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Courtesy Of Fackeltraeger Verlag / Courtesy of Fackeltraeger Verlag
Christiane Voelling is a 52-year-old intersexual who lives in Dusseldorf, Germany and has fought for greater rights for people like herself whose sexual gender is indeterminate.
MAINZ, Germany – Pink? Or blue? For most parents this is the paramount question when it comes to organizing a baby shower or choosing a color for a newborn's room.
But, what happens if the exact gender of the child cannot be determined? It is estimated that in Germany alone approximately 80,000 people are intersexual, so-called hermaphrodites, who have physical features – such as chromosomes, hormones, gonads and outer sexual organs – which cannot be unambiguously attributed to just one gender.
Christiane Voelling, 52, is an intersexual.
She is a nurse living in Düsseldorf who was born without defining gender characteristics.
Because German law requires that a newborn's personal data – including gender specification – is registered within a week, Christiane was proclaimed a boy at birth and called Thomas after a midwife supposedly mistook her enlarged clitoris for a penis.
In Voelling's case, it was later diagnosed that her indeterminate external genitalia were the result of a rare genetic disorder of the adrenal gland, the so-called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH.
"My childhood and teenage development was often agonizing because I did not really know what was wrong with me and where I belonged," Voelling said in a recent interview with NBC News.
Following a push from various human rights groups, Germany‘s government commissioned its National Ethics Council in December 2010 to consider the issue and come up with recommendations on how to identify intersexuals so they could live with greater dignity. The council, which in February of this year released its recommendations, even grappled with the question of whether or not a “third sex” should be introduced.
Invasive surgery
For Voelling, her gender issues were rarely discussed in her family growing up in a small town in a rural area of western Germany since her parents were convinced that they were raising a male child. Yet, in school, she would often be reminded of her ambivalence, when she played soccer with the "other boys," but also felt very much integrated in the girls clique.
She was experiencing an inner conflict that is rather common among intersexuals, or so-called differences of sex development (DSD) affected individuals, experts say.
"By the mid 90s, the first intersexual patients started seeking psychological help at our offices and most of them were preoccupied with feelings of shame, humiliation and a burdening tabooization of their problems," said Dr. Sophinette Becker, a sexologist and psychologist from Frankfurt.
For Voelling, her emotional trauma grew significantly larger at age 18, when physical scars were added in an unnecessary operation.
After being admitted to a local hospital for an appendix surgery, doctors diagnosed that their patient had mixed male-female genitals and an atrophied reproductive system.
But, when the young adult landed on the operating table, the surgeon found a full set of female reproductive organs, including an intact womb and ovaries.
Without consent from the patient, the organs were removed.
"I never received a truthful explanation of my condition and after the operation I felt a lot of physical and emotional pain for many years," Voelling said.
"Some 95 percent of all intersexuals systematically undergo genital surgery and other interventions without medical informed consent and without clear scientific proof," said Lucie Veith, the head of "Intersexuelle Menschen eV" in Hamburg, a group that represents hermaphrodites in Germany.
Gratification after legal battle
Only a couple of years later, Voelling also started receiving the regular administration of testosterone, or steroid male hormones.
"For 27 years, I was more or less exposed to severe doping," Voelling said.
"At age 47, when I felt more like a woman than a man anyway, I said enough is enough," she added.
Today, intersexual activists are trying to educate the medical community, affected families and the public about the often harsh consequences of genital reconstruction surgery and other severe medical interventions.
"These massive medical interferences plunge the intersexed child into total imbalance and lead to irreversible damages," said Veith, whose organization has nearly 600 members in Germany.
In 2008, Voelling decided to take her case to court and sued the doctor that had removed her female reproduction organs over unlawful intervention.
In its verdict, the court ordered the surgeon to pay 100,000 euro, (approximately $133,000) in compensation for performing an operation converting a hermaphrodite into a man without consent.
"I felt very relieved and it was really more of a moral reparation than anything else, but it unfortunately did not have consequences for the legal rights of intersexuals," said Voelling. She officially changed her gender from male to female, as well as her name from Thomas to Christiane, in a long bureaucratic process that same year.
Preparing legal framework
While experts say that Voelling's case is legally unique and will not set a precedent, the topic nevertheless started to receive more public attention after she wrote a book called "I was man and woman – My Life as an Intersexual.“
Despite some disagreements with the recommendations of Germany’s National Ethics Council released last month, Voelling and other intersexuals hope that the council’s recommendations will help give their status a legal framework in the future.
