If you have been following my blog, you know that I’m working on my book The Choice of a Countess, based on a true story of the incredible R.B. born Intersex. I would like to devote this post to Sylvaine Telesfort who has greatly helped me with my research on the book and who has passed away this summer. Sylvaine was the President of AMIHE, Association of Intersexuality and Hermaphrodism, in Paris. I discovered her association on the Internet while searching for information about people born Intersex and decided to call. Our first telephone conversation lasted for about an hour. She was open, frank and provided a lot of detailes and facts. It was priceless for my book. We met a few days later for breakfast in one of the parisian coffee shops not far from the St Lazar train station. This time I brought a digital recorder to register our conversation. Sylvaine was very generous with her time and knowledge, showing exemplary patience and understanding, particularly at the beginning of our encounters when the subject was still new to me. She patiently answered all my questions, sometimes going over the same issues again and again to help me gain necessary knowledge and to advance with my research. She has also arranged for me to meet a doctor and a good friend of hers, Dr Jean-Pierre Siffroi, a specialist in cytogenetics, from CHU Paris Est – Hôpital d’Enfants Armand-Trousseau, whose input was invalubale for my book. Born intersex, Sylvaine had […]
The Discussion over Surgery on Intersex Babies
If you have followed my blog, you know that I’m about to finish writing my book The Choice of a Countess, based on a true story of the incredible R.B. born Intersex. R.B. and I have met by a coincidence. It was on Martinique during Xmas vacations. We were seating next to each on the beach. We started to talk and after spending a few hours together under the hot Carribean sun, the idea of the book was born. I was totally carried away by R.B., her life, inner strength and resilience. However, I did not know anything about the Intersex people. It was the first time that I have met an Intersex person. So in order to write about R.B., I had to do a lot of research about the subject that was new to me. The subject of Intersex individuals is a complex, little known to general public matter and it raises a lot of issues which I somehow had to treat in my book while telling about R.B.. One of them seems to be a discussion (or a battle) on whether intersex babies should be operated. The point of the operation is to give them a gender identity so that they can integrate into society by the time they go to school, be identified as either a man or a woman and avoid zillions of problems they inevitably have to face. The main drawback of the operations is that they are based on the results of a […]
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