Last week I read this article about a remote village in the Dominican Republic where young girls appear to turn into boys, growing muscles, body hair, testes, and a penis. In my recent education about transgender persons and expanding my understanding of gender in humans, I’ve realized that sex and gender encompasses much more than the genitalia we are born with. Biological sex is determined through multiple characteristics including hormones, gonads, external genitalia, internal sex organs, and even brain dimorphism. Guevedoces are boys who are chromosomally XY (boys) but appear to be female based on external genitalia at birth because they did not receive the dihydro-testosterone required to turn the tubercle into a penis in utero. When puberty begins, they receive a fresh batch of testosterone and develop the genitalia to match. Many of these boys who are raised as girls describe feeling like they wanted to be a boy all along, and grow up to live normal lives as men. They are an example of hormonal sex and chromosomal sex not matching, and their sense of gender often is mismatched with their assigned gender. If this level of inconsistency is possible on a biological level, could gender also vary widely on a psychological level? Do transgender people have an internal sense of gender that differs from the biological characteristics they were born with? I would love to hear what you think. Write back to me, in the comments of this this blog.
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