Gender:  In the Genes or in the Jeans?

A Case Study on Sexual Differentiation

Part III—“Gonadal Differentiation” (Continued)

by
William J. Hoese, California State University Fullerton
Judith Gibber, Columbia University
Bonnie Wood, University of Maine Presque Isle


Section B

After school that day Terry went to the mall with her friends Tiffany and Melissa. They were excitedly getting ready for summer camp and shopping for swimsuits. They always had a great time at the mall, trying on makeup and perfume, picking out clothes, and checking out guys. Terry came out of the dressing room modeling a shocking pink bikini.

"Hey, what’s that?" asked Tiffany, pointing to some small scars just above Terry’s bikini line.

"It’s nothing," Terry answered. "Some kind of operation I had as a baby. I don’t even remember it."

Just then Melissa dashed over with a turquoise swimsuit. "Oh, Ter, this is so you!" she squealed, interrupting their conversation.

Terry loved it, and ended up buying both suits.

Later that night as Terry was lying in bed, she ran her fingers idyly across the scars on her abdomen. What was it her mother had told her about that operation? Something about "boy stuff" that got into her by mistake, before she was even born, and they had to take it out.... "Boy stuff?!?" What could that mean? What do boys have inside there? Terry pulled her biology book off the shelf and flipped to the picture of the reproductive system. Gonads.... Testes.... Did she have testes before she was born...? "But that can’t be," she thought, "I’m a girl!"

Questions

  1. Terry doesn’t realize it yet, but she did have testes when she was born. Consider this fact together with the results of Terry’s biology lab and suggest two scenarios that might explain these results.
     
  2. Is either of these scenarios a satisfactory explanation of Terry’s biological condition? Why or why not? (You may want to read again about the mouse experiment that was described earlier.)

Go to Part IV—“Internal Genital Differentiation”

Originally published at http://www.sciencecases.org/gender/gender3b.asp

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