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A village where little girls turn into boys aged twelve (2015)
- StavrosK 9y agoWhat's interesting to me is that these boys are raised as girls but feel like boys, which means that there's something physical that makes us "feel our gender". Although, the article doesn't really mentions whether there are many boys who go the other way, who resent a penis growing because they liked being girls.
- mfoy_ 9y agoWell, I wonder about that. Maybe it's more like all children wanted to behave like "the boys" but girls were discouraged and put in dresses, etc. I wonder if the "normal" girls also didn't feel that way-- wanting to go play with the boys.
- watchme 9y agoThat is a provocative thought. But it were the case—if every young (apparent) girl felt the same unease about their gender—one would assume that the people in the town would have already acknowledged that. They seem quite comfortable discussing gender.
- drzaiusapelord 9y agoWhat's so wonderful about being a boy? As someone who is somewhat introverted and nerdy, for lack of a better term, all the boy stuff seemed insufferable to me, even as a child. Wrestling, fighting, being aggressive, being tough, being overly competitive, etc is not something I wanted or related to and that attitude most likely kept me from forming the typical male bonding boys and teens develop. I fell deeper into books, computers, games, etc while they were out doing 'boy' stuff. I remember envying girls because they weren't pressured to constantly play sports and being bookish and a voracious reader was perfectly acceptable for them but 'weird' for a boy. As a parent I see my son's female peers and very few of them are remotely interested in boy stuff, even when offered. Even in toddler stages there's a marked difference in personalities with girls being calmer and more passive and boys wanting to do rough and tumble theatrics. Its obviously innate, at least to me. >but girls were discouraged and put in dresses, etc. Well, in the article that's exactly what happened but the males mistaken for girls complained. There's no evidence all girls complained.
- StavrosK 9y agoThis article goes into more detail: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981 And provides this interesting line: "A final interesting observation that Imperato-McGinley made was that these boys, despite being brought up as girls, almost all showed strong heterosexual preferences."
- jacquesm 9y ago> What's interesting to me is that these boys are raised as girls but feel like boys, which means that there's something physical that makes us "feel our gender". Transgenders are real, is what you are concluding. That's not really news.
- theossuary 9y agoIt actually is to many.
- tachyonbeam 9y agoVery much so. Have people not heard the line "gender is entirely a social construct"? That is mainstream thinking where I'm from. Also referred to as the blank slate hypothesis.
- KekDemaga 9y agoI never understood the "X is a social construct" argument. People seem to use it to dismiss ideas out of hand in my experience. Freedom of speech, rule of law, and consenting to sex are similarly "social constructs" as in they aren't fundamental laws of the universe but they seem to be pretty good ideas. What is intended to be inferred by this argument?
- Pfhreak 9y agoThere's a large group of people who believe that gender is a natural force in the world -- you are either a boy or a girl, because that's the way genetics is. I have had people tell me that boys like trucks and girls like dresses because of chemical differences in their brains. The gender is a social construct argument is the voice that believes the opposite -- that gender roles and expression are learned behavior in our society. Our parents and peers teach us what it means to be a boy or girl from a very young age, and what is socially unacceptable for those genders. (They also commonly teach us, here in the US, that there are only two genders.)
- watchme 9y agoIt's incredibly puzzling that these men felt like boys in their early youth despite never receiving the typical flood of testosterone in the womb. Sexual dimorphism is weird. There must more to it than sex hormones.
- mfoy_ 9y agoMust it though? What if all children are naturally inclined to "feel like boys", whatever that means. But then society dictates that some are "girls" and are put in dresses, hair plaited, and told to behave a certain way? Why wouldn't they feel uncomfortable with their assigned gender role, regardless of what's coming for them in puberty?
- lawlessone 9y agoplenty of cultures past and present where men wear dress like clothing and have plaited hair.
- watchme 9y agoThat is a provocative thought. But it were the case—if every young (apparent) girl felt the same unease about their gender—one would assume that the people in the town would have already acknowledged that. They seem quite comfortable discussing gender.
- cocokitty 9y agoOn the other hand, if there was a clear way to distinguish the guevedoces from the "permanent" girls before puberty, then they would presumably raise them as boys, not girls, because they would know that the penis is going to eventually come in. But their descriptions of discomfort with girlhood don't sound that much different than the ones I had, and so the parents can't tell them apart from any other persistent tomboy. Traditional girlhood is not a positive experience, it is designed to shape children for a subservient adult role. It is not strange or unusual to hate it and it's not evidence that someone is secretly a boy.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoMany transgender people report feeling that something didn't quite fit even as pre-pubescent children.
- sethrin 9y agoThis article provides an interesting overview of gender identity development: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/appsych/opus/issues/2011/spring/gender_identity_development http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/appsych/opus/issues/2011/spring/ge...
