vostok
Well-Known Member
Earlier this year, 23-year-old Anick - who was born intersex - was getting ready for the last in a series of operations that would give him a fully-functioning penis. The BBC followed his progress.
"I've lost count of how many doctors and nurses have seen me naked over the years," says Anick. "In the past few years alone it's been more than 100."
Anick was born with genitals that didn't resemble either a boy's or a girl's. "The doctors said to my parents: 'This child is mostly like a boy, but we're not sure yet,'" he says.
He did have testicles but they were in the wrong place, so his first operation - to move them - came at the age of four months.
Throughout his childhood, people would tell Anick that he wasn't really like other boys.
"I knew there was something different about me, but I didn't understand what," he says.
"I knew that my parents loved me, but at the same time they were taking me to the hospital
every six months, where the doctors would use words like 'abnormal' and 'atypical'
when they were talking about me."
He found it hard to make friends at school, and remembers holding his breath as a young child,
in an attempt to suffocate himself, and wrestling with the childproof safety caps on bottles of bleach.
After a more serious suicide attempt at the age of 14 he was given counselling,
but couldn't bring himself to reveal the source of his troubles to the counsellor.
"I didn't want anyone else to know who didn't need to know," he says.
"It was very, very isolating."
"I thought no-one knew what was different about me, that I was the only one in the world,
just some random miracle case," he says.
It was only five years ago, at the age of 18, that he learned there was a name for this -
and the reason for all his operations and hormone treatments: he was "intersex".
This discovery, and the realisation that there are other people out there like him, made a huge difference,
he says: "Suddenly I realised that I don't have to be ashamed of who I am and how I was born."
Doctors had also told Anick that he could begin reconstructive surgery to create a new penis when
he turned 18 and could give his own consent.
They told him not to rush to any decision and to go ahead only when he felt comfortable.
Three years later, in 2016, Anick decided that he was ready.
"That's when I had an epiphany," he says. "I needed to start telling people. I needed to tell the truth.
I was going to be going through a lot of major surgeries, and how many times can you have
your appendix out? I'd lost count of the number of times I'd used that excuse."
He began by telling his cousins, uncles and aunts and was surprised when they didn't react with disgust.
"I didn't know people could be so accepting of something I had been hiding for so long," he says.
The final operation was scheduled for June 2018, giving Anick hope that before long
he would at last feel confident enough to embark on his first ever romantic relationship.
It's February 2018 and Anick is on his way to the Organisation Intersex International (OII) conference in
Copenhagen. He's excited but also really nervous.
"It's quite surreal," he says. "For the first time in my life I won't be the odd one out.
I'm finding out about my people - that sounds weird, but that's what it feels like."
Delegates like Anick are arriving from all over the world to discuss issues that concern
all of them, and to share their experiences.
"As weird as this may sound, within a few hours of meeting we were all talking about our genitals," Anick says.
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-45979431
