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]

I started The Wasp Factory ad couldn't get on with it at all. What a bleak and miserable tale. I'm not sorry I didn't persevere, from what I'm told here.

I’ll watch this, thanks

yes but i feel it is - despite what Jim feels was the case - very dangerous to push this line of thinking. That's how Susie Green's child got caught up in all of this IIRC, in preferring pink and barbies?

I never played with dolls. I had meccano, lego, action man in a tank (the tank was important) and my favourite colour is not pink, never has been. Was i displaying male characteristics? I was the older child of 2 so not inheriting my brother's toys, deciding for myself.

I think you misunderstand. My point is suggestive that it it is not testosterone alone ( Jim's testes were removed as a baby) which determines maleness, but also, and most obviously, the chromosomes.

It is not our personality or sexual orientation which makes us male or female, but the hard-drive of chromosomal structure, plus the hormonal software - and also the interaction of these two.

but those chromosomes don't make us play with barbies or climb trees. That is my point.

It’s a novel. The father in the book is basically doing social experiments on his child.

I came across a similar case recently. It was Sophie Ottaway. Interestingly he didn't try to remasculinise himself when he found out, he just knew full he wasn't women although he actually looked like one. Pictures from childhood to present showed him actually dressed like a girl/women not a male's fantasy of one.

He is certainly outspoken on transing kids.

I think it is dangerous is to tell people they can't talk about patterns that they see because we think it might lead to ideas we don't like. That's been the downfall of a lot of well intentioned ideas over the last few decades.

It is entirely possible that there are noticeable patterns of male and female behaviour that are not socially conditioned, but which in themselves do not define the individual in question as male or female. We can all see that you are much more likely to see men that are 6'3 than women, but we don't say women who are 6'3 are men, or that we better not mention that men we notice sex based height patterns.

so let me get this straight: you think that if girls reject dolls in favour of football they are boys?

ETA because i went to early.

Jim is possibly fitting a narrative in his own head about his preference for "boy" things as a child knowing what he knows now. We will never be sure.

Gender as all we 2nd wavers know is a social construct. I never played with "girl toys" and then i joined the army. Am i not a girl?

I know the novel the wasp factory. It reminds of that? Sorry if that's what you meant.

Yes, sorry, I didn’t twig that you were the first to mention wasp factory. I was only recapping my (bad) memory of the plot. It’s 35 years since I read it, I think!

It's been ages since I read the book. I had to go to Wikipedia to remind myself of the plot.

I have to say it's people like Sophie and the others who were transed when very young, who had no say in what was done to them, that I feel terribly sorry and angry for. Sophie, according to the SC clarification of the EA, has no place in single sex spaces for women and girls. If there was any man that I'd give a pass to it would be Sophie and people like that. Sophie was raised as a girl, socialised as female, knew nothing else. Completely different to the porn soaked, prison onset, fetishists and the like who claim to have discovered they had lady brain as adults.

Do you believe Gwendolyn Christie is a man?

I literally don't understand what the heck you are on about.
What the hell has Christie got to do with anything you or i have said.
She's a 6'3" woman as far as i know

But you have repeatedly said, and never answered any of my questions.

So again and for the last time before you non-sequitur to something else: if i played with meccano and football as a kid, does that make me a boy?

Poor man.

It also says they were removed - or rather that Jim was sterilised.

I did answer your question.

Your mistake is thinking that biologically based patterns are somehow absolute. At least in the case of behaviour. So that if we say that there could be a biological basis for interests or maybe play behaviour, we could then conclude that someone who doesn't fit the typical pattern is in some way the other sex.

That is clearly not the case with other biological sex patterns. Like height. Men and women as a group have biologically based height patterns. We all see them around us, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who did not notice these patterns, which are not learned or socially constructed.

And yet, when you see a woman who is 6'3, well into typical male heights and very unusual for a woman, or a man who is 5'6 and within the female norms and unusual for a male - no one thinks they are the opposite sex.

And no one thinks that somehow we can't have a biologically based, real pattern, and also individuals who don't fit the pattern.

No one tries to claim height is a social construct. Or learned.

It is entirely possible to say there could be biologically based male and female behaviour patterns, but girls who like meccano and climbing trees are still girls.

No. I didn'T.

You repeated, more than once that the playing with "boy toys" was down to nature/chromosomes whatever we were talking about
and when pressed changed the subject.

so if you don't mind i won't bother with the rest of your rubbish

I must be a man too.

There’s a lot about this case that is problematic; the needless surgery, the gendered up-bringing, the secrecy, the lies, the harm done to a male body by artificial cross-sex hormones.

@Brefugee” I never played with dolls. I had meccano, lego, action man in a tank (the tank was important) and my favourite colour is not pink, never has been. Was i displaying male characteristics? I was the older child of 2 so not inheriting my brother's toys, deciding for myself.”

I played with exactly the same toys. No brothers or male cousins but many male friends. These are just toys and don’t need to be gendered.