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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Great Article, and OzarkHillbilly’s New Hero

Great Article, and OzarkHillbilly’s New Hero

by WaterGirl|  September 17, 20231:50 pm| 86 Comments

This post is in: Civil Rights, Open Threads

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OzarkHillbilly sent me this link and described Alicia Roth Weigel as his new hero.

I Came Out as Intersex in Front of the Texas Legislature

In her new memoir, Alicia Roth Weigel shares her story of coming out in the most political way possible.
It’s a long(ish) read, but her writing style is very engaging. (Politico Magazine)

Great Article, and OzarkHillbilly's New Hero
Alicia Roth Weigel is seen in the Texas Capitol in Austin. | Courtesy of Alicia Roth Weigel

At 3 a.m. on the day I made the biggest decision of my life, I called Wendy Davis for advice.

She’d been asleep, of course. It was a desperate moment, though, and I needed my mentor. Despite the hour, Wendy took my call and listened as I laid out the plan I’d frantically hatched over the past few hours. She was no stranger to pulling stunts to make “good trouble” — having once filibustered for 13 hours straight to help kill a bill that would have restricted abortion access across Texas, which made her the stuff of feminist legend — and she gave me her stamp of approval. But at the end of our call, she gave me one suggestion too: “I think you should try to look as feminine as possible when you walk into that committee room,” she said. “I know you don’t wear makeup, but maybe throw on a bit of lipstick, a killer dress and some power heels.”

Wendy often advises that heels bring confidence, adding a little height and some power to your posture.
“That way when you take the dais, all those old legislators’ minds will be wandering — we know some of them have even tried to hit on you before — and it will really throw them for a loop when you drop the fact that you were, you know, born with balls.”

I was about to come out as an intersex woman. And I was going to do it in front of the Texas legislature.

You may be wondering what intersex means. I’m not surprised. Though statistically we’re as common as redheads (about 2 percent of the world’s population), our identity is erased not just from history books but even in the present day. We are present in society but hidden in plain sight. Yes, the “I” in LGBTQIA+ is for “intersex,” but as of now, it might as well stand for “invisible.” We’re not exotic, but we are exhausted — constantly struggling for recognition or mere acknowledgment of our existence.

To start at the beginning, we have to rewind just over three decades, a bit before I was born.

Take a few minutes to read the whole thing.

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Reader Interactions

86Comments

  1. 1.

    mali muso

    September 17, 2023 at 2:00 pm

    Ooh, I just listened to a great interview/conversation between her and Jonathan Van Ness on their podcast “Getting Curious”.  Highly recommend

  2. 2.

    sab

    September 17, 2023 at 2:02 pm

    I love that “as common as redheads” comment for putting their numbers in perspective. (But I am coming from a family with Scottish and Irish ancestry)

    Her book isn’t out ’til next week.

  3. 3.

    RaflW

    September 17, 2023 at 2:05 pm

    I love this writing “I started thinking: If my sex, based on my anatomy, wasn’t neatly represented by either of those stick figure emblems on the doors of public restrooms, then where was I supposed to pee — outside? I’d get arrested for public urination! Is that what Kolkhorst wanted?”

    Perfectly conveys the exasperation of how these grossly intrusive (and hateful) legislators want to regulate the most mundane but very necessary functions of life, and with humor. Bravo.

  4. 4.

    Alison Rose

    September 17, 2023 at 2:12 pm

    I’m so proud of her for doing this, especially since it must have been incredibly intimidating. She’s totally right that the I in the acronym often gets ignored, within the community and even more so outside of it. And I don’t want to use intersex folks’ identity as some sort of argument-winning device, but their mere existence does indeed prove the bigots wrong with their THERE ARE ONLY TOTALLY-MEN PEOPLE AND TOTALLY-WOMEN PEOPLE AND NOTHING ELSE bullshit.

    I’ve also read from medical professionals that there can be a link of sorts being transness and the process that leads to one being born intersex. Not that all intersex people are trans or vice verse, but that as the author notes, a baby is born intersex because that developmental process early in pregnancy doesn’t quite complete itself. So it’s certainly logical and likely that for at least some trans people, that same process is where it stems from. All fetuses start out physically female. Some remain so as everything else, including their brain, develops, while others “switch” to male. So maybe sometimes when that switch doesn’t get flipped all the way, you have a situation where, for example, the body remains “female” but the brain doesn’t. I’m no doctor and I’m sure it’s a lot more complex than that and this doesn’t always apply, but it certainly seems reasonable and obvious to me that this is something that happens.

    Looking forward to reading her memoir!

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    September 17, 2023 at 2:15 pm

    @RaflW: Also this:

    (Which isn’t even enforceable, by the way — who carries their birth certificate around with them?)

    Something I’ve always wanted to ask the fuckers pushing these bills. Are they saying everyone needs to keep their birth certificate on them at all times? Some people don’t even have one, plus that feels like a massive security risk as far as identity theft.

  6. 6.

    Wag

    September 17, 2023 at 2:36 pm

    An amazing story. Thanks for sharing.

    As always with the GQP, there’s never ending work to do.

  7. 7.

