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I didn't need a birth certificate to get a social security card, a drivers licence, a marriage licence or to adopt. I'm 49 years old and back then you only needed a birth certificate if you wanted a passport. My parents tried several times when I was young, and so have I to get my birth certificate changed but so far I've gotten no where.
When I was born I had ambiguous genitals. In 1957 the only way to figure out what I had inside was exploratory surgery and this was before anesthesia was good enough to use on babies, even if my parents would have submitted to it (they wouldn't). My parents told me that they put "female" on my birth certificate because I didn't have testicles, but that's not something I was told about until I was in High School. They were told I might actually be male but things might become more clear as I grew. In toddlerhood I looked like a boy, people called me a boy, and I called myself a boy. My parents figured it was a better match. The pediatrician told them it was important for everyone to be happy. My parents weren't looking at my genitals to tell them if I was a girl or boy because they looked "in between" and my Doctor had told them it wasn't an accurate way to tell on me. They were looking for other signs and those all pointed toward boy. I grew up very happily as the oldest brother of 3 brothers and countless neighborhood boys who all played at our house because my father made us the coolest jungle gym out of scavenged boiler pipe using his welding set. I was told my penis and testicles didn't "finish" growing so I looked different from other boys and couldn't have children when I grew up.
I had no reason to think I might have female organs inside. I didn't have a female puberty, and my vagina was closed over so not I or any of my sexual partners ever knew it was there. It's not like having those things inside me had any impact on my life as a man. Discovering my vagina didn't make me feel like a woman, just like a man with a vagina.
The craziness that many other intersexed people have been victim to didn't happen to me and I'm a whole lot better off than many because it didn't.
Jim
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