Lauren's Story

[Received April 2001]

Hi I'm Lauren, and I have PAIS grade 1, so I'm pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum from most people on this web site, which is why I'm writing this. I was born and raised male and everything seemed fine that way until mid childhood. Then a few problems arose down below, the full extent of which I don't know. I was taken into hospital twice for corrective surgery. This left me pretty unsensitive and scarred.

I was always small down below and was nicknamed "maggot man" at school :) which was taken as a bit of fun. I was also quite overweight and so when puberty happenned the female aspects didn't really show. My hips and bum got bigger giving me a pear shaped body, and I grew a small amount of breast tissue. Also one nipple changed to a female shape but I was told this was just disfigured. On the male side all that happenned was a deepening of my voice and a small amount of hair in the pubic area and under arms/lower legs. I also grew quite tall. The abnormalities were noticed by my mum and doctor, but I was oblivious to them, blaming it on my weight problem, and secretly happy nothing big was happenning.

At around the same time I began realising I didn't feel male. It's not the sort of thing you can talk about, especially when you, as well as most of the public believe you are a normal teenage boy, but I really didn't understand the whole gender thing. I still don't and just really see people. At any rate I didn't like the male world, and didn't much like the way I was treated, so I figured I must be transsexual - it was around the time there were lots of newspaper stories and telly programs on the subject.

Later in school and moving onto college, I started looking into getting treatment and joined a [transsexual] support group. I went onto oestrogen and changed to the female role as I went to university. When I got used to the female role though I found I wasn't nearly as feminine as I thought I was, or wanted to be. I felt much more androgynous than that, although it was a vast improvement over male life. I figured sooner or later my brain would just click into being one or the other and got on with my degree.

In the last few years hormone trouble has reared its head. I've had everything from untreatable depression to black outs, all caused by the hormones. I was starting to get very worried and desperate over this when I saw a television program on intersex and things just clicked - I realised what was going on, and found other people felt like me!

I headed off to the doctor but was told on a number of occasions that I definitely wasn't intersexed, but after searching the internet I came across a couple of possible conditions and I was bitten by the bug. The AISSG put me in contact with first [Dr.]Cathy Minto, and then through her, Dr. Conway at the Middlesex Hospital [London].

At first we didn't think we could test for anything as I had been on oestrogen long enough to suppress my natural hormone production, but after a blood test we found I was indeed still producing testosterone despite being on twice the normal amount of oestrogen. Geez - I'd have been Tom Jones if I wasn't insensitive to the stuff. So luckily I got my diagnosis, and now, along with some gender counselling, I'm finally putting to rest the whole gender business. I identify as androgynously female, and I'll be getting myself sorted out and well again soon, now we know what is going on. It's such a relief just to know, as well as talking to other people in the same boat.

Thank you AISSG!