We all our who we are based on our biology, our environment in our early years(most shrinks say by 5 we are matured sexually to whatever we are attracted to but many suppress it due to society) and the choices we make fighting to find ourself.
Let me start with biology as all of us start out female. Many of us evolve into males but mother nature sometimes doesn't make all of the changes and we have more than two sexes.
The making of the sexual body in the womb is a complicated, many-stepped affair, in which there are many possible outcomes. This is true even at the level of the sex chromosomes. Most people have 23 pairs of chromosomes, all shaped like Xs, except for one lone Y chromosome in pair 23 if you're male (Y is the gene with the instructions for making a boy). The XX pair of a typical female is what International Olympic Committee is testing for when it tries to weed out the supposed transvestites from the actual girls. But some girls are born with only one X chromosome instead of the crucial pair. Others have an XY pair, but the male-making gene on the Y doesn't succeed in being heard, either because it's defective or because another gene has failed to make the necessary receptors. Before the 1992 Olympics, a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that about one in 500 female athletes flunks the gender test. Some of these women might have arrived at the games knowing they were different--one genetic anomaly, for instance, can lead a baby to develop as a female, but without ovaries and a uterus--but others probably had no idea that they were unusual, and slunk away from the stadium shocked and traumatized.
Not that all chromosomal oddities yield females, either. About one in 500 males would also fail a gender test. A man with Klinefelter's syndrome, for example, inherits not one, but two X's from a parent, as well as the necessary Y from his father. He thus has a chromosome "pair" that reads XXY.
http://www.pfc.org.uk/news/1996/biodoma.htm
Reseachers now show a difference between female and male brains and many of us are in the middle.
Intersex Society of North America is devoted to systemic change to end shame, secrecy and unwanted genital surgeries for people born with atypical reproductive anatomies. We are working to end the idea that intersexuality is shameful or freakish. In the U.S. alone, five children are subjected to harmful, medically unnecessary sexual surgeries every day. We urge physicians to use a model of care that is patient-centered, rather than concealment-centered
http://www.isna.org/
Get Discovery Channel documentary "Is It a Boy or a Girl?"
"Very impressive. Everyone interested in intersex issues should see this film." - Robert Blizzard MD (pediatric endocrinology), Genentech Foundation for Growth & Development
Let me start with biology as all of us start out female. Many of us evolve into males but mother nature sometimes doesn't make all of the changes and we have more than two sexes.
The making of the sexual body in the womb is a complicated, many-stepped affair, in which there are many possible outcomes. This is true even at the level of the sex chromosomes. Most people have 23 pairs of chromosomes, all shaped like Xs, except for one lone Y chromosome in pair 23 if you're male (Y is the gene with the instructions for making a boy). The XX pair of a typical female is what International Olympic Committee is testing for when it tries to weed out the supposed transvestites from the actual girls. But some girls are born with only one X chromosome instead of the crucial pair. Others have an XY pair, but the male-making gene on the Y doesn't succeed in being heard, either because it's defective or because another gene has failed to make the necessary receptors. Before the 1992 Olympics, a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that about one in 500 female athletes flunks the gender test. Some of these women might have arrived at the games knowing they were different--one genetic anomaly, for instance, can lead a baby to develop as a female, but without ovaries and a uterus--but others probably had no idea that they were unusual, and slunk away from the stadium shocked and traumatized.
Not that all chromosomal oddities yield females, either. About one in 500 males would also fail a gender test. A man with Klinefelter's syndrome, for example, inherits not one, but two X's from a parent, as well as the necessary Y from his father. He thus has a chromosome "pair" that reads XXY.
http://www.pfc.org.uk/news/1996/biodoma.htm
Reseachers now show a difference between female and male brains and many of us are in the middle.
Intersex Society of North America is devoted to systemic change to end shame, secrecy and unwanted genital surgeries for people born with atypical reproductive anatomies. We are working to end the idea that intersexuality is shameful or freakish. In the U.S. alone, five children are subjected to harmful, medically unnecessary sexual surgeries every day. We urge physicians to use a model of care that is patient-centered, rather than concealment-centered
http://www.isna.org/
Get Discovery Channel documentary "Is It a Boy or a Girl?"
"Very impressive. Everyone interested in intersex issues should see this film." - Robert Blizzard MD (pediatric endocrinology), Genentech Foundation for Growth & Development
) simply because it is a more descriptive label.