Radiolab - Gonads: Dana

Episode Date: July 22, 2018

When Dana Zzyym applied for their first passport back in 2014, they were handed a pretty straightforward application. Name, place of birth, photo ID -- the usual. But one question on the application stopped Dana in their tracks: male or female? Dana, technically, wasn’t either. In this episode, we follow the story of Dana Zzyym, Navy veteran and activist, which starts long before they scribble the word "intersex” on their passport application. Along the way, we see what happens when our inner biological realities bump into the outside world, and the power of words to shape us. This episode is a companion piece to Gonads, Episode 4, Dutee. "Dana" was reported by Molly Webster, and co-produced with Jad Abumrad. It had production help from Rachael Cusick, and editing by Pat Walters. Wordplay categories were written, performed, and produced by Majel Connery and Alex Overington.  Special thanks to Paula Stone Williams, Gerry Callahan, Lambda Legal, Kathy Tu, Matt Collette, Arianne Wack, Carter Hodge, and Liza Yeager. Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. And the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate. 

Before we get started, this episode has a lot of strong language, including repetitive F-bombs, strung together to a beat. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab.

From W-N-Y-S. See? See? I'm Molly Webster. This is GONADS episode five. This week we're bringing you a pair of episodes. This is the second one in the pair. They grew out of our reporting on X's and Y's and all the different biological realities that live inside of us.

In this episode, there they go. They're calling in. Dana Zim. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi. I can hear you.

Hi. This is Molly Webster. I can hear you. I got one of you're working. The other one's pretty low. Do you want to just turn the headphones around? Or is that working for you? Dana is doing something.

kind of historic, I guess you could say. And just to start us off, Dana uses the pronoun they. Not him or her, but they. And a few years ago... 2015 or 14, I can't remember which. I have memory issues. It's around 2014. Dana is filling out a passport application, and there are two boxes to check,

male or female. And Dana's like, well, I'm not either one of those. And so they wrote in a third option. intersects. I basically apply for my passport, got talked to by the manager of the office. He took me to a side and said, you know, you cannot get this passport. And they turned me down and I appealed. You can appeal a passport application.

Yeah. To who? Do you go back to the passport office? To the passport office. I appeal. Yeah, I took everything back to the passport office. and, you know, and I appealed. But the passport office rejected the appeal, basically saying male or female.

That's all we got. Yeah, from there, I found legal counsel. So, Dana ends up suing the State Department for a third non-female, non-male option. So we brought Dana into the studio to talk about the State Department case. And while we were having our conversation, what began to unfold, like in their personal, personal life story, was this tale of words. How words have the power to shape the world. Boy, boy.

I was an Air Force brat, so we moved all over the place. Dana was born in 1958, Michigan. Who was in the military, your dad or your mom? My dad. He was a queer Air Force pilot. So it was in Alabama for a while, Texas for a while, Montana for a while, England for a while. As a kid.

As a kid. Grew up with a bunch of brothers. Two older brothers and one younger. Like a whole pack of boys. Approximately 18 months apart. But Dana never really felt like one of them. Yeah, I got teased a lot. When I started showering with other boys and probably like the fifth grade,

I started getting teased about my size. and looking physically different down there because my testicles didn't look like the other boys. It looked like a stuffed saucy. It was little... It didn't look right. And Dana said it never felt right either. Well, I was always having pain, peeing.

From when you were little. Yeah, you know, going to the bathroom and those kind of things. Everything hurt. Not only that, but I was a clutch. Smaller. You know, I threw a ball like a girl. The brothers tried to help. Older brother was always trying to teach me how to do things better.

She was my hero for trying to stick up for me. But to me, the world was a scary place. My dad was always gone flying, and he was kind of a scary figure. My mother, she had a backhand that wouldn't quit, and she never played tennis. And Dana says for some reason, their parents always kept a close watch on them. Like, I remember once in childhood,

we were living in Arkansas. The girl next door had those cut out Barbie doll clothes, and, you know, we had cardboard barbies. So she had those, and we were playing with those, she and I. And my dad caught us. I got my butt spanked, and boys don't play with dolls. My brothers were able to do things similar to that, but I wasn't allowed to. Oh, so you think, like, if your brother was playing the paper dolls with the neighbor, it would have been a different response?

I knew that. Did you have any idea, like, why? No. I knew something was different. I just had no words. My world was very small. And I think you could say it was partially because of that smallness in an effort to make the world like a little bit bigger in 1978 at 20. I joined the Navy.

You did. That's so interesting because I would think that you would run away from the military after your dad. My dad was in Air Force. One of the decisions was, well, I... Oh, you went to office it. Yeah. I went to... Some 60 Americans are now beginning their sixth day of captivity in Tehran.

