FIRST PERSON: I am not just gay...but am I a freak?

I was 15 when I met a woman who made an impact in my life. Her name is Shamaine Centenera. 

 

I vividly remember her curly hair and Indian features as she cajoled me to enter a world of make believe through acting. As a third year high school student in UP Cebu, Miss Centenera gave me the workshop of my life. She forced me out of my shell, gave me parts that crossed gender lines.

 

In the final presentation after the acting workshop, I played a pregnant woman riding a jeepney, a girl possessed by the diwatas and a male part in a drama that I could not remember. She told me after the show that I should go into theater acting because I could play female roles with ease. It was my ultimate validation. I can play female roles and she approved. 

 

Nobody knew but at that time, I was battling my own private confusion. Puberty started when I was 11. I began to grow facial hair, began to have pimples and my legs became muscular because I suddenly became stronger and ran faster (something I never experienced growing up as a timid child). 

 

Then it stopped. I could feel something was different. I started to feel itchy in my areolas. It was so itchy that I scratched it till it bled in the nipples. My breast began to grow that it was even larger than my female classmates'. 

 

When I looked at my body in the mirror, it was not a body of a man. There was something wrong but I chose to be silent. My breasts became the topic of ridicule that I forced myself to be fat so that abnormality would be hidden.

 

It will be 28 years after when I would learn that I suffer from Klinefelters Syndrome (KS, for brevity). I am an intersexual. Undiagnosed until recently because when I was born, I did not have a micropenis, a common symptom of the disorder. KS is a genetic disorder that is not hereditary where a person is born with extra female chromosomes. A normal female is XX and the normal male is XY, a person suffering from KS has varying degrees of extra chromosomes starting from XXY, XXXY, XXXXY, etc. Hence, there are no specific symptoms and physical manifestations.

 

Then, by some twist of morbid coincidence, Julia Buencamino (Miss Centenera's daughter) was also 15 when she decided to end her life. It struck me at my core when I learned that Julia was a pansexual or suffered some form of intersexuality. 

 

Then, I wept. I knew where she was coming from. I saw myself in her shoes. I felt how she resigned to the fact that she will be buried as a woman despite the reality that he is a man. 

 

The frustration of having a body that is not compliant with the binary classification of man or woman is something that causes a great deal of pain. 

 

It already hurts to be gay. Now, I have to deal with this weird body like I was a freak of nature. The shame of waiting for everyone to change clothes in your PE class so you can hide your breasts. The humiliation of being forced to wear male trunks in swimming class and causing a commotion in the pool because I was topless. It was something I had to deal with everyday. At some point, I wanted to give up. Good thing I did not. 

 

But Julia surrendered the fight.  And no one should be blamed, not even Julia.

 

No one knew how to deal with the problem of intersexuality. In fact, doctors in the 1970's would immediately correct ambiguous genitalia to conform to the binary classification of either male or female. 

 

There are instances when a penis that has an opening at its shaft in the middle of the balls is corrected surgically by making an opening on the tip of the same. There are times when a vagina that has a very small opening is cosmetically enlarged to make it normal.

 

Later on, the penis actually turned out to be an extra skin and the opening in the shaft was because it was a vagina that has been deformed. Or the vagina that was enlarged turned out to be the sunken tip of an underdeveloped penis. Such practice is still so prevalent; there are only two states that prohibit corrective surgery on ambiguous genitalia; Malta and Australia.

 

Parents of an intersexual child can give love and support but the bitter reality is, it may not be enough especially when hormones play a big part in his or her life during puberty.
 

To an intersexual, the real problem is loneliness; a form of self-imposed mental isolation that no one can relate. In my case, it was something that did not have a name, like a curse or some form of a plague. It was the same loneliness that forces an intersexual to seek validation from other things. Hence, many of us experience addiction of some kind: food, drugs, sex, pain or the need to always be in a relationship. And in some instances, we resort to self-destructive behavior.

 

No intersexual child should die because someone suggested we are freaks and we would actually believe it. An intersexual child needs to be drawn out of the isolated loneliness that may lead him to the path of despair. By forcing an intersexual to conform to an assigned sex before he or she is ready to choose will simply reinforce the pain. 

 

My mother made me believe that I will be loved no matter who I will become. When I told my friends about my condition, they told me, "We always knew something was not right, but you are just Bruce to us so it did not matter." 

 

Shamaine Centenera told me there is nothing wrong with playing female roles and she gave me the validation I needed at that time. I was 15 then..same age as Julia when she died.

 

I wish I could have done for Julia what her mother has done for me.
 

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Bruce Villafuerte Rivera is a lawyer, law professor, and member of the LGBT community.