In this video I address the question of why it took me so long to find out that I was intersex, and why you may not know about your own intersex condition right now. Patreon: / mayaposch
NGL I put off watching this for a while because it's kind of a stressful thing for me, it was hidden from me for a while and stuff. But yeah this is all quite relatable. I didn't develop like any other boys in puberty, even within the wide "normal" range. Even the girls at school were amazed at the size of my hips and breasts that just developed naturally. I really like the comparison to the spherical frictionless cow actually. "Good enough for a lot of cases, but not really accurate to reality" is such a pragmatic way to boil it down. It also defuses so many of the "nooo you're not valid, only these two are valid and the rest are just mistakes" kind of BS which I'm very tired of.
Your life is certainly unique compared to most other people. Thank you for sharing your situation as I hope it helps others in similar situations. I guess "How would you know?" has been made a little easier for others to find out by your efforts.
I have Mild Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome which is REALLY difficult to diagnose. I found out in my 50s that I had a testosterone level closer to a woman's than a man's. No body or underarm hair,nice little bosom pert nipples and a female level of osteoporosis. People say I look like a 39 year old woman and I'm a 68 year old male. It's something to do with how much testosterone you get as a 2 month old foetus in your mother's womb. When I found out I had it,it really explained a lot about me 9:30
Hey! I have turner’s syndrome and came across your video :) I relate to you a lot in the sense that nothing is really “wrong” with me except for the fact that my female puberty could never develop fully by itself, because of underdeveloped ovaries etc. and yeah I can’t have biological babies either. We come in so many different variations, yet its something that’s barely taught and understood… It’s truly like an “invisible” thing that you wouldn’t really know unless you tested every single person! And I guess we call them “conditions” but at the same time they’re just a result of nature, and you live just like anyone else hahah… Many people would think based on hearing the word that intersex is just some trendy non-binary term or something when its a lot more than that. and intersex people can totally identify as one of the binaries as well. wish people had a better understanding of this, and that it would be more normalized especially in the medical world.
I do like to be sensitive to what people consider "offensive" but also remember that if you feel offended by one word, you have to remember that, that one "word" might be someone else's truth. I was accused of mocking an intersex person in an intersex group. I asked her if she was a chimera. She didn't know the word and got offended. Well if you find chimeras "offensive" then what about Maya? An out-spoken intersex activist named Hilda calls herself a hermaphrodite. So people are offended by the word she says is what she actually is. So it can get impossible. Your "trendy non-binary" statement is a great point. I believe this is part of the reason so many people still do not know the word. Thanks for posting!
I had asthma growing up. It's something that occurs naturally, but it doesn't happen to most people, and it interfered with my ability to function. That is why intersex conditions are considered disorders. It's not a personal insult.
I love your technical brain and education. You and I would get along great. I'm an Electromechanical Engineering Technologist with most of my experience in autonomous robotics.
I have been asked that question a few times, and agree with you … how would you know? It’s not like we feel different. As I have been asked that question, what is it like? If you never had anything to compare it to? The doctor who delivered me , wrote in his notes, said he could not determine which I was. I knew I was different, and didn’t know why … apparently our family doctor didn’t either. It wasn’t till much later in life that I discovered I was intersex . Especially when I developed secondary female characteristics. It sounds like we have a lot in common, not to often that happens.
Sounds very simular to my story. I’m AMAB, but always looked like a girl. Around 11 I grew to female length and then nothing. For male puberty only hair growth started and nothing else. Around 16 I started to develop a female body (hips and breasts), unfortually together with period like symptoms (without blood of course). Transitioned to female but the doctors never checked for intersex even when my body was off the charts. Now I finally have the proof that the hormones are going up and down but no official diagnose😅 And my hormone levels are actually so good (for a female……) that the insurance is making problems about testing😑
CAIS women don't menstruate so would know at puberty, and Swyers syndrome would not mature or menstruate so would find out then too. But they would be thought to be female up to that point. I guess that might be a real marker that females just automatically expect and when it never happens they are taken to a doctor to find out why. XX male syndrome might not be discovered until marriage and infertility problems. One of the reasons so many don't know is because the medical profession told parents not to tell anyone. so people have never heard of it before and think it is something new. They also didn't have chromosome tests in the past and not everyone was cut into to see about these problems. I think it helps when you state your intersex condition too so people don't think it is just a new identity word that people made up. It gives people another word they can look up and learn about. You have chimerism so that can be researched by people wanting to understand. Thanks for posting!
I grew up in a gendermysterious body and feel like I must be transgender. But I wonder if I could have intersex elements as well. Will try to find out 💙 thanks for being you
I wonder if it is more of a chimera issue. Twins merging into one. Medical community has documentation of women because they have two sets of genes to find the mother of the children. I still believe I’m a chimera. I’m not intersex but I have health issues that don’t fit in the box. They are only on one side of my body.
Thank you so much for this video! Do you know what when a person would be inter* based on their hormones? Like, if a person is afab, but has something about their body that does not necessarily fit into being endo, and then they find out they have as much testosterone as an amab person often has.. Would that person be able to consider themselves inter*? I've been doing loads of research but couldn't find anything specific to that topic... Would be really nice to know from a person that is inter*! Thank you and take care! El
Yes, having extra testosterone in a female body could be from Many conditions such as from the adrenal gland as in congenital adrenal hyperplasia in a female at birth. In that condition, the baby might look male at birth, might look in between at birth, or might look female at birth. Or it could be from another condition. Having one intersex condition can be very different from another one. Maya has chimerism intersex when one twin is xx and one is xy (usually female and male) and one twin is absorbed by the other one during embryonic development and the baby has a mixture. If the twins were the same (both xx female or both xy male) they would be chimeric too but not intersex. That kind of chimerism might not be known either. There were cases in the United States where the woman had eggs in her body that had two different genes. One from each twin and her kids appear to be genetically cousins instead of genitally siblings. One of her ovaries had her sister's DNA that had merged with her in embryonic development. That was only chimerism and not intersex. Intersex is when the twins merge with DNA from two different sex baby genes. The intersex active community is growing. They are no longer having to be alone. they are starting to meet each other and support each other. women with AIS so far seem to be making the most videos but there are many other conditions.
Your only one person with two complete sex chromosomes wich makes you freaking awesome. I did a Gene test and doctor don't want to say to me. I look like both sexes from nature and think like both too wich is mysterious. Maybe I am hermaphrodite too. It will be awesome.
Is it our modern sedentary lifestyle, combined with other environmental factors such as PFAO/PFAS causing some genes to underdevelop/behave in weird ways? Think we've steered too quickly from our biological roots as a society.
I have not seen any evidence to suggest such a link, but then intersex (especially among humans) is an extremely poorly researched and documented topic. Based on what we also see with animals, however, it'd seem that things like intersex conditions are a normal consequence of being complex, multi-cellular lifeforms. With humans you also get singular triggers like the SRY gene on the Y chromosome that have an arguably unreasonable effect on early development. I'm not sure whether SRY-related intersex conditions (CAIS and other AIS conditions) have been studied in a causal context. To my knowledge humans simply have to deal with a lot of random mutations as they grow up, and usually there are a few backup paths that ensure that a target is reached (like growing all essential organs in the correct locations). Just with development of the reproductive systems the paths are a bit more singular. This is definitely an interesting topic to further explore, however, and very good questions indeed.
Well, there were "Eunuchs who were born that way" written about in the bible so there were obviously enough of them to write about thousands of years ago. It was that common. I don't know what "condition" they had.
