INTERSEX
((Banner: Intersex))
((Reporter/Camera: Genia Dulot))
((Popup Banner: People who are intersex are born with a combination of male and female physical characteristics))
((Map: Santa Cruz, California))
((NATS))
((Sarah Keenan, Intersex))
Intersex is biology. Intersex means that there’s a combination of anatomy, chromosomes or hormones that don’t fit neatly into binary definitions of sex. I only found out when I was 49 years old, so eight years ago, and my parents and my doctors lied to me for my entire life, basically, and told me that I was a girl who couldn’t make hormones and have puberty. And the truth is, I wasn’t actually a girl and I never felt like a girl. I said to my father, “Pop, I think I’m genetically male. Do you know anything about that?” And he said, “Yeah, when you were a teenager the doctor said that they could make you a three inch penis if I wanted them to, and give you testosterone and I said, “Hell no. That’s my daughter. She’s a girl.”
So, he made the decision when I was 16 that I would receive estrogen and become as close to a girl as possible, rather than receiving testosterone and become as close to a boy as possible. And he picked a surgery for me to make my body appear more female rather than the surgery that would have made my body appear more male.
I needed to feel some control, so I got involved in cutting my body with knives and with razor blades. You’re not going to cut me. I’m going to cut me and I’m in control of where the cutting stops and where the cutting starts. I’m in the driver’s seat. You doctors, you parents are not in the driver’s seat. I’m in control of my body.
So, it was, in a sick way, it was taking ownership of this body that doctors and parents thought was their property to make decisions about.
Not to get too romantic, but love was the way out. Meeting my husband, being loved by him, you know, and he would see me slicing up parts of my body and he would just lovingly put his hand on mine, you know, and say, “you don’t need to do that. I love you so much. You’re perfect the way you are. You just, you don’t need to do that.”
And over time I began to believe him, that I was loveable just as I was.
((David Keenan, Sarah Keenan’s Husband))
Well, I’m attracted to Sarah and it’s less important what her gender is than who she is. I love her. If she’s genetically male and taller and stronger than usual, I’m okay with that. That’s not that important to me. If that makes me pansexual, I’m okay with that. If it makes me homosexual, I’m okay with that too. I love my wife. The only thing that’s troubling to me really is how much trouble she’s had getting acceptance of that in public.
((Sarah Keenan, Intersex))
Here it goes….Oh, I hit you in the head.
We want to see the surgeries that are conducted on intersex babies and children stopped until the child becomes old enough to make a decision for themselves, to express a gender identity, choose to either stay in between male and female, in terms of physical presentation, or choose to have surgery to align their body with male or female. But for it to be the person’s choice rather than doctors making that decision or parents making that decision, because they get the gender choice wrong a lot and these surgeries cannot be undone.
I have friends who had larger surgeries when they were babies and so much tissue was cut off that they’re not capable of experiencing sexual pleasure.
((POP UP BANNER: In 2016, Keenan became the first person in the US to have a birth certificate amended to reflect intersex))
((Sarah Keenan, Intersex))
And I wanted this birth certificate to say intersex so that in the future we’ll live in a society where babies don’t have to be cut up just to make them fit into a wrong box.