    Eyeroller

    September 17, 2023 at 2:47 pm

    @Alison Rose: Embryos actually have both male and female precursors.  The Muellerian ducts form most of the female reproductive tract if they persist; the Wolffian ducts form the male tract.  If “anti-Muellerian hormone” is present (secreted by developing testicles) the Muellerian ducts will regress; if not the Wolffian ducts disappear (except for some of it that becomes part of the bladder).  The fact that the more active process is required for proper male development seems to lead to this notion that all embryos are female.  Yet the “male” precursor forms first because it’s part of the development of the urinary tract; the “female” precursor comes a little later. The cell signaling involved seems to be rather complex and it’s somewhat amazing that intersex isn’t more common than it is.

    This all doesn’t even take into account chromosomal anomalies.  Klinefelter syndrom (XXY or sometimes XX+a piece of Y) is the most common human chromosomal aberration; at least 1 in 1000 human males are born with it and maybe up to twice that.

  8. 8.

    Yutsano

    September 17, 2023 at 2:49 pm

    Wow. That was powerful. I hope she has a better life living out in the open.

  9. 9.

    Alison Rose

    September 17, 2023 at 2:59 pm

    @Eyeroller: Okay well, I don’t think we really need to turn this into a TedTalk on fetal development, but going off what I have read elsewhere in scientific articles, and what the author says in this piece — “All humans actually start out with a common genital anatomy until seven weeks after conception, when they then sexually differentiate.” — the point is that the insistence on a hard and unyielding line between VERY BOY and VERY GIRL is based on bullshit.

  10. 10.

    Cameron

    September 17, 2023 at 3:03 pm

    Wow. I wish I had that kind of courage.

  11. 11.

    wenchacha

    September 17, 2023 at 3:10 pm

    Can’t recall when I first learned of intersex people, but it sure does put the lie to those who swear humans are binary, period. Because God.

    Other civilizations, other cultures have encountered intersex babies, recognized non-binary people, made space for other ways of being.

    I can understand the confusion it must present to new parents, and of course, seems like the wisdom was to use surgery to create little girls, in infancy. This was often to the detriment of the child. Same people don’t want to allow puberty-blockers. Too risky! God doesn’t make mistakes ya know.

  12. 12.

    Mousebumples

    September 17, 2023 at 3:18 pm

    I think I first learned of intersex on a House episode. That is, obviously, fictionalized, and I don’t remember the details.

    This is real, and powerful. Thanks for sharing.

  13. 13.

    Ruckus

    September 17, 2023 at 3:18 pm

    @Alison Rose:

    This.

    Much of life and most of the restrictions that people put on it is not just based on but is, pure unadulterated bullshit. All designed to control life, supposedly to make the width of the line separating one side from the other, distinct and unyielding. And it never is.

    As my sister was gay, I have met a lot of gay people in my life. So, I’m not but some of my best friends are. Some of them I’ve met long after my sister past away. They are and always will be gay. And that does not change who they are, but it does make them honest about life. And so many people are not, they think that the world is not diverse, that gayness somehow harms them, takes away from their beings. It doesn’t. There are 7+ BILLION humans on this planet. Given actual life and how it develops into living creatures, the concept that there is only two ways to be alive is absolutely ludicrous.

  14. 14.

    Frankensteinbeck

    September 17, 2023 at 3:26 pm

    @Alison Rose:

    You are thinking in correct directions.  Scientifically, there are a lot of variations on biological sex, with varying amounts of the body fitting the classic role.  Some of them are subtle and chemical and you can’t see it from outside.

    The ‘XX or XY’ thing is a simplified general rule with the actual truth being too Hella complex for pre-college education.  Same as electron shells in atoms.  Conservatives willfully refuse to grasp that the ‘science’ they claim in gender is the dumbed down oversimplified version of actual science.

  15. 15.

    lowtechcyclist

    September 17, 2023 at 3:29 pm

    @wenchacha:

    Can’t recall when I first learned of intersex people, but it sure does put the lie to those who swear humans are binary, period. Because God.

    I guess if God was trying to make everyone Totally Male or Totally Female, then God must’ve screwed up.

    I’m sure the fundies will come up with some other way to at least superficially explain how God didn’t screw up, but everyone is really intended by God to be the sex they were assigned at birth.

    The notion that they should just butt out of other people’s lives unfortunately won’t occur to them.

  16. 16.

    Alison Rose

    September 17, 2023 at 3:30 pm

    @Mousebumples: It was bad. It got a lot of things factually wrong, and it was also the absolute wrong subject matter to put alongside House’s intentional ironic offensiveness and “jokes”. I liked the show in general, but there were times they took it too far, and that was one of them.

  17. 17.

    eclare

    September 17, 2023 at 3:31 pm

    @sab:

    Seriously.  I had no idea it was that common, my mom was a redhead.

  18. 18.

    Ruckus

    September 17, 2023 at 3:32 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    the ‘science’ they claim in gender is the dumbed down oversimplified version of actual science.

    Well the question becomes is this because they are relatively stupid or willfully stupid?

  19. 19.

    Geo Wilcox

    September 17, 2023 at 3:33 pm

    @Eyeroller: And all that wonderful genetic creation gets totally fucked up by the forever chemicals we all ingest every day. Those chemicals affect the fetus a woman is carrying when she is exposed to them. The affect is cumulative.

  20. 20.

    eclare

    September 17, 2023 at 3:34 pm

    Thanks OH.  What a powerful story.  I wish I had her courage.

  21. 21.

    Alison Rose

    September 17, 2023 at 3:34 pm

    @Ruckus: When bigots insist that kids are too young to know they’re anything but cis and straight, I just think back to the first week of fourth grade. I’d transferred to a new school for the GATE program, and I got paired up with a girl on a project, and I immediately decided that she was the coolest and most interesting girl ever and I wanted to be her best friend because she was just so neat and it would be so fun to be friends with her. She was so smart and so pretty, looked like Shirley Temple except not white. She had the coolest clothes and toys. I was fascinated.

