#quoisex

[ipso-faculty]

Compiling some terms/posts useful for people questioning if intersex

Note: If a definition in is in quotes, the source material it is quoted from is linked to by the relevant term.

Highly relevant terms

Extersex - "[A] term for those who do not know whether they are dyadic or intersex. It could be because one feels as though they might be some form of intersex, but are unable to medically confirm it, or cannot confirm what intersex variation it is. It may also be for those who have a variation that may be considered intersex, but are uncertain if they want to identify as intersex." - @themogaidragon

Inter-Questioning - "a term for anyone who is questioning if they’re intersex, for any reason. (Whether it’s due to one’s physical body, familial experiences that imply one is, or possibly simply a mental feeling that one is intersex.)" - @eldorr

Quoisex - "[An] umbrella term for anyone who doesn't quite understand their sex or doesn't want to define their sex." - LGBTQIA+ Wiki Note: I understand this as more general than extersex, and would include people questioning if altersex. See the wiki entry for subtypes (quoigonadal, quoichest, etc)

Altersex - "An umbrella term to describe having or wanting primary or secondary sex traits/characteristics that do not align with the binary sex model that a significant portion of society has adopted. It is primarily used by those who are not intersex and are trans+ and wish to or transition specifically to have a body that does not fit the aforementioned sex model." -@intersex-questions Note: Being altersex does not make somebody intersex. I include it because many people questioning their intersex status realize this is what they're looking for.

Anisohormonal - "Aniso (unequal/uneven) + hormonal (relating to hormones). An individual who has an imbalance of hormones for any number of reasons. Such individuals may or may not also be intersex." - @sproutflags Note: includes non-intersex variations such as diabetes.

Subtypes of intersex people

Note: In my experience most people questioning if they're intersex have a hormonal intersex variation like PCOS, so I'm skewing towards this accordingly.

Dysgonadal - "[having] dysfunctional gonads. This includes agonadal (no gonads) and hypogonadal. Also known as gonadal agenesis/dysgenesis, dyssex and nullogonadal/asexed (null sex or avaginal/aphallia)." - @arco-pluris Note: contrasted with eugonadal - "people with functional gonads (reproductive cells). Includes hypergonadal (hyperfunctional gonads)"

Interhormonal - "Someone who is intersex and anisohormonal and/or feels that being intersex has impacted their identity as anisohormonal in some way and/or that their identity as anisohormonal has impacted their identity as intersex in some way." - @sproutflags

Intermeer - "a term used to describe all intersex variations that are caused by an overproduction of horomones (testosterone, estrogen, or both.)" - LGBTQIA+ Wiki Variations include: AES, FMPP, PCOS. Part of The Autre System for categorizing intersex variations.

Intermindre - "a term used to describe all intersex variations that are caused by a lack of horomones (testosterone, estrogen, or both.)" Note: The wiki lists AIS and EIS as examples although they are not due to a lack of hormones, but rather a lack of sensitivity to them. Part of The Autre System for categorizing intersex variations. See the wiki for more subtypes. Thank you to anon asker who pointed out the AIS/EIS issue.

Mesosex - "[A] person who has an intersex variation, but one which does not conform to perisex (non-intersex) ideas of what intersex is. For example, people who have intersex traits that are considered "mild", or who have variations such as PCOS Hyperandrogenism and Poland Syndrome." - @ipso-faculty

More intersex terminology

Intersex Terminology Masterpost by @intersexfairy

Edits: - 2023-12-13: corrected AIS mischaracterized as lack of hormones, ty to anon for correction - 2023-12-13: added interdynamic - 2023-12-20: added inter-questioning, thank you @fazbears-horror-attraction for sharing it! - 2023-12-21: removed interdynamic. Apparently "secondary sex" means something entirely different in omegaverse. Ty to anon for correction.

#let me know if there's relevant terms I'm missing! #doing research for coining some new terms #intersex terminology #intersex #intersex questioning #extersex #mesosex #intermeer #intermindre #autre system #interhormonal #quoisex #anisohormonal #dysgonadal #pcos #hyperandrogenism #interdynamic #mogai peer review #actuallyintersex #actually intersex

[quoicultureis]

quoi culture is being tired of "quoi is french for what" comments. we know. that's the whole point.

#lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #mogai #queer #quoi culture is #quoi #quoiromantic #quoimodal #quoisexual #quoigender #quoisex #quoispec #quoibinary

[quoipolls]

#quoi #quoi polls #quoiromantic #quoisexual #quoigender #quoisex #quoiamorous #quoispec #queer #lgbtq #aspec #ace #aro #asexual #aromantic #acespec #arospec #agender

[skyllion-oc-archive]

[Image Description: Traditional drawings of Charles and Chuck. Charles is a humanoid with snow white skin, long and messy red hair, no eyebrows, and black eyes with large bags under them. Charles wears glasses made up of scribbled ovals and a jagged line connecting the frames, a pearl necklace in the colors of the quoi flag, a long white labcoat that's closed up, a black shirt, black gloves, and black boots with gray straps and silver chains hanging off of them. Charles' hair has a pin of the demiromantic flag in it, and Charles' labcoat has an agender button pinned to it. Charles smiles, revealing sharp and yellowed teeth. Charles looks to the side and hold a finger up. Written by Charles is the text "Charles Demiromantic/Quoisexual Agender No Pronouns", with the artist's signature below. Chuck is a humanoid with light skin and straight red asymmetrical hair. Chuck is wearing black, opaque sunglasses, a baseball hat with the quoi flag colors on it, a choker with the agender flag colors, a black shirt, a torn brown labcoat with a demiromantic flag patched on the upper arm, navy blue yoga pants with frayed edges, and scuffed and muddy boots with a broken chain on one of them. Chuck's arms are crossed as Chuck has a small frown. Written by Chuck is the text "Chuck Demiromantic/Quoisexual Agender No pronouns/All pronouns" with the artist's signature below. /end ID]

I looked up quoisexal and it came up with the flag used for quoiromantic, so I used them both. Honestly though, Charles would probably identify as quoiromantic as well. I posted Charles and Chuck together because they're technically the same person, though Chuck wouldn't want you to know that.

#demiromantic #quoisexual #agender #lgbtq+ #pride month #pride art #my ocs #original character #skyllion ocs #skyllion art #charles #chuck

[themogaidragon]

Quoisex

Quoisex, WTFsex, or Whatsex is a term that can have many different meanings. It is an umbrella term for anyone who doesn't quite understand their sex or doesn't want to define their sex. Some definitions of quoisex include:

Being unsure what sex is, and therefore being unsure if one has experienced it or not.

Finding the concept of sex to be personally inaccessible, non-nonsensical, or inapplicable.

Finding the experience of sex confusing.

Disidentifying with the concept of sex.

An alternative to questioning to express exhaustion or frustration with searching for a better term to describe their sex.

Questioning one's sex for such a long time that the questioning itself becomes the identity, rather than a path toward any other more stable identity.

This term comes in very useful for many types of people, especially those who are intersex, altersex, or are system members (with a system-exclusive sex,) and struggle to understand and grasp sex as a whole, do to the biological complexity it has.

Quoisex is the sex equivalent to quoigender. quoiromantic, and quoisexual.

Quoisex subsets

Quoigenital

Quoigenital is a term for when one finds their genitals or desire for genitals to be confusing, nonsensical, exhausting, or out of reach. They may fully understand their other sex traits, while finding genitallia to be confusing as a whole or just confusing to them personally.

Quoigonadal

Quoigonadal is a term for when one finds their gonads or desire for gonads to be confusing, nonsensical, exhausting, or out of reach. They may fully understand their other sex traits, while finding gonads to be confusing as a whole or just confusing to them personally.

Quoichest

Quoichest is a term for when one finds their chest/breasts or desire for a chest/breast to be confusing, nonsensical, exhausting, or out of reach. They may fully understand their other sex traits, while finding chests/breasts to be confusing as a whole or just confusing to them personally.

Quoisecondary

Quoisecondary is a term for when one finds one or more of their secondary sex traits or desire for secondary sex traits to be confusing, nonsensical, exhausting, or out of reach. They may fully understand their other sex traits, while finding traits such as nipples, muscle tone, body hair, facial hair, and/or voice to be confusing as a whole or just confusing to them personally.

One could feel this way towards all their secondary sex traits, however this term can be used when one feels this way to only a specific few or just one.

Quoicombo

Quoicombo is a term for when one fits several (but not all) of the subsets listed above.

Quoisex, quoigenital, and quoigonadal were coined by Tumblr user altersex. The rest of the terms were coined by Cryptocrew, specifically Wendy.

The quoisex flags were coined by Tumblr user altersex.

#quoisex #wtfsex #sex terminology #questioning #quoigenital #quoisecondary #quoicombo #quoichest #quoigonadal

[varsex-pride]

Sex Questioning Flag

Sex Questioning is a process of exploration by people who may be unsure, still exploring, and concerned about applying a sex label to themselves for various reasons.

