Quote from: Late bloomer on January 08, 2014, 08:48:09 PM
I wonder I too am intersex. Reading through posts I come to the conclusion that the answers are complicated. I'm a male, 61 but was never much in the manliness dept. I had my first female inklings when 4. Then again when I came to puberty. Would reach down and wish that what was there wasn't male. My legs turned shapely, my hips wide, not a lot of body hair. Much trouble learning to read, had to be tutored. Absolutely a flop at expressing myself when it really counts. Growth sprouts out-of-synch with all the other boys. Bad at sports, hated most of it. Couldn't fight back, just wasn't in me. Always felt at home amongst girls, and later women. Hard work later in life made me strong, but the muscle mass was never to be. My 20's were near-normal, then broke down after that. When alone, came to enjoy fantasizing about being a woman. Always, with each episode of femininity, it was a passing thing. And then came the illness of Hep C, cirhossis, and meds. One of them is spiro, and that's all it took to send me over the edge physically and, to a limited extent, emotionally. Budding breasts, fat redistribution, disappearing body hair, smoother skin, a feminine side co-existing with a male-side. Where is all this body-morphing estrogen coming from? It cannot be my testes, for they are but shut down, the androgen-blocking of spiro doing it's thing. The only place left is my adrenal glands. As a test, I got ahold of some bio-identical estrogen/progesterone. Within minutes I got heavily aroused, and when that passed, spent the rest of the day in high-energy. My body likes this stuff, and runs on it like high-octane in a sports car. Giggly, bubbly, enjoying the feeling.
Don't know if the karyotype will show what's going on, and I'll have to wait because other conditions (life-threatening) demand priority. Perhaps this 'discovery' is the key to my healing, perhaps not.
Late Bloomer, it's probably too late for you to find out now if you don't know already, but was your mother given a drug called diethylstilbestrol (or DES) while she was pregnant with you by any chance?
For the 35 or so years between 1940 and the mid-1970s, DES was the standard treatment in the US and worldwide for preventing miscarriages in "difficult" pregnancies, and several million expectant mothers were given it. For the last couple of years I've been looking at the link between DES (and similar hormone treatments) and transsexuality. Your story is highly reminiscent of my own childhood and teenage years, and seems fairly typical of the life experiences of DES sons.
Here's a list of things commonly seen with DES exposure (note that most of these can be associated with other causes of intersex too):
Born between 1940 and 1971 (US) or 1980 (elsewhere)
Mother with a previous history of miscarriages; diabetes; other risk factors such as being in her 40s
Birth defects:
Undescended testicles
Micropenis - a fully formed but considerably shorter than normal penis
Hypospadias
Epididymal cysts of the testicles (these are apparently Mullerian remnants - fragments of female tissue that would have been absorbed in normal male development)
Vestigial female organs or organ remnants
Intersexed genitals similar to grade 3 PAIS
Other genital abnormalities (in my case a hydrocele)
Later in life:
Feminine-looking facial features, developing a body structure that's more like the female members of your family than the male ones
Other symptoms of low testosterone such as a lack of body hair, gynecomastica and an inability to build upper body muscle
Very shy, socially passive behaviour as a teenager
Difficulty forming friendships with boys; having a special affinity with girls
Being bullied a lot; having an inability to fight back
Having no interest in sport
People tending to assume you're gay; lots of men being attracted to you
Identifying as a woman, or part of you identifying as a woman while another part identifies as a man
One effect of cirrhosis is that it can shut down your testosterone production, and if you're being given spiro on top then I'd imagine your testosterone levels must be close to zero! That'll be why your body has taken on a more feminine appearance (even without transgender HRT) and your latent female side resurfaced, since without testosterone, even small amounts of estrogen will be able to do their work unopposed. This is something you should discuss with your doctor, since very low hormone levels could be contributing to your health problems.
