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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stop Mom Never Told You?

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Speaker 1: From housetop works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: This is Molly and I'm Kristin and Kristen. Something that's

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Speaker 1: been in the news a bit lately that's kind of

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Speaker 1: caught my eye is this couple in Sweden who have

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Speaker 1: a two year old that they call Pop, and they're

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Speaker 1: not telling Pop if he she is a boy girl. Basically,

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Speaker 1: they're holding back the gender from Pop and dressing him

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Speaker 1: in a variety of outfits, both dresses and what they

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Speaker 1: call masculine pants, um so that the child cannot have

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Speaker 1: to come into the world with this gender stamped on

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Speaker 1: his head, that he she will be free to develop

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Speaker 1: as it wants to. I'm screwing up the pronouns, I'm sure,

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Speaker 1: but that's probably not gonna be the last time happens

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Speaker 1: during this podcast. So I guess at some point down

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Speaker 1: the road, this child Pop will decide for him or

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Speaker 1: herself whether he or she would like to be labeled

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Speaker 1: as biologically male or female. That's sort of the thinking it.

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Speaker 1: It's sort of a grand psychological experiment that I don't

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Speaker 1: know if we we can't even guess how it's going

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Speaker 1: to turn out. That's sort of been the speculation on

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Speaker 1: all the blogs is how will it impact this child

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Speaker 1: to not know? And won't there come a time probably

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Speaker 1: fairly early on, when they say, you know, I am

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Speaker 1: boy or I am a girl? I mean, what when

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Speaker 1: what happens when the kid goes to school? Right? And

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Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is, Molly when it comes

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Speaker 1: to just picking a biological gender might seem easy to do,

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Speaker 1: you know, um, it's actually pretty hard to scientifically determine

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Speaker 1: whether or not someone is male or female. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: that might sound crazy because you could just say, well,

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Speaker 1: do go to the bathroom sitting down or standing up

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Speaker 1: and call it a day. But it gets a lot

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Speaker 1: more detailed than that, which we learned in an article

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Speaker 1: on how stuff works called why would a female Athlete

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Speaker 1: Fail a Gender test? That goes over this lengthy process

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Speaker 1: of biological gender testing. Basically, what we learned is that

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Speaker 1: you know, not only is pop going to face the

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Speaker 1: difficulty of the social construct of gender, but a lot

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Speaker 1: of people are facing the difficulty of the biological construct

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Speaker 1: of genera. So the how Stuff works. Article that we

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Speaker 1: reference focuses on, uh, this issue that happened in the

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Speaker 1: two thousand and six Asian Games where twenty five year

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Speaker 1: old female Indian athlete was stripped of her silver medal

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Speaker 1: for the eight hundred meter race because officials claimed that

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Speaker 1: she might not actually be a female. So the case still,

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Speaker 1: as far as I know, hasn't been resolved. But the

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Speaker 1: fact that this has happened in two thousand six or

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Speaker 1: three years later, it's kind of staggering to think that

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Speaker 1: in three years you can't figure out whether someone's male

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Speaker 1: or female. And the whole reason they start are doing

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Speaker 1: gender testing for athletic events was because, uh, the advent

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Speaker 1: of steroids. When female athletes were taking steroids, they looked

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Speaker 1: more masculine, and people were wondering, if you know, men

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Speaker 1: might be competing in female events to have a better

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Speaker 1: chance of winning. So it used to be that what

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Speaker 1: happened before an athletic events, they take you into a

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Speaker 1: room and you would take off all your clothes and

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Speaker 1: you basically prove that you are a female just by looking. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: people weren't too thrilled about disrobing right before an athletic event.

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Speaker 1: I would think it can kind of throw off your concentration, right,

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Speaker 1: and and those types of gender testing or not routine

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Speaker 1: at all anymore, usually only takes place if a claim

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Speaker 1: is filed against a specific athlete, as in the case

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Speaker 1: of this two thousand six Asian Games incident. And we're

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Speaker 1: not exactly sure what what all the tests um this

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Speaker 1: athlete had to undergo, but uh, we've got about four

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Speaker 1: stages of the general gender biological gender testing that would happen.