    SPOILER ALERT. I wanted to kiss her. My 9 year old brain in 1989 didn’t have the vocabulary or the societal awareness to recognize that, but I didn’t just like her, I like liked her. Took me until around 15 to finally go “….ohhhh okay yeah you’re bi*”. But it was absolutely there years earlier. If I’d been born a decade or so later, I probably would’ve seen myself correctly right away.

    (*Not the term I use these days, but back then that was all we had.)

  22. 22.

    lowtechcyclist

    September 17, 2023 at 3:36 pm

    That was gutsy of her to come out like that!  And while I’d been aware for many years that intersex people existed, this is the first time I’ve come across an instance where one of them has told their story.  It’s always good to see a human face rather than just a category.

  23. 23.

    Eyeroller

    September 17, 2023 at 3:40 pm

    @Alison Rose: It is a bit in the weeds, but lack of understanding of embryonic development is part of the reason for the “one or the other” absolutism.  I am sure that there are plenty of “religous” people who would be unpersuaded by any number of facts, but there are others promulgating this poison who at least know a little better.  But if one actually studies the development even a little bit, it becomes quite clear that God or whatever makes many, many “mistakes.”

  24. 24.

    Eyeroller

    September 17, 2023 at 3:49 pm

    @Frankensteinbeck: A rudimentary explanation should not be too complicated for high-school students.  They don’t need to learn about cell-surface receptors to get the basics.  And I learned about electron shells in high-school chemistry.  We just didn’t go into the quantum details.  But people in this country really don’t know much science at all, on any subject.  We don’t expect kids to learn it (or math) and many people resist it.

  25. 25.

    wjca

    September 17, 2023 at 3:54 pm

    @Eyeroller: lack of understanding of embryonic development is part of the reason for the “one or the other” absolutism.

    But understanding like that amounts to “expertise”**.  And expertice is a) elite, and b) anathema.  So, not likely to change.

    ** You can know that much and still be far from an expert.  But whatever.

  26. 26.

    lowtechcyclist

    September 17, 2023 at 3:55 pm

    @Alison Rose: When bigots insist that kids are too young to know they’re anything but cis and straight

    Which makes no sense at all – it’s got to be one of those things they know but refuse to know.

    I remember having crushes on specific girls when I was six years old. Are they saying that boys only start having crushes on boys, and girls having crushes on girls, at a later age?  It’s not a matter of ‘knowing you’re not straight,’ it’s just knowing who you’re attracted to in that sort of way.  I was romantically attracted to girls at age six, if not earlier.  I didn’t give it a name, why would I? It was ‘normal,’ and besides, a six year old wouldn’t have heard the word ‘heterosexual’ back then anyway.

    A six year old boy having a crush on another boy, or a six year old girl having a crush on another girl, wouldn’t have put a name on it either.

    I’ve had a number of gay male friends along the way.  I’ve asked some of them ‘when did you first know you were attracted to boys?’ And the answer was always ‘as far back as I can remember.’

  27. 27.

    Ruckus

    September 17, 2023 at 3:57 pm

    @Alison Rose:

    As I had 2 older sisters. (not all that much older) I noticed at a young age that there were 2 types of humans. It never crossed my mind that there were and could only be 2. Not until biology class. And then I realized that biology is not and never has been cut and dried. So meeting people that didn’t seem to fit into 2 neat categories, recognizing that animals develop over time, by a rather uncontrolled and anything but simple process. Like my sister, who didn’t figure it out till adulthood, even if she suspected before that. But we grew up in a 2 side world. I am the youngest in the family (or I was till a couple months ago), when I became the oldest in our extended family. My sister is the only one of all the aunts, uncles, cousins that was gay (or at least admittedly gay – I think an aunt was but she didn’t have the idea or guts to come out all those decades ago.)  As difficult as it can be today for a gay person, it was a lot more difficult decades ago. But why should it be? I cannot think of any reason other than selfishness and/or stupidity why we cannot live and let live.

  28. 28.

    BethanyAnne

    September 17, 2023 at 3:58 pm

    I heard someone talking about the metaphors we use for creating a human. Commonly, the metaphor is assembly, like a computer with DNA as the instructions. But a better metaphor is that we are cooked, and DNA is the recipe. Rarely the same way twice, and tons of little variations and substitutions and environmental factors play some role.

  29. 29.

    MisterDancer

    September 17, 2023 at 4:00 pm

    I recently read an absolutely fantastic paper of historical attitudes towards intersex people in historically Islamic areas. I think I mentioned it here before; there was a LOT of thoughtful engagement around the situation. A number of Islamic juists of note even said, under certain circumstances, the intersexed individual should choose their gender and have that officially reflected, and it was.

    This, of course, was not universal, nor really deeply respected Intersexed identities. There was a lot more…grappling, we’ll say, of people’s private parts than i would deem seemly. And of course, modern understandings may…differ.

    Yet it does show how there can be good faith efforts to understand Intersexed identities, even absent modern medical and scientific capabilities.

    “We” really, really don’t have to be so backwards and bigoted about so many topics in this “modern” society.

  30. 30.

    Princess

    September 17, 2023 at 4:02 pm

    @Eyeroller: wow, that’s fascinating! Thank you.

