Surviving Auschwitz: on the sins of being intersex

Having been born and raised in the Netherlands, stories of the horrors committed by the Nazis not only during the occupation of the Netherlands, but also those elsewhere in Europe are something which one grows up with. I also read a lot of (children's) books which covered aspects of this, including of course Anne Frank's diary. Despite this, it wasn't until later that I also became aware of not only Jews having been deported to concentration camps, but also homosexuals, gypsies, 'feeble-minded individuals' and many others. Usually in the name of 'racial purity' and such concepts.

Because of this I wasn't too surprised to learn via a German study [1] that intersex individuals were also dragged into this. The general attitude towards intersex individuals under German National Socialism was that intersex (or 'hermaphrodites' as they were then referred to) people were symptoms of racial impurities, the degenerate result of mixing of races and the like. Advised was to 'normalise' them, but preferably in such a way that they would be infertile, lest they would produce offspring.

Although much of any evidence that may have existed of medical experimentation on intersex people - by Josef Mengele and other Nazi doctors - was very likely destroyed along with other documents as the Soviet Red Army and Allied forces approached, the remaining evidence shows that such experiments were very likely performed. Possibly along the lines of the twin experiments and on individuals with specific conditions, such as dwarfism.


What caught me by surprise was that even exposure to brief snippets of this work would provoke an incredibly intense traumatic emotional response in me. Considering the many years of having dealt with reading through unpleasant texts on the topic of intersex, I had not expected this. Yet, just a bit of this paper has so far managed to completely emotionally destabilise me for days straight on three occasions. Especially the first day immediately after initial exposure I feel beset by sadness, hopelessness and frustration, finding myself unable to stop crying.

Clearly there's something about this work that manages to trigger a traumatic PTSD callback in a way that rarely happens in such an extreme manner. But why a historical work? After all, I wasn't deported to Auschwitz, did not undergo those medical experiments and didn't spend years facing the inevitable demise of myself and everyone around me for years as we suffered through one day after another. So what's the similarity?

Having spent a few months thinking about it, I am quite certain that much of the issue lies in that although the phrasing of how one used to talk about intersex people in the 1930s and 1940s, and how people talk about intersex people today has changed, the underlying meaning and implications has not. For example:

• 'Symptom of racial impurity' turned into 'biological flukes'.
• 'Correcting intersex cases' became 'normalisation of genitals'.
• Justification changed from 'racial purity' to 'ensuring happiness of an intersex child by not appearing different'. [2]
• 'degenerate being' became 'disorder of sex development'.

Over the past years, I have expressed on many occasions (e.g. [3]) the feeling of being a part of medical experiments, rather than being treated as a patient by doctors. My diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder appears to have strong roots in these experiences [4]. It feels as though I have been subjected to human experimentation involving the 'normalisation' of an intersex person. Try different brainwashing and other methods, see what sticks. Even if this may have been done out of ignorance rather than as a wilful experiment. [5]


So then, the upsetting thing about Ms Klöppel's article then appears to be that it rams home the point that nothing has really changed between 1933 and 2020? At least at a cursory glance it does appear that way. It explains the intense traumatic response, provoking more intense and longer lasting PTSD flashbacks than I can recall having experienced before.

It's possible that what makes it so much more intense is the accompanying realisation that if things haven't really progressed in the past eighty years when it comes to treating intersex individuals like full human beings with their own will and desires, then why would they change in the coming years or decades? Cue hopelessness and depression.


This is not a pleasant topic. It is also not a topic which I enjoy dealing with today. As much as I have come to accept my own body [6], I cannot accept my circumstances. I cannot accept the way that society treats me and others like me [7].

It appears that today's society has a lot more introspection and soul-searching to do. Because clearly intersex folk like yours truly are not a cause of society's woes, just as we weren't back in in the 1930s.


Maya



[1] Ulrike Kloeppel - Intersex under National Socialism http://mayaposch.com/literature_intersex.php
[2] The Intersex Controversy http://mayaposch.com/intersex-controversy.php
[3] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2015/06/for-what-am-i-but-medical-experiment.html
[4] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-eternal-war.html
[5] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/01/erasure-of-intersex-identity-through.html
[6] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-five-stages-towards-accepting-ones.html
[7] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/societys-attitude-towards-intersex-is.html

The five stages towards accepting one's body

Probably one of the most horrific things that has happened to me over the past years has been the struggle towards understanding and accepting my body. Not surprisingly, perhaps, in light of me being told since I was born that I was a boy, then a teenage boy, young adult male, male-to-female transsexual, oh wait, intersex, oh, totally transgender, no wait, MRI scan says you're a hermaphrodite. Nah, you're definitely male but you want to look like a woman. But you already have the body of a woman. Just the genitals, you know...

Countless years filled with staring at my image in mirrors, loathing, hating, loving, despairing. What should I see? I didn't know. What does my face, my body, any of it look like? Male? Female? Ugly? Pretty? Just regular? Just what?


You're just looking at a pile of mirror shards, with each shard reflecting a different 'me'. The person they told me that I was. The person others told me that I actually am. The inklings of a new 'me'. Maybe the real me is in there? Perhaps. How would you even be able to tell?


Even in all of that, there never was any doubt in my mind that my mind is me. That I feel like myself. What I went through in 2005 was to realise that I had been wearing a mask all those years. The mask that the lie of me having male physiology had created. Because my environment believed it. Because I had had no choice but to believe it. I mean, just look at those genitals.

Two years later I found out that I have even more genitals than just those 'male' ones. MRI scans are amazing, allowing one to take a gander inside one's own body. So now I really was a hermaphrodite. Likely a twin-in-one, because two embryos got a bit too cosy while in my mother's uterus. Pretty amazing. It gives me a good feeling to think about it like that. My body is pretty amazing in that regard.


But I must conform. I must choose between the binary sides. There's no other choice. Just imagine the peace it'd give after having that ugly male part removed. Only... it's still a part of me. It's still a part of my body. Why would I remove part of my body like that? Something that has actual uses, like being able to stand up peeing and not contracting urinary tract infections every other week? I'm not mad.

So... I'm keeping all of it. That's pretty cool, actually.


Maybe it's a bit like one of those Zen Buddhist Enlightenment trips. Or just the cheap version from The Matrix. There is no spoon.

There never was 'gender'. That was the great delusion. What I struggled against wasn't my mind fighting with my body about what my body should really look like. That was just society's horrific influence trying to poison my mind, turning it against me. Against my body. Make me sad and unhappy without me ever finding out that I was feeling sad because I had betrayed myself and my body along with it.

I'm not 'male' or 'female'. Outside of a purely biological sense those terms are completely meaningless. One cannot feel like a 'male' or 'female', because none of that has any meaning. What one can do is get used to one's own body. Learn to accept it. Love it. Understand it. Take care of it. It is all you truly have in this life, after all.


So much in society is about masks. Trying to take on different identities with clothing, make-up, body modifications including alterations to or removal of genitals, with tattoos and piercings. By adopting behaviours like smoking, using drugs or marijuana. They're all masks. None of that is real. None of it really changes anything. There is no spoon.

You're still 'you' inside. No matter what you do to your body.


There are many body configurations which I could have ended up with. I could have gone along with those friendly specialists and I'd have a nice 'transsexual' mark in my medical file, I'd have had GRS surgery and all that. And it would have backfired horribly. Because then my body would have continued its puberty regardless, and the horrible truth would have begun to dawn on me. That I didn't listen to my body. That the mutilation from this GRS can never be undone. That I'd forever have to live with this horror that I had inflicted upon myself.

To me, the biggest obstacle towards learning to accept my own body was to see the concept of 'gender' for the lie it is. That the brain is the same no matter which chromosomes one has. All we can be is ourselves, and the only reason why you grow up hating your body is because your environment tells you to.

Here the irony is probably that as a 'boy' I was bullied constantly throughout my school period, was never considered to be attractive and generally considered myself to be a failure in terms of looks. Dropping the mask, and suddenly I'm this very attractive woman who gets whistled at on the streets and gets a fair amount of attention from both men and women. If it didn't make me feel at least a little bit happy inside I would probably cry at this. I'm still only human, after all.

Society is also shallow like that.


