My Intersex Story: Was I violated?

My answer: Yes, I was violated.

Tragically for me, psychiatrists, doctors, and the therapist had the solution to my being intersex, they started to fix me at three years old, and throughout most of my life. Back then the theories of Dr. John Money were very strong. He felt you could teach gender, despite gender being a part of a person’s inborn personality. He also taught that our genital appearance created our gender, that if cosmetic surgeries are performed to make our bodies conform to the male/female binary, a child can be taught the rest. The topic of genital surgeries matching our gender, is something that some in the transgender community, most world governments, and many doctors and surgeons are still being brainwashed about. Now we know that gender will never be in our genitals, reproductive system, chromosomes, hormones.

From the early 90’s to 2014, I used to live a life of taking testosterone blockers, and cortisol drugs, for a condition that doctor’s convinced me to be a “disorder” and a “syndrome”. They could never even come to an agreement over what was going on with my body, and I have received a laundry list of diagnosis and explanations since birth. With all the things I had to do to appear female, I relate to the things some transgender woman have to do to.

Over a decade prior to that I was on psychotropic drugs for a so called “mental illness”, but in 1999 was sent to a psychiatrist who said I was NOT mentally ill, and weaned off all those terrible toxins. I suppose being called an “inappropriate female” and “mentally ill” was a good way to describe a gender nonconforming boy who tried like hell to live as a girl. The number one reason these violations happened: To hide my intersex existence and my nonconforming gender and nonconforming appearance. Intergender and Nonconforming gender is still not heard of. Not to mention that boys are not supposed to have an intersex body!

I was never harmed by Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), or Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM). Needless to say, my very intersex body was hormonally erased, and I was harmed greatly by a society that expected me to medically conform and “behave” as a girl.

I have undergone eighteen surgeries. Most of them due to the effects that Mitocondrial Dysfunction/Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) had on my body. You see, the connective tissues of my body are not typical. Connective tissue is EVERYWHERE in the body, so surgery has included my urinary, gastrointestinal, reproductive and muscular systems . When all is said and done, I have had over twenty-five procedures that required anesthesia. All because I was born different and doctors wanted to fix it. I now know that most of this could have been avoided.

There are a few of us, intersex people in America, who escaped having our genitals surgically destroyed. I am one of them. I have tried to figure out why. Here are the three reasons I think I escaped:

I was born in the early morning hours, after midnight. The attending physicians could have been too tired to look, or care about my genital intersex traits. Maybe they simply wanted to go home.
Both my parents were devout Catholic, and the church does not agree with the surgical assignment of gender with transgender people; so possibly it helped me to keep my body as is.
They did not notice some of my intersex issues, due to many of my differences being inside of me. This includes my atypical adrenals, atypical ovaries, and other intersex traits I have within.

Self-determination of my own gender, was not a choice given to me by doctors. I hope in time doctors realize that the male/female binary is causing us harm when they try to force some of us into these “binary norms”. I was told I was to be raised a girl, and that I would become a woman; and that was the sealed deal when authorities marked the final box on my birth certificate at my birth. Thank goodness things are changing, and more doctors are becoming intersex and transgender friendly! Thank goodness people are realizing they have a choice. For many of us it is life or death.