Not to be confused with gender or transgender, Intersex individuals have physical, biological characteristics that make the individual not fit cleanly into the traditional "male" and "female" categories.  It is an umbrella term covering multiple different conditions, including individuals who react to hormones much differently than most; people born with both male and female genitalia, or whose genitalia was ambiguous; people who have multiple sets of DNA and some forms of people whose DNA does not fall into the standard 46 XX or 46 XY genotypes most of us were taught about in school.

I, myself, fall into the both or ambiguous category.  As was common in the 1970s and later, this was a situation that was considered taboo to talk about.  Those with the condition had the truth about it hidden even from them.  The standard treatment was to pick one based on the best guess of the doctor at the time, and then perform surgery to make the child that way.  Standard thinking was that gender was based entirely on how the child was raised and socialized, having no pre-determined factor based on their minds at all.  While this has long been proven false, standard practice even into this decade at some hospitals, is to perform forced surgery on infants and toddlers to make them fit into a "male" or "female" only definition.  This often very traumatic for the children and can cause life-long issues for them.

For me, they declared me Male. The term is AMAB for Assigned Male At Birth. The female parts were sewed away so that I would not appear unusual at all and avoid issues with peers.  While it was the "best guess" of the doctors, part of the reason given was because males had more opportunities in American society in the 1970s.  The infant surgery was done and my mother was instructed to keep a secret because that was the best thing for me.

This secret persisted into high school, where I was having "stomach cramps" - really "periods" without any visible bleeding. The doctor gave me my first shot of steroids to stop them and force-start my "normal" male puberty. While I did not really want the shots, the doctor coerced me into agreeing.

This is part of my personal experience with being Intersex.  Many others have different stories, many much worse than mine.  Some intersex individuals consider themselves trans as their core gender is different what than what they were assigned at birth.  Others are fine with what they were assigned, but struggle with many other issues.  Each individual is different.  I hope to share more of these stories with you in the future.

It does, however, give me a unique, personal perspective on the current gender ideology discussions.  While many are talking out of ignorance, I can speak to it both from knowledge and experience.

Please join me in pushing for equality for all.

End Forced Infant Surgeries