Mrs. America

Growing up, Jackie is a self-described “girl’s girl” in family full of women - surrounded by her sister, mother, and several loving aunts. But a generational secret has been kept, and Jackie will slowly learn that she is deeply impacted by this secret and the silence surrounding it — one that shapes her life from the inside out. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, the secrets
that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others,
and the secrets we keep from ourselves. My guest today
is Jackie Blankenship, podcast host, marathon runner, beauty pageant Queen

(00:33):
MISSUS America, and Intersex LGBTQ plus advocate. Jackie's is a
story of the deepest kind of secret kept from her,
a secret inside her own body, her own being. For
a long time, she knows only the little that she's told,
and so the secret grows alongside her until at long

(00:56):
last she's able to know herself deeply and to find
the kind of profound freedom that can only be ours
when we embody our truth.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Yeah, it really exists,
the Kalamazoo. I was born in eighty five, and it's
funny that I'm now at an age where I can
look back and say it was a different time, But
it really was.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
You know, without the.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Computer at our fingertips, without the constant entertainment that we
now see, there's always something to watch, something to.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
Scroll, something to do.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
But when I was growing up, I really grew up
in that iconic moment of just enough freedom to be outside.
I lived outside with my little sister. We played and
rode bikes from a really young age around our neighborhood,
and I was.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
A girl's girl that liked to get dirty. I would
wear dresses.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
And aprons over my clothes because I wanted to make
sure I was always in a dress. So my mom
would sew aprons, was like, she liked to sew as
a hobby, and she'd sew me these apron full of
pockets just so with the sole purpose of knowing I
was going to tie them around my waist so I
could wear them over my jeans and my Michigan State
sweatshirt to go ride bikes with the neighborhood kids. But

(02:12):
I wanted to look like I was wearing a dress.
I was just hyper feminine from a super young age.
It was me and my sister and.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
My mom and my dad.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
My dad worked full time out of the house, and
my mom was very much in your stereotypical nineties mom.
She worked a lot of odd jobs. She cleaned houses
and did things out of the home to earn extra money.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
But for the most part it was us three girls.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
And then on top of that, my mom has six sisters,
and so it was really just all ladies all the time.
And my dad was surrounded by hyper feminists.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
And did your aunts live in Michigan as well or nearby?
What was the fabric of the family.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Like, my mom is very very close with all her
sisters and they grew up in East Lansing, and my
dad also actually grew up in Theaing. Now his family
all kind of passed away when he was a little
bit younger. Unfortunately, you know, his parents were older and
he only had one brother and one sister who have
both passed. Well, my mom has six sisters, all still

(03:12):
with us, and they get together all the time, I mean,
the seven of them having glasses of wine and beer
and chatting their loud Everyone knows the Johnston ladies and
it's a thing.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
And so I was always.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
Surrounded by big, large groups of boisterous, loud laughing women.
And that's a lot of my early memories are sitting
in you know, someone's living room, maybe it be my
aunts or my cousin and just loud, laughing, you know,
ladies having lady times.

Speaker 4 (03:43):
In real time.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
I love the image of you as like this sort
of you know, tomboy and jeans and a sweatshirt and
an apron tied around your waists. Just wow.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
I wanted to be good at sports, and I wanted
to be fast, and I wanted to be able to
do all the things, but then I also wanted to
be like dressed up all the time. So having so
many sisters, it turns out three of my aunts have
what's called complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
But it was very much hush hush in the.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Sixties when they were diagnosed, and they were told never
to tell anybody, so they didn't talk about it even
amongst each other much. It was something that they really
kept to themselves. It was personal and it was very
scary how it was presented to them. So my mom
had very very little information about what it was and
what it meant, and really didn't think much of it
until my grandma called her and said, you.

Speaker 4 (04:36):
Know, I'm a carrier of this thing in our.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Family, and it was always this thing, and she said
you might want to get Jackie checked.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
And my mom didn't, what do you even mean get
her check?

Speaker 3 (04:48):
She's a baby she's a little girl, and she said,
you just take her and get like a blood test done,
and that's how they'll check. And my mom, you know,
had told me even then, she didn't understand. She didn't
know biology. She didn't go education past high school really,
and even then, you know, chromosomes in the seventies and
sixties were something we're still learning about. They didn't have

(05:10):
the information that they do now. And so she's like,
I've been even understand how they were going to figure
that out from a blood test.

Speaker 4 (05:17):
I didn't really get it.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
So she took me in and told them, you know,
I think she needs to be tested for this. So
they did a care type test and back then it
would have been nineteen eighty nine. They sent it away
and it.

Speaker 4 (05:27):
Took months to come back.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
And when it came back, it revealed that I had
X Y chromosomes, which we typically see in males.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
And it was a bit of a shock to my
mom and my dad.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Curious, where was your mom in the birth order with
her sisters.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
She's the sixth.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Daughter of seven, so she's close to the youngest, close
to the youngest. Yeah, it's just so interesting, you know,
this podcast is so much about the layers and layers
of secrets. And it sounds like your mom grew up
in this family where this was also a secret in
the sense that her sisters were told, you don't speak
of this. You know, none of us speak of this.

(06:04):
So she didn't even know about this until your grandmother
called her.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Essentially, yeah, so she knew that something was different about
three of her sisters. They didn't have their period, but
she didn't have the language to know what it was called.
She didn't have any of that information and was taught
and told not to talk about it. And they were
diagnosed in a much different time. I was diagnosed at four.
They were diagnosed at like sixteen to nineteen years old.

(06:29):
They all three came forward and said that they had
never had their period. And you know, back in the sixties,
it was they believed, you know, if you were going
through what we now know is a menorreal you were
model asque you were stunning.