As for me, I'm still getting used to this body of mine that I have only recently begun to realise truly exists. And it's a pretty cool body. It has a few flaws, but that adds to its character. I could never hate it, because it does its best. I'm lucky to have a body like this.

And it's all mine. Forever.


Maya

Erasure of intersex identity through enforcing of transsexuality identity

The questions regarding my treatment as an intersex person at the hands of medical and mental health professionals over the past years have been, and still are, a strong motivator in researching exactly what it was that made this group of professionals persistently apply the wrong diagnosis ('transsexuality') even when the medical evidence made it obvious that my body is indeed that of an intersex person. As has become abundantly clear by now with the changes to my body's phenotype (courtesy of a nearly finished puberty), my intersex condition most closely matches that of a true hermaphrodite, in the rare sub-form without ovotestes, but with separate testicular and ovarian tissue.

What was it that made these professionals consistently fail to diagnose this condition, even after two independent medical opinions based on a 2007 MRI scan both confirmed this condition, followed by a 2011 exploratory surgery which again confirmed this intersex condition?


While understanding the true motivations behind their decisions and reasoning will never be truly possible, to me the most worrying aspect is that the underlying motivations can only truly be based on either ignorance or malice. Here ignorance can lead to the subject doing harm while being convinced that they are doing the right thing. Malice on the other hand has the subject well-aware of the fact that their actions are doing harm, but an overriding factor (ego) makes this harm seem irrelevant in light of higher goals.

So then, what reason could one have to so consistently get things wrong? One conceivable reason is that when I first visited a Dutch gender team, in 2005, I had nothing but suspicions, and their knowledge of intersex was limited to the harmful drivel in the WPATH standard and kin [1]. As back then my puberty hadn't really progressed yet into a level where my female phenotype was undeniable, I seemed to not fit into their 'intersex' category ('true hermaphroditism' being quite rare), and thus got put into the 'transsexual' category instead.

This is supported by the subsequent talks with psychologists at that gender team, who all kept pushing me to finally admit that I was a boy who wanted to become a girl, even as I struggled to see myself as anything other than a child at that point in time. Just a child who wanted to understand their body.

Across multiple Dutch gender teams and a number of specialists both in the Netherlands and elsewhere, the same assumptions were made:

• I was biologically male.
• I wanted to become a woman.

The Dutch gender teams had refused to communicate with their (German) colleagues who had judged the first MRI scan. Instead they would come up with contradicting opinions to the original reports, refuting any points that would disprove this assumption of me having a male biology. The results of the 2011 surgery (surgery report & biopsy findings of the testicular tissue) would end up not swaying their opinions either.

The second point was something which I had never expressed. My question to the gender teams and other specialists had been to help me figure out what was going on with my body, as it had become quite apparent to me that it wasn't a male body. Yet for some reason this got ignored. It is very likely that in the end it was cognitive bias on the end of the people who I talked to and who judged over my case that made them incapable of understanding what I was asking of them.

By one psychiatrist especially it was hammered in that I couldn't be intersex, and that if I wanted to get any help, I had to pretend to be transsexual. By that time I was feeling so emotionally worn out that even faking being transsexual seemed like an acceptable alternative to getting answers to all the questions which I still had about my body. Even if looking back I knew it would have been a catastrophically poor choice.


So the cognitive bias, that makes these specialists try to cram everything and everyone into a 'transsexual' category seems to be at fault, then? In the most forgiving, in a 'the road to Hell is paved with good intentions' kind of sense, definitely. While one cannot discount the possibility of malicious intent, it would not have changed the damage that would have been inflicted by a scenario due to sheer ignorance and the blinders of cognitive bias.

This concerns damage that centers mostly around the following:

• Ignoring phenotype: enforcing the illusion of an incorrect phenotype.
• Ignoring intent: assuming desires that are not present, ignoring actual intent.
• Identity erasure: the use of brainwashing to accept the other side's suggestions as their own will.

Feeling in contact with one's body is essential if one wants to be emotionally resilient [2]. By reinforcing the illusion of me having a male phenotype, I became more susceptible to their suggestions as I began to question what my own senses could perceive. By questioning my intent they attempted to coax me towards accepting their suggestions [3]. Ultimately I would have lost my own sense of self, of purpose and direction. Identity erased.

