Putting a PSA video on intersexuality together. Care to help? :)

It's indeed both baffling and sad At this point it seems like my only recourse is to take legal steps. Or move to some foreign country where doctors actually do give a darn about their patients. Already tried Germany, Belgium and the USA, no luck yet

 

Please forgive me if I'm missing something but what exactly do the doctors you've spoken to have to lose? Is it simply a matter of pride? They can't/ wont accept that an error was made or that they missed something?

That kind of reaction doesn't really fit well with my experience of the medical profession though I have known people who've had similar difficulties getting official/medical recognition of something that seems obvious to people who know the person involved.

Moriquendi

 

I have absolutely no idea what is going on or why. I have had many different false diagnoses thrown at me, including transsexuality and something called 'autoparagynaecophilia', which from what I can determine was made up on the spot.

Maybe it was because the first hospital (VUMC) made such a huge blunder by treating me as a transsexual for 2.5 years that when they got proven wrong by a sexologist, they had to ensure I wouldn't sue them or so and made deals with other hospitals. Yeah, all conspiracy-style. It's the only logical thing I could come up with other than them being hugely incompetent.

---

Anyway, I put another script together, have a look and tell me what you think. I was thinking that while stick figures might work, using real (or CGI) actors might have more of an impact.

Code:

VIDEO
	[Two Doors next to each other, one has the male Symbol on it, the other the female Symbol.]
	[A Guy walks up to the Door with the male Symbol, opens it and enters]
	[A Girl walks up to the Door with the female Symbol, opens it and enters]
	[Another Girl walks up to the Doors, stands between them for a moment, looking at both of them, then reaches for the Wall in front of her with a sense of longing on her face, but doesn't touch it.]
	[Suddenly the Girl remembers something, reaches inside her pocket and gets out a piece of Chalk]
	[The Girl uses the Chalk to draw the Outline of a Door on the Wall]
	[The Outline glows for a moment, then a third Door forms, alike to the first two, but with a combined male/female Symbol on it]
	[The Girl nods to herself, pockets the Chalk, then opens the Door and enters]
	
TEXT
	(large) Intersexuality
	(delay) Having both male and female physical characteristics.
	
TEXT
	1 in every 2,000 children is born with it.
	
TEXT
	Many feel forced to hide it and pretend to be something they are not.
	
TEXT
	"We are human beings."
        [VIDEO] Pans upwards from a group of people looking up. They are a mixed bunch:
        - different ages
        - different colours
        - different genders
        - some gay
        - some disabled	
       [VIDEO] Stays fixed on this miscellaneous group.

TEXT
        "Some of us are intersexual. Can you tell who?"
	
TEXT 
        "Does it matter?"

TEXT
	More information:
		- www.mayaposch.com
		[add more links to organizations, information and such]

 

That sounds good, gets the message across without being so emotive as to make people defensive.

One of the reasons I suggested the stick men is that unless a film is done very professionally it can look very cheesy and the same goes for cgi whereas stickmen (think xkcd) can get the message across, on a budget, without appearing cheap.

How depressing. I just googled autoparagynaecophilia, it turns up in only two places, your website and this thread...

Moriquendi

 

Yeah, it's hard to screw up stick figures I got some experience with acting, photoshoots and all that, though, and I think that with the right people it should be possible. Semi-professional equipment wouldn't hurt either Anyway, just brainstorming still on how to bring this script to life.

Maybe I should ask the author of xkcd... from the little I know of him he just might be interested

Yeah, the sexologist told me it was a 'rare term within sexology'. Supposedly it means that I see myself as a girl (physically) while I'm not. Conveniently forgetting that my environment began to see me as a girl first. She also insisted she had said some things during the earlier appointment while my friend and I knew she hadn't. I so love it when professionals lie to me.

Checked out my legal options earlier today as well. Sadly I'd need to find thousands of Euros somewhere to pay for a lawyer. That's also a no-go, in other words.

 

No harm in asking, you might also try the guy who made the Simon's cat videos.

