hello! for the cl1tor1s length survey, i was wondering how i should put down that i was AFAB but have PCOS that caused high testosterone levels (including cl1tor4l growth) until i began hormone therapy? PCOS like that seems to sometimes be counted as inters3x by the community, but i don't want to fudge the results of the survey. it was below "normal" "male" levels, but much higher than "normal" "female" levels, so i'm not sure...
Lee says:
Good question anon!
Although the mainstream medical & scientific community does not consider people with PCOS to be intersex, there are a few exceptions; "some researchers have included extreme polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)-related hyperandrogenism within the umbrella of intersex variations (Huang, Brennan, & Azziz, 2010; Jones et al., 2016)," (source).
However, as you mentioned, the intersex community seems to mostly be open to including people with PCOS under the intersex umbrella-- although of course there are a few exceptions there as well as there is almost never as 100% consensus of opinion in any broad and diverse community.
I'm not intersex myself, so resolve the issue for this particular survey I've updated the questions to list being intersex and/or having PCOS as two distinct things because that gives us the most flexibility in interpreting the results.
I've specified that people with PCOS-only should answer "no" to the "are you intersex" question so I have the option of keeping the data separate for now, but could later merge the results of the two categories in one graph and include PCOS with other intersex disorders if folks would like to see the results that way as well.
The link to the survey is here: https://bit.ly/T-growth