Speaker 4 (06:43):
You were athletic. So that's what they thought was their reasoning.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
They were thin and tall, you know, pretty clan of women,
and they thought, oh us Johnston girls, that's what they thought.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
And my grandma was like, that's not right.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
I don't think that's right, And she said, well, because
I'm so, they thought it was because they were so.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
Athletic and so thin and fit.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Well, they went to the doctor and that's when they
were diagnosed, and all three found out together.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
That's really that's extraordinary. And then it's interesting because your mom,
how do I say this, like parents don't always do
the right thing. That could be a tagline for family secrets.
And there could have been a universe in which your
grandmother went to your mom when you were born, might
have just crossed her fingers and decided not to say anything.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
And so my mom was well aware three of her
sisters were infertile, and that was really what she knew
about it. So when she became aware that, oh, that's
actually could be genetic and that you could pass that
on as well, that's when she said, oh, I could
pass on this thing. And she might admit it now,
but back then she didn't really understand all the ins

(07:58):
and outs of what it all meant. That's what she did,
But I really don't think she grasped it, because I
know how long it's taken me to fully grasp it.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
It certainly is incredibly complex to grasp. A girl born
with CIS also has internal testes along with xy chromosomes,
but develops externally as female. We're in the late eighties,
early nineties, so this is pre internet research isn't possible,

(08:29):
and even if it were, so much is unknown.

Speaker 4 (08:33):
Now. You know, we'll have people who go to a
fertility center.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
We'll say they pick their embryos, and they think they
know what gender they're picking ahead of time because they're
basing that off those chromosomes.

Speaker 4 (08:42):
But you got to think back.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
You know, in nineteen eighty five when I was born,
that none of that existed.

Speaker 4 (08:47):
That wasn't a thing you could do.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
I mean, chromosomal research was relatively new, assigning it to
gender really than the last twenty years. And so when
we say it's a different time, it was a really
different time with our own standing of sex, gender and biology.
And basically what we know now is it's when the
embryo is essentially male, if you want to assign a

(09:09):
gender to an embryo is male, and when the sroy
gene kicks in, which is what males have that trigger
their testosterone development. My body, it clicks on and my
androgen receptors are like Nope, we can't accept that. So
it's like I'm insensitive to all testosterone or androgen. So
when the androgen and the testosterone wash over me to
develop my body instead, okay, use that and it turned

(09:33):
it into.

Speaker 4 (09:34):
A usable source, which for me was estrogen.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
And so I develop on a female pathway, they say,
because all embryos actually start in the womb as females,
and then once the hormones wash over you, it dictates
which pathway you continue growing on throughout the rest of
your development in the womb. So internally, I didn't have cervix, uterus, ovariaes,
filopian tubes, none of that. I just had testes that

(09:57):
were in my abdomen. Now, the testes were never going
to drop. I was never going to suddenly become male,
but they were there producing male levels of testosterone.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
But the way my body operates.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
As a person with CAIS is it aromatizes that into estrogen.
So I continue to develop female without any medical intervention.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
It's amazing. Our bodies are amazing and what we've come
to be able to understand about them totally. So another
thing that was very much true of its time is
that once they had a medical answer diagnosis. The doctor
has told your parents to just keep the extent of
it quiet, and you know, And that's where I started thinking, Oh,

(10:41):
this is all on a need to know basis. You know,
what does Jackie need to know? Maybe Jackie doesn't really
need to know anything. Maybe Jackie only needs to know
that she's eventually going to need surgery for something. This
thing you know, as you said, but is not clear
on what that is.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
I like to say that one of my earliest memories,
like a core memory, was sitting in the living room
watching Full House on our giant tube TV with my sister.
I must have been eight or nine years old when
my parents came in and they sent my sister out
of the room and said, we just need to talk
to Jackie for a minute.

Speaker 4 (11:12):
So my mind is rasin what did I do?

Speaker 3 (11:16):
I did I secretly go ride my bike by the
drug store they tell me not to go near or
what did I do?

Speaker 4 (11:21):
And they said they just need to talk to me.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
I didn't do anything wrong, And it was to explain
to me that I was like my aunts because I
knew my aunts couldn't have babies, and that was because
one was in the process of adopting children from China,
and we were all very big part of that process,
helping fundraise and she actually went to China.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
So it was very much talked about in our family.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
And everyone was very very excited to meet this baby
that they were adopting. So it was something at the
time that was really top of mind for me. At nine,
I was going to.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
Have a cousin. I'll get this was my first experience
being the older cousin.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
So what was presented to me at around nine years
old was that you will be like your aunt and
you will not be able to have children, So you
won't have a period some day when you're older, and
you won't be able to have kids of your own.
And when you're older, once you go through puberty, you'll
have to have a surgery. And when I asked why,
they said, that's just how your body works, and we

(12:22):
all kind of left it at that.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Why do you think that they chose to share that
much with you at age nine? Was it because you
were going to be entering an age maybe not that
long from now, where some of your friends might start
to be getting their periods, you know, at eleven or twelve.
I mean, do you do you have any idea what
they're thinking was of I.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Might have even been you know, not that you asked
that I trigger those memories.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
I might have been ten.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
And I think it was because they were sending home
on the video list that they were going to be
playing for the class in fourth and fifth grade of
reproductive health. And I think it made my mom realize
I can't send her into that not knowing that she
will not be having that same deberty that they're learning about.

(13:13):
So her way of telling me the truth, which she
did her and my dad they did. They told me
I'll never have a period. They told me that I
wouldn't grow body hair like you know my peers would.
They gave me the outcome. They gave me what was
going to happen. I did. They didn't have the language
I don't believe to tell me why or what actually

(13:35):
was going on. They didn't have the language know it
was testes because the doctors only called them gonads.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
That interests me so much to the you know, the
sort of obfuscating language that doctors use. Again, even your
parents were kind of on a need to know basis.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
It felt like that, and I think they thought they
knew everything, and they in you know, there was one
conversation we did have, probably ten years ago now and
where my mom's we did tell you everything. We had
a talk and told you everything, And she was referring
to that conversation I was like about ten years old,
and I think in her mind, I think she truly

(14:12):
believes that she did, and I think she did tell
me everything that she understood in a way she understood it.
I think now with the knowledge we have and what
we know about biology and the real science, I think
that it would be explained differently. And I also think
understanding that my intelligence level, like my books marks at ten,

(14:32):
isn't what it is now at force. Even if you
would have explained it as scientifically as I know it now,
I probably wouldn't have understood.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
It right well. And there's also this sort of wisdom
about telling children things is to tell them not so
much like on a knee to no basis, but to
tell them the bare minimum facts and then let them
ask questions if they want to know more. That you
wouldn't even have known what questions to ask.

