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Beyond Today

Who should decide what sex you are?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.61.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The UN say there are as many people with intersex traits in the world as people with red hair. All over the world, children with intersex traits are being operated on to be sex assigned at birth. The BBC’s gender and identity correspondent Megha Mohan has met the people at the forefront of the intersex identity debate including Rosie, a six year-old with ambiguous genitalia, and those leading the way in Kenya. She tells us about sex, its misunderstood relationship with gender and asks who should be making those big decisions about who we are. Producer: Lucy Hancock. Editor: John Shields

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:06.6

Hello, welcome to Beyond Today.

0:08.8

I'm Tina Dehealy and this is a space to answer one big question about one big story. Today, who decides what sex you are?

0:25.0

How many intersex you are?

0:27.0

How many intersex people do you know and do you even know what it means?

0:37.0

Well I've been speaking to someone who definitely knows a lot more about intersex people than we do.

0:45.0

I'm mega Mohan and I'm the BBC's global gender and identity

0:48.6

correspondent.

0:49.7

I am addicted to the internet so I know what is happening in these conversations

0:54.0

with minority communities that are happening in places you know like Tumblr

0:57.8

Planet Romeo you know kind of these kind of safe spaces that minority communities go to to define who they are.

1:06.9

And I think being the first global gender and identity correspondent means that I can, we can visit those conversations to tell a more

1:14.1

rounded human story. She's made a documentary about people with intersex traits

1:20.0

and how they should be treated and when or even if they should ever be operated on and who gets to decide.

1:27.0

Mega met a six-year-old whose parents have made a pretty big decision.

1:32.0

Rosie is such an interesting case for us because Rosie is a six-year-old girl who lives in Milwaukee,

1:39.0

which is a city in near Lake Michigan, and it a very famous for the Fons happy days if people can't place it in their heads and

1:48.7

Rosie was born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. So she is intersex-bodied, which means that she was born with ambiguous genitalia,

1:58.8

and her parents made the rather revolutionary decision to raise her as intersex-bodied openly.

2:06.0

So they are going to let her choose what she would like to be when she grows up.

2:11.5

Hi, my name is Rosie.

2:13.0

Rosie is frequently mistaken for a boy

...

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