the secret of her life

Well, the media has descended on my little country town. Several weeks ago there was a fire at an egg production warehouse in the next (smaller) town down the road and tragically one of the volunteer firefighters was killed when the burning roof collapsed on him, an event worthy of media attention but not the reason the media has descended on us.

No, the reason for all the hoo rah is a lawsuit filed against his widow by his mother and ex-wife trying to block her from receiving any and all benefits (like the $600,000 death benefits, life insurance and joint property). Basically, they want to run her out of town on a rail.  A little tarring and feathering might not be out of order.  Why, you might ask, would they want to do this?

Allegations have been charged and rumors have exploded.

They were getting a divorce, were living apart, property was settled and they were only waiting for the court date. The widow denies this.

The marriage was not lawful in Texas since she is genetically a man, born as a male with a male name. She claims she was born with a birth defect that was surgically remedied later in life.

The deceased husband did not know about her 'history', that it was revealed to him during a child custody hearing and that was why he was divorcing her. She claims he did know, that the surgery happened after they were married.

And on and on it goes.

Pretty hot stuff for a small town in Texas.

Rather than repeat it all, here's a decent report on what's happening. 

And though her parents claim she was born with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome or AIS*, she was obviously a boy at birth and was raised as a boy as she herself admitted in a video she made in her early 20s, a boy who wanted to be a girl and who started dressing and living as a girl in her teens and who admitted to wanting a sex change operation.

*AIS is a condition in XY babies that makes them insensitive to androgen (male hormone) and are born with outward female genitalia (a blind pocket vagina) but no uterus or ovaries and with testes that do not develop or descend. This condition is not usually discovered until puberty. Sometimes a partial syndrome (PAIS grades 2 – 4) results in both a vagina and a micro penis.

It turns out that this type of thing is not so uncommon. It happens in about 1 out every 20,000 births, with PAIS/1 or 2 happening in 1 out of every 200 births. My son knows a woman who was born with this condition, who is genetically a male with a male brain, but because it is easier to change the anomalous genitalia to female than male, that's what the doctors recommend. And so it is done. They don't know, of course, if the baby is male or female unless they do genetic testing or until puberty so they just rely on social conditioning and upraising to make these babies female. It doesn't always work. My son's friend likes girls just like any hetero male with a male brain. That makes her a lesbian in our society, but she is not, not actually.

There must have been a time in our human history before we became so 'civilized' when we did not make these individuals pariahs and accepted them however they saw themselves. It's a shame that as civilized 'religious' human beings we now strive to make these individuals ashamed and undeserving of human and civil rights.

Whether the widow was truly AIS or was simply (if that can ever be called simple) a complete male with a female brain, whether her husband knew before the marriage or not I suppose will come out in the upcoming court case. Regardless, I don't see her having a future in this town. And although the ex-wife and the mother and their lawyer claim that this is strictly a legal affair, citing Texas law that makes same sex marriages illegal, it is definitely about the money and about the hate and about the fear. It's definitely not about love or about who we know we are.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about AIS...it's causes, appearances, socialization, treatments, etc...here's an excellent site.