My Intersex Painting from 2014
Little art and little rant. It's a 2-for-1 sale today! :V I promise you, the wall of text relates to the painting.
Hey there, I just joined today, so I wanted to say hello and share my experience.
I found out I was Intersex in the 90s when I was 14 because I never got a period. They mapped out my DNA and I was diagnosed as CAIS shortly thereafter. My parents were told I could get cancer later in life, so I was forced into signing surgical consent forms by Boston Children's Hospital, and I had a gonadectomy at 15. I was told to keep my condition secret or I'd "never find a husband." <--??? They gave me a bag of clear resin dilators (basically perfectly straight dildos) so I would be able to "fit a penis" and sent me on my way.
I was super fucking horrified through out the entire process and emotionally scarred, especially when they handed me the bag. Even as a teen I was 0% interested in sexual things, and the whole concept of me having to accommodate a man with a painful-ass process was insane to me. I never used the goddamn things. Suddenly I viewed myself as a sexual object for someone else.
I completely caved in on myself emotionally in the following years, which didn't help when my parents divorced a little over a year later. I didn't date until my mid 20s, and I was asked by my parents if I was a lesbian after awhile. Nope. I'm CIS. I just didn't want to date because I thought I was a freak, destined to be alone til I died. But I dated anyways and I got married at 29, despite having turned his proposal down THREE previous times because I couldn't give him a family, etc. (Best decision ever though, because my husband is literally my #1 cheerleader.)
In 2014 I was going through college for my second time (my first "college" wasn't accredited so basically nothing I did mattered) and as part of my required electives, I decided on a Gender Studies course, specifically because I was CAIS. I anonymously emailed the professor a few times looking for resources for Intersex people, etc. A few weeks into the term we read a few essays written by Intersex people. One of the experiences mirrored my own and I quite literally burst into tears in class. The professor took me out of the classroom and asked if I had been emailing her and I told her I had. She asked me if I wanted to keep it private or tell the class. I decided, fuck it, I'll tell my tale. Through tears I talked about everything that had been done to me. I doubt I was very intelligible, but everyone understood. At the end of the class, 10 or so of the young girls in there surrounded me and hugged me and said a lot of nice things.
After that day, I decided I was fuckin' DONE with shame. It took so long for me to get comfortable saying I was Intersex. I decided to force myself to accept myself by expressing feelings through artwork.
Now on to the painting! I was an art major and I was taking a Painting course the same time as I was doing my Gender Studies course. Despite my painting professor vehemently not believing me that I was colorblind, because girls "can't be colorblind," I did my best. Near the end of the semester she finally believed me when I turned in my painted color wheel and it was rancid looking.
Anyways, our last project had to be something personal to us, and we had to use two famous artists and combine their signature styles in a painting. I chose Barbra Kruger because it was the only way I'd be able to use text in the assignment and her pieces are phenomenal when it comes to activism, and Claude Monet because of his use of bolder (and sometimes inaccurate) colors later in his life after his vision began to fail him.
\"Being Intersex\" - 2014, 24\"x36\", Acrylic on Canvas (c) Me
The result is what you see above. I used some of my favorite colors for the torso since I'm a sucker for crazy bright colors. I wasn't really going for a skin tone and probably would not be able to tell if I was close to one! But the long and short of it is that our bodies belong to us. The way we were born is the way we were intended to be. We are perfect, whole, and complete as we are, and the only one who has any say in that is US.
I got a 100 on my final painting after a slew of poor grades from when the teacher didn't believe me.
I majored in Ceramic Design and I did two more Intersex art projects using ceramic tiles I made plaster molds for. I'll post it another time maybe. Today I definitely wrote more than I should lmao.
So hi! I hope you like my painting and it's nice to meet you all. xoxoxo
