Recently, Faux (I mean, Fox) and other media outlets made a spectacle about the "man who found out she was a woman."
For an organization whose "conservative" commentators preach "family values" and such, the network seems, sometimes, to have an almost-lurid fascination with people who don't fit into the traditional categories of gender and sexuality. Of course, Fox and their ilk see us as freaks, or worse. But the fact that they pay more attention to us than the supposedly-liberal outlets is, to say the least, interesting.
But it's the subject, I think, of another, much longer, post (or something other than a blog post). The reason I paid attention to the story is that I realized such "discoveries," while not common, aren't exactly unknown, either.
During the days immediately following my surgery, when I was resting and recuperating in The Morning After House, an intersexed woman came to Trinidad for Marci's help. Like Steven Crecilius, "Lindy" found out she, essentially, the entire female reproductive system inside her when she went to a hospital for another condition that nearly killed her. Like Steven (who, I imagine, will change her name), "Lindy" felt she was not the male her birth certificate said she was. And, the discovery of that internal uterus cleared up that mystery, and others, as Steven's visit to the doctor did for her.
Since starting my transition, I have met other intersexed people. Upon meeting them, I always said something like, "I can only imagine how it must have been." And they said some version of the same thing to me. Not one of them ever thought he or she was "more" transgendered or gender queer, or thought they were authentic and the rest of us were simply trying to avoid dealing with some other issue. Sometimes I think each of them had another heart, in addition to another set of sexual and reproductive organs, within them.
For an organization whose "conservative" commentators preach "family values" and such, the network seems, sometimes, to have an almost-lurid fascination with people who don't fit into the traditional categories of gender and sexuality. Of course, Fox and their ilk see us as freaks, or worse. But the fact that they pay more attention to us than the supposedly-liberal outlets is, to say the least, interesting.
But it's the subject, I think, of another, much longer, post (or something other than a blog post). The reason I paid attention to the story is that I realized such "discoveries," while not common, aren't exactly unknown, either.
During the days immediately following my surgery, when I was resting and recuperating in The Morning After House, an intersexed woman came to Trinidad for Marci's help. Like Steven Crecilius, "Lindy" found out she, essentially, the entire female reproductive system inside her when she went to a hospital for another condition that nearly killed her. Like Steven (who, I imagine, will change her name), "Lindy" felt she was not the male her birth certificate said she was. And, the discovery of that internal uterus cleared up that mystery, and others, as Steven's visit to the doctor did for her.
Since starting my transition, I have met other intersexed people. Upon meeting them, I always said something like, "I can only imagine how it must have been." And they said some version of the same thing to me. Not one of them ever thought he or she was "more" transgendered or gender queer, or thought they were authentic and the rest of us were simply trying to avoid dealing with some other issue. Sometimes I think each of them had another heart, in addition to another set of sexual and reproductive organs, within them.
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