"In our recommendation to the German government earlier this year, the main message was that intersexuals are different from other human beings, but they need to be respected and belong in the center of our society," said psychologist Dr. Michael Wunder, a member of the German National Ethics Council.
Because irreversible medical interventions of gender assignment in people with ambiguous genitalia are typically conducted during early childhood years, the German Ethics Council determined that these operations present an infringement of the right to physical integrity, thus a violation of basic human rights.
The Ethics Board also said that "a non-justifiable encroachment on the personal rights and the right to equal treatment is present when people who cannot be assigned as ‘female’ or ‘male’ because of their physical condition are legally compelled to assign themselves to either category in the civil registry."
Following Australia's example, the German Ethics Council recommended that in addition to the registration of "female" or "male," the German government should introduce the category "other" or should allow a “no entry,” until the affected person have made a personal decision themselves.
Last September, Australia introduced new guidelines, which allow its citizens to change the sex details on their passport to female (F), male (M) or indeterminate (X).
"This amendment makes life easier and significantly reduces the administrative burden for sex and gender diverse people who want a passport that reflects their gender and physical appearance," said Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd.
In Germany, rights activists, representatives from the Ethics Council and intersexuals now hope that German lawmakers will soon implement regulations, which will help to protect the rights of hermaphrodites and remove discrimination on the grounds of gender identity and sexual orientation.
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Gotta love this one heh heh. Seems the Christians will have a hay day here LOL. They seem to be good at condemning those who are different or those who cannot help what they are because of how they are born. Sometimes I just hate christianity and I guess the muslims are not much better.
Not "much better"? Every hear of the father and brothers of a Christian girl who got raped who then proceed to kill her?
Men with boobs, women with penises. Sounds like they need a circus more than a court case. Should they also be allowed to marry themselves?
Barry,,, Why drag Clarence Thomas & his old hag into this? They are already married to each other
Clarence has man boobs & his old lady certainly is no lady!
This is a case of a TRUE trans-gender person, not someone with a Mental condition that just "thinks/feels" they should have been born the other gender. She had a real physical medical condition that caused her to be misidentified as male when actually female. Remember that 45+ years ago they didn't have the genetic testing we have today that could have said that she was Female (XX) and NOT male (XY). This type of gender identification is happening less and less today and are these radical genital mutilation surgeries on infants/children to ASSIGN them a gender. The bias to either "always make it a girl", or "always make it a boy" is finally being weeded out of the medical profession as more research is published.
The ones that really have real problems are the XX-XY, Fragile Y, and fragile X individualsthat truly are BOTH genetically male and female. But that is such a small percentage of the population with these rare medical conditions. Those mentally ill crack pots that grab the headline and control GLBTG groups do these people a disservice. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to change their outward "Husk", instead of addressing the REALproblem that is in their minds. When, where and how their brains get "the wires crossed", "wired wrong", or "incorrectly programmed", we may never know, because those same GLBTG activist groups fight and attack any research and data in that area, unless it supports their social, political and power agendas.
So glad you know more than the people who are intersex what they should think, feel and do.
Intersex is different than transgender. Also, if you understood transgender persons you'd know they don't all want surgery.
Transgendered and intersexed are not the same thing.
See Prof M Diamond's presentation to the American Psychiatric Assocn Annual Conference:
"Transsexuality as an Intersex Condition".
Here's the abstract from "Sexual Hormones and the Brain: An Essential Alliance for Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation Garcia-Falgueras A, Swaab DF Endocr Dev. 2010;17:22-35
It's a bit difficult saying something is a "mental condition" when anatomical differences are visible on PET and MRI scans, and in autopsies.
See
Male–to–female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus. Kruiver et al J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2000) 85:2034–2041
We've known that Transsexuality is caused by a "Feminised Brain with an otherwise mostly Masculinised body" or the reverse for over a decade. However, many people see this an an Ideological or Religious issue, rather than a biological one.
What a interesting store its the type of story that you hear about ever once in a while to me it's a sad story to live in a world where someone else can make the choice for you and you have no say so about it until you wake up from surgery to find that your sexual organs and your choice have been taken away from you. I do remeber a TV show are few years ago that delt with thee same thing here in the United States and it was just as sad. I wish these people the best that life has to offer you and please stand up for you rights as a human being.
I'm glad to see that Germany has finally come to their senses. Just because these people were born hermaphrodites does not mean they do not have rights. I'm happy to see that she won her case against the doctor who, without consent, took her uterus and ovaries out. It's appalling to hear that 95% of all intersexuals systematically undergo genital surgery and other interventions without medical informed consent and without clear scientific proof. Who are these doctors to think that these patients do not have the right to consent first? I wonder why there are more hermaphrodites in Germany then anywhere else?
