“Kiira Triea” aka Denise Magner was an American computer programmer, hoaxer, and troll.
Magner appeared on the radio show GenderTalk #250 with hosts Nancy Nangeroni and Gordene O. MacKenzie on March 20, 2000. Magner fabricated an intersex medical history that was later independently confirmed to be false. Magnerâs false statements are in bold.
Once these lies were exposed, Magner requested that the hosts edit the description. Below is a record of the changes made, and a transcript of the segment.
In this section:
- Denise Magner overview
- Biography
- Fake names and accounts
- Lies told in GenderTalk interview (2000)
- Arrest and conviction (2007)
- Obituary: a lifetime of lies (2012)
Episode notes and changes
Original program summary:
Kiira Triea, activist and writer, on intersexuality and her own mis-treatment by the psychohormonal research unit at Johns Hopkins in the â70s.
Altered program summary:
[name removed by request], activist and writer, on intersexuality and her own mis-treatment by the psychohormonal research unit at Johns Hopkins in the â70s.
Original program notes:
66:06 Kiira Triea, intersexual activist and writer, who works with the Coalition for Intersex Support Activism and Education and does education with academic and clinical folks âtranslating our world to them.â Kiira talks about her treatment by the psychohormonal research unit at Johns Hopkins in the 70s, and what she feels are the important issues in dealing with intersexuality.
Altered program notes:
66:06 A historically interesting interview on trans medical mis-treatment.
Transcript
- Kiira Triea, guest
- Nancy Nangeroni, host
- Gordene MacKenzie, host
- Hal Fuller, announcer
Nancy: Kiira Triea is an intersexual activist and writer who works with the Coalition for intersex Support Activism and Education. And she is someone who was at the Psychohormonal Research Unit at Johns Hopkins in the 70âs and is an activist today. Kiira, Welcome to GenderTalk.
Kiira Triea: Hi, Nancy.
Nancy: How are you doing tonight?
Kiira Triea: Fine, thanks.
Gordene: Hi, Kiira, how are you doing?
Kiira Triea: Hi Gordene.
Nancy: So letâs see, youâre an activist and a writer, and it sounds like you went through some hell with John Money back in the 70âs?
Kiira Triea: Ah, well, Iâve written some stuff that has been described as fairly brutal, I guess.
Gordene: I think it was brutally honest. (laughs)
Kiira Triea: Yeah, I guess it wasnât as brutal as it could have been.
Gordene: Yeah.
Nancy: So you were an intersexed person?
Kiira Triea: Yes, I was at the Psychohormonal Research Unit at the age of 14. My syndrome was called Progestin Affected Female.
Nancy: What does that mean?
Kiira Triea: It means that my mother was given a drug called Progestin to facilitate and not have an abortion while she was carrying me. It has progestin, which is a synthetic estrogen and has the effect of causing the virilization of the genitals depending on the timing effect in some female fetuses.
Nancy: OK, so youâre going to have to explain that to me again. What does virilization of the genitals mean?
Kiira Triea: Well, it means that it can cause development of the genitals that lie somewhere between an enlarged clitoris to something that looks more like the normal genitals of a male, except lacking of course descended testes and so on.
Nancy: So this acts on what would otherwise have been a female fetus, otherwise a male, orâ
Kiira Triea: Wellâ
Nancy: Or is it hard to say?
Kiira Triea: It primarily, as far as intersex syndromes go, it affects someone who would not have been intersex had she not been exposed to progestin.
Nancy: Right.
Gordene: I see.
Kiira Triea: So um, I was raised as a female until I was two years old, I was raised as a male between the age of two and fourteen. At the age of 14 I began feminizing puberty, because my internal organs are female.
Nancy: So wait a minute, was this an undiagnosed condition?
Kiira Triea: Ah, not really.
Nancy: Thatâs right, because they switched you at two years old.
Kiira Triea: It was diagnosed, but I was born in 1960 in the Philippine Islands, Iâm a Navy brat, so you know, one of those not-so-rare instances where I was treated outside of the treatment methodology, and kind of fell through the cracks until I was 14.
Nancy: Thereâs a part of me Kiira that just want toâI, my mind is like trying to polarize, Iâm⊠You went from living as⊠They raised you as a boy for two years, then raised you as a girl, no they raised you as a girl for two years, then as a boy until age 14?
Kiira Triea: Yes, Mm hm.
Nancy: Why did they switch you over?
Kiira Triea: Pardon me?
Nancy: Why did they switch at age two?
Kiira Triea: Well, who knows. (laughs)
Nancy: Really?
