Word: kellys
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Kelli went on to have three more surgeries to construct female-looking genitalia. But the matter wasn't settled. At the age of 4, she started asking, "Mommy, am I a boy or a girl?" When she was 6, she questioned her mother about all her surgical scars, and when Kelli was 8, her mother told her the whole story...
...truth came as a relief, although Kelli, now 10, is still grappling with the significance of gender in her life. A stocky, surefooted kid whose interests range from gardening and landscaping to marble collecting and woodworking, Kelli suffers from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which, she says, actually makes her feel more self-conscious than being intersexual. When asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she replies, "A carpenter. Maybe I'll be a male carpenter." Why a male carpenter? "Because I'd be taken more seriously...
True hermaphrodites like Kelli are thought to be quite rare. But less extreme cases of intersexuality occur more often than you might think. One estimate from a scientific review published in 2000 is that they represent 0.2% to 2% of live births. About 30 genetic and hormonal conditions can give rise to intersexuality, leading, in some folks, to an obvious mixture of male and female sex traits. In others the variation is far less noticeable, producing, for example, the premature development of body hair. Indeed, many intersexuals probably live their whole lives as men or women without ever suspecting...
...surgical world, "it's easier to make a hole than build a pole.") The goal was to minimize the amount of time the child spent with a nonstandard body in the hope that he or she would find it easier to develop a conventional sense of gender. As in Kelli's case, there was also concern that "extraneous" reproductive tissues might be more likely to become malignant...
Either way, the decision to operate soon after birth isn't easy. In retrospect, Kelli's mom thinks she might have waited. "Parents can help their kids live with genitals that are different," she says. On the other hand, she acknowledges, postponing surgery might have been difficult too. "If we had left Kyle as Kyle, I'm convinced he would have felt feminine at times...