Moriquendi

 

Gynephilia (or gynophilia or gynaecophilia or gynesexuality --from Greek gunē, "women," + -philia, "love") is the erotic attraction to adult females and/or femininity. Its counterpart androphilia (from Greek andro-, "male," + -philia, "love") is attraction to adult males and/or masculinity. If it sounds like a complicated way to describe sexual orientation, it is. The advantage is that it does so without confounding with the gender of the person (as terms like "homosexual" or "lesbian" do) and therefore these terms are often used in reference to intersexual people.

Autogynephilia (or autogynaecophilia; "love of oneself as a woman") is the term coined in 1989 by Ray Blanchard to refer to "a man's paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman." It has been theorized to motivate cross-dressing as a sexual fetish in biological males and to motivate gender dysphoria in non-homosexual biological males (for the record: I think they are wrong on both counts and have much better --and scientifically backed-- theories for both).

"Para" has a Greek origin and means something like "beside", "near", "past", "beyond", or "contrary". So 'autoparagynaecophilia' seems to mean "love of oneself as not (quite) a woman". Or something?

Aaannyways... I think that doctor was kind of trying to ******** their way out of a tight spot. When Latin jargon enters the conversation, this usually means that medics are at a loss. My guess is that they are embarrassed and insecure. They have no idea what to do with you and wish you'd just go away.

The clinical psychologist's response should be to simply ask what you want and what you imagine that would do for you: how it would make a difference to your life and how you feel about yourself. I'm disappointed with my Dutch colleagues that they appear not to have asked you that question.

My impression is that you sort of chose to become female because you did not feel male and were not perceived as male by significant others either, until one day you realised that your choice did not have to be binary: either male or female. You could also be neither. Or both.

But because of your other life experiences, being a sexual adult and sexually intimate is fraught with complicated and unpleasant feelings anyway, so there is a part of you that actually would much prefer to stay 'asexual' like when you were a child (a common theme for many people who struggle with issues of sexuality, actually). But sexuality and intimacy are human needs and the heart wants what the heart wants:

"Love is not in the head, children. Love is in the blood, burning for you to do its will." --Spike, in Buffy The Vampire Slayer

My impression is that your quest to find out the "true" nature of your gender is in fact an analogue for your quest to understand that complex riddle of sexuality and intimacy through 'unlocking' your sexuality. But perhaps you are looking for the wrong key to the wrong lock (if you'll forgive the Freudian imagery). Perhaps you are simply the gender that you feel you are (whether male, female, both or neither), never mind what your various body parts tell you, and sexuality and intimacy actually have very little to do with gender in itself.

The way to learn to be close to others is to learn to be close to yourself.

 

That is my cat. Except he inserts his paws into my eye sockets instead of hitting me with a baseball bat.

 

There's elements of all cats in the Simon's cat videos, it's what makes them great. My cats had a habit of bringing me live toys and depositing them in my bed, nothing wakes you up faster than a small rodent running up your leg followed by a cold, wet, cat.

WRT what Nexxo said I agree wholeheartedly that knowing yourself makes it easier to know others. If you can become comfortable with who you are I think it will become much easier to deal with the fact that other people and society as a whole doesn't accept who you are. I don't have any training in this field as Nexxo does so I can only go on instinct and I'm sorry if I've mis-read the situation.

Moriquendi

 

Well, what I want is to know what I'm looking at when I'm standing in front of a mirror. I despise sexuality because I can not understand what or why I'm feeling something. There's a huge gap in my knowledge of my body which leads me to avoid things like relationships and sexuality because I can not explain to others what I am.

As an example, I may or may not have a vagina. Two clinics in Germany say I do, the hospitals here say I don't. When I look at the currently 3 sets of MRI images I find myself agreeing with Germany as I can see something I do not see on the MRI images of males. See the 'about me' page on my site for one MRI image.

As said, I'm looking to discover my sexuality. Whether or not I actually do have a vagina means a great deal to me, because it would explain why I'm feeling particular things from the outside, why I make a lousy male with the organs I have (the sensations I experience) and many more things.

It would explain to me what I am, and consequently which options this body offers me, as well as allow me to explain to others what is going on. At this point even the thought of intimate contact is frightening as it's just frustrating, confusing and painful. Yet as said it's not something you can just push away. It is part of oneself.