Speaker 4 (14:58):
Bingo.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
The conversation was short because I felt very uncomfortable and
I couldn't place why I.

Speaker 4 (15:07):
Felt so uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Did they seem uncomfortable?

Speaker 3 (15:11):
They seemed sad, and I remember thinking, why do they
seem so sad?

Speaker 4 (15:16):
Like what's wrong?

Speaker 3 (15:18):
One of the things I remember saying, Well, I'll just
be like my aunt. And I loved my aunt. I
love my aunt very much, and we were very close
with her. She baby sat us all the time, we
did sleepovers at her house, and she was our fun aunt.
She was the youngest sister. And I remember thinking, if
I'm gonna be like her, that's a good thing, right mom,

(15:38):
because it's my favorite aunt. And I remember her and
my dad feeling sad because I clearly didn't understand. And
they kept asking if I had any questions, and I
was like no, no, and then that was that. And
I remember worrying about having some surgery, but it never

(15:59):
came up. I mean for years that surgery never came up.
No one talked about it. I didn't ask is this
the year? Like it never it never came up.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Did they also ask you not to talk about it?
Was your aunt or was anyone?

Speaker 3 (16:15):
I was specifically told not to tell my friends or
people from school, and that this is one of those
things they told me that was private, and that there
are some things that are personal and that people don't
need to know, and that you.

Speaker 4 (16:29):
Not to tell anybody.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
And you know, when you're told that as a kiddoh,
A lot of what happens is you look at it
like a response like I will get in trouble if
I tell, because that's how I understood it. I didn't
look at it like, well, this is my story, my body,
my truth. I looked at it like, well, mom says

(16:50):
not to tell, so if I tell, I'll be in trouble, right,
Like there's a negative outcome to me telling. And at
the time I did not realize that in the brain,
the negative outcome was I would be ostracized. I would
be made to feel like I wasn't a girl, or
questioned about my gender. But in my mind, the negative
outcome was upsetting my family because I wasn't supposed to tell,

(17:14):
and I was told they did say, if you ever
want to talk to your aunts, let us know and
we'll talk to them and set something up. Because this
was again, I mean, we didn't I couldn't just text
message to them, I couldn't go on the compute. I
could email them from our dial up internet, but outside
of that, it wasn't really an option. We didn't have

(17:36):
cell phones and they didn't love talking about it, so
it was like, well, if you want to set up
a conversation and everything, it just felt so forced and
weird that I was like, nah, I'm good.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
That's interesting too, because it's it's like, you know, your
parents wanted to kind of remain in control in a
way of who knew what and when, and which makes sense,
but you know, to sort of if you were going
to talk to your aunts, that they would want to
know that you were going to be talking to your
aunts that wasn't going to happen on your own.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Well, that was definitely part of it, and I think
from their point of view, my mom's was, well, I
need to at them if they're okay with that, because
they were still I mean, they really have a lot
of trauma from it themselves, and even now in their
mid seventies, I would say, I would say one of
them has come around to talk about it, but the
other there's one that still will never talk about it.

(18:29):
I believe her children probably don't know.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
What about your sister. Was there any discussion about telling
her or not telling her.

Speaker 4 (18:36):
You know, it's funny.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
I don't know when she learned about it. I believe
my mom and dad must have told her. I knew
she knew about it, but it didn't come from me,
And I think that was one of those things that
I carried always wondering. I know people in the family
know this about me, but I don't know who in
the family knows this about me.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
And I don't know who knew before I knew.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
I don't know who was gonna find out and when
or if you know, I didn't it.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
It was such a weird thing to talk about.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
How did that sit with you, that feeling of, you know,
having a sense that some people knew, maybe they knew
before you knew, some people didn't know. You weren't supposed
to talk about it. How did that exist in your psyche?
And in those years where you're growing up, you're entering puberty,
which is also the beginning of when some of this

(19:29):
is starting to reveal itself in your body, or not
reveal itself as it were, where you know your body's
not changing like everyone else is. No period, no body odor,
no hips, no like pimples, you know, right, None of
the typical hormonal shifts. You're having a singular experience. You're

(19:49):
not the only person in the world who's having it,
but you're the only person in your immediate world, and
it doesn't present in any kind of exterior way, so
nobody knows this.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
So I was in middle school, it would have been
the late nineties, and that was still a time where
you weren't talking about your period.

Speaker 4 (20:07):
You weren't talking about you didn't want.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
Anyone to see that you had pads or a tampon
in your bag. You know, that was something that was
still very embarrassing. So my girlfriends didn't talk about it.
It wasn't something that came up. I remember learning when
each friend first had their period because their mom would
call my mom when they were just having their coffee
talk and tell her, and then she'd tell me so

(20:31):
and so started their period, sweetie. You know that kind
of thing, And that's how I knew my friends had
started their periods. But outside of that, I was developing
at the same trajectory, growing breasts, getting taller. You never
would have known from the outside that I had a difference.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
We'll be right back. Jackie has the surgery when She's
fifteen during winter break from school in the year two thousand.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
I'm in ninth grade, and ninth grade is a shift
for everybody. You start high school and it's you know,
girls are getting meaner than middle school. I cared more
about my social life than my schooling, for sure, and
I cared more about boys.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
All of a sudden, I was.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Getting crushes boys, you know, me to dances, I just might.
The things I cared about were suddenly a lot different
than what I cared about before. And I knew that
I had to have that surgery in ninth grade, and
we were going to do it on either holiday break,
winter break, or summer break. And I don't know why

(21:44):
we landed on winter break. I don't remember why, but
we did. And I had to end up missing about
two weeks of school so that way I could have
the procedure and then recover throughout the next month before
going back after holiday break.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Was it presented to you as like a big procedure
like or was it presented to you as like, oh,
it's going to be nothing, Because my understanding is that
it was not nothing, you know, and there was like
a recovery and having a miss school for a while,
did you have a sense going in it.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
Was presented as a pretty serious surgery. You're gonna have
to stay the night in the hospital, they're gonna have
to put you under, and you'll be on painkillers, and
it's gonna hurt. But it wasn't life threatening in any way,
So it wasn't like I was scared dying or anything
like that.