Sandy,
Welcome to the reality and world of a Socialized, Government-controlled, Single-payer, Health-care system, where government bureaucrats with NO medical training decide and dictate "standards of Care" for every medical condition and procedure.
There aren't more in Germany, than anywhere else, it is just how Germany's Government run health-care system "deals" with them. Notice in the story, that doctors are "REQUIRED" to assign a gender/sex to ALL CHILDREN BORN WITHIN 24 HOURS. No genetic testing, etc. is case like this woman, because it isn't permitted under the "Standards of Care" and costs too much money.
Htdjpf- Your ignorance is showing. How this condition was handled in Germany until recently is the same way it was handled in the US until recently. So "government bureaucrats" aren't responsible for this response.
But Germany has had what is essentially a "single-payer" system since the 1890s.
The fact that these people had surgery and had "stuff" removed without their consent is beyond belief!
Believers:
God works in mysterious ways, creating life for whom, if not living, and creating man to supply the world with wars just see if a superior being would self-annihilate.
God created man because of the mistake of creating man?
If man needed to reach agreement requiring accepting what God has been created or to perish, man would wisely perish.
Naturalists:
Nature works in mysterious ways, creating life for whom, if not living, and creating man to supply the world with wars just see if a superior being would self-annihilate.
Nature created man because of the mistake of creating man?
If man needed to reach agreement requiring accepting what Nature has been created or to perish, man would wisely perish.
What a work is man, from what he says – I do not wish to hear, from what he does – I do not wish to see, from what man feels – I feel nothing at all.
What a work is man who profits them self not.
(Man would be Mankind if kind were real)
What the hell are you saying?
The uninformed bigotry displayed by many of these posts is mind boggling! I hate to break it to you folks, but hermaphrodites have always existed as long as there have been human beings. This is the result of genetics and the natural play of hormones in these individuals. This is not a choice, it is simply how these folks are born. There is none of the possible ambiguity surrounding the homosexuality that has led to so much debate, yet our culture seems to conflate the issues as if they are the same thing. There is no doubt -- this is their physiology. Many cultures have recognized and respected the existence of a "third gender," yet our cultural perceptions of gender are so rigid and screwed up that we demand these individuals actually mutilate their bodies in order to fit into one of our two recognized gender categories. Why? Because it makes us more comfortable not having to acknowledge anything outside our sexual dichotomy? There absolutely should be a third option for these people, and not just as "place holder" until they decide which gender they want to "pick." Why should they have to pick male or female, unless they want to? Why can they not be themselves, if that is what they want? Why should they be made to feel like there is something inherently wrong with them because they were born different, because they fall into a third (albeit smaller) category of gender identification based on their physiological characteristics and natural hormone production?
IF everyone were a hermaphrodite, then who would've been thrown out of the Garden of Eden!
God.
they have rights as gays and lesbians and transvetites have... this is all about "special " rights.
Please explain.
He can't.
Why, when you are both in a way a man and a woman, to expect to be treated as different than a person who is either one or the other, a request for "special rights", rather than just a request to be treated as who you are?
To all those who belittle this woman and others like her all I can say is that I wish you suffered the same condition; if so, I think you would feel differently. Your attitudes are disgusting and you make me want to vomit. Crawl back into the sewers where you belong.
Too many Americans lack the ability to show empathy, sympathy or compassion for those who deserve it. Oh well, it boils down to character traits; you either have such traits or you don't and those who lack such feelings, in my opinion, are a waste of human flesh.
interesting. hermaphrodites, gays and lesbians all face the same thing: misunderstanding, discrimination and abuse by many in the general culture.
in spite of the tragedy of scrambled genitalia, the advantage of the hermaphrodite is that their condition is indisputably genetic, out of their hands so to speak. you would think this would translate into a modicum of understanding from the rest of us.
gays and lesbians genetic issue likely only expresses itself in the brain, it isn't notable to the naked eye and as a result all kinds of unpleasant motivations for being different get heaped on them.
it's clear that the cretins who are mocking the hermaphrodite can't even comprehend their obvious visible genetic aspect. i doubt they will ever be able to comprehend the genetic gay/lesbian aspect before they leave this planet.
how sad. for all of us.
What advantage? They're still treated as unnatural freaks.
Read some of the comments here.
