Last Christmas, my parents discovered, to their utter horror, that they have already watched about 90% of the Christmas movies available on legal streaming websites. One of the remaining 10% was The Grinch, an english classic (to my knowledge. At least I've seen many people meme about it online.) So for the first time in my life I sat down and watched it.
The pitch is, roughly, as follow: in some fictional fantasy town full of people who love Christmas, there is a nearby mountain, and in this mountain lives a hermit who hates Christmas, and also people, and just life in general. This fellow is named the Grinch. People dislike and/or fear him, mostly due to hearsays since it's not like dude ever really shows up to do anything. The movie mostly follows this one little girl who's like "who's this Grinch bitch you guys keep talking about. He's literally just some dude?? Why are we mean to him. Stop."
Anyways. It's an intersex narrative, to me.
Stay with me on that one. "Intersex," for those who somehow read this blog yet never heard of that word before, is a word referring to people who naturally have mixed sex characteristics- think historical bearded women, people with ambiguous genitalia, people who are born with a penis and XX chromosomes, etc.
You've probably seen pictures of the Grinch online; he's a big green, fuzzy guy who eats plates and have a knack for breaking stuff. Yet it's noteworthy that of all possible reasons to ostracize him- once again, he is fucking green,- the things people pick up as reasons to mock him are "you're 8 and you already have a beard" and "you are fucking hairy dude." The whole reason why the Grinch becamse such a misanthropic dude in the first place is because he tried and failed to shave said beard, and when he gives social stuff another shot in the movie, he's immediately mocked by being gifted a razor for said beard.
Now, hyperandrogenism, aka having an excess of androgens, is an intersex condition. Among other things, symptoms include hirsutism (aka: lot of hair everywhere, including facial hair) and a precocious puberty (such as, completely random exemple, growing a full beard at age 8.)
So you understand, it is very easy for me to read the Grinch as an intersex metaphor, if not straight-up an intersex character, lashing out after being subjected to unchecked intersexism from his peers. Which I personally find pretty cool and baller, considering the utter lack of intersex representation in the general media landscape.
