Jessica Buch is a model, student, volunteer and advocate, and she is also in recovery. She has been the face of Pantene, Covergirl and more. Jessica is currently an undergrad student studying pre-med at Santa Monica College, and she is planning on transferring to UCLA in 2021. She recently came out publicly as Intersex, and she is now an Intersex advocate. Diagnosed with CAIS (Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) at a young age, Jessica’s life and upbringing relative to her body looked very different from the other kids around her, and she was taught to hide her condition for most of her life. Jessica spends her time studying, hanging out with her dogs, boyfriend, and friends, as well as volunteering with Bless It Bag, and staying active through hiking, pilates, and yoga.
Jessica Buch is a model, student, volunteer and advocate, and she is also in recovery. She has been the face of Pantene, Covergirl and more. Jessica is currently an undergrad student studying pre-med at Santa Monica College, and she is planning on transferring to UCLA in 2021.
She recently came out publicly as Intersex, and she is now an Intersex advocate. Diagnosed with CAIS (Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome) at a young age, Jessica’s life and upbringing relative to her body looked very different from the other kids around her, and she was taught to hide her condition for most of her life.
Jessica spends her time studying, hanging out with her dogs, boyfriend, and friends, as well as volunteering with Bless It Bag, and staying active through hiking, pilates, and yoga.
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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast, my name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame and I am your host, today we have Jessica Buch. Jessica is here to talk to us about intersex which falls under the LGBTQAI umbrella, I want to give you the definition. The definition of intersex is an umbrella term that describes bodies that fall outside the strict male, female binary.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There are lots of ways that someone can be intersex, it is used for a variety of situations in which a person is born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit into either box. Sometimes doctors do surgeries on intersex babies and children to make their bodies fit binary ideas of male and female, doctors always assign intersex babies a legal sex, male or female in most states. But just like the non-intersex people, that doesn't mean that the gender identity they'll grow up to have, this brings up questions about whether or not it's okay to do medical procedures on children's bodies when it's not needed for their health.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Being intersex is a naturally occurring variation in humans and it isn't a medical problem, therefore medical interventions like surgeries or hormone therapy on children usually are not medically necessary. Being intersex is also more common than most people realize, it's hard to know exactly how many people are intersex but estimates suggest that about one to two in 100 people born in the US are intersex.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
There are many different ways someone can be intersex, some intersex people have genitals or internal sex organs that fall outside male, female categories such as a person with both ovarian and testicular tissues. Other intersex people have a combination of chromosomes that are different than XY, usually associated with male and XX, usually associated with female like XXY. And some people are born with external genitals that fall into the typical male, female categories but their internal organs or hormones do not match like our guest.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So Jessica Buch is a model, student, volunteer and advocate and she is also in recovery, she has been the face of Pantene cover girl and more. Jessica is currently an undergraduate student studying to be pre-med at Santa Monica College and she is planning on transferring to UCLA in 2021, she recently came out publicly as intersex and she is now an intersex advocate. Diagnosed with CAIS, Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome at a young age, Jessica's life and upbringing relative to her body looks very different from the other kids around her and she was taught to hide her condition for most of her life.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Jessica spends her time studying, hanging out with her dogs, boyfriend and friends, as well as volunteering with Bless It Bag and staying active through hiking, pilates and yoga. I am so excited for everybody to listen to Jessica, she is beautiful on the inside and out and we even discussed the fact that if she ever committed a crime her DNA is actually that of a man but if you see photos of her that will be very surprising to you, she is absolutely stunning.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So I hope this episode is very informative, especially with this being Pride Month, I'm really excited for all of you to hear about what it's like being intersex, all the different ways that people are born and Jessica Buch is here to tell us about her experience. So without further ado, I give you Jessica Buch.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So I was reading through my notes on you and I read something like you were foreign looking in mid-America and that was a struggle and that you had to your intersex and a Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Okay, so I don't know what you look like at this point, I'm picturing like, "Okay, she must look kind of like a boy." Right? And so then I went to look at you online, I was like, "Wait a minute, wait a minute." And so anyway, I had so many questions for you and then also I wrote a crime novel in my head because your DNA, so...
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, I told her about that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So your DNA is male and so if you committed a crime, I feel this movie and book happening, if you committed a crime the DNA would show up male and no one would ever suspect you and so anyway, I just wanted to let you know that-
Jessica Buch:
Exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
... it's an avenue twist here, wondering.
Jessica Buch:
That's what really like the example I use to tell everybody about my condition, I'm like, "Basically, if I was to murder somebody," not that I'm going to, "Then I could, because on my birth certificate it says I'm female but my DNA is male."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
See? At first I was like, "This is amazing." But anyway thank you so much for being here and talk about us, I would imagine, when did you come out about being intersex?
Jessica Buch:
I came out about being intersex in February, so really recent.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, it's like really new.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. I mean my close friends and stuff I've known, I've talked pretty openly about it for the last like maybe two years. It just took me a long time to kind of like get the courage to come out publicly just because people have different opinions and it's a very personal thing to me, and so it took a lot of courage and deep inner work to be able to come out about it so I'm pretty happy now.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What was the impetus for wanting to come out about it? What made you like, now is the time?
Jessica Buch:
Well, I actually got inspired by a lot of other people that I saw online coming out about it and there's only one other girl and she identifies as they/them, sorry, I can't say that. But they identify as they/them, so I saw that they were open about being intersex and they're actually with the same agency that I am there with the sister agency in New York called Women Management and I'm with Women 360 Management.
