Being Different And Fitting In
By David Cameron
OII-USA Spokesperson for Human Rights
I can’t believe I’ll turn 60 next year. I’m amazed I’ve lived this long and survived my life as a queer person of sorts. It has never been an easy journey; in fact, it’s been very difficult, being different and trying to fit in, not only in the two-sex/two-gender binary system at large, but also in the ever-evolving gay culture. Most people when they see me read me as a “tall masculine guy,” but that wasn’t always the case and in some ways still isn’t. I’m still seeking a welcoming community where I feel comfortable and accepted for who I am.
One’s sex is different from one’s gender identity. Both are different from one’s sexual orientation. The religious right likes to meld us all into one, as if we were all the same queer species. Gay men/males come in all colors, styles, sexed anatomies, expressions and sexual experience. We need to celebrate the diversity that we bring to our irreplaceable and special world.
We are diverse gay men! But what do we mean by “gay men” and, in particular, what do we mean by “male” or “man”? We know the stereotypical characteristics that all gay males/men are supposed to possess: hyper-masculinized appearance, an adequate phallus/penis size (hopefully something over 3 inches when erect), and being able to stand to pee. But what else should we possess in the sexual anatomy department? Well, I guess we’re supposed to have two testicles in a scrotum that produces sperm and testosterone (and some estrogen so we act nice occasionally). And we need sex chromosomes, which are XY for the standard-looking male.
Can a gay male/man have any other sexual anatomy than what we presume to be standard or normal? There are many boys born with micro-penis, and in the past century many were reassigned female and given vaginoplasties. Yikes! Doctors seem to think a man needs an adequate penis only for vaginal sex. Some people are born with ova-testis and others with blind vaginas. People come in all sorts of sex chromosome variations too: XXY, XXX, XYY, XXYY, XXXY, XO, XY females (known as androgen insensitivity syndrome) and XX men, XY/XXY and all sorts of other mosaic patterns.
Can any of these persons be considered males/men? It depends on how they identify, if they are not aborted first. Although most people on the planet come in the two standard-sexed bodies, many of us do not. Depending on how “intersex” is defined, variations exist in anywhere from 1 in 150 to 1 in 2000 births. Doctors still perform infant genital surgeries (and hormonal interventions) five times a day in the USA. I guess they feel pressured by our binary-addicted culture. How can a doctor decide what is best for a child’s future sex life? What if that child were destined to grow up into a gay man?
When I was 13 and puberty came, I knew I was different from other boys. I still hadn’t developed like others, and I was often teased for having small testicles, and I had gynecomastica (breast growth in a male). I was also very tall; by 15, I was 6’ 9”. My energy was very low and I was a shy, awkward, emotional, self-conscious and sensitive “feminine” kid. My parents were concerned about my lack of development. They were told by the family doctor I would grow up to be “normal” and be able to have children.
I experimented sexually a lot with boys starting in junior high and struggled with my sense of gender and sexuality all through college. I was told by religious leaders that the feelings I had for men were just a phase and that I would eventually turn heterosexual. I tried to be bisexual and had a few girlfriends. In my mid-twenties, I enjoyed dressing up in drag and discovered a whole newworld that was exciting and creative. I came to hate traditional gender roles with a vengeance! And I wasn’t sure what world I really belonged to. I knew I was different, and I wanted to fit in somewhere.
When I was 29, I went to an infertility clinic because I wanted to find out if my body produced any sperm, since I had my doubts. (I remembered reading in a high school biology text that giants were usually sterile.) Although I treasured my difference, I wondered why I had small breasts, big nipples and a smooth feminine-looking physique, never having developed a musculature like other guys my age. After several tests, I was informed that I had XXY sex chromosomes, 10 percent of the standard testosterone production levels for an XY male and no sperm. I was offered breast reduction surgery and testicular implants but refused. I’ve since learned that this anatomical variation happens 1 in 500 “male” births, is called Klinefelter’s Syndrome, and exists within various creatures in the animal kingdom.
