February 25, 2025
Dear Trustees,
It’s come to my attention that Mr Jared White is under fire for comments he’s made regarding sex and gender. I do not know Mr White, so let me make an introduction to him and your board.
I’m a registered nurse in Manitoba, born female with a rare intersex condition called an ovotesticular disorder of sex development (OT-DSD) which was discovered when I was a teenager. From age 16 – 33, I lived as a butch lesbian, and then masculinized my appearance further through testosterone use and surgeries. I’ve lived in relative peace as a transman for 20 years, but entered into the public conversation about gender and gender affirming care in 2019, after seeing harms done to young people by current practices and politicized narratives about our experiences.
Current concepts regarding trans/gender started rolling out to the mainstream culture in the early 2000s and we saw a major shift around 2015. Along with major shifts in activist messaging, we also started to see a major shift in the young people showing up to clinics. A brand new cohort of mostly teen girls, who don’t fit any of the known types of gender dysphoria, has emerged and are now the majority of those seeking medical interventions. I assessed many of them in my Kelowna clinic from 2018-2019.
Though I remain committed to the LGBTQI2S+ community – seeing value in diversity and inclusion, I’m also committed to viewpoint diversity. Being critical of a political tactic or framework should not be misconstrued as hatred of the people who hold those views.
The LGBTQI2S community itself is being harmed by the current political narrative, which needs careful and compassionate scrutiny:
Gay and lesbian people are harmed when we can’t define our sexual orientation as sex-based.
Those of us with intersex conditions/DSDs are harmed when we can not understand our conditions as sex-based
2 Spirit indigenous people are harmed when their own cultural understanding of sexual orientation is colonized by Western academic beliefs
If anyone could have a legitimate claim to being “both sexes”, a “third sex” or “between the sexes”, it would be me. The nature of OT-DSD is the presence of both ovarian and testicular tissue in one individual. This can happen for several reasons, including an SRY gene on an X chromosome. I don’t yet have clarity about the cause of mine. I hope to get answers about my genetic make-up this spring from a specialist in Winnipeg. I do know that I had an aunt with the same condition – which has all been kept a family secret. The condition has long caused me shame and confusion about my sex. It’s thought to be the hardest of all DSDs to determine which sex category to place us into. But, it’s really not that complicated. Biological sex simply means which reproductive category we belong to. This is defined by which gametes we produce. No human being can produce both gametes. In the case of an OT-DSD, where both gonadal tissues coexist, one is always dominant and the other is always dormant. In my case, I had a fully functioning ovary on one side and a dormant ovotestes on the other side. My testicular tissue produced testosterone, which virilized me, but it didn’t produce sperm. I am reproductively female. Though I look like a man and chose to become legally male, I am female. There are only two sexes. OT-DSD proves that sex is binary since both reproductive gonads can’t be viable at the same time.
Obscuring facts about biology and the binary nature of sex would deny me the information necessary to understand my own medical condition and unique biology. It would (and has, in the past) confuse(d) me about the reality of my own sex, identity and healthcare needs.
Whatever reasoning Mr White is applying to his position about sex realism, I agree with him that a return to common sense is necessary, not only for society at large, but for the very people the LGBTQI2S represents.
I plead with your board to consider that a political narrative is harmful, and there are ways to love us and preserve our dignity without denying the realities of biological sex and where it matters. We very much, indeed, need compassionate helpers to fix this problem.
Respectfully,
Aaron Kimberly
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