Most of the posts here in focus on the medical questions regarding intersex conditions, but very little focusing on the emotional impacts.  I know many of us with intersex conditions have been scarred, physically and/ or emotionally as a result of our situation, but we rarely see any expressions of our feelings from those scars.  This is really in the front of my mind due to events in my life, so I need to vent a little.  Maybe having this thread will help others vent as well.

I need to give one caveat with my rant... I recognize I have it far easier than most people in our situation -- my parents chose a path of ignoring rather than correcting.  I didn't undergo any surgeries for them to bring my body "in-line"; I wasn't butchered to remove my breasts; my genitals were untouched.  For this I am very grateful.  But the lies and misinformation from my parents regarding my situation has still left me hurt.

For almost 35 years, I was lied to regarding my birth and lied to regarding my medical history as a child.  It took that long for my mom to admit that they knew a second fertility treatment was delivered after I was conceived and that some of repeated blood tests when I entered puberty showed some unusual endocrine system activity.  Even worse, my mother had my childhood medical records destroyed so I could not gain access to them.  I'm killed by the number of times I raised questions growing up and I was told I was crazy.  I knew at 12 I developed breasts, but my parents insisted I was fat (despite weighing under 100 lbs at the time).  (It wasn't until my mid-30s when I finally saw a doctor familiar with intersex conditions that I had any confirmation of what I knew.)

A few weeks ago, I had the realization I wished my parents had never meddled with nature.  That's not to say that I wish I didn't exist... merely a statement I'd like a life and body a little more ordinary.   That's one level of my anger towards them.

The other aspect is how much I feel like they violated the trust a child should have with their parents.  I understand protecting me from the reality as a child, but as I matured and particularly once I was an adult, I deserved to know the facts about my own past.  Their lies, misdirection, and destruction of evidence has hurt me greatly.  A large chunk of my life was wasted, believing I was delusional thinking my body was showing physical traits of both genders.  It affected my sense of self-worth; it made me question my own sanity; and it kept me from growing into a complete person for a long time.  The more I learn of the realities of my body, the more anger I feel towards them.

I have directly confronted my mother on the issue and I can tell she still has yet to tell me everything she knows.  And that kind of bothers me too.  Given some other unrelated events in my recent history have amplified trust issues for me, the ongoing struggle to accept my parent's past actions has been difficult.  So I need to keep working to accept my past.  I know I won't thrive until I can put this anger behind me.  But knowing what I need to do doesn't make it any easier.

/rant over

Anyone else need to vent?

Hey there -

I know you posted this back in October but I sometimes totally forget about this area of the forum because it's not highly traveled!

Anyway, I kinda know how you feel. My parents choose to ignore some "slight differences" I had from the standard female model at birth. I'm very happy about that actually, because I have heard the horror stories of those who had surgery or other things done to them and they had no choice at all in the matter.

I also knew I was different from other kids growing up, but for the most part my parents let me be who I was (and really, I've always been male in mind and the way I act). It wasn't until before puberty that my mom started taking me into the doctor regularly. I remember one appointment very vividly because I felt totally messed up after it. Either way, parts of me were beginning to show some growth and this was discovered when the doctor was giving this exam. My mom freaked out. There was an "F" on my birth certificate and I think she was "over" passing me off as a "tom boy". So I was given estrogen. I was not told that's what it was at the time. This is where my anger always lay. I was given a hormone that I was not told about, asked about, nor wanted. I also developed breasts (which I hate to this day). I ended up basically having a breakdown about what was happening and my mom stopped taking me to that doctor. When I was a teenager was the first time someone diagnosed me with "Gender Identity Disorder" and called me a transsexual. That also totally messed me up mentally because after that I just thought to myself, now I not only have a messed up body but I'm metal too. I had a "disorder".

It took me years to get over that and in those years I did a lot of dumb ass things like try to drink away my problems and get on anti-depressants (which actually ended up making things 10x worse for me).

Even now I'm still evolving but I've come to terms with a number of things. For one, I don't blame my parents. They did the best they could and I know my mom THOUGHT she had my best interests in mind. She just wanted me to have a "normal" life and not have to deal with problems. It was simply her ignorance of the fact that I wasn't actually abnormal and her fear that caused her actions.

I lucked out (so far) in that I don't have any health conditions either. I simply have some parts that don't look like normal female parts. But I have often wondered what exactly caused that to happen while I was in the womb. No pre-natal records exist for me either. My parents were married for 14 years before they had me (and I'm an only child). I've heard two different stories about what happened. This year, my aunt (my mom's sister) sent me a card that my mom had sent her 2 months before I was born. There was a letter inside the card. It was from my mom and she was talking about expecting the baby (me) - a boy. Which leads me to believe an ultrasound happened and they saw my "thing" and decided, yup, boy. So there was definitely some weirdness surrounding my existence as well.

But, the past is the past. There's nothing I or anyone else can do to change it. I can't change my body (I did try to take Testosterone shots at one point and had a horrible reaction to them - probably because my natural level of T is only slightly less than the low end of a regular male's). The thing I have complete control over is my mind. I've lived my whole life with the "F" on my birth certificate now and I realized that no matter what the gender marker is on that, I know who I am in my mind. Nothing society as a whole can do will change that either. I spent too many years agonizing over the fact that I was male but "forced" to live as female. Just about everything about the way I was previously thinking was actually detrimental to my happiness. It was only after I started to gain a new outlook on things that everything started turning around and even the anger I'd previously felt had started to go away. There wasn't any "magic pill". There wasn't any smarmy "self-help" stuff. It was just me making a conscious decision about my life.

Anyway, not much of rant, but it was still good to write out

Puts any problems I had growing up into perspective.
I don't blame you both for being angry.  I know I would have told my kids what was happening to their bodies, as much as they could understand, as soon as possible.  I find it unbelievable that someone would destroy medical records as well. Maybe it is the effect of 30 years as a Copper, but this is peoples lives that are being stuffed around.  Justice was not done.

Karen.