I was OK with the body I was born with but my endocrinologist apparently was not. He prescribed 300 mg of synthetic testosterone to be injected every two weeks for the rest of my life. He never told me what was going to happen, offered me no counsel, and told me to consult a medical journal for more information. I went through puberty again in my 30s. I only enjoyed the high sex drive induced by the treatments because I had never experienced being horny when I was a teenager. What wasn’t explained to me was that my body was going to masculinize. My once hairless body became covered with hair (much to my disgust) while I started losing my beautiful auburn hair to baldness. I became quite strong and trim. My voice dropped from a first tenor to a baritone. I also became HIV positive within the first five years of injecting testosterone. That is another story.
I had always felt caught between the sexes without knowing why. Emotionally and spiritually, I have always felt more feminine. During the first few years of testosterone replacement therapy, I felt that my female persona was dying. It was a time of overwhelming confusion, yet also a time of discovery. My sexual orientation hadn’t changed; I was still attracted to men. I didn’t understand why I had been chosen to have this experience, and I often wondered whether I should have stayed who I was. I knew that being “caught between” would be my life challenge and that would be OK since I felt whole with all my unique parts. I have since gotten back in touch with my female side, and I have realized that I never completely lost her. In the end, because I was so tall, I decided to find out what being male was like. I guess I’m still finding out.
For many years I was filled with shame and a sense of freakishness, and was told by my parents to keep my secret. I didn’t learn until 1995 that what I had was an intersex condition, that who I was originally was OK, and that I never had to take any hormones to change the way I looked. I like the term “intersex” because I prefer more choices than male or female. I think there is a continuum from male to female, like shades of grey between black and white. If only I had always known it was OK to be different and that I didn’t really need to fit into our binary system, I think I would have been a much happier person. I might have avoided some of the pain that I’ve had to endure to fit in. It’s been hard to feel like I belong to a community, any community.
When others look at me, they probably see a big, hairy, bearded, and very tall man. In many ways, I look and act like a typical San Francisco gay man. I guess most people see me like that and don’t think anymore about it. But I know that the truth is much more complicated. If you see a guy who looks “masculine,” just remember you can’t judge a book by its cover. And not all of us were created to populate the planet into extinction.
I was fortunate to meet a wonderful male partner who helped me through my transformation and has continued to love me just the way I am. We’ve been together for 28 years.
I want to be a part of a healthy and caring LGBTIQQ community where “difference” is seen as an attribute, not a detriment. We are all diverse. We belong to many different communities. We are not all the same. Many even in our community feel pressured by our binary-addicted culture. And many of us feel like we don’t fit in. I decided that telling the truth of my story and educating others about who I am is the only way to go. I think as gay men we are always trying to figure out what it means to be a man. And many of us are looking for a community to belong to. My journey is maybe just a little more unusual.
David Cameron was born in Canada, and grew up in Pleasant Hill, CA. He is a former international teacher, having taught in Thailand and Egypt. He met his partner, Peter Tannen, at a bisexual potluck in Sunnyvale. David had a home and garden renovation business prior to going out on AIDS disability and currently volunteers at the STOP AIDS Project. In addition, he serves as an appointed member of San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission’s LGBT Advisory Committee and is a Coordinating Committee member of the LGBTI Health Summit to be held in Philadelphia in March 2007.
Bhakti Ananda Goswami – Diversity and Tolerance Chair
Born with an undiagnosed medically intersexed condition, he was sex-assigned and raised as a girl. A lifetime of being intersexed, not perfectly male or female, not being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual, but at times persecuted as all of these, has given Bhakti Ananda Swami some unique insights into the nature of sex and gender along with great empathy for persons who have been rejected and persecuted for being different.
From: BENT: A Journal of CripGay Voices/November 2004
Letter by Bhakti Ananda Goswami to OII-Members
Diversity and community...
We are also family members!
We are mothers and fathers, parents (yes there is an English word for parenting that is not sexed !) And grandparents, great grandparents (my oldest grand daughter, 21 years old, is expecting her first child's appearance this month!)
We are siblings, sisters and brothers and others...
We are aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, daughters and sons, grandchildren, great grandchildren.
We are lovers and spouses, husbands and wives, ex-spouses, custodial and non-custodial parents...
Some of us are free-sex advocates, and some are celibates.
After more than 25 years of devotion to my 'common law wife', when she decided to normalize her life and marry a 'normal man', I became am a religiously vowed celibate. (that was 20+ years ago). Since then I have re-directed that psycho-social husbandly part of my passionate nature into protecting and caring-for the larger human family.
Fitting into the complex social reality of human familial and community relationships
Since having 'intersex' bodies, atypical 'gender identities' (senses of self) and 'orientations' (innate responses to others' sex-signaling) may complicate all of these categories of 'normal' familial relationships, often these relationships are full of uncommon challenges and even emotional and physical dangers for us.
For those living in the world of 'normal', obeying all of the rules and navigating through the vast complexities of human 'social animal behavior' signaling and responding is difficult enough. Just look at the pressures experienced in any society, by 'normal' adolescents and teens, as they are hormonally sexualized and thus forced to confront the complex realities of sex-dimorphic human social behavior. For many their entire sense of self-worth depends on their success at winning, whatever it means, in the game played 'between the sexes' in their own social system. And in many societies the 'winners' are idolized while the comparative 'losers' learn to live vicariously through them, as models of what it means to be a 'real man' or 'real woman'.
Thus, for example, Americans have sports and entertainment industry 'stars', who create, define and refine the current vocabulary and grammar of our social language of sex-signaling. Countless magazines and other media are devoted to communicating the latest fashions and actions of these 'sex-symbol' idols to their fans, who often slavishly imitate everything from their speech and dress to their bodily movements and scents (what cologne or perfume do they wear?).
Unfortunately for our society these trend-setting fashion-icon sex-symbol 'star' people do not make very good examples of personal virtue for our masses to imitate. In fact many of them have 'won' in our social game 'between the sexes', because of a very limited range of superficially attractive features or entertainment or sports talents. They have been given a pass through life by their adoring fans, who have en-abled them to get to where they are, despite enormous personal character flaws, and even chronically criminal and destructive behaviors. In the political subcultures of both the conservatives and liberals it is the same, with 'stars' emerging who wield enormous power, through their idolizing fan-base, but who are often as superficial and corrupt (and corrupting) as their counterparts in the sports and entertainment industries. The subcultures of education, science, medicine and religion etc. also have their own defining and re-defining trend-setters, who often do not 'walk the talk' of honesty and integrity within their own attempts to normalize / rectify / save / heal or educate humanity.
One of the dominant realities of my life, as an atypically sex-differentiated person, is the sense of objectivity that I have always felt, because of being conversely both an outsider and an insider to the worlds of male and female. With this simultaneous sense of sameness and otherness, I have been able to stand-apart from the whole phantasmagoria and watch it ....the great 'battle between the sexes', and the sex-substratum of the greater physics and metaphysics of giving-and-receiving, which is the essential creating-sustaining-destroying dynamic of the universe.
So as the great machine of creation grinds on, occasionally a bit of something stops it. A cog in the wheel brings the whole thing to a halt, and the machine has to be examined to see what makes it work in the first place, and what its vulnerability is... What can stop it. In one sense I am a cog in the wheel of creation, and for me the whole thing stops for me to examine it. I see what makes it work, and the work it does. I also see what its vulnerability is. I have no desire to sabotage it, and I want my 'part' in it to be perfecting in every way.
We atypical people are not here as an accident, or as a pathology to destroy the 'normal' or typical cosmos or 'order of the universe', or the good-order of our smaller societies and families. We are not here as a pathology, but as both a diagnostic 'tool' and curative. We are here for an objective self-analysis and 'spiritual inventory' of the human race. We are not here as patients, but as physicians, to bring wholeness / healing to our families and societies. We are here to aid in the ongoing process of diagnostic spiritual, relational and physical 'reality checks', for the physical and metaphysical improvement, healthful maintenance and correction of the human condition.
But to fully embrace our role, we must both appreciate the reality of the physical and metaphysical 'binary' of giving-and-receiving, and simultaneously transcend it. The entirety of a thing cannot be seen from inside of it, where only some parts can be examined closely. To view anything in its functional entirety, we must be in some profound sense outside of it.
But critics who are only outsiders never understand the internal realities of a thing. The most useful critics are therefore those who have been both inside and outside and know both realities.
