by Dimakatso ‘Garfield’ Sebidi

I am unshakable. I am unstoppable. I am God-fearing. And I am proudly intersex.  

I was treated differently because I am different. This is because I was born with two genitals. I spent the first six years of my life in and out of Baragwanath –which is now called Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital. In those six years, I was subjected to more than eight different surgeries on my young body – the first of which occurred when I was a year and six months old. Before that surgery, I did not have a birth certificate. So, for a year and six months before my future was decided for me, before I spent the first six years of my life in hospital, I was living, but since others had not yet taken a decision on my identity, I did not ‘officially’ exist. As I got older, as little as I was, I was very confused. I wasn’t in pain, and yet I was attended to by a million doctors every day. I was the patient that was always stripped naked. To the point that when I finally got home after those six years, I never understood why genitals were called a “private part” because mine were never private. I was never allowed any privacy when it came to my own body.   

This lack of privacy did not end when my life at the hospital did. When my family was living in Boksburg, word got out about why I had been in the hospital for so long. From that point on, whenever there was a family event or occasion, people would always take me to the toilet to ask me to strip naked because they wanted to see my body for themselves. Even at such a young age I was so used to taking off my pants without any pride or shame, because for so long it did not feel as though my body and the possibility of privacy belonged to me.  

My mom would tell me that I’m “special” – and I felt special, with people always wanting to look at my body. But I think what she didn’t realise is that through her saying that, through the constant assurances that I was “special”, I was becoming mentally isolated. It felt as though through saying I was “special”, I was being told that I am alone. Not only was I different, I was also alone. I know that this was never the intention, but because this was something that I was hearing a lot, especially from my family, it really put me in a mental corner.   

This feeling of being different and alone is something that followed me throughout my childhood. I knew that I was different from my lesbian friends because they were experiencing their periods – and I was not. My body was more masculine, my vagina did not really look like a vagina, and this affected me a lot. I was not like them; I was not experiencing the same things they were – and it made me struggle with not only self-acceptance but also self-love. People were still talking about me, and when people see something that they don’t understand, they don’t have positive things to say. I was hearing negative things about me, that I was ‘unnatural’, ‘demonic’ or just ‘wrong’. At school I could not even go to the bathroom because people were uncomfortable around me. It was hell for me as I was bullied badly. When no one takes the time to clearly explain your anatomy to you, why you are different, why people are treating you so differently, you end up thinking that God made a mistake with you, and that you were not really meant to be here. I was pushed towards suicide.  

The challenges I faced because of people seeing me as ‘different’ motivated me to work in schools. A lot of intersex people, a lot of intersex babies, are bullied in schools just like I was. A lot of intersex people cannot access their right to education because of bullying which has led to high dropout rates amongst intersex children. Most of the time, parents of intersex children feel like there is nothing that they can do because they also don’t understand – they do not have the language. I was 21 years old when my parents first sat me down to explain to me that I was intersex, but at the time the only language they had to describe people like me was the offensive word “hermaphrodite”. They did not have the language to understand, like many other parents.  

When an intersex person is born with ambiguous genitalia, like I was, and it is visible from birth, your parents speak to the doctor to decide whether to remove or operate on your genitals without your permission. Parents are told to expect a girl child or a boy child, but doctors never tell parents to expect an intersex child. When an intersex child like me is born, and their parents have that conversation with the doctor, what is actually happening is a conversation where they are choosing a certain life for you to live. They are deciding your identity for you – whether you will be a girl child or a boy child – before you even know your own name. Your parents are pushed to this choice because they don’t understand.  

I sometimes wonder, if I went back to Baragwanath and told them that I’m here for my penis, what would they say? Because it’s mine, and they took it from me without my permission. They did not give me a chance to decide for myself. But honestly, if I had the chance to choose now – I would still choose to be me. To be intersex. I wouldn’t want anyone to have touched me. I would not have gone through these surgeries. I am 39 and still have complications every day, I still have scars that sometimes make me feel ashamed when I take off my clothes. They are not supposed to be there. If only the world, especially the doctors, knew and accepted that intersex people are normal, I would not have to live with their choices about my body. Being intersex is normal. It is my normality. It is my reality. And no one has the right to take that away from me. No one has the right to choose my sex, or gender, or sexuality for me. I proudly choose to be me. And doctors should tell parents that an intersex child is a possibility when they are pregnant, and that the child needs to be loved and celebrated equally. It is not about accepting your child; it is about loving them.  

Intersex children deserve to be celebrated for who they are, not decided for. And that is why I speak so boldly and proudly today. I am who I am. Being intersex is one of the reasons that I am grateful for existing. God did not make a mistake. The males and females who made choices for me and about me did, and because of them I am taking lifetime medication. Not by choice, but because those males and females did not want to accept God’s creation.