I Was Taught That Boys Need Girls And Girls Need Boys; You Say That's Not True

I am not a biologist. In this world of 8 billion people, not all are men or women, where a man has XY chromosomes and a woman has XX chromosomes.

When fraternal twins are conceived, these two balls of cells may clump together, and one person develops. Such a human chimera may have a mixture of cells that are both XX and XY.

The SRY gene may cross over from a Y to an X chromosome. And so some men may grow up with XX chromosomes.

Klinefelter syndrome occurs in men with XXY chromosomes. Men can also have XYY or XYYY chromosomes. Women can have XXX chromosomes.

But genetics is not destiny. A long road is traversed in growing up. Sports, such as the Olympics, is about finding exceptional people who can delight us with their performances. Caster Semenya is one example, who apparently is a woman with androgen insensitivity. As I understand it, she is only one case in which the International Olympic Committee has wrong-footed itself.

In Las Salinas, in the Dominican Republic, some girls grow up to be men. Basically, some physical developments that occurred for me in the womb occur there during puberty. For some reason, this condition is more common there than elsewhere.

This post is inspired by sad current events in the United States. I have tried to concentrate above on biology. One can read Flannery O'Connor to get a Catholic sensibility on another possible complication. Deidre McCloskey is an economist who has an interesting memoir. Judith Butler supposedly is clearer in lecturing or talking about the complexities of gender than she is in her writing.

Selected References

• Judith Butler. 1990. Gender Trouble.
• Anne Fausto-Sterling. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality.
• Deidre McCloskey. 1999. Crossing: A Memoir.
• Flannery O'Connor. 1955. A temple of the holy ghost.