Sorry if this is the wrong board - Sunday Times Magazine - 'I was born a boy. Why was I raised as a girl?'

[Another2Cats]

A very sad case of a boy born with DSD (is that the correct terminology?) raised as a girl.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/0211e79e-2a5c-4393-a871-f3e558120d48?shareToken=fe7eff9d6144ed47b4bcd1b07b08132f

Kristi Ambrose always wondered why her mum made her take tablets to be ‘like other girls’. It wasn’t until she was a student at university that she discovered the truth — and began her journey to becoming a man called Jim

[Content removed by MNHQ due to breach of copyright]

Thanks for posting this. An interesting read, not least because he is insistent that his condition has nothing to do with being transgender.

I saw a trailer for this, and will watch. The Reimer case is well known, but the scale of it is horrific. The trailer clearly states 'you might think this is a transgender issue, but it isn't'. It isn't, but surgery on kids can apply to both.

It isn’t a transgender issue, but it does have overlaps.

Overlaps about consent for radical medical treatment on a child that isn’t ill.

Also there’s a related discussion about why Kristi was a tomboy, and is so much happier as a man. Presumably it’s because their body was, despite mutilation, male. But does that suggest there is an innate gender [that can perhaps be wrong?], or Just that a male baby will grow into a male despite counter treatment.

In 1984, a woman I worked with at the time had a baby that turned out to have a DSD. She was told within hours of the birth that the baby had been born with both sets of genitals, and that the best thing to do moving forward would be to remove what looked like a micro penis and raise the baby as female. No further tests were discussed - a straight forward yes or no for surgery. She refused to have any surgery at that point and sought a second opinion. It turned out that her son was born with 5 ARD DSD. She continued to raise him as the correct sex, thank goodness.

Was that in the UK?

Well, I was a tomboy and would also have preferred watching the baseball to playing with dolls. In fact I preferred anything to playing with dolls when I was little, despite my female body, so what happened to my innate gender?

Right, I agree, but Jim seems to feel strongly that he was not as he should be and needed to change- which makes perfect sense as he was being incorrectly treated.

This is selection bias, isn't it? If Jim had been happy as a girl, he'd have grown up socialised into that gender and probably never gone through the stuff that made him the subject of a documentary.

What would be interesting would be if someone has systematically followed up all boys with comparable DSDs who underwent that protocol and found out what fraction of them feel like Jim, and what fraction have settled into their (genuinely in this case) assigned gender. Though I wouldn't go further than "interesting" - whatever the results were I don't think it would really prove anything about the general population, because those people are likely to be so atypical in their experiences in so many ways.

That's all very sad. It shows how important a man's genitals are to them as a species, that when a boy is born without what they think is acceptable they can't accept it.

this protocol was based on a single, flawed study that Money did in 1965 on a set of twin boys

Calling that a study - even a flawed one - is stretching the definition to breaking point.

I look forward to watching this documentary.

It reminds me of what has happened with the Dutch protocol and puberty blockers.

I've just read the article. It is awful what happened to him. I'll be interested to watch the documentary.

The trans lobby are always trying to co-opt people with DSDs to legitimise their arguments so I think it’s fair he wants to be separate, though as posters have pointed out there are overlaps.

I didn’t know you could reverse the neovagina op. He doesn’t mention any ongoing complications or health issues. That’s great if not, but I wonder if it’s been glossed over a bit. It is heartening that he has a good life though. You hear about so much despair in this area.

His feelings of being a boy probably relate to testosterone coming from small un descended testes.

No - these were removed shortly after birth

What was removed was his micro-penis, not the undescended testicles.

Even in the photo of Jim as a child you can see he is a boy.

If anything it goes to cast doubt on the whole trans concept. Jim was male regardless of his given name, girly clothing and incentives and urgings to pursue 'girly' activities.

It's such a sad story, and relatively recent - it's horrible to think that they would do that to a child.

I hope that these days, the child's biological sex would be established immediately, and their ongoing care would be focused on how to help this little boy live a full and healthy life.

Ambrose/Jim seems to have come through it all with a lot of courage, insight and positivity, and is campaigning for other children with DSDs to be spared what he was put through. Good luck to him.

Sadly, there is an alternative outcome for boys with DSDs, as we've seen in the sports world - somebody can come along and cynically spot the potential for medals, money and glory by putting that boy into women's sports..

"A surgeon, Richard Carter, was called to speak to his parents and advised them they should put their newborn through the first of two operations to make him look like a girl, removing his testes and surgically cutting off his penis. When his mother asked for more information, Carter gave her an impenetrable medical
Carter operated the same day. The surgery effectively sterilised Ambrose "

I think the second op they refer to is the neo-vagina

They're basically saying that a male with a tiny penis will be more successful in life if they just rebrand themselves as female as it's less shameful than having a little one?!

So if he had visible testicles then why remove the penis...it must have been obvious he was a boy. Horrendous!

It also suggests that maleness is not entirely the product of testosterone - but a combined effect of testosterone on an inherently male biology - as determined by chromosomes.

I'm assuming the poor man had to dilate in addition to taking oestrogen, I don't want to think what they used to construct the fauxgina and what additional issues this risked giving him.

There was a thread a while ago about a Brit who'd had the same thing done to them. A birth defect that caused a split penis, iirc. From Yorkshire from the accent. Parents told surgery was the only option. Absolute secrecy and hormones given at puberty. Although genetically male, by the time the person discovered they were a grown ass adult with a very troubled youth. They were still living as a woman. Seemed a lovely person. Disgraceful what was done to both of them.

The article says they were undescended

So, he did have undescended testicles. What an invasive and awful operation to conduct.