Happy to know this human @pidgeo_n
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When I was 18, and retrieved my medical records from @luriechildrens, I found out four important truths that changed the course of my life. ▫️
1️⃣ I discovered that as a baby I was labeled a male pseudo-hermaphrodite 46XY. This was shocking because I had been assigned female at birth. ▫️
2️⃣ I was born with undescended testes. No one ever told me this truth, instead my doctors lied and told me I was born with “cancerous ovaries” that had to be surgically removed in order to save my life.
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3️⃣ My clitoris was deemed too large (at a mere 1.5 centimeters when stretched) when I was 4 years old, and surgically altered with a medical procedure called a clitorectomy–very similar to #FemaleGenitalMutilation. ▫️
4️⃣ At age 11, I was told by my doctors at Lurie that I needed a surgery on my urethra and bladder, but discovered thanks to retrieving my medical records that they actually gave me a complex vaginoplasty-like surgery instead.
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All of these surgeries were NOT medically necessary, and done without my consent.
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All of this happened, I would find out, because my genitals didn’t quite fit the doctors’ binary perception of what “normal female” genitals should look & behave like. No medical reasons whatsoever. My body was cut, put on display and medically violated because people with M.Ds pathologize (see last post) our beautiful healthy #nonbinary #intersex bodies.
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I went back to the hospital where all of this went down and asked my best friend (& amazing Chicago movement photographer Sarah-Ji @loveandstrugglephotos) to take photos of me in front of the drive way leading into the entrance of the hospital that was then boarded up and being demolished. It was a driveway I was very familiar with as young person, a driveway that lead to the gates of a small personal hell. ▫️
Lurie Childrens hospital, and all children’s hospitals that continue performing non-consensual medical unnecessary surgeries on intersex kids, claim to “care” for us when we never needed that “care” in the first place. If you go on Lurie’s website today, they still have clitoral surgeries listed as a medical intervention for intersex babies.
