Dawn Vago has grown up with the consequences of having surgery to “correct” an intersex variation as a child. Now 35, she is genetically male but has always looked entirely female. She has CAIS, complete androgen insensitivity syndrome: her body has XY chromosomes but is unable to respond to male sex hormones, so she developed female genitalia. Internally, she was born with testes instead of ovaries, and no uterus.
Warm and self-assured, Vago lives in Cheshire when she’s not working as an entertainer on a cruise ship. She is one of only a few British intersex people prepared to speak publicly on the issue. “My parents were told not to tell me, that I wouldn’t understand and I wouldn’t fit into society if I knew the shameful secret about myself,” she says. “They wanted me to live an open and honest life, so they told me when I was five years old.” Dawn’s parents were told by doctors that she would get cancer if her testes weren’t removed, so she had a full gonadectomy aged eight. “They said I would not survive puberty if I did not have the operation, and that wasn’t true.”
The advice regarding the cancer risk has since changed; it is now thought to be minimal and to affect adults, not children – meaning the decision to remove the testes or ovaries can be left until people are old enough to make it themselves. Vago says the synthetic hormones she now has to take have left her with a higher risk of developing breast cancer than she would have had of developing testicular cancer. “Because my body wasn’t receiving the healthy hormones that it would have produced, and through mismanagement of my synthetic hormones, my body started to deteriorate.” By the time she was in her mid-20s, Vago had developed osteoporosis and broken 11 bones. She believes choices about medical intervention, be that surgery or hormones, should be left until the individual is old enough to make an informed decision.
Doctors said I’d never find a man to love me and have my own family. I adore that I’m married and starting a family
Vago is living proof that intersex people can live successful lives while being open about being born outside traditional male and female categories. We’re speaking a few days after she has had a bid to adopt approved. “Doctors told my parents that I would never find a man who would love me, and I would never have my own family. I absolutely adore the fact that I am married and about to start a family. It proves you control your own life.”
ack’s parents knew he was different before he was born, when a routine scan couldn’t determine if he was a boy or a girl. Juliet was referred to a consultant at the local hospital, followed by meetings with geneticists and neonatologists, blood tests and an amniocentesis. She was told her baby was genetically male, but that this didn’t necessarily make him a boy. “It was very hard. I’d just assumed that XX is girl and XY is boy,” Juliet says. “Because people don’t know there are variations, when they occur it’s a freakish thing. But actually, he is just a normal child.”
Bouncing around the living room of their home in the West Midlands, Jack looks completely ordinary. With mousy, curly hair, a runny nose and a toothy smile, he clambers over Juliet and chucks a green football at me, oblivious to what his mother is telling me.
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“My entire pregnancy, I’d worried that I wasn’t going to be able to love my baby because it wasn’t a he and it wasn’t a she,” she recalls. But when Jack was born, he was blue and floppy. “Although it was awful at the time, it was the best thing that could have happened: I would have done anything to have made sure he was breathing again.” Her eyes fill with tears. “Quite quickly, he was crying. The relief was unbelievable. He was a baby and he needed feeding. Making sure that he was cared for was my priority, not poking around in his nappy.”
“Vago is living proof that intersex people can live successful lives while being open about being born outside traditional male and female categories.”
As long as he/she is honest about who he/she is..and his/her mate is aware of it...than that is between them.
One is biologically male or female and it should state which sex that person is on a BC. There can be another fill in the blank for what sex they identify.