Kiira Triea: The histories of many intersex people are very murky, and itâs not at all an unusual history amongst our population. I can think of a number of people who had similar histories.
Nancy: OK.
Kiira Triea: And may of us switch sex at leastâ
Nancy: Iâm sorry, I donât mean to make you feel uncomfortable about this.
Kiira Triea: No, Iâm not uncomfortable.
Nancy: OK, good. Please, donât let me do anything to make you uncomfortable. I mean, not that you control what I do, butâ
Gordene: So at age 14, Kiira, then you went to Johns Hopkins?
Kiira Triea: Right, I actually lived in Baltimore.
Gordene: OK.
Kiira Triea: So I, it was very convenient for them. They like their, ah, patients to be close by and sometimes coerced families to move to Baltimore.
Nancy: Oh dearâ
Kiira Triea: Or in the area so they could have them close by.
Nancy: Oh boy.
Kiira Triea: So it was very convenient for the Psychohormonal Research Unit that I lived here.
Nancy: So you went there when you began feminizing at 14?
Kiira Triea: Right, right.
Nancy: OK, and they, um, so weâve got 15 minutes here. What did they do?
Kiira Triea: Well, the interesting thing about Progestin Affected Females is that we are kind of valuable, or we were valuable to Money and his theories in the 70âs, because one of the kind of accepted wisdoms about progestin is that it doesnât virilize the central nervous system. In other words, to put that colloquially, it doesnât produce boy brains (laughs).
Nancy: Virilize, is that like masculinize?
Kiira Triea: Yes.
Nancy: OK.
Kiira Triea: So you could have someone with whatâs called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or an XX female with CAH, who had equivalent genital virilization, and she might very well want to identify more as a man. Or at least someone who is a bit more genderqueer, but Iâve never met myself any progestin affected people who want to transition and live as men.
Nancy: So in other words you were sort of, without the intervention of this Progestin, you would have proceded to term, been born as a girl, declared as a girl, and raised as a girl, lived as a girl.
Kiira Triea: Yes, yes.
Nancy: But with this virilizing or possibly masculinizing hormone that your mother was given to prevent a spontaneous abortion, I guess?
Kiira Triea: Right. And it doesnât do that, by the way.
Nancy: Of course not. Yâknow, most of this stuff doesnât work. So that caused them to decide to raise you as a boy, but they waited until age two for some reason to make that decision, but for whatever reason they decided to raise you as a boy.
Kiira Triea: Well, I was kind of in-between. I wasnât definitely male or definitely female. And these things in the 60âs were pretty arbitrary at times.
Nancy: And than at age 14 when you began feminizingâ
Kiira Triea: Then I was at the Psychohormonal Research Unit.
Nancy: How did that feel to you when you were feminizing? Was that welcome or unwelcome?
Kiira Triea: (sighs) You know something, thatâs really too complex a question to answer in any real kind of dichotomous way.
Nancy: So there were some aspects that maybe were OK and some aspects that werenât?
Kiira Triea: Well, itâs something that could be answered if intersex people had access to knowledge about themselves and were raised in some kind of meaningful way as far as their gender and sex identity goes. But when youâve had the facts of your biological status hidden throughout your entire life, itâs hard to come to a real firm decision about well, is this good or is this bad?
Nancy: I understand. So perhaps in the context of the ways you were misrepresented, it was disturbing to sort out the false ideals that you had been taught, would you say that? The false ideals of gender?
Kiira Triea: You know, I really think that itâs really kind of hard to map intersex reality into a kind of dichotomous gender identity reality.
Nancy: I was just trying to get at how you felt about it as you were enteringâ
Kiira Triea: Well of course it was confusing, and I tried to hide the fact that I was menstruating for like three months. Finally, I just refused to go into gym class andâ
Nancy: That must have been very, very difficult.
Gordene: Because you were in a boyâs gym class.
Kiira Triea: Yeah, I was in a boyâs gym class, and my breasts were developing.
Nancy: Oh my, what a conundrum you were in!
Gordene: And when you got to John Money, it seems that there was a real confusion about gender and sexuality and some of the messages he gave you sound like they were pretty disturbing to you.
Kiira Triea: Well, see, as far as the Pyschohormonal Research Unit goes, and John Moneyâs theories, it would have been very beneficial to them if I had accepted assignment as a male, that would have been in accordance with his theories about intersex kids or human children in generalâ
Nancy: That the environmentâ
Kiira Triea: There was a tabula rosa [sic] for gender identity.
