ADELE Addams wasn’t given such a choice. Born in the late 1970s, she has Klinefelter’s Syndrome, so is XXY; chromosomally neither male nor female, in other words. Her parents were encouraged to assign her as male, and surgery was performed immediately. In her mind, this was “the wrong decision”.
After a difficult childhood and adolescence – “I eventually went into care, as my family couldn’t cope with what was supposed to be a boy but looked and sounded more like a girl” – she began living as a gay man. Yet this didn’t feel right either, and three years ago, after “a lot of fighting”, she was granted NHS surgery to make her body female. Now 31, she finally feels that “it’s all come good”, and is passionate about empowering others to define their own gender.
The Independent: The third sex: The truth about gender ambiguity
Last year she set up Project Silverfish, a support service for intersex and transgender people, whom she describes as “the most marginalised minority community in London”. Named after her friend, the transgender DJ and music producer Alex Silverfish, who committed suicide in 2008 following years of harassment, the project offers its users practical advice and advocacy, and has just launched its first therapeutic support sessions. It also delivers training to charities and social services.
The Independent: The third sex: The truth about gender ambiguity - Adele Addams
Addams, who last December won a Home Office Community Engagement Award for her work, explains that while transgenderism and intersexuality are not the same (the former is not a medical condition), “it’s not uncommon for trans people to discover later in life that they’re intersex”.
Editorial comment:
IT was wonderful to read about Adele Addams in this article and to see that she is doing okay now, finally living as herself.
Adele was the subject of a short documentary film directed by London-based Australian filmmaker Maxx Ginnane, that we have linked to in our Videos on the Web page.
We were saddened to read about the death of Alex Silverfish, after whom Adele has named her Project Silverfish, but are pleased to see that she has set up such a project. Certain parts of London are tolerant of difference but many most certainly are not.
It is interesting that we have known a number of XXY women in London, when medicine continues to insist that all XXY people can only be men and must be made into men if they are not. Little wonder Adele had such a hard time with the NHS.
Overall this is not a bad article, and we are glad that The Independent has taken the subject of intersex seriously though this piece does have its shortcomings.
We prefer the word ‘intersex’ to variations like ‘intersexuality’ and ‘intersexed’ for reasons that we have written about in several locations on this website, such as the FAQ and Some Notes on Intersex for Journalists.
There is an over-emphasis on sex chromosomes as well as on gender. The so-called sex chromosomes are just part of the picture and sex determination is polygenic – the product of the interaction of many genes.
Reality is always more complex than one newspaper article has space to explain within.
Gender has been used as a stick to beat intersex with since the 1950s or 1960s, by medicine, psychology and psychiatry, and so we prefer to steer clear of it here.
Again, we have written about the invention of various gender theories by the notorious John Money as a weapon against intersex, and those articles can be found on this website via the Search box.
OII Australia does not support the third sex concept.
And then there is the statement that intersex is a “medical condition”… oh dear.
