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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMan visits doctor for abdominal pain, discovers he is genetically a woman
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/man-stomach-pain-discovers-woman-article-1.1363992The patient, who will continue to live as a male, has an extremely rare combination of two genetic abnormalities, Turner syndrome and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, doctors discovered.
IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)IrishAyes
(6,151 posts)After retiring to BumpInTheRoad, MidWest, I had to give up one of my favorite amusements: chuckling over the headlines on the 'news' tabloids at supermarket checkout counters. Got one woman furious at me when I was almost ROFL; I gasped, "Who in the world is stupid enough to believe that crap?" She chewed me out but good. Since I had to wait on a nearby bench for my friend to finish shopping, I saw that woman take the one I'd been laughing about and buy it. When she walked past the bench, I could swear she tried to run over my toes with that damn cart.
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None of the above needs to be taken in any negative way by or about the LGBT community. I'm only poking fun at some of the more outrageously false stories carried in tabloids and the people who believe those stories, not genuine variations in sexual anatomy. Thank you!
SharonAnn
(13,771 posts)that he had female internal organs.
Referred the family to a specialist for this kind of thing.
He thought he'd seen everything by then, but that one was new to him!
Zorra
(27,670 posts)To answer this question in an uncontroversial way, youd have to first get everyone to agree on what counts as intersex and also to agree on what should count as strictly male or strictly female. Thats hard to do. How small does a penis have to be before it counts as intersex? Do you count sex chromosome anomalies as intersex if theres no apparent external sexual ambiguity?1 (Alice Dreger explores this question in greater depth in her book Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex.)
Heres what we do know: If you ask experts at medical centers how often a child is born so noticeably atypical in terms of genitalia that a specialist in sex differentiation is called in, the number comes out to about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births. But a lot more people than that are born with subtler forms of sex anatomy variations, some of which wont show up until later in life.
Below we provide a summary of statistics drawn from an article by Brown University researcher Anne Fausto-Sterling.2 The basis for that article was an extensive review of the medical literature from 1955 to 1998 aimed at producing numeric estimates for the frequency of sex variations. Note that the frequency of some of these conditions, such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia, differs for different populations. These statistics are approximations.
Not XX and not XY one in 1,666 births
Klinefelter (XXY) one in 1,000 births
Androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 13,000 births
Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 130,000 births
Classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia one in 13,000 births
Late onset adrenal hyperplasia one in 66 individuals
Vaginal agenesis one in 6,000 births
Ovotestes one in 83,000 births
Idiopathic (no discernable medical cause) one in 110,000 births
Iatrogenic (caused by medical treatment, for instance progestin administered to pregnant mother) no estimate
5 alpha reductase deficiency no estimate
Mixed gonadal dysgenesis no estimate
Complete gonadal dysgenesis one in 150,000 births
Hypospadias (urethral opening in perineum or along penile shaft) one in 2,000 births
Hypospadias (urethral opening between corona and tip of glans penis) one in 770 births
Total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female one in 100 births
Total number of people receiving surgery to normalize genital appearance one or two in 1,000 births
Intersex is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesnt seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. For example, a person might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the inside. Or a person may be born with genitals that seem to be in-between the usual male and female typesfor example, a girl may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or lacking a vaginal opening, or a boy may be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has formed more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of her cells have XX chromosomes and some of them have XY.
Though we speak of intersex as an inborn condition, intersex anatomy doesnt always show up at birth. Sometimes a person isnt found to have intersex anatomy until she or he reaches the age of puberty, or finds himself an infertile adult, or dies of old age and is autopsied. Some people live and die with intersex anatomy without anyone (including themselves) ever knowing.
Which variations of sexual anatomy count as intersex? In practice, different people have different answers to that question. Thats not surprising, because intersex isnt a discreet or natural category.
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In the same way, nature presents us with sex anatomy spectrums. Breasts, penises, clitorises, scrotums, labia, gonadsall of these vary in size and shape and morphology. So-called sex chromosomes can vary quite a bit, too. But in human cultures, sex categories get simplified into male, female, and sometimes intersex, in order to simplify social interactions, express what we know and feel, and maintain order.