Jessica Buch:
And this person is the only person in the fashion industry that I've ever seen or like the most famous or has the most followers on Instagram that I've ever seen public about being intersex. And they really inspired me about coming out and they supported me and talked me through it and told me about how their experience was when they told their agency, because I haven't been very open with my agency about this before because it wasn't something I really told anybody other than my close friends.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did your agency respond?
Jessica Buch:
They were so, so supportive and I think that they're really happy that I was able to be open and honest about it. I also think that nowadays is the time to speak up about how you're different, you know what I mean? And I think that's something really valuable and important.
Jessica Buch:
And for me it was just important to speak up about it because like I said, I haven't seen very many people in the fashion industry who are open about it. And I thought that was really important to me and they kind of gave me a new avenue of the way I wanted to direct my life. I'm going to school now full time, I'm trying to go to medical school to become an endocrinologist who specializes in intersex kids.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's so awesome.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, it's crazy because the one thing that I found out from talking to everybody who is public about it online is that there are no intersex specialists. In the whole entire and in all of United States, even in LA, wherein the center of the LGBTQIA movement, there's no intersex specialist. So basically when you go to a doctor or an endocrinologist they either have heard about it or they don't, but they don't really know every single thing about it. So you're just kind of getting like the things that they were taught about it is kind of what the only thing they know about it, so pretty crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow, that surprises me, that really surprises me that, that's...
Jessica Buch:
Especially here in LA.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. So you were born and raised in Denmark and dad is Danish, Mom is American, and you moved to Indiana of all places when you were 12. How did you get from Denmark to Indiana?
Jessica Buch:
Okay. So my parents knew they wanted to raise my sister and I in Denmark because it's a very pretty good place to grow up as a child. I had a very good childhood, I grew up riding horses, bareback through the fields, running through the woods and exploring abandoned castles. It was amazing, it's completely different than over here and it's a lot safer. I started taking the bus like the public transportation when I was eight years old or something by myself, it's totally different.
Jessica Buch:
But they knew they wanted to raise us half of our life or half of our childhood life in Denmark and half of it in America, because I have family in both places and they chose Indiana because my grandmother lives in Illinois and they wanted to be close to her. And my parents are both chiropractors, so they were searching for clinics that they could take over in the area and the area they happened to find one in that they liked was Indiana, so that's how we moved there.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Got it, okay. And so you were born in Denmark and that was when at birth is when they tested you for this condition.
Jessica Buch:
Yep, at birth. And that's actually usually not the case, especially for CAIS people because on the outside you really can't tell that anything is wrong or different. For other people that have ambiguous genitalia or certain things that didn't develop right, it's a little more obvious. But for someone with my condition it's not, and the only reason why they knew to test for it is because my aunt actually has the same thing that I do. So in my case, I think it's genetic in all cases but in my case it was genetic from somebody that actually was alive and that knew about it. Some people go their whole life without knowing and they just think they can't have kids.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow, that's really interesting. So can you explain kind of what your condition is and whatever you're comfortable in terms of the physicality?
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. So I am what's called intersex and intersex is an umbrella term because it applies to basically any variation in sex, characteristics, hormones, genitalia, chromosomes, just any variation that is not specifically male, female, and so my condition is something that's called Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. So it's like a condition that falls under intersex because I have XY chromosomes so that's male chromosomes, and Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome stands for basically that my body is completely insensitive to androgens which are the male hormones.
Jessica Buch:
So any male hormone in my body, my body turns it into estrogen so it can't accept the male hormones basically. And so I was born with internal gonads instead of a female reproductive system so on the outside my body is female with a regular vagina and everything like that, but on the inside I was born with internal gonads. So basically when I was 11 months old, the doctors decided that they had to remove my gonads because they were to become cancerous, that's what they said to my parents and that's what my parents said to me later.
Jessica Buch:
So they removed them which caused me to have to be on hormone replacement since the age of 10 I think, to kind of go through puberty, develop breasts and grow and just develop like female, because otherwise I wouldn't have any source of hormones.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So your ovaries basically developed into gonads, is that right? Like there's no uterus?
Jessica Buch:
Yes, yes. So basically I believe that every human body starts as a little female look in a fetus kind of thing, and so my body was supposed to turn into a male or completely into a male but it didn't do that because of a genetic problem, whatever, right? So usually gonads or whatever turn into ovaries in females, but for me they stayed like testes, so they're more like testes than they are. They like to say gonads because that's the more accepted term because I'm technically a female but yeah, basically if I were to cut them my body would have produced testosterone but my body would have turned it-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Turn it.
Jessica Buch:
... into estrogen. Yes, right.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you would have a time?
Jessica Buch:
Yes. I actually recently talked to a girl who has Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and she didn't find out about it until she was 15 and kept her gonads and she was able to develop completely normally, like completely without hormones. And the doctors are still trying to take her gonads out because they're saying they're cancers, but I think that there is a complete [inaudible 00:13:57] in my opinion because basically their chances of becoming cancers or as much as males have a chance of getting testicular cancer but you don't see them chopping off their balls, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, right.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, and there's no real reason for them to remove them, it's not like they're causing any issues or they're not even visible either. So if you identify as female, you can't even see them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So question about that. So when it came to finding this information out, because none of it appears on the outside, I mean there are people who are female and then there's you who's a model so it's like it even takes it even further, right? Why does it feel like such a big part of your identity or something you have to come out with when people probably would never know and it doesn't affect that?
