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How do you become a *** minority?
That's a great question because
I'd never thought I was
In my experience of being an intersex person
I didn't know I had an intersex condition until I was fourteen years old
and even then
what I was told was
was not the truth
I found out
the truth about what intersex is and what my own intersex condition is
in stages
because it was all kept under
a lot of like cloak-and-dagger secrecy and shame because people were so afraid
of it
and the real big fear was that I'd kill myself if I knew the truth
because the understanding, the understanding that general, broad was that there are understanding is that there
two options
and if I wasn't one of them
and I'm going to be asked to
leave the big, giant
hokey-pokey of life. So
until I was about fifteen years old
I didn't think it was a *** minority and of course I didn't know that word
because when I was fifteen, it was 1985.
And we didn't have the
concept of *** minority? You're right the concept of *** minorities wasn't
there. I mean, I think, really,
and then even after I knew, even after I found out that I had an
intersex condition,
because I had been
lied to and
and
been given that cloak of shame
I put it on for myself
so I didn't ever talk about it.
I kept it under
big wraps;
I lied about it. When I got into sticky situations I would just lie about it. I didn't want to be
the a minority. Who's like waving their hands going "Ga, I don't want to be a minority! Pick me!"?
I made a decision on a record that I made in
2002, um
and I decided
I'm just going to put it in the liner notes. Because I'm still like a recording
artist where you have actual liner notes. Jazz.
So anyway, I wrote
I put it in the liner notes. I said
to the writer, "You can put it in there that
Eden Atwood had a
genetic condition at birth: Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome."
"You can put it in there."
"Make it kind of vague and oblique."
So I'm brave but I'm not really that brave. I'm brave enough.
I'm brave'ish.
And nothing happened; no catastrophic thing happened.
Nobody called me any names. Nobody was ugly to me.
Nobody wrote anything awful.
So then I took another little step,
and another little step.
um, and then I did a national
Prime Time Live interview
and did a big step,
and still nothing bad
happened to me. I moved to Chicago when I was 19, and
very luckily got this incredible gig that
very quickly turned into four nights a week in the
chichiest club in town, and only, it, the Gold Star Sardine Bar it was in the Playboy building
in Chicago; it was gorgeous and
uh... but the whole idea of the jazz singer, the femme fatal, the chanteuse,
is this feminine ideal, right?
I mean that's the way I played it. I felt like I
felt like i had this incredible secret. I felt like I had this incredible secret,
this incredible secret. I have
typically male chromosomes
I had *** inside my body that were taken out when I was 14.
What would happen
to this ideal that I'm promoting
if anybody knew that?
So couple years after that
I got a job on a soap opera and
flew to New York and was taping this soap opera but the
soap press from like Soap Opera Digest Soap Opera Weekly
Soap Operas Anonymous
all the, the whatever their magazines, they would be downstairs and there would
be photographers and journalists
and they started this,
there was some rumor going around about an actress on a different show,
she was really a man. I was like, that is so dumb
but if they find out about me I'm screwed.
So I quit 'cause I was too, plus it sucked.
They don't know, they don't know, they don't know what intersexuality is?
They don't know what,
they don't know what intersex is. They don't know what *** minorities is. I didn't, I hadn't ever
ever heard the term sex positive until thirty seconds ago. No,
that's not true.
From your first video. So,
going back to you as an infant.
You were born.
They identify you as female.
Yep. You grow up.
You're beautiful - modeling, talented - singing. Except that along the way
became an intersex activist
and started talking about really, you know,
difficult things to talk about. Stuff that's really routed to a lot of past
trauma too. I'm, mean I'm
before the internet
found out about my intersex condition and then spent the next 14 years
never talked to another person. How did you find that you were intersexed?
Um, well, that's a horrible story, but I'll do it fast and rapid fire.
So I was 14 n' everybody got their period but I didn't.
And I heard there was a shot you could get, a big, huge, like horse tranquilizer shot
of estrogen and it would be if you have your period.
And I didn't want to be left behind and it was weird and I felt bad.
And so I got the shot and nothing happened. Then they took blood from me
And I they were like, "wow this kid has a lot of testosterone and very will
estrogen (though some testosterone
uh, converts to estrogen.
so i did have secondary *** characteristics development and not much
not like now
so uh...
that's when they start having like private conversations
orion out in the waiting room and they're talking to my mother and she
comes up with really red eyes and looks very unhappy and
can't look at me
so my mother decided we're gonna tell you the very best place in the world
we're not going to go to saint james' impute left saint james'
we went to the mayo clinic and rochester minnesota
and they take my blood and then they developed a story that they have told
all these other girls too
she never needs to know
so just touches cancers of race we had taken out
should never have biological children's could have to take hormone replacement
for this to real life
and they'll have a good life
so
the truth is the body of seeping out doesn't it so
then my relationship with my mother's horrible because we have an attachment
disruptions she has a secret that she's keeping from me and i feel it that we're
not talking about it so it's not
so i run away from home
took the bust on the mississippi live at my father
and he was divorcing his fifth life
who
in a bid to kinda get back and told me one night you know they lied to your
parents lied to you the truth is you're really half man half woman
and i was first time ever thought about you myself
because i thought headset
he would've had to be in dot big of a horrible secret
for everybody to be acting so weird
but this is this still the timely caddell for one month
and he did say that any of the number of dr
and you get there from bir zeit have flown back into the mayo clinic
and another met me there
and then they gave me
hit a very
convoluted being gigantic explanation that really whenever my head they'd
already been done
and already made me feel ashamed about my body because they lied to me the
first time
i was about a campaign around perfect surgery and infants you can't unring
that bell
what's you want people
arguable another intersects exist
but it's always existed then it will always exist
that there is a district binary there never has been that you have to options
than you think you have
i loved seeing cranes video because
thinking about like and jillian different boxes enough for everybody on
the planet
because suffering and i think people don't know that
so
my contribution to that is to say
uh... is to combat the shame that was given to me when i was a child
and even though it's still rankles me sometimes and it's still hard sometimes
that i was nervous coming in today
even i've done so much performing at some nervous
making
to know that there is you can be exactly who you are
has been all
plan forty-four
speech of wisdom