  31. 31.

    Anoniminous

    September 17, 2023 at 4:13 pm

    @BethanyAnne:

    Some DNA sequences code for amino acids that eventually become proteins. Some DNA sequences code for functional roles such as regulation, signalling, etc.  Some DNA sequences are instructions, e.g., ‘skip the next n-number of nucleotides.’  To add to the fun, at the moment we don’t know what some DNA sequences do or even if they do anything and the moment will change.

  32. 32.

    BlueGuitarist

    September 17, 2023 at 4:16 pm

    Impressive!

     

    Perhaps of interest (since i seem to be temporarily stuck in the 1700s), and also a challenge to American bigots:

    American Revolutionary war hero General Casimir Pulaski (“father of the American Cavalry”) was intersex

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-revolutionary-war-hero-casimir-pulaski-intersex-180971907/

    General von Steuben, who trained the American army at Valley Forge, was openly gay

    https://www.history.com/news/openly-gay-revolutionary-war-hero-friedrich-von-steuben

    Going back to the revolutionary war, the cause of American freedom was intertwined with freedom from narrow minded, repressive ideas about sex and sexuality.

  33. 33.

    Ruckus

    September 17, 2023 at 4:20 pm

    @MisterDancer:

    “We” really, really don’t have to be so backwards and bigoted about so many topics in this “modern” society.

    No we don’t.

    But.

    And it is a huge but that didn’t need to exist. If more people would understand that someone else’s biological existence has nothing to do with theirs, other than humanity can take a lot of forms. Personally I blame religion. Because for the last over 2000 yrs we have a segment of the world’s population (and a large segment of the founders of this country) that believe(d) that there are only 2 possibilities and that everyone, every living thing has to fit into one or the other category. Male/female. With us/Against us.

    Our education system was based around this. But science moves on, discovers more, explains more. And learns more. And so should all of us. But conservatives do not want to learn, they want to control, and in a way that does not allow differentiation from their limited view of we are right and everything else is wrong. It’s Yes or No. They want to conserve the world they think has existed for a very, very long time. And they are wrong, it never did exist that way. But we have the ability and the absolute NEED to see that it does exist in more ways than right or wrong.

  34. 34.

    MisterDancer

    September 17, 2023 at 4:21 pm

    @lowtechcyclist: Which makes no sense at all – it’s got to be one of those things they know but refuse to know.

    There’s a hierarchy to it, in my experience. Bigots like these make male desire of femininity their norm. Any young lad (usually but not always White in modern times) expressing desire for a feminine person who is a “standard” woman is protected. We’re told he’s just a lad being a lad, expressing “healthy ” amounts of masculine behavior, regardless of how aggressive that behavior becomes. People who they expect to be Women (almost always White or Light-Skinned PoC) who express attraction to most men are OK as well, so long as that attraction isn’t forceful — There’s a reason society was discomfort by Teen Women’s reactions to The Beatles,  even Frank Sinatra, and I submit that’s still seen as abnormal behavior these days, to some extent.

    Go outside those bounds, and that’s where trouble begins. For example, even if you’re “conventionally beautiful,” being too aggressive about your desires for Men is almost always going to get you negative press. A young “lady” who refuses to dress to that “norm” gets oft-negative notice, unless they can parley that difference into fame overshadowing the negative press.

  35. 35.

    MisterDancer

    September 17, 2023 at 4:28 pm

    @Ruckus: Personally I blame religion.

    You…you do note I just wrote that about Islam, right? I mean, we can blame religion for a lot (more on that in a sec). But I just documented that at least one religion had a number of it’s shot callers spent a whole lot of time working to integrate Intersexed people into it’s framework. Working to ensure that they were not pathologized. And I’m pretty sure it’s not the only one, although I’ve not done the research thereof.

    Religion is but a framework. And that framework can boost people up, or hide a host of evils. And, all too often, it can do both.

  36. 36.

    Dan B

    September 17, 2023 at 4:29 pm

    In India there are Hijra who are primarily intersex.  They live in groups and are given intersex children to raise.  Because India has many poor there are few “corrective” surgeries.  They were considered to be sacred and appeared at weddings to bless the union.  The British stopped that and currently Hijra show up in shops to frughten away customers and extort money from the shop owners to stop the intimidation.  It is nightmarish to put people through this due to circumstances beyond their control but that’s the British way, or at least the colonizers way.  I hope it’s gotten better but I doubt it under Modi.

  37. 37.

    FelonyGovt

    September 17, 2023 at 4:33 pm

    A trans male friend of mine was born intersex. When he was born the doctors “guessed wrong”, causing him 40+ years of anguish.

    The novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is a really good and I think, fairly sensitive fictional account of an intersex person growing up in a rather “traditional” Greek family.

  38. 38.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    September 17, 2023 at 4:34 pm

    @MisterDancer:

    Reminds me of Gloria’s speech from the Barbie movie:

    It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

    You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin.

    You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas.

    You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people.

    You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.

    But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.

    You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.

    I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.

    The first time I saw Barbie in the theater, the audience broke out in applause and cheering following Gloria’s speech.

  39. 39.

    Kelly

    September 17, 2023 at 4:34 pm

    The Pirates Gender Code isn’t really a rule it’s more of a guideline

  40. 40.

    FelonyGovt

    September 17, 2023 at 4:35 pm

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: That speech made me cry. Like, tears rolling down my cheeks. It was so true.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    September 17, 2023 at 4:42 pm

    OzarkHillbilly has good choice in heroes.

