Biological Aspects of Sex and Intersex

Understanding the nature of Intersexuality is difficult even in 2010 because the delineation between the sexes genetically is not as clean as was once thought. The normal XX chromosome pattern for females and XY chromosome pattern for males has always been blurred by genetic abnormalities that date back to antiquity, but the public hasn’t been privy to the intimate details of the average person’s chromosomal sexuality. The human DNA strand has on it among other things, 22 pairs of autosomes and 1 pair of sex chromosomes for a total of 23 pairs or 46 individual chromosomes. Half are contributed by the mother and half from the father. If all goes well from conception to birth, a genetically viable fetus gets born as a healthy boy or as a healthy girl. But for some of us, the genetic sequence has been skewed, since even the smallest genetic abnormality could be the difference between being born genetically healthy, or being born with Cerebral Palsy or Deaf. Many people are born with genetic abnormalities that are innocuous; say for instance the ability to roll one’s tongue or with detached earlobes. Others of us may have abnormalities that may never manifest, and hence we will never come to an awareness of them. Still others of us may have genetic dispositions that manifest at birth or shortly thereafter regardless of whether these genetic abnormalities are discernable or not.

Intersexuality is a condition that usually becomes apparent at birth or shortly thereafter. It is simply someone born with ambiguous or indistinguishable genitalia, or with both a male set and a female set of genitalia. This condition usually forces doctors and parents, or doctors or parents to choose a preferred gender for their newborn child. It was once widely referred to as Hermaphrodism, but that term was so widely alluded to in pornography that it has since taken on a negative connotation, and most people described by the condition prefer the term Intersexed. For some women it may manifest as Turner’s syndrome where she lacks a critical X chromosome (45X0), and in men as Klinefelter Syndrome (47XXY) where he possesses an additional X chromosome (van Rijn, Swaab, Aleman & Kahn, 2008). In many cases, the genetic variation is so specific that it is hard to catalog, and thus there appears to exist a wide spectrum of gender orientation abnormalities that even medical science has as yet to explore.