Jessica Buch:
I think it's very much like a psychological thing, right? I always felt very different and not a part of, every girl goes through a period when they get their period and I never got my period. And every girl or most girls talk about how they want to have a life and have kids and I wasn't, I mean I knew since the age of 10 that I wasn't able to have kids.
Jessica Buch:
And usually people don't, like if they can have kids they don't find out till they try, so for that it was hard for me. And also another thing which is definitely a benefit now but actually made me feel very different earlier is that I don't get pubic hair, armpit hair, I don't smell because I don't have the testosterones, the testosterone is what causes pubic hair and armpit hair and odors, you know what I mean? Stuff that.
Jessica Buch:
So I literally don't wear deodorant and I don't smell, things like that, but little things like that is what made me feel different when I was a kid, right? That's all I wanted, that's all I wanted, all I wanted was like damn, my period and to talk about how like orally I'm getting weird hairs or whatever, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, just to fit in.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. And then another thing is when I was a kid, doctors have always told me that I was probably never going to be able to have a normal sex life, so in my body I'm born without a cervix so my vagina is like instead of a canal that goes up into something, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, the uterus.
Jessica Buch:
Like up into the uterus or whatever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right.
Jessica Buch:
I don't have that so mine is more like a pouch, so there's like an ending to it. So some people have a more, it's kind of graphic to talk about, but I mean I'm totally open about it because there's people that need to know these things. So some people have a more flexible and maybe a little bit deeper of a pouch, you know what I mean?
Jessica Buch:
And some people don't, so they don't really know how it's going to function for you until you have sex. So I was so, so terrified of having sex my whole entire life which is actually a big part of how drugs were introduced into my story because everybody was talking about having sex and I was literally told from doctors that I probably wouldn't be able to have normal sex.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did they tell you what kind of sex you'd be able to have or what would happen, what some type?
Jessica Buch:
They told me that the guy would definitely be able to feel a difference that something was wrong. So basically if I ever had sex with a guy I would have to tell them about this whole entire thing, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, okay, okay. Right, right, it's very involved.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, so it's very involved. And sometimes when you're a teenager, it's not really what you want to talk about.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
They're not interested.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're like the conversation that I can [crosstalk 00:17:55].
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. So there was a lot of aspects to it in that way that just made me feel so not a part of, like I didn't feel a part of in the girls club or the boys club. So it was just kind of like, I was like, "So what? What am I?" So I kind of just felt like an alien growing up, you what I mean? I was just like, "Well, something is different from my body and I can't talk to my girlfriends about it because they have no idea what I'm talking about."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What about your aunt? Did she ever talk to you about it?
Jessica Buch:
She did. I think that because I had such a weird image of sex in my head growing up, it was really hard for me to talk about it even with my aunt who had the same condition that I did. And so it just, I don't know, just talking to her was like talking to my mom about sex, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, right, like [crosstalk 00:18:40]-
Jessica Buch:
It's not something anybody wants to do. And so it was nice to know that there was somebody else like me, but for me it was like talking to my mom about having sex, you know what I mean? Now we're able to talk about things because I'm older and it's something that's not as weird as it is when you're a teenager. But back then when I really needed someone to talk to, it's a little bit too weird and uncomfortable for me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that makes total sense. And you were also told to hide your condition?
Jessica Buch:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. That's another thing they tell pretty much all intersex kids when they're young because basically what they told me is like, "You need to not tell people because people are going to start rumors about you and kids are really mean and you're going to live the most normal life if you just pretend like everything's normal."
Jessica Buch:
And so that also really mess with my head a lot and I didn't really have any counseling or therapy I could go and talk to about that, you know what I mean? My mom and dad, they were amazing and did their best but they thought that I could talk to them about everything but that's just not the case for kids, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Jessica Buch:
That we have a very close relationship.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
If they want it to be but it's not how...
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, but it's not really how it goes, yeah, and so it was just weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So you're feeling totally left out, when did you start using?
Jessica Buch:
I started using when I was about... I mean I smoked weed and stuff since I was like probably 13 or something and drank and stuff like that, but I feel like I started doing it to medicate myself when I was about 17.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, okay. So by then though, you had already entered Miss Indiana Teen USA?
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. So I entered Miss Indiana Teen USA my freshman year of high school, I was still going to regular high school in Indiana, I was 15. And I happened to win and I went to Miss Teen USA in The Bahamas and from there I got as a model, and I kind of saw that as my way out of Indiana in high school and I don't know, I was bullied a little bit and just kind of... It's very different, you know what I mean?
Jessica Buch:
I always tried to move on from the next place, that's kind of how I coped with thing, at first I moved from Denmark to America and then I was like, "Okay, well now I'm still feeling weird so I'm going to try it onto the next thing." And that's kind of how my whole entire life went on up until I got sober pretty much, but yeah. I moved to Miami for six months first, I lived with my godparents when I was 15 till I was about 16 for modeling and my mom came out all the time of course, and then I got a contract in New York and I moved to New York when I was 16.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow. And who did you get a contract with?
Jessica Buch:
I got a contract with Women Management and the thing that kind of put it all together for me was when I got a huge contract for Pantene, I ended up making more money than my parents when I was 17 or maybe I was 18. And they're both chiropractors so they couldn't really tell me that I shouldn't go do what I was doing at that young age, you know what I mean? So that's kind of what validated it for them, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. So you were living in New York at 16 and you were probably traveling all over the world at that point.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. I lived in Milan for six months, Milan is in Italy, and London, Paris, Germany, Barcelona, all over the place from my modeling career, which was great. But I think around 17 was when I started self-medicating with whatever drugs and alcohol I could find and that was easy for me to find at that young age and that industry all over the world, it didn't matter where I was.
