Posted on 04/29/2015 7:18:48 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
Edited on 04/29/2015 8:36:53 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
CHICAGO — She was born to a young Chicago couple, named Jennifer, and grew into a beautiful long-lashed child with wavy dark hair, big brown eyes and a yearning, youthful desire to be just like all the other girls.
Only she wasn’t. Doctors first noticed her slightly enlarged genitals, and then discovered she had testes inside her abdomen and male chromosomes. And so began a series of surgeries to make things “right.”
[snip]
“Take them home and love them … just the way they are.”
Sage advice for any child.
That isn’t always possible in cases where the genetic programming is messed up. A person with the XY chromosomes who cannot respond to testosterone does not develop as a male, and probably is unaware of being genetically male. The difference in a male and female brain is not caused by the genetics, but by the amount of testosterone present during fetal development. Without testosterone, the brain is female.
Some individuals are the result of the fusion of two early embryos. If those embryos are male and female, then that person is a true hermaphrodite and has both estrogen and testosterone guiding their growth and brain development.
I feel so sorry for the parents in these situations. What do you do? Not really much of a clear answer.
“Some individuals are the result of the fusion of two early embryos.”
Chimeras.
AIS is proper term. I can’t link to anything as I’m on phone, so do some Googling. But rumor has it that Jamie Lee Curtis and possibly Ann Coulter has this condition.
A one in a thousand biological accident does not violate the male/female binary of the human species.
And radical physical mutilation to make a man a “woman” doesn’t prove the gender barrier is as mutable as sex roles.
Ann looks more Marfan’s to me.
Fascinating article.
> Sage advice for any child.
Yes.
God does not make mistakes. But (I believe) neither does God control every detail of life, else we would have no free will.
Circumstances and events we do not comprehend are opportunities for growth and learning, and for better understanding of God, each other, and ourselves.
I’m left handed and female. I read somewhere that being left handed is due to an unusual amount of testosterone in the system during gestation. Anyone else hear of that?
Why does everyone always say “God doesn’t make mistakes”? Nature makes them, after “the fall” of Adam and Eve, anyways. We have to deal w/any number of horrid things thrown at us by nature; this one is pretty darn difficult but one could say (begrudgingly) that at least the “Liberals” have been on the forefront of accepting things and people who are “different”. These people are different through no fault of their own.
I submit that "Nature" does not have the capacity for "making mistakes" because Nature is simply the sum total of the sentient and non-sentient forces of our natural environment. The sentient components are the humans, the animals, and God (depending of course on one's conception/definition of God). The non-sentient components are things like the weather, the ground, meteorites, the Sun's radiation.
"Nature" -- the Nature that causes a genetic mutation that causes a child born with a non-normal reproductive system -- is not sentient. We're talking about some unknown combination of (pick as many as you like): solar radiation, chemicals in the environment, genetic lineage, random chance, etc. None of those are capable of making a "mistake" because they are likewise incapable of directed thought or action. Such forces of Nature are not capable of conscious choice.
Nature certainly does "throw things at us", tornadoes being a good example. But they're not "mistakes", they're just more non-sentient parts of "Nature".
God, on the other hand, I believe is sentient and thus capable of directed action and conscious choice.
All that said, you are quite right that children who are as you say "different through no fault of their own" are to be accepted and loved. Which was all I was saying in the first place.
Yes, you are a freak of Nature.
/humor
Regards,
mark
That was an excellent post. As they get older let them be what they really want to be without any outside pressure. Those that are DNA male and DNA female with rare exceptions decide to be what their DNA tells them they are.
I’ve heard of that too. My mom was only 33 when I was born but I have heard that older moms are more likely to have twins and left handers.
Yes, exactly.
I have not heard that left-handedness is more prevalent in one sex than the other, which would be the case if the sex hormones influenced it.
I have read that right handedness is controlled by a gene. If you do not have the dominant form of that gene, your handedness is basically random. So people who have the recessive form of the gene can end up right or left handed.
This explanation does not cover all aspects of handedness; I have heard of children showing signs of being left-handed, who were forced by their teachers to use their right hands. They did learn to preferentially use their right hands, but they always remained somewhat clumsy at it. (This practice was largely dropped by the time I entered school in the mid 1960s.)
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