    And kudos to Politico for printing this.

  42. 42.

    wjca

    September 17, 2023 at 4:43 pm

    @MisterDancer: Religion is but a framework.

    And a flexible one, even in what is nominally the same faith.  Witness the variations, just within Western European Christianity, of the point where we are held to have a person.  Or, as it was sometimes phrased, “when the soul enters the body.”

    Today, among some, it is the instant that a sperm hits an egg.  Among others, it’s when the foetus can survive outside the womb.  At times in history, it was “quickening” — the point where the foetus could be felt to move.  In still others, it was several days after birth.  And others, if you care to dig into the topic.

    Same basic religious framework.  Quite different takes on a rather fundamental point.  No surprise if other religions have analogous variations.

  43. 43.

    MisterDancer

    September 17, 2023 at 4:45 pm

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Seen the movie twice now. Both times that speech gave me chills.

    Fun facts, both from this article:

    • Ferrera has a powerful TED talk along the same lines,
    • No less an actor than Meryl Streep wanted to do that speech!

    I’ve read some fascinating intersectional critiques of the speech, but I think the sheer power of getting those words out to all the young women seeing BARBIE? Whew.

    20 years from now, I hope my toothless Black ass is here to see all the amazing media from people inspired, as a kid, from seeing this work.

  44. 44.

    Dan B

    September 17, 2023 at 4:45 pm

    This post resonated with me as a rendering of the emotional journey of coming out.  There are periods in my coming out as gay where I made big changes and can’t remember how.  How did I get from Cincinnati to Chicago?  How did I tell my best friend I was homosexual?  It’s revealing that Alicia can’t remember her testimony.  Her emotions were overwhelming.

    There’s a big piece in today’s Seattle Times about a family that fled Texas with their 7 year old trans daughter.  “I breathe easier.” begins the headline.  They’d lived in fear that their daughter would be taken from them and put into foster care.  And she would be forced to live as a boy.

  45. 45.

    Another Scott

    September 17, 2023 at 4:50 pm

    @Eyeroller: One of my “favorite” stories is about Lydia Fairchild:

    Lydia Fairchild (born 1976) is an American woman who exhibits chimerism, having two distinct populations of DNA among the cells of her body. She was pregnant with her third child when she and the father of her children, Jamie Townsend, separated. When Fairchild applied for enforcement of child support in 2002, providing DNA evidence of Townsend’s paternity was a routine requirement. While the results showed Townsend to certainly be their father, they seemed to rule out her being their mother.

    Fairchild stood accused of fraud by either claiming benefits for other people’s children, or taking part in a surrogacy scam, and records of her prior births were put similarly in doubt. Prosecutors called for her two children to be taken away from her, believing them not to be hers. As time came for her to give birth to her third child, the judge ordered that an observer be present at the birth, ensure that blood samples were immediately taken from both the child and Fairchild, and be available to testify. Two weeks later, DNA tests seemed to indicate that she was also not the mother of that child.

    A breakthrough came when her defense attorney,[1] Alan Tindell, learned of Karen Keegan, a chimeric woman in Boston, and suggested a similar possibility for Fairchild and then introduced an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about Keegan.[2][3] He realized that Fairchild’s case might also be caused by chimerism. As in Keegan’s case, DNA samples were taken from members of the extended family. The DNA of Fairchild’s children matched that of Fairchild’s mother to the extent expected of a grandmother. They also found that, although the DNA in Fairchild’s skin and hair did not match her children’s, the DNA from a cervical smear test did match. Fairchild was carrying two different sets of DNA (with one of them of being her unborn twin’s), the defining characteristic of chimerism.

    Human biology is really, really complicated. Forcing people into boxes based on binary “understanding” is stupid and dangerous.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  46. 46.

    WaterGirl

    September 17, 2023 at 4:53 pm

    @FelonyGovt:

    A trans male friend of mine was born intersex. When he was born the doctors “guessed wrong”, causing him 40+ years of anguish.

    It wood be hard to come to terms with that, even if the decisions were well-meaning at the time.

  47. 47.

    WaterGirl

    September 17, 2023 at 4:56 pm

    @Baud: I had never heard of Political Magazine – my guess is that’s what allowed them to publish it.

  48. 48.

    Ruckus

    September 17, 2023 at 4:56 pm

    @MisterDancer:

    Yes I noticed.

    Just adding my 2 cents, if it’s worth that much….

    More agreeing with you than anything. And yes some religions in this world do account for differences in humans. Many(most?) seem to have been written by some that don’t accept differences at all, that hold that their religion and all of it’s bits and pieces are at the top of any argument whatsoever about anything.

  49. 49.

    WaterGirl

    September 17, 2023 at 4:57 pm

    @Dan B: Just reading that made me cry.

  50. 50.

    eclare

    September 17, 2023 at 5:05 pm

    @FelonyGovt:

    Same.  It encapsulated all the pressures perfectly.

  51. 51.

    Scout211

    September 17, 2023 at 5:11 pm

    @FelonyGovt: When he was born the doctors “guessed wrong”, causing him 40+ years of anguish.

    Oh god.  That is so sad for your friend.

    At the beginning of my career,  back in the 70s, a divorcing couple came to my office asking for couples counseling to help settle a parenting disagreement for their very young child.  This was before mandatory divorce mediation for divorcing families.

