Nobody Needs to Know Quotes

“We are raised to believe that you should just be able to glance at someone for a split second and know what lies between not only their legs but also their ears.”
― Pidgeon Pagonis, Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir

“I immediately felt the familiar need to hide my new reality from everyone around me.”
― Pidgeon Pagonis, Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir

“Hey, hey, listen,” my mom said, her voice softer as she consoled me. “You could always adopt a baby.”
But that’s not the game I’d been playing, the role was preparing for.”
― Pidgeon Pagonis, Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir

“Hey, hey, listen,” my mom said, her voice softer as she consoled me. “You
could always adopt a baby.”
But that’s not the game I’d been playing, the role I was preparing for.”
― Pidgeon Pagonis, Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir

“The system didn’t want to say that I’m intersex. That I’m not female or male. The doctors wanted to choose a gender for me and then make my body agree with their ideas about who I should be.”
― Pidgeon Pagonis, Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir

“As Cal Stephanides, the protagonist in Middlesex, said: I was beginning to understand something about normality. Normality wasn’t normal. It couldn’t be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself. But people—and especially doctors—had doubts about normality. They weren’t sure normality was up to the job. And so they felt inclined to give it a boost.”
― Pidgeon Pagonis, Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir

“We are raised to believe that you should just be able to glance at someone for a split second and know what lies between not only their legs but also their ears. On top of this, there is also supposed to be an inherent synchronicity between the two.”
― Pidgeon Pagonis, Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir

“So let’s say you’re an AIS baby and your little undescended baby balls start making testosterone, right? A person with AIS would be, like, Nah, I’m good. Their body would not respond to the testosterone. Instead, it would say, Abracadabra, and—poof!—it would convert the testosterone into estrogen. And since an AIS person’s genitalia started in a sex-neutral state, like all embryos, and their body isn’t responding to androgens, instead converting them to estrogens, which it can respond to, an XY AIS infant is often born looking virtually indistinguishable from XX female infants. To make matters a bit more complicated, AIS is an umbrella category for two subdiagnoses: complete androgen insensitivity (CAIS) and partial androgen insensitivity (PAIS). PAIS is just like CAIS, except there is only a partial insensitivity to androgens, and thus, PAIS babies usually come out of the womb with genitalia that has more ambiguity than their CAIS counterparts. The PAIS embryo almost masculinizes but doesn’t quite do so completely, so the infant is often born with genitalia that is visibly neither completely feminine nor completely masculine in appearance. Genital sex traits like swollen labia, partially fused labia, bifurcated scrotums, enlarged clitorises, and/or different degrees of hypospadias—a term that describes when the urethra doesn’t open at the tip of a penis/phallus—can all be apparent in PAIS individuals. Because PAIS traits aren’t hidden from plain view like those of CAIS, which often goes undiagnosed for years, an individual with PAIS is usually diagnosed at birth or very soon after.”
― Pidgeon Pagonis, Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir

“For the first six weeks of development in the womb, embryos are sexually indifferent. Regardless of sex chromosomes—the twenty-third pair responsible for a person’s sex characteristics—their gonads, internal reproductive tracts, and external genitalia are identical. After week six, embryos typically begin to sexually differentiate, starting first with the gonads. All gonads can form into either testes or ovaries, and that development is dictated by sex chromosomes, which hold the blueprints, so to speak. If the chromosomal sex is XY, then usually the gonads will become testes, and their internal and external genitalia will masculinize—and vice versa if the chromosomal sex is XX. I said typically and usually while describing this process because, as I found out that day in my class, it’s not always what happens. Sometimes an embryo rebels. Enter androgen insensitivity syndrome, or AIS. When a person is born with AIS, their sex chromosomes are XY—the typical chromosomes for babies who are assigned male at birth. But AIS infants are usually assigned female at birth because their external genitalia appear feminine. However, a pair of undescended testes (instead of ovaries) and a blind-ending vagina that doesn’t lead to a cervix or uterus are present. The AIS body is able to convert androgens—hormones, such as testosterone, that are responsible for the development of male sex characteristics—into estrogens, or hormones that are responsible for the development of female sex characteristics. This magic trick of sorts is partially able to occur because androgens, as it turns out, are precursors to estrogens.”
― Pidgeon Pagonis, Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir