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PARENTS ~ What would you do if your child was born with Ambiguous Genitalia?
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Re: Intersexed or Ambiguous genitaila
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Clinicians treating intersexuality worry that any confusion about the sexual identity of the child on the part of relatives will be conveyed to the child and result in enormous psychological problems, including potential “dysphoric” states in adolescence and adulthood. In an effort to forestall or end any confusion about the child’s sexual identity, clinicians try to see to it that an intersexual’s sex/gender identity is permanently decided by specialist doctors within forty-eight hours of birth. With the same goals in mind, many clinicians insist that parents of intersexed newborns be told that their ambiguous child does really have a male or female sex, but that the sex of their child has just not yet “finished” developing, and that the doctors will quickly figure out the “correct” sex and then help “finish” the sexual development. As the sociologist Suzanne Kessler noted in her ground-breaking sociological analysis of the current treatment of intersexuality, “the message [conveyed to these parents] … is that the trouble lies in the doctor’s ability to determine the gender, not in the baby’s gender per se.”12 In intersex cases, Ellen Hyun-Ju Lee concludes, “physicians present a picture of the `natural sex,’ either male or female, despite their role in actually constructing sex.”13
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Re: Intersexed or Ambiguous genitaila
if i remember tomorrow/tonight i'm gonna try finding that story where the parents gave their semanaya a sex change. it messed up his life because he didn't relate to being a girl, but he was born with two sets of organs and they opted for what they thought best.Comment
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Re: Intersexed or Ambiguous genitaila
there is also the story of John/Joan the (I think) Candian BOY who the Dr slipped when doing his circumsision and cut of the childs penis. They then opted to reconstruct the baby's genitalia to female and raised him as a girl (Joan)Comment
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Re: Intersexed or Ambiguous genitaila
I have no idea. Cause ewhen you think about it if you did nothing and waited till puberty how would those other 12 years go? It would be difficult to raise not to identify with either sex, so I guess I would be like the parents and choose one based on which parts dem have the most of. Raise them as a boy it easier to change a penis into a vagina if them wrong.Comment
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Re: Intersexed or Ambiguous genitaila
But Seemiyah, would you have the surgery at birth based on the Dr reccomendation?Comment
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Re: Intersexed or Ambiguous genitaila
Probably. I am guessing they can test for more things now, so like the other case we discussing if they can tell me that the child doesn't have a womb or ovaries I would be inclined to go with the doc recommendation that's it a boy.
Although now that i am thinking about it, maybe I would just raise them a specific sex but without surgery and when puberty hit we can figure out what dem supposed to be? Hell I don't know....
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Re: Intersexed or Ambiguous genitaila
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Barbara's Story
[Received May 2002]
When my parents were expecting me, they used to refer to "Christopher". However, it was Barbara who arrived, a cheerful, lively child who enjoyed playing with her doll's house, Barbie doll and teddy bear, but who, at 5, also knew every car on the road and had a large collection of matchbox cars.
In first year at grammar school, we studied chromosomes in Biology. A smear was taken from a girl's mouth and we all gawped down the microscope. I distinctly remember thinking the thought, "If they do mine, it'll show male chromosomes." Perhaps we know more than we know.
The following year I started Latin, where nouns are categorized into male, female and neuter. One weekend we visited friends who lived elswhere; their eldest son was my age and had just started Latin, too. His friends asked whether I was a girl or a boy. He spontaneously replied "neuter!" and instead of being deadly offended, I was rather intrigued and amused by the aptness of his comment. This reminds me of a less positive experience of a similar nature. I was about 10 and on a playground in my grandmother's town, children there stoutly refused to believe was a girl unless I came into the bushes and revealed myself. I finally gave in, and they were satisfied. A girl, after all!
I grew up as a normal, healthy girl. Nobody knew about my intersex condition until I was 13 years old when my clitoris began to grow. I was terribly embarrassed and kept quiet about it initially, because I thought it was because I had started to masturbate quite early on. But as time passed, I did get pretty worried and eventually confided in the district nurse who visited from time to time. She sent me to my GP, who sent me straight on to hospital, where 2 weeks of tests followed. It still fills me with indignation today when I remember how they made me lie with my legs open and the medical students jostled in the doorframe for a better view, or how catheters were painfully inserted into all openings without anaesthetic, so they could see what course they took. Again the room was sprawling with gawping medics. And degrading medical photographs.
Once they had finished all their tests, I was informed that a bikini-cut from hip to hip would have to be done to carry out an internal examination. They didn't say what they were looking for and I didn't dare ask. I had just turned 14. The operation took place in the radiology theatre - I saw the sign on the door as they wheeled me in. The secret murmurings of my flustered parents and doctors convinced me of the fact that I had cancer and noone was telling me. I thought they were going to give me radiotherapy during the operation.
When I came round, the doctor told me that they had had to remove my ovaries and that I wouldn't be able to have children. That was a terrible shock. No sooner had I woken up completely than I checked to see if my clitoris still worked - I expect that I was worried that they had been cutting away at my bits. Luckily, all was well. At least something to be thankful for! I cannot express how grateful I am that I was not subjected to a clitoris reduction with all the risk of sensation loss that this might have involved. As it happened, with my hormones regulated, I grew into my clitoris, as it were, and today have no qualms about going into a sauna with or without men. I must say that although I didn't know the truth about what had been done, after the operation I felt that my physical equilibrium had been restored. I have no regrets whatsoever about the gonadectomy or its timing.
