Her name is Dalea Rundblad. She was born with a rare DSD (Disorder of Sexual Development). In the video interview below she explains both her condition, Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS), her struggles, and her deep concern that “extreme” Gender Activists are using her condition as well as other DSD’s to denounce the male – female binary. Also, believe it or not, the Gender Ideologues are coming after the word “mother.” You’ll need to watch the end of the video to hear what she has to say about that.
Like I said in a previous post, the radicals behind the Gender Identity & Expression movement want to fundamentally restructure society. (Not everyone supporting the GI&E movement is a radical, but they are misinformed.) Attacking a word like “mother” on the grounds that the word is not “inclusive” enough is just one of many radical tactics being used. More about this specific attack in a future post.
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Gender Ideologues lump all DSD’s into a category called “intersex.” You might remember that category from a previous post where I discussed what our children are being taught in elementary school. Check out the Gender Unicorn here in the “Sex Assigned at Birth” section to see what I mean. [If you want more information on how Activists misuse DSD’s to further their agenda, see this post.]
Below is a long-form interview, slow at parts, but still informative. And very inspiring. Unfortunately, informing yourself about today’s Radical Disembody Movement is going to require more than a 60 second soundbite or 280 character Twitter feed if you want to get your brain around the issue. Plus these long form interviews help to humanize a very dehumanizing cultural moment. A cultural moment filled with people who have been convinced that personal fulfillment involves escape from the bodies they were given. As I search the internet for compelling content I will offer more of these in the future.
I encourage you to spend time educating yourself about this issue. I hope to help you do that. I’ve used the word “radical” more times than I feel comfortable doing. But I’m convinced we’ve reached an important cultural tipping point. My prayer is that we lean back. And seriously reconsider the world we want to live in.
I’m encouraged by the fact that many Gays and Lesbians, self-described Radical Feminists, and more on the political Left, are finally recognizing we have marched across a “bridge too far” in our efforts to reach the marginalized. We need to retrace our steps. Admittedly a hard thing for “progressives” to do. But increasingly “progressives” are saying “wait, wait, biology is not bigotry.” And they are finally speaking out. As a result, tension between the LGB and the TQ+ is growing. We will look at this development in future posts. Some rather strange alliances across the political spectrum, Radical Feminists joining Cultural Conservatives, offers hope that the tipping point may yet be averted. If we come to our senses together.
But unfortunately the louder Transgender “Queer” Activists still receive most of the media coverage. And far far too many leaders of our cultural institutions are listening to the “loud and vulgar” among us. Dalea wants them to listen to her too. But will they? As you’ll see she is far from loud and vulgar.
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I’ve taken the liberty to highlight some of the compelling parts of Dalea’s interview below. The place in the timeline is noted in case you want to fast forward (or rewind) to those points.
FYI: YouTube will only pay the content provider, the interviewer, if you “watch” the ads during the video playback. So do him the favor of not skipping those ads when they appear. Go get a swig of your favorite beverage and then return. Let the ads play on.
Now to the interview.
I just love this woman. Her tenacity and positive attitude in spite of her “condition” is inspiring. She doesn’t use the word disorder but she doesn’t push back when the interviewer uses that word. She is clearly more concerned with the extremist Gender Ideologues who have appropriated DSD’s for their own far-reaching agenda. I echo here what I said in a previous post:
We should respect and care for those who have these disorders but let’s not ignore the obvious. We should embrace them and recognize their often heroic efforts and celebrate the tenacity with which many of them live their lives, but we should not lie to them or pretend that they don’t have a problem.
You can tell Dalea is tired of the lies too. And she has dedicated her life to both educating and assisting the uninformed and the marginalized. You will be informed and inspired.
NOTABLE QUOTABLES:
Dalea: (3:55) I think I should explain to viewers that don’t know me or my condition…all of that. I was born with a condition called complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS). And don’t worry I will explain. It is a condition where a female looking girl is born without a uterus and she is born with internal gonads. And she has an XY chromosome which usually throws people for a loop, as it did with my mother. She was very worried and very confused because a lot of times with pregnant women they go for their tests and they do amniotic tests they can assert the expected sex of the baby right. So they told her, you’re having a boy.
Dalea: (5:55) It was very difficult because there is so much ignorance about this condition and now especially now with all the um very extreme activists calling everybody intersex it’s become even more difficult to differentiate what is what and what are we talking about here. Because when you put everything into a cube and you have different colors of different situations and different experiences and you put everything together and you say this is what this is, we’re fighting for everybody and that just doesn’t work that way it really doesn’t. Especially when our conditions are used for financial gain, for advancement…how? Well to start, to begin with a lot of the not-for profit people out there, yeah, they may not be making profit but people are getting paid for talking, also aligning with the LGBT community where what we have has nothing to do with uh the rainbow and I will explain why in my opinion this is happening (later)…
Dalea: (9:36) [Women with my condition usually don’t talk about it. They hide it.]. This is what I did. I was my mother’s Achilles heel. She had an imperfect baby and I was always under scrutiny and I was homeschooled for a while…she didn’t want to really deal with me and my problems. I had to frequently go to the doctor. I had additional problems because of a medication my mom took during her pregnancy. So this added a little bit more to my already difficult beginning of my life. But I want to clarify that it’s not…some doctors think that it’s because of that medication that I have this condition, but I want to clarify that it’s not the case. It could have been a trigger but women that have CAIS are born in families without having to have any external medication or anything like that it just happens and it happens to run in families.
