hey guys! it was brought to my attention that they way i refer to my ‘sona’s gender identities is offensive to some people, and i sincerely apologize if i’ve made any of you upset with this! the last thing i want to do is to offend any of you or any of the supportive communities here. if i ever act in a way that concerns you in this matter - or any other matter - DO approach me about it so i can fix it.
i’m asking those who follow me, or those who are more knowledgeable about it, to please let me know what would be a more appropriate term for me to use to refer to my ‘sonas identities?
Yeah guys! Mise and I are asking for a little advice so if you have any info please let us know! Mise’s original post has an answer section, so please go there! :>
alas, there is no appropriate term
“hermaphrodite” is the only word for describing an individual with fully-functional genitalia of both reproductive sexes
i see this post has already gotten a suggestion to use “intersex”, and that troubles me
the whole reason “herm” got a bad rap in the first place is that people kept referring to porn as “herms”, and also to intersex people as “herms”, and then started thinking that’s what intersex was about
but hermaphroditism in humans is impossible; it’s really only something that occurs within a species as a whole, not individuals. (except in fantasy porn land of course.)
so now we coined “intersex” to make the difference more clear… and i’ve seen a good few people suggest using “intersex” to label herm porn with the intention that it’s a nicer word to use
but that recreates the exact same problem!
they are different words that mean different things. “intersex” is not a more polite synonym for “herm”. the whole reason “intersex” exists is to emphasize the difference from hermaphroditism.
i’m starting to wonder if the people who take issue with “herm” are intersex themselves, or are misunderstanding the situation
i can’t speak to whether intersex people tend to have a problem with “herm” used literally, but afaik it doesn’t have any synonyms — and definitely not “intersex”.
(anecdote: someone i know actually tagged herm porn as “intersex”, and someone sent him an ask complaining that intersex people don’t want drawn porn in their tag, and i had to explain to him that this person wasn’t just being a jerk)