Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word) by Thea Hillman

Author:Thea Hillman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Manic D Press, Inc.

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I went to see my doctor this week. I have stopped taking birth control, which I have taken for the last eleven years, and I recently reduced my dexamethasone, in an attempt to be as much me as I can be.

With the pill gone, I've started breaking out on my face, neck, hairline, and back. The same places I broke out all during high school and college. I have noticed long hairs on my upper lip. More on my cheeks. And not the regular long peach fuzz. I was concerned that these changes reflected a change in my chemistry, in the amount of 17 hydroxy progesterone getting turned into testosterone. And I've asked my doctor, and he says it's hard to tell. He can never account for a causal relationship between my hormone levels and my symptoms, especially if it isn't reflected in the lab tests. And so far, it hasn't been.

I stopped taking medication the first time after I went through puberty at age thirteen. My endocrinologist said I didn't really need it anymore since I had probably gotten all the height I was going to get. He said the only reason I'd be taking it now would be for cosmetic reasons. But by the time I was seventeen, my acne was bad and my periods were abnormal, so I started up on the medication again and have been on it ever since.

More than a decade later, I'm learning about intersex and meeting people that are on no medication at all, even people who have my condition—they took no medication at all. My whole life, my CAH has been discussed as a health problem. But now I realize it's a sex problem as well. To what degree have I taken medication to maintain girl chemistry, to attain girl attributes and keep boy ones suppressed?

To what degree have the doctors done this, and in what ways have I become complicit? My medication suppresses the overproduction of 17 hydroxy progesterone, a precursor to testosterone. What else is being suppressed? It made me wonder what would happen if I wasn't on medication, and made me wonder what else I'd been swallowing along with all those pills.

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