Shall this baby be a boy or girl?

Whenever a baby is born he/she brings life into this world. Many are excited to be in the stage of finding out the sex of the baby and buying everything blue or pink. What happens when humans are intersexed? When someone is born and they apparently don’t fit the typical definitions of a boy or girl, they are referred to as intersexed. One of the most interesting aspects of this topic is that many won’t show intersex anatomy until puberty or even adulthood. They can have either an ovary and a testis or two testes. Can you believe that back in the 1950’s intersexed people were all to be reared as females by doctor’s recommendations and even used surgery to make them more feminine? Some might grow up and feel more feminine or masculine and feel that their ‘chosen gender’ is not who they really are.  Presently, intersexed people are given the opportunity to decide whether they want to be a male or female. Even though a lot of these cases have kept private due to confidentiality between doctors, parents and patients, I have read about several cases in which parents decide to raise them as males and when the individual grows they feel more as a female and when raised as females they report their behaviors to be more ‘tomboyish’.

I want to talk about J and her story. Her parents decided to raise her as a male after doing surgery on her to look more on the masculine side. Since she was a little boy, she always knew she was different because she felt drawn to females as friends and as she grew older she felt attracted to males but not so much as “friends” she would say. When her puberty stage kicked in she developed breasts and widening of the hips. Her parents immediately took action and took her to a doctor to get a “special vitamin” to stop all the feminine actions of her body. The relationship with her parents was bad since the beginning specially after she identified more feminine and her parents would not approve. At the age of seventeen she left her house. Years later and after trying to have a better communication with her parents, she asks her mother with a sense of embarrassment about a scar she has on her private area. Finally, 40 years later her mother tells her the truth. Can you imagine all the mixed emotions?! Forty years without knowing the truth and finally understanding all those feelings as a young individual, must have been tough on her.  This story is so amazing because after finding out the truth she could not hate her parents but only feel a little upset about her parents lying to her and deciding for her without giving her an option.
 * Judy/Max another story worth reading. This story talks about the struggles about determining to behave as a female or a male, not to mention his own curiosity and his parents confusion. Imagine a life trying to find out who you really are and visiting the doctor constantly to find the answers. Clearly, this story has a happy ending with the person finding his true self from within.