Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00696)

Subject: REPLY TO JOHN / SAMBLO


Dear John and Theos-Talk Friends, 

I certainly had no intention to bring up anything about my life in 
this forum. As it happened, soon after I made my appearance here, 
someone here posted a link to my article on the GALVA (GAY AND 
LESBIAN VAISHNAVA ASSOCIATION) support group website. It is that 
article that mentioned my intersexed condition. Because the 
biographical sketch on that site said almost nothing relevant to my 
studies of Theosophy, I then posted here my bio notes for the World 
Council of Elders, which focused more on my religious studies. I 
thought that people here should know that I am considered qualified 
to speak on Vaishnavism by the World Vaishnava Association, and that 
my expertise on the history of Eastern religious traditions has been 
recognised by the leadership of such groups as the World Hindu 
Conference in Sri Lanka, the World Hindu Organization in Nepal, The 
Universal Sanatana Dharma Foundation and World Fellowship of 
Religions in India. I only posted reference to some of my religious 
and academic credentials here to provide some fairness and balance to 
the post about my intersexed condition on GALVA. 

I am not embarrassed by my condition, but find it unfortunate that 
some people seem to drag the subject of my gender into every other 
discussion I get into. There were many other references to me on 
the internet, so why was the link to this particular GALVA site 
posted here ? As a strictly celibate and chaste (for many years) 
Sannyasi, my only involvement with sex is as a minister / counselor 
and medical ethics activist for the rights of intersexed persons and 
others who have suffered from any kind of sexual abuse. For 
instance, I have long been active in working against the 
international sex slavery of women and children, and against female 
genital mutilation. 

Regarding the GALVA article, I was asked to contribute said article, 
not because I am gay, lesbian etc. but because I am a Vaishnava 
Shiksha Guru who has long ministered to the glbti Vaishnava 
communities. As someone born with a very rare form of late 
virilizing 'true hermaproditism', and someone with an extensive 
background in research, science, medicine and human services, I am 
somewhat of an expert on the whole subject of 'intersex' as 
hermaphroditism is now called. After completing a comprehensive 
survey of the research literature on sex differentiation and sex 
dimorphic behavior in vertebrates in 2001, I decided to make a 
topical index to my study available online to the glbti support 
groups, ministers, counselors, doctors, teachers and others in the 
human services fields. 

As a human rights, social justice and medical ethics activist, I am 
especially concerned about the plight of intersex infants. 
Statistically about 5 Intersexed babies a day in the USA are 
surgically 'reconstructed' to APPEAR to be either male or female, 
when the doctors have no way at all to ACCURATELY guess what the 
child's gender identity is likely to be, based on their ambiguous 
genitals. More than half the time the doctors guess wrong, condeming 
the poor child to a life of complete misery. Intersexed adults who 
have been subjected to these sex-change surgeries as infants are now 
establishing support groups to oppose these unwanted sexual 
mutilations. Because I had a very rare late virilizing condition, I 
was spared any surgery as an infant, and was of a legal age to make 
my own decisions, when by body started masculinizing. So I am one of 
the fortunate intersexed persons who was not subjected as a helpless 
infant or toddler to mutilating 'normalizing' surgeries. However 
many have not been so fortunate, and many more (globally tens of 
millions) of intersexed persons live in a social and legal non-entity 
state and suffer all kinds of social and medical abuse, fear and 
shame due to peoples' general ignorance about the existance of 
intersexed people. 

Societies try to erase the existance of persons who do not fit neatly 
into the dimorphic system by forcing them at birth into a sex 
assignment of male or female CHOSEN BY SOMEONE ELSE and enforced 
through surgery and hormonal treatments. This inflicts unimaginable 
suffering on such children, and deprives them of all their right to 
self-determination. I am of the conviction that people should be 
allowed self-determination in gender identity. Therefore I am an 
activist in this area of human rights. If my own experiance as an 
intersexed person can somehow serve in the education and relief 
others, then the suffering of it all will have been worth it. 

Still it would be nice to be able to carry on a dialogue about other 
subjects without having my gender history dragged into it. I never 
would have mentioned it here, but since twice now the subject has 
been brought up, I am giving a little testimonial regarding this 
issue. Instead of just being curious about me, I request that Theos-
Talk members who are interested, learn about the plight of intersexed 
persons, and work to change the law and the horrific medical 
practices that have been inflicted on intersexed persons to enforce 
their arbitrary legal definition as male or female. No one can 
possibly know what the gender identity of an intersexed infant is 
going to be when they reach puberty and naturally masculinize or 
feminize. Therefore birth sex assignments must be flexible and NO 
SEX ASSIGNMENT SURGERY should be performed until and unless the 
person themself desires it. 


As for HPB, I would not be surprized if she was intersexed, because 
of her tremendous intellectual powers and some of the other 
characteristics of her strong personality. This is because androgens 
are the neural organizing hormones, and in XX persons who have been 
hyper androgenated in utero, having an extrodinary I Q is one 
possible outcome. In fact, when XX persons excell in male dominated 
fields, they often exhibit characteristics of having been hyper 
androgenated before birth in the critical neural organizing periods 
of fetal development. 

I have never heard that HPB was intersexed, but she certainly 
exhibited many signs of it. None the least of which was becoming 
the dominant personality in a society of males. She surrounded 
herself with men, and controlled them not through sex / seduction, 
but through her intellect and force of personality. She was the 
Alpha Male in her intellectual peer group. In once sense she may have 
been incapable of 'surrendering' to a husband or any guru figure, 
because she herself was an 'alpha' male personality. Thus her 
Mahatmas were necessary to embody her own real, but socially 
unacceptable, personal power. In such a case, the real interior HPB 
was her great strong SERAPIS, and the body she was living in was a 
life-long sourse of cognitive dissonance for her. This is not like 
multiple personality disorder, but is what intersexed persons who 
have been wrongly sex-assighned suffer through their whole life if 
they cannot somehow get a legal gender re-assignment, or simply pass 
as a member of the gender they identify with. In HPB's time and 
culture, it would have been extremely difficult for her to 'be her/ 
HIM SELF'. Thus, HPB coped with her frustration by expressing 'her' 
MASCULINE GENDER IDENTITY through her MAHATMAS. The men she 
IDENTIFIED WITH were like the Kashmiri Rajas. Thus her 'mystical 
form' as SERAPIS was like these heroic figures. She was not a girl 
or women in awe of them, 'she' felt 'herself' to BE ONE OF THEM. For 
her, the life of HPB was probably less real than that of her 
Mahatmas, especially Master SERAPIS, whom she identified with. 

So much for my opinion about HPB being intersexed. 

best wishes,

Bhakti Ananda Goswami 

ps I will post the index to my survey here. 

Message 9943 

From: samblo@c... 
Date: Thu Dec 26, 2002 4:04 pm
Subject: Re: Theos-World Article by HH B A G




Ramadoss,
Thanks for the page. Yes, some time back when the subject person 
posted his
unusual congenital condition I immediately remembered reading that 
Madam
Blavatsky had in explanation regarding her abruptly ended marriage 
had 
stated in part
as reason that she herself had this selfsame "Intersex" condition. I 
wondered of the 
poster had knowledge of this commonality betwixt the two of them. 
Perhaps 
he might
have a comment.

John




Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size 
9944 Re: Article by HH B A G dalval14@e... dalval2 Thu 
12/26/2002 3 KB 
9947 Re: Article by HH B A G ramadoss@g... ramadoss78229