Popular Taiwanese television host Liching, who married a man 14 years her junior in 2002, was not born a hermaphrodite as she had claimed six years ago but was a man, revealed the Taiwanese doctor who treated her.
Hermaphrodites are people born with ambiguous genitalia.
channelnewsasia.com: Taiwanese TV host Liching: Both man and wife.
In his article, Dr Zhang described how he helped a male patient undergo sexual reassignment procedures to become a woman. That patient was revealed at the end of his article to be Liching, better known in Singapore as the husky voiced host of the variety show “Diamond Club” on Channel U.
According to Dr Zhang’s article, he sent Liching to Singapore for her sex change operation in 1981 as the procedure was illegal in Taiwan at that time.
He went on to claim that Liching was definitely born male as her 23rd pair of chromosomes consisted of one X and one Y chromosome. The 23rd pair of chromosomes in women consists of two X chromosomes.
When questioned by reporters, the doctor explained on Wednesday that he did not write the piece to expose Liching’s past, but merely wanted to share his experiences.
He said that he revealed the patient’s identity “because she [Liching] had already released an autobiography that dealt with her past [gender-related] issues and publicly announced that she was a transgender individual”.
He added that he simply wanted to encourage people to face their sexuality, reported Hong Kong entertainment rag Next Magazine.
In reality, Liching wrote in her autobiography that she was born Wu Chungming, a hermaphrodite, not a male, to a mayor father in Chingshui, Taiwan in 1962. She changed her name to Wu Mingen after undergoing a sex change operation and acquiring a new identity card that stated she was a female. …
These recent revelations have cast doubt on Liching’s original gender and the accuracy of her autobiography. However, her success in the entertainment world has never been in question. …
Even with credentials like these, it is unknown how the fallout from this incident will affect her employment status, though Eastern TV did not react when she revealed in her autobiography that she was born a hermaphrodite.
Liching’s lawyer said in a statement on Wednesday that the host was distraught after hearing the news and even broke down in the washroom. However, Liching had “resolved to turn this sorrow into a source of strength and focus on her work”.
Editorial comment:
The ignorance of the majority of medical practitioners in relation to intersex continues to astound me. Their arrogance is even more incredible. I was appalled when I read this news item today.
Liching’s doctor not only committed an illegal act in revealing something about her history as his patient – he also showed that he is as tragically ignorant and as brutally arrogant as most doctors I and my intersex friends and colleagues encounter all the time.
Ignorance about intersex seems to be far more common in medicine, psychology and psychiatry than knowledge, an observation supported by the many non-intersex medical and psych people I have known over the years and know still.
Media reports like this one do nothing to lift that veil of ignorance, either.
In fact, what they do is perpetuate it even amongst those who should know better.
Where do we begin? Perhaps with a list, at the risk of saying the same things we always say, yet again.
- There is no such thing as a human hermaphrodite, a human being having two complete sets of reproductive organs, one male and one female.
- Intersex is not having ‘sex chromosomes’ aka a karyotype that is neither XX nor XY. Some intersex people have XX, XY, XXY, XYY and many other combinations of X, Y and O, and most do not. They are still intersex. Any doctor who pretends that not having a non-standard karyotype means one is not intersex is a liar or an idiot, pure and simple. Unfortunately, we have encountered a great many of both in medicine.
- ‘Sex chromosomes’ are not the sole arbiters of what sex a person is. It is far more complex than that and involves other genes in combination.
- Some intersex people are born with what doctors like to label “ambiguous” genitalia. That does not make them “hermaphrodites.”
- Some intersex people are assigned male at birth. Some are assigned female at birth. One-third of non-consensual surgical and hormonal sex assignments enacted upon intersex newborns get the sex of the child wrong. The child knows what sex they are – all our brains are sex-typed and our brain tells us what sex we are.
- Medicine is a combination of art and science that is heavily subject to systems of belief, ideologies if you will, and most often the science is overridden by those systems of belief, most or none of which are actually supported by real scientific research.
- Psychology and psychiatry are ‘soft sciences’ that are even more subject to scientifically unsupported systems of belief than medicine.
- Intersex is not somehow ‘transgender’ or a subset of ‘transgender’ although some intersex people may also identify themselves as ‘transgender’ by virtue of having had to go through ‘transgender’ or ‘transsexual’ medical protocols in order to obtain any partially appropriate medical treatment at all. We demand client-centred medical treatment for all intersex people.
- Intersex people have a perfect right to choose to undergo urogenital correction surgery so that we can live as the sex we know ourselves to be. In fact, so does everyone if they wish. It is not up to doctors or anyone else to surgically and hormonally assign sex without consulting with us. We demand the immediate end of non-consensual experimental cosmetic surgery on the genitals of intersex newborns now!.
- Almost nobody on this planet is 100% totally male or female. There is no hard and fast biological line between the sexes. The sex binary is a myth, a fantasy, a system of belief and nothing more.
Liching, I was saddened to learn of what amounts to an attack on you by this appalling doctor. I hope he gets his just deserts, preferably in court, and is struck off as a doctor. I hope that you get back on your feet fast and do not suffer any setbacks in your life and your career.
Liching, our hearts are with you. It takes enormous, unimaginable courage for people to live truly as themselves in most societies on Earth, still. We admire anyone who does so, and you have our deepest respect.
In the meantime, may we suggest that you forgo the deprecated term “hermaphrodite” and use intersex instead?
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A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis.
By this “doctor”‘s definition, both mother and daughter would be non-intersexed males. The ignorance and arrogance of some incompetents in the medical profession continues to astound me. Just when I think it can’t possibly get any worse, it does.
I can understand over-simplification of minor details to the point of inaccuracy to get a simple, accurate idea across to the popular press. I’ve done that myself, but I’ve also given the caveat that I am over-simplifying.
What this… “medical practitioner” said though was just plain wrong at every level.
My sympathies to his victim.