She was born with a penis and vagina and struggled to be accepted as a woman.

Who knows the nice Luiza Freitas for the first time, you can’t even imagine the amazing story this woman has to tell. And you certainly have no idea how much she’s already suffered. Born in Iúna, a small town in the interior of Espírito Santo, Luiza was born intersexual and her life was cruelly marked by prejudice.

Intersex – or simply intersex – are people who are born with biological characteristics of both genders – what we used to call hermaphrodite🇧🇷 The UN estimates that 1.7% of the population is born intersex, that is, 1 in every 58 people – and that’s a lot!

Biologically speaking, there are at least 30 different categories of intersex human beings. In some cases, only the chromosome count indicates intersexuality, in other situations the individual has genital organs of both sexes, for example.

Luiza was born with a penis, vagina, testicles and uterus and ovaries. “Thank God I didn’t suffer any type of genital mutilation, because I was born in a very small town and there wasn’t even that kind of surgery. But I was registered and raised as a boy. My parents viewed my condition as a disability.”

Read more: Model reveals to be intersex and heats up debate on the subject

Raised as a boy, even after her first period

At the age of 12, Luiza began to develop feminine mannerisms and was called “faggot” by her colleagues. “I already saw myself as a girl, I wanted to put on lipstick and wear dresses,” she recalls.

By this time she had already menstruated for the first time and, talking to colleagues, she discovered that she was not a boy like the others. Even so, her parents did not admit that she was a woman. “I ran away from home when I was 13, because my father tried to kill me. At the police station nobody helped me and there I was also called a fag”.

It was at the church that she got help and, advised by a priest, she went to live in a Catholic community in Santa Catarina. “But at the age of 14 I had to run away from there too, because I was not accepted as a girl”. This time she ended up in Ribeirão Preto, in the interior of São Paulo, and there she finally managed to start the transition to having a female body. “I started living with a transvestite who helped me through the process,” she says.

Abandonment, industrial silicone and teenage prostitution

Luiza finally found an environment where she was accepted as a woman, but she would experience a new nightmare. “In addition to the hormones, I made the mistake of putting on industrial silicone. It was horrible and could have cost me my life. I’ve done several drains [para retirar o silicone], but I still have a lot of pain”. Unaware of the seriousness of what she was doing, she injected the silicone into various parts of her body, including her face.

As if that were not enough, Luiza was unable to pay for the transition and had to become a prostitute while still in her teens. “I did not like [de me prostituir], but at the age of 17, I was lucky enough to make some contacts to work with events”. And what started by chance ended up becoming his profession. Today, Luiza works as an event executive producer.

Read more: “Before, being a woman was even a possibility. Today, it is being able to be free”

It only started to be accepted by the family after becoming pregnant

After a very confusing childhood and an adolescence marked by suffering, Luiza was finally living a good phase. Being a woman was a huge achievement for her and in the profession things were also working out. That’s when she decided to try to make peace with the past, on a trip to her hometown.

“My parents still didn’t accept me, they called me a tranny and all that is a thing”, he reports. Only after giving birth to a daughter did Luiza manage to be accepted as a woman by her mother – her father had already died at the time.

It was at age 32 that she decided she wanted to be an independent production mom. At the time, Luiza had not yet had the surgery to remove the penis, but her female reproductive system works perfectly. The pregnancy also allowed her to speed up the court process to be officially recognized as a woman.

“I needed to have a daughter to prove to justice, to my mother and to the church that I am a woman”. Today you little rihana is 5 years old.

Luiza also says that, despite discrimination, she never stopped being Catholic. “Before rectifying my name, the church did not accept me as a missionary, because on the certificate I was still a man”, she recalls. Currently, she works as a producer for a priest and her daughter is a child singer in the church.

Despite everything, Luiza considers herself a lucky person.

This woman’s story would fill a book, and at 38, she has already been through a lot of suffering in her life. Despite this, she believes herself to be a lucky woman. “After 30 years, I started to be accepted by society and by my mother. But what about those intersex and transsexuals who cannot get pregnant? Or the intersex who are mutilated in childhood? This is all very sad.”

She cites the case of a friend who is now suffering the consequences of mutilation. “Daniel had his sexual organ cut off because the family wanted to raise him as a girl. But he ended up discovering himself as a man and today he suffers a lot”.

Just like the Belgian model Hanne Gaby Odiele, who revealed to be intersex in 2017, Luiza argues that this type of operation is unacceptable. Gendering an intersex child surgically can bring a lot of pain and suffering, as these procedures are irreversible.

Once and for all, we need to put prejudice aside

It is very frightening to realize that very little is said about intersexuality, even though these people represent almost 2% of the world’s population. So it’s no wonder that parents are not prepared to deal with the arrival of an intersex child.

For Luiza, the ideal would be to be able to register these children as intersex, instead of forcing the family to choose a gender to be placed on the birth certificate. Unfortunately this is still very difficult, although not impossible. Even so, parents have the option of trying to treat this naturally within the home, paying attention to the child’s behavior.

“Let the child run his course, to see how he feels. Even if, for example, she was born with a penis, but is intersex due to hormones. Because the hormones will mess with the psychological and she is the one who needs to say what her gender is, not the parents or the doctors”. Luiza also believes that parents shouldn’t be afraid to explain to their children that they were born different from the others.

And it is precisely to try to make this subject stop being taboo that Luiza decided to open her story. It is no longer possible to sweep the subject under the rug, while thousands of people are suffering because of prejudice and genital mutilation. “I only started talking about it openly about a year ago. I decided to do this, because I think that way I will be able to help other people in the same situation. Everyone has the right to be happy and no one deserves to go through what I went through.”