Severed, I think what maridanne meant was that nobody is going to drag intersexed people off somewhere so they can pray away their ambiguous genetalia. Or tell them that they're going to hell because they chose to have ambiguous genetalia. That it's hard to argue that intersexed people chose to be born like that. Which is what a lot of people do to homosexuals.
Michelle, you haven't been exposed to some of the "fundies" out there. Don't you think that Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist would absolutely expect this person to go somewhere in private and pray until Jesus took away one set of genetalia or the other? And that failure to do this would automatically consign them to hell?
Thetruthandnothingbutthetruth:
You are a fool. Would you make fun of other genetic disorders such as autism, or aspergers syndrome? How about Spina bifida? Hahaha you're sooooo funny, ahole. Please make jokes about children born without limbs or blind etc...
Hermaphrodites are not witches or sinners, they simply are born with the attributes of both men and women. It is not common and certainly, those afflicted do not deserve your stupid comments.
Charles, without knowing this person, I'm pretty sure you're right; most people of this mindset also make fun of "cripples", "retards", and everyone else who isn't capable of being everything that they think people should be, so they enlarge their generally low opinion of themselves by attempting to cut everyone else down to below where they are through fault-finding and name-calling.
I would consider a hermaphrodite the ultimate partner...'best of both genders'
...excuse me while I ponder this fantasy..sigh
That does seem like a lot for a country the size of Germany. It seems unimaginable that anyone could be operated on without consent. There are many people that seem to be abnormal in some respects but shouldn't forced to me made to conform to the dictates of others.
How about the involuntary sterilizations that were performed here in the US as late as the 1970's? It's not just confined to Germany.
See above, evidently we have being doing this here in the united states automatically!
80,000 people in a country the size of Germany is about 0.1 per cent, so it's large enough to be a noticeable minority but small enough to be shunted aside by mainstream society until the mainstream society has it pointed out how wrong they've been.
If you pick up on one of these in a bar, the question "Your place or mine?" becomes truly relevant; and is it a date or a threesome?
This is a condition you are born with, in the same way some are born with Down Syndrome or dwarfism, for example. What sets this apart is that for the formative years, these people don't really know into what they are forming. It may be that in the case of this individual, DNA and other testing wasn't available 52 years ago so nothing was done. What's actually the saddest part of this story is that a surgeon took it upon himself to remove the sexual organs without consent.
Aren't hermaphrodites people? Then they deserve every right that every one does.... If one wants to marry your son or daughter, let them it's not your choice..
Republodites is another problem entirely, Keep them away from all living things, if they can't own you they will kill you .... i.e., Romney's Death Panel denying care to 60 million families, just because he doesn't like you & can't own you
You're right Jim, this article isn't really about hermophadites in Germany, it's really just all about the U.S. Presidential election, so thank you for pointing that out.
Next up is right-wing, wiccan, one-nutted, aboriginee, knock-kneed albinos. Or, as more commonly known, undocumented Democratic voters.
Thank you Jazz, I am signing off and going shopping and you are sending me away with a good laugh. Loved your comment.
The two of you deserve each other. So much need to put down people who differ from you.
The surgical choices made for this individual, not by the person, but by the surgeon without consent of the patient is disgusting. The amount awarded in the civil action is further victimization of this person.
Aren't hermaphrodites people? Then they deserve every right that every one does.... If one wants to marry your son or daughter, let them it's not your choice..
Republodites is another problem entirely, Keep them away from all living things, if they can't own you they will kill you .... i.e., Romney's Death Panel denying care to 60 million families, just because he doesn't like you & can't own you
I'm a hermaphrodite or rather an X indeterminate when I was young.My foster father decided to put me on surgery to remove some penis like thing to make me become a girl of which I'm really is.I am now 55 yrs. old and I have feminine features.I couldn't blame him for deciding for me,but somehow I wondered if the intervention is right.The Lord God created me and He created me perfect.An extra something wouldn't hurt me at all,for I know that God did it on purpose,so that I may know who my children are...the one's stolen from me.My own biological parents turned me into a breeding cattle,wherein it resulted in children that have been taken away from me.And I want them back. --------Anonymous --------
Obviously god didn't give bigots your brains or heart. One day when hermaphrodites can poor more money into lobbying politicians than the Koch Brothers & big oil do, you might get a voice in this "Free Country" we call America
Jim poor is spelled pour not poor. The key to being intelligent is too first use words correctly and not as you have by using the word poor and pour which both sound the same but have two different meanings.
Don't layer words as it makes one ignorant.
A persons individual liberty and freedoms do not reside in how much they can pay someone.
