Courtesy Of Fackeltraeger Verlag \/ Courtesy of Fackeltraeger Verlag <\/p>\n
Christiane Voelling is a 52-year-old intersexual who lives in Dusseldorf, Germany and has fought for greater rights for people like herself whose sexual gender is indeterminate. <\/p>\n
By Andy Eckardt , NBC News Producer <\/p>\n
MAINZ, Germany Pink? Or blue? For most parents this is the paramount question when it comes to organizing a baby shower or choosing a color for a newborn's room. <\/p>\n
But, what happens if the exact gender of the child cannot be determined? It is estimated that in Germany alone approximately 80,000 people are intersexual, so-called hermaphrodites, who have physical features such as chromosomes, hormones, gonads and outer sexual organs which cannot be unambiguously attributed to just one gender. <\/p>\n
Christiane Voelling, 52,is an intersexual. <\/p>\n
She is a nurse living in Dsseldorf who was born without defining gender characteristics. <\/p>\n
Because German law requires that a newborn's personal data including gender specification is registered within a week, Christiane was proclaimed a boy at birth and called Thomas after a midwife supposedly mistook her enlarged clitoris for a penis. <\/p>\n
In Voelling's case, it was later diagnosed that her indeterminate external genitalia were the result of a rare genetic disorder of the adrenal gland, the so-called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH. <\/p>\n
\"My childhood and teenage development was often agonizing because I did not really know what was wrong with me and where I belonged,\" Voelling said in a recent interview with NBC News. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Read the original post: Courtesy Of Fackeltraeger Verlag \/ Courtesy of Fackeltraeger Verlag Christiane Voelling is a 52-year-old intersexual who lives in Dusseldorf, Germany and has fought for greater rights for people like herself whose sexual gender is indeterminate. Continue reading
\nGerman hermaphrodites push for human rights<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"