Story title: I’M NOT AFRAID OF MY TRUTH ANYMORE… YOU CAN CALL ME SHIVOL

My name is Shivol . I am 22 years old young intersex activist and a human rights defender . I was born intersex and I was raised as a girl. Throughout my growing up, I was taken to doctors and I also underwent endless tests to try and determine my sex as I was told that I needed a corrective surgery since tests had proven that I am female. Growing up, I faced several problems which includes being bullied in the community that I was growing up in as well as at school. I remember several times when I was in grade 1, a girl I was playing with peeped on me while urinating in the toilet. The next morning when I got to school, I got to school to find other students shouting humiliating slurs at me saying that I have 2 organs. This used to upset me so much that I started fearing and hating going to school because no one wanted to play with me. I also suffered violent attacks from school bullies, accusing me of being a witch and this made me feel like an outcast. This resulted to my parents transferring me to another school in a different town where I was made to stay with a family member. After my transfer to a new school, I thought that I would be happy since I had moved to a totally new different school where no one knew me. I thought that I would not have to face hatred, abuse and being called stigmatizing names but all that changed one day when my aunt whom I was staying with shared my secret with one girl I was going to school with. This in turn caused the cycle of being bullied as well as verbally and physically abused simply because of born different from other girls in the school. Going to school was the most painful experience in my life.However, I managed to go through primary level education and when I started form 1, I had to start living with my father’s employer who was sympathetic to my situation because no one in my family really liked staying with me because of my intersex nature. During my form 3, my roommates stated that there were told that I was born intersex by my father’s employer which causes them to start fearing sharing the same room with me.

And it became a painful experience for me to continue attending school since many people had always had their suspicions of me being someone who looked different from the typical male and female students. I wrote my final O’level exams, but I did not pass as I expected because I was suffering the stigma and discrimination both at home and at school due to mental health issues.

After finishing my O’level, my parents managed to enroll me to do two short courses at a different college, to help me secure a better life in future, but I didn’t finish because of the scarcity of funds. I had to move back to the rural areas to live with my parents for two years, and due to the changes, that were happening to my body, my parents were pressured to undergo for corrective surgery as per doctors’ recommendations. I was 19 years old living as a girl, but my body was changing into a boy’s body, and this made me refuse to undergo corrective surgery and I was evicted from home. I spent five days being homeless with no place to go until I met a woman with a pure heart who took me in. I used to spend most of my time on the internet, which led me to meeting up with Ronie Zuze , the founder and Director of the Intersex Community of Zimbabwe Trust, I was inspired with their postings on Facebook where they would share openly their intersex narrative and lived experience with the world. They started teaching me about being intersex which I found to be an important thing in my life. I also managed to meet other intersex people and we instantly became family with one another through our almost similar life experiences which have common experiences of family rejection coupled with violence, stigma and discrimination being perpetrated most by our immediate family first. Meeting other intersex people gave me a sense of belonging as well as a reason to live since most times I would think of taking my life.

Before I met Ronie , I had no information about what kind of person I was and what being intersex meant. I now live openly as an intersex person.

Growing up, I had a passion for writing, but I couldn’t find anyone who encouraged me. Meeting Ronie was a life-changing experience since they are the one who started encouraged me to put my thoughts and feelings and emotions in writing. I started to write about my life and through Facebook I decided to come out about my reality of being born intersex. I was writing my live experience as a way of taking back my power and overcoming feelings of feeling shameful which I had grown up being made to believe. I also write to educate and inform to dispel misconceptions and the misunderstanding of how many people from my country and around the world view intersex bodies. Through my art I am able to advocate and to raise awareness on intersex issues.

Even though I have managed to come out and speak openly about my reality, I still face many challenges which I have to deal with every day especially being intersex is still being very much misunderstood since intersex people have been invisible all along and they are only starting to come out and speaking openly about being intersex now and it has made many people uncomfortable. All my national identity documents state that I am a girl but when one looks at me, I don’t look like a typical girl/female, neither do I look like a typical boy/male and this means that every time l make use of my ID, I get accused of stealing someone else’s ID document. For example, one day I went to the Econet shop , and they refused to assist me as they were accusing me of using an identity document that doesn’t belong to me. I ended up did not getting the services and that was a dehumanizing experience because the whole scenario drew the attention of the whole shop including some customers who were in the shop. I also have a challenge when I go out and find myself wanting to use public toilets. One day I got off the bus and went into the female toilet. The woman started screaming and saying that I wanted to rape her. I took out my ID and I was accused of not being the one on my ID, so I had to take off the top I was wearing in front of everyone to prove that I had breasts for them to believe that I had the right to use the public bathrooms. If I had not done so, they could have called the police for me. This experience left me shattered and it still haunts me today such that I now cannot go out and use public bathrooms.

Coming out was a process which brought some healing, and it also helped me with self-acceptance. Not only did it do that, but it is also part of my activism work since my coming out, I have had many intersex people message me on social media to share with me their stories and the challenges they are facing. I am able to offer advice and support but sometimes I get some people who come into my inbox to ask me dumb questions such as can you have sex and impregnate yourself?, did you grow a penis when you grew up and it made you look like a boy? or which organ do you have sex with?All this is just proof of how much ignorance is within our society especially when it comes to issues of intersex people. Being born intersex, it does not mean that a person is born with full-grown and functioning organs. Most people do not understand that being intersex exists in many different ways, and that there are more than 46 variations.

l got an MRI and l learned that l have male and female sex characteristics. I’m now at a point where l have an idea about which reproductive organs l have and how they probably function. The unfortunate reality though is that, being an intersex person, finding medical assistance is still hard in Zimbabwe.

At this point, my wish is for acceptance not only for myself but for everyone who finds themselves in a similar situation. All l can do is keep trying to inform all of those who are willing to listen. Hopefully this can help others feel less lonely than l did.