The irony in all of this probably has to be that as part of a transsexuality diagnosis, one gets accosted with accusations about one's gender, when no such thing exists [4]. I wouldn't be able to tell you back then whether I felt more 'male' or 'female' and these days the question seems even more ridiculous to me. All I ever wanted to be was myself, and that hasn't changed. After all, one's brain couldn't care less about one's phenotype or genitals, being all sex-less [5].


And that's it, I guess. Just one more shining example of human intelligence struggling to outperform its own shadow. Cognitive bias and ego getting in the way of providing help and answering questions. Just me at what appears to be the end of that particular medical and mental roller coaster, with nothing gained but PTSD and what feels like most of my life so far tossed away for no good reason.

It almost makes one want to cry.


Maya


[1] http://mayaposch.com/intersex-controversy.php
[2] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-body-anchors-reality.html
[3] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-eternal-war.html
[4] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/gender-is-social-contract-not-part-of.html
[5] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/your-brain-doesnt-care-what-genitals.html

PTSD and accepting the death sentence

Dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been a near life-long challenge for me, even if for most of that time I wasn't aware of having it. The biggest challenge for oneself I would say is to define what PTSD is. Of course one can read up in the literature about how PTSD affects the brain, changing the structure and functioning of entire sections. But that doesn't tell one what it is like to experience it, or how to deal with it.

Is PTSD a threat? No, it's your brain having been remodelled to fit a high-threat environment. Forever. That's why it'll happily send your mind careening from one perceived threat to another, helpfully assisted by a society which has not the faintest inkling of how full of easily-perceived-as-one threats it is. From sudden noises, to poorly communicated messages, to aggressively formulated bureaucratic communications. You're aware of this, and manage to eventually down regulate the resulting 'something is going to try and kill me in a second' reflex. Usually. There are still the jitters that can persist for hours or days.

PTSD basically makes you very poor at dealing with stress and lots of environmental triggers. But that's what it does. Not what it is.


The shape which I feel matches PTSD the closest is that of loss and the associated grieving process. The thing that has been lost is oneself: the 'you' that existed before the trauma, the trauma the death sentence and subsequent execution. As one's self (personality) is built up out of a mosaic of one's memories and experiences, the traumatic event(s) has the result of essentially destroying this mosaic, killing the personality of the person in question.

To deal with PTSD, then, is to work towards accepting this loss. Accept the loss and essentially the death of oneself. Of this previous incarnation.


Though I never got to know the five-year old me before they were killed in the traumatic event that would follow, I do know from things which my mother and others have told me what that child was like. An energetic, open and always cheerful child, who'd be friends with everyone and loved life. I think I would have liked this person. Yet I have to accept that I'll never be that person. This child was killed. I only have the fragmented memories of that child.

I do remember the child and teenager who grew up after this child's death. None of the openness, energy and cheerfulness. Withdrawn, uncertain about others and themselves. Questioning everything about life and the point of being alive in the first place. Then the death of that person over many years, through countless torture and interrogation sessions, physical and sexual abuse. That person is dead now, too.


Accepting these deaths feels right to me. This child and the other person tried their best, but sometimes your best isn't good enough. So you are killed. It's not their fault. It's not my fault. I don't have to feel guilty about their deaths. Though I still feel angry about what happened to them, the only thing that I can do is to try my best to live, learn from their experiences.

Only through acceptance can one move on.


Maya

Adulthood: The grey twilight between hope and suicidal despair

Whenever it is mentioned that someone is 'coming of age', it is usually portrayed as something positive. To grow up, to gain new rights and responsibilities. To have the world open up to them. That's the romantic version at least.

For too many of us it never manages to reach that 90s sitcom levels of endearingness, however. The main feelings that I find myself struggling with at having accomplished reaching adulthood by staying alive, are those of disgust with humanity in general, and a mix of despair and terror as I contemplate my own safety and future.


It should be obvious to anyone who is even mildly sane that humanity as a whole is far from sane. With the widespread beliefs in religions, cults and things like hoarding property, with wanton violence and destruction by the biggest bullies in the playground, all that the adult world is, is a daycare centre's playground without the requisite adult supervision.