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Speaker 1: And of course it would start with a physical exam

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Speaker 1: in which you would, like you mentioned, you just disrobe

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Speaker 1: and you check four secondary sex characteristics, obviously if you

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Speaker 1: have a penis or a vagina, and then they would

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Speaker 1: also look at the presence or absence of body hair

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Speaker 1: and other signals to whether or not you would be

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Speaker 1: a male or female. And we'll get back to that

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Speaker 1: in a second, because that's not that seems clear cut,

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Speaker 1: it's not right. So once you if the physical characteristics

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Speaker 1: can't conclusively determine anything, then they head to a blood

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Speaker 1: test to look at physiological differences. And this is where

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Speaker 1: they really examine levels of hormones in the blood, testosterone, estrogen,

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Speaker 1: The thinking being that men will have more testosterone. But

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Speaker 1: at the same time, there's no real rule for how

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Speaker 1: much testosterone and estrogen determines a man or a woman,

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Speaker 1: so I gotta keep going. So that's when they go

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Speaker 1: to the genes. You know, we are raised thinking from

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Speaker 1: high school biology that women have two X chromosomes and

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Speaker 1: men have an X and a Y. And so what

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Speaker 1: you would do is you would do a genetic test

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Speaker 1: to determine the pres sense of X and Y. How

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Speaker 1: they're kind of falling on the X X X Y

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Speaker 1: spectrum um and we think of that as pretty binary.

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Speaker 1: But what they're finding is that it is not right.

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Speaker 1: There is a possibility that female cell can have a

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Speaker 1: Y chromosome. So in that case, if if you're being tested,

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Speaker 1: and say if I was being tested and one of

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Speaker 1: my cells had a Y chromosome, a doctor would probably

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Speaker 1: then check to see if there is a certain thing

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Speaker 1: called an s R Y gene in that cell that

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Speaker 1: is either absent, mutated, damaged, or disabled, because this s

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Speaker 1: R Y gene is pretty important, right, Milly, Yes, I mean,

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Speaker 1: this gene discovered pretty recently, and the thinking is is

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Speaker 1: that it's one of the mini genes that starts working

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Speaker 1: on a fetus shortly after conception. They're thinking that there's

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Speaker 1: about fifty four genes that start working on the on

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Speaker 1: a fetus in the ten days after conception, even though

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Speaker 1: a fetus doesn't have a gender until about seven weeks in.

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Speaker 1: So what they think that s R Y does is

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Speaker 1: it flips on, uh, the ability to be male. Basically,

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Speaker 1: you know, XX was sort of thought of as a

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Speaker 1: default if nothing else happened to you, you would turn

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Speaker 1: out to be a female. If your s R Y

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Speaker 1: gene kicked in, then you would develop the y chromosome

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Speaker 1: and become a male. So, Molly, if I were being

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Speaker 1: tested for my biological gender and they found the Y chromosome,

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Speaker 1: the reason why they would look for that faulty sr

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Speaker 1: Y gene is because, first of all, in the absence

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Speaker 1: of a Y chromosome, it would trigger the development of femaleness.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time, of faulty sr Y gene

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Speaker 1: on the Y chromosome will have the same effect. Right,

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Speaker 1: is everyone confused yet, because we are a little bit.

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Speaker 1: But the thing about it is is that because for

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Speaker 1: so long people have thought of people as either male

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Speaker 1: or female, a lot is not known about these genes.

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Speaker 1: They're still doing a lot of work. For example, like

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Speaker 1: I said, it was thought that being female was sort

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Speaker 1: of default of something not getting switched on. But now

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Speaker 1: researchers are looking at something called d A X one

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Speaker 1: which may actually be the thing that does turn on

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Speaker 1: a female gender. So there's pro female genes, is what

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Speaker 1: they're thinking. There's anti male genes, there's pro male genes.

