Angel Of Sadness, Or Angel In A Cemetery (Wilhelm Kotarbiński, C. 1900)

Franz Kafka, from a letter to Milena Jesenka featured in "Letters to Milena,

my gf's laptop's audio driver's broke and she's complaining about it being slow so now i get to install linux on it :3

Dear fiction writers there is no such thing as an "intersex species", please stop telling me that your alien species is intersex rep.

That's not what intersex means. If your reasoning for a character being intersex is "they're a [insert species that has different sex characteristics from humans]", just stop.

If "all of them are intersex" then they aren't intersex. They just have different sex traits/reproductive organization from humans. If thats how they typically look, thats just what being perisex (non-intersex) looks like for that species. Intersex refers to an individual with sex characteristics atypical for their species.

This also goes for third sexes. That's not atypical if it's a commonly observed cluster of traits recognized as "a sex", that means that'd just be another form of being perisex (for that species). Intersex essentially means 'other' or 'neither', the point of the word is that we don't fit into the boxes provided for most of the population, not that we're a rare and magical third box.

Additionally shapeshifters (usually) also come off as bad rep for the same reason. If your character is intersex because they're a shapeshifter, they're not intersex. You don't become intersex, you're born that way. I don't like when characters have their bodies altered later in life and are called intersex for those modifications. And the idea that a character is becoming intersex by transforming their body just reinforces the idea that there is a certain type of way an intersex body looks, and that intersex is something you can 'become' via bodily alterations. We can look like anything. Sometimes our variations are only visible through chromosome or hormone testing. And often we have our bodies changed against our will to make our intersexuality less obvious. If you can become intersex via body alterations, does that mean medical abuse removes our intersexuality?

Yes, you can have a non-human character be intersex‐ if that individual has variant sex characteristics by the standards of their species.

Yes, you can write a species with bigenitalia (both parts)- just don't call them intersex or hermaphrodites (that is a slur). Some better terms are cosexed, monoecious, gonosimulites, dualsex

Yes, you can write shapeshifters as intersex- as long as you understand what intersex means and apply the actual definition of the word to the context of your story.

Lomochrome color ‘92 Sun-kissed

ring with a painting of an eye, watercolor on ivory framed by split pearls; american c. 1900s.

May Day poster by Nina Vatolina (1950s)

Siegfried (1921) by Thomas Theodor Heine | The Cat on the Pillow (19th century) by Adolf von Becker

pleeeeeeeease indie web and scenecore and whatever other subcultures.... have fun and be cringe but PLEASE be careful with your blinkies. if your website has flashing lights that are on by default or that can't be turned off, then it is inaccessible to photosensitive people. if your post has flashing lights, it needs to be tagged. PLEASE. i love indie web stuff but the prevalence of unavoidable flashing lights makes me really anxious!! people have migraines and seizures! please use tags like "flashing lights" and "eye strain," NOT "epilepsy" or "epilepsy warning," and please consider making your site accessible by removing flashing lights or making them avoidable. PLEASE. make the web usable for photosensitive people.