Speaker 4 (22:35):
But I remember about a month before, I was like,
you know, just before Thanksgiving.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
Maybe we had to drive up to the University of
Michigan and that is where I had the surgery, where
I met the doctor for the first time, and they
needed to do an ultrasound to find the testes in
my abdomen before they booked the surgery, and we drove
up there and I remember her saying they only would

(22:59):
refer to the surgery as a gonad act tom me,
and I was like, what is Like?

Speaker 4 (23:03):
I had never heard the word gonad.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
Before, and even then I didn't know. I didn't know
what I was having done. When I talked about it
at home, I refer to it like a hysterectomy. When
I have my surgery, which is like a hysterectomy, And
no one ever corrupted me. So when I remember sitting
there and doing the ultrasound and the doctor had to
measure them on the ultrasound chart, and she said, isn't

(23:26):
it funny that you're going through all this and have
to have this big surgery for these two little things
that are this, you know, a radius of this many centimeters.

Speaker 4 (23:35):
Isn't that funny?

Speaker 3 (23:36):
And I said yeah.

Speaker 4 (23:38):
And I said, it's like a complete hysterectomy, right.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
And I think at the time, I thought I was
sounding smart, like I knew that a HYS directed me
you were having your ovaries removed, and I thought that
this was like the same thing, right, And she kind
of stopped and said, no, it's not that because they're
not ovaries.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
And I said what are they?

Speaker 3 (24:01):
And she said they're gonance And I said, is that
like an ovary and she said yes, And that was that.
No one said, well, they're testes. No one sat me
down and explained, this is what's happening.

Speaker 4 (24:16):
They are testes.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
They are producing your estrogen like women's ovaries, you know, would,
but they are testes. They only referred to them as
gonands because that's the only term I knew for them,
and so I continued to call it a hysterectomy because
I didn't know what else to say. Like, everyone acted
like this was no big deal because I would be
missing school to go have it, but people wanted to
know where I was.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
And your parents didn't tell I mean, they certainly didn't
tell your school. You know what the surgery was that
you were having, but the administration and your teachers at
the school did they know that you were that you
were having surgery.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
So my mom says, to this day, her biggest regret
when we went through all that was not being more
forthright with the school because she was very defensive of
it because of how she was being treated by the doctors.
They were treating her, in her opinion and in my
opinion looking back, like she was stupid until just do

(25:13):
whatever they say. She felt like they wanted her to
be their puppet, and it was confusing, and they would
say things like, well, if you use this language or
tell her this, she could develop gender dysphoria, which we
look at like a mental illness, is how they presented it,
and that would be scary, and my parents didn't want that,
and so they were doing whatever the doctor said. And

(25:33):
then you know they told my mom, well.

Speaker 4 (25:35):
You don't have to tell the school this.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
It's no one's business, and then that idea really grew
roote than her.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
It's no one's business.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
They're right, this is her story, and we don't need
to tell the school. And I think that she looked
at it more like like it was my right in
my privacy and not their business, which is true if
I was an adult at a workplace it. The difference
is I was in a fifteen learning you know, biology

(26:03):
and literature and reading Shakespeare and having to do homework
and testing on it. And I missed two weeks of school,
so I came back. And not that I deserved special privileges,
but I was going through a lot mentally, and I
was going through a lot hormonally. I had just gotten
my natural hormone production taken away and I was then

(26:23):
put on artificial hormones and I had to go up
and down and doze. The doctor told me when I
came through, when I woke up from surgery, that I
was now menopausal and that I was going through menopause
and I would be put on estradio as I went
through menopause, and then I had to stay on it
because I wasn't old enough to go through menopause yet,
so that's where I was at. I was getting hot flashes,

(26:47):
I had tender breasts, I had all the symptoms of
someone going through menopause. But then I'm also on vicodin.
I was on a morphine drip because the surgery was
pretty intense.

Speaker 4 (26:56):
At the time.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
And when I went back to school, I remember the teachers.
No one had an ounce of sympathy for what had
happened because they didn't know. They thought I had just
some little procedures, and so they handed me a stack
of homework and said, why didn't you do this overbreak?
And I said, I don't know, because I was on vikedin.

(27:18):
Of course I didn't read Romeo and Juliet. So I
failed every class and I had to then spend the
rest of high school.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
I mean, they're not joking, would they say?

Speaker 3 (27:29):
If your GPA gets low in the beginning, it's hard
to bring back up, and it affects you, you know,
when you're looking at colleges and you're going into the future.
And mine was low, very very low, and it brought
me to a really low point in my life. In
my adolescent I suddenly was very, very active on the
cross country and track team, and that was really nice
my second home. And I wasn't allowed to race because

(27:50):
my grades were too low. So I not only felt
less feminine and scared and confused, but I'm coupled that
with I felt like dumb kid, and I very much
felt stupid, and I like I wasn't smart like my
other friends. And I played it off like it's because
I didn't care.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
I don't care.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
I don't care about school. I don't want I'm not
going to do that homework, I don't care. What the
reality was, I had let myself get so far behind
with everything going on that I wasn't going to be
able to catch up without help. Now, as an adult,
I can look back on that and think I love
my parents to death. I think they did the best
they could with what they had at the time, but
that was their job to be involved and help me.

(28:33):
And I mean, I remember when grades came out and
the report cards were still sent in the mail to
your house and you had to wait by the door
and get the mail before mom came home because she
was going to see her report card.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
And I remember it coming.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
And it's saying like D D D minus D, and
I knew I'm going to be in such big trouble.
And I remember them looking at me like like they
didn't know me, like I had two heads. They said,
what happened? I remember my dad was so mad, and
he never gets mad. He is the most even keel guy.
And I remember him throwing the report crud on the
ground and saying, are you on drugs?

Speaker 4 (29:05):
What happened?

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Are you?

Speaker 4 (29:06):
Are you taking drugs?