Jessica Buch:
And it started out with Adderall because I was still trying to finish online high school, after I transferred out of regular high school I still had to finish high school. And then it kind of went on to coke, Molly, and then eventually I was taking a lot of pills and then the thing that really brought me down was OxyContin and then accidentally doing heroin and then it was all bad from there, pretty much.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you started doing heavy drugs, were you back in the United States?
Jessica Buch:
Yes. I wasn't able to get pills and all that kind of stuff in Europe, that was more like coping weed and drinking, you know what I mean? But prescription pills is kind of an American thing so I kind of stopped going to Europe because of that, I was like, "I'm just going to stay over here now, yeah." And things really started to fall apart from me and I wasn't working, I wasn't showing up to work because I had made so much money.
Jessica Buch:
And when I was so young I thought that, "Well, I made all this money, I'm never going to have to work again, it's going to last me forever." Which is just not the case, you know what I mean? But I didn't know any better, I really didn't. And I didn't want to talk to my parents, I didn't want to talk to anybody, I was like, "I know everything and you know nothing." And so yeah, it was...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did they have an idea of what was going on? Or did they ask you about it? Or what was their kind of...?
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. I mean they knew that something was up but they really just thought I was smoking too much weed and maybe drinking too much, but they really didn't know how bad it was. One, because they lived in Indiana and I lived in New York so it was hard for them to really tell and I never really wanted to see them because I think I was also ashamed of what I was doing because I knew it was wrong, right? So it was pretty crazy. That went on for a while and I moved to LA when I was 21 to try to get over this little weird thing I was going through and it honestly just got worse there, it got way worse, the geographics don't work.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, no, they don't because you bring the problem with you. So you felt really left out but then you found the fashion community and it sounds like they embraced you really young, you got these great contracts. Did you feel like you fit in there in that community?
Jessica Buch:
I honestly never really felt like I fit in anywhere, I thought it was all kind of pure luck, that was just the mentality that I had, you know what I mean? I really didn't think I deserved any of it, but I mean it was a really fun time when I was booking all those jobs and working a lot. But I think the thing that made me feel okay with myself was definitely when I found my concoction of drugs and alcohol that worked for me, that's what made me okay.
Jessica Buch:
And so I actually ended up losing my virginity when I was 19 because I was so coked out and drugged out to the point where I basically didn't know what was going on, because that's how I had to be in order for me to get over my fear of having sex and figuring it out.
Jessica Buch:
And it happened to be that it ended up being okay, like everything worked just fine, you know what I mean? Maybe it was a little uncomfortable in the beginning but it wasn't anywhere what the doctors had told me or maybe I had made up in my head because every case does vary with my condition. So some people have it worse than others, some people do have to have a vaginoplasty like surgery, reconstructive surgery, I actually considered that for a while because I was so scared.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Before you'd even tried.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, before I'd even tried. It's something similar to trans people, well intersex is not like trans at all, but trans people have to use dilators when they get vaginoplasty to dilate the vagina, because their type of vagina that they get from a vaginoplasty is the same kind of vagina that I have, that I was born with.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You were born with.
Jessica Buch:
So I had to use dilators from 14 to 17, which is also pretty traumatic because I hadn't even had...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How does that work with the dilator?
Jessica Buch:
So a dilator is like a metal rod that you shove up to make room for what's going to go in there eventually, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, yeah. With that from 14, you weren't having sex but you had to use a dilator?
Jessica Buch:
I mean, I told them that my friends were so I was like, "Just in case something happens, you want to be prepared." You know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, okay.
Jessica Buch:
I mean I use that, I mean I don't know, it was all pretty traumatic to me because I didn't even know, I just felt so alone. I honestly thought a lot of this was normal but people just didn't talk about it, so I was very confused.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Did you ever tell anyone along the way?
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, I told my close friends but it took me a while to really even get informed about what I was and what exactly my condition was. For a lot of my younger life, when I told people I was like, "Yeah, I had cancer when I was young so I had to have my uterus removed and so I don't get a period." Something like crazy stuff like that because that justified it, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, yeah, I mean that makes sense to me. And you have a younger sister, did she know about it?
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, she knew about it, she's awesome. She's even actually offered to donate one of her eggs if I ever want to do have kids with my, whatever husband or boyfriend or whatever. So that's really amazing of her, so she's completely normal female.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that's amazing. Okay, so you're doing a lot of drugs, you move to LA and what happens you thought, "Okay, I don't ever have to work again." Came to LA to clean things up, things got worse, what happened?
Jessica Buch:
I kind of fell in, I mean I was in a bad crowd already like a very heavy partying crowd and I had this really crazy, crazy boyfriend in LA who I'd met in New York. And me and him together was just a bad combination, we never left the house and we just used all the time and I never worked and I didn't show up to anything, and then if I did I would show up not sober with powder on my nose and I would get sent home, it was really bad.
Jessica Buch:
And that kind of went on for a while and actually when I moved to LA, the reason why I convinced my parents this would be good is because my sister moved with me to LA, she moved out from Indiana with my parents to move to LA with me. And so she moved there to help me calm down, but I'm like a crazy addict, like manipulative psycho bitch and I convinced her that everything I was doing was normal and she started doing it with me.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, yeah.
Jessica Buch:
So that's kind of like having somebody there justifying my behavior and making sure that I didn't die, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, oh, I do.
