The Intersex Chronicles

On this episode, we talk about intersex experiences in Ghana, shedding light on the stigma, discrimination, and identity struggles many intersex people face. It also examines how they navigate religion, culture, and societal expectations while seeking acceptance and belonging.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

They had an abdominal pain so much. Went to the hospital. Then the doctors put another glove. And then they dilated her. The blood full, no, no, in the message. This image told us last year. December that is now a male. Since I have to 14 new messes, should be a no more female. No mean it was gathering there because they created it themselves. They joined things, he didn't have a space to come out. It was gathering there. And they dilated the child and the blood came out. Now they are telling us that the probability of the blood packing there every month is high, so the child should come back. So they remove the woman the uterus. And we are seeking other help. So what we decided last week is that one because this is automatically neither male or female. Because everything male, if you had just left that one there, would have managed the male. You took it out about ten years ago. Now we don't take out everything female.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

And today we are opening up a crucial conversation in a series called Intersex Chronicles, where we will talk of intersex. In case you do not know, they are the I in LGBTQI. And in this episode, we will delve into the experiences and realities of intersex individuals, shedding on the unique challenges they face and the resilience they embody, as well as a bit of their biology to help us understand more. We will explore what it means to be intersex, the misconceptions that surround them, and the personal stories that reveal the diversity and strength of intersex lives. Join us as we listen, learn, and uplift the voices of those who too often go unheard. Somebody here. So um I'm going to allow you to tell me how your experience has been as an intersex person, how was it like growing up as an intersex person?

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Okay, thank you for the opportunity. Um it's great to be here, and I'm here on behalf of the intersex movement Ghana and on behalf of Kiwatch Ghana to share our story, to share our live experiences. Normally, when we say intersex, um uh people get confused. It's something about sex or sexuality. But intersex is a name that was going to represent over 46 plus vibrations that make somebody either a male or a female, neither male or female, overly male or female, or both male and female. So, and in that intersex also deals with hormones, with gonouts and uh um the the sex organs as well or the genitalia. So, chromosomes, hormones, gonuts. When I say chromosomes, they they are the those chemical factors in our bodies that really determines uh how we behave as either male or female, or hormones is what really makes uh somebody a very feminine person or determined, but in the mix or the chemical mix of formation of a human nature, the mix can go such that it's the levels are varying, so there's an admitted level, accepted level that a female should have. But in the mix, as we all know, sometimes you are you are making gary soakings to take. Sometimes you may end up adding, although you may not like sugar, end up adding too much sugar or too much granite or the garry content, or you may just wait a bit and the gallery may swell up to the extent whereby you cannot eat it all. So sometimes you even divide it. You are making a soup, and once in a while you know how to make granul soup, but today it's salty or it's less salted. So it's the same way with the human body, the same way with nature, how human beings are created. So as the mixing is going on during the fertilization and implantation stage, either somebody inherits more or a more of it, the father's side have come, will make the mixing higher, or the more of the mother's side have come will make the mixing higher in the favor of the mother. So this is the lay explanation of what intersex means to us. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

And so how how did you first discover that you are an intersex person?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Thank you. It's it's it's a story that took me over 24 years to discover.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Wow, 24?

