TRUE-LIFE
AT 18, discoverd I wasn't who thought i was
Emma Lynn Dowd, 44
Winding wool around the knitting needle, I relaxed into my grandma’s armchair.
It was the mid 1980s and I was 6.
The clickity clack of knitting was so comforting.
‘Jason, you should be out on your bike,’ my grandad boomed from the doorway. But I hated how rough the other boys played. Stunts on their bike, scraped knees and bruises. I hated basketball, fishing and noisy arcade games too. Happier knitting, playing with dolls.
That year, Dad took me to the barber to cut off my brown shoulder length hair. I was devastated.
I never fitted in – by 15, the boys thought I was weird.
‘Stop acting like a chick,’ one said when I huddled in a corner of the changing room after PE.
By now, I looked different. My leg and chest hair hadn’t grown, and my skin felt smooth.
I bit my fingernails to look more masculine.
Boys in my year had started growing muscles, while I couldn’t even do three push-ups.
‘Jason, you’re weak!’ my PE teacher barked.
Then, in November 1996, just before my 18th birthday, I started getting stomach pains.
‘And my chest hurts too,’ I told my doctor.
‘There are a few lumps,’ they frowned, pressing around my nipples.
Terrifying.
Could I have cancer? As the consultant examined me, I could tell by her confused look something was wrong.
‘This is breast development. Are you taking female hormones?’ she asked.
I shook my head, confused, as she sent me for an ultrasound.
‘I’ve been getting tummy pains, too, probably just indigestion,’ I told the sonographer.
‘There’s more than that going on,’ he replied.
Pointing at the screen, he showed me the outline of something I recognised from science class.
A uterus and two ovaries. ‘The pains you’ve been getting are your body preparing to have a period,’ a consultant explained.
‘What does that mean?’ I gasped.
‘It looks like you had surgery as a baby…’ he said.
My heart raced as he searched my medical notes before explaining that I was intersex.
It meant that when I’d been born it wasn’t clear if I was a boy or a girl.
My parents had decided I should be a boy.
I knew nothing about it and was bursting with questions for Mum and Dad.
But I sat there quietly as the doctor suggested fortnightly injections of the male hormone testosterone to suppress the female hormones in my body.
I felt conflicted.
But I was sick of being bullied for being different. So I agreed.
Went home to Mum and Dad, still in shock. My mum explain