Nancy: And that gender is entirely environmentally determined. So, Gordene was telling me that Money did some absolutely crazy things here, I mean really questionable stuff?
Kiira Triea: Well I believe thatâs all part of the cultural attitudes toward intersex children, and itâs partly incorrect to simply demonize Money and say that he was completely nuts and he did those things. He was not exculpable as far as his responsibility toward intersex children goes, but he also was more or less expressing the cultural kind of othering, what I call pseudospeciation of intersex children, by behaving that way.
Nancy: So what youâre saying is that we shouldnât go after Money for what he did but rather we should consider it symptomatic of the overall cultural attitude.
Kiira Triea: In general, yes.
Nancy: I think thatâs entirely fair. I think thatâs very reasonable, We all function in the environment and culture that we function in. But that culture did create an environment in which it was OK for Money to do some extraordinary things with you at age 14, like show you a pornographic movie?
Kiira Triea: If you were a child with autismâ
Nancy: Is it OK that Iâm going here with this?
Kiira Triea: Pardon me?
Nancy: Is it OK that Iâm taking this here?
Kiira Triea: Yeah, itâs OK. Sure. And if you were some other child youâd be very concerned as a parent if your child came home and said, âWell, uh, a world-famous therapist cursed at me today, showed me a pornographic movie and took my picture in front of a tile wall without any clothes on.â But because of the weird sort of cultural positioning of intersex people, this is acceptable behavior. And because of Moneyâs position in our culture, as a preeminent expert about intersexuality, he could, he was free I believe to kind of get out of control as far as confusing his professional life with his personal life.
Nancy: Kiira, you are so intelligent on this, I am kind of, Iâm definitely impressed. Letâs talk about the cultural positioning of intersex people. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because this is the first time Iâve heard that term.
Kiira Triea: Thereâs a lot to say here. One point I often make is that itâs probably conceptually incorrect to think of intersex people as being strictly ambiguously sexed or in-between sex, or especially expressing bioessentialism, saying well, weâre intersexed, therefore weâre intergendered. I prefer to remove this discourse away from these sorts of cultural memes of sex identity and gender identity into the real world of the actual lives of intersex people and define our cultural positioning in terms of how our culture views us as having been born with not âintersexedâ genitals, but different genitals. Because there are lots and lots of intersex people who are not at all between sexes. Some are and some arenât, but itâs a very big blurry kind of cultural taxonomy. And I prefer a definition that includes everyone and not just someone.
Nancy: In other words, youâd rather be described as someone who was born with genitals of a more unusual variety?
Kiira Triea: Yeah, kind of like someone whose genitalsâ configurations falls toward the outside of the bell curve.
Gordene: Well then, what happens, and I donât know if itâs happening now, though there are some changes, what happens with the medicalization of that in the hospital? Whatâyou said you were confronted with many choices like many young intersexul children areâŠ
Kiira Triea: Iâm not sure I quite understand your questionâ
Gordene: Iâm sorryâYou were saying on your article, Iâm looking at your article that you read, Kiira, that they injected you with testosterone first?
Kiira Triea: Oh, sure. Um.. you knowâthat.. when youâre in a large teaching hospital and youâre an intersex person, unless your parents protect you, youâre going to have some kind of surgeryâyouâre going to have either phalloplasty and masculinizing surgery, or at least this was true at the Psychohormonal Reseach Unit where I was.
Nancy: Thatâs changing today and we know there are people working on that.
Gordene: Not fast enough. (laughs)
Nancy: Sorry, Kiira.
Kiira Triea: I just call it the PRU, but mostly people donât know what Iâm talking about.
Nancy: Whatâs the PRU? Sher it with me, I donât get it, what the press releaseâ
Gordene: No think about it P R U, like Toys R UsâŠ
(laughing)
Nancy: Very good, Kiira, very clever.
Kiira Triea: I like that! I never thought of that.
Gordene: I think one of the things you said that really powerfully moved me again in your article on all of this is you said, Why did these people invest so much energy in my genitals? That maybe they were so profoundly awed by them that they started this elaborate treatment stuffâŠ
Nancy: They were in such awe (laughs) thatâs great.
Kiira Triea: Itâs all so funny, I know
Nancy: Well there are people out there who kind of wish there was more excitement in their life, and having different genitals is certainly interesting.
Gordene: But in all seriousness this is a very mutilating, oftentimes very painful procedure that people go through that takes a long time if ever to recover from. Kiira, what do you have to say about something like that?