- otakucode 9y agoOh sure, read up about the case of Doctor Money and the Boy With No Penis. It's a horrendous tale of criminal medical misconduct. Dr. Money is a repulsive fuck. Rough story is that twin boys were born, parents took them to get mutilated (circumcised), it went wrong and one of the boys lost his penis. Dr. Money swoops in and says 'its OK, raise the child as a girl, everything will be great'. Everything was not great. This did not stop Dr. Money from writing books and travelling all over the world lying to other psychologists about how great the case was going. Around 11 or 12 the child attempted suicide for the first time. The parents finally gave in and told them the secret at that point. Dr. Money, when he got back from his globe-trotting, was incensed and talked them into going back on it, forcing the child to continue to live as a girl, and aggressively advocating for hormone treatments. Eventually after more unpleasantness (including, according to both the child and their brother, 'treatment sessions' during which Dr. Money forced the two to disrobe, compare anatomy, and engage in sex acts in order to 'convince' the uncertain one of their gender) the older child in late adolescence was finally able to break away from the clutches of Dr. Money and tell their story. Dr. Money was taken to court, and it was discovered doctor-patient confidentiality apparently goes both ways. He refused to produce any of the recordings of the sessions he had made even when the patients insisted. Dr. Money was mostly ruined, and I think spent some time in jail. Both of the boys killed themselves in early adulthood. There's certainly a biological component to sex. There are chromosomes, hormonal differences, morphological differences in genitalia, brain dimorphism, and several other ways in which things can go. And they can generally be mixed and matched any which-way. I've never understood why people who don't actually have an interest in human biology want to demand a simple picture. If they want a simple picture, there is the simplest one available: Let people do what they want. Don't let it bother you. End of story. If you want to get into human biology, dive right in! It's amazingly complex and will surprise you at every turn! Everything you think is 'this is always how it is' goes wrong at some point, and we've seen most of it! (Speaking of which if anyone knows any case studies involving a person with no working mirror neurons, I'm interested.)
- mfoy_ 9y agoHuh... I wonder if there could be some sort of intervention therapy that could keep them a girl, in that case, or if it's really set in stone that they will transform. If so, there could actually be a sort of "third sex" on the horizon. It's been explored quite a bit in sci-fi tropes, but amazing that it's actually (kind of) real! Imagine if you literally got to choose your sex, with no preset arrangement... you were just a "third gender" type, then elect to go through either male hormone or female hormone therapy depending on your druthers.
- sandworm101 9y agoBut it looks like they really aren't girls. This seems to be the delayed development of biological structures in a classic xy male. In an animal population this might be an advantage, hiding potential future rivals from older dominate males. We dont call girls a third sex simply because thier breasts dont develop until puberty. We call that normal. But perhaps all children are the "third sex" until they show all the classic structures.
- mfoy_ 9y agoWell, the idea is that boys and girls are actually anatomically identical in the womb and then various hormones / enzymes / whatever make the various base structures develop into what we'd recognize as either male or female sex organs. So imagine if there was a simple way to delay that process until adolescence, when children could choose for themselves whether they wanted male or female anatomies.
- mnw21cam 9y agoMaybe they could choose anatomies. But they can't choose the part they play in reproduction later. If they choose an anatomy discordant with their genetic gender, it can make reproduction tricky.
- mfoy_ 9y agoAssuming you could get a pair of working ovaries with male chromosomes... what would happen? I really don't know enough about biology or genetics... Or is the issue that with male chromosomes it's "tricky" to get working ovaries? But what if it's not the typical transgender surgery, but actually having the gonads and tubercle turn into ovaries and clitoris instead of testicles and penis?
- lithander 9y agoIs the penis functional? Can they father kids?
- sigio 9y agoAssuming they can... otherwise this mutation would have died out quickly enough ?
- xutopia 9y agoI remember reading in a book (I can't remember which one) that they had penises albeit smaller than average. It makes sense because a normal penis goes through two growth spurts and this one doesn't benefit from one of the two.
- marcandre 9y agoApparently most males with this condition are sterile http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/health/rare-medical-condition-hides-child-s-sex-until-age-12/article/444648 http://www.digitaljournal.com/life/health/rare-medical-condi...
- jacquesm 9y agoOnly roughly half of them become men at the age of 12 years, the remainder are normal females.
- microcolonel 9y agoMeanwhile in reality; they were about half female, and about half male to begin with. The word "girl" used to refer generally to young children, probably because they don't really start to differentiate much visually before puberty.
- mfoy_ 9y agoGood point. But I don't think most people realize that if it weren't for the way adults decorated their children, their sexes would be wholly invisible. People seem to generally be more comfortable when they can put a label on things...
- microcolonel 9y agoWell, they're not wholly invisible, but close enough to it that they can typically share clothes as a practical matter. You can expect in about 99.5% of cases that your child will identify with the gender corresponding to their sex, so people dress their kids up in miniaturized adult clothing matching their likely gender, in anticipation of adulthood. This seems to have started with the rich, and as societies get more generally rich, more people typically start wanting the same things. The sexes are quite visible before puberty in terms of behaviour, just not so much in external development. I'm not much against gender roles, I don't see the problem with them. From a practical perspective, it seems like people will do better if they are familiarized, from an early age, with the role they'll almost inevitably seek to fill to at least some extent. Worst case you find out you've been somewhat wrong at around puberty, and you adjust from there.
