Hello All, I'm New

[Sarah511]

Hi Everyone,
I'm a 38 year-old woman who discovered a few weeks ago, with no help from parents or doctors, that I have a micropenis and clitoromegaly. Oddly enough, this did not shock me as much as what I saw on my birth certificate, which my father just decided to give me. Even though I have a female name, I am designated as a SON, something I have to believe that my parents had to have known. I confronted my mother with this information the other day over the phone but she claims nobody told her anything. I have my doubts about that because a few years ago, in a moment of anger, my mom told me that I was a "mistake", something I always found odd and she never explained.
This has been building for a few years. 3-4 years ago, I noticed that one of my labia is twice as large as the other labia. I asked the gynecologist on my next visit but she said it was nothing (curious huh?). I've been having fatigue problems and went to my regular doctor twice to test my adrenals and thyroid, but both times he said they were normal. I wrangled a visit to a female endocrinologist last year and complained about my hirsutism, among other things. She did tests and said that "everything was normal" (which was a lie, as I got a copy of the tests, and my DHEA levels were practically at 0). I feel like going back to her and waving my birth certificate in her arrogant face and asking if she'd like to rethink things. :mad:
I have been so confused for so long about who I am gender-wise. Sometimes I feel like a woman inside but sometimes I think like a man. I haven't had any luck in the romance department with men - they will only get so close to me and then back off...I think men sense something. I am considering lesbianism, even though I only feel attracted to women occasionally.
Then there are health issues and finding doctors who will treat me with respect. I have found some good referrals on the Trannie site in my city, so I'm going to follow up on those.
I have been reading all your messages and replies. I feel like I know a few of you at least a little bit already. Well, thank you for letting me tell my story and vent.

[beach]

hi sarah,learn more,search harder,be presistent,dont give up,....beach ps.welcome

[Sarah511]

Thank you Beach...
I apologize to you and to everyone for the angry tone in my letter. If I seem angry right now, it's from years of being told nothing by parents, and from being told nothing and being stonewalled by doctors. I will search and learn and find out more until I get the answers and the medical help I need.

Sarah {{{xyxyxyx}}}

[Betsy]

Hi Sarah,

Gosh...don't ever feel like you need to apologize for anger caused by someone else...particularly if you are venting here. It's a safe space, and we don't always need to mind our p's and q's (or x's and y's for that matter!)

I call your mom's failure to remember selective amnesia; if seems to run rampant with many of our parents. Have you tried to get any of your medical records from growing up?


Betsy

[Glenn]

Welcome aboard!

Betsy and everyone have created a really cool, safe place to vent and ask questions, so don't think you're out of line.

Glenn

[susan44]

do feel free to vent here. I think most of us relate to your mothers stonewalling and utter incompetence from the medical community. Let it rip sarah!!!

I was never able to get a straight answer from my mom. I say fuck em all and their squimishness about us.

best of luck in finding your way,
susan

[Rudy]

Nice to meet you Sarah.
Sorry to hear about your parents lack of dialogue with you. i've been there too. I think that is perhaps what it is the most depressing thing about being born different. Anyways vent here its a nice place to get support and meet people with similar situations. Take care Rudy

[Betsy]

Glenn said: Betsy and everyone have created a really cool...

You're making me blush, Glenn. You and all the other users have created a really cool, safe, space. This is really yours (meaning=everyone) ya know!

Rudy...welcome to Bodies!

[Janet]

Perhaps if our very real questions and concerns had been heard and answered, we wouldn't be so angry. Denial and secrecy run rampant on us, and obviously it doesn't stop even when we have real proof. How silly, miseducated and uninformed the medical "experts" seem to us.

Find your truth, whatever that might be.
Share your truth with your friends and family. You'll be surprised how easily they come around.
Find your place, wherever you are comfortable.
Tell your story (as opposed to your parent's story) and gain strength in knowing you are not alone.
Get professional help (if you can), because it will help you heal and be who you are.
Live your life, because it is yours alone to live.

Let us know when you're ready for some informational handouts. They're a great tool to help you gain confidence as you find your voice. Try to remember that the truth is much less frightening than what you've lived with already.

