Sex and Beyond

• Is sex really a biological fact?
• In 1843 Levi Suydam, a twenty-three-year-old resident of Salisbury, Connecticut, asked the town board of select men to validate his right to vote as a Whig (political party in the US in the 19th century) in a hotly contested local election
• The request raised a fuss of objections from the opposition party, for reasons that must be rare in the annals of American democracy: it was said that Suydam was more female than male and thus (some eighty years before suffrage was extended to women) could not be allowed to cast a ballot
• Determining sex


  1. A physician, one James Barry, was brought in to examine Suydam

  2. Barry declared Suydam male upon encountering a phallus

  3. Whigs won the election by a majority of one
• Barry's diagnosis turned out to be somewhat premature
• Within a few days Barry discovered that, phallus notwithstanding, Suydam menstruated regularly and had a vaginal opening
• Suydam's physique and mental predispositions were more complex than was first suspected
• Suydam had narrow shoulders and broad hips and felt occasional sexual yearnings for women
• Suydam's 'feminine propensities' included fondness for gay colors, aversion for bodily labor, and an inability to perform the same
• It is not clear whether Suydam lost or retained the vote, or whether the election results were reversed
• Levi Suydam


  Clearly not male nor female, perhaps both sexes at once
• For Suydam, what matters is the legal rights that come from being recognized as a being
• These are the rights to a number of laws governing marriage, the family, and human intimacy
• The state and the legal system have an interest in maintaining a two-party sexual system, which is in defiance of nature
• Biologically speaking, there are many gradations running from female to male; and depending on how one calls the shots, one can argue that along that spectrum lie at least five sexes-- and perhaps even more
• The five sexes


  • HERMS – TRUE HERMAPHRODITES – possess one testis and one ovary
  • MERMS – Male pseudo hermaphrodites - possess testes and some aspects of the female genitalia but no ovaries
  • FERMS – Female pseudo hermaphrodites - have ovaries and some aspects of the male genitalia but lack testes

  
• For some time medical investigators have recognized the concept of the intersexual body
• The standard medical literature uses the term intersex as a catch-all for three major subgroups with some mixture of male and female characteristics
• True hermaphrodites


  • In some, the testis and the ovary grow separately but bilaterally, in others they grow together within the same organ, forming an ovo-testis
  • Not infrequently, at least one of the gonads functions quite well, producing either sperm cells or eggs, as well as functional levels of the sex hormones-- androgens or estrogens

  
• Pseudo hermaphrodites


  Possess two gonads of the same kind along with the usual male (XY) or female (XX) chromosomal makeup, but their external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics do not match their chromosomes
• Merms


  Have testes and XY chromosomes, yet they also have a vagina and a clitoris, and at puberty they often develop breasts. They do not menstruate, however.

  
• Ferms


  Have ovaries, two X chromosomes and sometimes a uterus, but they also have at least partly masculine external genitalia. Without medical intervention they can develop beards, deep voices and adult-size penises.
• It is extremely difficult to estimate the frequency of intersexuality, much less the frequency of each of the three additional sexes
• Psychologist John Money of Johns Hopkins University, a specialist in the study of congenital sexual-organ 'defects', suggests intersexuals may constitute as many as 4 percent of births
• Three sexes- herms, ferms, merms deserve to be considered as additional sexes
• Sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum that defies the constraints of even five categories
• Hermaphrodite


  The word comes from the Greek name Hermes, variously known as the messenger of the gods, the patron of music, the controller of dreams or the protector of livestock, and Aphrodite, the goddess of sexual love and beauty
• According to Greek mythology, those two gods parented Hermaphroditus, who at age fifteen became half male and half female when his body fused with the body of a nymph he fell in love with
• Each category is complex and vary enormously; moreover, the inner lives of the people in each subgroup-- their special needs and their problems, attractions and repulsions-- have gone unexplored by science
• Biological and medical scientists assert that the body tells the truth
• Embryologists have understood that during fetal development a single embryonic primordium — the indifferent fetal gonad—can give rise to either an ovary or a testis

  
• Both male and female external genitalia arise from a single set of structures
• In the 1950's psychologist John Money extended these embryological understandings into the realm of psychological development
• All humans start on the same road, but the path rapidly begins to fork
• The road begins at fertilization and ends during late adolescence
• If all goes as it should, then there are two, and only two, possible destinations—male and female
• Money's 10 Road Signs directing a person along the path of a Male or a Female


  • Chromosomal sex
  • Gonadal sex
  • Fetal hormonal sex
  • Internal morphologic sex
  • External morphological sex
  • Brain sex
  • Assignmental
  • Pubertal hormonal sex
  • Gender identity role
  • Procreative sex
• Geneticists say that it is because of a specific Y chromosome gene, often abbreviated SDY (for "Sex-Determining Gene" on the Y)
• Biologists also refer to the SDY as the Master Sex-Determining Gene and say that in its presence a male is formed. Females, on the other hand, are said to be the default sex
• SDY Gene


  • It turns the indifferent gonad into a functional testis
  • The testis then induce hormone synthesis
  • The first hormone that appears (MIS, or Mullerian Inhibiting Substance) suppresses the development of the internal female organs