Chronicle Editor
Andile Tshuma
Growing up intersex must make for a confusing isolated and sometimes life-threatening childhood, especially in a mostly conservative society like Zimbabwe.
Would you handle being born with both sexual organs? It can’t be easy, particularly during the childhood days when curious age- mates start wondering if you are a boy or girl.
The girls won’t want you, and probably the boys could reject you too. It is not what it should be, but unfortunately children can be like that.
Ambiguous genitalia is a rare condition in which an infant’s external genitals don’t appear to be clearly either male or female at birth.
Usually the sex or an individual is determined by their internal organs and the secondary sexual characteristics that appear at puberty.
Intersex conditions occur when there is a defect in the normal process of sexual maturation that results in abnormalities.
People with ambiguous genitalia are sometimes referred to as hermaphrodites. However, many organisations have labelled the term as derogatory and the term intersex is proffered in most circles.
The condition affects a number of people as an estimated one in 2 000 babies is born with the condition.
While some gender activists are calling for “hermaphrodites” to be left alone, some people in society are for the idea of corrective surgery during the early years of life to avoid cases of people growing up with acute identity crises.
In 2018, a series of stories were written about a Tsholotsho child who had ambiguous genitalia and was appealing for financial assistance to undergo surgery. The child got help and has been through a number of surgeries, after tests proved that she was a girl but had also developed male organs. However, she will have to take hormonal medication for the rest of her life so that her body organs can fully function as a woman.
What really pained me is that this child, who did not understand that she was different from other children, got her shock when other children noticed that unlike other girls she was playing with, she had a boy’s organ too.
She asked her granny to make her a proper girl, without luck. She endured years of being isolated by both boys and girls.
For her, the surgery was a relief and I remember her exclaiming to her granny and the reporter who initially wrote the story, that she was “a real girl now”.
Intersex people tend to suffer a lot of social prejudices as communities may not understand them due to failure to classify them as either male or female.
The school-going days must be the worst as children can be evil sometimes. Imagine school bullies or a whole class laughing at one of their own because he or she is neither a girl nor a boy, when they discover that the classmate has two sets of private parts. It can make a child hate school completely.
Sometimes even insensitive teachers can make the situation worse, especially if they are made to make a decision on the toilet that the child is going to use, the boys or girls. Teachers can make a bad and painful joke that could haunt a child for life.
Intersex people are born with a mixture of male and female sex characteristics. To determine the sex of an intersex child doctors try to work out what happened during the baby’s development.
They check the body’s DNA containers, the chromosomes, to see whether the child is genetically female or male. They see if the baby has ovaries or testes, and whether they have a womb or not.
They also test the hormones the body is producing and try to determine how the baby’s genitals may develop.
Test results can be on a scale between male or female and after the results, a series of corrective procedures may begin to help the person identify with a particular sex. According to the United Nations, the condition affects up to 1,7 percent of the world’s population.
Kudos to Mpilo Central Hospital for making efforts to help intersex children.
An effort to help intersex people when they are still welcome, but they should not be made to feel like they are creeps or that something is wrong with them.
Also I think the decision to go under corrective surgery must be by choice. After all, humans are so diverse and some may choose to embrace their condition.
In many African communities, being born intersex may be considered to be a curse to a family or a whole clan. Some people do not understand the medical and biological side of things that like other conditions and deformities, someone can be born with two sexual organs.
It must also be difficult to make and sustain friendships as people may not understand what and why that person is like he or she is. Human beings are curious by nature, children are even worse, and once they get the hint that one of them is different from the rest, all hell can break loose.
Some intersex children are reportedly permanently hidden at home, with some being killed at birth, as families feel that their conditions would bring bad luck to a whole clan as they are considered to be a sign of bad omen.
Mpilo Central Hospital has initiated a register for people with ambiguous genitalia in a bid to help them deal with the issue and avoid future psycho-social problems they may encounter regarding sexuality.
In a baby with ambiguous genitalia, the genitals may be incompletely developed or the baby may have characteristics of both sexes.
Dr Solwayo Ngwenya, the clinical director at Mpilo Central Hospital, interviewed by this publication recently said the hospital decided to help communities deal with ambiguous genitalia after noting many resort to faith healers to solve the medical problem.
“We have started a register which will help us ascertain the prevalence and we will be able to help everyone who will approach our public relations department for help,” said Dr Ngwenya.
“We have also attended to a few cases of older people who present with cancer only for us to discover they had been living with unsolved ambiguous genitalia. We have a lot of girls who are being raised as boys and upon reaching puberty, they can start menstruating which can cause cancer problems in the long run,” he said.
Dr Ngwenya said Mpilo Central Hospital has the capacity to screen and determine the dominant hormones in a person and conduct necessary surgeries if need be.
He added that people with ambiguous genitalia should not be classified under the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community as that belief tends to fuel stigma.
“This is a medical problem that must be solved medically to avoid future health problems for those affected. We therefore urge members of the public to come in their numbers and register,” said Dr Ngwenya.
In many maternity wards, babies with ambiguous genitalia are born to freaked-out parents who’d be ignorant of such a condition, mothers in a highly emotional state who are not always offered counselling and advice on how best to help their children and their situations.
Mpilo Central Hospital has started a good cause and hopefully other stakeholders in the health sector will be roped in so that more children and older people with the condition can get all the assistance that they need.
Hopefully, this move will create better awareness of the condition so more people will understand that it is a genetically occurring condition and has nothing to do with witchcraft and curses.
While this programme brings hope to communities, these surgeries must be by choice and for older children, they should be counselled and their consent is crucial to avoid future problems of gender identity crises.
Online Reporter
Londile Moyo