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Speaker 1: It's a hodgepodge. While I mean, you know, it's not

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Speaker 1: so easy it's x x and x y anymore. We

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Speaker 1: were reading an article in Salon where a guy was saying,

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Speaker 1: you know, they're xos There are all sorts of basically

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Speaker 1: spectrum of chromosomal identities we can have. Right. Doctors are

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Speaker 1: just now realizing how many combinations, genetic combinations that that

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Speaker 1: fetus in those first seven weeks can develop. Right. But

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Speaker 1: there are some people who have known that it's not

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Speaker 1: just a matter of X X and x y when

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Speaker 1: it comes to being male or female. And those are

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Speaker 1: people who are born with ambiguous genitals, which is estimated

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Speaker 1: to happen and about one in according to Scientific American Right,

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Speaker 1: and according to a New York Times article, that's about

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Speaker 1: the same prevalence rate as cystic fibrosis. Just to put

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Speaker 1: it in perspective, now, sort of a common thing, common

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Speaker 1: term that I know I was using before I found

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Speaker 1: it was incorrect is hermaphrodite. This is what we think

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Speaker 1: of when people who are born with both male and

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Speaker 1: female sexual organs. But the more proper term, according to

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Speaker 1: some is intersex. And according to the Salon article that

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Speaker 1: we referenced, which was an interview with the author of

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Speaker 1: the new book between x X and x y UM,

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Speaker 1: intersex is an umbrella term that includes people with a

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Speaker 1: tremendous number of genetic conditions, from those who are born

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Speaker 1: with an extra X chromosome to those with overdeveloped adrenal glands.

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Speaker 1: And in between all of that you have the ambiguous

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Speaker 1: genitals like we were talking about, So sort of the

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Speaker 1: standard of care for someone who was born with ambiguous

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Speaker 1: genitals for a long time was to kind of look

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Speaker 1: with what you had to work with and then assign

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Speaker 1: the gender, do some surgery so that they biologically fit

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Speaker 1: that gender, and then never tell the kid that there

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Speaker 1: was any sort of question about uh, their identity at

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Speaker 1: birth right and since since then, in in more recent years,

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Speaker 1: as these kids have been growing up, there have been

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Speaker 1: a lot of tragic stories associated with it, that's right,

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Speaker 1: and probably one of the most heartbreaking and most famous

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Speaker 1: stories about the situation UH is the case of Bruce Rymer,

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Speaker 1: who was born in n right h. What happened was

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Speaker 1: Bruce was had a twin male twin, and when he

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Speaker 1: was circumcised at eight months UH, something went wrong and

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Speaker 1: most of his penis was burned off in the process,

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Speaker 1: and his parents decided to give him reconstructive surgery and

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Speaker 1: to therefore make him more or less a girl. And

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Speaker 1: they did this along with Um a sexologist at Johns

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Speaker 1: Hopkins University named Dr John Money, and Money kind of

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Speaker 1: wanted to do this experiment to see whether or not

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Speaker 1: nature or nurture can truly determine your gender because they

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Speaker 1: had the perfect control, which was Um, Bruce's twin brother,

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Speaker 1: and then they would have Bruce, who was now living

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Speaker 1: as a girl, and so they could kind of see

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Speaker 1: what would happen with with the two. And according to Money,

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Speaker 1: things went fabulously well. The child loved being a girl,

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Speaker 1: he totally took to it, but behind the scenes things

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Speaker 1: were not going that smoothly. According to articles that were

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Speaker 1: written once Bruce Um was an adult, UH, and actually

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Speaker 1: changed back to a male. Living as a male. He

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Speaker 1: said that he never wanted to be a girl. He

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Speaker 1: would always try to play with his brother's toys, he

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Speaker 1: would rip off his dresses. He hated every many of

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Speaker 1: every minute of it. And there were some questionable things

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Speaker 1: that that doctor Money did as well to try to

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Speaker 1: teach Bruce and his twin brother about male and female relationships,

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Speaker 1: and they were just all all sorts of kind of

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Speaker 1: there's a huge dark shadow kind of in the corner

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Speaker 1: of of this whole story. And um, then I believe

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Speaker 1: it was in two thousand three he ended up committing

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Speaker 1: suicide due to maybe not necessarily this actual process there was.