Those who rule the playground through might and usually a clout of lackeys are the ones who set the rules, who determine who lives and who dies. Because this isn't just your local daycare centre's playground, no. On this playground the children kill and are killed. Even as no one seems to be able to truly explain why any of it is happening, the playground is a near-constant warzone when it isn't filled with the sound of bickering and suffering.


Normally a child can grow up in relative safety and oblivion from this adult playground. Others are not so lucky. I still cannot remember exactly what was done to me or by who back when I was five years old, but that first introduction to the world of adults has left a lasting impression. I never want to be an adult. Not if it means becoming like those people.

Never truly having been granted the right to exist, with psychologists, doctors and others having made it abundantly clear that I'm also insane and also an abomination with this body of mine and also am imagining everything, it feels like being that kid in PE class who didn't get picked by either team and has to sit it out at the sides. Before getting beaten up after said PE class. For being weird. And wearing glasses. And reading books.


I don't like the world which these so-called 'adults' have made. I note the violence, lack of tolerance and respect, the enforcing of baseless views upon others and so on. It shouldn't feel so dystopian, but at the same time one can only admit that the care-free life with the happy ending is reserved for films and sitcoms. And yet this is the only world that is offered to one.


To me the main question I guess is then whether after more than a decade of surviving the medical system and related, how much do I want to struggle through this adult playground? Carve out my spot and somehow stay safe from the bullies. None of that sounds like particularly fun to me. I can feel my mood swinging between careful optimism and despair. Nothing about it seems particularly easy or fun, yet it's hard for me to tell when something is truly that bad, or when it's my PTSD blending in with reality.

As a veteran of the War of Dehumanisation, I have become maybe allergic to any system that does not acknowledge people as such. Call it bureaucracy, regulations, the law, etc. All of it is an easy shortcut to not have to think about people as living beings with their own feelings and dreams. It were humans who made up rules, nations and bureaucracies. We humans get it wrong more often than that we get it right. That's why it's essential that we are always ready to revisit any rules and systems we created to improve them.

This is sadly also exactly the part where humans fail so badly. Call it cognitive bias or any of those other cute psychological excuses for humans refusing to use this supposed 'human intelligence' for intellectual purposes. In the end the result is that tragically, the average child is more perceptive and fair than the average adult human.


Maya

Changing my Gender Social Contract so that I can wear comfy, colourful clothing

It's sometimes interesting to look back on the past years and note just what changes have made the biggest impacts on my life. Back in 2005, when I first found out about being intersex, I still had a male social contract (male GSC [1]) and was attempting to behave accordingly. Fifteen years later I have switched to a female GSC with as only surgical intervention being the removal of the half-formed testicles.

Even though my body's phenotype is that of a woman, it being stuck in puberty limbo for years, as it tried to sort itself out, has given me the opportunity to really see the pros and cons of both the male and female GSC. One with me as a feminine-looking, but flat-chested 'guy', the other as a regular woman with an ideal figure. What are the most noticeable differences that I experienced in either social role?

I have to admit that it's mostly the clothing, really. While part of me misses being able to go topless during the summer without having to cover up, I also have to admit that there are a dazzling amount of clothing types, styles and colours that are simply unavailable with a male GSC. No skirts, no airy shirts and tops, no showing of tummy in public, no displaying of skin beyond certain acceptable limits. The male GSC is pretty darn harsh when it comes to what is deemed acceptable. In that regard, wearing a bra plus airy top in summer that leaves one's tummy free seems like a small compromise.


I remember clothes shopping back with the male GSC. How boring and limited the selection was. The thrill of finding anything with a colour that wasn't black, dark-blue or grey. Looking at old photos from the 1990s and earlier makes one wonder just what in the heck happened there. Did some religious cleric pronounce a fatwa against colourful clothing worn by men when I wasn't looking?

Since my body is obviously that of a woman, male clothing is comically oversized for me, with even 'S'-sized shirts falling loosely around my body and the smallest commonly available male jeans sliding straight off onto my hips. This caused me a lot of grief back in my male GSC days, as finding clothing that actually fits me was practically impossible back then. Definitely the wrong body type.


