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The online edition of Israeli newspaper Haaretz has an article about the life and struggles of an Arab woman born with an intersex condition. From the article: "The doctors referred H. to a hospital in the north that treats similar cases, and there she began a long series of treatments and tests that lasted 18 years. H. had to go there with her parents once a month for intrusive and often humiliating tests. 'They would undress me, measure my sex organs and sometimes take photographs,' recalls H. 'I felt unprotected. I didn't understand when I was supposed to get undressed and who was allowed to undress me. For the doctors I was an intriguing phenomenon, which everyone wanted to see and touch. I recall one examination when I lay naked on a bed in the emergency room, with lots of doctors all around, all looking and touching..."
"When H. turned 11, following consultation with their physician, her parents decided to turn her into a girl, that is, to remove the testicles and reduce the size of her clitoris so that she would look female. They did not share the decision with their daughter and it appears that her parents neither understood nor wanted to understand the full implications of H.'s condition." "H. felt that the world of women was closed to her. For years, she refrained from entering into any kind of romantic relationship with boys or young men her age. 'Every time my sisters talked about marriage, I was outside the conversation,' she says. 'I felt defective.'"
Read the entire article here.
Posted by Emi on Feb 1, 2005