I like what you’ve written here; the vast majority of narratives about biology, etc. tend to focus on people like me, who are transgender but were born intersex. You discussed quite a few of the genetic anomalies that can happen, and I am fully aware that to discuss all of the variants of XY would take you a long time. I actually have a rare 47, XXY/46,XX mosaicism, and was born with both male and female reproductive organs, minus the vaginal opening.
When we say that gender is a spectrum, I think there is some truth to that, although there are also biological roots, as you mention above. Without even thinking about it, we tend to express who we are and what we identify as from a very early age; for me, I have always identified as something of a tomboy, and while I was forced to be a boy after a cruel operation at seven years of age, I found myself gravitating toward a particular hairstyle and particular type of clothing that fit ‘me.’
I think that a great deal of our identity not only comes from our clothing and expression, as we say, but something inside us that tells us when we are being true to ourselves or not. I only went through half of puberty thanks to my intersex condition, and because I have a certain level of androgen insensitivity, my voice was a bit higher than others. Because I was ridiculed, I had to force my voice to be lower, and as a result, lost tonal inflections and part of my personality. There is something within us that, from a very early age, tells us who we are and who we were born to be.
Even though I transitioned (or really am transitioning; I’ve been on hormones for about seven months now), I still wear male clothing. Why? Because that is who I am. Thinking about wearing something overly feminine makes me feel very uncomfortable. Could this be because such thinking has been ingrained within me to be shameful? Perhaps, but for me, it wasn’t shameful. My parents allowed me to express who I was from a very early age, but it wasn’t until I learned what was done to me that I fully understood what was done to me and how my parents tried to help me. The surgery, I think, was done because I was attracted to girls, and they wouldn’t willingly ‘make’ a lesbian…
Thanks for a great read, and I enjoy talking about and discussing science with people!
Here is my narrative here: https://medium.com/@stacysedgewoodcurran/being-transgender-and-intersex-ending-the-stigma-starting-the-conversation-ba315a831525
- Sedgy