Punjab

13-year-old becomes a boy after sex change operation

Father delighted at having another son to share his responsibities.

Yaqoob Shahzad December 23, 2010

HAFIZABAD: A 13-year-old girl turned into a boy on Wednesday after a successful operation at the district headquarters (DHQ) hospital in Hafizabad.

The family have named the boy Usman (his name before the operation was Aisha).

The girl had been brought to the DHQ hospital complaining of chronic pain in her stomach. Dr Zahoor Ahmed, a urologist, examined her and told the family that her physiology was that of a male and not a female. He recommended a sex re-assignment surgery.

The family is a resident of Dhariwal village in Hafizabad. Usman’s father, Sharif, said that Usman had been suffering from the stomach ache for more than four years.

He said he took him to several herbal physicians in and around his village but the pain persisted.

“We’re happy that we have got another son,” said Sharif. “I had been weighed down by the responsibility for three daughters.

Thank God... The boy will share some of my responsibilities,” he added. He said that he and his wife could now grow old reassured in the knowledge that they had two sons to look after them. Sharif now has two daughters and two sons.

Usman underwent two operations at the DHQ hospital, Dr Zahoor Ahmed told The Express Tribune.

He said that he would operate on him for the third time in about three months.

Dr Zahoor said Usman had no signs of the development of biological traits specific to females.

“Female breasts normally start developing by this age but there was no sign of these in Usman,” he said. He added that Usman’s reproductive system was closer to that of males, although it was underdeveloped.

The first two operations, he said, were successful and the boy was healthy. He said that the third operation would be performed to repair his urine duct and connect it to the reproductive organ.

“This is a rare condition, though it is not for the first time such a case has been dealt with in Pakistan,” Dr Zahoor said.

He added that he had assisted Professor Nawaz Chugtai, in some similar cases at Mayo Hospital, Lahore.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24^th, 2010.

COMMENTS (10)

Karen Gurney | 13 years ago | Reply Around 1 in 200 babies is born with their sex not wholly differentiated as male or female.. intersex conditions. Everyone of us is conceived as a primitive female embryo and nearly everyone of us either continues to develop as female or is masculinised by hormones released in utero and becomes male. Sometimes these processes do not proceed along the usual path and the result is a person who is neither wholly male nor wholly female. For thousands of years, the existence of "hermaphrodites" has been known to civilisations around the world. But very few of those who have arrived by that other path are actually "hermaphrodites"; that is, have the reproductive organs of both sexes. The incomplete sexual differentiation affects different individuals in different ways depending on the basis on which it occurs. The variation in sexual formation may affect all or any one of the gonads, the genitals, the urinary tract, the chromosomes or even the brain. While the evidence is not yet beyond reasonable doubt, there is now sufficient scientific evidence to reasonably suggest that the sex of the brain (yes, male and female brains are physiologically different and each sex is better at some tasks than the other) does affect a person's sense of their gender. As someone slse said, we are all made of God so how can any of us be not accepted by Him? kaz.

Lisa Wilson | 13 years ago | Reply Contrary to what QuranVsHadith writes above, this is not a case of transgenderism. This is actually a case of a person being born with an intersex condition. Which particular condition is not stated, but there are over 4000 identifiable IS conditions and still counting. It's not evil or bad, it's just part of life. God/Nature loves variety. People, unfortunately don't!

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Nauman | 13 years ago | Reply So "she" walks in the hospital as "Martha"(figuratively speaking) and walks out as "Arthur"...POOF!!!..like magic!!!...Mmmmmm....someting ain't right here...here in the west it takes years of repeated surgery, a life time of hormone therapy and prolonged psyco-therapy before gender re-assignmemet is declared a success....I hope the poor lad has acsess to some professional psycological support...Mere acceptance by a very obviously misogynist father isn't going to help in the face of the very possible and strong ostracisation this person is going to face in the rural setting where he hails from.....

Ghausia | 13 years ago | Reply Mentioning names and not mentioning the psychological impacts of the operation on the kid, shoddy reporting ET.

Talha | 13 years ago | Reply @ muhammad sadiq Why, you ask, its becuase females are only good for two things, cooking food and making babies. This is according to a noble prize winning scientist Mullah of Pakistan.

muhammad sadiq | 13 years ago | Reply why couldn't the fathers' daughters have helped him in sharing the responsibilities?? are we still living in the medeival age? when will these ppl stop thinking of daughters or sisters as liabilities to be married off & done with?? why cant a pakistani daughter become the responsibility bearing memeber of the household?? the few girls who do earn think that they are doing a favor to their families,that they are doing a "man's job".when will our society need to realise that women need to have careeres just as men do & work because that's what is to be done & not because it was her "majboori" to work.

prasad | 13 years ago | Reply Amna - I agree with you. But the television channels went one step further. They showed the boy on the hospital bed -they showed the father - an absolute invasion of privacy. Glad however that the boy will have a better future. hope there is some psychological counselling for the family.

Syed | 13 years ago | Reply Thank God they dealt with the issue sensibly and did not just hand him over to Eunuchs. Although I do oppose the statement of the parents that they were happy cause of getting a son. A genuine response should have been that "son or Daughter we will love him/her in any case and be pray for his/her health"

Amna Mela | 13 years ago | Reply It was unnecessary to state names.

QuranVsHadith | 13 years ago | Reply Now this is a case of REAL trangenderism.....what these fake Eunichs claim to be, but in the reverse....male gone to female. As they stated this is VERY rare. So if this boy and his parents are able to deal with this situation and he will become a healthy productive member of society, why do we play pretend along with the beggars, who are actually born men?

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