transabled.org

 

• About
• Login
• Contact
• Accessibility

Google Search:
Web transabled.org Go

 

Home / Thoughts / What if?

What if?

Written by Sean on Sunday, April 8, 2007

Here I was, watching tv, when they announced that a documentary was coming up about a doctor doing surgeries on unborn infants of around 20 weeks of age to repair spina bifida. My partner pointed out that the problem with such surgery is that at that age it is impossible to know if it will be a form of spina bifida that manifests itself, or if it is spina bifida occulta. That got me to thinking…

So, what is spina bifida? Basically, it’s a split in a vertebrae (or many) in the spinal column. In some cases, the spinal cord pushes through and gets stuck and it causes paralysis and other generally unwanted effects. Wikipedia has a good article on this. Spina Bifida Occulta is basically "hidden" spina bifida, which doesn’t usualy make itself know at all throughout someone’s life.

Apparently 5%-10% or some say as much as 23% of people have Spina Bifida Occulta, and don’t even know it.

And my brain started thinking "what if?"

What if I was born with spina bifida and while I don’t have any physical effects, I was left with the deep feeling that I should have been paralysed?

X-Ray showing Spina Bifida Occulta at S1

It’s not uncommon to hear such stories of intersexed babies, treated to take one gender rather than the other, often arbitrarily, and later in their life appear to be transgendered, when in fact it was simply that the good doctors and the well intentionned familly made the wrong decision about the gender of the infant. This is a fairly straightforward explanation of some cases of transsexuality. Before any of our transsexual brothers and sister say that it’s an oversimplification, I’ll readily admit that it is :) And it also doesn’t apply to everyone, not by a long shot. But it’s there. It’s undeniable.

What if it was a relatively simple explanation like that for me as well? Of course, it doesn’t really explain why I feel that way, but it would give some foundation for the feeling. It would be something physical that I could wave and point at. Particularly to those who say that drawing comparisons between BIID and GID is pointless since there’s a "female" gene, but not a "disability" gene.

I know, I’m likely grasping at straws. But the theory is appealing nonetheless. It can’t be proven unless and until I have an x-ray taken of my back, showing that area. And the x-rays taken last year after my fall don’t show that area. And even if I did manage to get x-rays, and it did show spina bifida occulta, what then? Just one theory. It would certainly be interesting to get all the para wannabes x-rayed and see if there’s such a trend, wouldn’t it?

Of course, it doesn’t explain all those of us who want need to be amputees, or blind, or deaf, or to have any other impairment. But then, forcing an intesexed baby into one gender may see them grow as a transsexual individual, but not all transgendered folks were intersexed at birth. It doesn’t remove the validity and reality of their position.

[tags]Spina+Bifida+Occulta, Paralysed, BIID, GID, Transsexual[/tags]