Channel 4′s Embarrassing Bodies told the story of Dell recently, an intersexual person. In this touching and extraordinarily honest few minutes, Dell spoke about his hopes and his fears as he grew up and how he would like to be seen as neither male nor female.
Intersex is the term used for those people who are born with both male and female characteristics, a condition thought to be caused by hormonal and genetic irregularities which affects around 1 in 2000 people each year.
In the past such children have had a sex chosen for them and received hormonal and surgical treatments to push them towards that gender. However, current thinking is that things should be left alone until the child is old enough to make such a decision for itself.
Dell was not diagnosed at birth but was seen as female and named Deborah. It was not until he reached puberty that things became more difficult because his body did not develop like other girls. He grew only one breast, his periods did not start immediately and he began to get a beard. These differences made him uncomfortable and he started to hide the signs.
As an adult, he lives as neither a man nor a woman and was quite open about his genitalia – the question which intrigues most people. He leafed through a book which showed various examples and showed a picture of his own where we saw that the clitoris was larger than most other women’s and was much more like a small penis.
This is a person who has both masculine and feminine traits and he would like to be able to wear both men’s and women’s clothes.
His overriding wish was for a day when intersex would not be seen as unusual.
This admirable person has gone a long way to promoting a healthy attitude towards his sexuality by calmly and unemotionally explaining the facts.
It really was the most illuminating and informative interview on the subject.
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