An intersex person was born with a vagina and testes revealed that she doesn’t want to be identified as a man or a woman despite looking female.
Alicia Roth Weigel, 30, from Texas, was born with a vagina and testes but without uterus or ovaries.
Weigel said that spent most of her life hiding her genital condition and have pretended to have her period just to fit in at school.
“When I had boyfriends, I told them I had fertility issues so I couldn’t have children,” Weigel said. “What kind of man would want to date a woman who was born with internal testes?”
Weigel said that she had ‘no idea’ there was a term to describe being intersex until she discovered an article about it when she was 27-years-old.
The term intersex is used to describe a person born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that is not male or female, and today, Weigel said that she does not identify as a man or a woman despite looking like a woman.
The 30-year-old was born with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome or CAIS, a medical condition that means an infant has XY or male chromosomes, and internal testicles but presents female.
According to experts, around 1.7% of the American population is born with intersex traits, a percentage that is similar to the number of people born with red hair.
When Weigel was still a baby, her parents made the decision to have her testes removed resulting in a frenzy of hormonal imbalance.
“Essentially they castrated me, when you take away someone’s testes without their consent, it is castration,” Weigel told MailOnline. “My body does not respond to androgen hormones which are what most people consider male hormones.”
“Even though I have XY chromosomes, my body converts a certain level of testosterone to estrogen,” Weigh continued. “So my testes would have produced those hormones and my body would have converted it into estrogen.”
Weigel said that she relied heavily on hormone medication.
“I basically grew up in hormone withdrawal,” Weigel said. “The most similar thing I can describe it to is menopause.”
“Women going through menopause get mental fog and osteoporosis and hot flushes, which is what I experienced,” Weigel explained. “I grew up with depression, I had to get my bone density checked all the time.”
“All of that was not medically necessary, it was a decision that could have been delayed and probably avoided,” Weigel said. “My body is now reliant on external hormones to be okay.”
Weigel also revealed that she was advised by doctors not to tell anyone that she was born with both a vagina and testes.
“Doctors said that people would make fun of me, so I should lie and make up stories to fit into the normal paradigm,” she said. “When I was in middle school and my girlfriends started getting their period, I carried tampons even though I would never need a tampon because I don’t have a uterus or ovaries, so I don’t menstruate.”
“When I had boyfriends, I told them I had fertility issues so I couldn’t have children, but I didn’t tell them the truth,” she continued. “What kind of man would want to date a woman who was born with internal testes? You end up creating a wholly false narrative to fit into what society deems normal.”
“My brother didn’t know, my grandmothers didn’t know, my friends didn’t know.”
Weigel added that while she looks like a woman, she identifies herself as non-binary.
“I use both she and they pronouns, I was never given the choice on how to identify,” Weigel said. “One day we won’t even know the gender. We won’t have these male and female and non-binary boxes. It’s all about thinking beyond the box.”
Weigel is now using her life experience to advocate on behalf of the intersex community. She also testified in front of the Texas state senate in a public hearing on the failed bathroom bill.
“The legislation said that you had to use the bathroom that aligned with the sex on your birth certificate,” Weigel said. “It was intended to hurt trans people, but it also propagated this lie that everyone is born male and female.”