Xref: utzoo alt.sex:22893 sci.bio:4183
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!goanna!goanna.cs.rmit.OZ.AU
From: msf@goanna.cs.rmit.OZ.AU (Michael Fuller)
Newsgroups: alt.sex,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Sex changes
Message-ID: <4543@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 20 Dec 90 23:06:59 GMT
Sender: msf@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au
Followup-To: alt.sex
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 36

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