Guys... After Working On This Incrementally Over The Past 8 Months Between Other Personal Work And Commissions,

Guys... after working on this incrementally over the past 8 months between other personal work and commissions, I finally did it. I have kicked clothing design's ass and have served my archael heirus, Eden, the finest religious sci-fi drip... Very minimally shaded so this can serve as a good reference!

And a version without wings <3

"One of the things about being born with genitals that challenge what is considered normal, is that no one ever tells you that there is anyone like you. You feel completely and utterly alone. Even today, young children are never put in touch with others who are going through the same thing. You are purposely isolated, your difference covered up — and it is horrible.

One day, I met with my writing teacher at her house. Next to my place at the table was a newsletter. Hermaphrodites with Attitude was written across the top. Upon seeing that word, which still had the power to terrify me, written so bold, so proud, I became suddenly unable to speak, even to breathe. Reading the text, I found my story in other people’s words. People I did not even know existed. It was as if my whole life had been lived to reach just this one moment. I took the newsletter home, and for days and days would pick it up in disbelief and hold it to my chest like a talisman.

And so it started, the strength that comes from finding those like you. The words that used to frighten me, make my skin crawl, like gender and hermaphrodite, roll off my tongue easier now. They are beginning to belong to me. I will never find the words of my six-year old self, and that is fitting. Today I have the reasoned and educated voice of a grown woman who knows harm when she sees it and is increasingly growing strong enough to name it and try to stop it. Saying this does not mean I am always brave, because I’m not. Speaking out as an intersexual, as a hermaphrodite, I go forward, but I also still retreat to protect myself. At one moment I may tell a friend my story, talk knowledgeably about it on the phone with a stranger. But then the subject comes up in a room full of people, and I speak in generalities, as if it were something that happens to other people. And I feel that silence between my legs, the place that sets me and my past apart from most other women. But I’m kind to myself when I can’t quite tell the whole truth, as all intersexuals should be. We have lifetimes of shame to overcome and, for most of us, this has been a secret that we have guarded with our lives and at great expense. Coming out as a hermaphrodite has its own precious timing. You can’t peel the chrysalis off a butterfly and expect it to survive any more than we can speak out, or even face our own truth, before we are ready.

If you are intersexed, listen to your heart — slowly you will emerge. It takes commitment and courage, it is frightening, but not nearly as frightening as that monster you created all those years out of your own sweet body. As you tell your story, and tell it again and again, a sort of transformation takes place. You start to speak for all intersex people who have ever lived and are yet to be born. Your intensely personal story drops into the background, and what comes forward is your story as myth, as a kind of transcendent truth. Try to love yourself enough to free your hermaphroditic voice, so we can all claim our lives, and the bodies we deserve to celebrate."

-Finding the Words, Martha Coventry, Chrysalis #12, 1998.

at least im not alloromantic 🙏

fat men with big tits i love you keep breasting boobily

ID: A collage of photographs of intersex activists at the 1996 ISNA retreat. From Chrysalis, Intersex Awakening, 1997.

In 1996, for the first time ever, intersex activists in North America met each other in California for the first ever ISNA retreat. Activists cried together, laughed together, and started laying the groundwork for the intersex rights movement in the United States. Throughout this retreat, ISNA filmed a short documentary of their conversation, which shares intimate moments of activists talking about their lives, surgeries, and how monumental this moment was for American intersex history.

The thirty minute documentary, Hermaphrodites Speak! is available to watch for free on YouTube.

Circe Invidiosa by John William Waterhouse (1892)