Intersexualism Hermaphrodites essays

Intersexualism Hermaphrodites essays People known in the medical literature as true hermaphrodites have a mixed gonadal structure, ovo-testis, or sometimes one ovary and one testis. It was stated in this interview that the politically correct word for hermaphrodites is now intersexuals because of the mythological origins of hermaphrodite. Most intersexed people have a very, very, hard time with personal issues which surround being born intersexed. There is a relatively small group of "out" intersexuals in the world, a number that is steadily growing, but the vast majority live with the silence, shame, and fear that they learned as a child or teen. I taped an interview from the talk-show Leeza where she interviewed an intersexual person named Sallie, who told of her personal struggles when dealing with intersexuality. Sallie is an XX person who was exposed to progestin prenatally and was assigned at first as a female. She underwent no surgery at birth, but at the age of two was surgically transformed into a male in the early 1960's. She was raised as a male until age thirteen. When Sallie was thirteen she began to experience the first signs of feminine puberty, which she tried to unsuccessfully hide. She woke one morning with blood on her sheets and thought that she had contracted some mysterious disease, but eventually realized her lifelong feelings of "otherness" was actually more than just the alienation of a sensitive and lonely young boy. When she found out she was a hermaphrodite she said that it actually felt like a crash in her head - the train wreck of truth. Some people had told her that she was lucky to have had a choice of which sex she wanted to be. She disagreed by stating, "The choice is really just a chance to screw up your life even more at an age when you should be coping with the first stages of growing up. It is a no-win choice. Normal people don't choose which sex they are...they just are. Int ...