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Speaker 1: It was a compound situation and it sounds like his

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Speaker 1: wife left dumbist brother died. And there's a book if

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Speaker 1: you want to learn more about this whole situation. It's

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Speaker 1: written by John cole Pento and it's called as Nature

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Speaker 1: Made him the boy who was raised as a girl

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Speaker 1: but now Kristen. This is an instance of someone being

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Speaker 1: born with male genitalia and then having you know, this

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Speaker 1: unfortunate situation happened. But what we're really kind of interested

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Speaker 1: in today is ambiggest genitalia. So let's talk about what

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Speaker 1: happened to Cheryl Chase. What she alights in her work

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Speaker 1: with Intersex Society is just the damage it does to

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Speaker 1: kids to alter their genitals at such a young age

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Speaker 1: and then to basically lie to them about who they are. Right.

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Speaker 1: It's very controversial because obviously, you know, if if a

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Speaker 1: baby is born with ambiguous genitalia, the parents want to

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Speaker 1: assign it some kind of gender for probably for social

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Speaker 1: reasons and also for sexual functioning, and Chase is arguing

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Speaker 1: that it should be left up to the child. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: what Chase wants to happen is uh in contrast to money,

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Speaker 1: is you would assign a kid a gender based on

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Speaker 1: kind of what you know, what your best guess was.

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Speaker 1: But then if you're going to do any surgery to

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Speaker 1: kind of reinforce that gender decision, you would wait until

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Speaker 1: the child was old enough to be part of that

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Speaker 1: decision so that they didn't have to find out, you know,

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Speaker 1: twenty years later when it happened to them as a child.

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Speaker 1: Obviously this is controversial. It's it's an easy thing to say,

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Speaker 1: but when you are holding, you know, a new baby

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Speaker 1: and you just want to have the best life possible.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine that giving them a gender identity

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Speaker 1: isn't the best thing possible, I would imagine, right, But

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Speaker 1: it seems like the standard operating medical procedure is slowly

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Speaker 1: trending towards holding off on that surgery. Uh. In two

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Speaker 1: thousand and six, the journal Pediatrics published a paper that

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Speaker 1: was signed by fifty international experts that was promoting the

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Speaker 1: idea that the child should be a signed a gender

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Speaker 1: as soon as possible um and that it should be

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Speaker 1: done by the doctor examining the child's genes, hormones, genitalia,

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Speaker 1: internal organs, electrolytes, gonads, and urine, and then the doctors

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Speaker 1: would help make the best decision for assigning a child agender,

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Speaker 1: but then holding off on the surgery until a little

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Speaker 1: bit down the road when the child can have input

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Speaker 1: in it as well. Right, And you know, one thing

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Speaker 1: that Chase points out in a New York Times profile

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Speaker 1: from two thousand six is that a lot of it

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Speaker 1: has to do with parents hang ups that the kid

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Speaker 1: you know at seven might already be ready to tell

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Speaker 1: you boy or a girl. And then it's more just

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Speaker 1: sort of you know, the social problems with bringing home

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Speaker 1: a kid that you you know, you aren't quite sure

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Speaker 1: about that sometimes forces the parents to go ahead and

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Speaker 1: make the cut right. But at the same time, ALLI,

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Speaker 1: this is an almost impossible experiment to study because you

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Speaker 1: have no idea what the psychological ramifications are going to be.

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Speaker 1: If you leave a child with ambiguous genitalia and just

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Speaker 1: let them grow up and see what happens, you could

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Speaker 1: end up with another case similar to uh the sexologists

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Speaker 1: doctor money, where it turned out horribly for the child. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's basically no long term study of any of this,

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Speaker 1: and what we tend to have in the press are

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Speaker 1: the very negative anecdotes that the things where you know,

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Speaker 1: people committed suicide and just lived with this awful misery

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Speaker 1: of not knowing who they were or not being able

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Speaker 1: to endure what had happened to them when they were smaller.

