[ ARC forum 2 ]

Advice simple - forget it.

Written by Paul B. at 27 Mar 2003 05:30:50:

As an answer to: Some advice needed written by Craig at 26 Mar 2003 20:02:39:

> I am a 20 year old male who recently had to have a physical as part of applying for a 911 dispatcher's job.

Well, they don't want you karking when you have to help someone else who is karking, do they? Would greatly defeat the purpose.

You've been well answered by the competent and honest posters - Ivan, Jim, and Ralesk (where's Rood?). "If it obviously ain't broke, don't try to fix it". This is the axiom of the medical approach to this sort of condition.

> Luckily I've been healthy growing up and I've avoided doctor's visits and none of the schools I went to did showers after PE so no one really knows that I am what is called intersexed.

Well, given the details of this interaction with such a "loser" of a "doctor", I have to agree with you.

> I am a boy but with what the doctor told my parents were ambiguous genitals. I have a divided scrotum and a very small penis, a little less than 2" soft and just over three" when I'm stiff. My pee place is in some skin folds where my scrotum ends.

I'm not sure how "ambiguous" is ambiguous. If you have both (or even one) testes in the scrotum, you are not ambiguous. You appear to have posterior(; scrotal, "third degree") hypospadias with severe chordee.

> I know I can't father children and have normal sex because my penis curves back between my legs when I'm stiff.

The latter may be true, but the former certainly is not - unless you also happen to have neither testis in the scrotum. There are means to achieve insemination, even the use of a(n unlubricated) condom taped down behind the opening with a hole cut in the end! The chordee probably provides more of a challenge.

> Before you feel sorry for me, I'm really happy that my parents told the doctors that they didn't want an operation to change me to look one way or the other.

As indeed you should be! Corrective surgery for this condition is nowhere near as successful as some would have you believe, and many (if not most) specialists feel it is more likely to be successful for an adult. If you wished it, that is. In particular, all surgery bears a risk of reducing your sensation and causing pain, which you undoubtedly do not have at present. Mutilation (so-called "gender reassignment") has a virtual guarantee of destroying sexual function).

> I'm happy the way I am, and besides I'm gay and my b/f likes me the way I am. If you're wondering, sex feels great.

Then who are we to suggest otherwise?

> At my physical, the doctor freaked at first and then got on with things.

Calculating ...

> He tried to skin back my foreskin, but he couldn't because it has a very small hole, about 1/8 inch. It hurts to try and push it back.

And herein lies the trick - if you have a scrotal hypospadias, you have no hole on the glans, because the hole is elsewhere. Whatever "hole" you have there is an illusion. There is little point in "pushing back" your foreskin.

> None of this causes me any problem but the doctor told me that he believes that I should be circumcised because I can't keep myself clean.

Let me be clear. Such advice is not merely incompetent, demonstrating no knowledge of the topic whatsoever. Such advice is criminally malicious.

> I don't want to do this cause I don't know what the head looks like under the skin, if it's normal looking and I never have a problem, but he's kind of scared me.

Anyone who advises what you suggest he did, would be a pervert, and should be reported to the medical authorities. Unless you feel like doing that, just file him away amongst the people you never want to see ever again in your lifetime.

> I want to leave things alone. The private intersex message board doesn't know what to do in these cases, although they all say no.

That's a rather ambivalent answer, isn't it? If you were to see a competent doctor who had experience in this area, he would show you "before" and "after" pictures of the cases like yours he has re-fashioned before, and would discuss with you the results (actual numbers) in terms of sexual function. If he failed to discuss all of those matters, to your complete satisfaction, you wouldn't consult him again. No specialist in this area would operate without a "consideration" period of at least three to six months.


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