Ben: (10:44) Just to clarify. Everyone in utero begins as a female and then the testosterone triggers the masculinization of the baby into a boy. So you were primed on a genetic level to become a boy but because there is something in your body that doesn’t metabolize testosterone or androgens you maintained the female but you didn’t you but I guess you didn’t develop the female reproductive system, it just didn’t, it stayed in a certain spot without going somewhere?
Dalea: I can elaborate on that…for me to do the work that I do helping young girls that a lot of the times they’re suicidal because we happen to find out about this when our periods don’t come right, a lot of us. And then they go to the doctor and then the doctor tells them well you’re really part man. You know. Or they’re really a man. Stupid things like that. Or the newest one. You are Intersex.
What happens with women, with us. I spoke with a couple geneticists so that I could learn how to explain it the best way. Just like as you so wisely said everyone starts as a female as an embryo because we come from a female. The XY chromosome. The Y chromosome itself has a gene called SRY. The function of this gene, SRY, is responsible for sending testosterone signals to the body so that the individual then changes into a male as it continues to grow right. So XX is female they don’t have a Y chromosome with the SRY gene. XY is a potential male. In order for that XY individual to develop as a male and be born with the body of a typical male, that SRY gene has to function. In our case it doesn’t function. So when it doesn’t function it cannot send the signal, “hey wait a minute I want to make this female into a boy” and we end up being born with what I call a “relic” or what could have been the Y chromosome. And then we are born with a normal vagina and a vaginal canal and all of that but no uterus and then our we have internal gonads so typically they are producing enough, it’s called aromatization. This gonads will produce testosterone which our body turns into estrogen. Yeah, it’s very interesting so whenever it’s possible to leave them inside it’s fine because we just operate like any other girl right.
What happens a lot of times because they think that we are going to get cancer if they don’t take them out, they take them out, and then of course we have to start taking hormones, hormone replacement, right. So our body has no ability to process testosterone on top of it all…so you know when I hear from people, I hear this all the time online as a way to insult me. Oh, you’re really a man…I do this work. I release videos and I do whatever I can to bring awareness and some sanity to all of this because it’s just insane. I’m just, I don’t even know what to say anymore, I’m crazy…and they fail to understand I could have been, but I am not and by seeing my Y chromosome I can see there was a potential for my body to you know our bodies such complex, I, I guess I’ll call them machines, they’re not machines, they are a divine creation, something very beautiful and very special and it shows us when something clicks in a different way, so many repercussions can happen, right? So that’s this is why I’m very careful to be judgmental of people who are different than myself because who knows what’s happening but because of the things that I suffer as a child and as a teenager…there was something inside of me that said, you need to talk about it.
There are girls out there who feel like you that they are all alone and there are only this crazy extreme people that they call themselves intersex and they’re just muddying the waters for these fragile little girls who need to feel accepted…to blend in…to be not too different that you have to be singled out somehow…
[16:55 TO 31:00 is very inspirational.]
When the interviewer asked her why she began to look for other women like herself she responded:
Dalea: (31:20) I had begun to see a lot of talk and movement on the activist arena and some things were very distasteful to me. And I said well I need to just try to focus and so I found some groups online but I quickly discovered that mostly they are the most loudest and most venerated speakers or activists (I hate the word activist!). I’m an educator. I’m not an activist….But they were all gay or identified as queer. And they were the ones that are the loudest and the most vulgar. Because I find a lot of it to be very very vulgar. I had seen a video of a girl (once I joined the group) who has what I have and she was referring to her gonads in a very horrible masculine way completely disregarding all the straight girls because that’s what happens. You know, just like in the regular population, we are like regular women and some of us will be gay, of course,…but I’ve noticed that it’s an emphasis on the gay um interlacing
Ben: intersectionality is the term.
Thank you. That I’m not very versed on…so there’s nothing wrong with being gay and diversity is beautiful however when you have only a segment of the population talking about your life, that’s not right to me. When you have language that is not very polished and very vulgar, I am against that because there are gentle flowers out there, 14 year olds, 13 year olds that are just discovering that they have this, this uh, condition. [She has had emails and phone calls with girls who] do not want to reach out to these established, uh activist organizations because they are “that’s not me.” (34:54) “You know, I’m just a girl, I don’t have to have a third gender, that doesn’t exist! I don’t like the words they use. But the problem with all of this is, I’m taking one for the team. Because they can’t speak without giving their medical history away….I know actresses in Hollywood that I know who are blockbuster who have it, they don’t talk about it, politician(s)..people living their best life, you know they may be adopting kids instead of having them themselves…they don’t come forward, because it comes at a price. If you google me the first thing you will see is “intersex” woman, I am nothing else but that. What about what about my value as a human being? I am a woman. And I have a condition but, listen, if you become an adult and you are a wrong adult and you want to call yourself intersex or helicopter or lizard, go for it live your best life, but to just label our children you are cutting their wings.