We are here to help, and you can always email either Betsy or I.
Good luck!
Janet Green
Executive Director
Bodies Like Ours

[Jules]

How are you!! My name is Julanne! I'm a girl who only found out about four years ago that I'm intersexed! A genetic male rasied as a female. When you talked about feeling that your are female with male thoughts I can understand completey! That is exactly how I feel about my gender!! I would never want to go back and be a boy but My sexual tastes and interests are male orented. Men too seem to like me alot at first then back off when they get to know me. (all though I had a boyfriend for ten years it was largely a friendship) Even woman who know me say they can feel my male energry. I realy don't know if I will in the long run end up with a male of female partner:confused: My mother forbid the doctors or any one else to tell or even hint to me about my true sex. She died when I was twenty leaving me to discover the truth on my own. I had no penis but had two testes, removed at birth. everyone keeps telling me how better off i was being raised as a girl but I still wonder. A penis does not make a man a man. and many transgendered girls are just that, boys with girl parts. Have you ever read your full medical records? they realy helped me when I read mine. I can understand the pain in being lied too. But this must have been very tough on your parents as well. Your mother needs to be approched very gently on the subject of your gender. My mother took it very hard, I'm sure your mother did too have simpthy on her. It was very brave of your dad to give you your birth certaifite have you asked him about your birth?? My father was very forth comming and very releived that the truth is out and he reminded me that my mother suffered very badly with the choices that she made with her baby. I would love to chat with your more. jmtutty@msn.com. I am gay myself but struggle with the reaility that a hetrosexual life might be easer for me, I have trouble with gay woman because i'm so in between butch and femm that I have trouble attracting one or the other. and the type of girls that I really like are in fact hetrosexual. all is fair in love and war so I just might take a boy for a partner but let him know that we need to fanticise about girls to make me climax. Keep your spirits up, ther are doctors that can help you you just have to look harder.. hope to hear from you Julanne

[Debbie]

Sarah and Juls...( and everyone else)
Just wanted to respond as a parent of an intersex child. I can certainly feel exactly the fear and terror docs placed on your parents..especially your moms. I was so totally confused and "lead along" by the medical profession.
I just want to say that I understand your anger about the secrecy. I myself am trying to raise my child with full knowlege of gender reassigment at 11 weeks from male to female....and about her being intersexed. An important thing I let her know is that there are others out there who have experienced the same thing as her if not something similar. And that I accept her for whomever she chooses to identify as. I believe for all intersex people to lean on each other to get through life is a great thing. I only wish we could get the parents to also lean on one another. Myself, I went from a very confused, quilty, uneducated state to a self educating, almost obsessed for answers and spokesperson for intersex rights etc......
I have to say I am lucky. I have always been around people with different sexual preferences(gay, lesbian,transexuals etc) and people who have had individual mindsets. For me -- to have an intersex child-- was a ''tad'' easier than for most parents. I myself have always felt 'alone' and 'different' as I have always been overweight'. This I believe helped me to be more accepting and understanidng of the 'need for truth'. Also, My mom was a "ostrich' (head in the sand) - and that also made me strive for truth and honesty.
I guess why I am telling you this is because not ALL PARENTS may have had those things in their personalities or lives before giving birth to an intersex child. I just want you all to know that I am sure that your parents did what they THOUGHT was best. It may not have been the best but they ''believed'' it was. It is not an easy decision to choose whether to tell or not to tell.
I want all here at BLO to know that I am right here anytime, if perhaps you have questions about what a parent might think or react like to certain things. I would like to help you understand that what the medical community had/has done to your parents is why they are like they are in most instances. I thank God that I was one of the lucky ones to have met ISNA and BLO's and have them help lead the drive in me to make things different.
I thank you again for posting. It helps me each day to learn how to deal with my Kelli better. I dont want to make the same mistakes that so many other parents have while raising their intersexed children.Thanks for your time.

[Wohali]

