What's good everybody? My name's Pidgeon and today we're going to be talking about intersex.
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So what is intersex?
Intersex is a condition when someone is born with sex chromosomes, genitalia, or reproductive organs that aren't easily categorized as men or women.
Intersex is a condition that can affect between 0.1 -- .01 -- .05 percent to 1.7 percent of the human population.
That higher end of the statistics -- statistic -- that higher end of the statistic
That higher end of the statistic is similar to the amount of redheads we have in the world.
So think about that.
So who am I? I'm Pidgeon. I was born with an intersex condition known as Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.
* blowing raspberry *
That's harder than it looks.
You YouTube people *clicks tongue* Y'all do amazing work out there. I don't know how you do this.
Sniff some peppermint. *sniffs peppermint* *blows raspberry*
Let's try this again *clears throat* So who am I?
*background music* I identify as a queer gender non-conforming intersex person.
I'm Pidgeon and I was born intersex.
I was born with a condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.
Or AIS for short.
This means the cells in my body are unable to really hear testosterone when it's calling out.
It says, "Hello testosterone, imma make you into estrogen."
So my body has developed phenotypically -- which is a fancy word for what my body looks like on the outside -- it has developed phenotypically on a "female" traditional trajectory.
When I was born, the doctors took me out of my mother's womb
literally took me out because it was a cesarean
when they popped me out of that belly, they were like "ah congratulations lady, you got a baby girl"
and they wrote female on the birth certificate and sent us on our good little happy-go-lucky way
a few months later, my pediatrician was like "hmm...I see something going on here between these little chubby legs of your daughter"
"let's have a specialist at the Children's Hospital take a look-sie"
and the specialist did some blood work and they discovered I have XY chromosomes.
They discover also that I have a karyotype that would suggest -- and a karyotype is, I believe, it is a fancy word for your chromosome set
especially your sex chromosomes
and I could be wrong so imma check this out. Might edit it out, might not. Um maybe just put some words on the screen.
So I'm at the hospital, the doctors run their test, and discover that I am intersex
*background train noise* that I have XY chromosomes and I have a condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.
And at the age of one -- I was only one year old -- the doctors talked my parents into doing a gonadectomy.
So yeah, so you're born with these -- these uh -- these gonads in your abdomen
but the important thing to note that in the beginning of life, they all start as the same gonadal tissue, just kinda chillin in the abdomen
and it isn't until the fourth month in utero that the hormones will wash over the body and dictate what those gonads are gonna do.
Kind of like they become fuel to an engine that's kinda just sitting there
and the fuel will either push those gonads down into the scrotum area and become testes
or they'll kind of keep them put and keep that engine purring but right where they were and they'll become ovaries.
In my case, they stayed gonads
so it was just automatically thought that I had a uterus and ovaries and all that stuff.
The truth was that I didn't have all that stuff.
At the age of one, the doctors told my parents, "your child was born with gonads that are undeveloped ovaries"
And man, this is so confusing, like imagine being a parent, getting all this information on your firstborn child.
Everything you kind of took for granted is just kind of thrown out the window
and now all these doctors are throwing all these terms at you and telling you
what you thought you knew about the world isn't true and your kid -- your daughter actually has these undeveloped ovaries
and dah dah dah dah dah and gonads.
So they told my parents, "we gotta take these gonads out right now or they might become cancer by the time your kid turns eleven."
To be continued.
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*music* Intersex surgeries
*music* And remember -- intersex stories not surgeries
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*music and spilling noise*