Isn’t Science Wonderful

Mother Nature just likes to experiment, she doesn’t like cookie cutters. When I read comments that our gender is determined by our chromosomes my eyes roll up; if Mother Nature was that uncomplicated.

WHY ARE SO MANY BOYS IN THIS SMALL TOWN RAISED AS GIRLS? THE INTERSEX CHILDREN OF SALINAS.Second Nexus
By Haley Pollock
October 29, 2015

A small and ethnically homogenized corner of the Caribbean is home to an interestingly large population of children bearing the same medical anomaly. In the Dominican Republic city of Salinas, approximately one in every ninety children have this mutation, and are born with exterior genitalia that either appear female or non-specific and ambiguous at birth. They are generally assigned a female gender, given girl’s names and raised as daughters… but when puberty sets in, something fascinating happens.

Known as Guevedoces, which is a Spanish idiom meaning “testes at 12,” these children are born with a genetic mutation that delays the development of external male sex organs. When X and Y chromosomes combine during conception and pregnancy, males usually produce the enzyme that converts testosterone into DHT, an androgen that produces the penis and testes. In these children, that enzyme doesn’t get produced until puberty. It’s a little more complex than that… but that is the basic overview.
[…]
Scientists have been studying the Guevedoces for years, following them throughout their lives as they develop from babies into adults. It was the study of this mutation that led to the development of the drug Propecia, used now to treat both male pattern baldness and benign enlarged prostates, by blocking the 5-Alpha Reductase enzyme. Studying the development of these children also illuminates many ideas about gender, identity, nature vs. nurture and makes cracks in the foundation of the gender binary.

It is just amazing to me the diversity that Mother Nature has, we as a society want to fit everything into nice little boxes but that is not possible.

Noting that many people do not fit the long-held concept of the gender binary, some point out that there is far more to gender identity than the presence of reproductive organs. While others argue that transgender or intersex people are simply confused, or suffer from a dysmorphic disorder, when an infant with no discernible genitals is female via social assignment, then becomes a male based on late onset genetic processes, gender definitions grow complicated. This exploration into the concept of gender propels new medical and psychiatric discussions, not to mention civil rights, into the future.

There are still many people who cling to the quant 1950 notion of gender and sex. They don’t want their little binary world upset with reality.