Cosmos Intersex Article Online

As a blogged about earlier, I did an Interview for the Science Magazine Cosmos a few months ago, in April.

The article has now been made available online, along with my interview as one of the case studies - though without my picture. Probably just as well...

Gender is so basic to our identity that few of us stop to even think about it. However, for a significant proportion of the population it's not so black and white. Consider these real-life stories:

There once was a boy named Bruce. As a baby he lost his penis in an accident and was surgically transformed into a girl called Brenda.

Then there's Kylie. She was told that she was born with deformed ovaries that were surgically removed at age four. As a young woman, she discovered she was actually born with testes and male chromosomes, though she has only ever considered herself female.

Tony was also technically born as a genetic male but, because of his atypical genitalia, the doctors at the time decided he would be better off assigned as a female. By the time he turned seven, his phallus had started to grow. Doctors subsequently removed his testes to prevent him from masculinising any further; but the truth was he had always felt like a man, not a woman. When he turned 30, he chose to live his life as a man.

Zoe was born a male but always felt like a female. She did her best to accept her male form and identity but found the effort to maintain the charade became increasingly difficult and stressful over the years. Then, aged 47, her body spontaneously began making the transition into a female … and the relief was enormous.

But regular readers of my blog would have followed that in Real Time, as it happened. So you know all that. Still, it's interesting, No?