Basically the system that you are talking about is called a Despotic Communistic Dictatorship where a persons rights of what they can do, can say and hear is based upon what someone else wants them to hear,see and say.
This is a form of Communism based upon the Chinese philosphy of the Three Monkies which is nothing short of creating people who are ignorant of the truth that like their ignorant masters that control them through fear their only goal is to make money off of them so they can make theirselves seem more important than another or more godly when in fact their ignorance can be seen every time they mouth the phrase.
"God gives me these rights."
Sounds to me like God is a socialist.
A god does not give any rights to anyone as the only person that benefits is those telling the person what rights they have where laws are then created to make such people fearful of the "godhead" and to make them believe without question what they are told to believe.
Every single American has the right to be as they choose to be, as they choose to live their lives as the Constitution protects these rights.
Only the despotic nature of religion, such as was the norm during the age of kings and queens when kings and queens told their subjects that they had been chosen by god to lead them and that what was happening was a direct result of what god wanted to happen without the individual choice of each subject being taken into consideration. This type of fuedal system is still Communism where all ideas and actions of how people should live their lives came from a king or queen because such people had been able to swindle or convince a group of people that they were in fact the voice of god when in fact they were nothing more than littoral deviants able to twist language and words around to brainwash the masses into believing their story.
The Constitution protects your freedom of speech but does not protect those who would stalk you and harass you to force you to change how you think to be like they are...the common minded and ignorant.
Wow. I thought I had issues. This is a tough, tough issue and I am SO thankful I was NOT born like that. It must be EXTREMELY hard to deal with. Good luck to them all.
The answer to many peoples questions about why can be answered by science where religion would try to get rid of such people calling them abominations and spawns of the devil because such "disorders" actually draw more people to want to find a center of understanding instead of just assuming the reason why people are hermaphodites.
The more people come to an undestanding through science why the cells during the process of fetorial evolution, or the cells that are developing to use DNA to build the cells from a microbial sized group of proteins and energy that develop into a life sized human, miscommunicate during celluar seperation the more people will understand that such people are not in fact monsters but are normal human beings.
The real kicker here is that religion has tried to cover up for thousands of years such "dieseases" by hunting such people down calling them witches, monsters, demons, burning them on crosses or drowning them.
Even with a basic understanding of DNA that one learns in high school people should have the understanding that hemaphordites could be a possible link to a primordial phase in the evolution of humanity.
You can ask any geneticist that DNA only passes on the physiological, or how a person looks, to the new born and not the personality. The reason being is that every person experiences the events around them infinitely different from the next. Neither one of the parents experiences that they have experienced during their lives will be passed onto the child nor will the child know will their knowledge.
Since physilogical traits are passed onto the next generation through DNA a hermaphodite can be looked to as a remnant of an ancient type of human that like some types of species on Earth have both male and female parts and reproduce with the need for sexual copulation.
Basically this means that at a certain time the egg factor releases an egg into the growth cavity while the other factory releases sperm into the growth cavity. The two combine like any normal egg and sperm combine that after certain amount of time a flap would open up allowing the new life to emerge from the growth cavity.
Over millions of years and through what humans of the time would have called a mutation of DNA if they had had such scientific facilities that we have today, the two sexes male and female evolved from a hermaphodite type species that because of a sequencing problem during the exchange of DNA a new species of human called the male and female came forth.
This is why science is fun to learn about. Science opens up new thought processes to prove an existance that religion can only speculate and assume happened.
The Earth is not 10,000 years old either.
The truth to humanities evolution is there and located within science.
Science is also the best tool in defeating racism and discrimination as a person can tell you the reason why they are the way they are because of science where religion would discriminate against you because you look differently than what you are expected to look like thus in essence destroying the notion of the assumption of a god telling a person that what is is what is.
Not even wrong for the Universe is bigger than God.
Now I'm certainly no expert on genetic science, but does some sort of test exist to determine whether the individual has XX or XY chromosomes? In my mind, THAT would be the correct way to determine a child's sex, regardless of the failure of the genitalia to develop correctly. Again, I'm no expert, but from my understanding of biology it would be the chromosomes that determine whether puberty brings an onset of estrogen or an onset of testosterone (barring adrenal gland dysfunction) thus determining the development of true male or female characteristics.
It's been possible to determine whether someone's cells are all XX or XY for years. But many intersex people don't fit into those two categories. Biology is more complex than just two options. And to make things even more complex, a person's genes aren't the sole determinant of how their body develops.
It's a bit more complex than that. Most men - 299 in 300 - have XY chromosomes. But 1 in 300 don't, and some women do.