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Yes. So, because growing up, we I'm from a family where we have a lot of male appearing persons. So when you are born, when you're not the alpha male, you are virtually pushing behind. So my brothers, cousins, we can do a lot of sports, can be very active. So we have full of boys. But I was born very feminine, I was born very smallish, very tiny, and um looking sickly. So from the wet go, I was being protected as a child from ministry in our things. So it wasn't that the doctor prescribed that no let don't let him run around, don't let him play ball, don't let him do this or that. But it's just because I appear fragile, so I was more protected. So even when my elder brothers were going to the field to play ball, they would I will not be allowed to go because, like, hey, you're going, you fall sick, and I was very sickly. I was always falling sick. So I've done plenty of texts. I've gone to check where they checked my heart, they first thought it was holding heart. They've done all the scans and it was never holding hat. Then there was also a lot of checks to to now understand why I was still having a lot of chests, palpitations, and all that very young as a child. And they check and check, they never got it. So, you know, the usual thing, prayers also come in, the witches in your family are the ones who are trying to kill the child because of what the child carries, all those narratives also came in. Then they also thought maybe I'll be sickle cell. So they started because we had a neighbor whose child was also falling very sick, was also very bony, like myself. So they started taking me through all those tests as well, and I didn't have the sickle cell gene as well. So they they left me. Then when I got into my 10 going, it's kind of stopped. But by 1213, I started developing a lot of abdominal pains. So I was there, and it's like there's a time that in every month I have to have severe abdominal pains, severe pains in the abdomen. That first they thought I was just being lazy, I didn't want to do any work, so once in a while I'll wear my pullover and I'll curl myself in, and then no last baby, so mommy will always be like let him sleep. So my brothers all hated me well growing up, but it was not that, and then they took me to hospitals, they were not finding what it was, and I always had a very high body temperature. Very up to now, I have very high body temperature. Growing up, I can't become a bit lighter skinned as a child, and at a point I become very darker, so the whole thing was confusing, and they got tired of searching, they couldn't find anything like oh, when he grows, you to get better and all that. So they left me. But normally at that time, when I started getting those pains, the the I was prescribed a bluefin, a tablet, then that was very common. So even now, my mom doesn't go to the hospital anymore. She just buys the bluefin down in the container and a spring. Also, is there parasites? So the moment I'm beginning to feel because it's not the stomach pain, it's severe abdominal pains in my teenage years. Then take it, last sometimes three, four, five years. I didn't know I was developing anything, I didn't know that it was intersex. I was very feminine with a lot of gifts, but very slim. And always I was the type that to work well, work well, work like a man, be strong. Then my brothers always be like fighting with my mom that it's because you've always been partnering, that's why it's not man enough. And up to today, my brothers and I we don't have family. We are like hello, hello to each other, but we don't because they've always treated me like that, the lesser brother. Until now, so when now we've all grown, we've grown with faith, and I'm also not able to cross that bridge. So that was the earlier stages that I went through. So growing up and then started working, and I knew I was in the teaching service for some while started volunteering on this HIV program. So we started learning about a lot of things. Then I started falling sick again, the usual thing every month. So I knew that this month by this time. So normally I even thought that um one of the working hours told, oh, uh, the devil won't always be taking your salary. So every time of the month, they you force when it started when they pay you, then you are sick, you have to go to the hospital. So you know, we're going to all those churches, those prayer camps, those things they mix for you. Drink and drink and drink, and you got a point, then it will stop, then it will come back again. But I didn't know my system was fighting, my system was fighting until I was almost 24. Then there was this specialist doctor that came to uh the whole thing, it was called just Trafaga Hospital. So I was made to go through those tests again, and that's when he persuaded to check the genetics and see the family history. So during those checks before they found out that I have more female hormones, my femininity is not me choosing to be. And he said that he suspects that internally I may have a thing or two there that is causing the pain, but they don't have the system to actually check and know. So I was still on the medications that gives me the strength, and that led me into life, into working life until I managed to go out of this country to first get the first one conference, and that was when they told me to my face, this is what you have, and you have a plastics uh uterus system in your body that is trying to develop like a baby's, so every time it is fighting with the testosterone, so testorium is fighting it, it's fighting back. So when the it's it wants to usher itself like a female at certain times of the month, then the testosterone is pushing it back to remember that it is a male body, so then your body is at war with itself, and that is how I you feel. Then if you take a painkiller, then it numbs the pain for a few hours, then it is back again until the the number of hours or days that that is supposed to happen. So they told me you can give me uh hormonal therapies, then but it was expensive. But I was giving some to try that could make me more masculine, they make me more but by then I was already in the community, I was already accepting myself. So one thing I did was I hide it because just imagine people know you as a same sex person or whatever, and you got used to that narrative in your mind, then now the one that people don't even understand, you also don't understand, you're not going to be known as me to say a hermaphrodite, and they don't even show you on the body, but it's internally and the hormonal system. And growing up, I had this thing that I couldn't understand. Why, out of all my brothers, the same family bloodline, my sex organ was very small whenever I was growing, and had a microphone system. So, as growing up, it's it refused to grow. So, you know, when you're SS, you take some tubes, some things to chew, something the colleagues will you know the battle experience. We went through all that, but never knew that it is due to the condition. So, because of that, it affected my self-confidence since childhood, it affected my confidence as a teenager, affected my confidence as even an adult entering to relationship because in African setting, we champion on size and grape and all that, and then this is somebody that you are not having that, and also in the minority community, it's even worse. Gripe is all about it and size and length, so it became a fighting force. So I suppressed it for years until 2018 when I met my godfather, so false again, and then he was questioning me, and so like and I explained to him that this is it. It's like, ah, we can look for somebody to represent us. We are not finding this time for West Africa to push somebody to represent the community. I don't understand this thing here, too. I'm not even accepting it. I prefer you call me any other thing apart from this one because I didn't understand it myself. And it was like, just go and learn. So I was nominated to represent Africa on the Yogawa Intersex Board, and that's is how I learned about all this, and that is the beginning of the intersex movement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Wow, this is quite a history. So, listening to everything that you've shared, how how would you define intersex based on your experience? I know the experiences are different for everyone. I I remember some time ago, I I have friends who are intersex, and when they shared their experiences with me, I was amazed. At some point, I had to shed tears because I I am imagining myself in their position, not knowing what is happening to my body and all of that. Would you say intersex is more of uh a battle within?