Jessica Buch:
I made it so much worse, I made it so much worse because I had been alone for so long so I was just like, "Oh, this is normal." And then somebody from my family was there, I was like, "I got to get her on this train, she's my little sister so I can manipulate her." You know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yes, I do. I have a younger sister who I used with a lot and you definitely trust them that they're going to keep you alive more than you do in other situation.
Jessica Buch:
Oh, for sure, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It was nice for that.
Jessica Buch:
It's crazy, it's a really weird feeling, it becomes very codependent.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Very, yeah.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. So I mean, that kind of took me down and then by the end of that year she was realizing how crazy the shit was and she was trying to get out of it and trying to do her own thing and I was like, "Why are you leaving me? Don't leave me, I can't do this by myself." And I just started losing my shit and really going crazy. And my ex-boyfriend was getting cirrhosis of the liver and I was getting blamed for it and all this crazy shit and I was like, "Oh my God, I really need to figure my shit out." And something happened.
Jessica Buch:
Somehow my mom was informed about what I was really doing finally after all these years and she came out and forced me to stay with her for three weeks and got me an addiction doctor, she thought that, that would help me and he basically was prescribing me Xanax to like get all, like to get-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, to get up.
Jessica Buch:
... so I wouldn't die, so I wouldn't die, because you can't just stop taking all the shit, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Jessica Buch:
And so I was doing that and the whole time I was just trying to get by, I was trying to do everything other than opiates, I was smoking weed, taking Xanax, doing blow, doing everything. I was just like nothing, I couldn't feel good again, I just could not feel good without the opiates and so it was a nightmare. And previously to that, like six months before that, another person had sent me to another kind of holistic rehab where you hike in the mountains for 11 miles a day and eat vegan food or whatever.
Jessica Buch:
And I got high the night I left, but this time around I was like, "Oh my God, my mom knows, shit is over, I have no money, I'm just going to try this out." And I really was trying my hardest and just trying to do everything other than opiates. And the minute my mom left I called the drug dealer, I was like, "Give me all the [inaudible 00:32:39] opiates you have, I need everything." And I was like, "Okay, I'm calling the rehab now." And I called the rehab, someone came and picked me up the next day, I had done all my drugs. And I went into rehab, tried to leave a bunch of times, I didn't leave and I am sober for three years now.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's awesome, congratulations.
Jessica Buch:
Thank you, I just got three years on June 7th, on Sunday.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That's awesome, congratulations, that's a big deal.
Jessica Buch:
Thanks, thank you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I remember my family trying to police me, I love when people are like, "Oh yeah, I'll come here and stop you." That's not happening, not happening. Were people not hiring you anymore? Did you lose contracts that you had?
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. I mean, there was one instance where me and my sister were actually booked together like as sisters on a job in New York for five days and I was so fucked up and we got to the shoot and I was really fucked up on the shoot. And they told us, they were like, something said that the clothes didn't fit right or something, but they sent us home that day and canceled us for the whole week because I was so out of control or something, I barely remember it. And a lot of things like that happened, I got canceled many times, I didn't show up, I was late, I was just not a good employee, not someone you could hire and rely on.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And have you been able to get some of those contracts back? Or how has it been kind of reentering into that space? Or did you ever leave?
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. I mean I left for about, I would say almost a year, but I started working again right away after I went back into it, it's just ever since I was young the industry has really changed a lot. I started out before social media and everything like that and LA is just different, like different place than New York. But I mean I was working a lot, but it never was like it was when I was first starting with all the big contracts for sure.
Jessica Buch:
And I think that it was like the way the things played out was definitely a blessing, because I was able to figure out what other things that interested me. I think for me, I'm someone who craves something a little deeper than just being judged off of your looks, you know what I mean? And I feel that's kind of been a pattern throughout my whole life, and so I decided I wanted to go back to school and so that's what I've been doing and I've really been loving that a lot more.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. It's going to be an interesting experience to have your physical body be the thing that tortures you emotionally, but also the thing that is her all did by the worlds. It's constant like, "You're so beautiful, not only are you beautiful, we want to pay you a lot of money to take your picture." And this, that the other, but at the same time your relationship with your body is also tortured because of this intersex piece.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, it's crazy, it was such a battle. I mean, I've had so many battles with my body, not only drugs but for a time the way that my addiction started out was from an eating disorder, I was like super, super anorexic. That's kind of why I justify doing drugs in the beginning too because I was like, "Well, it helps me not eat." But my relationship with my body was just so messed up because people were telling me like, "Oh, you're so gorgeous." Or like, "You look so amazing." And I'm like, "I'm like an alien, what the fuck is happening with my body? You don't even know me, I'm so messed up." You know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right. You can't enjoy it, you can't enjoy it. It's an interesting piece because from the outside it looks one thing, but on the inside you just cannot enjoy the other gifts of your body because you feel this one piece of it is not the same as everybody else's.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, it's like you can't judge a book by its cover, right? It's literally that, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. So in the intersex community you said you saw someone come out and talk about it, what is the journey been like of coming out and talking about it and who have you told and sort of can you walk us through that?
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. So since I've come out publicly I've had several people reach out to me of different kinds of intersex conditions was specifically, I really find it special when someone who has Complete Androgen Insensitivity reaches out to me because I feel like I can really, really personally relate to them and that's been really, really special to me. I feel like this has been a new form of healing because I still am healing from it, I thought my whole life that there was nobody like me and my doctors told me that it was one in a million when really it's 1.7% of the population, which is as much as redheads who are intersex.
