Insight: Nov 7

This week on SBS Insight speaks to people who are Intersex about how they navigate life and the medical system.

Alex David was raised as a girl but is chromosomally male, born with ambiguous genitalia and internal gonads that did not turn into anything. Alex is Intersex which is when someone is born with male and female characteristics. Alex had surgery when young to look more female because doctors reportedly didn’t have a clue about Alex’s sex. Growing up, Alex felt out of place and from the age of 17 tried to live as a male. Alex now identifies as non-binary.

Bonnie and Phoebe Hart were born with testes in their abdomens instead of ovaries and a uterus. At the age of 12 and 17 they both had surgery to remove the testes because they were told there was a high cancer risk. They were then instructed to do vaginal dilation which would better enable them to have heterosexual sex. They said it was a painful and unsupervised process.

Sophia Young was born with an Intersex variation called mosaic Klinefelter’s Syndrome and says she was born with both a penis and vagina. She wasn’t operated on as a child but sometimes wished she was. She was raised as a girl but at the age of eight says her parents changed her into a boy and changed her name to Harrison. She later changed her identity back to a girl and started modelling in an effort to raise money to have corrective surgery on her genitals.

‘Louise’s’ first child was born with a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Louise and her husband decided to operate on their daughter when she was a baby. She had a clitoral reduction, labiaplasty and her vagina was formed. They don’t regret the decision and say it was to ensure she lived as a normal girl.

Nearly two per cent of Australians have some sort of Intersex variation. It’s as common as people with red hair. Intersex advocates are calling for a ban of surgery on Intersex infants and say procedures on people before they are old enough to consent are a violation of human rights. However, doctors say any ban would affect many families and individuals who are happy with the surgery they had as children.

8:30pm Tuesday on SBS.