msf@goanna.cs.rmit.OZ.AU (Michael Fuller) (12/21/90)
tmca@emx.utexas.edu (The Anarch) writes: > However, it then struck me that I have absolutely no idea how >the reverse might be performed, and I'm pretty sure that it is, because >I seem to remember hearing, more than once, about people getting several >sex changes before finally settling down. I don't know if the original >body was male or not. I guess I can sort of understand how a male might >go female and then back again; the interface, as it were, is still there, >the peripheral has just been disconnected. But I'm having trouble with >the idea of an original female going to male - it seems to me that we'd be >asking an awful lot of the female physiology to expect all of the "interface" >to be there. Well, I must say at the outset that I don't know diddley-squat about the subject. HOWEVER :-), I seem to recall that the basic human body is female. At some point in the womb the presence of male hormones causes the body to `convert' to a male one - testicles forming (which would be ovaries otherwise), penis forming (underpart of glans would be cliteris otherwise), etc. The point is that the bodies are originally the same, and at some point adjusts to become a male body. Now the interesting point is that I recall a BBC documentary from a few years ago which detailed the case of a few families (all descended from one particular woman a few generations previous), where the male children were not exposed to a sufficient level of the requisite hormone in the womb. As a result, their external genitalia failed to develop, and they were, to external examination, girls (and the villagers treated them as such). At the onset of puberty, the flood of hormones was of such a level that normal development continued, and the children developed fully in to normal males. Hopefully this is somehow at least marginally relevant. Can any one in sci.bio add to this discussion? > Just curious, > Tim Me too, Michael