The Persian Gulf. And then... Small group of islands on the edge of the Antarctic. The Falkland Islands. And then I did three tours in Beirut. How did it feel to be part of the military, or at least away from home, and away from your siblings and your parents? It felt fairly good.

I felt a little free. Free of the confines. But a couple things happened when I was in the Navy, about five years in. First, people started thinking I was gay. Not that I did anything to encourage that. I didn't date anybody. I didn't do anything. Or do you remember how that started or why?

Well, because I was so small. I didn't go out drinking and trying to pick up women with the guys. and there was somebody on board my first ship who I guess was putting books and magazines on my rack, very gay context. Gay porn or something. Explicit gay porn and some books. You could think that leaving gay porn on someone's bed or bookshelf is not that big of a deal or some sort of like initiation thing or something. But this was at a time... Before, don't ask, don't tell.

Where if you were gay, you were kicked out. And so I got caught up in the witch hunts. You know, at one point, the NIS, which is a precursor to the NCIS. The National Institute of Security? Navy Intelligence Service. Oh, okay. So close.

Give me another acronym. I'll nail it. Anyway, so they interrogated me about, you know, who I was dating, who I had sex with. Really? Yeah, you know, those kind of things. And then while all that was happening. When I was in Beirut, on my second tour, late fall, 1982. Dana was working below deck doing some paperwork in a noisy fan room,

and an announcement went out on the ship that said that they're going to do a test launch of one of the gigantic missiles on board. But Dana didn't hear the announcement because they were in the super loud room. And I get done my paperwork. I opened the hatch to go back into the ship, and I step out, the gun goes off. Firing a 70-pound projectile. Maybe 20, 30 feet away from my head. Holy crap. Yeah.

And, yeah, and the corpsman basically wiped blood out of my ears, gave me some aspirin. I said, well, you'll get your balance back and go back to work. Basically, back in those days, they didn't know about where they weren't, concerned about brain injuries or anything like that. And it's like, hey, you just go back to work, you're fine. You know, they didn't really realize how much screwed up you can be from them. Dana says that ever since that time... Yeah, I can't, I have a hard time looking backwards and telling time.

Needless to say, after the witch hunts and the brain injury... They asked me to re-up, and I'm like, no. You know, when I got out, you know, four years after I got out, I think it was. or a little bit longer, I started going to Colorado State University. I was about 30 years old when I started college. During their first semester, Dana was in a poetry class, and Dana says something in the words of those poets and in the class discussion pushed them to go see the college therapist.

I walked in and said, well, you know, I think I'm depressed and I think I'm gay. Gay. Tell me more about the why you thought you were gay. Well, two things. All that confusion going on in my mind, you know, am I a boy or girl kind of thing? I don't really know what the hell is going on with me anyway. Dana says that they didn't really feel like a boy, like the way other boys do. They kind of felt like an off-kilter kind of boy.

And what do you call that? And then all these witch hunts in the Navy got really started thinking about whether I was or not. Like maybe those guys were seeing something that Dana couldn't see it, that was true. I thought, well, it must be a gay man because I didn't know anything else. I didn't know how any other term. We had gay lesbian, bisexual, and we had crossdressers. Oh, yeah. That's what we had.

So you're like, okay, out of the other term. those options. Which one feels the most like me? I was what I thought was the best option than I was. So I went to gay male and, you know, I didn't date anybody, but... The therapist that Dana saw ended up recommending that they go join this group on campus. It was the gay and lesbian alliance, which later became the gay and lesbian and bisexual alliance, you know, because that's how long ago it was. This would have been 1989-ish? Yeah.

Like walking into that group. What did that, here I am. What did it feel like to hear you are? My heart was pounding like mad. You know, I didn't know what to expect. And they just said, oh, welcome, have a seat. You didn't ask who you date and who you fuck or anything like that. Those would be some hard first questions.

I think I'd run if someone started a conversation with that. Well, you know, those were a faucet went through my mind. It's like, you know. You thought there was like an entry visa? You need to sign off on certain things? Yeah. Yeah. But they were very welcoming.

And I thought, well, you know, at least there's a place that I can hang out where people accept me for being different. Within a short while, Dana is not just going to meetings, but is protesting with the group. Because around that time, something called Amendment 2 was proposed in Colorado.

The amendment bans or repeals any state or local law that protects homosexuals from discrimination. Amendment 2 flares up in Colorado, so we got ourselves pretty organized. I went to the Larimer County Republican Convention thing. Oh, my God, really? Yeah. Oh, so you became something of an activist?

