Written by:
Shirley Liu
Photographer:
Phiyllis Christopher
Intersexuality
After growing up withdrawn and sexually dysfunctional and feeling lonely and unhappy until her mid-30s, Cheryl Chase finally had a nervous breakdown. Chase was born with ambiguous genitals-- as are five children in the U.S. every day -- and raised as a boy for a year and a half when doctors decided Chase was a girl and removed her enlarged clitoris, rendering her non-orgasmic.
Following her breakdown, Chase devoted herself to healing. "I found others who had been treated in ways very similar to myself. Everybody that I had met had suffered in complete and total shame and isolation and believed that they were the only one."
The medically unnecessary surgeries, nine of ten of which are clitorectomics ("You can dig a hole but can't build a pole," says one Harvard doctor), were initiated in the 1950s and are still standard procedure today -- even U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders has performed them. These procedures are given no psychological follow-up.
"When I realized that clinicians are treating people today no better than they treated me, I wanted to stop it," states Chase. In 1993, she founded ISNA, Intersex Society of North America, the first organization of its kind. Through ISNA, Chase is fighting: 1) To increase the visibility of intersexuality as a phenomenon 2) To oppose medically unnecessary, irreversible interventions like genital surgery and 3) To create a system of positive interventions to replace surgery and silence through peer support and mental health support.
"Intersexuality has a lot to teach us, not just in terms of gender expression and helping intersex people directly, but about how complex life is."
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