Having clothing that fits properly, then. In a wide variety of colours, styles, formats and fabrics. Anything goes. Anything fits. It's one of those little joys in life that are easy to forget next to the other discoveries during those years, such as unlearning the male walking pattern (which had caused massive lower back pains) and unlearning trying to talk like a male (which had practically destroyed my voice). In that sense, switching from the male to the female GSC was akin to regaining my freedom after having been locked away in the wrong social contract for years.

What it has taught me above all is just how silly it is that society has these GSCs to begin with, how it enforces these ever-changing rules about what is and isn't allowed, even to the detriment of the individual involved. By essentially forcing me to dress, talk and walk like a stereotypical male according to this social contract, it deprived me of suitable clothing and it may have damaged my voice and lower spine. It deprived me of my individuality and overrode my very body.


Everyone should be allowed and encouraged from their very first minutes on this Earth to discover who they are and how their body works. Their environment should support them along the way, so that they can be themselves. They should not have a body image or expectations about their body forced upon them. My own experiences show just how much damage can be inflicted when a child is told that they're a 'boy' or a 'girl'. Until the beginning of puberty such differentiation essentially does not exist, after all.

Even though me walking and talking the wrong way was more a matter of me imitating what I saw around me, me being told from a young age that I was a boy did make it clear that I was expected to behave like other boys. I should not have felt forced to talk and move in a way that physically hurt me, just like how I should not have felt compelled to wear baggy, drab, ill-fitting clothing, just because society's enforced male GSC says that it is Right and Proper.


Maya


[1] https://mayaposch.blogspot.com/2019/12/gender-is-social-contract-not-part-of.html

The eternal war

After so many interrogation sessions, they begin to blur together. Sometimes there's one person sitting at the other side of the rickety table. Sometimes two or three. There's always the folder with your files on the table. Sometimes they start off all cheerful and full of promises, other times they try the bad cop, good cop routine. Always there's the knowledge in the back of your mind that they are not your friends and just want you to confess. Spill the beans.

Through the blinds you can somewhat make out the outside world. It feels like such a long time ago since you have last seen the sky. Felt the sun on your skin. Smelled the air after a rainstorm. Instead it's just another sterile room that's still filled with the silenced cries from other unfortunate souls. And the predatory grin at the other side of the table. Just another day spent in eternity.

The theme is always the same. If you cooperate with us, you'll be out of here in a jiffy. Why are you making things so hard for yourself? Who or what are you protecting? It's not worth it. It's not real. This is you here now. In this uncomfortable chair, in a place where you do not want to be. In this prison. We are here to help you, but you must cooperate.

Just tell us the things we want to know, and you'll be out of here, on your way home before you have time to even grab your coat.


Catching my reflection in the standing mirror as I get dressed in the morning, I can still feel how part of my soul is stuck in those interrogation rooms. Hear the alternatingly enticing or accusing voices. About helping me, about me being difficult. About why I cannot simply accept the facts that they put in front of me. Facts which I know to be false.

The claims made by them, about how my body was that of a male, with no indications of an intersex condition. Though they could absolutely help me with the transsexuality which they were convinced that I had.

Looking at my unclad body in the mirror, I can only smile bitterly at those memories. Following with my eyes the contours of my wide hips, narrow waist and still-growing chest that took no medication and no artificial hormones to grow. The years that my body actively resisted responding to hormone therapy for some reason which I still do not understand. The relief when my body decided to continue with puberty and increase its production of female hormones. The cessation of hormone therapy. This body which I see in the mirror is the only fact that I have to accept. This is my body. Not the delusion they tried to make me believe in.

In many ways, my body continuing to develop like this feels like the only way that I could have escaped from those interrogation sessions. It feels like salvation, just when I thought that I was about to lose my sanity, my mind and probably many other parts of myself which I would rather keep.


Though I have had to go back to doctors again recently to catch up on some lingering issues - mostly because getting a gynaecologist to accept you as a true hermaphrodite intersex woman is tougher than nails - I have some hope now that this time it will be different. Nobody can tell me those same lies again. I escaped all of that. This time will not be like before.


Part of me still feels like it'll forever be trapped in those interrogation rooms.


How do you take the war out of a person?


Maya