Over the years each check-up at the hospital brought a new bit of bad news. "Oh, by the way, we had to remove your womb, too", "Oh, by the way, your vagina is too short and we don't know if you'll ever be able to have sex. But if you want to get married, we can cut a bit off your bum and insert it or cut your labia and sew them together to extend the vagina externally." Thank goodness I had the sense to decline these offers of help. "Oh, by the way, promiscuous men will find you particularly attractive!" Just what a 16 year old girl wants to a hear!
When I was 18, the consultant gave me a letter (I still have it) saying that I had suffered from underdevelopment of the ovaries and the womb, that these had been removed at 14 and HRT started. This was what I innocently told my new boyfriend 2 months later. This was 26 years ago and he is today my husband. He wasn't put off, and 8 weeks later, we slept with each other for the first time. It took about 3 months for penetration to take place, as the hymen was scarred. You would have thought that they could have sorted that out for me...He was very patient and gentle and I felt totally loved and accepted. I blossomed. I could not believe my luck.
Later that year, I had an appointment with the consultant, who would have liked to talk to my boyfriend, too. But he preferred to wait for me in the car. At the end of the examination, she mentioned that I had a "broken Y". I asked if it had anything to do with the operation. She denied this strenuously. Not being a leading light in things biological, I shared everything blithely with my boyfriend who for some time called me his little Y-girl. I didn't doubt my feminine identity, even though I was always mildly irritated by the size of my clitoris - though it did its job extremely well.
Having reached the youthful age of 35, I decided that the time had come for me to look things in the face, not because I was particularly brave, but because things were not going well in my marriage. My consultant had died, my medical notes had supposedly been destroyed. However, the endocrinologist was still alive and he put me in touch with Professor Ieuan Hughes in Cambridge. I flew over and he spent a great deal of time examining me and patiently answering all the questions I had always wanted to ask. He explained that because my cells had been hardly able to absorb the male hormones in my body, the Y chromosome could not take effect and make me into a boy. Thus I had been born a girl. Afterwards I hopped on to my bike and drove back into town, filled with a deep sense of relief. I remember thinking, "I can live with THIS!"
My sister ferreted out an address for an intersex support group [AISSG UK] just getting off the ground. I went to the second ever meeting. There were 4 adult women with the same condition present and there we were, driving along together in a car. We realized we were making history, probably the first ever carload of women with the same intersex condition. That was a tremendous experience.
Before the meeting I met up with my cousin, not having seen her for many years. She said: "I've always known about you. You're a hermaphrodite. My dad told me." The term hermaphrodite is firstly not correct, meaning someone who has both male and female reproductive tissue, and secondly, being of Greek origin and sounding exotic is one of those terms which are not very helpful because they underline the impression of freakishness. I think doctors need to do a lot of tidying up with the medical terminology used when dealing with intersex patients to avoid unnecessary psychological hurt and stigmatisation.
"The next port of call after the meeting was the parents of an old schoolfriend who had taken me to Scotland for a holiday straight after my gonadectomy. It turned out that they too were in the know. And although it was my diagnosis, my body, my life, I had been told nothing but a pack of lies. I was furious with my parents. When I next rang my husband, I told him. I now know that at the sound of the H-word, so innocently shared, he lost the plot.
As time went on, I felt as if an inner sluice was lacking. I just soaked up everyone's emotional gunge as if it were mine, and had no sense of the boundaries between me and other people. I now think that the abuse-like experiences at hospital in my teens had left me with a feeling that I was everyone's property, without a right to say no and batten down the hatches.
With the help of psychoanalysis, I have been able to look the possibility in the face that I might in some way be male, whatever that means. I feel now that I have integrated both sexes in myself, as many people who do not have an intersex condition try to do after a mid-life crisis. Being childless is a permanent sadness, particularly not being able to have the experience of a child growing within me and giving birth. But I am lucky to have a job which involves working with children. I have come to realize that it is not the acceptance of a man which makes me feel a proper woman, but my deepest sense of who I am.
The [UK and Continental Europe] intersex support groups have become like family. So much healing occurs just through fellowship with other women who have been through the same. At last one can talk to one's heart's content about the dreadful secret one has kept hidden all one's life. I was always told, "What you have is so rare, you'll never meet anyone else who has got it." It makes me spit when I think of the amount of women all over the world who are still kept under this illusion.
I am not sure if doctors are fully aware of the psychological damage they do to intersex children by lying or keeping things secret. As for the damage done by clitoral surgery, I passionately feel that this should be delayed until the patient can make a personal decision. What other part of the human anatomy which is larger than normal at birth has the surgeons scurrying off to grab their scalpels as if it were a question of life and death? Why are people who are normally so willing to accept that each human being is unique, suddenly so afraid of variation when faced with the fact that between the conventional extremes of male and female which we tend to regard as normal, there are endless shades of variety?
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