Lisa-Lee Dark is in her early twenties, working hard at her career as a singer and optimistic about the future. However it has been a struggle to get to that position for although Lisa is happy about who she is now it has not always been that way. Throughout her childhood Lisa was known as Lee and was raised as a boy. The confusion was caused by a mistake in assessing which sex Lisa-Lee was when she was born . Her genitals appeared to be male and so she was brought up as such. However it later turned out that appearances can be deceptive and Lisa-Lee is in fact female - neither a hermaphrodite nor a transsexual . The cause of the wrong assessment of sex was rare medical condition which affects only one in four thousand five hundred births.
Lisa-Lee begins by explaining her condition, Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, CAH for short, "It's an extremely complicated disorder," she explains in her light voice which has a slight upward inflexion. "It's a family of inherited disorders like mixed-gender identity," she continues, "where it's not just males who can be mistaken for females, it's females who can be mistaken for males as well. You have an enlarged clitoris, so it looks like a male organ. You can easily slip through the net unless the hospital check you. I was born in a car, and was taken first to the Carmarthen Hospital, but because I wasn't resident in the area, they sent me to the Swansea Hospital. Each one probably assumed that the other hospital had done a full examination."
Lisa-Lee's childhood wasn't a particularly happy one which, she says, was more to do with family problems than her condition. "I used to get bullied quite a lot. I think it was because the bullies picked up on that slightly feminine thing - and I never did. I was extrememly shy and sensitive, and they will go for you then. You soon learn to toughen up." For years Lisa-Lee escaped the bullying by conentrating on her music and writing.
Neither Lisa-Lee's parents or doctors spotted that their son was actually a daughter, "It's rare to slip throught the net, but it can happen. This isn't such a well-known condition, doctors don't know much about it themselves."
Puberty brought headaches, fainting, muscular pains, and depressive episodes, "The doctor told me it was growing pains, I was spoilt and kids my age didn't know how lucky we were!" Still seeking help, Lisa-Lee consulted a doctor in private practice, "He told me I had a rare form of hermaphrodite condition, that my body was trying to develop into a more female body, that I would be dead by the time I was twenty-five, and I'd die a horrible death."
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Unsurprisingly, Lisa-Lee found this hard to understand and harder still to cope with. Although, she says, that after many years of suffering from depression the thought of an early death gave her a feeling of happiness. Death, would, at least, mean an end to the heartache and pain she'd gone through. As a teenager, and now on hormones and steroids prescribed by the doctor, Lisa-Lee put on between five and seven stone in weight and began to lose her hair. She also had to cope with a weakened heart and immune system. The changes in her physical appearance caused her great distress, "Some people thought I was male and some thought I was female. I think different people picked up on different things. I could never understand what they were picking up on, and that would hurt and upset me. I'd think 'What's wrong with me?' I was brought up to believe I was male, so as far as I was concerned I was male."
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For the next three or four years, Lisa-Lee visited other doctors, each confusing her further with a different diagnosis from the last, until she didn't know what to believe. Her family problems continued, and she found little support from that source. As in the days of the school bullies, Lisa-Lee found comfort in her creativity, "I didn't have an escape from things, except through music and acting and the entertainment industry."
Recently Lisa-Lee stopped taking steroids altogether. Her hair has begun to grow back. But being at ease with a different identity doesn't happen quickly. Lisa-Lee doesn't think of herself as female, in spite of her name, "I've never classed myself as very masculine or very feminine. I just feel like me. People can find that strange, but I say now, 'If you can't accept me it's your problem, not mine.' People who grew up with me see me as a little boy. I think it would be too much for them to see me be extremely feminine. It wouldn't suit who I am. I'm just going to carry on as I am."
Thinking about the future and a possible partner, Lisa-Lee wants to take things slowly, "It would be nice later on. I've grown up thinking I'm something, and then told I'm something else again. At the moment, I've got to concentrate on getting to know myself."