Speaker 3 (29:07):
And he genuinely thought I might be out with friends
smoking weed or something, and I remember thinking, what, No,
why would you think that? And so then their alternative
to that was I must be lazy.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
No one put it together.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
No one put two and two together that while she
missed a lot of school, oh, we never sat down
and did her homework with her.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
Oh we didn't make sure she understood. No, it never
came to that.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
And so then I spent the rest of high school
catching up one of those grades, and I still felt
less then by my peers, I was benched from every meet,
every race, every track meet until the grades could come up,
and that was going to take a long time. So
everyone knew on the team, why isn't Jackie running she's
one of our best two milers. Well, it's because her
grades are bad, and so every week they'd see that

(29:51):
my grades were still bad. So to everyone around me,
I just felt like like I was stupid.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
And it's such a cruel thing because probably running track
would have been one of the outlets for you both
in terms of was something you were really good at,
was something that you really enjoyed, and also, you know,
just all of that pent up energy, all that confusion.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
It really felt like everyone was so disappointed, and that
was the common denominator everyone was.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
My parents were so disappointed.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
I remember my coach getting the news that he had
to benched me, and he said, I'm just so disappointed
in you.

Speaker 4 (30:31):
You've always been.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
So relied, Like, I'm just disappointed and everything. I'm disappointing everybody.
But in my mind, I hadn't done anything.

Speaker 4 (30:40):
I didn't do anything to be in this circumstance.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
And right before college is when the other secret about
my body kind of came to light. I was a
senior in high school going into my senior year, and
I went back to the doctor for my yearly follow
up post surgery, and I'm now two and a half,
three years post surgery, and they informed me that now
that I'm eighteen, if I wanted, I had to start
dilation therapy.

Speaker 4 (31:04):
And I didn't know what that was, and I asked,
why would I start that? What is that?

Speaker 3 (31:08):
And unbeknownst to me, I was born without a vaginal canal.
I didn't have a vagina. And that was dropped on
me suddenly my last year of high.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
School because you had turned eighteen and prior to that,
I mean, what was the reason for your not being
informed of that earlier?

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Well, my mom told me. I The way it was
phrased was I might need some kind of therapy when
I'm older and I want to be in an intimate
relationship with my husband some day. And I remember thinking,
I'm not going to talk to you about this. What
are you talking about? And I didn't know what she meant.
I was really weirded out. So I turned eighteen, going

(31:49):
into my senior year, I was a legal adult, which
meant I could go to these doctors appointments alone. And
you know, at that point, my mom's working full time
two jobs, my dad's working, so I thought I was
being the big girl, you know, I had printed maps
off of map Quest and drove the three hours by
myself from our town in Kalamazoo to ann Arborda University

(32:10):
of Michigan to see this doctor. And I thought I
was going in and just talking to her and doing
my first big girl doctor's appointment, because you know, we
were learning that all women eventually go to you know
the guy, know, you go to your woman doctor appointment,
and you all have that moment when you go for
the first time. And I guess I just thought that's
what I was doing too, like my friends were doing.

Speaker 4 (32:33):
And when I arrived and they told me that I
you know, I mean, a jaw was on the floor
at that point.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
I had just, I mean, honestly out of sheer look
for them, not attempted to have intercourse. I had never
drank a drop of alcohol. I had never gone to
a party. And it wasn't because I didn't get invited.
And it wasn't because my parents would have said no.
They were pretty liberal, easy going parents. I didn't have curfew.
I could do what I wanted.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
I just didn't.

Speaker 4 (32:59):
It wasn't something that interested me.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
It didn't even occur to me because you know, back
in the nineties and early two thousands, the only thing
taught was abstinence.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
Abstinence.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
If you don't do it, you won't get pregnant. That
was what was taught to us. So the people I
knew that were vocal about having sex were the ones
that were like gossiped about, and it was like, oh
my god, they're halving there. So when I'm sure many
more were that we didn't know. And so it never
even occurred to me to do that. And so when

(33:30):
I went to the doctor and they explained to me
my options, I was just flabbergasted. She told me, you
can do this dilation therapy, and she gave me like
real scientific like well, we see this percentage of people.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
That works on them.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
And or you can do a surgery where I grabbed
skin off of you and create a deeper vaginal canal.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
And I was like, why do I have to do this?

Speaker 3 (33:53):
Because it was presented as you have to do this,
and she said, well, you won't have a fully formed
vaginal canal right now. You only have about an inch
and a half of development. And I said okay. So
it never was given to me as an option that maybe,
you know, maybe I don't want to do that. Maybe
that's not something I want for my body. It's my body,

(34:15):
you know, Maybe I don't want that. Maybe that's not
the kind of sex I'm going to be having. But
that wasn't ever an option. It was you are obviously
going to have head real normative sex. Obviously you're going
to want to please a man some you know, sometime
in the next five years.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
You have to do this. You have to do this
to your body.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
And they gave me a ground paper bag of dilators
and just sent me home, expecting me to do that
every day for thirty minutes in my bedroom forever.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
I'm speechless at that. Sure, it rarely happens to me,
but I mean it's true in so many different areas
of medicine. And is it discomfort? Is it just the
medical industrial complex, like we're just going to move this along.
Is it not really having a kind of kind of

(35:04):
compassion or empathy for the human being that like they're
sending an eighteen year old girl home was a paper
bag full of dilators and saying like this is what
you're gonna do.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
Yeah, And I said, well, how long do you have
to do it? And she said, well until you feel comfortable,
like you feel that that's enough, like you've done enough.
And I was like, okay, And then I said, well
when and then I'm done? And she said, well, no,
it won't hold that, so you'll always have to do
it unless you're sexually active.

Speaker 4 (35:36):
And I'm like, so if I'm not, I have to
go back to doing it the rest of my life,
and she said yes. And it was. It was a show.

Speaker 3 (35:45):
And it was not something I wanted to go do
in my bedroom across the hall from my mom and dad.
It was not something I wanted to take with me
to collage in my shared, tiny dorm room.

Speaker 4 (35:56):
How was I going to make that happen.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
It was super uncomfortable and something I was embarrassed by
and something I.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
Didn't want anyone to know well.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
And it's also just about the most joyless thing. I
can imagine the idea of this young woman that there
just having to do this thing to herself as opposed
to giving herself pleasure. It's like the opposite of.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
That, right. It was preparing myself to give pleasure to
someone else, is what it was. And I remember at
that same appointment, I was just ill prepared in general
for everything that was going to happen, because that was
when I started to feel everyone's having these experiences and
I'm not, and I feel different.