Hi,

I'm new here too. I just wanted to say I can relate to what you all are saying. At 33 yrs old I am now facing the demons of my childhood after avoiding doctors for years because now I want to know & understand what I am. I'm not sure if my parents knew I was any different, but throughout my childhood my mom would say how ashamed I made her because I looked so much like a boy. She was constantly reprimanding me because I wouldn't "act like a girl". When I was 7 I started menstruating, so I was taken to a doctor. After examining me, he quickly became more interested in my genitals than concerned about the early puberty. He even called the nurse in to have a LOOK at me too after exclaiming "what on Earth?!" as he probed my privates. He told me he wanted his doctor friends to have a look at me too and left the room to call some of them. I was sent to 4 or 5 diff drs, having 4 genital exams in one afternoon. Talk about traumaticizing someone. One doctor was so cruel in his probing he caused me to bleed around my urethra, he went so far as to strap me to a table and photograph me. That seems totally inappropriate behavior for any physician. He wanted to do an exploratory exam, I can only guess to look for gonads, he was repeatedly calling my parents wanting to know when they would bring me in. My mom finally told him to leave us alone and that she would never take me to see him again! The first doctor, my pediatrician, in later years would tell me to undress and would fondle my breasts & genitals whenever I would come in for a sore throat or ear infections. After that I feared doctors, avoiding any kind of exams as an adult until now as I started to see a physician 6 months ago for IS & hormonal problems. Nevertheless I still hate doctors and refuse to allow a male doctor to ever touch me again.

Jules I can relate to what you express. I was raised female, its on my birth certificate, but I never felt very female inside. I like things that guys are 'suppose' to like. I have always been around women, but can only relate somewhat to them. Being attracted to women I am forced to live as a lesbian, though I don't really consider myself one. Lesbians have not been wholeheartedly accepting of me because I don't act right, don't look right because I don't entirely fit either butch or femme roles. I actually prefer hetero women, but they of course don't want a relationship with who they see as a woman. *sigh

Sorry if this was too long. I get overly wordy sometimes.

Angela

[Jules]

Hi angela!! While it may seem that most lesbians seem to be looking for butch or femm, there are smart, educated lesbians who don't want butch or femm and get fusterated becuse of the stark line between butch and femm. What they want is somone in between. which is how I describe myself. But you have advertise who you are. Also taking female hormones has greatly helped me to act a little more femm, which is how people seem to react to me best. ANd that is imporant to me. When I acted very tomboyish I got very mixed reactions from people mostly negitive. Often times when your body lacks enough of the hormones, which do change behavoir, it is easy for your mind to revert back strongly to it's genitic sex. I know this because I stopped female homones for ten years and behaved very male-like durring that time. When I went back on female Hormones It changed the way I felt about being a girl very postively. I use a hormone cream as well as pills and will never go off them again. If you really are against female hormones, try male hormones, they also do wonders in helping depression.:)

[Wohali]

Hiya Jules!

I feel kinda lost at this point because as I posted in another of the forums I am being denied HRT. I only care up to a point how lesbians or anyone else accepts me. I feel if they can't accept & like me for myself then they are the ones with a problem not me. I tried real hard to be a femme for 8 yrs. I did find I was able to get butches' attention, but I can't say I liked being with butches. I finally said to myself enough is enough I am having to "try" to be feminine. Whereas being myself which is more masculine is easy.. I don't have to work at being that way. I hate feminine interests, I hate makeup and I hate girl clothes. I started being myself and I am happier inside. So if I have to be alone the rest of my life because I chose to be myself then so be it.

Angela

[Jules]

I too am more comfortable in boy clothes, injoy acting masculine, and avoided girls clothes and ear rings and can be just as happy with no make up. Being yourself is one of the gifts of being a indivdual. Just like people dress up for work, or will put on a happy face when working with the public, It is of value to say we do need to fit in as best we can with our culture, and when we are around people we call our trusted friends,we let our hair down, let out breaths out, and act out we feel. I never got good responces when I would sit with my legs open, or would talk like a man, or carried a wallet in my back pocket. It realy didn't take a lot of effort for me to close my legs, speak softly, put on a light shade of lipstick and carry a small pocketbook, but the better way that strangers treated me was overwellming, once people saw me in behaving in a way that was more in tune with how I looked. Once people see you as a human insted as a confuised person you can let you gard down slowly and break people in softly to who you really are. That approch works!! You will gain friends, good friends very quickly. You can decide who will except you for who you are, and you will learn quickly who are your friends and who you can act totaly yourself around. I don't know how you look, or how ambigous your privates are, but if you look really masculine and have gonads you might want to look into male hormones, and it is possable to have breast tissue removed if you don't like them. On the other hand If you have both overies and gonads the effect of having both hormones can bring on big gender swings with large bouts of depression. :( If your body and face look more female and you have a vagina and a peirod, you might not have enough female hormones to stimulate the neron growth that would make acting a little femm some of the time not so tough. You need to find a doctor you can trust. plus if you have a undesended teste it needs to be checked for cancer now and then. I will not give you the wrong advice, Ive walked in your shoes to some degree and i'm telling you what has worked, very well for me. You may feel alone, but feelings are only temparary. Don't ever think that it means you have to be alone. I'm not a doctor but I do know you need to have a predomnate hormone, male or female or you will suffer from depression from hormone swings. If you told me a little more about yourself and how you look and what you know about your sex cells, your gentic sex (xxxy-xx-xy) I could try and be a little more helpfull to make you feel comfortable about your situation. The first step is just admiting you need a little help in figiring out who you are, and I think your making that step and I commened you for it. Once you know who you are in full and are happy with it, then other people will be too. You just need to understand yourself fully, have doctors that care about you, and your mental heath, dicide if you do or don't want surgery and be thankfull for who and what you are because ther is no one else in the world like you.
You are not alone! Other intersexuals have come before you and can live wonderfull fullfilling lives and be well respected, I promice you that!! I'm One of them!!!!!!!!!

