Heike Boedeker on gender variance

Heike Susanne Bödeker (also known as Heike Spreitzer) is a German writer who dabbles in music and academia.

She has stated she was born in 1963 and was "adopted by the family of a psychotic woman." She described her family life in Heidelberg as a concentration camp: "like being at the hands of some torturer or KZ-Waechter resp. like living in a death row." Heike has very little good to say about her adoptive mother. She was glad for the time apart when her mother was hospitalized in 1969, and Heike says, "occasionally she beat me really seething with hatred." and " I will spit on her grave rather go to hell..."

Medical history

Heike says she is diagnosed with mixed gonadal dysgenesis. She says she was assigned female at birth but was reassigned male in 1968 around age 5. Around age 12, she says she was put on testosterone (from November 1975 "until shortly before my attempt at suicide around the time of my 14th birthday in May '77."). This gave Heike what "many contemporaries due to their lack of any musical education mistake for a male voice." In 1977, she dropped out of the program she was in, then "had a major breakdown" at age 18.

After living as male for about 16 years starting at age 5, Heike says she was reassigned female at age 21 in 1984. Her turning point, like Denise Tree's, came in 1993. She spent time learning about the Siksika, Piikani, Kainaa, Tsuut'ina, and Nakoda First Nations, and became aware of ISNA.

"I experienced another breakdown only a few weeks after [2 years of psychotherapy] had ended." She says she was later adopted by Anna Boedeker and got in a relationship with Denise Tree (aka Kiira Triea). Between 1998 and 2000 Heike Bödeker described herself as "Kiira's partner":"This is what happens when one's gf lives in Germany"

* Both CISAE and GMSSG and EZKU used to be hosted on this domain.
* Wrote pro-autogynephilia piece in response to Becky Allison
* Wrote article on Native v. White gender variance with Triea and Teresa Binstock
* http://www.sonic.net/~boedeker/ (now Heike's mother's site)
* Boedeker has gone to considerable effort to erase her presence from the net.
* boedeker@netcologne.de
* Boedeker_Spreitzer_GbR@t-online.de

Selected publications

Michal Rachel Nahman (2000). Embodied Stories, Pragmatic Lives: Intersex Body Narratives on the Net. Unpublished thesis, York University.

The EZKU website is run by Heike Boedeker, from Germany, who used to run the Genital Mutilation Survivors' Support Network website (which is no longer in existence). As opposed to GMSSN, EZKU is not a support network; rather, it is an online journal (the offline version of which dates back to 1981 -1 985) devoted to intersexual and transsexual traumatization issues. Through this website Heike has demonstrated dissatisfaction with the exclusion of transsexual issues frorn the intersex movement. The EZKU website contains Heike's life history. It focuses specifically on traurnatization caused by surgeries, hormone therapies and the mistreatment s/he received. I use Heike's cornments and hir online testirnonials in the next section where I compare the different intersex websites... For Heike, a functioning body is just as important or even more important than a
body that can 'pass' for mate or fernale. Here we see a key difference amongst
people in the rnovement. Sorne equate normafcy with function, others with
appearance.

For exarnple, in her
online testimonial, Heike describes her feelings at the age of 15, stating that she
could not identify as anything:
1 can't be male, I can't not be male, 1 can't be female, I can't not be
fernale, I can't be intersexed, 1 can't be not intersexed, i can't betranssexual, I can't be not transsexual.. . likewise, I canY have
r'ships [sic] and I can't have no r'ships.. .sounds crazy, right? [Heike
Boedeker, GMSSN website (no longer available online)]
When she wrote this Heike was feeling rejected by various different comrnunities
and found herself in a double bind. While others have constantly identified Heike
as an intersexual, she sees herself as just as much a transsexual, or rather she
is frustrated by the need ta identify as anything at all.

References

Boedeker, Heike (Janunary 24, 1998). "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Herm." Real Intersexed People, via CISAE

External links

http://www.anna-boedeker.de/cats/family.htm