[RGMCjim]

Hi Everyone!
I've been very busy lately. Tomorrow, (the 8th & 9th) my partner Lee and I are singing in the Rochester Gay Men's Chorus Christmas show. I now work for the chorus selling ads. I'm singing a jazz improv of Jingle Bells as a solo. This week we got Lee's new dancing leg just in time for him to tap in the show. My partner lost his right leg at this time last year (diabetes). The accompanist for the Chorus is my ex and he's giving a Theatre Organ concert next weekend and I've got 3 solos in that.
On January 20th I'm instructing the members of the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley Speakers Bureau on Intersexed people and our issues. This is a lot of responcibility because these people become the ambassadors of the intersexed to about 2,000 people per year.
I'm pretty bummed out about NYC backing out of a change in policy that would have allowed transsexuals to change their birth certificates without genital surgery. They would have needed just 2 letters, one from a physician and one from a Psychologist stating that the change of gender is appropriate and intended to be permanent. This would have been a great first step toward changing things in the whole state. Because of the way transsexuals are treated it's not possible for the intersexed to get our birth certificates changed either. I was originally assigned female but was raised male, given male hormones to start puberty (I was hypogonadal) and have lived my whole life as a boy/man. The court won't change my birth certificate because I haven't had any genital/organ surgery and they state that I have no more reason to claim being male than to claim being female so they aren't going to accept new medical information about me as evidence and won't count my life history. I was hoping that the NYC changes would help my cause. I don't have the money to hire the kind of legal help I'd need to take on the State.
Those who know me know I had a couple years of health problems that were pretty bad. I'm doing much better now. It turns out that many of my problems were exacerbated by the high adrenalin levels I run as a result of having CAH. I was 40 years old before I got a decent health workup and it was 7 years after that that someone finally put all my adrenal gland problems together with my ambiguous genitals and suggested that maybe I had more than just progestin exposure in utero. My Dad has my problems too and after I alerted him he was also found to have CAH. Because of the medical profession trying to hide intersexed people more attention was given to my gender (which was never a problem for me) than to the actual health issues that I have as a result of the physical condition that causes me to be intersexed. I can see now that my medical needs weren't even addressed because they were more concerned with the shape of my genitals and my gender identity. At least I didn't fall into the hands of the "genitals made to order" surgeons, but I also didn't find Doctors who would evaluate and treat my very real medical needs until I was middle aged. It was always out there, but I got funneled into the wrong hands.
Well, that's my update!! Hope everyone is marching along.

Jim Costich