    You guessed it. The decision they needed help with was regarding their young child who was born intersex. One wanted the child to be surgically “assigned” a gender and the other parent felt surgery at this young age could do irreparable harm.

    I won’t go into details, but only to say that couples counseling was not the venue to settle this excruciatingly painful parenting issue.  I referred them elsewhere.  I often wondered about that child and always secretly hoped that the parent who did not want the surgery would prevail.

    I loved Middlesex.  What a great book.

  52. 52.

    Princess Leia

    September 17, 2023 at 5:21 pm

    @FelonyGovt: ​
      Until I read Middlesex I had no idea that Intersex existed. That book really was fabulous.

  53. 53.

    eversor

    September 17, 2023 at 5:22 pm

    @Ruckus:

    It is religious.  In the case of the US the dominant religion is Christianity.  Both the Old and New Testaments along with Jesus  himself are crystal clear that there are two genders and that’s it.  They are also all crystal clear that society must be patriarchal and that men are in charge and women must submit.  There’s no arguing with this as it’s central to the entire religion.

    Many of the religions Christianity exterminated did not work like this.   Homosexuality, gender bending, and all were accepted and in some cases embraced.  Plenty of them were also matriarchal as well.  When Christianity encountered these non Christian view points it exterminated those who had them, forced converted them at the tip of the sword or gun, and usually stole their children and sent them off to Christian educational camps.

    It’s the beating heart of the religion.  It’s why shit is so fucked up in the US as well.  And as long as Christianity exists those problems will exist.

  54. 54.

    prostratedragon

    September 17, 2023 at 5:23 pm

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:  Wow. What with other things, I forgot I’d meant to see that movie; move back to the front burner.

  55. 55.

    Eyeroller

    September 17, 2023 at 5:39 pm

    @Another Scott: There’s hardly any better example of “God doesn’t really care about embryos” than twin absorption.  It may be even more common than we realize–it seems to be fairly frequent that one identical twin kills the other and may absorb it, but we wouldn’t recognize that since their genome is the same.  A good 20-30% of twin pregnancies end with “vanishing twin syndrome” and that’s when it’s far enough along to see both. Fetus-in-fetu is even creepier, but fortunately extremely rare.

    When I was young I used to read about how animals like deer normally had singleton babies, but “if conditions were good” they’d have twins, and I’d wonder how that happened.  Now I know.  One kills the other in utero.  Of course around where I live there seems to be plenty for deer to eat so in spring I often see does with two fawns.

  56. 56.

    Another Scott

    September 17, 2023 at 5:47 pm

    @Eyeroller: Obligatory – My Big Fat Greek Wedding (1:07).

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  57. 57.

    Baud

    September 17, 2023 at 5:49 pm

    @Eyeroller:

    I think I absorbed a twin and that’s why I can’t lose weight.

  58. 58.

    Brachiator

    September 17, 2023 at 5:51 pm

    @mali muso:

    Ooh, I just listened to a great interview/conversation between her and Jonathan Van Ness on their podcast “Getting Curious”.  Highly recommend.

    Thanks for the tip. I will check it out.

     

    ETA. I can’t keep up with all the additional letters in the LGB… reference. I just accept the variety of humanity. However, I know that it is also important to people that their lives and their very existence be acknowledged, especially where some want to deny them or oppress them.

    Also, I guess that instead of acknowledging variation in human beings, some people are stuck on narrow ideas of “normal” and “abnormal.”

  59. 59.

    Baud

    September 17, 2023 at 5:55 pm

    @Brachiator:

    I choose abnormal.

  60. 60.

    Abnormal Hiker

    September 17, 2023 at 5:58 pm

    @Baud: Not all of us choose

  61. 61.

    Baud

    September 17, 2023 at 5:59 pm

    @Abnormal Hiker:

    Nice.

  62. 62.

    Lyrebird

    September 17, 2023 at 6:00 pm

    @MisterDancer: Did you ever see this NYT piece about ancient Jewish thought recognizing several genders beyond male and female?  Warnings: lots of discussion of suicide rates, and it’s not a gift link, but I know many commenters have hacks to read anyhow.  I forget how I got to read it.

  63. 63.

    cain

    September 17, 2023 at 6:04 pm

    @Alison Rose: @Ruckus: When bigots insist that kids are too young to know they’re anything but cis and straight, I just think back to the first week of fourth grade. I’d transferred to a new school for the GATE program, and I got paired up with a girl on a project, and I immediately decided that she was the coolest and most interesting girl ever and I wanted to be her best friend because she was just so neat and it would be so fun to be friends with her. She was so smart and so pretty, looked like Shirley Temple except not white. She had the coolest clothes and toys. I was fascinated.

    I just got off the phone with my 84 year old dad adn we got into it about transgendered folks because he was in a dinner convo with some republicans who was yelling that Democrats are forcing children to question their sex etc etc. He brought that up because I was telling him that my wife as a assistant principal has to deal with a lot of complex situations that teachers need guidance on. One was a 5 year old who insists that he is a girl and wanted to use she/her pronouns.

    My dad who is a democrat but I would not call him a liberal (I’m the most liberal in my family) but definitely reasonable. But he was alarmed by that because it seems that what his Republican colleague said had a ring of truth.

    I said, nobody is teaching these kids – unless there is a child psychologist involved. But kids KNOW that something is wrong. It’s their body. They know and it confuses them as well. The entire idea of transgender is to be able to align the mind with your body.