---

To stay somewhat on-topic

I have left a message for the XKCD author and am awaiting his response.

 

MRI's are notoriously hard to read (I know, I share an office with a bowel surgeon). The area you're looking at is pretty similar in males and females anyway because males are really just a testosterone-driven mutation of the female body plan (it's why men have nipples). I can clearly see something that looks pretty obviously like a vagina, especially when compared to an MRI of a male pelvis but when you look at this image of a male pelvis, or this one or this one, you can understand why some doctors think they are just looking at the rectovesical septum*. What is throwing them off, I suspect, is that the vagina normally has a thick wall of protective tissue (see the thick white walls on the vagina of your female pelvis MRI; it has to deal with penile thrusting and later with a whole friggin' baby coming through) while the walls of the septum are rather thin, like that of your vagina. But this thickening of the vaginal wall occurs in puberty, driven by oestrogen, and therefore would not have happened to you. Your vagina would have the physiological features of a pre-pubertal girl.

But perhaps the more relevant question is: what do you want to be? Your genitals are not going to give you the answer: plenty of people who feel that they are stuck in the wrong gender body to prove that. Gender is in the head, not between the legs. If you want to be a woman with a vagina, then gender reassignment surgery is the way to go: you just play along with the doctors who during the preparation for surgery will make a lot more MRIs. When a hidden vagina is uncovered in the process, it is win all around.

If, however, you don't want to make any changes to your body then be who you feel you are, not what fuzzy MRIs of your genitals (or doctors) tell you. Learn how your particular body functions and how to enjoy it. Tell people what you think is the truth. After all, nobody knows your body like you do and it is not as if anyone can dispute you on it. The options are in your head.

(Please let me know if you don't really want to discuss this further on a public forum).

* Only men have a rectovesical septum. Women have a Pouch of Douglas. Incidentally the rectovesical septum is where the new vagina is created in male-bodied people undergoing female gender reassignment surgery.

 

That makes sense to me; I have a problem with my back that causes pain and other problems but so far nobody has been able to tell me exactly what's causing it and it is very difficult to say "ok, I don't need to know what's causing it just what to do to avoid it" I can only imagine that that feeling is amplified greatly for you.

I hope you get a positive response from the xkcd guy.

Moriquendi

Edit; Nexxo got in while I was writing my post.

 

That is a very good analogy. Unexplained physical symptoms make people nervous. When they are very uncomfortable, they become positively distressing. How can you deal with something when you don't know what it is, what is causing it etc.?

Occasionally psychologists get people with chronic pain and other "unexplained medical conditions" (euphemism for 'the doctors are stumped' although they would interpret it as: 'it's all in your mind'). We can't give them the answers they seek; we can only help them to really get to know how these symptoms work: what triggers them, what makes them worse, what makes them better. How to manage them and their impact on your daily life functioning, your body image and self-confidence. In the end, it is about function, not cause. Because even if you know the cause that doesn't stop the pain, does it?

It's just an alternative way of looking at it.

 

I've had all three of those interpretations from different people and it's taken me many years to accept that I'm not going to have someone point at something on an X-ray or MRI scan and say "that's it, that's what's causing the pain and it's called this"

A large part of the pain management program I recently went on was focused of how we think about our bodies and the extent to which that can affect our symptoms.

Moriquendi

 

I don't know what I want to be. I don't even know what I am right now. I feel more comfortable in a female role, but I also realize that I am not a girl. I also know that I'm not a male in any sense, both physical and emotional. I just don't know.

I have tried to play along for years, but it just doesn't work, because they only keep asking me 'but you want to be a woman, right?' to which I can only answer 'no, I just want to know what I am now'.

At this point I regularly ask myself whether I should continue at all, as it's doubtful I'll ever get the answers I apparently need to keep living.

 

That particular question is one that I think everyone of reasonable intelligence grapples with at some point though probably not from as unsure a starting point as you. My answer has always been "I am me", other people can apply any labels they like to me, none of them are entirely right and none of them ever will be because everyone is unique. Nexxo is right though that people like to apply labels to people so that they can divide them into "people like me" and "people not like me". I guess that gender and sex are some of the most basic labels and probably the ones we learn to apply earliest.

