Physician-induced dissociation

This morning started off in a rather nightmarish fashion. It began with an email response from the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the US, whom I had contacted a while ago, to ask for help with finding a solution to my intersex situation. Sadly their email kept mentioning and referred to my condition as a medical disorder, the infamous 'disorder of sex development' (DSD). This is a sensitive term to me, because this term has been used extensively by all of those physicians - including those in the Netherlands - who have mistreated me and attempted to force me to undergo genital reassignment surgery, as well as tried to brainwash me into believing that I had to be transsexual.

To reiterate, in medical terms a 'disorder' is a condition which is incompatible with a normal, healthy existence. Worst case it implies a non-viable existence. Disorders in a medical sense are without exception conditions which require immediate and constant care, demanding constant care where a cure through surgery or otherwise isn't possible. Almost all intersex conditions do not fall under this header. People like me do not require medical attention, as such. Aside from complications which can develop for some conditions - like my hermaphroditic condition - intersex conditions are almost always as a rule complication-free and do not require medical attention.

The main reason why an intersex individual might still request medical care is in order to fill in blanks about their body and to maybe tweak some things in order to make their body feel more like their own. This falls more under the header of 'cosmetic surgery' than that of urgent medical care to deal with a life-threatening disorder. Being infertile isn't a disorder either, but just an inconvenience.

Due to all of this and many bad experiences I got triggered quite badly by this NIH email. They provided some links to resources, but upon perusing these I found that they were all institutes exclusively using the term 'DSD'. I even contacted one in Germany today, and they refused to even answer my queries about how they treated intersex cases, and whether they could help me. I feel like I got brushed off there. At any rate I wrote back to the NIH, closing that path of inquiry and informing them that their use of the term DSD is both offensive and unhelpful, and that I would pursue the search for intersex experts via sources with more empathy and scientific understanding.

Suffice it to say that during all of this I became rather agitated. With my post-traumatic disorder distorting every thought and observation, I felt more and more hunted and desperate until I was nothing more than a trembling emotional shell, ready to snap if something happened to push me just that little bit further.

Most of it all is just this incredible uncertainty, with one physician proclaiming that I have for example a vagina, and no prostate, while another will proclaim the opposite. One will state that I am physically a male, while another will state that I am physically female. In all of this I only have these proclamations and my own observations. Thus I know that I do not appear to have a male body. I know from getting cut open back in 2011 that I have at least a rudimentary vagina, yet this seems to be snowed under by physicians vehemently denying that I have any female genitals.

To my thinking much of this confusing mess might be that most of these physicians simply do not have a clue. I trust the surgeon who cut me open and saw things with his own eyes. I do not trust those who disagree with that assessment, and think that they're just afraid to show that they're utterly clueless. They'd drive a patient to suicide with their rigid attitude than to admit that they do not know, or might be wrong.

For that is the course I am on. Despite my rational mind puzzling together the most likely truth from all of these fragments, fact remains that I do not know what is going on, or what this body is. I do not know why I'm having these pregnancy-related symptoms. I do not know whether a reconstructive surgery can give me a functional vagina, or that I'll just a vagina-less female. When I look into the mirror, I do not see a woman, or a hermaphrodite. I merely see doubt, frustration and impotent rage reflected back at me. I'm not even a body at this point. I'm not even nothing. I'm less than nothing. Just a brain which may or may not exist. I'm not sure.

There is no 'I'. There is no 'me'. Over the past decades as I have tried to figure things out I have only become more familiar with the horribly pleasant sensation of dissociation. Unable to define this accursed body I was born into, my mind distances itself from it. The result is a numb, but not unpleasant sensation. Confronting my mind then with the existence of this body breaches the dissociation and results in expressions of frustrations and rage only aimed at utterly destroying such a horrible joke of a body.

I still do not think that being intersex is the problem here. I have no problems with just being myself, with a healthy body and interesting characteristics. Yet it is clear that the problem here is simply put physicians. They have made me sick. They are making me sicker. They have caused my PTSD, my dissociation. They frustrate, enrage and have pushed me to commit suicide once already, and will not relent. They are driving me closer to attempting suicide again every day. They don't have empathy. They aren't human. They just have their massively swollen egos with which they crush patient after patient. Each sacrifice feeding their ego even further.

It's why self-important physicians and psychologists could once before confidently state that homosexuality was just a disorder, but that they could cure it, not caring in the slightest about the countless victims they made this way. It's why today this same carnage repeats itself, but this time with intersex individuals as the sacrificial offering. Homosexuals regained their humanity. Intersex people still have all the humanity of a lab rat in the eyes of physicians.

This is why I cannot deal with this body of mine any longer. This is why I have to force myself to keep living and not slit my throat this very moment. This is why I regret ever having been born. I have no value in the eyes of the world.

If I could snap my fingers and cause every 'DSD' supporter to instantly suffer cardiac arrest, I would do it. My hatred and contempt reaches that far, fuelled by the endless pain and agony I harbour inside my chest. I want to stop living. It hurts so much. Yet I still hold the hope that some day being alive won't mean feeling intense pain amidst the shards of me as a person. And that's maybe the worst curse or cowardice of all: not having the guts to end this torment.


Maya