    My dad then had to both sides the stupid thing because I need to show compassion to these parents. I’m like yeah, I get it – some folks liberal/conservative/progressive all digest new facts at different rates – but you know at least on conservative end it almost always ends up with abuse on the kid because you are now forcing them into the birth gender causing trauma. I’m not going to show compassion for that.

  64. 64.

    cain

    September 17, 2023 at 6:09 pm

    @Dan B: You can always rely on the British to apply their Christian outlook to what was relatively healthy. Even better that whole thing was recognized when the Muslims were in charge.

    In fact, I would say when Hindu conservatisms lash out at shit like Valentines day – they learned all those traditional value bullshit from the British. It’s not Hindu values but Christian values being spat out.

  65. 65.

    LiminalOwl

    September 17, 2023 at 6:09 pm

    @Lyrebird: Thank you! I was trying to find that article before I read your comment. Here’s a gift link, for anyone who wants to read it (gaa, looks awfully messy, but I don’t know what can be trimmed).

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/opinion/trans-teen-suicide-judaism.html?unlocked_article_code=CI0O9mGmFgsa17jpcqZRP84yOp2vwU5h3nGKAK6YXmkC7IiR_H9gelsO5PPgWhTC5mKQ66AXufjS5duYl62CiRzrQ9kTZL5lkflmfO2IUMIcLME4pj03OrFDiS4ETNkFSY3pL2uN677tMtqM4UH90VIiPxwzSIhb8jOSZWAPJcC9yiTHFsvtFb56aO8DC2LWHa3KYRd4hC0LVMva15drwSYdJuZRuXtkab-OtEO-lShZ5yNutnFY2pw1KIeUw9DIKasBMoK4CQjAPl9M9P-WO41HhOZrYg5-qIU1fqquJptGWCFem6ZAymmwXLgZnVH7fQ0V5974HYrukn6PdXR1l3uDB7E&smid=url-share

    I thought there were relevant articles at heyalma.com but my search didn’t turn them up.

  66. 66.

    HinTN

    September 17, 2023 at 6:11 pm

    @BethanyAnne: Two hours late but that’s a great analogy, which may explicate why, when The Blogmaster put up that video of the Botany Tropicals guys, who were adorable, what I bought off their web site were the greeting cards that asserted, “Your cornbread ain’t quite done in the middle”.

  67. 67.

    Jay

    September 17, 2023 at 6:14 pm

    @Baud:

    you need to stop eating for two,

    get more exercise,

    and you would be so much prettier if you smiled more,…..

  68. 68.

    Brachiator

    September 17, 2023 at 6:14 pm

    @MisterDancer:

    People who they expect to be Women (almost always White or Light-Skinned PoC) who express attraction to most men are OK as well, so long as that attraction isn’t forceful — There’s a reason society was discomfort by Teen Women’s reactions to The Beatles,  even Frank Sinatra, and I submit that’s still seen as abnormal behavior these days, to some extent.

    You can also add Elvis, the young Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallée to the list of singers and performers who made women swoon. There are some Looney Tunes animated cartoons that riff on Bing Crosby.

    And of course there’s Lisztomania.

    Lisztomania or Liszt fever was the intense fan frenzy directed toward Hungarian composer Franz Liszt during his performances. This frenzy first occurred in Berlin in 1841 and the term was later coined by Heinrich Heine in a feuilleton he wrote on April 25, 1844, discussing the 1844 Parisian concert season. Lisztomania was characterized by intense levels of hysteria demonstrated by fans, akin to the treatment of celebrity musicians today – but in a time not known for such musical excitement.

    Admirers of Liszt would swarm over him, fighting over his handkerchiefs and gloves. Fans would wear his portrait on brooches and cameos. Women would try to get locks of his hair, and whenever he broke a piano string, admirers would try to obtain it in order to make a bracelet. Some female admirers would even carry glass phials into which they poured his coffee dregs.

    In the West, female frenzy has often been acknowledged, even worshiped and sometimes feared, as with the ancient Greek maenads, the “raving ones” who were followers of Bacchus.

  69. 69.

    Baud

    September 17, 2023 at 6:17 pm

    @cain:

    I’m sympathetic to loving parents. It can’t be easy raising a trans child in this society.

  70. 70.

    Another Scott

    September 17, 2023 at 6:20 pm

    @Eyeroller: Ooh.  I just had a thought:

    How many souls does a chimera have??

    Doing a quick Google search, it’s clear that I am not the first to ask that question.  ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  71. 71.

    evodevo

    September 17, 2023 at 6:20 pm

    @Eyeroller: ​
      No, it’s not too weedy…almost no one I know is aware of any of this stuff. I used to emphasize it in my community college bio classes because I knew they would never come across this info again (and CERTAINLY had never been told any of it in small town HS LOL). People have no idea how fraught the developmental process is, or how many mishaps or roads not taken there can be. Especially with all the know-nothingism rampant nowadays, the more education on this, the better.

  72. 72.

    Brachiator

    September 17, 2023 at 6:22 pm

    @Baud:

    I choose abnormal.

    Young Frankenstein, Abby Normal.

  73. 73.

    MisterDancer

    September 17, 2023 at 6:22 pm

    @Lyrebird: @LiminalOwl: thanks to both of you! I have not read it, so I shall do so with interest.

  74. 74.

