So why?

So why? Why the naming of what I am? Why the “coming out”? 

 

So much easier to keep your head down and pretend; pretend what you have been encouraged to pretend, to perpetuate the myth, to pretend that it is just not so! After all, it made other people comfortable with their version of reality to pretend a complete normality; a version that did not contain such inconveniences as having to accept someone as being different. 

 

If I really reach down inside, the answer must lie in part in wanting some self-respect - to be known as who and what I am - and in part in wanting others caught in this in-between world to know that they are not alone. That it is the prejudices, misconceptions and ignorance of other's that is the problem, not what we are, as we are born, as we are made. That is not something we can be held responsible for. It is not something we have chosen. It is not something we do, it is simply as we are.

I am happy to be held to account for my actions. I am not happy to be held to account for the way nature made my body.

It is bad enough facing all of that prejudice without facing your own inward doubts and worse, the shame that you may come to feel because of it. That really does poison, the shame, it is quite toxic. It makes you not want to be you; but none of us, none one of us, have the choice of not being what we are. In the end you do have to come to terms with that, to accept, to be what you are. 

 

Note – I do say, “What you are” not “What you have become”. This is not about accepting what you have become because of your actions. It is not like standing up as saying “I am D and I am an alcoholic” as a step to changing to not being one any longer. This is simply about your biology, about that which is you right to your core. 

 

So, what is it that I am? Simple. I am a chimera.

First, take two foetuses in the very earliest stages of conception, twins, but when they are no more than the smallest bundle of cells. Then allow them to come into contact with each other. Something strange can happen to those two bundles of what are as yet stem cells – so adaptable and changeable at that stage – so able to become anything – they become entangled, they merge into one being. But one being with two distinct cell lines made from what were, for a time, two separate lives.

It may be that they are both males. It may be that they are both females. Chances are, if that is the case, they will pass through life never knowing that they are a twin being. But what if one is male and the other female? Think – as they grow, as they weave one in and out of the other, so some parts of the body will want to become male, others female. Some cells have the chromosomes that will carry male genes, Y chromosomes. Some cells will not. When that critical time comes when “maleness” is switched on – about 12 weeks – those cells, those with the Y, can respond to the call, can become “man” cells, can set out to build a boy. But the other cells, those that are XX cells, they are deaf to that signal. They carry on doing what they are programmed to do. They set out to build a girl. 

 

The result? A body that is both. A dual purpose, dual function body - well, sort of, at least in terms of structures. That is where the hormones come in. If there are enough XY cells then there may be just enough hormone produced to make them dominant, so the result is apparently male. It may even be functionally male. It may even grow up believing that it is male. It may even look like one - well, reasonably so. It may grow like one. Yes, it may even passes through puberty at the right time and become what appears to be a man. It may even function as a man – biologically.

So far so good. But – ah the “BUT” had to come. Those girl cells, those XX cells, they had not been idle. They had followed their instructions and build all the right bits to make a female, and even wired them up in the right way, only the hormones kept them quite about it. Too much testosterone – or androgen as it is sometimes called – not sure what the difference is if any, not that it matters – and too little oestrogen. Poor girl cells. Not triggered into full action. Not allowed to blossom. But what they have built, what they have become, is still there, is still alive and responsive.

What have we got? A heterosexual male who is also a female. Bazaar? Exotic? Confused and confusing? Try living it!