- Mz 9y agoI'm not much against gender roles, I don't see the problem with them. From a practical perspective, it seems like people will do better if they are familiarized, from an early age, with the role they'll almost inevitably. I am a woman who was one of the top ranked students of my graduating class. I see lots of problems with it. An awful lot of the social construct of girl's lives only works if you "marry well" and if marrying well is the only thing you want out of life. You run into a fuckton of serious friction between that social construct and wanting an education, making your own money, being gay and on and on and on. As just one side of the story. I also did not want my sons to grow up and not know how to, for example, feed themselves properly. This has serious health consequences and just fundamentally should not be someone else's responsibility.
- imron 9y agoFrom 2016 (according to the url), or 2015 (according to the article).
- amingilani 9y agoIf someone finds an animation on this, please share. I'm so interested in seeing how this change looks like. Apparently, the real world trumps the limits of my imagination.
- mfoy_ 9y agoYou'd probably get a decent understanding by studying how fetuses develop, as it's the same fundamental process.
- amingilani 9y agoAhhh, I never took biology, I guess now's the time to read up on this a bit more.
- jacquesm 9y agoThat is one of the most interesting things you can do if you're interested in biology, embryology tells an incredible story.
- amingilani 9y agoFound something. I can't vouch for the accuracy of this, but this site has an image: https://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2016/12/guevedoces.html https://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2016/12/guevedoces.html
- OneTimePoster 9y agoThis article appears to have triggered HackerNews disassociated curiosity. I wonder if the opposite is true, where some cultures in Afghanistan treat little boys like girls for sexual purposes?
- BanMeToSaveYou 9y agoThis article appears to have triggered HackerNews disassociated curiosity. I wonder if the opposite is true, where some cultures in Afghanistan treat little boys like girls for sexual purposes?
- zzalpha 9y agoI don't understand this comment. What are you trying to say? And what do you mean by "sexual purposes"? Also this article doesn't describe a simple culture construct. It's about a real biological change that causes apparent girls to develop into boys through puberty.
- jff 9y agoHe's referring to 'bacha bazi', which as you point out is a cultural construct.
- segmondy 9y agoThere's a documentary on Netflix (9 months that made you) 3 episodes that covers this for those curious about more details. The episode were this was discussed was either in 1 or 2.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago"disorder"? Sounds like an evolutionary advantage. There isn't any use for a penis before puberty. Just is something that can get infected or damaged as a child. Plus smaller prostrate as adult means less chance of prostrate cancer and maybe some other diseases.
- tantalor 9y agoI think you are merely complaining about semantics, but there are plenty of disorders (abnormal conditions) which have an adaptive advantage in some contexts; sickle-cell anemia is a well known example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease#Genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease#Genetics a person who receives one defective and one healthy allele remains healthy, but can pass on the disease and is known as a carrier or heterozygote. Heterozygotes are still able to contract malaria, but their symptoms are generally less severe
- eggoa 9y agoWell, they're sterile too. That's certainly an evolutionary disadvantage.
- tenken 9y agoI've been reading The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. And assuming that Earth is super overpopulated eventually (moreso that now), sterilazation, DNA altering, and other radical changes in mankind such as homogenous relationships worldwide may be one of the few ways mankind can persist in he universe ... It's a good book. I recommend it. I guess my point is that sometimes when something is different Now, it's hard to grasp it's significance and pros and cons because maybe our viewpoint is skewed to our current perceptions (which is a theme throughout the book, it has alot of time travel).
- cthalupa 9y agoSeems like sterility isn't guaranteed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5α-Reductase_deficiency#Fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5α-Reductase_deficiency#Fertil...
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- rubyfan 9y agoMind blown, this is quite amazing.
- h4pless 9y agoSo, not to be a troll, but can anyone actually vouch for the legitimacy of this? I don't really doubt it's legitimacy, and it's nice to think that gender is not just a psychological spectrum but a biological one too, but this article is completely devoid of sources. I was a tortoise until age 7. Being a reptile is a bummer, and my tutle penis didn't develop until age 45. Most people born in CA are like this... Just sayin'.
- anonalex 9y agoNot sure why nobody want to admit that these children are male at birth. They have a Y chromosome. One out of all of the many biological triggers due to a Y chromosome happens to not trigger until puberty time. Scientifically, what about this makes the children female beforehand? Did they possess developing female genitalia?
- ALee 9y agoThis line. The idea that diversity, strange, or abnormal may not be beneficial to society doesn't make sense. Innovation can literally be anywhere. “By a quirk of chance Dr Imperato’s research was picked up by the American pharmaceutical giant, Merck. They used her discovery to create a drug called finasteride, which blocks the action of 5-α-reductase. “It is now widely used to treat benign enlargement of the prostate and male pattern baldness. For which, I’m sure, many men are truly grateful.”