Jessica Buch:
And the fact that people don't know about intersex, even I talked to you and I talked to [Christiana 00:37:55], right? And most people have never even heard about it and they're like, "Wow, your conditioning sounds so crazy, I've never heard of that, I really honestly had no idea that existed." And that's another huge part of why I wanted to come out about it and just inform people even just my friends, you know what I mean? Just I want people to know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it's interesting because, so there was a study that came out that talked about different androgen washes and it was round rats in homosexuality. And so I had read the study and it talked about the process from the change from female to male and the fact that, that change happens is where things I hate to say go wrong, right? Because they don't want to say, it's not like wrong, but during that switch that's when you get more of one hormone, not enough, it changes here but not here.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And so I went to treatment with a guy who had, he had both, at birth he had a penis and he had a vagina. And at birth, they had closed up the vagina I guess, they had decided that he was going to be a male and they had closed it up. And I never saw it so I don't know what the exact formation of all things was, but it was interesting because they closed it up and that was it and gave him hormones.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And so we went to treatment together and he was a him, he was a very much a him too. So I was very shocked to find out that after treatment he became or was trans and decided that he was actually really female, he had always really felt female. And that his parents had made that decision for him and that he was so hurt that he didn't get the chance to make that decision and so on and so forth.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And that was my first kind of introduction to this idea that these genetic things are happening at birth and the decisions that are being made are happening before the person has any idea about their own body and maybe not enough information and we have you said as many red heads. If that's the case, how many children are we making decisions for and how are we thinking about those decisions? Those are topics that are really important and that I've already... He who's became a she is now dead because she used herself to death as a result of this battle.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And so I'm sure that, that is something that is fueling so much anguish and I think that you coming out and talking about it and just normalizing the conversation and allowing us to have it and to figure out for me to say like, "Okay, so what do you have and how does that work? And do you have a uterus?" "No, I don't." And just trying to understand I think really, really helps, it's going to really help the community for sure.
Jessica Buch:
Right, I know it's pretty crazy. I mean one thing I do want to clarify, you actually can't have both that function, you can have one that function.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, bigger function.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, right, right, right. Sometimes people just get confused like, "Oh, you can have like both." Right? But yeah, basically that is the case for a lot of intersex kids and that's something that I've come across that I had no idea existed. For me my condition is very much on one end of the spectrum like I'm very much female, you know what I mean? My body identify that way. Some people who will have my condition don't, but I very much identify that way. But some people who for example, have Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, they're only partially in a... what's it called? Insensitive to androgens.
Jessica Buch:
And so their body, they might have an enlarged clitoris which was supposed to be a penis, you know what I mean? And so their genitals might not look like this or that. And so as a child, like maybe I've heard of people having it done when they were six, when they were 12, 17, all before the age of 18 because that's when the doctors decide they need to do it in order to have a normal life. The doctors change their genitals or their gender based on which surgery is easier to do or more successful to do, you know what I mean?
Jessica Buch:
And that is so crazy because so many people are so scarred for life, for example there's a person on YouTube who's very open about this and their name is Pidgeon and they have Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. You should look them up on YouTube, it's called Pidgeon and they talk about their surgery, I think they were like maybe 10 or 11 or something like that, don't quote me on that.
Jessica Buch:
But they had surgery and they identify as non-binary and they never wanted that surgery, they never wanted the doctors to touch their genitals, they wanted them to keep them the way they are. And some people like they don't know, maybe they want to be male, maybe they want to be female, but the fact that somebody before they can consent like decides that for them is really sad. And the doctors, most parents have the best intention when they do what the doctors say, because the doctors here have the higher power, you know what I mean? The parents are always going to listen to "what's best for the kid."
Jessica Buch:
And so it's just crazy and I think that it's something that definitely needs to be talked about in this country. There's no laws against non-consensual genital surgery for intersex kids in America and there's actually a bill that we were trying to get passed this past fall that would make it illegal to operate on children without consent, like intersex children without consent and it failed.
Jessica Buch:
They didn't pass the bill because they said that they needed like whatever, whatever the legislator, they said that they couldn't pass the bill because I don't know, I guess they need to decide for the kids like what gender they're going to be. I don't know, it's really messed up, like it's basically modern day genital mutilation, they talk about that in Africa but it happens here, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. It's really you know it's been helpful thinking about this and thinking about just the intersex umbrella. For me it's been helpful thinking about, sometimes when there's so many gender options that we're talking about like binary, non-binary. Facebook has 72 different gender options and as someone who hasn't had that experience, for many years I have not understood why there are so many and why someone wouldn't identify, I always think to myself, "Well, there's parts of me that feel male and there's parts of me that feel female."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But if you are intersex, your DNA, in your case no, but I can completely understand when you're like, "I'm not really sure, I don't feel either one." And quite literally, my DNA, my biology is not either one, and that actually is a really helpful way to think about it and to think about how it must make people feel when we want to categorize them and they can't be categorized and how left out that must feel.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. I mean it's crazy because I think that society has such a fixed idea of what is male and what is female, but intersex people are literally proof that there's something in between, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, right.
Jessica Buch:
There's actually something between male and female, it's crazy and it's just, I don't know.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What's a hermaphrodite? Is that intersex?
Jessica Buch:
Yes, that's intersex, but the new word for hermaphrodite is intersex.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay, okay, I'm just making sure.
Jessica Buch:
Yes, yes, yes. So hermaphrodite is old terminology in the intersex community.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And is it a bad word?
Jessica Buch:
Kind of.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like a derogatory word?
