I was perusing the internet today and found this statistic which blew me away, just wondering if any of you have heard this number before. If you folks have been formally diagnosed, you are "lucky" in at least one sense, you have a name to call your condition. The rest of us somewhere between male and female people have got to contend with the public and doctors who really don't know what to call us.
I spoke on the phone for 2 1/2 hours to a "true hermaphrodite" who was born with ambiguous genitalia, consisting of a very small penis and a blind ending vagina. At puberty she never got breasts and grew a beard and hair on the chest and formed a masculine bone structure. She got so tired of being mistaken for a man in drag she finally began living as a male full time and is responsible for a landmark California legal precident that allows people to change their gender on legal documents without going under the knife. He is my exact opposite, having been believed to be a girl until puberty and I have been raised as male and did pretty well until recently when I could no longer live in denial about all my female "complications". All the doctors could tell him was that he has a 46xx female karotype and that some of the genes must have just translocated. Also he contracted terrible osteoperosis even though he took a lifetime of homone replacement therapy.
It seems that so many cases of intersex do not have a clearcut label .
Anyway here is the statistic
In the majority of DSD cases, the underlying genetic mutations have not been identified. By identifying new sex determining genes, researchers hope to map
the 80 per cent of DSD cases in humans that remain unexplained genetically.
It is 16 years since SRY - Sex-determining Region, Y chromosome - was identified as the master gene for maleness in eutherian mammals, but the genetic pathway through which SRY maketh the male remains enigmatic. By identifying new sex determining genes, researchers hope to map
the 80 per cent of DSD cases in humans that remain unexplained genetically.
taken from the following article
biotechnews.com.au/index.php?id=395258364&fp=4 &fpid=5555
Maybe a little encouragement to others who come to this site knowing they are different, but don't know what to call it. Hang in there
Also, please don't think that I am calling anyone lucky to have any intersex condition, or that I don't understand the pain it causes. I just think it would be nice to have a name for what I have too.
Thanks for listening
Michelle