Colors from this flag by @protego-et-servio​ using -genital flags format, however sex questioning could be more than just genital, could apply to question your genotype, karyotype/chromosomes, gonads and so on. Not always questioning if they are intersex but could also altersex, perisex, parsex or protosex.

#chromosomal #biosex #questioning #pride flag #flag #quoisex #quoisexed #quoissex #quoisexo #varsex #protsex #perisex #perissex #perisexed #altersex #intersex #parsex #parasex #altersexed #intersexed #protosex #endosex #dyadic

[term-repost]

Quoisex :: An umbrella term for sex identities that are not understandable or not wanting to label it. It can include dysidentifying with sex, finding sex identity confusing, an alternate term for sex questioning, etc.

Can also be called WTFsex, whatsex, quoiadic, WTFadic, or whatadic.

#original poster: altersex-archive #(bcuz i have no idea who coined or made the flags) #altersex #aldernic #liom #liom community #mogai #mogaireal #mogai community #mogai heaven #mogai term

[itsmejenamie]

Day 23 is inspired by the Quoigender Pride Flag. Quoigender is a gender that can have many different meanings. It is an umbrella term for anyone who doesn't quite understand their gender or doesn't want to define their gender. Some definitions of quoigender include: Being unsure what gender is, and therefore being unsure if one has experienced it or not. Finding the concept of gender identity to be personally inaccessible, non-nonsensical, or inapplicable. Finding the experience of gender confusing. Disidentifying with the concept of gender- either as a social construct or as something potentially applicable to oneself. An alternative to questioning to express exhaustion or frustration with searching for a better gender identity term. Questioning one's gender for such a long time that the questioning itself becomes the identity, rather than a path toward any other more stable identity. It is the gender equivalent to quoisex, quoiromantic, and quoisexual. People who identify as Quoigender may also identify as Quoifluid, Quoimasc, Quoifem, Quoimascflux, or Quoifemflux. Quoigender flag design was posted to the Pride-Flags DeviantArt account, although its original source remains unknown. #quoigender #quoigenderpride #cosplay #pridemakeup #makeup #pridemonth #loveislove #loveyou #youarevalid (at Colorado Springs, Colorado) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQg-iq5jVJL/?utm_medium=tumblr

#quoigender #quoigenderpride #cosplay #pridemakeup #makeup #pridemonth #loveislove #loveyou #youarevalid

[ipso-faculty]

A point a friend on discord made was

People with "mild" variations are often invalidated when they call themselves intersex and attacked, and not all people feel safe saying they are intersex for that reason and end up saying they are perisex. A term between the two would help with the safety of those people who do not feel safe and who are often forced to be put in a position they are not in.

Not all people with mild variations consider themselves intersex. However, they are not considered perisex because they have variations in sex.

Not everyone likes to use intersex. This is because they may find it very medicalizing (and sometimes the person has a variation in visible sex, but does not fit or does not want to see it fit into any medical term) or they may find it not medicalizing at all (some people really have problems with their sexual variation, causing disabilities, for example, and prefer to use more medical terms that define this). So, for those who feel that intersex is too medicalizing a term, you may prefer to use alternative terms

I'm the asker about spectrum and I wanted to let you know these points

Also. When I think about intersex as a spectrum, I meant in the linguistic/conceptual aspect. As like graysexual is in the asexual spectrum.

Myself, my intersex variation isn't studied yet (partial or mild EIS). And mesosex resonates with me. Even though in the end I could go with just being a dyadic ally or questioning/quoisex/extersex. I also feel as if like both the terms perisex and intersex could fit me

Some people also say sex is a statistically bimodal spectrum. What do you think about it?

Thanks for sharing! I'm glad the term mesosex resonates with you 😄 It's honestly really useful to hear from people who feel the term mesosex resonates with them. I put the word out there because I had a sense there's a demand but as somebody who feels solidly intersex I feel honestly weird having a say in a label I don't myself use.

If you didn't see it already, a mesosex person chimed into the original thread.

To me intersex is the anti-medicalizing term, especially in contrast to DSD, which to me is 100% medicalized. But that's just me!

Analogies about Biological Sex

So you also asked about my thoughts on sex as a "statistically bimodal spectrum", and the short answer is I think the term bimodal is misleading and possibly circular, and there are better analogies out there.

