Intersex disorder doesn’t make a woman less of a woman

[Butterfly]

Intersex disorder doesn't make a woman less of a woman
Missoulian
18 September 2009


http://www.missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/article_88a87460-a45c-11de-9a31-001cc4c002e0.html


Test results in the case of 18-year-old Caster Semenya, the gold medal-winning middle-distance runner from South Africa, have produced evidence that Semenya was born with both male and female sexual organs. Unsubstantiated reports out of Australia and England revealed that her test results showed that she has neither ovaries nor a uterus, and produces three times the amount of testosterone that "normal" women do. My God, how this hurts and hits home.

In my personal experience, these findings are consistent with DSDs, Disorders of Sexual Development, also known as intersex disorders. Specifically, these findings are consistent with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, or AIS. AIS is a disorder that the majority of the industrialized world struggles to understand, and this child, from a third world country, is having her diagnosis broadcast across the Internet and TV screens throughout the world. This child is 18 years old. What must she be going through?