AIBU to think this girl was treated shoddily by doctors?

[Unsurehere]

Posting this as after reading another post. Don’t want to be too revealing, but one of my DDs friends was born truly mixed sex. She had a mixture of genitalia and hormones.

At a few months old, doctors decided it was easier to create a male genitalia despite the fact she showed more female hormones when tested. She was given testosterone at a young age, puberty was kickstarted and she was raised as a boy.

The child always expressed distress and confusion, and the child did know about their birth sex being not male or female.

The poor girl is now 17 and beginning the process of transforming to a more feminine appearance.

When I heard of her story, I was deeply shocked and very concerned for her. Yes it was apparently easier to create male genitalia from what she was born with, but from a young age she referred to herself as female and hormone testing revealed female hormones. The girl also has ovaries and with a surrogate could have children.

Hence, AIBU to be appalled at how doctors handled this situation and to think raising the child and allowing her to make her own choice would have been much better? Leaving any permanent surgery and hormones to years later, not assuming and moulding the child into having male attributes?

FWIW I don’t blame the parents as they only took the doctors advice and have always fully supported their child.

Intersex conditions were treated appallingly in many cases. But it's a tough call when gender norms are so all-pervasive and important.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a world where you could wear what you like, play with what you like, look like what you like, and sex would only be important when it actually was relevant (childbirth etc.)?

That's what used to happen. There have been cases where a boy has had his penis removed and him brought up as a girl - but hopefully we're more enlightened now. Please god. Totally outrageous, what were they thinking of?

True intersex people are rare. It sounds as if this young lady was one of them.

From a medical standpoint, I can understand why they would have treated the child as male. First of all, it's a lot easier to take things off than to add them on later, if she did self-identify as male. Secondly, if she had testes, it would be important that they be brought down into the scrotum if they were in the abdomen. If left in there there is an increased risk for cancer and infertility. (This is because the testes are not meant to be at the same temperature as the body; they're meant to be somewhat cooler. Exposure to heat greatly decreases the available oxygen in the testes and can lead to problems.)

During childhood some children can be somewhat gender fluid. We know, for example, that the majority of children who identify as "transgender" actually self-identify as their birth gender after puberty. It may have been easier for the providers to hedge their bets and wait until the child was older. That way, if she decided she was female (which it appears she has) the transition would be easier for her.