I already agree with what others have pointed out about sex not being a spectrum - a spectrum has one dimension (a line), and sex has dozens of dimensions (chromosomes, hormones, etc). Out of the analogies I've seen, I like most Hans Lindahl's train tracks analogy for sex development.

But I'm gonna guess that by "sex as a statistically bimodal spectrum" you mean "sex as a statistically probability distribution/density" and take this as something distinct from the sex-as-spectrum model.

As it turns out, I have a lot to say about "bimodal"

In my experience, people tend to have huge misconceptions about what statistically bimodal means. It understandably gets conflated a lot with the idea that there are two separate populations.

So let's think about height. People will say things like "height is bimodal" because they're conditioned to think that men and women are separate, and the average man is taller than the average woman.

And when they say things like "height is bimodal" they think the distribution for adults will look like this:

But here's what the adult human height distribution looks like:

The thing about normal/Gaussian distributions is that adding them together is tends to result in something that also looks normal/Gaussian.

If we look back at pink and blue distributions I hand drew, there's a visual sleight of hand going on there. Where the area under the curve is pink or blue, we can think of one pixel as representing one human in the data set. But in the part where they overlap, it's not one pixel per human, its one pixel for two humans - one from the womens' data set, one from the men's data set.

The result is that the size of the overlap looks half as small as it should be. It leads people to mistakenly think there is less overlap between men and women than there actually is.

So if we actually take that overlap and show how the distributions add together, we get something that immediately stops looking so "bimodal":

With the two probability distributions that I drew there might be a small dip in the middle, but it would be quite small. 🙃

Two probability distributions need to be really far apart for them to produce something that actually looks bimodal. (Specifically, the difference between the means needs to be smaller than twice the standard deviation - details here.)

True bimodal distributions are rare. They do exist in nature. But most of the time when people see a probability distribution with two peaks, it is a result of misleading visuals, noisy data, or poorly-binned histograms. 👀

In grad school I was taught that bimodality is a sign your data is suspicious: "Statisticians are trained to be suspicious of distributions with multiple modes. Such distributions usually indicate inhomogeneity in the system, or, in plainer language, different causes for the different modes. All familiar proverbs about the inadvisibility of mixing apples and oranges apply." (Gould, 1981)

In particular, the misinterpretation of (apparently) bimodal data has been used to confirm eugenicist ideas about racial differences, because when it comes to statistics we're always a step or two away from having to grapple with the legacy of eugenics. ⚠️

So let's get back the original question about seeing sex as statistically bimodal. The average person understands bimodal to mean "two populations", not statistical bimodality.

So before I even get into what sex even is, right off the bat this analogy is dangerously circular: sex is what it is because it's two separate populations.

Sex in humans is determined by a whole bunch of things that tend to correlate with each other (chromosomes, SRY gene, androgen levels, androgen sensitivity, estrogen levels, estrogen sensitivity, etc), so I can see the desire to illustrate that some things co-occur together more than others!

But I agree with @queercripintersex in the discussion of your previous ask that trying to project the multiple dimensions of sex into one dimension loses too much information, and is difficult to even do because so many factors are non-continuous (chromosomes, etc).

For the continuous variables, you can in theory try to find out if they have bimodal probability distributions. But quite rapidly run into issues of poor data. The data on testosterone levels in women is shockingly insufficient. Like I went looking for distributions of free testosterone levels and just look at how much noisier and sparse the data is for women (on the left) compared to men (on the right):

Source: Ooi et al, 1198

Even with all the noise in the data it's still unlikely that at any of the age categories, that the men's data and women's data added together would produce bimodal distributions. There's too much overlap.

As a general rule of thumb, any given physical difference (hormones, measurements, etc) has more variation within the sexes than between them.

Our culture has vastly overestimated the biological differences between the sexes. 😫 So I worry that adopting a sex-as-bimodal-distributions analogy will only feed this misconception. 🫤 I'm personally going to avoid using the analogy.

#sorry this is so long #but you asked an academic so this is what you get haha #eugenics: it's always there #biology of sex #biology education #science education #statistics education #text #intersex #mesosex #actuallyintersex #actually intersex

[quoicultureis]

we're quoi, of course our identity is reduced to one single part of the original definition.

we're quoi, of course people think no one besides quoiromantics and quoisexuals exist.

we're quoi, of course we get told that everyone has an orientation/gender/sex/amory etc.

we're quoi, of course we've heard the "haha it means what" comment the first time today.

we're quoi, of course we've been labelled as other things without consent.

we're quoi, of course we're beautiful.

#lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #mogai #queer #quoi #quoispec #quoiromantic #not quoi culture #quoisexual #quoisex #quoigender

[quoipolls]

welcome to quoi polls!

this is a blog for polls directed at anyone on the wider quoi/wtf spectrum, whether it be quoiromantic, quoisexual, quoigender and more. if you identify as quoi or even just relate to it on any level, these polls are for you.

please note:

unless stated otherwise, the polls on this blog are only meant to be answered by quoi folks. if you're not quoi and don't relate to it in any way, the "results" button is for you.

you don't have to be quoi to submit polls

you can submit polls targeted to a specific quoi subgroup, i.e. autistic quoi people, quoigender people, asexual quoiromantics etc.

the maximum amount of answers is 12

unless all 12 answers are used, there will always be a "see results" button

i may change the wording of a submitted poll if it exceeds the character limit, contains casual bigotry or is not entirely clear.

#quoi #quoi polls #quoiromantic #quoigender #quoisexual #quoisex #quoispec #aspec #aromantic #asexual #agender #acespec #arospec #ace #aro #queer #lgbtq

[quoipolls]

#quoi #quoi polls #quoispec #quoiromantic #quoisexual #quoigender #quoisex #quoiamorous #agender #aro #ace #aspec #arospec #acespec #asexual #aromantic #queer #lgbtq

[quoipolls]

#quoi #quoi polls #quoispec #quoiromantic #quoisexual #quoigender #quoisex #quoiamorous #aspec #agender #aromantic #asexual #ace #aro #arospec #acespec

[quoicultureis]

welcome to quoi culture is!

rules:

submissions must start with something like "quoigender culture is", "wtfsexual culture is" or similar. all quoi/wtf identities are welcome.

no bigotry of any kind

what is quoi?

in short, quoi-, also known as wtf- is a prefix that describes confusion about, disidenfication with, opting out of a certain concept and more.

the three most common quoi identities are:

quoiromantic:

quoiromantic experiences include:

being unsure of what romantic attraction is or being unable to differentiate it from other kinds of attraction and thus not knowing if one experiences it

finding romance / romantic orientation / romantic attraction to be inaccessible, inapplicable or nonsensical

disidentifying with romance / romantic orientation / romantic attraction and opting out of these concepts or simply not defining one's romantic orientation

questioning your romantic orientation for so long that questioning itself becomes the identity

quoiromanticism overlaps with aromanticism and unlabelledness, but not all quoiromantics use those terms.

quoisexual:

this is similar to quoiromantic, but with sexuality / sexual orientation / sexual attraction.

quoisexuality overlaps with asexuality and unlabelledness, but not all quoisexuals use those terms.

quoigender:

this is similar to quoiromantic and quoisexual but with gender.

quoigender overlaps with agenderness and unlabelledness, but not all quoigender people use these terms.

quoi terms also exist for other concepts, such as different kinds of tertiary attraction, amory, sex, gender modality or binary gender. if you feel quoi for a concept that doesn't have a term yet, you're still welcome here!

about the admin:

i'm Delta (@the-delta-quadrant) and i'm quoiromantic in the way that i opt out of romantic orientation altogether because i don't understand romance, so it's not really a useful concept to me. for a while i used the label aromantic along with quoiromantic, but that no longer felt right because aromantic usually describes a romantic orientation, whereas romantic orientation is something i do not have. while i don't identify as aromantic, i still consider myself to be adjacent to the aromantic spectrum though, based on lived experiences. i also consider myself quoibinary as a fundamental part of my abinarity, as well as quoisex.

i also used to identify as quoisexual for a bit back in 2018, in the way that i wasn't sure if i was experiencing sexual attraction or not. i used greysexual along with quoisexual. i also used to identify as quoimodal and rejected the concept of gender modality for myself. i no longer use either of these terms anymore though and now identify as asexual and trans.

#lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #queer #mogai #quoi #quoiromantic #wtfromantic #quoisexual #wtfsexual #quoigender #wtfgender #quoiamorous #wtfamorous #quoibinary #quoisex #wtfbinary #wtfsex #quoimodal #wtfmodal #quoispec #wtfspec #aspec

[quoicultureis]

quoi culture is wishing all quoi intersex and especially quoisex intersex people a happy intersex awareness day.

#lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #mogai #queer #quoi culture is #quoi #quoispec #quoi culture #quoisex #intersex

[quoicultureis]

quoisex culture is not wanting to talk about your sex in any more detail than "perisex".

#lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #mogai #quoi culture is #queer #quoisex