[stylist] thanks for the comments, plus more on male and female gender

[Chris Kuell]

I don't want to cause an off-topic debate here, but I would like to 
enlighten those interested with real information.

Eve is correct in that basic   genetics show that the father determines the 
sex in a human baby. Mother's always pass on an x chromosome, and fathers 
can pass along either an x or a y chromosome. If he passes along an x, the 
baby is xx, or female. If the father passes along a y, the baby is x y, or 
male.

That's basic ninth grade biology. In true life, though, things are much more 
complex, and of course, aberrations are apt to occur, hence we have 
evolution. No offense, Eve, but your 25% hermaphrodite figure is off by 
about a thousand fold. I am cutting and pasting from an article I found on 
the American Medical Associations web site, which I believe is reliable. 
It's somewhat scientific, but is very enlightening when it comes to 
transgender people, and I believe, even gay or bisexual people. By this, and 
I want to be clear, I don't believe homosexuality or bisexuality is simply a 
life choice, I believe it to be a complex biological result. Here's the 
clip, before I get too off topic and get booted from the list.

 (The terms hermaphrodite and pseudohermaphrodite, which have been used in 
the past, are now considered pejorative and inaccurate and are no longer 
used to refer to an intersexual person.) Sometimes the phrase "ambiguous 
genitalia" is used.


Overview
According to the highest estimates (Fausto-Sterling et. al., 2000) perhaps 1 
percent of live births exhibit some degree of sexual ambiguity , and that 
between 0.1% and 0.2% of live births are ambiguous enough to become the 
subject of specialist medical attention, including surgery to disguise their 
sexual ambiguity. Other sources (Leonard Sax, 2002) estimate the incidence 
of true intersexual conditions as far lower, at approximately 0.018%.

In typical fetal development, the presence of the SRY gene causes the fetal 
gonads to become testes; the absence of it allows the gonads to continue to 
develop into ovaries. Thereafter, the development of the internal 
reproductive organs and the external genitalia is determined by hormones 
produced by certain fetal gonads (ovaries or testes) and the cells' response 
to them. The initial appearance of the fetal genitalia (a few weeks after 
conception) is basically feminine: a pair of "urogenital folds" with a small 
protuberance in the middle, and the urethra behind the protuberance. If the 
fetus has testes, and if the testes produce testosterone, and if the cells 
of the genitals respond to the testosterone, the outer urogenital folds 
swell and fuse in the midline to produce the scrotum; the protuberance grows 
larger and straighter to form the penis; the inner urogenital swellings 
swell, wrap around the penis, and fuse in the midline to form the penile 
urethra.

Because there is variation in all of these processes, a child can be born 
with a sexual anatomy that is typically female, or feminine in appearance 
with a larger than average clitoris; or typically male, masculine in 
appearance with a smaller than average penis that is open along the 
underside. The appearance may be quite ambiguous, describable as female 
genitals with a very large clitoris and partially fused labia, or as male 
genitals with a very small penis, completely open along the midline 
("hypospadic"), and empty scrotum.

There are dozens of named medical conditions that may lead to intersex 
anatomy. Fertility is variable. The distinctions "male pseudohermaphrodite", 
"female pseudohermaphrodite" and especially "true hermaphrodite" are 
vestiges of 19th century thinking that placed "true sex" in the histology 
(microscopic appearance) of the gonads.

The common habit in the 21st century of elevating the role of the sex 
chromosomes above all other factors when determining gender may be analogous 
to the older habit of finding "true" sex in the gonads. Though high school 
biology teaches that men have XY and women XX chromosomes, in fact there are 
quite a few other possible combinations such as Turner_syndrome XO, Triple-X 
syndrome XXX, Klinefelter's Syndrome XXY, XYY, XO/XY, XX male, Swyer 
syndrome XY female, and there are many individuals who do not follow the 
typical patterns (such as cases with four or even more sex chromosomes).