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doct_quinn187 karma

It can be hard, but it's decent, mostly because I try to keep a really positive attitude about everything. Most of the problems I don't have to really think about too much on a daily basis, but the EDS causes really extreme chronic pain, and that is the killer. I had to drop out of college a few years ago due to all of the health issues, and have been living at home with my mother ever since. I figured out after a while that I definitely can't hold down any sort of real job, so I've been working on getting disability for the past few months. Once that is finally approved though, my quality of life will definitely skyrocket.

doct_quinn113 karma

I was diagnosed with my intersex condition when I was 7 rather than at birth, as I appeared completely "normal" then. I only actually heard the term intersex for the first time about 9 months ago when I met an amazing activist. The only real physical feature that make it obvious is that I have a fairly androgynous face, and if I don't keep up with waxing, I can grow a pretty nice beard. And I identify as female, seeing as I was assigned female at birth and raised as a girl. (Although it feels weird to say it that way, as my parents were actually really gender neutral when it came to my childhood. I was never forced into dresses or playing with dolls or anything like that.) I don't really feel particularly masculine or feminine, or really lean more towards one gender or the other, but just picking one tends to make life easier. (You know, when it comes to filling out forms, pronouns, all that stuff.)

doct_quinn99 karma

Thank you. And I don't mind at all, I've actually been very open about the whole thing. Talking about it definitely helps with healing, I've found. This'll be long though - unfortunately I don't really know how to tell this story in a concise way.

The incident itself in a nutshell - Basically, I was at a friend's house, and there was a very small party (around 10ish people, the only person I knew beforehand was the friend whose house I was at). One of the guys there was the DD (didn't have anything to drink all night, was completely sober), and the rest of us proceeded to get incredibly drunk. I was falling down, vomited quite a bit, and passed out on the floor. Wasn't planning on getting that drunk, but sometimes it just happens. So the DD offered me a ride home with everyone else he had brought with him. They all lived at the university campus, I lived only about a mile away from my friend. We got in the car, I fell asleep in the front seat, and he drove everyone else home first (even though he lived there too?). He then drove me around town for 2 hours, even though I kept telling him where I lived, claiming he couldn't find my house and that I should just stay with him instead. I kept fading in and out of consciousness, but finally he took me back to my house. When we got to my house, he pulled me into the backseat, claimed he could "cure the lesbian", and proceeded to rape me. I was pretty out of it and wasn't able to fight back very well, but did try to get out of the car several times, and for some reason I couldn't get the door open. (I would find out later that it was a decommissioned police car, and he never had the locks changed, so you couldn't open the backdoors from the inside.) After he was done, I was pretty much in shock. For some reason I focused really hard on the fact that I couldn't go inside my house until I found my cell phone (as I found out later, I'd actually left it at my friend's). I went back to my house, grabbed my mom's phone, and came back to the car to call mine and try to find it. He grabbed me and pulled me back in the car, and drove me around town for another hour insisting I go home with him until I finally threatened to call the police if he didn't bring me home. He eventually did, and I went inside, proceeded to do everything that Law and Order: SVU tells you not to (throw your clothes in the wash, take a shower) and then laid in my mom's bed next to her and sobbed for like 3 hours. She was pretty alarmed, but just kind of left it alone, figured I'd had a bad night or whatever, because I kept saying I didn't want to talk. Also, I was a virgin at the time, and had never even really kissed anyone.

I finally told my mother 5 days later, and we went to the police to report it. I got restraining order against him, and then a year and a half later it finally went to criminal court.

I still don't completely understand why I lost. I had every single person from the party there as a witness, and every single one testified as to how drunk I was. By law in Montana, drunk consent is not consent. But the defense argued that "even if you're blackout drunk, that doesn't mean you can't still make decisions, even if they're bad decisions."

I had evidence photos of the fact that there were hand print shaped bruises all over my body. I had a nurse from the local rape crisis center who did my exam give testimony. Nurses from there typically never say whether or not they are positive that forceable sex occurred, because it's pretty hard to be positive. But even she said that the only possible way the injuries I sustained to the genitals could have happened was by force.