Speaker 4 (36:38):
Around then, the few.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
Friends were hurting to have sex, and I had friends
talking a little more openly about their periods, and a
few of them had gotten on birth control, were gone
to a guynecologist for the first time, and we're having
these experiences.

Speaker 4 (36:52):
That I would never have.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
And I felt when I went to that appointment. I
think I felt really cool before the appointment. I'm like
my friends, I'm going to a lady doctor, and I
think I just felt really like feminine having to do
that like they did. There are other ways people can
be born that lead to this same outcome, and so

(37:16):
this isn't just a you have ais, you have to
do this thing. There are many women that have had
to go through dilation therapy for other reasons. But because
I have that, you can't do like a passmear. I
don't have a cerfix to look at. So I was
not prepared for this.

Speaker 4 (37:29):
Doctor that I barely knew, to put.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
A glove on and stick their hands inside of me.
I was not prepared for anything like that. And so
with students watching because I was at a learning hut,
So I had, you know, male students in the room
watching this woman measure my vaginal canal and then tell
me how many inches it was and how much I
would actually need if I was going to be sexually

(37:53):
active anytime soon.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
And it was humiliating.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
You know, these people watching and she's showing me on
her finger through her digits on her finger, you're about
right here, and obviously that's not gonna work right, Like
it was just some playful, funny thing, and it definitely
didn't feel that way. And at the end of the conversation,
she asked what I was doing next, and I said, oh,

(38:16):
I'm going across country practice and I'm hoping to run in.

Speaker 4 (38:19):
College in a year.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
I'm applying for schools and she made a flippant comment
about when I need my physical for them to go
back to her and to not tell the school I
had this, And that was the first time I was
specifically told not to tell someone in a social way
like I always was told not to tell like friends,
Like it wasn't like something like idle gossip.

Speaker 4 (38:40):
It wasn't something it was personal.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
But no one had told me like I couldn't tell
an authority figure for lack of a better word. So
I was like, oh, well, I mean I wasn't planning
on it. I didn't even have the language to like.
It never would have occurred to me had she not
said that to tell.

Speaker 4 (38:54):
The school I was applying it.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
I don't know why I would for my coach, but
her reasoning was it was the year two thousand and
two or three, and she didn't want to see me
for some reason, not be able to run because I
had X Y chromosomes. And she's like, I'd better be
safe than sorry, and my birth certificate says female I
never would have had any issues, but if and she
can't promise that that wouldn't have happened. But that freaked

(39:18):
me out.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
So do you think she was trying to be protective
of you there?

Speaker 4 (39:22):
Yes, yes I do.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
And yet it's one more person saying you can't talk
about this. Yes, exactly, We'll be back in a moment.
With more family secrets, Jackie moves through her teenage years

(39:53):
carrying a secret she cannot name, and in a way,
she grows more and more isolated as her body becomes
something she doesn't fully understand, but In another way, Jackie
is very much out there. She's not only an athlete,
but there's another world she steps into, one that feels
almost like an alternate reality, one in which she's on

(40:17):
stage and under lights, competing in pageants. In that world,
Jackie leans into performance, glamour, and control. She loves wearing
the gowns, vying for the crown, and becoming someone who's
both visible and celebrated, recognized for her beauty. And when
people inevitably ask questions about her body, her surgeries, she

(40:40):
has an answer at the ready, a story that sounds
clean and contained. A cancer scare, a hysterectomy, something unfortunate
but understandable. It becomes the version of the truth that
follows her everywhere, and in that space where image and
narrative matter so much, Jackie learns how to present a

(41:01):
life that makes sense, even when the real one just
beneath it does not, at least not yet.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
I did pageants throughout late middle school and all of
high school. I did smaller ones that my parents could afford,
and they could only afford one a year. These other
people would travel the state and do them every other weekend,
trying to win a crown.

Speaker 4 (41:21):
We didn't have that, So I did one a year
and I never won. Never.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
I'd bedop thought sometimes, but never. And when I got
to college, my mom's like, if you're going to continue
those you.

Speaker 4 (41:30):
Got faith for them.

Speaker 3 (41:31):
Took a break in college, so I left the home,
didn't do pagents anymore, and just ran across country and
track for a Fair State University or at NCAAD two
school in Big Rapids, Michigan.

Speaker 4 (41:42):
And I went to school. I was a super duper senior.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
Took me along kind of figure out what I wanted
to do and where I wanted to go with it.
Met my husband there and kind of found myself like
many people do, and then got a job and I
could bathe pageants and I was like twenty four, and
I started getting back into the pageant scene.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Then, when you started dating your husband, how honest were
you with him about your history?

Speaker 4 (42:06):
I was very honest with him.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
I had boyfriends before him that didn't get any scope
of the truth. They got the weird hysterectomy story that
I told everybody. But with him, we worked together at
a restaurant and we were just really really good friends
in the beginning, and so I kind of had told
him more than I told everyone else, But he knew

(42:28):
I didn't really have all the language, I think for
what had been done and why it had been done
or any of that. So as I got older and
Google became a thing and I could go on Facebook.
I remember when Facebook first came out and I was
in college, and you had to wait for your college

(42:49):
to get accepted by Facebook to be able to use
your college email and join the social media.

Speaker 4 (42:56):
And it was a big deal.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
And so my college was one of the ones that
you could use Facebook book and that's when I started
typing in things like complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, just to
see what would happen, Like what what?

Speaker 4 (43:07):
What am I going to find? Right?

Speaker 3 (43:10):
And I'd find I found support groups, and I found
you know, secret groups you had to join to talk
to people. I found, uh like Wikipedia pages about of
what CIS was, and it kind of contradicted everything I
thought it was. And so he was dating me as
I was starting to learn, and so he heard every

(43:32):
spiral out of my mouth as I learned it because
he was learning it with me.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
What was it like to finally have language? You know?
You were just pushed along this path if you do
this and you do that, and this is what's going
to happen. That's what's going to happen. But you don't
have the terminology or language for it. And then suddenly
there's this trove of information and also other people other people.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
So I always knew the name of what I had
complain Andrew and sensituty syndrome. That was never a secret
or held from me. But the big thing was I
didn't have the accessibility.