Jessica Buch:
I mean yeah, kind of. I mean I'm also just not learning about this, so if you're intersex and you're listening to this, please don't get mad at me with certain things I say. I just started learning honestly about my condition this past year, I mean I just decided this past summer what I wanted to go into which is specializing in intersex people. And throughout all that I've been learning stuff every day, and since I came out to people have corrected me and I totally appreciate that because I'm not an expert at all.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, right, this has just been your life experience. Have you met other people in the program who have talked to you? Has it been something that people in the recovery world have reached out to you about at all?
Jessica Buch:
Definitely my girlfriends have, I think that for CAIS males it's very weird for them to talk about because I just think that it's scary, like CIS guys are for some reason really scared of ever talking about any kind of gender issues, you know what I mean? Or being like, "Oh, because I have a boyfriend." You know what I mean? So CAIS guys are like, "Oh, does that make him gay?" You know what I mean? Like it's just such a weird...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, come on, really?
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. I feel like males are really weird about gender stuff, so I've never had anybody who's male talk about it. I mean, I've of course talked to my boyfriend about it, he's been very supportive and amazing about it, but mostly it's women who talk to me about it and support me. But the other cool thing that's coming out about being intersex is meeting other intersex people here in LA, I've met some really cool people here and the only other intersex person I've ever met before, that was my aunt, you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Jessica Buch:
And that was like another version of my mom so it's a little weird.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, you're like, "I don't really want to talk about my vagina and sex with you."
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, so it's been really cool. And in LA there's so many people that are part of the pride movement and everything like that and the cool thing is that I've met many different kinds of intersex people not just people with my condition and there's so many different variations. If you think about it there's so many different ways that you can be this or that or something in between, so it's pretty crazy and it's pretty amazing.
Jessica Buch:
Because I think we've all had the same experience and feelings of being different and being a lab rat. I remember growing up and I thought that it was normal for three different male doctors to look at your vagina for 10 minutes and probe around when you're six years old, not that, that's molestation because it's in a... you know what I mean? But I thought that was normal and it was really weird for me and my parents were standing there and looking with me and I'm like, "This is my private parts." You know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Jessica Buch:
It's very weird, but there's other people that have gone through that and you know what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, a lot of poking and prodding. It's interesting, when we get into recovery most of us felt like we were born with our skin too tight, we were born different, we didn't get that we were born without the manual for life. Everybody else got the manual for how to do this thing and we didn't and we just never felt a part of, and it's interesting to talk to people who literally, they were born...
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you have the experience like you were actually born different or you had this and what that feels like and how easily that leads to substance use when you don't know how to deal with the feelings. And what's even more amazing is that sobriety, I have seen sobriety bring people, whatever their challenge in life is, I have seen sobriety force it out and have the world accept them.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I have not seen situations where people can, like I was thinking, if you came out about it, how did it go? We're people. And the recovery community, I have seen them embrace all sorts of different kinds of things because we want people to know that no matter what, we support them, we'll fit in. And so I can just see how getting sober was the first piece for you, that was the baseline.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And then this next piece, this next layer of freedom came from the secret that you were told to keep, you were told from a little girl like, "Don't tell anyone this, this will be bad for you." And particularly after basically a lifetime of people admiring your looks, what an interesting group of events to take place.
Jessica Buch:
Right, I know it's so weird. It's a weird thing but it's really amazing to kind of get in touch with who you really are and it teaches you what you have to offer the world, like I always kind of knew that modeling wasn't everything that I needed to feel good, you know what I mean? It didn't really fill me up. But for this coming out about being intersex and informing people has really given me a new kind of inspiration for life about what I want to do and what my purpose is, you know what I mean? Here on earth, and I think that sometimes it can be difficult for people to figure out what the hell their purpose is, you know what I mean? And I'm just very happy that for me, that it's been pretty obvious.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, it's been straightforward and you're a great person to... approachable and all of those things for people will want to listen to what you have to say about it and they will certainly be surprised that any part of you is male as I was, I was like, "I am so lost, how is it...?" You know what I mean? There's some people where they're more masculine or feminine or, "Okay, whatever, maybe I could see it." But I took one look at you and was like, "Ah, she has male DNA."
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, I mean it's pretty crazy. So another word for my condition that I've seen online is kind of like superwoman-ish because everything is feminized, right? Because for my condition, my condition is the only one of the intersex variations that completely feminizes everything so every hormone turns into estrogen. So every part of me is like hormones really made a big difference.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So female but different...
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, hormones really make a big difference in your appearance, all females who get a period and have normal reproductive system have testosterone too, you know what I mean? So imagine being even more female than that in your hormones, you know what I mean? That's why it can be hard to like, "Wow, she has male DNA." Because I'm so feminine, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right, it's just doesn't. I always find like some of the best spokespeople for things are the ones you never see coming, that's because you have the captive audience, people are like, "I'm sorry, what?" That doesn't make sense. Whereas if you have someone, if you have a woman who is, she's 6'3 and she looks like she could be in the WNBA and you're like, "Oh, she's intersex." It's not that far off that, okay, she had more testosterone or whatever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
And it's imaginable, but with you it's just not even ballpark imaginable, but it's interesting because your body turns it all into estrogen. I'm very jealous that you don't have any body hair and that you don't smell and it feels like that's very unfair, but it also sounds like you deserve to get some of the positive aspects out of it. From that perspective, what was your conversation, like how did you approach this with your boyfriend, the conversation?