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Speaker 1: You know, we don't have any evidence on people who

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Speaker 1: had surgery and we're fine with it. So, um, it's

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Speaker 1: very hard thing to study and determine. But I will

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Speaker 1: say that, you know, one of the main goals of

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Speaker 1: intersex organization is just to bring awareness to it, and

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Speaker 1: you know, to know that it happens and to know

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Speaker 1: that there's not necessarily something wrong with the child that

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Speaker 1: needs to be fixed. Um, it just needs to be

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Speaker 1: sort of recognized as part of the spectrum that we

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Speaker 1: were talking about earlier, right, and um, going back to

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Speaker 1: the Salon article with the author of Between x X

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Speaker 1: and x Y, his main thesis is everyone is intersex

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Speaker 1: because going back to those chromosome levels and levels of

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Speaker 1: hormones and secondary sexual characteristics, it is nearly impossible to

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Speaker 1: say someone is perfectly male or perfectly female because there

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Speaker 1: is no absolute standard for it. Now, perhaps this was

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Speaker 1: our subconscious attempt to broaden our listener base Kristen by

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Speaker 1: saying no one is perfectly male and no one is

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Speaker 1: perfectly female. That's everyone can listen to Sminty, which is

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Speaker 1: thought of a sort of a female podcast. But you know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's an interesting, interesting issue. Yeah, absolutely. And um.

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Speaker 1: On a side note, Uh, if you want to do

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Speaker 1: some fantastic summer or fall reading, I do highly recommend

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Speaker 1: the book Middle Sex, which is a fictional account of

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Speaker 1: a hermaphrodite by Jeffrey Eugenitys. And it is a fantastic

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Speaker 1: um fictional book. And speaking of summer and fall reading,

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Speaker 1: as you know, we recently data podcast on chick lit

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Speaker 1: and what are listeners are reading? And we decided that

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Speaker 1: we just had so many great reading lists that we

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Speaker 1: might start sharing one at the end of every podcast.

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Speaker 1: So keep them coming because we like them. Um My

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Speaker 1: wallet doesn't like getting them, but my brain does. Today

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Speaker 1: we're gonna share the reading list of Abby, who works

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Speaker 1: at a food magazine and so she's reading a lot

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Speaker 1: of food related books like Heat by Bill Beuford, My

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Speaker 1: Life in France by Julia Child, Cuisines of Access of

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Speaker 1: Evil that Chris Fair sounds interesting, Simple Cooking by John Thorne,

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Speaker 1: uh a novella shop Girl by Steve Martin. Also Trail

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Speaker 1: of Crumbs, Kim Sunny and Happy all the Time by

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Speaker 1: Laurie Cowen. So if you would like to send us

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Speaker 1: your reading list, or send us questions, comments, or really

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Speaker 1: anything at all, just want to share your thoughts, please

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Speaker 1: send me and Molly an email at Mom's Stuff at

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And as always, um, if

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Speaker 1: you would like to read the article that we referenced,

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Speaker 1: why would a email? Athletes fail A gender tests? And

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Speaker 1: many more articles about gender, biological gender and how gender

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Speaker 1: develops in the womb and outside of the womb. And

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Speaker 1: all of that in between, you should head over to

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And if you just want

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Speaker 1: a daily dose of Kristen and or me, head over

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Speaker 1: to our blog how to stuff at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. I think those are all the reasons you'd

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Speaker 1: want to go to how stuffworks dot com. But they

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Speaker 1: really are countless, aren't they, Kristen, Yes, so head on

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Speaker 1: over to how stuffworks dot com and we'll see you

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Speaker 1: next time for more on this and thousands of other topics.

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Speaker 1: Because it how stuff works dot com. Want more how

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Speaker 1: stuff works, check out our blogs on the house. Stuff

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