Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, What?
If you think growing up gay was tough, try this one for size:
you're a 14-year-old boy and you start growing breasts.
Or this: your name is Anna, you're 21 and about to get married, and your mother says you can never have children.
Catherine Watson explores the world of intersex.
Tony Briffa is an engineer, a foster parent, and the Greens candidate for Lalor in the next Federal election. He also has a former husband, and once considered himself a lesbian. Briffa’s story is a graphic demonstration of the complex lives of intersex people.
"I was in the lesbian scene for a number of years and everyone assumed I was a woman," Briffa said. "What they didn't know was that I am genetically male and had testes when I was born. I have never had a uterus or ovaries. I looked completely female because of the treatment I had as a child, but was I a lesbian? Conversely, if I was in a relationship with a man - and I was married to a man once - would I be in a homosexual or heterosexual relationship? I had female written on my birth certificate, and I was born with a vagina..."
A year ago, Briffa began testosterone treatment and is steadily becoming more masculine. These days, he says, "I'm just a guy."
After a protracted battle with the authorities, he has even had his true sex recognised with the issue of a corrected birth certificate.
Like many intersex people, Briffa was born with the physical
characteristics of both male and female. The ambiguity is due to a condition
called androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS).
People with AIS do not respond - or respond only partially - to the chemicals
such as testosterone which determine our biological gender. Some have complete
sets of male and female external sexual organs*1.
Others have chromosomal
variations which can only be detected by genetic testing. Others may look female
but have internal testes and typical male chromosomes. There are around 19,000
intersex Australians, many of them part of the gay community. To outsiders, they
usually look like typical men and women.
"Some of us look a little ‘ambiguous'," says Briffa, also the
president of the Australian AIS Support Group, but that's usually from the
inappropriate medical treatment we received as children. Particularly when a
mistake was made in the gender of rearing and the initial decision was
surgically or hormonally reinforced."
Briffa was two years old when doctors at the Royal
Children’s [Hospital] removed his testes. At seven his penis began to
grow anyway, so they castrated him. Then they treated him with oestrogen all
through his teenage years to make him conform to the female identity they had
assigned him at birth. When he was 12, he told his doctor he didn't feel like a
girl but he was ignored, as was his request for a mastectomy.
But while his requests and feelings were of no interest to the doctors, his body
was an object of endless fascination. Every few months, much to his distress, he
was called into hospital to have his genitals examined, often in front of
medical students. No one ever asked him if he minded.
People with AIS used to be referred to as hermaphrodites.
These days they refer to themselves as ‘intersex’ people, a term which
acknowledges that gender and sexual identity is more complex than can be
revealed by chemical or genetic analysis. Lately there has been something
of an upsurge in the subject of intersex people, with Briffa appearing on '60
Minutes' and 'Squeal' and in an article in ‘Good Medicine’
magazine.
He says the Internet has been a powerful tool for enabling AIS people to get together, talk about their experiences and lobby for political change. What is perhaps most remarkable about Tony Briffa is the courage and resilience he has shown after so many years of confusion and unhappiness. Today he is a man of wide interests and concerns, an "advocate for the rights of all people and animals", as he describes it.
"My family and upbringing helped foster the belief in me that I can do anything I want to," he says. "I want to make a difference in the many issues I believe in, and stopping genital mutilation on children with intersex conditions is one of them. What is most important for intersex people is the acceptance of sexual and gender variations," says Briffa. "We believe in relationship recognition irrespective of gender, and we believe in the legal recognition of one's self-identified gender. In this we have common ground with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities."
The thing he finds most difficult to accept about his past is the arrogance of his doctors in not listening to him. "It would have been a lot easier to shift socially into my correct gender role when I was a teenager. Making mistakes is bad enough; not learning from them is inexcusable."
He is also sad for his family, who have supported him
throughout his ordeal but who have also lost a daughter they knew for 31 years.
“I feel bad about their profound loss,” he says, “even though I know I'm
just being true to myself.”
• For more information on AIS contact the AIS Support Group Australia at P O Box 1089, Altona Meadows, VIC 3028, Australia or call +61-3-9315-8809.
Email. aissg@primus.com.au
Web site: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aissg
SOURCE:
M.C.V. (GLBT Newspaper)
'Melbourne Community Voice'
Issue Date: 12th October, 2001.
32 Bridge Road,
Richmond, Melbourne,
Victoria, 3121.
Australia.
E-mail: editor@mcv.net.au
Telephone: + 61-3-8415-0422
Fax.: + 61-3-8415-0433
Notes:
*1 People with AIS have external genitalia that can range from completely male to completely female and anywhere in between, but not both.
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