Kristi Ambrose’s upbringing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, mirrored that of many young girls in the area. With devoted parents, a spot on the soccer team, and countless hours spent playing outside, her childhood was filled with typical youthful joys.
Her affinity for sports naturally led her to embrace a tomboy persona, which often resulted in her mother persuading her to don more traditionally feminine attire and experiment with hairstyles like perms.
At the time, Kristi believed these were the normal parent-child disagreements that many teenagers face, a simple generational tug-of-war over style and identity.
However, at the age of 19, Kristi’s life took a dramatic turn when she uncovered a family secret that had been hidden from her. Her realization was earth-shattering: her family had concealed from her that she was born intersex, possessing XY chromosomes, and had undergone surgery in infancy to make her genitals appear female.
Now, at 50, Kristi has embraced his identity as Jim and is sharing his story in a documentary that chronicles his long journey towards self-acceptance. In this revealing narrative, Jim reflects on the pivotal moment he learned the truth during his first year of college in 1995, a moment that forever changed his understanding of himself and his past.
Tonight, speaking in a documentary about his decades’ long journey of self-acceptance, Jim has recounted the moment he found out the truth during his freshman year of college, in 1995.
‘I was taking this feminist studies course,’ he told Channel 4’s The Secret of Me – airing tonight at 10pm. ‘They had given us a selection to read from this book but I hadn’t done the reading.
‘The tables were all in a circle because the professor wanted us to be looking at each other when we talked.
‘I just started looking around. You could see people were shaking their heads in disbelief or disgust, and I thought, oh this has to be good, what is this.
‘I started flipping through the book and I started reading about how some children are born with genitals that fall outside an arbitrary acceptable norm. It’s measured, you know, this length, you get to be a boy, this less than that, you get to be a girl.
Kristi, who now at 50 goes by Jim, discovered he had been born intersex with XY chromosomes and had undergone medically recommended surgery as an infant to make his genitals appear female
‘Then you lose your phallus and you’re raised as a girl. The choice is made by the parents and the doctors. The child is having their gender designated, selected, imprinted, for them.
‘People are just sort of “my god I can’t believe this happens regularly… they just mutilate babies?”‘
At that moment, it hit Jim – that ‘this was about me’.
Immediately, he went the doctor’s office to get his medical records – and rushed to open them in the car.
‘I start at the top and immediately it says “carrier type, XY”. And I’m like, wait, what the f*** is that… why are they running chromosome tests on me?’
Expressing frustration with his family, Jim added: ‘Why didn’t you tell me this? I had to find out on my own? In my car? With nobody to talk to?’
In archive recordings, Jim’s mother and father, Alice and John, admitted that they thought they were doing the best thing for their child.
Jim felt angry, after finding out that years of being ‘bullied for how he looked, measured to other girls and feeling like a fish out of water’ were linked to ‘lies’, and caused ‘so much unnecessary suffering’.
The documentary also heard from Dr Richard Carter, who performed the surgery on Jim.
‘I was called to the woman’s hospital to see an infant that had ambiguous genitalia,’ the retired urologist said. ‘Ambiguous genitalia is a condition where you’re really not sure whether, when looking at the genitalia, you’re looking at a male or a female.
‘The most obvious thing was that the phallus was nowhere near the size of a penis we would expect from an infant.
‘In 1976 the medical world thought was that these patients needed to be surgically constructed the way they most likely looked.
‘This was strictly an anatomical decision because it was so much easier to make it look like a clitoris than trying to make it look like a penis.’
In the documentary, Jim also opened up about the heartbreaking moment during his childhood in which his mother told him he would end up having to have a vaginoplasty.
He said: ‘I was around the age of 12. My mom took me into her bedroom… She was sitting next to me, and she said, “Soon you’re going to have to start taking these pills that are going to help you grow and develop breasts, and make you look like other girls.
‘”One day, later on, you’re going to have to have a surgery,” and finally she said, “But you’ll never be able to have children of your own”.
‘That’s when she gets choked up, she breaks down and starts crying and I’m caring for her, I’m telling her “it’s OK mom”‘
His experience through teenagehood was one of discomfort. After being put on oestrogen, Jim ‘wasn’t that excited about growing breasts’, and ‘wasn’t happy about the way their body was changing at all’.
After finding out the truth, at 19, he stopped taking hormones for several years.
However, doctors, seeing his bone density deteriorate as a result, insisted he must go back on oestrogen – or start taking testosterone instead.
Jim opted for the latter, albeit initially feeling hesitant.
He found he was growing happier in his body, content, and ‘comfortable in his own skin’.
He eventually also got a double mastectomy and had the vaginoplasty removed.
‘I wanted to decolonise my body as much as I was able to,’ he explained.
Jim has dedicated his life to intersex activism, arguing against the procedures he got as a newborn, which he says take bodily autonomy away from people.
Speaking to the Big Issue last year, he explained: ‘My belief is that children’s bodies are their own at any age. If a 12-year-old kid says they want this and they are this and they want this body, that kid requires care, love, compassion, understanding and someone listening.’
However, he also explained he has, over the years, come to understand that parents allowing surgeons to take part in some procedures never likely intend to cause pain.
‘These parents don’t sign up to harm children,’ Jim shared. ‘It’s a cultural belief that genitals must look this way and therefore must reinforce the fiction that genitals come in two sets. Once you realise that what you’re working against is cultural, generational and entirely human, then you’re like “Oh, s***. That’s what we’ve been working against”.
‘No wonder that person stared at me like I had three heads. It’s not that this person wants to harm babies. It’s because it’s an entire cultural belief that bodies are supposed to look one of two ways. I used to think about it as a sprint, but it’s a multigenerational marathon. A cultural change has to happen.’
Jim told the programme he has since taken a step back from activism, because the years of work into intersex rights left him burned out.
However, he poignantly reflected on the fact that it was the community he was able to find in other campaigners that helped him live a happy life – with Yvonne, a partner that loves him – today.
‘I had found that community that saved me,’ he shared. ‘If I’d have had to go back to Baton Rouge and stay there the rest of my life, it would have broken me. I have no expectation that I would have been alive.’
The documentary ended with the statement: ‘Around 1 in 2,000 babies are born with genital differences that put them at risk of surgical intervention.
‘So-called “corrective” surgeries for intersex children still occur in most countries globally.
‘Many of these children have been lied to about their bodies and some have never been told the truth.
‘Intersex activist continue to campaign against medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex children.’
The Secret of Me airs on Channel 4 at 10pm, on January 20.