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Intersex is physical, but the battle it gives you within is higher than sexuality. Because intersex is a biological mix. Yes, yes, but it gives you a battle of self-doubt so long. Many of our people who are even being tagged as trans, as tongue boy, uh trans woman, and all are actually because of that chromosome determining it. So a tongue boyish-looking person uh who is female by sex birth cannot force herself or himself, no matter how the person, because some tongue boy identifies he, some identified as she, that's what I'm using that, to be the norm feminine. So such a person is left in a place where the person is constantly fighting with the person's self, yeah, how to express, how to present, and having intersex children is easy and common than having twins, identical twins. It's easy and common than having uh then they're like as common as the eye colors, you know. Although we all have brown eye color, the the the uh the brown look brown and black, but if you check some people the pigmentation is different, it's easier to see in the quiet presence because they have blue, they have green, they have yes, but our eyes it's all not brown, yeah. So so how common that is is how common intersex is. Yes, many of us it doesn't show, it is lying there, it's not triggered. Let me give you this map: a man and a woman who normally are a let's say the man is a and a smaller a. The woman is also a and a smaller a. Now, the big A in the genetics, if you know genetic mapping, the big A is the man's um genetics of having a but a small that man meeting another uh woman who is AB or having only A without any small A will not have the chance. There will be no if you do the mapping. Um if I have the body here, I could have showed you, you see that there will be no chance of ever having an intersect child. But a woman or a female who is A and a smaller A, and a man who is also A and a smaller A, when we are mapping, so A, the big A comes to meet the first big A, the big A comes to meet the small, or we do get to a point where we have two small A's. So automatically, that family they will give birth, they will give birth to at least an intersex child. It may be ambiguous or it may be hidden. So that means that both parents are also intersex, hidden there. So the male, yes, the male is X, Y, but it's another extra small X hiding. The female is X, but it's a small Y hiding. So when your small Y and your my own small join, they become one, it's a how half and half. When they now join, then the child is born away. So those family can keep it with 100 children, they all have interest vibrations because they are parents. That's why we say if you want to marry them, don't just when you are checking seek yourself, check your genetics as well. When the mapping shows it can show you easily that you are, so in our space, it's it's it's a lot of pain to not even know what is wrong with you, yes, not even know the name for it, and then most of people who are intersex who people label as sexuality are actually thrown in by the people because the time they are going up playing the ball as a female and being masculine, they had no sexual idea. But society pushed sexuality on you that you are like this, you have to like girls. So by the time that person is developing into adolescence, the likelihood of liking girls or girls started proposing to that girl is high, but it's not because that girl wanted to. It's a trait that others are seeing and pushing her into that's that spectrum, and that will now be a fight with her not to even be in. So, interests can be all of us are our our our our hidden basis for who we are, our hidden basis for how we can even do sports. A man should be able to run and jump. Why are we all not doing the high job the poor votes? Some men are overly male. So we ask more why. Some women are very feminine, naturally, very soft, very well endowed in all places. She's overly female. So the softness that we think that makes you a woman can be able to or it's more, and that is also an intersex. Yes. Okay, yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Wow. So um I think when it comes to intersex, everything has got to do with genetics. Today you have really taken us to biology class. Yeah. How how has it been like for you having all these medical checks? I I I don't know whether it's okay to say that you are probably speaking from a privileged point of view because I know there are probably other people who are having this inner battle biologically that they do not know about. How has it got to do with intersex and medicine? I'm asking this because I met a friend in Kenya who shared, oh, I think I was with you, the doctor. He he shared that since he was going, yeah, he had to be always on operation beds because they were using him as a lab rat, trying to do surgeries to correct things, and the body is also fighting against it. Is it an experience that is very common to all intersex persons?