    Brachiator

    September 17, 2023 at 6:29 pm

    @Alison Rose:

    Okay well, I don’t think we really need to turn this into a TedTalk on fetal development, but going off what I have read elsewhere in scientific articles, and what the author says in this piece — “All humans actually start out with a common genital anatomy until seven weeks after conception, when they then sexually differentiate.”

    I think some of this is actually stated much like this in some biology and general science texts.

    This may be why some fundamentalists hate science. They want to insist on “male and female, created He them,” a hard line not supported by reality.

  75. 75.

    TriassicSands

    September 17, 2023 at 6:34 pm

    I’m sorry, but Weigel’s story just doesn’t ring true. As we all “know” God created human beings in his image and thus, we are all exactly alike (as male and female and only male and female) and perfect. There can be no mix-ups, given the big guy’s omniscience and perfection. Just ask a Republican.

    Oh, if only that were true. Life would be so much simpler, but it would also probably be less interesting. Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be any more evidence of that being the case than there is that Trump will soon start acting presidential or that Joe Biden is running an international crime syndicate with his son. (Personally, I gave up on the former the day Trump announced he was running in 2015 and it’s becoming clear that the RepubLicans will never give up on the latter.)

    The capacity for human beings to ignore things that they find inconvenient or that conflict with the fairy tales in the Bible seems almost unlimited. The problem, in one sense, isn’t the Bible, whose books were written and consolidated by sexist/misogynistic men with an agenda that was hardly a blueprint for a just society. No, the problem is that something so obvious is ignored and misinterpreted by the many modern human beings who have much the same agenda.

    If there is one thing that my reading of the Bible told me, it was that no “God” either wrote or inspired it (in any positive, meaningful way). Good people can believe in the Bible and Christianity as long as they don’t lose sight of how they came into existence and what their proper roles are in society. Personally, the more I read the Bible and read about it, the less I could believe. I understand that for many Americans religion is a part of a social life that doesn’t appeal to me, but isn’t, in and of itself, harmful. It becomes harmful when people believe they have the right to codify their religious beliefs into law and impose those on non-believers. That is what the SCOTUS majority has been doing for some years now.

    So, my heart goes out to Weigel for any difficulties or struggles she may face and I admire her courage in going public especially in the benighted state of Texas. My hope, which seems less realistic with each passing year, is that all Americans will eventually embrace rationality, decency, and the need to live and let live.

  76. 76.

    cain

    September 17, 2023 at 6:38 pm

    @Baud: Absolutely. 100% agree – loving your child no matter what especially for things like this is damn hard.

  77. 77.

    Eunicecycle

    September 17, 2023 at 6:39 pm

    @Eyeroller: my daughter apparently had an embryo that split, and later one was absorbed. I don’t remember what the evidence was but they could tell by ultrasound. She already had a set of fraternal twins so that would have been crazy!

  78. 78.

    wjca

    September 17, 2023 at 6:44 pm

    @Brachiator: I can’t keep up with all the additional letters in the LGB…

    Eventually, they’ll run out of letters.  Maybe just break down and go with ETC.

  79. 79.

    Eyeroller

    September 17, 2023 at 6:50 pm

     

    @Another Scott: That’s an excellent description of a dermoid cyst but (and I had to look this up) they are rarely due to twin absorption.  Usually due to skin stem cells getting trapped in an interior area rather than exterior.

  80. 80.

    Ruckus

    September 17, 2023 at 7:25 pm

    Life can be anything but the expected. Expectations are what we think something should be, should turn out like, become. But often what happens is far different than expectations. Life can be simple. CAN BE. It often isn’t in any way simple. We often don’t turn out to be who or what our parents thought we would or who or what we thought we would. I retired 2 yrs ago and I’m still trying to find my way as a person that takes care of themself but doesn’t actually work – other than house work. I had a job of one sort or another for 60 yrs. And not not all of them were full time… I didn’t/don’t know what I want to do as a retired person but I 100000% knew I did not want to work any longer. Work is somewhat stressful! Who’da known?

  81. 81.

    Ohio Mom

    September 17, 2023 at 7:31 pm

    @eversor: You might find this interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/opinion/trans-teen-suicide-judaism.html

  82. 82.

    Ruckus

    September 17, 2023 at 7:33 pm

    @TriassicSands:

    No group of more than 20 humans will ever all eventually embrace rationality, decency, and the need to live and let live.

    Because no group of humans over some nominal size will ever have all have a basis or upbringing to eventually embrace rationality, decency, and the need to live and let live.

    I’m selecting 20 as the maximum sized group that might, and that is still a slim chance given any 20 humans.

  83. 83.

    Ohio Mom

    September 17, 2023 at 7:34 pm

    @Lyrebird: I should have read the whole thread, you got there first.

  84. 84.

    Anyway

    September 17, 2023 at 7:38 pm

    Another fan of Middlesex here. It also has a great history of Detroit. I sought out Jeffrey Eugenides’ later books but was disappointed.

  85. 85.

    Another Scott

    September 17, 2023 at 7:41 pm

    @Eyeroller: Neat.

    Made me look…

    My older brother had teeth in the roof of his mouth that were cut out when we had braces as kids.

    Teeth are weird!

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  86. 86.

    lowtechcyclist

    September 18, 2023 at 7:45 am

    Dead thread, but I’m going to drop this in here anyway since it’s directly on topic. NIH did a survey of nearly 200 intersex persons back in 2018.  It’s long, and I haven’t read the whole thing yet.  Here’s their report:

    A national study on the physical and mental health of intersex adults in the U.S. – PMC (nih.gov)

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