Is this Intersex condition realistic & sensitive?

[cavitycollector]

Hello. I am writing a comic, and in the comic there is a man who is meant to be intersex. I have done as much research as I could find into different Intersex experiences and though I’ve seen none that are identical to his, based on what I’ve read think it is possible? I think I probably have an okay enough grasp of the actual science behind it, but in terms of his personal experiences I’m not sure.

He is a man in his late 20s. He currently has notable breasts, a deep voice, a lot of body hair, and is very heavyweight. For his backstory so far I have written: He was born in the 1990’s with male appearing genitalia, and was assigned male at birth due to this. He was raised as a boy, but during childhood he began to experience negative symptoms such as fatigue, weightloss, muscle weakness, and early development of body hair and odor (precocious adrenarche). He was seen by a doctor who determined he was actually female, and his parents not knowing what direction to go with hormone therapy let him choose. He chooses estrogen for a female puberty because he has always behaved femininely and been bullied for this, so he believes this might be the answer. (He also starts other treatments for the other symptoms of congenital adrenal hyperplasia) Once he begins this therapy and transition develops breasts, he realizes he doesn’t want to continue with female hormones and asks to be socialized as male again and to start male hormone treatments instead.

Throughout this, his parents would be trying to do what is right while completely out of their element, and there would be some conflict about the difficulty of resocializing as female and then male again. they would not really understand and slightly resent losing their son, and then again not understand and be both frustrated by the switch and also relieved to have their son back. In adulthood his parents do not acknowledge his technical female sex, they just desire normalcy.

My main concern is the parents, doctors, and character himself choosing a female puberty at first. I have no idea if that is realistic, especially for the 90s. Most of the experiences I’ve read even when the child is ”biologically the opposite sex”, they continue being raised as their AGAB with or without their consent. I know this experience would be unusual in that way, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible. I feel some parents may justify it because it is technically their “true sex” and therefore bioessentialism states they must be raised as their “true sex”. These parents would have been willing to go either way and believe whatever their son seemed to lean towards due to their complete ignorance on the subject.

If you believe this is unrealistic, what other ways could I come about having an intersex character with these adult physical traits, who identifies as male, and is fully accepted as such by his family, who have been shown to NOT be accepting of transgender people, just him due to it being a “real medical problem”.

Comments

[melannen]

I am not sure about the hormone therapy questions - I suspect it would depend a *lot* on when and where he was, and also exactly what doctors he was going to - but I think it's very unlikely even today that any doctor would look at a child with unambiguous male gentalia and no obvious dysphoria and say they were "actually female" regardless of their genes or hormones, doctors tend to go with genitals if asked to make a call. If their genitals are in some way ambiguous, with CAH they would likely have been tagged as intersex at birth, and decisions about how to socialize them would have been made with the parents then (and possibly revisited later). In my understanding of CAH, XX people with CAH are very unlikely to have unambiguous male genitals anyway.

I'd advise you to tread carefully regardless if you want to go in that direction; the question of treating children with hormones is a *really* hot-button issue politically right now in many countries and you could end up telling a story that was harmful to real-life people dealing with serious threats if you weren't very, very careful.

Anyway, if all you need is a dude who is intersex, has complicated gender feelings about it, and has bodacious bosoms, I would probably go with Klinefelter's syndrome. Most people with Klinefelter's are raised cis male and many are not aware of their condition until puberty or later if at all, and breast development (gynecomastia) is a common symptom. (Although if you don't need him to have a lifelong intersex condition, gynecomastia happens in cis males not infrequently too, due to a variety of things. And many heavyweight men develop nice boobs without any medical condition.)

[pauraque]

I don't have the knowledge to answer your intersex-specific questions, but one thing I can say is that you do not want to be using terms like "actually"/"technically"/"biologically"/"true sex" when what you are talking about is a person's genes. Genetic sex is not more actual, technical, biological, or true than other sex characteristics, and that framing is transphobic. (If you have your fictional characters speaking ignorantly because they don't know any better, that's fine, but you as the author should know they're being ignorant.)

[lilacsigil]

He was seen by a doctor who determined he was actually female

How and why did the doctor determine this? It's very unlikely that an intersex child in the 90s would be allowed to choose either male or female puberty, particularly as you've set up a framework of his parents and doctor being very set on what his "real" sex is.

[yalovetz]

I would seriously rethink writing an intersex character, given the way you currently talk about intersex people. You've called intersex variations "disorders", referred to intersex people's genitals as "abnormal", and seem to have done most of your research by looking at pathologising medical information, which is problematic given how frequently intersex people are seriously traumatised by the medical establishment. Try reading up on the subject using resources from intersex-led organisations and researchers, such as OII.