Where do I belong?

I don’t know if this belongs here or not, but I wasn’t sure where else to post it.

Last week I was unexpectedly outed by my ex girlfriend as being intersex last week in front of an entire class room at my university.

I posted about that in the confessions and secrets group days ago just to vent, but I actually got some nice and supportive comments and it helped me a lot. I was able to go back to school and deal with the questions and the unwanted curiosity... at first.

But yesterday it just got worse. A lot worse... I had people asking questions I did not know how to answer. I guess they want to know where I fit in and I always thought I knew where that was until now.

I was born this way with both parts, they both function. I do not have female breasts, but I have a vagina and I have a very irregular period, which is why I use eve to track it. I only just tried out the forums when this mess at school started happening. I’ve always identified as male.

My parents did not let the doctors “correct” me at birth and I am very thankful for that. They raised me fairly neutrally and I could play with or dress in either gender clothes I wanted. I leaned towards the male side of that on my own, but even today I have no desire to change anything about myself surgically. I was born this way, my body is healthy, and I am comfortable in my own skin so I see no need to do anything medically to myself. I’ve always thought of myself as a male and I think if my hormones had gone the other way and I had ended up with a more feminine appearance than I do, I still would identify as male and be the exact same person that I am now.

I was outed once before in middle school and it was horrible. The bullying got so bad by the time I was a sophomore in high school that my parents moved just so I could go to a different school for my last two years. After that move, I did not tell much of anyone that I was intersex.

Obviously I had to tell girlfriends due to intimacy. I had a few break up with me on the spot over it, the ones that stayed always made it very clear that they were just tolerating my differences. It always hurt but I didn’t know that wasn’t normal at the time.

The last four years, I have built my body confidence back up and just been trying to be comfortable with myself. Then my ex pulled her stunt.

It was scary but ok at first, but yesterday was one of the worst days of my life. I guess me being intersex became the hot gossip on campus because I had people I had never met or spoken to before come up to me to either ask invasive questions or straight up insult me. I had at least 3 people tell me I was going to hell.

I made it through two of my final exams yesterday then went to the gym on campus to work out like I usually do. When I got done and went to run in the locker room and shower, I got stopped by two guys and told I can’t use the locker room anymore. They wouldn’t even let me go in to get my things out of my locker. They weren’t school faculty or anything, just regular students like me.

I was so humiliated I just left and went back to my dorm to shower. All that was in my locker was clothes, since I walk everywhere on campus, but I shouldn’t have to plan a damn covert operation to get my clothes back from the locker room.

I have never been interested in what other guys have going on in the locker room. I just want to shower and get clean clothes on. But now that they know I have an extra part between my legs, they assume I’m creeping on them I guess? I don’t even know how they knew? Did the people in my class get on some loud speakers and announce it to everyone when I wasn’t paying attention? I did not think it would be this bad. I thought it would just be the people in that class room and maybe some of their friends if they gossiped.

I’ve never been super outgoing and my main focus is school, so I don’t have a big group of friends here. But the few friends I do have, or did have at least, I thought would stick with me. But I can’t get a single one to answer a call or text and when I ran into one this morning, they just walked on by like I wasn’t literally face to face with them.

I didn’t think I needed to tell them about my private parts honestly. I thought maybe they would be surprised at most when this started happening, but none of them have even tried to talk to me. They just dropped me like it was nothing.

I have never felt more alone and worthless than I did after that. Everything I used to feel confident about myself just feels like a giant question mark now.

This morning I had another flood of strangers asking questions and it is all I can do to not snap someone’s head off. If it’s not a question about my private parts or my gender, then it’s people asking why my parents didn’t just get the doctors to “fix” me when I was a baby.

If I answer the questions, then I get more questions. Or if I deflect the questions or say I don’t want to talk about it then they claim I am rude or stingy. I don’t want to be rude, I don’t want to argue with anyone, but no matter what I do it backfires. I just want to be treated like I was two weeks ago. Like a normal person.

It’s too much for me. I feel like the rug got yanked out from under me and every time I think I am ok, a new question or insult throws me for a loop.

One person actually argued with me about my gender and sexuality, which I always thought was pretty cut and dried. I identify as male and I am attracted to women. But apparently people feel this is up for debate because now they know I have more than the standard equipment between my legs. Some people are mistaking me as trans, which is fine if they don’t know what intersex is but they argue with me pretty aggressively when I try to explain the difference.

It’s gotten so bad today that I am literally hiding in a stall in the men’s bathroom right now to wait for my next exam just to avoid the avalanche of questions, comments, and insults. Although according to multiple people this morning, I shouldn’t use this bathroom anymore either.

All of this is exactly why I was never open about being intersex and just presented myself as male only. This has gone way beyond the curiosity it started as and now I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack every time I leave my dorm room. I don’t know if keeping it private is why its so bad, but this is worse than what happened in middle school when I tried to be open with my friends about it.

I have two years left at this school before I get my degree and if this is how it is going to be, I don’t know if I can do it. I feel humiliated and alone and abandoned by the people I thought cared about me. And the more I think about it, the less sure I am about where I belong. Do I belong to the LGBTQ community or the cis gender community? Right now, I feel like I don’t belong anywhere after the way I’ve been treated at school this week and how my so called friends dumped me like I was nothing.

Is this how it will always be or does it get better? I don’t know what to do anymore. I have no one to talk to and I don’t want to tell my parents before I go home for Christmas. One more day of finals before I leave and I don’t know if I can make it without losing my temper on someone because I am so fed up with being treated like a sideshow freak. I just want to go home where I have friends that don’t care what is between my legs and never leave again.