SPEAKER_00 21:06

It's it's not to all, it's to those that people can identify and those who can afford it. So many of our community members in Ghana have remained safe because they didn't they cannot afford it, and second, because the doctors don't even know what it was. So if the doctors had got the equipment and the ability to diagnose why I'm so feminine, as a child, I would have been put on hormones longer than I started it in 20 uh 24 and stopped halfway. And with that six months, I stopped because it doesn't make sense to me anymore. Because now our most parents cannot afford it. That is the only reason we are saved in Ghana. But those who can afford it, better the affluent families, they quickly quietly choose where to fix the child. Yes, there are a lot of female working around with testes in their abdomen, but they don't even know. Yes, there are a lot of males working around with everything in. Internally being female. There are a lot of female walking around there's not even a female you trust in there. But if you go genetics and internal, this person has the breasts, the heaves, the everything that we call female. And looks female, but internally the person is male. Yes. And if they had known early, it would have put them on so many treatments that may not even work. That would end up hurting the liver and causing a lot of death. So because the way it is common, many of our parents also kill the children at birth. They call it Ambaye, it hasn't come well, never knew. So let's lose its face, let it go and come back. Well, so quickly they drown it in the bathwater, or they put something in its mouth or choke it, and they tell the mother, Oh, some mothers don't even know their child has died. Yeah. Because of the condition. So they quickly, because we are in pain, they are now collecting blood from you. They see that grandma take it out first. So quickly, you come and tell you, Oh, you've lost the child. You cry for some few days, and they're hoping that you have an you are young, you should have another child later. Yes. And if the genes that I showed you is the same, you repeat the same child again. One case we are handling nicophoria after 10 years of surgery, six different surgeries. Last year, Kolobu teaching us to tell this person that we are sorry. Um, it seems we made a mistake. We took all the meal out, but now your labs are showing that you had a male. This somebody they've taken everything male out. And the person had only clitomeral. Clitomegal is when the clitoris looks bigger, but has a blind vagina. So it looks there like a vagina opening, but it cannot be penetrated. As a baby, and this baby from infancy from one year was me from three years, I mean, operated on since then. And last month, so what they did was that because the person had a womb, they joined it and they created a passage through the birth canal so that it can connect. Then the passage went to pierce the annual part. Now the feces of this small child is not coming from the front or the back. They now they have to pre create another one here on the stomach and put a rubber there so the fleet will come for eight months for the place to heal for them to recorrect it. Now they have gone through all that. Only for last month, this they're telling us this child is now 14. It's telling us that um the child had an abdominal pain so much going to the hospital. Then the doctors put another glove and then they dilated her the blood full. No, no, in the menses. This same child they told us last year, December, that it's now a male. That since I've known 14 new menses, should be a number of a female. No, it was gathering there because they created it themselves. They joined things, it didn't have a space to come out, it was gathering there, and they dilated the child and the blood came out. Now, they are telling us that the probability of the blood packing there every month is high, so the child should come back so they remove the womb and the uterus, and we are seeking other help. So, what we decided here last week is that we're not because this is automatically neither male nor female. Yeah, because everything male, if you had just left that one there, would have managed the male. You took it out about 10 years ago. Now we want to take out everything female, and this child cannot even be penetrated. Yes, because so we are now looking for they have been scheduled to come October for surgery, we've stopped it. Looking for other options, we've returned to hospitals in Michigan and other places so that they could we could have a second opinion. Because at least this child should have something to hold on to, cannot lose everything, we're gonna have to become like an empty container, and it's not fair to such a person that now, okay, at least the blood is coming, so let's find a way to get a connected world to flow. We've created one already, let's stick to that. Although, as a 14-year-old girl, they've created there's no breasts, there's nothing in it's a boy from the top, from the stomach, the novel up is a boy, and they've created a girl from the narvel down. That is how it is. When it's working, it's about boy working, having everything can be treated as a female. Now they're having complications, they want to save their heads. So, what do you want to do? Camely just remove their uterus so that their blood will not be scattering there. It's any proper country, it should be sealed, but that will cost us a lot of money. Let's just save the child. And so, this is death, it's just a tip of our bag while we go on. I had to stop taking it because it was making me very aggressive than usual, it was making me very moody, very angry, and then the drug, the side effect was too much for me. Yes, you know, I'm very emotional already, and then this thing to make me more male is doing that. We have friends who have been taking the hormonal therapy in Ghana here, and now they have been made uh sterile. That's what I say. They can no more be fertile. And have kids. Don't be fertile. We had we met one lady, we they found a problem with the the the condition early and did the surgery, and she's now about 33. During that time when the surgery took her womb out. Oh no, they took the womb out, and now she's here, she's old, and the woman before the mother is now telling you the reason why you cannot give her because you had this condition, you had ketomangal, your criteria was too big, and when we were doing there was some mistake, so the doctor decided to take the woman over this everything. Just imagine you're getting to know after 33 years. This is what your parents are trying to fix you because doctors say that is the only way to save you, the coercive ones. So these are the things, and it's really expensive because the hormonal therapy that we even take is even take a tablet is about a tablet is about 90 CDs, that's about even a year ago, it's even in dollars. So if you bring the CDs then it was 90 CDs when the CD was about 12 CDs to the dollar. Now it's gone, and that would take three of that tablets each day just to be looking more male. The female ones, I have not checked the price of that one. So you can imagine how many of us can afford, and we don't even have it in Ghana to buy, so we go to the manufacturing unit of the Colorado GT in hospital, and then when they are ordering drug for Ghana from India, you have to pay down every order for you. Multiply 90 CDs times 3 times 30 days and C. So we are saying that let's all know that human beings are not made male and female. They are made male, overly male, partially male, female, overly female, partially female, both male and female, neither male, female, or even in between. Let's understand that somebody's masculinity is not their will, doesn't connot to sexuality. Somebody's femininity is not their will, but their hormonal, chemical, biological help mixed in there that are dictating the person's life.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

