Does this experience support the trans idea of being born in the wrong body?

[Gettheleather]

Excuse the long post. There was child born in 1988 with cloacal exstophy. The babies genitalia was unidentifiable. During surgery internal testicles were removed. The baby spent their first year being raised as a boy and at one year old it was decided that it would be psychologically better for the baby to be raised as a girl. The Drs were under the impression that it didn't really matter, a child without genitalia could be raised either sex and it be fine.

For the next approximately 20 years the child was raised as a girl, chromosomal testing was done for medical reasons and it was discovered they had the XY chromosome. He decided he was a man. He has spoken of always feeling like something wasn't quite right, he had struggled spending many years trying to convince himself and everyone else that he was something he wasn't.

I know most of mumsnet agree that gender is dysphoria is a very real condition and simply question how gender identity law can be exploited by those not genuinely suffering with it and how it will infringe on others rights. But I do believe there are some who question that you can be born in the wrong body at all. If sex is truly only about genitalia then why did this man feel so distressed by the years of living as female? Is it some evidence that sex and gender are more than just biology?

I'm not being goady, I feel it's a valid thing to question.

I think the biggest problem was the lack of honesty tbh and lack of choice.

Parents could technically have just given him a neutral name such as ashley or Alex and steered clear of raising him.as anything but "himself"

I wouldn't want to have to make the decision and I feel for all involved but perhaps this could show that years of feeling the way he did is just as likely if not more so than the possibility of suicide due to lack of a penis.

Despite not having make genitals etc, obviously... one word makes a huge difference there.

He's biologically male. He always has been. Please don't think I'm at all trying to question that or suggest for a second that he's transgender.

The fact that he always felt male on top of being male is what is interesting to me. What makes a person feel a certain sex? Is it their biology? And if so what scientifically is causing that feeling? It clearly wasn't hormones because he was on female hormones.

When we talk about raising someone 'as a girl' that is assumed to be about gender roles.

And a large part of it in society is.

But a large part of it is also about raising someone as their sex. Being raised 'as a girl' means being raised to know that you have the kind of body that can get pregnant and give birth to children.

If you're raised as a girl in the gender related ways, but know the sex related ways don't actually apply to your body, of course you are going to think something is very wrong.

Are there cases of this now where perhaps parents leave surgery and hormone treatment til much later in order to see how things develop?

What would happen if the kid was to decide And then surgery/treatment etc started?

And while I haven't read the book, according to that article he didn't say he grew up feeling male, he grew up feeling that something was wrong (which it was) and the gendered way he was feeling was not him (which very many people feel).

He decided he was male when he was older and much more aware of his own condition and the social context of that.

Painting well it could be seen either way.

I was raised as female, socialised as female and I very much feel female. The socialisation and biology could explain why I feel female.

This mans case takes the socialisation reason away. He was very much socialised as a female.

So I suppose that does leave biology like you are saying which goes against the trans argument. But we don't know what about biology actually causes the 'feeling' of what you are. So for arguments sake let's say it's a different type of hormone that we haven't yet discovered. Can that hormone go wrong or not? Can it ever be in assigned during development to the wrong biology?

I've seen a photo. He looks male. So whereas he didn't have a penis (isn't it funny how lack of a penis makes one female?!) he likely did have all the other bits and bobs that XY chromosomes turn on at puberty to make one male ...

YetAnother I think he would've had the male parts if he'd been left off hormones. But the hormones made him very much appear as a female for many years.

get the you've misinterpreted the tone of my post. And possibly not read my post immediately following it.

SaintFrancis I have read the book and he does say he felt like had spent his life trying to convince himself and others that he was female. He always pushed the thoughts to the back of mind because he didn't want to make his mum feel the guilt of having potentially made the wrong choice.

Thing is, in your original post you didn't link to an article api haven't read his book

YetAnother I think he would've had the male parts if he'd been left off hormones. But the hormones made him very much appear as a female for many years

It sounds like a horrible case of medical negligence to me.

SeaChange ah yes, my apologies, I had misread the tone and missed your second post. Thank you for making me aware. I saw red too quickly and I really am sorry, I can see you were not being insensitive.

Similar to this older case that I remember

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11814300

In this case the horrifying aspect was that it was taken as a success to encourage others to do the same in similar circumstances, which the boy involved was shocked by when he found out, as it was anything but a success from his POV.

It dies make me question the "there's no such thing as a male/female brain"

'SaintFrancis I have read the book and he does say he felt like had spent his life trying to convince himself and others that he was female. He always pushed the thoughts to the back of mind because he didn't want to make his mum feel the guilt of having potentially made the wrong choice.'

So he wasn't raised as female then. He was raised knowing that someone had made a choice to raise him as female. That isn't the experience of a person raised female.

YetAnother it truly was a horrific example of getting it wrong. The testis they removed could've allowed him to father children one day.

The book is only 99p on kindle at the moment if anyone does want to read.

In the case raised by Bumply, the boy was abused by the doctor - made to simulate sex acts with his twin brother to learn how to be a female, he had to urinate out a hole in his abdomen, have a variety of dubious medical and psychological treatments.

That is not the same thing at all as being raised as a girl.

Biologically, he was born a male.

Externally, he was intersex.

Surgically, he was effectively castrated, as the doctors' thinking at the time was "No penis, not a boy."

He was raised as a female, in accordance to his external appearance.

He was not a girl. He was a physically messed up boy and he grew up feeling 'wrong'.

Why the doctor's didn't perform chromasomal testing before removing the testes, I have no idea.

This does not argue the case for transgenderism.

This argues the case for better testing and care for intersex people.

There has been a movement among intersex campaigners for doctors not to rush to assign gender in this sort of case, and more importantly not to rush into genital surgery to make intersex infants appear more one sex than another, as has been generally the practice historically. The United Nations now recognises such non-consensual uninformed surgery as a breach of human rights.

This surgery has often been for largely cosmetic reasons to make the child look more like one sex than the other (regardless of function and chromosomes), and often as in this case from the mistaken assumption that a boy without a penis = female.

This article from The Independent is quite interesting.

Greater recognition and acceptance of people with intersex conditions is important, and ongoing support especially through puberty. Intersex conditions can also be linked with other chromosomal abnormalities which may cause health problems and other difficulties as well as infertility.

Intersex conditions are a whole other issue from gender dysphoria, though I notice many trans rights campaigners frequently co-opt intersex conditions into their arguments, conveniently forgetting that sex and gender are not the same thing, and I expect without any consultation with intersex people.

Saint sorry I didn't explain very well. He was told that being raised as a boy for the first year was the bit that they got wrong. They changed his gender on his first birthday and began raising him female, however this meant he had a hard battle to have his birth certificate changed from male to female.

Fairy I completely agree with everything you've said. I just want to make it clear I'm not linking transgender and intersex. They are very different. Just that in this particular case, was he suffering from body dysmorphia whilst being raised as a girl? Or is it something else when the person is biologically male/intersex?

In Germany (and I expect other countries as well) there is the option for no sex to be recorded on the birth certificate where there is any ambiguity as to whether the child is male or female.

In the UK the situation is very unsatisfactory as this is not an option. For an intersex person where, like in the case you describe, they are assigned one sex at birth and later decide that was incorrect, the only official mechanism for that to be changed is by declaring themselves transgender and to go through the processes designed for gender dysphoria.

Surprisingly, and in my opinion shockingly, people with intersex conditions have no protection under the Equality Act in the UK.

He was biologically male. That's not my question really. He was raised as a female and always felt it was wrong.

The fact that he always felt male

OK, but those are two different things when you think about it - he didn't feel female, or he did feel male?

In either case, had I been 'raised as a female', rather than raised as myself I two would feel that that was wrong, and I am one! Albeit a pretty gender non-conforming one, who luckily was raised by parents who didn't force me into skirts, or refuse to buy me toy cars, or stop me doing woodwork or computers, but who supported me in my interests and bought clothes I felt comfortable in, and cut my hair in the various hairstyles I decided I wanted (80s/90s kid, so some were pretty crazy).

I wonder what 'being raised as a female' meant in his case - especially since his parents knew he'd been born with ambiguous genitalia, so were perhaps a little more strict/forceful about it all.

Spaghetti you may be on to something there. The book does suggest he felt under a lot of pressure to convince others he was female. He mentions wearing a dress that he knew would make his mum happy. It does also say that he felt very much like a tomboy and kept confirming to himself that that was fine, lots of girls are 'tomboys' and that it didn't mean anything.