Yeah, I was a spokesman for the Student Alliance. Oh, so you really found a home there? That felt pretty good. When I started winking up or being woke or whatever the term is, You were so love it. I start starting to, I'm a lot more awoke now than I was then. It was like I got my first sip of coffee and the caffeine started like, okay. Activate your brain?

You're like, oh, the world looks so different, so many colors. Yeah. There was one problem, though. Living as a gay man as I was at that time. Dana was not gay. No. They felt at home. as a gay man, but they were mostly attracted to women.

And towards the end of college in their late 30s... Well, I was in art school, working in the Fibers department, doing my studio classes. This woman, Winnie, kept coming in and watching me work. She got to know me, I got to know her, and we started dating. We got married. Really? Yeah. Wow, you went all the way to marriage?

Yeah. And this is in, this is early aughts or like late 90s? In 2002, 2007 we got divorced. Five years. Yeah. Didn't work out. We both had issues we weren't dealing with. Dana says this period of their life up through the marriage and through the end of it,

it was very confusing. They were just trying to figure out where they stood. And they were trying out all these terms like, bisexual. Also, trams. How did that idea get into the room? Well, because, I mean, I was hearing more and more about trans people.

Okay. Starting to read a little bit about it. And so I'm like, well, maybe, maybe. And why did that feel more true than gay male or straight male? Well, because I knew this, there was a feminine quality about myself that had to recognize. Okay. So I thought, well, if I'm not a man, I must be a woman. And the only kind of woman I thought it could be was going to be a trans woman.

Meaning to Dana, a person who was born male but identified as a woman. Right. So you're like, holy crap. So you were like, hmm, that's so interesting that like. Well, that's where I went to. I can't explain how. No. I mean, that's the only, yeah.

It's just, it's like in, oh, In a world where there's limited words, you're just like trying to figure out the word that fits you. Right. It's like these small steps towards a truth. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, after the divorce, I'm looking at myself and saying, okay, what's going on here with me? This isn't working. What Dana discovers after the break.

It's so cool. Hi, this is Annette calling from Newcastle, California. Radio Lab presents Go Nads. It's supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone in the process of science. Additional support for Radio Lab is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. We're back. Episode 5. The story of Dana Zim.

At this point, Dana is divorced and feeling really unsure about who they are. They tried boy, girl, trans, by gay male in marriage. And none of it seemed right. I was really disheveled. I was really, I was crying. I was like, I wasn't taking care of myself. Dana says at this point, they started to really wonder, where is all this confusion coming from?

So I started digging deeper. Okay, a lot of stuff was going out with what happened to me as a child. Dana had always had these, like, memories. Some of them hazy of having surgery as a kid, being like three, four, five, six, and being in the hospital. So I was pretty much there alone most of the time. My grandparents visited me once. My dad was there once. How many surgeries do you think there were?

I don't know. Wow, but more than one. Definitely more than one. Between three and six years old, I had multiple. I just don't know how many. Dana only had, like, tiny fragments of these memories. I mean, it's hard to remember anything when you're three anyways. But now, in their 50s, Dana started to look back and wonder,

what were those surgeries? Also, does that explain why I feel so different down there and, like, why I'm in pain? At that point, I was in such pain that I was walking. bow-legged, trying to keep anything from touching it. So I started looking up penis surgeries and trying to figure out what happened there. Oh, so you're like, okay, I don't know what happened to me as a kid, but I know I had this pain and I know I had these surgeries, so maybe they're connected. Right.

So I started looking up that, looking at a lot of different diagrams on penis surgeries, all these different types, and there's thousands of different penis surgeries. And I'm like, shit, I didn't know there was that many. in in rectile dysfunction surgeries, penis pumps. And I keep looking and I'm like, I was trying to match up scar tissues, you know. That was your approach. That was my approach.

Ooh, you must have seen some gnarly photos. Yeah. And while searching all these photos on the internet, Dana did start to see images where the scar tissue, like the patterns of the scars, looked familiar. That's when I found this term. It intersects. It just popped up on the screen?

It popped up on one of these surgery things, intersex. And I'm like, what the hell is that? So I typed in intersex. And behold, the internet was full of information on intersex. And bells are really starting to go off. Ringing in my head going, oh, maybe. Baby. Yeah.

