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Coming home to myself

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Photograph of an artwork resting on a deep blue background. The artwork is colour pencil and ink on textured white paper. It shows a small child carrying a suitcase, standing outside the entrance to a large hospital building. The facade of the building has been removed, revealing 2 floors of beds with a child in each staring down at the lone child on the threshold. The entrance to the hospital looks like a mouth with a tongue as the steps leading up. The artwork is titled 'The eyes of the hospital stared out at me. Hospital Eyesed'. On the hospital wall is the sign, 'Great Ormond Street Hospital'.
'Hospital eyesed'. © Chris North for Wellcome Collection.

For Chris North, being born intersex in the 1940s (or a “true hermaphrodite” in the language of the time) meant decades of hospital visits, tests, operations and secrecy.

There are very few known intersex people of his generation, and Chris is passionate about telling his story to shed light on both this period of medical and social history, and to explain where changes are still needed today.

Chris’s four-part story is one of trauma, survival and transformation, and how now, aged 76, Chris is “coming home to himself”.

I dedicate these articles to my late sister Ann who was hugely significant in my life and endured a rare auto-immune disease.

Chris North

Born different

For Chris North, being born intersex in the 1940s meant his many childhood hospital visits, tests and operations were not explained or discussed. As he reveals, doctors encouraged strict secrecy.

Wonder years

The confusion and secrecy surrounding his condition seriously affected Chris’s mental health, blighting his teenage years. But somehow he began to hope and plan for the future.

Ways appear

While his sense of body shame meant the personal side of his life was unfulfilled, Chris’s career was rewarding. His own childhood experiences gave him profound empathy for the children he worked with.

Journeying home

A serious health scare was the catalyst to Chris beginning the process of understanding his experiences more clearly, and using that new insight to help other intersex people.