Jessica Buch:
So I approached it with my boyfriend, I believe I told him when we started to get more intimate. Also, because when I was not sober, when I was still using, I hadn't dealt with any of this stuff, I still had all like even though I had a boyfriend while I was using for on and off for a year and a half and we were definitely sexually active, I was so gone far off this earth that I had no idea if he could feel something different or if I could feel something different because honestly I couldn't feel anything ever, you what I mean?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, yeah.
Jessica Buch:
Every part of me was numb, physically, emotionally, everything. So I honestly had no idea, so I was very raw and open when I first got sober and I started dating my boyfriend when I'll have six months sober or something like that. And so I think I told him when we first started getting intimate and he was just like, "Okay, that's cool, that's fine." And he's like, "I support you and I'm here for you and let's just see how it goes." And we did the thing and it was fine.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I'm really happy to hear that, that it's all good. I wonder what he was like, I wonder how I would take that information in like if I were dating someone and they told...
Jessica Buch:
Exactly, you need someone like, "Oh my gosh, what?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
It's not even that I'm like, "Oh, there's something wrong with that, I just don't know how..." It's like the information and you don't see coming.
Jessica Buch:
It's just like you would never expect to hear that, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Jessica Buch:
So you'd just be, "What?"
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I'd be thinking like, "Okay, you have an STD."
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, exactly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Like that's the top coming, it has to be, or five kids somewhere, something, I mean that intersex I just would never see coming.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, exactly, it's very interesting. I mean, I think that one thing to be very grateful for and positive about this is just that the way that things worked out for me is really fortunate that I'm able to have a normal romantic and sex life, that's definitely a blessing because not all intersex people are able to, you know what I mean? Some people are like I said, they have those genital reconstructive surgeries and those surgeries are really, really hard to accomplish, especially if you're working with tissue that's ambiguous, that's not either or.
Jessica Buch:
And some of them are botched and they can never feel anything down there, or they are never going to be able to have sex, like it's very crazy what some of these people have to go through and I feel so much for them. It's really insane and it's crazy that the country we're living in doesn't have any more laws and restrictions about that and isn't more informed, there's no specialist like I said before and there's no people who... Imagine if there's some condition that people with redheaded people had to have surgery for because they were redheaded and there was no doctors that specialized in it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean that is just mind blowing to me.
Jessica Buch:
It's crazy. I mean there's doctors like endocrinologists who know and who had a patient, one patient maybe like it before, but there is no person that specifically studies to help intersex people, right? So it's very crazy.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I mean, that really surprises me and tells me that there's a long way to go with that and I would suspect that a lot of people used over this and that a lot of people use substances to cope with any kind of intersex issues because they don't feel like they can talk about it. I mean, it makes perfect sense like if you have a condition you can't talk about it plagues you and you can't talk about it, that you would seek some sort of numbing agent of some kind.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, exactly. And some people don't even know about it until they're trying to go through or going through puberty or anything like that, it's just crazy because it varies so much, you know what I mean? But I think that a big motivation for me to go to school and go through med school and all these things is just being able to be somebody who can, one advocate for them in the medical community which I...
Jessica Buch:
There's another guy who is intersex, his name was Dr. Michael [Kushner 00:59:25] I saw him at a UCLA seminar, it's like a LGBTQIA seminar at UCLA med school and he talks about, he's out there doing seminars about what intersex is and intersex people and like, so there's people out there like that. But a big motivation for me is just being there for my community and making sure that intersex people have the right resources and I wish that I had been told like, "You need to go to counseling or therapy or something, you need to talk about these things." I had no idea how to talk about any of them.
Jessica Buch:
I mean I was like, "I had to be on drugs for me to want or be able to have sex." You know what I mean? That's not a normal behavior, you know what I mean? I mean that and also the medical part, there's just so many things that need to be improved in our community and there's many ways that we are underserved as a whole. And I think that that is something that people, that's another reason why people need to speak up and that's another motivation for me wanting to come out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I suspect that this will see a lot more as time goes on and people get more educated about the topic and there will be much more information about how to handle it. I mean, it feels that everything you described about growing up with the condition feels like would be traumatic experiences and we know what happens with young trauma.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
But it's incredible that you've been able to be sober for three years and you've put this amazing life together and that you've decided to take your experience and put it towards something. You see a need in the community and to show up for that and especially when you don't, I mean the truth is that you could have a great career as a model so it's not something that weren't desperate to find a career, it's you found your passion which is really exciting.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah. And the thing is like now with social media it's so much more obvious that people don't know about it because now there's such like it's so easy to spread information and to talk to other people. Before when I was finding out I was a kid, there wasn't really a huge social media, so I couldn't really reach out and see, you know what I mean? But now there's 15-year-old girls or whoever going through puberty who are intersex reaching out to me saying like, "Thank you so much for talking about this." You know what I mean? It's a different experience, I think that it's going to be definitely a huge part of changing this community.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here and being on the podcast. And I would love to direct people to your Instagram if people want to reach out to you, what is your Instagram handle?
Jessica Buch:
It's @JBuch. Okay, so my last name is Buch, not Butch or Bush, or Bush. People say it different, a million different ways. It's JBuch but it's spelled J, B as in boy, U-C-H.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. And to reach out to you there about this topic if they're interested in learning more information, and then we're going to put notes on the show notes where people can find more information about intersex and we're also going to look for some organizations that support that so people can reach out for support as well.
Jessica Buch:
Yeah, there's a really great organization called interACT who works with young intersex kids. And I have a slide on my Instagram like highlights that describes what intersex is and I have a couple of videos that I worked with my agency for Pride Month coming out about intersex, so just keep tune and you'll see.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
Jessica Buch:
Thank you so much.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
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