[Jules]

Hi Debbie and ever one eles, I wanted to write back and say that you are doing a great job trying to understand your daughter as best as you can.
When I was born, I was 7 weeks premature. As soon as I came out of the womb the delevery doctors started agrueing about if I was boy or girl. My mom demanded to see me but they rushed me out of the room and they put a gas mask over her and knocked her out. My father heard one doctor say I was defenity a boy so he begain telling everyone they had a boy and begain passing out cigars. they had a very unplesant suprise ahead. The next morning A call went out to doctor Crawford of Mass Gen' Hosptial, (HE WAS A HERMAPHIDITE DOCTOR) asking him to come down and define the sex of the child because the doctors at Beverly just didn't know. My whole family was on edge. They would not let anyone in my family see me unclothed, plus I was in a incubator, my mom and dad knew something was very wrong. Dr Crawford met with my mom and dad and told him my sex was still a question and do be prepared when they see me.
My heart breaks at the idea of my young mother not knowing if she caused it ,or drank, or eat something, that may have caused what they were now calling a birth defect. She did not know she was pregnent untill very late.
I had ambigous gentials, not like a girl and not like a boy but featureless like a barbie doll apart from a flat stump. Two swellings were suggestive of testes. A die reflux test showed that I had a thin small internal vagina that was attached to my ureathra wall and connected my semial vesticals, a discharge came out of my ureathra which was under my testes.
My Mother cried for weeks, On the day of my birth she confest to my father and her sister that she had a feeling all along that her baby was going to be very sick and deformed. Now her worst fears had been confirmed, and they had yet to say if i was a boy or a girl. More testing showed that I did indeed have two gonads and my chromzones were XY. Dr Crawford and Dr Hendren told my parents I was both, half boy half girl, a intersexed child. Although there was no threat to my life at that time, they talked to my mother about the culture shock of my gentials being to diffrent, and how I could never grow a penis and if they tried to make one for me it could damage my sexual sentivity. They also clamed that many boys born with out gentaila have already grown up and found little injoyment in life or sex because of the terrible way intersexed peopple are treated and because they are rejected by sex partners as adults. The kindest thing that could be done for her child they said, would be to resign the sex. Dr Hendren was the greatest and most skilled surgen alive at that time. He was the first doctor to fix a cloceal disorder without the clostomy bags.(That is when your born with out a anus) and was the first doctor who could do reconstrutive surgery that fixed bodys so well you could not tell the diffrence between his work and true genitics. He reassured my parents that he could make a very pretty, sexualy funtional girl using the skin I already have. My mothers biggest fear was that I would never climax without my testes. He reasurred her that he could work around my sexual nerve ending and that I may never know the diffrence. SHe agreed but with one stipulation. I was never, to know the truth about my birth once I got old enough to understand. If I was to be a girl then I was always a girl and It was never to be brought up again! She swore her husband and her parents to the same. Never talk about it!!!!!
This would be her struggle and her pain that she would take to her grave.
But it would have to be brought up again. They were not able to give me a vagina until my teenage years, and Dr Crawford insisted that I be brought in from time to time for follow ups! My mother was in shock that I had to have another operation years later. She walked out very angry swearing that her child would not be a "doctor freak", I was a girl, no more problems and she went into deep denile.
But all was not well at the Tutty's. Dr Hendren asked over and over that I be brought back at a year old to see if my face was femminzing and if indeed I seemed to adjust to the surgery. At first she did not answer any of his calls, but the tramma of early birth, sepration from family, and gential surgery put me in a fight or flight mode as a baby. I was far more hyperactive then she could deal with. My mother had very little pataince for me and took it at liberty to try and control my bevaiour my hitting me and abusing me. As a hyperactive child, this only made me more and more defiant of her. My mom was a tough girl who got angry often beat up her father her mother and girlfriends and was some what feared because of her temper,(the irony of it all) and now she had a child on her hands who stopped at nothing, feared nothing, not even her anger, never slept, and was getting more and more active and defiant by the day! Also by now she was seeing that I wanted nothing to do with girl toys like dolls but wanted trucks, race cars and would rip a dress of as quick as she could get it on me. Even my own father could not slow down my never ending energy and the call went out to Dr Crawford and Dr Hendren that I was out of control!!
They quickly saw that I had severe hyperkentic syndrome and asked my mom to put me on medication but she refused, now blaming them for my behavoir. She also brought up that I was mentaly deranged as a child and acted like a boy.
When I was three years old my mother who looked now like she had aged 30 years, admitted total defeat with me, and even thought about giving me up for adoption but the doctors told her again to put me on medication, and she did, Ritalin. The highest does ever given to a child on record at that time. Within days of being on the pills. I went from babbling to talking whole sentiences. I could sit in a class and learn, and and my mom and I started getting along. But it would be short lived. I started seeing the doctors twice a year and she companed to no end that i was a very "square girl" with a deep voice that wanted, by my actions, to be a boy. The doctors would take me aside and ask me If I knew what my sex was. "A girl, I would say" they told my mother not to worry, many girls like trucks and boy toys and that I was firmly seated in the female roll, my mother begged to differ.

Can you feel my mother's pain Debbie? Does this story help any of you who think that the pain of being intersexed is just not on the child but on the parents as well?? I will be happy to continue this saga later, for the story gets deeper and deeper.

[Az1]

Hi - Welcome to bodies Like ours .
Az 1

Muhoe

[RGMCjim]

Sarah,
Don't appologize for venting anger here. You just go ahead and scream - this is the safe place for it, and you've got a whole lot of good reasons to let loose.
I'm 45 and live in Rochester, NY - just a hop away from you. It sounds like you need medical referals for GLBTI friendly doctors. If the Syracuse gay community center doesn't have a referal system - and yes you're right, transexual friendly docs are your best bet, let me know. Rochester has an extensive referal, and I've got resources.
When I was born the medical protocol of secrecy, lies, shame, surgery and making us disappear hadn't come into full swing. By the time you were born it was. Chances are your parents were lied to, or only told bits and pieces. Further more, there's a REALLY good chance they were sworn to never tell you the truth about yourself.
I'm intersexed too - and I only learned my complete story last year!! From what you describe it sounds like you're intersexed - either testicular feminization (XY but having not had enough exposure to testosterone while a fetus to completely differeniate into male. If this is true you may have one or two testis in your labia, you have a vagina but have never menstruated because you have no uterus), or CAH or other exposure to androgenic hormones in utero, (XX but exposure to androgens in utero caused partial male differentiation, hence the phalloclit. In this case you may or may not have a functional uterus or ovaries- it's a matter of degree. I'm this kind of hermaphrodite). There are some other things your body could be, but in any event you've probably got a MAJOR piece to your puzzle already just knowing what you do.
The things that intersex our bodies also intersex our brains. (I can point you to resources that explain this) Many of us don't fit the binary gender identities and/or gender expressions. Others often feel like there's something different about us but they just can't put a finger on it. It has driven every lover I ever had crazy and almost lost me my partner of 9 yrs. It all changed when we found out that I wasn't a malformed male, I was intersexed. My friend Curtis (CAH) was recently told that there was something very "disturbing" about him...... you're not alone in what you're experiencing.
Here's the good news. EVERTHING will change for the better the further you come into understanding yourself!!!!!!
Just remember this-- the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train.
Keep coming back here - there are tons of resources on this site and with the people who frequent it. There are other gab sites out there too.
If you want to talk, e-mail me at jcostich@rochester.rr.com and I'll give you my phone #. Isolation is the WORST thing. I'm trying to gather other intersexed/intergendered people together locally so if you end up feeling like you need to have contact with others - it's in the making.

Jim