• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Towleroad
  • Towleroad on Social Media
  • Privacy Policy

Towleroad Gay News

Gay Blog Towleroad: More than gay news | gay men

  • Body
  • Daily Resist
  • POLITICS
  • Travel
  • Music
  • Theatre
  • Film
  • TV
  • Sports
  • Business
  • Men
  • Marriage Equality
  • Space
  • Trans Rights
  • Books
  • Science
  • Gay Iconography
  • TowleREAD

There Is a 1 in 100 Chance You Are Intersex

February 19, 2015 by Charles Pulliam-Moore

800px-Male_female_intersex_communication_large_arrows.svg

The recent conversations about gender expression have rightfully supplanted the ways that we once conflated psychological and sexual variance. As a society, we’ve grown become more cognizant and accepting of the ways in which one’s gender identity is not always tied to one's body. Though we’ve grown more accustomed to thinking of gender as existing on a spectrum, it’s not often that we think the same of our biological sexes.

“The main problem with a strong dichotomy is that there are intermediate cases that push the limits and ask us to figure out exactly where the dividing line is between males and females,” Arthur Arnold, a biological sex research at UCLA explained to Nature magazine. “And that's often a very difficult problem, because sex can be defined a number of ways.”

The basic biology that we’re all brought up to believe in states that men and women can be differentiated by the presence or absence of the Y chromosome. While that logic holds true in the most general of senses, a closer look at chromosomal variance reveals a much more interesting and not immediately obvious truth: in many cases physiological sex can shift on a genetic level.

Differences of sex development (DSD) manifests itself in a number of different forms depending on which different specific genes are functioning in a variety of different ways. The sort of DSD that we’re most familiar with are those in which a person’s body demonstrably belies their assumed sex such as genetically female women who discover that their gonadal tissue developed into small testes rather than ovaries. These cases, Claire Ainsworth explains for Nature, occur 1 in about every 4,500 births. If we were to take more minute sex variation into account, however, 1 in every 100 people could consider themselves intersex.

“These discoveries do not sit well in a world in which sex is still defined in binary terms.” writes Ainsworth. “Few legal systems allow for any ambiguity in biological sex, and a person's legal rights and social status can be heavily influenced by whether their birth certificate says male or female.”

Recently Thailand, India, and Australia have made small inroads in allowing for a wider variety gender representation, but Ainsworth raises a valid point. The law, generally speaking, is no friend to those in the biological in-between.

Filed Under: Intersex, Sex Tagged With: Health, Intersex, Sex

Recent Posts

  • Bigfoot, Cheyenne Jackson, Meghan McCain, ‘It’s a Sin’, Ted Wheeler, Snoopy, Boise Gay Bar: HOT LINKS

    Bigfoot, Cheyenne Jackson, Meghan McCain, ‘It’s a Sin’, Ted Wheeler, Snoopy, Boise Gay Bar: HOT LINKS

    5 hours ago
  • Black Woman Whose Family Was Cuffed at Gunpoint During Mistaken Vehicle Stop Files Civil Rights Lawsuit

    Black Woman Whose Family Was Cuffed at Gunpoint During Mistaken Vehicle Stop Files Civil Rights Lawsuit

    10 hours ago
  • Twitter Investigating After Kellyanne Conway Allegedly Shared Topless Photo of Teen Daughter Claudia

    Twitter Investigating After Kellyanne Conway Allegedly Shared Topless Photo of Teen Daughter Claudia

    10 hours ago
  • Gay Ballet Dancer Seeks Room to Rent, Goes Viral

    Gay Ballet Dancer Seeks Room to Rent, Goes Viral

    11 hours ago
Previous Post: « Video Of Homophobic Beating In Ghana Sparks Pushback From Ghanaian Celebrities: WATCH
Next Post: CPAC Excludes Log Cabin Republicans As Sponsors For Third Year In a Row »

Primary Sidebar

  • Bigfoot, Cheyenne Jackson, Meghan McCain, ‘It’s a Sin’, Ted Wheeler, Snoopy, Boise Gay Bar: HOT LINKS

  • Black Woman Whose Family Was Cuffed at Gunpoint During Mistaken Vehicle Stop Files Civil Rights Lawsuit

  • Twitter Investigating After Kellyanne Conway Allegedly Shared Topless Photo of Teen Daughter Claudia

Recent Posts

  • Bigfoot, Cheyenne Jackson, Meghan McCain, ‘It’s a Sin’, Ted Wheeler, Snoopy, Boise Gay Bar: HOT LINKS

    Bigfoot, Cheyenne Jackson, Meghan McCain, ‘It’s a Sin’, Ted Wheeler, Snoopy, Boise Gay Bar: HOT LINKS

    5 hours ago
  • Black Woman Whose Family Was Cuffed at Gunpoint During Mistaken Vehicle Stop Files Civil Rights Lawsuit

    Black Woman Whose Family Was Cuffed at Gunpoint During Mistaken Vehicle Stop Files Civil Rights Lawsuit

    10 hours ago
  • Twitter Investigating After Kellyanne Conway Allegedly Shared Topless Photo of Teen Daughter Claudia

    Twitter Investigating After Kellyanne Conway Allegedly Shared Topless Photo of Teen Daughter Claudia

    10 hours ago
  • Gay Ballet Dancer Seeks Room to Rent, Goes Viral

    Gay Ballet Dancer Seeks Room to Rent, Goes Viral

    11 hours ago
  • 19-Year-Old Gets 28 Years to Life for Brutal Murder of Teen He Feared Would Expose Their Relationship

    19-Year-Old Gets 28 Years to Life for Brutal Murder of Teen He Feared Would Expose Their Relationship

    11 hours ago
  • Citi Says it’s Standing by Golfer Justin Thomas After Anti-Gay Slur, Requiring Him to Donate ‘Meaningful Portion’ of Sponsorship Fee to LGBTQ Orgs

    Citi Says it’s Standing by Golfer Justin Thomas After Anti-Gay Slur, Requiring Him to Donate ‘Meaningful Portion’ of Sponsorship Fee to LGBTQ Orgs

    12 hours ago
  • Nikki Haley Says Violent Insurrection on Capitol, Coup Attempt ‘No Basis’ for Trump Impeachment: ‘At Some Point Give the Man a Break’ — WATCH

    Nikki Haley Says Violent Insurrection on Capitol, Coup Attempt ‘No Basis’ for Trump Impeachment: ‘At Some Point Give the Man a Break’ — WATCH

    13 hours ago
  • Hate Crime Charge Added in Case of Gay Man Stabbed and Strangled into Coma by Grindr ‘Date’

    Hate Crime Charge Added in Case of Gay Man Stabbed and Strangled into Coma by Grindr ‘Date’

    13 hours ago
  • Mitch McConnell Caves on Filibuster Demands, Agrees to Senate Power-Sharing Deal: WATCH

    Mitch McConnell Caves on Filibuster Demands, Agrees to Senate Power-Sharing Deal: WATCH

    13 hours ago
  • MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Permanently Canned from Twitter for Election Conspiracy Theories

    MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Permanently Canned from Twitter for Election Conspiracy Theories

    14 hours ago

Most Commented

  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Towleroad
  • Towleroad on Social Media
  • Privacy Policy

Footer

Copyright © 2021 · Log in