This brings me to the position of OII, as recently stated by our fearless loving leader Curtis. There is a lot of pain, fear, anger and even hatred among us wounded 'intersex' atypical people, and some of us, as a result, for personal protection and empowerment, have identified with very sexist and exclusionary socio-political 'identity' movements, such as male-hating radical feminism, or binary-hating gender-queerism (or whatever the binary-haters are now calling themselves.) Curtis has rightly perceived that our common struggle is not about such 'patriarchy' or 'binary' or hetero-normative rejecting identity movements. Neither is it about accepting or rejecting the medicalization or pathologizing of our individual bodies or classes of atypical or 'abnormal' conditions. Our struggle is only about basic human rights and integrity. It is about our best walk in this world, and empowering every other human being to 'walk' (sit or lay-down) through their own best possible 'walk', as in 'journey of life' or life quest.
As "charity (love) begins at home" our most immediate mission-field (yes I sound like a Christian because I am one), is in our own 'family' or inner circle of relationships. Improving these relationships must begin with improving ourselves. We must try to become empathetic, to understand others more as an insider to their own needs, aspirations, fears and sufferings. This means listening to their 'testimonials' ...so I applaud the OII position as defined by our dear Curtis! How can we listen if there is a normalization of the discourse, with voices being censored? How do I know what the inside of a person (or group / identity movement, religious confession, medical condition) is like, if I cannot listen to the authentic voices coming from 'inside' of that person or group?
So let the OII be an alliance or association of people of honesty / integrity, who are devoted to the universal cause of human rights. Let us create a protective 'space' where all are safe to be honest, to express themselves frankly and openly, in the company of others who value their honesty / integrity, even if they do not share (or even oppose) their particular perspective.
It is possible for people of equal intelligence and virtue to hold opposing opinions, because their life experiences have taught them opposing lessons. Let us remember this as we seek to transcend our various opposing perspectives, to find our solidarity with all of those humans who struggle for the recognition and realization of their most basic human rights.
Even in prosperous nations and families, atypical people have many basic human rights problems. 'Sexual' or gender identity or gender expression minorities, along with all other minorities, are subject to abuse, dis-empowerment, exploitation, persecution, denial, perceptual or actual physical erasure and genocide by the fearful 'threatened' majorities that want to deny, destroy, contain, expel or exploit them.
The suffering poor are always denied their basic rights. Children as a class have few or no 'rights' in many lands. Women have no rights under Islamic law / Sharia, as ultimately under Sharia they can be legally executed for the most outrageous of 'sins' or 'crimes', such as defiling the 'honor' of Muhammad or their families.
The physically and mentally ill and differently-abled have serious human rights problems world-wide.
Racial prejudice and oppression denies people the right to life, or living an empowered, educated full life.
So as allies in the OII, instead of being merely self-absorbed activists fighting our own particular self-serving battles, let us 'think globally and act locally', remembering that what we share with the rest of humanity is infinitely greater than what divides us, and that we are all in the same struggle together.
Wishing you all peace and love,
Bhakti Ananda Goswami / David
Ahem, an announcement:
May Garsson and Tom Odegard of OII-USA will read at 7 pm on Friday, March 14th at Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid Avenue, a little north of Hearst, in Berkeley, as part of the Last Word Reading Series. There is also an open reading.
Tom Odegard, a wonderful and unique poet, is a resident of Friday Harbor, Washington and a frequent visitor to the Bay Area. In addition to being the proud possessor of an xxy gene, he is a volunteer fireman and host of a reading series in Friday Harbor. His poetry ranges from autobiography to political rant to exploration of some of the deeper levels of the human psyche, and is highly literate and at the same time very accessible and
extremely entertaining. His latest books are Past Lives Led/Ms.G Steps Out and Friends Well Met & More.
May Garsson is a poet and working artist and oil painter who lives in Marin County. Her well-crafted poetry has the knack of being funny and serious at the same time, and she writes about unusual and often outlandish everyday experiences with touches of disruptive social commentary. Her nature poetry is superb. She has studied poetry at SF State and UC Berkeley and has an art show coming up in April at Northpoint Café in Sausalito. She says that art and writing keep her alive.
The Last Word Reading Series is presented by Nefeli Caffe, a café/restaurant that serves dinners, tapas, coffee drinks, beer, wine, and more in a beautiful and colorful atmosphere. Dinner here is wonderful and should not be missed. The contact phone for the series is (510) 644-3977. Admission is free.
