I have scars around and on my genitals. When I was young my mom told me that I had surgery just after I was born. Now as an adult, I think I may have been born with some sort of intersex condition but I am afraid to talk to my parents about it.
Probably not, from someone who worked in pediatric urology and endocrinology. They don’t tend to do surgery until you are older because you need to be old enough to determine what your gender identity is very clearly, which is not clear sometimes with intersex conditions. It’s a really bad decision to make too early. Probably what you had was an undescended testicle or hydrocele or something.
No haha. Did you read the book about the boy whose penis was burned off so the infamous Dr John Money told them to make him into a girl. They did and it was terrible.
Were the standards any different in the 80s? I’ve heard stories of people getting “corrective surgery” in infancy but the cases that I’ve heard are not from the US or are much older.
Outside of North America maybe, that I don’t know. But in North America they tell the parents they won’t know the gender for a while, to name and dress and groom the child as the parents choose, but they let them know it might change. It’s so rare though, I’ve seen one case in 20 years of hospital work.
Human Rights Watch was pretty concerned about prematurely assigning gender to intersex children, back in 2017. I expect there’s more regional variation in this than you’d think.
I have scars around and on my genitals. When I was young my mom told me that I had surgery just after I was born. Now as an adult, I think I may have been born with some sort of intersex condition but I am afraid to talk to my parents about it.
Probably not, from someone who worked in pediatric urology and endocrinology. They don’t tend to do surgery until you are older because you need to be old enough to determine what your gender identity is very clearly, which is not clear sometimes with intersex conditions. It’s a really bad decision to make too early. Probably what you had was an undescended testicle or hydrocele or something.
You say that like parents wouldn’t make the decision and find a doctor to do it.
No haha. Did you read the book about the boy whose penis was burned off so the infamous Dr John Money told them to make him into a girl. They did and it was terrible.
Yeah that happened about the same time as OP’s story
Were the standards any different in the 80s? I’ve heard stories of people getting “corrective surgery” in infancy but the cases that I’ve heard are not from the US or are much older.
Outside of North America maybe, that I don’t know. But in North America they tell the parents they won’t know the gender for a while, to name and dress and groom the child as the parents choose, but they let them know it might change. It’s so rare though, I’ve seen one case in 20 years of hospital work.
Human Rights Watch was pretty concerned about prematurely assigning gender to intersex children, back in 2017. I expect there’s more regional variation in this than you’d think.