New member

[Guest JayHL]

Hi

My name is Jay. This is my first post here and in the hope that I will get the opportunity to post more than once, I shall keep this short! I am Scottish, but living in England for now. I am male, but due to the fact that I was born with a physical intersex condition (genetically inherited). I was reassigned female and spent my childhood and teenage years in a state of utter confusion. The mist lifted when I finally transitioned back - to male. Professionally I work in health services and am also active in intersex rights campaigning. If anyone has unanswered questions about intersex issues, please let me know.

[MaryEllen]

Hello Jay,

Welcome to Laura's Playground. Thank you for your offer to help out with intersex issues. It's greatly appreciated.

MaryEllen

[Guest miss kindheart]

Hi Jay,

<<< hug >>>

Welcome to Laura's Playground.

Please feel free to come over and chat sometime.

The Chat room does require another registration that is separate from from your forums one.

Please read the chat room rules before coming in, and expect a short interview with one of the chat room moderators.

One of the things that they will ask you is if you read the rules.

We have Intersexed meetings -Wed 8pm est, and you are welcome to attend.

We all look forward to seeing you.

vanna

[Guest Angel Heart]

Aww I am so sorry I have always imagined how horrible it would be to be born intersexed, but corrected to the wrong sex. Is it as bad as it may seem?

[Carolyn Marie]

Welcome to the Playground, Jay. I'm glad you've joined, not only because we can hopefully help you, but also because we don't have all that many members who have your condition, and its important that we can hear from someone with life experience to share.

Please feel free to post in any of the forums, in any thread. We'll do our best to answer all your questions. All the posts are moderated, so there are delays sometimes before you'll see them appear. I do ask all our new members to please read the site Terms and Conditions, as we use the rules to keep the site safe for all.

HUGS

Carolyn Marie

[Guest angels wings]

Hello Jay welcome to Laura's

Angel

[Guest JayHL]

Thank you for the welcome messages. I shall certainly do my best to help others whenever/wherever I can and I am sure there will be help available to me. It may be of interest for you to know that my professional specialism is child mental health (age range 0-18 yrs) and I have worked with children who present as intersex, transgendered, androgynous or simply ‘different’.

I clearly remember the horrors of my own childhood and do my utmost to help LGBTI children and young people to value who they are and how precious their lives are both to themselves, their family and the rest of society. My personal trauma was not really caused by the fact that I was born with an intersex condition, but how the rest of society reacted to a child who did not fit the ‘standard’ bipolar grouping of male/female. I was deemed not to be ‘viable’ in terms of having any future as male so the medical advice to my family was that I be surgically reassigned to ‘female’. By the age of three onwards it became obvious that the ‘experiment’ was beginning to fail and I struggled through my early school years. The procedure with M to F reassigned children is that in addition to surgery, they are prescribed hormone therapy at puberty (followed by more surgery). I insisted that I be told what the tablets contained and what they were for.

My mother (who was a doctor) must have finally decided that the time for honesty was an imperative and told me that the pills would enable me to develop into a woman. I was horrified and refused to take the medication, despite dire warnings from the medical team responsible for my ‘case’.

I want to make it clear that for me, the idea of developing into a physical female was not based on any negative value judgement of women (whom I regard highly), but entirely due to the fact that my hard-wired gender identity is male. Surgeons can change a child’s genitalia, but this procedure does not change the brain.

By secondary school level things were becoming surreal. Refusal to take the prescribed hormones meant that I was held in a perpetual pre-adolescent mode since I did not develop female physical characteristics. When I was 15 my general appearance was that of a tall twelve year old. My mother, who was wonderfully supportive counselled me that I should consider taking the next step and actively undertake a gradual progression to male. By the time I entered university I had done just that. Because of my treatment as an infant I shall have to take hormones (androgen via intra-muscular injection) for the rest of my life. This part of my life brought me closer to another group of people, the trans community. They were (an still are) very supportive of me and I count many of them as my closest friends. Despite the differences in our experiences and attitude towards surgery, we have a great deal in-common. I have had some surgery to repair what was done to me in infancy, but in my case, I was transitioning to reclaim where I was before. However, I did not look forward to going back into an operating theatre. As a child I had been paraded in front of doctors and medical students and underwent several surgeries. None of which I had asked for. I find it illogical and bordering on abuse of both intersex and trans people in that whilst Intersex children are subject to non-medical cosmetic surgery without their consent, trans teenagers and adults whose mental health is not in-question and true gender identity is clearly evident, have to undergo years of assessment and delay at the hands of ‘gatekeepers’.

Oh, I should end by saying that the prognosis that I was not considered to be ‘viable’ in terms of having any future as male, I am now married (my partner is female) and she regards me asa totally 'viable' man

[Guest Angel Heart]

I find it illogical and bordering on abuse of both intersex and trans people in that whilst Intersex children are subject to non-medical cosmetic surgery without their consent, trans teenagers and adults whose mental health is not in-question and true gender identity is clearly evident, have to undergo years of assessment and delay at the hands of ‘gatekeepers’.

I knoww! It's so annoying!!

[Bulldog1948]

Hi Jay,

Welcome, my brother. You will that this is an excellent place to spend some time. The ladies and gents here are all quite friendly and always look forward to meeting someone new.

I am happy to see that you were able to return to your true self. Man, it's a total bummer when you are being forcd into living as someone that you know you are not. I am very fortunate that I wasn't forced into any type of SRS as a child. But, I was more or less raised as a [ I can't even say that word]. But was and still am totally male [ hard-wired brain and all] lol Finally was able to get all of my legal documantaion taken care of and have been married to the sane beautiful woman for 20 years now.

Anyway, I do hope that you stick around so we can chat back and forth.

Mike