Kiira Triea: This is really a profound and upsetting part of my daily life. I consider myself to be pretty wellânot recovered, but I have achieved at least some balance. I do a lot of resource and support work with CISAE and my online and real-life support group InterAct. And people who are subjected to this are occasionally will fall down on my doorstep and they are in very, very bad shape. And they canât go back to Hopkins, and they canât go back to Columbia Presbyterian, because theyâll be further traumatized. Really, at this point⊠Iâm working with someone here in Baltimore, trying to find a therapist or a counselor, and sheâs just going out of her mind. And at times it makes me very angry because the medical community will not address thisâŠ
Nancy: Itâs interesting that doctors make a fortune, doctors are among the most well-paid professionals out there, and yetâ
Kiira Triea: And they make their careers on it.
Nancy: Yeah, exactly, they make their careers on body of people of difference, but when people are hurting, itâs like theyâre not there.
Kiira Triea: And in the absence of any empirical evidence whatsoever for the efficacy of this treatment methodology, it continuesâ even into this new millennium it continues. I was kind of hoping that seven years ago when I came out that weâd have a slam dunk by the year 2000, but it hasnât quite happened yet.
Nancy: So thereâs no proof that this does any good whatsoever, but theyâre still doing it.
Kiira Triea: Thereâs no long-term study. There are very few studies whatsoever on following up intersex children, that shows it has any efficacy other than traumatic sequelae.
Nancy: As Dregerâs book, and certainly John Colapintoâs recent book have pointed out, too, itâs just absolutely happens without the personâs consent, so frequently, and the parents are almost blackmailed into it, terrorized into it, and there are many operations that are secretive, and thereâs such a sense of secrecy and shame and pain shrouded in the whole procedure, that itâs remarkable to think that people can get through it. I mean, itâs hideous.
Kiira Triea: Aliceâs book was a bright star in my heavens.
Nancy: And itâs opened up the dialogue.
Nancy: For all the listeners out there, itâs called Intersex in the Age of Ethics, by Alice Dreger, and it has Kiiraâs article.
Kiira Triea: Seven years ago I was writing dozens of letters and being ignored, being kind of reviled in print myself and other activists were frequently excoriated in print by world-famous doctors. And to finally have Aliceâs book come out and see our words be next to such renowned clinicians and academic writers was justâit brought tears to my eyes.
Nancy: Thatâs wonderful, Kiira.
Nancy: Well, Kiira, weâre down to just like 30 seconds. Is there anything you havenât said that youâd like to say quickly?
Kiira Triea: No, just thanks so much for having em on the show. I wish we had a little more time.
Gordene: Iâm sorry we got to you so late. Sometimes that happens. I apologize, but weâll have you back again, OK?
Kiira Triea: Iâm hip.
Nancy: All right.
Gordene: You keep up the good work!
Nancy: You are, you are. Itâs wonderful to hear someone speak with such depth of understanding about this stuff. Itâs terrific youâre out there doing this work, Kiira. Weâre happy youâre with us.
Kiira Triea: Thanks for the opportunity, yâall.
Gordene: Ok, you take care.
Kiira Triea: Bye-bye now.
Gordene: To crawl out of the wreckage of what medicineâ
Nancy: To her credit, sheâs not wanting to slamâ
Gordene: Because sheâs saying itâs a symptom of the culture.
Nancy: Yeah. And seâs working to change things. Good for her.
Hal: A point that I wanted to make but there wasnât time was how much the doctorsâ perception of her sexuality dictated his treatment of which way the child should go.
Gordene: She even says in her article, she talks about John Money asking her if she would rather be Fâed or would rather Fâ somebody, and those were some of the determining factors at 14 years old, and then she says that John Money showed her a pornographic movie which frightened herâshe said what if they showed me a movie of people being soft and tender and loving each otherâ
Nancy: Now if somebody did this, if somebody in the queer community showed a movie like that to any child anywhere, and it was gotten a hold of by anybody on the right, thereâd be hell to pay for it.
Hal: Oh yes.
Nancy: But because the person is supposedly legitimated as a doctorâ
Gordene: And they way that intersexual bodies are treated.
Nancy: And you know what, this is still going in, Itâs not John Money at Johns Hopkins any more Iâm sure, but thereâs still people out there doing it. We have to go!
References
GenderTalk program #250 (March 20, 2000). http://www.gendertalk.com/radio/programs/200/gt250.shtml.
Triea K (1997). Power, orgasm, and the Psychohormonal Research Unit. Chrysalis, 2:23-24. (PDF)
Triea K (1997). Interview with Dr. Arika Aiert. Chrysalis, 2:13-15. (PDF)