be the one walking in those shoes...who will you be to disagree with her?

Aimee, you also mentioned androgen in utero.  I am glad you brought that up.  What happens when little girls are bathed in testosterone while still in our mother's womb?  I don't think we just shake it off when emerging from the womb.  Did those androgens make us into the tomboys we were?  Did they make us find a place where we think analytically like males while leaving us with the grace of a woman?  Is it the reason why I and others with CAH can change the oil on our cars and then get dressed to go out, putting all our  of our fem side on display?  And then go home with our girlfriends? 

Each CAH woman I have met is an extraordinary woman.  We really are brilliant and can find solutions to every problem we are presented with, or so it seems.  It seriously blows my mind when I meet others.  The range of personas we take on are amazing.  We are butch, we are fem, we are somewhere in between.  But we are all very, very smart.  And for the most part, we all also consider ourselves intersex.  Sure, each one of us wishes there were another term to put there as an adjective to describe ourselves, but there isn't.  So, until someone comes up with somthing better, we use it reluctantly.

And there is one constant.  It's the intersex side of us: 

Fix the problem like a boy, and solve the problem like a woman. 

Is that intersex?  Or is it because we are also lesbians?