Transcript Phoebe All of Us Safe Schools Coalition Minus18

PHOEBE	Hi. My name is Phoebe and I'm a filmmaker. I live in Brisbane and I love playing ultimate frisbee or ultimate disc and Bollywood dancing and gardening. I'm intersex. Basically, it means that I have both male and female characteristics. Intersex is probably more common than you think. It may be as common, say, for example, as having red hair and seeing as you probably know someone with red hair, the likelihood that you've met someone who's intersex is pretty high. The condition I have is called androgen insensitivity syndrome. That's pretty rare. It's about 1 in every 25,000. But there's a lot of different types of intersex. When I was younger, I didn't know that I was intersex. Actually, I was diagnosed when I was about five years old and my parents knew, but they didn't tell me anything until I was about 11 years old. And at that time, I was sort of expecting that I'd be getting my periods and, like, going into puberty fairly soon and it wasn't really happening, so I asked my mum when she thought I might get my period and she told me at that time that I would never get my period and, in fact, I wouldn't be able to have a baby and that was quite shocking for me. Even though it was a shock, though, I guess I had some inkling that I might have been different or special in some way so it sort of confirmed it somehow. Growing up intersex is not easy and it hasn't actually been that easy for me. I felt a lot of the time when I was a teenager that I was the only one of my kind. Being intersex in your teenage years is very... It can be quite difficult. There can be a lot of changes happening in your body that are not the same as your peers. So, for example, when I was a teenager, I mean, all my girlfriends were having their periods and getting bras and, like, dating boys and none of these things were happening to me and I felt really excluded and I was really appreciative of the friends that could see that I was sort of not on the same journey, but, you know, included me anyway and were just really nice about it. I really, really felt that support was amazing and it really helped me through. When I was 17 and I finally found out the full story of what AIS was and that I was AIS, intersex, I found out at the same time that my younger sister also was AIS and that was really amazing for me. I didn't realise that there was anyone else in the world that was like me, let alone my own sister, and it's been great to have her on the journey just to have someone else who really understands what I've been through and has been there as well. So we share a lot, you know, together and, in fact, we also belong to a support group where we will come together with lots of other people with AIS and other intersex variations and just talk and share our experiences because, you know, talking about things is actually really, really positive. Like, it gets these ideas that have sort of been festering in your head and gets them out there and you talk about it in a way that's sort of safe and it helps you to sort of really get through it. I guess there are expectations about what it means to be a man or to be male and what it means to be a woman or a girl or female and these might be things that sort of play into the mind of young intersex people. I mean, it can be quite confusing to determine what parts of maleness or femaleness are you kind of thing. Most people who are intersex happily identify as being male or female and will be happy for you to use the pronouns that sort of correspond to those genders, but I guess it's something that you can't automatically assume, so you may need to just clarify what pronoun that person wants you to use. When a child is born intersex, it can mean a lot of things. It can mean that they're born absolutely happy and healthy and functional. There is a lot of surgery that occurs for a child that's completely happy and healthy just simply because their genitals don't look exactly male or female, they're ambiguous. What if you had surgery that changed your body irrevocably so that, you know, even before you'd had a chance to use your body and test it out and see what you like or you don't like... I mean, if you don't get that chance then you'll never know and so therefore if you're an intersex baby and you have your genitals surgically altered, I mean, when you get to, you know, puberty, you've lost something. You don't have that sort of natural sense of finding out what you like and what you don't like because it's been taken away from you and that's rather damaging. When eventually I did tell some people about me and what I was, I suppose, and how I was different, I was expecting that my friends would really reject me and, like, wouldn't want to know me anymore, but the complete opposite was the case. Everyone I talked to about it was extremely accepting and they could understand and when I explained it clearly, they just were like, "That's fine," and I was really, really relieved by that because I seriously thought people wouldn't like me for being me. However, I have met a few other people who are intersex who received bullying when other kids at high school found out. It's a difference, but it's genetic and, you know, we can't help that. I would love it if people respected that and weren't bullying each other at school over things like that. Once I reached out and found other people just by doing a Google search for "androgen insensitivity syndrome", it was amazing. It actually opened up my whole world. Just realising that you're not alone is a fantastic feeling and I feel like my life has gone in this direction now that I know all these other people, intersex and also gay, lesbian, transgender, queer, bisexual, that now form this kind of other family around me and we can share our experiences and our struggles and it just feels really nice to have people that really understand what you've been through. I think, you know, to be a supportive ally for an intersex friend, it's just about, like, including them, bringing them along and, you know, inviting them to the party or hanging out with them or just doing normal things that you would do with any other friend. You know, it's when you treat someone differently or like they're kind of not going to be included now because they won't understand or they're not part of that sort of thing, I think that's the worst thing one can do. You know, we all learn together as a group, so why not just include everyone?