Carter Malone
Senior Member
- Jul 24, 2017
- 424
- 63
- 45
I was an intersex child who had surgery. Don't put other kids through this.
Kimberly Mascott Zieselman, Opinion contributor Published 3:15 a.m. ET Aug. 9, 2017
Doctors and parents are doing irreversible harm solely due to discomfort with difference. We are erased before we can even tell them who we are.
My natural hormone production ceased, and I was forced onto hormone replacement therapy for the rest of my life. I was just 15. Doctors also recommended to my parents that I receive invasive surgery to create a more “typically” sized vagina — thankfully, my parents refused. I didn’t find out about any of this until I was 41 years old.
Intersex people like me — up to 1.7% of the population — are born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical definitions of male or female. I have androgen insensitivity syndrome. Because my body was resistant to androgens, including testosterone, in the womb, my natural hormones automatically converted into estrogen through a process called aromatization.
Intersex people have been the last bastion of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” with doctors commonly telling parents for many years that the best thing they could do for their children was to have surgery done, even when they are infants, so they can grow up “normal.”
I can understand why the parents would agree to this surgery. "She" was female on the outside so of course, she must be female. Incredibly, she was not told the facts of her surgery until age 41. How many times have we read people declaring that a male can't get pregnant?
This is a dizzying dilemma. Parents struggling to do the right thing for their children and listening to the so-called experts, who may or may not have an agenda that actually does not serve the best interests of their patient.
How do you make this decision?
Kimberly Mascott Zieselman, Opinion contributor Published 3:15 a.m. ET Aug. 9, 2017
Doctors and parents are doing irreversible harm solely due to discomfort with difference. We are erased before we can even tell them who we are.
My natural hormone production ceased, and I was forced onto hormone replacement therapy for the rest of my life. I was just 15. Doctors also recommended to my parents that I receive invasive surgery to create a more “typically” sized vagina — thankfully, my parents refused. I didn’t find out about any of this until I was 41 years old.
Intersex people like me — up to 1.7% of the population — are born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical definitions of male or female. I have androgen insensitivity syndrome. Because my body was resistant to androgens, including testosterone, in the womb, my natural hormones automatically converted into estrogen through a process called aromatization.
Intersex people have been the last bastion of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” with doctors commonly telling parents for many years that the best thing they could do for their children was to have surgery done, even when they are infants, so they can grow up “normal.”
I can understand why the parents would agree to this surgery. "She" was female on the outside so of course, she must be female. Incredibly, she was not told the facts of her surgery until age 41. How many times have we read people declaring that a male can't get pregnant?
This is a dizzying dilemma. Parents struggling to do the right thing for their children and listening to the so-called experts, who may or may not have an agenda that actually does not serve the best interests of their patient.
How do you make this decision?
