Welcome to Sentivia

Okay, so let me break down who I am for you all, because it seems to be a point of interest - and quite frankly, it’s important. As I opened with, I have a vagina. And yes, for some of you, that might be obvious from my appearance. I look like a woman, I dress like a woman, I guess you could say, but the thing is, I also have balls. Yup, that’s right. I know, it’s probably not what you were expecting. Honestly, it took a bit of nerve for me to come up here and talk about my genitals with you all, but hey, here I am.

Now, I want to be clear – I’m not talking about bravery or some kind of exceptional courage. I mean, literally, I have balls. Right here, inside my body, where many of you would have ovaries. This makes me intersex.

Most people are taught to believe that you’re either biologically male or female. However, the reality is that it's far more complex than that. There are numerous ways someone can be intersex, and my situation is this: I was born with XY chromosomes, which are typically known as male chromosomes. However, I also have a vagina and testicles inside of me. I don't respond to testosterone. As a result, during puberty, I developed breasts, but I didn't experience other typical male puberty characteristics such as acne, excessive body hair, or oily skin. So there you go, you can be jealous of that, I guess.

Now, because I was born without a uterus, I also don’t menstruate and I can't have biological children. It's important to note that it's not just about what genitals you have. Society seems to want to categorize people based on their genitalia. Even before a baby is born, we ask the question "is it a boy or a girl?” as if that’s the first thing that matters. As if the existence of a penis or vagina should change how excited we are to welcome that life into the world. As if what’s between someone’s legs tells you anything about the core of a person. Are they kind? Funny? Smart? None of that comes from having this versus that.

Yet, we define ourselves by them. We live in a society that loves to label each other and shove us all in boxes. We are taught that this gives us a sense of belonging and how to interact with one another. But that’s where the problem begins: biological sex isn’t black or white; it's on a spectrum. You have your genitalia, your chromosomes, your gonads, your internal sex organs, your hormone production, your hormone response, and your secondary sex characteristics - all of which are aspects of biological sex and each with a lot of natural variation, yet we get two options: male or female. It is frankly absurd, if you really think about it. Is there any other single human trait that has only two options? Skin color? Height? Eye shape? Of course not.

If our minds can think in a multitude of ways, and our bodies can look in a multitude of ways, then it stands to reason that biological sex has a spectrum as well. Did you know that you could have XX and XY chromosomes together? Or you could have an extra X, resulting in XXY, or two extra? It goes on from there. Now, for the typical ‘normal’ XX or XY folks, what do those labels even mean? I, myself, am an XY, if my DNA was found at a crime scene, they would label me male. If someone found my skeleton in thousands of years, they would label me male. But is *that* the whole truth of it? Is that who *I* am?

What happens if a woman has ovarian cancer and has to have her ovaries removed? Is she no longer a woman? What about those intersex people who are born without any gonads at all, or just one? Do you need a uterus to be a woman? There are many of us who are born without one. And as for our beloved genitals, society paints this picture of one perfect penis, one perfect vagina, as if we’re all supposed to be stamped out by the same cookie cutter. We all know that’s not reality. It doesn't take much to notice that everyone is different, and that includes down there.

We have so normalized these two boxes, male and female, that we’ve forgotten to question the very concept itself. People like myself are constantly viewed as the exception, the anomaly, the outlier, but the truth is that intersex people represent a similar percentage of the population as redheads do – about two percent of the population. That’s roughly 150 million people around the world. We're not rare, new, or going away. We're just invisible. We’ve been around throughout all of history, and in all cultures, we just aren’t talked about.

In fact, many people might not even realize that they're intersex. Have you ever had a karyotype test done to determine your chromosomes? Or a full blood panel to check your hormone levels? I mean, I had a friend who found out he was intersex in his 50’s. The executive director of interACT, the leading intersex human rights organization in the US, found out at age 41. Doctors knew at age 15, but hid it from her, because that was easier than admitting she wasn’t “fully” a woman. So yes, intersex people are often lied to and kept in the dark about our own bodies.

I found out about my intersex status at the age of 10, and honestly, it didn’t faze me at the time. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized I didn't fit into society's expectations and that I was seen as abnormal, and that’s when the shame started to sink in. Kids don’t have shame until we put it onto them. They don’t care about the “right” toys or clothes. We, as adults, have programmed this shame into them.

I had doctors lie to me. They told me at 10 that I’d get cancer unless I removed my testicles, and they continued to tell me that every year. Even today, there are still doctors who want me to remove them. But there’s no reason. My testicles aren’t going to give me cancer and they don't produce sperm because I don’t respond to testosterone. They are fine where they are, but my doctors didn’t understand the difference because there is so little information about intersex people.

As I got older, a doctor told me I needed to have surgery on my vagina so I could have “normal sex” with my husband one day. Her words, not mine. I’m incredibly grateful I did not go through with that surgery. It’s fine. Everything is fine. You wouldn’t even be able to tell I am intersex unless I told you. But these experiences, with doctors touching me since I was 10, have impacted me more than I thought.

I've been lucky enough to escape physical harm from unnecessary surgeries. My other intersex friends have not been so fortunate. Many of them have had surgeries to remove gonads like mine. Sometimes they do this when a person’s chance of testicular cancer is lower than a typical woman’s chance of breast cancer. Yet they don’t tell a woman to get her breasts removed. These surgeries are often done to improve an intersex child’s life, but they usually do the opposite.

It’s not that doctors are bad people, we live in a society that wants to “fix” those of us who don’t fit the norm. We’re not problems to be fixed. We need to enlighten our society. That’s why I am creating a genderless puberty guidebook that teaches kids about their bodies, not their boy bodies or their girl bodies, just their bodies. We often put too much pressure on our bodies for doing things that are out of our control. It’s fine. It’s normal.

Imagine a world where we can live without all this shame. I want to change the way people think about biological sex in society. I know, I know, it’s a lot to ask. But eventually, we all accepted that the world is round. We no longer diagnose gay people with mental disorders, or women with hysteria. We evolve and change as a society the more we learn. Biological sex is on a spectrum; it’s not just black or white. This is not only going to help intersex people, but it’s going to help all of us.

How many of you have felt ashamed for not being girly enough, or too girly, or not manly enough, or too manly? The shame that we feel for not fitting into a box is often a reflection of the shame we have for ourselves. The reality is that nobody actually fits in a box, because those boxes aren't real. This binary system of male and female is something we constructed. It’s not real. But, it doesn’t have to exist. We can break it down, and that is what I want to do. Will you join me?