Speaker 4 (44:10):
To learn more about it.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
There was no you know, I wasn't going to learn
about that at my school library at my high school
in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Speaker 4 (44:17):
That wasn't researched, it wasn't talked about.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
And on top of that, the Internet was such a
new thing I didn't have that option to go look
it up and research it. So it really was halfway
through college when I learned that the you know, information
is at my fingertips.

Speaker 4 (44:32):
I just got to look.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
And so when I finally looked and learned about it,
the beginning, I had a lot of denial, like I'm
not I'm not reading it, and I would almost like
didn't get the answer I wanted. But I got the
answer I suspected, and so I would kind of shut
it out. And then every you know, a few months
or so, I'd be feeling emotional about something or i'd

(44:56):
be feeling down and I'd pop out that computer and
i'd you know, google it again or look something up
and click on websites with people talking about it or blogs,
and then I'm Nino's Lamasha. And I kind of did
that game for a couple of years and got information
that way, and then I finally applied to join a
anonymous support group for people with intersex variations and they

(45:19):
didn't even they called it DSD still then, and that's
when I started to meet people who also had it
or had different intersex variations.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
As Jackie moves into adulthood, her life begins to take shape.
She marries in twenty thirteen, and in twenty sixteen, she
and her husband become parents with the help of a
donor egg and her sister as a gestational carrier. It's
a complicated, deeply emotional journey that finally becomes real when
their daughter is born. At the same time, Jackie's building

(45:54):
a public life, working in radio and TV and continuing
in pageants, being back into that familiar world where presentation
matters and where you can really shape a narrative about
who you are. Gradually, she begins to speak publicly, though
she remains careful when speaking about her experience, well a

(46:15):
fraction of her experience. She talks about the struggle, the infertility,
the difficulty of becoming a mother. But what she doesn't
talk about is the reason for the struggle. The deeper
truth of her very self remains just out of reach.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
There was an eight year span where I filled myself
with so many activities. I think that my high school past.
That felt very much like a loser. I felt left then,
I felt stupid. I would have been way too scared
to try the broadcasting class, or try the theater class,
or to audition for a play. I never would have
done any of that because I felt labeled by everyone

(46:55):
around me as not hardworking and not very intelligent.

Speaker 4 (46:58):
So I went through a phase from twenty.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
Four to like thirty where I did everything and anything
and everything. I did multiple pageants, I did community theater.
I had never been a play in my life, never
sang a note, and I was in.

Speaker 4 (47:12):
Like four musicals at our community theater.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
I was just getting involved and just doing any activity
that I could. I joined a hoop dancing clath. I
was just always doing something. I was running marathons every
two months Sunday. I was just very busy, keeping myself
occupied with random things that I thought would fulfill me.

Speaker 4 (47:31):
And I was on the news.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
I was working as a reporter, and all the other
reporters and anchors around me were around my age twenty
eight to thirty one, and they were all getting pregnant.
I would say, like three of them were getting pregnant,
and we were, you know, with my sister trying to
do IVF and have a baby, and I felt like
I want to share my joy and excitement and journey

(47:54):
like they are, but theirs is visible, right They're on
the news pregnant. And so I remember starting to feel
that paying of jealousy a lot, because you know, we'd
have sponsors or local boutiques in places, ending my coworkers
gifts and things and congratulatory things because they could see
them on the news they were pregnant, and I was like, well,

(48:16):
we are too, but it's just different.

Speaker 4 (48:18):
And so I.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
Began talking about infertility because I was way too afraid
to talk about being INDORSEX, and I kind of took
that and made it my platform. And I competed at
the missus Michigan America pageant and got first runner up
with the platform of infertility awareness and education, talked about

(48:40):
one in eight couples.

Speaker 4 (48:40):
But it just always felt.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Like a lie, and I felt like I had connected.

Speaker 4 (48:46):
I was a storyteller. That was my job.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
I worked in news and radio, and I did mostly
features in when I was in news, and I connected
with a lot of people locally who were also having
infertility struggles, and they really admired my speaking about it,
and I felt so disconnected from them and uncomfortable. I
felt like just like a fraud, right, Like I was

(49:09):
getting this attention and these accolades were talking about infertility
when I was like, but I'm not infertile. Necessarily, I am,
but it's for a totally different reason. And I don't
remember a time in my life believing I could have
children because I was so young when I learned I.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Couldn't, right, And so that would be, you know, a
story that you could tell yourself of why at that time,
you know, like why it was okay to like you're
giving a voice and a platform to a very real,
very important subject that a lot of people aren't comfortable
talking about because you know, there's shame involved with impertility,

(49:44):
and there's you know, just so much that's fraught.

Speaker 4 (49:47):
Well, and it affects so many women.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
And I think that it also made me feel very
connected to a womanly experience when I felt like I
had missed other experiences that bond and I felt like
that was important. But then the bigger it got, it
almost became like bigger than I wanted it to. I

(50:12):
was being interviewed about it, I was writing articles about
it for local publications. I was having boutiques call me,
you know, going to support groups and talk to people
at the fertility center and talk to groups that were
coming in. And it was making me very uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Because you felt inauthentic. Yes, you were being seventy percent
authentic or the.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
Good way to put it, seventy percent. Like the only
truth of mine was I can't have kids like these
other people. But the difference was they were going through
heartbreak every month when they'd get their period and all
these things, but like I never had even had a period,
Like I couldn't relate to any like they'd say, I
remember people, you know, if we were at an event
and someone would walk up and be like, I just

(50:56):
love listening to you and hearing your journey.

Speaker 4 (50:59):
You know, I'm struggle too.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
And every month, you know, I can't believe I pray
not to have my period and now I used to
pray to have it and I would not and go
yeah yeah, But inside I was like dead, like I
didn't what.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
Do I just look sympathetic? What do I like? I
was playing this part, hiding this big other truth.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
So what changed?