So this is well, thank you. But um most of the time, intersex babies are often put under the knife, and like you just said, it took her 33 years to find out that this is what her parents did to her. If I'm to put myself in her position, I don't even know how I'm going to feel about my parents. Being an advocate for the intersex movement, how do you feel about children who are constantly being operated on intersex babies? How do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Now the advice is the surgery is a no. We stop one in War, we stop in Bulgar this year, and what we are able to convince the parents that wait till the child gets into adolescence and let's really know which side the child will belong. Then we can actually see. And if it isn't even necessary, we are hoping that by then government will ban it as it's banned in Kenya and other countries. We have swear people are born with two pennies and two vagina, excuse me to say, and their parents choose one. Okay, cut this one, they sell this one. What if the one you are selling is will not be or cutting will not be the strong one when the person goes up as a child. But you want to feed the person in a way so they can go to school, you can have uh how the rename the child and say this is a male and child and all. So, what we are asking government to do is to submand the surgeries and create a third sex marker for Ghana, as done in Kenya, where we have you know a birth certificate, passport, everything, male, female, or intersex. With the third sex marker, this child who is born and will not be forced to take either male or female, will be packed in the eye until adolescents go in. If the child feels like changing later and align more to male or female will be allowed, just go to an affidavit and have a change so that people will not be forced into the surgery. But the surgeries need to be stopped. It is cosmetic, it's doing more harm than good, and all the people we have met so far in Ghana have gone through the surgeries. Nothing good to say about it.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

You just mentioned something very important, looking at how efforts are being made to ensure that there's a third sex marker and all of that. How has um societal norms and expectations impacted the social life of intersex persons? Because, like you were saying, with everything that you shared, you are growing up, you may have masculine features within, but probably you appear more feminine, and they are expecting you to walk well, sit like a girl, talk like a girl, do this, do that. How does it affect intersex person socially?

