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Klara’s Story

I’d been born with ambiguous genitalia, more or less 2 on the Prader scale though that scale is only a shortcut and things went some in this direction, some in that direction. My parents had wished for a boy, for one reason or another, and though usually people with genitals like mine are adjusted to look more female, in my case the opposite had been done; what it had taken, for the doctors to do this, I do not know and can only guess. What had been done exactly, I do not know and can only guess; why my gonads had remained, I do not know and can only guess; what injections I’d been given back then, I do not know and can only guess.

It is a common thing, in my life: “I do not know, and can only guess”. Erratum after erratum, until what could have been could be no more, and a play-pretend became in its place instead.

I grew up as a boy, with not quite. In the first year of life I’d had a caretaker, due to my family’s money, and one of them had quit after an argument with my parents about me not being a boy. In the kindergarten, I’d been a pile of confusion, reacting when the teachers had called for girls, and not reacting when they’d called for boys; an airhead with a head full of ideas, I’d been called, and they’d pushed me towards books. Other parents had reacted weirdly when I’d been called the name given to me, a decidedly male one; this, too, got resolved by some of the teachers by giving me nicknames that were more gender-neutral. The name I have now, I got from one of my great-aunts, at the age of 4, after she’d declared my parents and grandparents cretins for trying to push this play-pretend nonsense on me.

“At the age of 5, my mother had tried to commit suicide, her note stating that she is doing it because of me and that it is all my fault for how I am. I’d been able to read, then, already.”

At the age of 7, I’d gotten declared a liar in the first grade of elementary school, for naively stating that what I have in my pants isn’t like what the other boys have. I do not blame the teacher, for it is so unlikely a possibility that their disbelief is understandable; I do blame my parents, however, for going along with it without paying attention to the details.

Throughout the first grades of elementary school, I’d flourished regardless of the obstacle of the “liar” label. I’d done magnificently in math, okay in most other subjects, and I’d taken to my extracurriculars—ballet, singing, piano—very well. Obviously, the ballet classes had had a repeat of the kindergarten experience, with being given a nickname instead of a name, but by then I’d had friends in elementary school too, and being called nicknames had simply been my thing. In the meantime, I’d had at least one more surgery, and ran from the operating table for another one—though if memory holds that one had been cosmetic—due to fear of needles and injections that had started to form by then.

However, in time things had caught up with me. In the fourth grade, at the age of 10, I’d had three upperclassmen try to bully me, thinking that with me being so girly a boy I’d be an easy target. They were correct, in a manner of speaking; all the teachers and my parents both had denied me help, and I’d resorted to skipping school. When discovered and shackled by some solution to my skipping with no solution to the bullying, I went beyond what people had thought capable, time and again; even now, I find it slightly amusing how easily I’d forged signatures of about a dozen teachers, while being left-handed. However, a family friend, if he could be called this way, had at some point caught me and used my isolation and my situation to his advantage.

“There’d been agreement, but no consent. There could not have been consent, any of the many times.”

In the end, I’d been forced back to school anyway, and I’d thrown myself at the bullies. I got beat up worse than them, but when the nurse, the one person in the school who’d cared, had called their parents to inform them that they are beat up because of a gang-up on a girl, the bullying had stopped.

Why she had cared, I do not know and can only guess.

My grades had gone down, and my extracurriculars had stopped feeling good. Eating had become a chore on the good days, and a challenge on the bad ones. I’d distanced myself from my friends, and when at the age of 11 puberty had started and then at the age of 12 changes had been visible, a different kind of bullying had started. When someone is labelled as a freak, it is easy to see them not as human but as a target; and when someone is seen as having breasts and slight curves and a voice that is lower than what any of the boys has, with the adults staying quiet it is easy to see that person as a freak. I do not blame them; I blame the parents, and the teachers.

At the age of 13, I got sent to therapy for maladjusted adolescents, after social services got notified by someone—probably one of the parents of the other kids, though I do not know and can only guess. It had helped, some, and I wish I could thank those people for being there and for telling me that I am not the problem.

