âI hear that in the Western world, a girl like me would have been diagnosed and âtreatedâ
from birth or at least as puberty began. This didnât happen to me because no one thought there was anything to treat. We noticed I was different, but different didnât mean wrong. Some girls are what they call late bloomers, anyway.
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âI canât biologically contribute to making new life. I did not know any of this about my body until soon after August 2009, when I won the gold medal in the 800-m race at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany. I was only eighteen years old and had been subjected to invasive and humiliating gender confirmation tests without my consent just prior to the race. What followed was a media firestorm that continues to this day.
âOf course, growing up I knew I looked and behaved differently from many of my peers, but my family, my community, and my country accepted me as I was and never made me feel like an outsider. The beauty of my childhood was that I never felt othered or unwantedâthis is the source of my strength. I have never questioned who I am.
âThey learned to respect me because I respected myself. I was fair, I minded my business, and I could play well. Iâm still friends with many of those boys today, all now men with families of their own. What I started realizing even from my young days is that people treat you the way you treat yourself. I never hid or felt ashamed to look and act the way I did. If you gave me something sour to taste, I gave it right back.
âI have never been in a âcloset.â I have never understood the whole Western âcoming out of the closetâ thing. I never hid who I was or felt I had to. Everyone in my world seemed to know. I didnât go around yelling that I was into girls but, if I had to address it, I would. If some boy tried me, Iâd say it straight out, âIâm into girls. Maybe me and your sister can talk. And if you like your dick, let us not speak of this again.
âThe thing is, I donât want to be a man. If my bodyâs makeup makes me âintersex,â as they say, then Iâm intersex. Thereâs nothing to be done about that. The terms will change as the years go by. They always do. To me, theyâre just words. Even if I did this or that to fit some peopleâs idea of what a woman or a man is supposed to look like, my soul would remain the same. My body is mine, and I will not change it for anyone. That is what saved my career; it is the reason you know who I am. And I feel sorry for the sisters who agreed to the surgery, for their road to inner peace may be harder and longer than mine. My soul feels right in my body. I believe it always will. But if one day I change my mind about that, itâs my business. Mind yours.