And I was just starting therapy. at the VA hospital up in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She convinced me to go see a Uralnoose at the VA, and he confirmed, yes, indeed, I was intersex. What does intersex actually even mean in your case? Because it can mean a lot of things. Like, what did the doctor say to you? My doctor told me I was born with ambiguous genitalia,

and then they constructed basically my genitality to look male. In other words, like Dana wasn't born with what the doctors would consider male or female genitalia. It was like they had something that seemed to be either an enlarged clitoris or maybe a small penis. It was unclear. And maybe there was a little bit of a vaginal opening in Dana's case. And as is often the case with babies that are born this way, parents don't really know what to do. And the doctor will basically say, well, you've got to pick one. And they picked male.

I don't know exactly who'd made that decision. I think it was my father who said, you're not going to cut that off. Looks like a penis to me. It sounds like my father. But anyway, the doctors, they constructed a penis. It should have been a large clitoris, probably. And that was it. How old were you at this point when you figured all this out?

50. You were 50? And I'm 60 now, 10 years ago. Whoa. You were 5-0 when you finally found out that you were intersex. Yep. Dana says when they figured all this out, they had two, like, simultaneous feelings. One?

I was livid. Why didn't my parents tell me this? Why just basically lying to me my whole life? Did you call them? Yes. What did your mom say? say? Not much. She basically was angry back at me. She said, you're a boy, you're always be a boy. Was your father still alive when you found out about the intersex? Oh yeah, I called him too.

What did he say? He was him and hawed a lot and kind of said he was sorry, which is where we start reconciling. Did he explain where he was coming from at all when you were little? No, not really, but I had to learn how to forgive myself for all my anger with my parents and forgive them as well. But Dana says that like amidst processing that rage. I was actually euphoric for almost a year. Tell me about the euphoria. Why? Because I finally had an answer. I mean, it was the question I had asked and wondered about my entire life up to that point. The question being, am I a boy or girl? And the answer was yes. Both. Yes. That was euphoria. What does euphoria feel like to you? Walking on air. I had to break the binary for myself.

That was... Break the binary. Yeah. Like, okay, if I'm not... a man, I'm not a woman, I must be intersex or hermaphrodite, and that works. But it's not the question I should have been asking. I was like, who am I and those kind of things, but... You're saying the question you should have been asking is who am I, not am I a boy or girl? And why am I here and those kind of things. Those are the questions, the kind of questions most people ask. What Dana means is that those are the kinds of questions most people get to ask,

but they were so forced into like wondering if they were a boy or a girl that they never got to get to like the big existential life questions that most of us, you know, wrestle with. They were just way back at ground zero. I was stuck there when I got unstuck. What did it like mean to like find a word that explains you? It was so cool. Yeah. I think it was probably the happiest times in my life. You now identify as a Herm, intersex, non-binary, queer.

Yep. Is there anything in that that, do you feel like fully free and found and sort of euphoric in you now? Or is there anything that still feels confining? No, it pretty much is. I just had a T-shirt made up so as that, but it says, you know, A-F at the bottom of it. Perm intersex, non-binary, queer as fuck. Oh, as fuck. Or and funny, I don't know.

Perm intersex, non-binary queer as fuck. You look, that's pretty much it. I got to put on a t-shirt. Hope nothing else changes. Perm intersex, non-binary queer as fuck. How are you going to put that? Perm intersex, non-binary queer as fuck. Since discovering intersex 10 years ago, Dana's become involved in the community,

repping and traveling to conferences. That's actually what kicked this whole passport thing off. And in May of 2018, Dana and the State Department were back in front of a judge arguing the case on its constitutional merits. In September, a judge ruled in favor of Dana saying that the federal government cannot refuse a passport based on basic identity. But two months later, the State Department appealed. Another round of oral arguments is expected this coming spring.

Since Dana's case began, seven states in three cities, including Washington, D.C., have non-gendered identification documents. Special thanks for this episode. Go to Paula Stone Williams, Kathy 2, Matt Collette, Lamb Illegal, and Jerry Callahan. This episode was reported by me, Molly Webster, and co-produced by Jad Abumrod, with production help from Rachel Cusick and editing by Pat Walters. Our wordplayed music was written, performed, and produced by Major Connery and Alex Overington. And before you go, we'd love you to sign up for our newsletter. You can do that by going to radiolab.org slash newsletter or text gonads to 701-01. That's gonads to 701-01-1.

See ya. Hi, this is James Mears from Denver, Colorado. Radio Lab was created by Jabba-Bumrad and is produced by Soren Wheeler. Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design. Maria Matasar Padilla is our managing director. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Maggie Bartolomew, Beka Bresla, Rachel Cusick, David Gavall, Bethelhabty, Tracy Hunt, Matt Kiltie, Robert Krollwich, Annie McEwan, Latif Nassah, Melissa O'Logh, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. With help from Shima Olialli, Carter Hodge and Lisa Yeager, our fact checker is Michelle Harris.