The defendant didn't actually testify, they just showed a video of his police interview. He admitted multiple times in the interview that I was incredibly drunk. His whole interview was honestly just incredibly ridiculous. His description of the whole night was ridiculous, but the "sex" sounded like really poorly written fanfiction. Here is his version -

I was incredibly drunk all night, to the point that he was embarrassed for me. (This is actually completely accurate. I would have been embarrassed for me, I was a hot mess.) When I finally stopped drinking though, I then consumed so much water that I became "waterlogged", and started vomiting from the sheer amount of water. He had to practically carry me to his car, where I fell asleep, and he drove everyone else home first so he didn't have to wake me. He then couldn't take me home right away, because I was too drunk to give proper directions. But when he finally found my house, I sat up, got a "midnight adrenaline rush", and as suddenly completely sober. I then turned to him and said "I've never made out with anyone before, and I believe that I would like to learn from you."

We then moved to the backseat of the car, because comfort. While making out with each other, he then said "Man, I wish you were actually bisexual instead of a lesbian." I then responded with "I'm actually pansexual, I just hide it." I then took off all of my clothing, and he said to me "Do you want to see it?", and I said "Yes, I definitely do." He then asked me "May I play with your pussy?" (Fun fact: If anyone ever actually said that to me during consensual sex, the sex would stop right there.) We then had sex, but the whole time in the back of his mind he was thinking "This is wrong, I hope I don't end up in a police interrogation room or something." (Yes, he actually said this.) But fear not, for he intentionally did not give me an orgasm, because he knows that once girls have an orgasm from a guy, they become attached to him. He also worried that I was romantically interested in him, and he didn't want a romantic relationship with me, as that would "go against my sexual orientation." (But I thought I was actually pansexual?!) Then I started crying, but he knew that was ok, because that's what girls do when they lose their virginity, because the last girl he had sex with was a virgin and she cried hysterically too and then never spoke to him again. Girls are crazy. He then helped me get dressed, helped me look for my phone, and then we joyously drove around for another hour and he graciously offered to let me stay at his place where I could have the bed and he would sleep on the floor, but I declined, and decided to go home instead.

So the closing from the defense was a whole mishmash of things. "Buyer's remorse". Drunk people can still make decisions. You can't really prove she was drunk. Why'd she wait 5 days to report it? Does he really look like a rapist? I mean look at that face! She isn't really a lesbian, she's just confused and has identified as that for so long that she can't accept the fact she's actually attracted to men, and is afraid that if the gay community found out they'd reject her. This was just her finally deciding to let nature take it's course. And the weirdest one - I testified that during the rape, he'd held me on top of him, and I struggled to get off, and he kept pulling me back down. During the struggle, he (I'm pretty sure accidentally) penetrated me anally. The defense lawyer was like "Do you really believe that? How can a man "accidentally" slip out and penetrate someone anally?" (Of course on the side, my mom was all "This man has clearly never had any real, fast, intense sex. Because it happens alllllll the time.")

He was found not guilty, and my lawyer interviewed the jury to find out why later that day. Apparently the majority of the jury just didn't give a fuck and just wanted to go home as quickly as possible, and there were a handful of men on the jury that were just not going to be swayed to vote guilty. So they all just went for not guilty to be done with it. The quotes from the adamant jurors were as follows: "There's no such thing as lesbians, she's just confused, and now she regrets it." "That's not rape, that's just college."

tl;dr - Lesbians aren't real; you can still consent to sex with a sober person when blackout drunk; all girls who claim rape are just regretting a one night stand; big, goofy, baby faced chubby boys in the marching band can't possibly be rapists

doct_quinn93 karma

Intersex is where a person has characteristics typical of both sexes, such as having XY chromosomes, but having an otherwise anatomically female body. For me, I'm anatomically female for the most part, but am completely infertile, and my body doesn't produce any estrogen and produces exclusively testosterone.

CPP is when puberty starts well before the average age, sometimes as early as birth. For me, it started at around age 6. The treatment is relatively simple, in my case I just had an injection of a hormone suppressant every 3 weeks until I was 13, at which time I was taken off of the medication and immediately started puberty again.

doct_quinn65 karma

My dream is to become a comedian, or at least a comedy writer. I would absolutely love to work somewhere like The Second City.