No wonder this poor man is confused-his father denied him the appearance of the sex his DNA proved HE is-male...
HIS DNA says he was born a male-and that is what surgery should have been done to make HIS appearance that of a normal male, same as his DNA-nature isn’t perfect-accidents can happen to a baby in utero that cause deformation and other problems, including ambiguous or incorrect sex organs-but DNA does not lie-and it says everyone is either a male or a female-not intersex, transgender, or whatever other fictional term people can invent...
Basically it is not only our genes but also our responses to hormones that make us male or female.
Some of these intersex conditions are produced by a genetic insensitivity to testosterone (sounds like what this is). When this insensitivity is complete, the result is a person who despite their XY chromosomes, has a body that appears outwardly just like a woman, sometimes a very attractive woman, with a female personality. Often they don't know anything is wrong until they start wondering why they never started to menstruate and find out that they can't have children. It would not make sense to glue a penis on such a person, if this were even possible.
They were not able to determine DNA at the time of this persons birth.
The first reliable DNA tests were available in late 1983 and were expensive and required a large sample of blood.
There also were no CT scans or MRI either and x-ray is not really enough to peer into a baby and make a critical judgment in such a case. And there is no way a doctor would split a newborn open to get a clear look.
All they had to go on was appearance. They call these cases ambiguous genitalia for a reason..it can be VERY ambiguous.
It sounds like this was a case where the scrotum was partially open at the top and the urethral opening was near the base of the tiny penis.
The penis and the clitoris are actually the same body part except in the female the urethra does not run through the clitoris/penis
The ovaries are also the same part as the testicles. They take a final form based on hormonal state and XX/XY status.
They probably thought the child had undescended testicles that could be brought down later when the child actually had ovaries.
The tissue forming the labia is the same tissue that forms the scrotum and that is why if the labia is fused it appears to be a normal scrotum.
When considering these facts it becomes clear how easily a mistake could be made back in the early 60’s
These unfortunates deserve our love and prayers. This is nothing at all like simple gender confusion!
The routing of the urethra through the enlarged clitoris that has been mistaken for a penis is delicate and the result leaves an increased chance of urethral strictures. Basically the clitoris is opened with a surgical incision line along the bottom and a small catheter is placed along the slit and into the urethral opening below. The slit is then stitched closed and left to heal...there may be modern improvement on this crude technique but that’s how they would have done it in the early 60’s. Lastly, the scrotum/labia would have been closed.
Later if the testicles could not be brought down or were otherwise absent or damaged testosterone would have been administered to increase the size of the penis/clitoris and prosthetic testicles implanted to attain a normal appearance.
This is, of course, a painful sentence for the child if a mistake is made :-(
If the child is actually XX and is mistaken for male then the horrific mistake is generally discovered when the child’s ovaries are triggered to produce estrogen at the beginning of puberty. You can imagine the horror the child would face as secondary sexual characteristics of a female began to take form.