SPEAKER_00 31:46

It's like a battle between yourself and the ability to breathe. Okay. You are battling how to breathe because you are telling somebody to walk well. Our working normally we either take our father or mother, say you are walking like your father when we are growing up, or you're working like your mother. The nature, the bone nature, the person to sit well, to talk well. The voice is so low. And you can see some boys that the classical signs of uh acne is unthinkable. Which most people, if you go to genetics, isn't everything male, but it's more female that is causing the acne. And but many people don't know, they think that hey, a small girl, young girl that is, you have so much acne. Is that you know man already? Small girl, you have your big breast already. We cause something precarious puberty where by eight nine a child has puberty. Sanitar's sex condition. Children born and the the small boy, the man who is so big, sanitary condition. It's not a gift from God as we have been blessing them. Yes. So all the societies is the attempt to get and put everybody in a box, not for your safety, but for them to be able to understand and know how to refer to you. It is harming us and it's killing us a lot. And it is the one single thing that is causing intersex people to commit suicide. The suicidal rates are abnormal. Because, first of all, you don't even know the name that what you have is intersex, and then you trigger your fancy that anybody can become intersex at any age. Yeah, you can be in your monopoles, then you start developing intersex conditions. Yes, there are women who are finished giving by four children, the last child. Then now the the the vagina is growing back and becoming like a penis. The crystal risk is coming out bigger. It's now they have now triggered the condition that was hiding in here all along. There are men who now start developing micropenies, the penis is shrinking, the person is going into feminine, the breast is coming out at an age. So we advise that those of our brothers who are trying to gym and do hormonal, be careful. If you're taking all those hormones to look more male and you go to trigger intercess condition and it reverse everything, down for and then those are our sisters who are also forcing to be female, and the knife, injections to get bigger breasts and all those things, you go and trigger your intercess condition that is hiding there because it can be in your life, your body the whole time, you will never know. So long as it does not hurt you, no. So everybody can have a condition, but since it's not visible, since we don't do more labs in Ghana, we will not know. That is why we are saying that less while we fight people on appearance, we should know that we are fighting ourselves because there is one in each person's house, and it's more common and easy to get than twins.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Okay, so to wrap up, what can we do to stand in solidarity with intersex persons? What do you think we can do?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Learn more about the variation. We have at least for now, we have at least 46 plus variations different. So we meet and the statistics that was taken as about 2014 says that uh one to two percent of the population is born with ambiguous genitalia. That means the one we can see, the one we can see is one to two percent. So let's say the population of this room it should be estimated that one to two percent of our population here should have an intersex condition. Now, if we were to add my own my micro, somebody's cleptomegaly, somebody's woman making the person look like a stud, somebody all those things together to now get to the 46. In intercess conditions, maybe more than 50 percent of the population. Yes, so it is very common, and we should know that when we are speaking for intersex, we are speaking for ourselves. We are opening the door for people to understand why human beings are born in a way feminine or masculine, and we should always speak and know more about it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Thank you for being a part of this essential conversation on intersex. Today we've gained insight into the lived experiences of intersex individuals, breaking down misconceptions and highlighting the importance of understanding and acceptance. The story shared reminds us of the rich diversity within our community and the need for greater visibility and support for intersex. I hope this episode has deepened your understanding and inspired you to advocate for inclusivity. Until next time, continue to lessen, learn and stand in solidarity with all members of our community. This initiative was brought to you by Cupacity Ghana and Basilian Sisters Ghana. Please like, subscribe, and add your comment to the conversation. Thank you. Bye.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Like wine, roses are red for a reason. I find easy to love and be eating. Well, I don't want to stand up to go to the tooth. If you ain't gonna have a boot, if you ain't gonna use me, look, tummy, tummy, and that the front for me, and that the front for me.