Speaker 3 (51:18):
Well, we hit COVID in twenty twenty and I had
taken a break from pageants.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
We were all at home. I was working in morning radio.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
I had a morning radio show, and we were touted
as the first two women morning radio show, all women
produced in our state in Michigan. That always was very exciting,
but then it also always sat weird with me too,
because I had such a week different woman experience than
other women. We had come off of COVID and I
had gained some weight, been drinking too much beer at

(51:46):
home and the next and I thought, you know what
I'm gonna do when it get in shape and entered
that missus Michigan Pasion again, I'm gonna try it again.
So I did, and once again I got first runner
up and I was like, oh, well that's that. Well.
The gal that won at the time was a really
close friend of mine and she ended up getting diagnosed
very sad with what's called Tarlov cysts on her tailbone,

(52:08):
and they're basically cysts wrapper on her tailbone, and so
she couldn't go to MISSUS America because she could barely sit,
let alone go on a plane for three hours and
walk on a stage. So they basically said, Jackie, you
know the drill. As the first runner up, you have
to fill the duties.

Speaker 4 (52:24):
She can't go.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
So I was like, oh, I'm going to missus America.
I'm going to Vegas. So I'm getting.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
Ready to go to Vegas.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
I'm going to MISSUS America.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
Now, this is so cool.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
I used to watch this on TV growing up, you know,
I remember Alan Thick being the MC for a while,
Like this is so exciting, And when I was there,
I don't I just made the decision I'm going to
talk about being intersex? Why not?

Speaker 4 (52:49):
What I didn't even win to come here? Like who
cares what I have?

Speaker 2 (52:52):
To lose.

Speaker 4 (52:52):
This is my only time going on here.

Speaker 3 (52:54):
And I ended up talking about an interview to a
few of the judges and they were really fascinated, and
I remember thinking, wow, they seem they're so into talking
about this though, okay, And then on stage, I didn't
expect to make top fifteen, like I had done so
many pageants and I'd done this, I'd been in this
ring before. So I made Top fifteen and that was
my big goal, and I'm just like, now, I'm ready.

(53:14):
I made Top fifteen, let's go party.

Speaker 4 (53:16):
I'm done.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
Well.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
Then they narrow it down to six and I made
Top six and in the top six you have to
answer an on.

Speaker 4 (53:21):
Stage question, and they asked.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
Me on stage, what is one thing if you had,
like a wish, that you'd wish for? And I said,
I was diagnosed at a really young age with a
difference in sexual development and it's not talked about.

Speaker 4 (53:37):
I was told to keep it from everybody, and I had.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
A surgery to change my body without me understanding my body.
And if I had a wish, it would be that
no one else has to go through that. And we're
more educated on differences in development and intersex conditions, and
that was kind of it, and it was kind of quiet,
and I got some claps, but then I made it
top three. Then I ended up winning the whole thing,
and everyone said they just really felt.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Moved by that answer.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
I guess so at that point I was the first
openly intersects Missus America.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
It's a beautiful thing when someone finds her voice, when
her voice emerges from within her after a lifetime of
secrecy and silence and is suddenly unstoppable. In Jackie's case,
on stage, under the lights, under pressure, in front of
hundreds of people, she speaks the truth of herself. The

(54:33):
poet Adria and Rich once wrote, it is that which
is under pressure, particularly the pressure of concealment, that explodes
into poetry. And this is precisely what happens poetry liberation.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
I remember in my thirties, when I was still a reporter,
I got sent out to breaking news. There was a
vandalism done at a local church that had put a
art structure that was meant to resemble a cross, but
it was rainbow because they wanted to be a church
that welcomed LGBTQ plus people, and someone had thrown red
paint all over it and graffited it.

Speaker 4 (55:13):
So the church.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
Decided, well, to combat this, let's have people write their story,
something secret, an anonymous thing about themselves on this cross.

Speaker 4 (55:24):
It's still art. You know, we were not gonna let
this happen.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
So I went to go to the story and I'm
there and I'm live on television, and I saw on
this cross someone had written in sharpie, I'm Intersex and
I'm here in Grand Rabbids, And I remember feeling immediate panic,
being so panicked, like afraid that someone was trying to

(55:51):
prank me, or like screw with me, or say something
to me on news about this.

Speaker 4 (55:57):
And so it was.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Really wild that only four years later, like that, probably
four five years later, when I won Missus America, that
those feelings had left, and I was so much more
comfortable talking.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
To say Jackie has come a long way would be
an understatement. She is missus America. She's an advocate, a mother,
a truth teller, a force.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
I feel like I have two lives right in now.
You know, one side of my life is a mom.
My daughter's at that age, she's almost ten, and she's busy.
She's a does competitive dance and she has activities every night,
and she's got homework, and I just feel like I
wear my mom had a lot, and I'm really busy
with that. And then on the other side of things,
I am a content creator, So I actually left my

(56:48):
career in broadcasting this past year. I just finally hung
up my headphones and decided I was going to take
content creation and advocacy full time in whatever way that
life books and look as in looking for opportunities while
still making my content and doing my thing. So I've
since then, i'd try to do daily videos educating people

(57:11):
about the different intersex variations and what that means and
different policies and how that affects intersex people.

Speaker 4 (57:17):
And I like to talk.

Speaker 3 (57:18):
About the idea that surgeries were not anti surgery for
people who are intersex, were anti surgery when they don't
know what's being done or why.

Speaker 4 (57:30):
So that's something that I like to really talk about.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Most because that's the biggest thing with my surgery is
I'm not angry that it was done, because that was
the information and the medical knowledge they had in nineteen
ninety nine two thousand was to remove those testes. What
I'm unhappy with is that it wasn't shared with me
what it was being done fully and people knew and

(57:54):
I didn't, and it was my body.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
And your daughter is just struck me when you said
how she is. She is the age that you were
when your parents sat you down.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
Yes, And I had a really full circle moment with her.
So they're going through reproductive health right now in her class,
and they had, you know, one of those moments where
all the girls went into one room and all the
boys went in at the other and they were learning
about their growing bodies. You know. She got in the
car after that conversation and I said, well, let's talk
about it.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
What'd you learn?

Speaker 3 (58:28):
And she's telling me all what she learned, and you
know what she'll be doing when she's older and what
she won't be doing. And I said, I was really
honest with her, and I said, it's going to be
learning for me too, Greenly when you are going through this,
because I never had that. I never went through that.
And she said, I know, I remember you telling me.
And they told us that we shouldn't feel alone because

(58:49):
all girls go through this, and I told them, no,
they don't.

Speaker 4 (58:53):
And I said, well, thank you. I'm really glad that
you said that.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccur is
the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also

(59:30):
find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd
like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.