I watched the Law & Order this week and because I am not gay I

[jwirr]

have some questions. I have known two transgender persons in my life: one was a baby in a hospital undergoing testing for sex identity in 1959 and the other was the wife of my cousin. Both went through surgery in infancy. The baby had obvious signs of a gender mix-up so that is when I learned that there really is such a thing as being transgender. The woman was an adult when I was about 16 and she was a good friend of my mothers. The group of women she was a part of all knew about her past and accepted her. I remember her fondly.

So what type of signs exist for persons not eligible for surgical change as they were? What does the medical community require before they will acknowledge this need? Give me some background on this as I would like to better understand what I was seeing all those years ago. What causes this mix up?

[DCKit]

1. Sexual "reassignment" in infancy is (most?) often the result of a botched circumcision...

as in, they cut off his dick and try to make the best of a horrible situation.

The majority of transgendered adults I have known identify as the opposite sex. Having actually known several, I have no doubt that these people are, in fact, female persons in male bodies and vice versa.

It just happens.

On Edit:

I watched that show too and, though it was completely over the top sensationalized (for the viewer #s), I believe they handled it very well and with reasonable sensitivity.

[jwirr]

3. I did not see the adult I was talking about but I did actually see the

child. The mother showed me that the child was born with both a penis and a vagina - no scrotum bag. The university was testing internal organs to see which sex the baby favored most so that they could begin reassigning it to one sex or the other.

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. Actually, no

My mom worked for many years for a urologist in a large clinic in Central California. Incidents of intersexed births is shockingly high among farm workers, most likely due to prenatal exposure to pesticides, fertilizers and other industrial agricultural chemicals. Many of these chemicals strongly mimic estrogen; when a male fetus is exposed to them, the normal "masculinization" that normally occurs can be impeded, resulting in indeterminate genitals. In the past, the usual course was to "fix" the genitals and raise the child as a girl, but it was pretty common for such children to be have a masculine self-image and to latter transition to a male identity.

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. "There really is such a thing as being transgender"

A person born with indeterminate genitalia is not transgender, but intersexed. This typically happens because the mother was exposed to pesticides, solvents and other toxic substances while pregnant, which interfered with the fetus' sexual development. Transgender is when a person has a gender self-identity that does not match the person's "assigned sex."

Some people born intersexed are also transgender: this typically happens when an intersexed child is surgically altered to have "normal" genitals (typically female, as that is easier and less expensive) and then raised as that gender, while being genetically the other sex. Long-term tracking of such people has shown that genetics is usually dominant, and they will often times transition gender to match their biology.

[jwirr]

5. Thank you. That answers much of the questions I had. I do not know

what actually happened to the baby as our children were in the same ward and we left first. I think the adult lady was lucky in that she was very satisfied in her role as wife and adoptive mother.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. the two infants you knew were born intersexed not transgendered

transgendered people are people who feel like they were born in the wrong body. like the head/heart does not fit the body.