Moriquendi

 

Got a message back from the XKCD author, he would like to help, but he's too busy at the moment. If he finds someone else who could help me, he'll let me know.

 

Someone once mentioned to a religious person: "You guys keep looking up for the answers, while you should be looking inside yourself".

At the risk of sounding like Yoda or something, possibly you seek the answer in the wrong place. And ironically, from a very binary viewpoint (male or female) that you yourself protest is not an accurate reflection of the complexities of the human condition.

First, what makes you think that you are not a woman? What is a woman supposed to be like, and how are you not one? Don't get misguided by your physical features like your doctors are: as I said before, plenty of women feel trapped in a male body. They have all the male characteristics, including the XY chromosome set --but they feel female and if you look at their brain in an MRI, it is female (this is important: male and female brains look distinctly different on an MRI; different size corpus callosum and hypothalamus).

Same could be said for being male: how do you know you are not male? How is a male supposed to be? Again, ignore the physical features for a moment --there are men who feel trapped in a female body. They have the breasts, vagina, womb and ovaries and XX chromosome set, but they feel male and under an MRI their brain looks male.

There are also people who distinctly do not feel either gender (or both), regardless of what their body says... their brain often has features of both genders.

Perhaps if you want to MRI anything in your body, you should scan your brain, not your pelvis. Gender is in the head, not between the legs.

For what it is worth, I think your body is hermaphrodite: both male and female, but your brain is wired on the gender continuum (because it is a continuum) towards the female end. But I also get the impression that you have been taught very conventional, narrow binary concepts of "male" and "female" so you can't place yourself on these narrow constructs at all. If you think of a phase-space of all possible ways to define gender, it is like you are trying to place yourself on one of two very narrow pinprick small points labelled "male" and "female" in gender-space, and find that neither describes you.

While the reality of gender is that it is a big circle, with "male" at the left of it, "female" at the right, "both" at the top and "neither" at the bottom. You are on a point somewhere inside that circle. Try it: draw the circle, write those words inside it and draw a point at a position that best describes the gender that you feel you are. Don't feel discouraged if you don't manage it at first, or if you change your mind a lot. It is an exploratory process that is as much about learning and gaining insight into what you understand by the terms "male" and "female" as where you place yourself in the circle.

You may even first want to make a list of words that you associate with "male" and "masculinity" and "female" and "femininity". What words do those terms evoke?

I believe that in the end, you will find your answer, but it is in your head, not in your pelvis.

It is of course important to recognise that it takes a lot of confidence in your own feelings and courage to just go with them; to trust that what you feel is right and needs neither justification nor external physical "proof". That is a problem a lot of transgendered people have, because the general public are largely pigeon-holing, either/or-thinking prejudicial morons. And perhaps that is the difficulty you face also: to trust your own feelings. Look inside yourself, and believe in what you feel.

EDIT: Moved to Serious Discussion, to ensure that this thread continues to be treated with the respect and consideration it deserves.

 

those dirty dutch! XD j/k nexxo

yeah to me it seems like you've taken to being a girl over a guy.. I just visited your site, you definitely look like a girl to me

that's gotta be tough having male parts but you don't give up on dating.. you'll learn a lot of things and maybe get crushed- but it's a lot better than nothing, it should answer a lot of the questions only you can answer

otherwise you'll be spinning in a circle forever and what good is that.. you can quote einstein.. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

remember your not the only one out there with identity issues.. like let's say you go out on a date and a guy slaps you on the ass.. you make out (I dunno how the dutch do it.. probably dress up and go to s&m bars ) then he goes for the cooch when you're having an aftercap inside getting to know each other

you don't have to do anything or you could be strait up and say.. I have to tell you something- had a good time ect.. but I have this condition that makes me different.. he'll either understand and talk about it or bolt.. just don't get all crazy and yell have a look at this and whip it out in his face! that's my opinion anyway

you might meet someone who understands.. having a good shrink around might help too.. I'd forget all this doctor stuff

 

That's a shame. The beauty of doing a simple animation is that it shouldn't be too hard to do it yourself.

Moriquendi