What's intersex? Is that like an orgy?
About transsexual
Most people are familiar with the concept of transsexual, meaning someone who has had gender reassignment surgery and/or hormone therapy to resemble the opposite sex. Gender reassignment is used as a treatment for gender dysphoria—a psychological disorder where someone’s perception of their gender doesn’t match their biological gender.
While it’s possible there are biological reasons for gender dysphoria, none have been firmly identified (1). Gender-bending chemicals like atrazine, and food products like soy, come to mind as obvious possible influences. But often, gender dysphoria is the result of child abuse, and other major stressors in a child’s life.
Walt Heyer
Walt Heyer, who runs the website Sex Change Regret, was secretly dressed and treated like a girl growing up by his grandmother. Not surprisingly, it messed up his gender identity, and as an adult, he had gender reassignment surgery and lived as a woman for several years. Now he lives as a man again, and is one of very few people who collects stories of sex change regret—of which there are many.
Heyer found that, as with many male-to-female transsexuals, mimicking the physical characteristics of a woman didn’t bring him psychological peace or happiness, and actually even made things worse. He says sex change regret is common among transsexuals, but usually doesn’t set in until 5-15 years after surgery. Interviews with transsexuals in the first few years after the surgery tend to be positive, encouraging others to follow in their footsteps. Meanwhile, the suicide rate among transsexuals remains tragically high.
Intersex: The biological reality of mixed gender
The male-female dichotomy is nearly universal among all forms of plant and animal life on Earth. But life is creative, and in the case of gender, all kinds of extraordinary and unique variations occur on a regular basis that make gender ambiguous—neither completely male nor completely female. This is known as intersexed, or hermaphrodism. It’s the bane of marijuana growers everywhere.
There are all kinds of novel intersex conditions in humans, some obvious from external appearances, some not. Here are a few:
Androgen (testosterone) insensitivity video
Ambiguous genitalia video
Klinefelter’s syndrome, in which a boy is born with an extra copy of the female X chromosome--instead of having XY chromosomes, he has XXY. This causes him to develop female characteristics, such as breasts and wider hips, and sometimes, a female gender identity.
Androgen insensitivity, sometimes called testosterone insensitivity, is where a biological boy with XY chromosomes has a genetic inability to respond to male hormones, and as a result, never develops male sex organs or other male characteristics. Externally, he appears female, but internally, doesn’t develop female reproductive organs. This condition is often not discovered until puberty, when tests are done to figure out why menses didn’t start. Someone with this condition explains it well in the attached video.
Ambiguous genitalia that makes gender unclear from appearance, or both male and female genitalia.
A short documentary is attached about a young man who was born intersex, but was turned into a girl surgically when he was 1 year old—something his parents never told him. The doctor assured his parents he would grow up as a happy girl, but that didn’t happen—he always felt male. He got into body building in puberty, and looks and feels very male today.
Genital deformities can lead to a baby mistakenly being identified as the wrong gender. For example, a male baby’s genitals may be inside the body rather than outside, making him appear female. The baby will most likely be raised as a girl, and the issue won’t be discovered until puberty.
A video is attached by a woman who was born with a genital defect that made her appear male--she had a very enlarged clitoris that was mistaken for a penis, and her vagina was fused shut. She was raised as a boy, and in puberty, when she started menstruating, she was apparently given testosterone to stop it, compounding the problem. Eventually, genetic tests showed she was 100% female and she now lives as a woman.
Genital deformity video
Unlike gender dysphoria, a psychological disorder we’re encouraged to celebrate, even in prepubescent children, hermaphrodism has long been treated like a shameful secret. It’s often a major source of lifelong physical and psychological pain for people born with it.
Intersex children are often forced into one gender or the other from infancy, sometimes with disastrous results. Many times, the child’s condition is kept secret, even from the child. Intersex children are often mutilated with genital surgeries that permanently destroy or diminish their capacity to experience sexual pleasure and achieve orgasm.
These practices arose largely from the theories of John Money, a psychologist who believed gender was all about nurture—how a person was raised. His theories were tested out on the lives of hermaphrodites, starting in the 1950s.
Dr. Money is famous for a case in which one of a set of twin boys lost his penis in infancy as the result of a circumcision gone wrong. On Money’s advice, the child was surgically transformed into a girl, and was raised as a girl, his true gender kept secret from everyone including him. Money bragged about his great success with this case—which was not a success at all. In reality, the child had a lot of psychological problems growing up, and eventually committed suicide.
Intersex documentary.
This interesting documentary on intersex contains a brief overview of Money’s influence on how it was treated.
Final thoughts
It’s strange that intersex, a fairly common biological reality, is little known and rarely mentioned, compared to every other variation of sexual orientation and gender identity imaginable—all of which are more closely tied to psychology than biology. I guess biology isn’t contentious enough in a world where polemics matters more than science.
When I was in college 30 years ago, there was a movement by intersex people to introduce a new pronoun “zee” for people who are both male and female. It made sense to me—why should someone who was born both male and female be forced into one gender or the other? These days, I occasionally hear about the same kind of movement, but it always seems to be promoted by and for people who feel both male and female—not people who actually are both male and female. Again, strange.
The most shocking development in recent years is the idea of gender reassignment for young children with gender dysphoria. According to the American College of Pediatricians, gender dysphoria usually resolves itself during puberty:
“Gender dysphoria (GD) of childhood describes a psychological condition in which children experience a marked incongruence between their experienced gender and the gender associated with their biological sex. When this occurs in the pre-pubertal child, GD resolves in the vast majority of patients by late adolescence. Currently there is a vigorous, albeit suppressed, debate among physicians, therapists, and academics regarding what is fast becoming the new treatment standard for GD in children. This new paradigm is rooted in the assumption that GD is innate, and involves pubertal suppression with gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists followed by the use of cross-sex hormones—a combination that results in the sterility of minors. A review of the current literature suggests that this protocol is founded upon an unscientific gender ideology, lacks an evidence base, and violates the long-standing ethical principle of ‘First do no harm.’”
Is there any parent in their right mind who would consider a highly experimental procedure with potentially devastating consequences to block puberty, when puberty is the one thing that could cure their child’s problem? Rhetorical question.
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NOTES
(1) Lombardo F, Toselli L, Grassetti D, Paoli D, Masciandaro P, Valentini F, Lenzi A, Gandini L. Hormone and genetic study in male to female transsexual patients. J Endocrinol Invest. 2013 Sep;36(8):550-7. doi: 10.3275/8813. Epub 2013 Jan 14. PMID: 23324476. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23324476/
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FURTHER READING & WATCHING
Performing ‘Sex-Change Procedures’ on Kids Is Child Abuse, Texas’ Attorney General Says. He’s Right, and I Should Know. Walt Heyer, The Daily Signal, March 02, 2022 .
“When parents write to me for help, the first thing I ask them is: ‘What happened in your child’s life prior to the onset of gender distress?’ Every parent has been able to pinpoint one or more major stressors in the child’s life.”
VIDEO: Disqualified from the military for being intersex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkzTjD1ihoI
VIDEO: Intimate personal details about the lives of several intersex people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTHIIlzRzlU