Is Perineum gender-dysphoria a thing?
I know this might sound a bit weird, just trying to see if people can relate to this.
Only a couple of times have I questioned my gender identity but for now I'm settling on gay, cisgender man.
When I was young (maybe 12 or 13) I learned about how some intersex people will sometimes be born with both genitals, like, both a penis and vagina in some form. And about how some of them will only find out when they're older because they got some form of surgery when they're babies.
(I know this is a very particular experience and I don't wish to appropriate it or get into it per se.)
But I was maybe a late-blooming preteen when I heard of these cases and it sort of got into my head that this might have been the case for me. My only proof: my perineum. In particular, my perineal raphe (wikipedia link).
(Again, I never have had any reason to believe I am intersex or have any real knowledge on this matter.)
But you see, when I was a kid, I noticed I had a line in-between the scrotum and the anus. A sort of ridge that nobody had mentioned to me and I'd never heard about in the few anatomy lessons of our biology class.
Apparently it's called a "perineal raphe", most endosex men have it and women too, although it's usually not visible in women. And it's a normal result of fetal development.
But to me it clearly looked like a scar, and the fact that it extends into the scrotum only made me more sure of it. In my head it had to be a scar. And since I'd heard anecdotes from my biology teacher about how some intersex people may get surgery when they're kids to modify their genitals... I was convinced I'd been born with both a penis and a vagina, and that "perineal ridge" was the scar where they had sewn it shut and maybe even added my balls.
I know. I even voiced this paranoia to some of my friends in the middle of a "two truths and a lie" game but I immediately regretted it and played it down. I finally settled on how unlikely that was and even though it had to be a scar, it just wasn't a genital reconstructive surgical scar from when I was a baby. Just some other wound from when I was a kid that I couldn't remember and I was too embarrassed to ask my parents about anyway. Eventually forgot about it I guess.
It's not my only instance of gender dysphoria and I know it's weird af. I was just wondering if anyone had ever felt something similar, or know if this is a concept at all.