Dalea: (39:20) I call it variations of sex development. And they just have a blanket statement most of the very strong activists they call it intersex for everything, so you have no idea what anybody has or and they’re just everything is intersex or a third gender, which I’m not thank you. It doesn’t exist. They confuse mythology with history…
Ben: that’s a good one, confusing mythology for history.
Dalea: yes they do, they think its science, but it is not true….I also really recoil against have you ever seen this, the cookie with all the genders and all these things and okay they also have this graph where at one side they have a guy a male on the other side they have a female and then in the middle they have what they are calling intersex or middle sex…
Ben: or non-binary
Dalea: right and as you get closer to the center they say that’s the degree of how non-binary you are and it surprises me that this is endorsed and that everybody is passing it around as if it’s something possible.
(42:30) Just because you have masculine qualities as a woman or feminine qualities as a man doesn’t mean you have become a middlesex and a new gender, okay and that’s my contention. I don’t know how you feel.
Ben: What I’ve been calling the rainbow crowd, while there are people that are being represented and you know sexualities and different lifestyles that are being represented by that rainbow originally that was what the rainbow was for, but it has been captured by a specific ideology that takes sexuality and gender and biology and just mixes it all up and adds all this stuff called post-modern theory and critical theory to it and in effect what it does in the case with people with conditions like yours which is not a sexuality and it’s not a gender its a physical condition that has to do with sexual organs and sexual development but also the development of every other aspect of the body because we’re not just sexed creatures, that our sex actually informs a lot of our development. But they’ll appropriate you, they’ll call you intersex, they’ll appropriate you and say well I’m like intersex but in the Genderland and in the process of doing that and with the power that they have, with social capital they’re completely erasing those people with a sexual developmental disorder, I’m sorry to use the word intersex but like the condition of that entire set of 40 or 50 conditions are being used as a political ploy. And then the understanding of that by the populace at large is covered up and then the medical help in the medical industry which is completely adopting this gender ideology is also not able to help you any better than before this stuff came along.
Dalea: (45:08) Yes, bravo, we have specific medical needs for girls with CAIS there’s a slight variation to it called PAIS (partial androgen insensitivity syndrome) where its kind of like us but not 100 percent and those girls are born with more differences that are visible on the outside, right and so that, if we just get put into this melting pot of just everything goes I mean there are just people that are just calling themselves intersex just because they like to wear lipstick and high heels and they’re a guy. So it’s losing all, in my opinion, it has no meaning anymore. Also, I was very sad to see recently how activism it’s coming after the most sacred of words “mother”. I’ve heard that they are fighting to change it and call them birthing people and sometimes I feel like I’m watching an American Horror Story Show because I don’t understand we all come from a mother how can we do away with such words? …We should not have to change everything to accommodate some people’s lifestyles and choices.
Ben: The people who would have us change everything aren’t respecting people such as you. They don’t respect women. They don’t respect motherhood. They don’t respect people with actual physical conditions, they don’t even respect gays and lesbians because they think that a lesbian should sleep with a man if the man calls himself a woman. They’re the ones who want everybody to respect them and they respect no one at all.
Dalea: (50:20) Let’s not forget the family nucleus is valuable. Just because we have other lifestyles doesn’t mean we have to dismantle the family…
Ben: There are aspects of the family and tradition that can get pretty ugly, so how do we move in the direction of acceptance without moving in the directions of dismantling, in other words what would you want society at large to better understand about people specifically young females with your condition, how to treat them.
Dalea: (51:30) First of all I want them to know it is not a choice we make. We are born with a genetic condition that we have no control over and we are not men. The fact that we have a Y chromosome only means that there is a relic in our attic that shows that we could have been should the SRY gene have been doing the right thing, right. So it only means we could have been. But we want to live for the most part…normal lives. We are productive members of society…regular women have a little testosterone in them but we have zero, none you can pump me up with testosterone if I try to be a body builder and all you’ll do is pump me with more estrogen because my body will just convert it to more estrogen so we have no testosterone. The process is called aromatization. How the body converts testosterone into more estrogen.
Ben: does it create an androgynous body type then this inability to process any testosterone?
Dalea: On the contrary we’re all women. We are so feminine. I don’t grow body hair. I have never had to shave my legs….our skin is typically we have very beautiful skin, nice skin, our hair grows and we are very delicate…we tend to be a little taller. We have very little masculine in us.
She clearly wants to maintain the male – female sex binary. There is no third sex. She’s right.
Finally to my Christian brothers and sisters, when reaching out to those who say they have gender-dysphoria, the vast majority of whom do not have a DSD like Dalea, Embrace, Don’t Affirm.
Ephesians 4:25 (NRSV): So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors…
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