Then, still at the age of 13, I went through menarche. In the confusion, I hid it from my parents completely, going as far as throwing away my underwear. Perhaps that had been a mistake, and they would have fixed things; or perhaps, it had been what had saved me from more surgeries to mutilate me into their play-pretend version of something. What followed this was a rather confusing time, during which I’d found new friends; then after one of them had gotten pregnant at 14 for reasons indicative of familial trauma, her reasoning had resonated with me too much. Within the next half a year, I’d become the neighborhood bicycle, having engaged in sexual activities with a lot of people; I believe that I had not gotten pregnant then, but my medical history is so much of a scrapbooking art piece that I do not know and can only guess.

When I was 15, I’d moved out, couch-surfing for some time. In hindsight, that had been an absolutely idiotic decision, as it is only luck that had stopped me from having to engage in sex work—instead, I’d tutored kids older than me in math—but to this day I can’t imagine the opposite decision—which is staying with my parents—as something that would have resulted in anything good. I’d attended a high school, this time pretending to be a boy, and it mostly worked as none of my classmates had seemed to know how my body is except for one who’d been paid of in kind. It was definitely a rather strange experience, especially with the school being one in which there’d literally been less than 10 girls in the whole school—and one of them had been me, in all my crossdressing glory—but I have some fond memories of it and I consider it to be a good part of my past.

At 17, I chose to tell another family member about my experience from when I’d been 10, the reply I’d gotten being one that’d led me to trying to follow my mother’s footsteps from when I’d been 5. I’d gotten stopped by a friend of mine, who afterwards became my first boyfriend—and in hindsight, I fear that he’d done it to keep me alive, which absolutely hadn’t been a good thing for him—and who is the person whom I consider to be the one I’d truly given my virginity to: informed consent, and all of that. I’d gotten pregnant with him at the age of 18 to 19, and then miscarried which kinda happens sometimes, especially to those who try to subside on cosmic energy instead of food; meanwhile, he’d left for student exchange.

Years passed afterwards, with minor things that don’t necessarily matter—such as some minor steroid use, a few sexual encounters, and accidental intimacy that shouldn’t have happened—and with things not necessarily minor that I don’t have enough knowledge about; for an example, I know that my mother’s father is dangerous sexually, and that he’d had a preference for boyish girls, but how I know this … I do not know and can only guess.

The next important event happened at 27, when due to lack of good enough access to a gynecologist I’ve decided to get my gender marker corrected. It turns out that in the country I am in, that’s not doable unless you have a diagnosis that you are transgender, and you cannot get one if you are known to be intersex; to quote one doctor, “If you have never been fully male, then you cannot understand being male well enough to decide that it is better for you to be female,” and I believe that leaving this one without a comment is better for everyone’s sanity. The diagnosis process has indeed been a farce, with quite a few tests being repeated until I got the result I wanted, and an interview during which some pretty bizarrely invasive questions about my sex life have been asked. During the process, I’ve found out that I am a chimera, with both 46,XX and 46,XY karyotype detected in my cells—the second test was a cruddy one which could barely detect anything, to give the doctor who would diagnose me as transgender a paper saying “46,XY, normal male karyotype”. I’ve also found during this process that I feel pretty okay on testosterone—which I took for the hormone testing, having gotten some less than legally—but I hate being forced into one or the other instead of just being able to be.

“I consider the name given to me by my parents to be my brother’s name, and the one given to me by my great-aunt to be mine.”

My transition after the diagnosis has been a farce as well, as I’ve tried to titrate the changes via clothing choices and my behavior to match this, but apparently the people at the workplace I’ve worked at at the time haven’t considered a few months to be slow enough a timeframe, so at some point I just finished my transition in a day to spite them; I definitely am my mother’s daughter, and let’s leave it at that.

Once everything has been changed legally, the process of trying to find out what exactly had been done to me had started.

It turns out that my medical history is full of fantasy-genre fanfiction, such as me supposedly having been surgically circumcised when not only is this not a procedure done often in this country but also I most assuredly lack the equipment for it. The doctors were forced to rely on the signs visible, such as potential scar tissue around my genitals in the shape of a crescent moon—unfortunately, no moon magic to go with it—and the knowledge of what could have been code for what, and they didn’t get much closer. Afterwards, I turned out to studies, poring through them to understand what exactly could have been done, why, and how should I expect my body to function. To this day, there are things that I don’t know and am unlikely to know, but at least I can take the play-pretend and turn it into something that is me, one erratum after another.


The views expressed in the stories shared do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of Intersex Canada. This section of the website acts as a platform to project intersex voices, and empower intersex people and their loved ones.