Source: Şerife, “Köyde interseks bir çocuk olmak,” (“To Be an Intersex Child in a Village,”) İnterseksüel ŞaLaLa, 1 October 2013, http://intersexualshalala.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/koyde-interseks-bir-cocuk-olmak/
Do you know what it is like to be an intersex person in Anatolia, in a village in Turkey? I know that pain, I know what it is like to be the kid who got called names or heard a mother’s sigh when she was asked about it.. Listen to it from someone like me who once could not speak Turkish at all.
I guess I was 5 or 6 years old, I remember some women from our village and my mother forcing me to lie down and touching me between my legs while I was crying and screaming, making comments like they were doctors. They were consoling my mother by saying: ‘’Look, it is right there. It will open with the grace of God’’ and my mother would agree with them with gratitude and say, ‘’Amen, please God.’’
For the first time I sensed that a part of me was bad. A connection between my mind and that area had started. I stayed away from the adults and was scared of them for days. It was the spring of 1978.