Fausto-Sterling - Sexing the Body

Notes 279
B. In females
1.Absence or anomalous development of the vagina, uterus, and fallopian
tubes (Rokitansky Syndrome)
16. Money 1968.
17. I have distilled the information presented here from the following
sources: Gross and Meeker 1955; Jones and Wilkins 1961; Overzier 1963;
and Guinet and Decourt 1969.
18. Federman 1967,p.61.
19. Each of the three categories of intersex may in turn be subdivided.
The medical researchers Paul Guinet and Jacques Decourt separated ninetyeight
well-described cases of true hermaphroditism into four major types.
Members of the first group (16 percent of the cases) exhibited ‘‘very advanced
feminine differentiation’’ (Guinet and Decourt 1969,p.588). They had separate
openings for the vagina and urethra and a cleft vulva defined by both the
large and small vaginal lips. At puberty they developed breasts and usually
menstruated. Their oversized and sexually alert clitoris, which at puberty
sometimes threatened to grow into a penis, usually impelled members of this
group to seek medical attention. In fact, even through the 1960s some intersexes
raised as girls first drew medical attention because they frequently masturbated,
an activity deemed unseemly for the female. Members of Group II
(15 percent) also had breasts, menstruation, and a feminine body type. But
their vaginal lips fused to form a partial scrotum. Their phallus (a structure
found in the fetus that most frequently becomes either a clitoris or a penis)
was from 1.5 to 2.8 inches long, but they urinated through a urethra located
in or around the vagina. Most often, true hermaphrodites (55 percent) appear
in a more masculine physique. The urethra runs either through or near the
phallus, which looks more like a penis than a clitoris. Any menstrual blood
exits periodically during urination (a phenomenon known as hematuria, or
bloody urine). The vagina (without labia), which opens above a normallooking
scrotum, is often too shallow to permit heterosexual intercourse.
Despite the relatively male appearance of the genitalia, however, breasts appear
at puberty, as is true for the last group (13 percent), whose phallus and
scrotum are completely normal and who have only a vestigial vagina.
Internally, virtually all true hermaphrodites have a uterus and at least one
oviduct in various combinations with sperm transport ducts. The data on
chromosomal composition are not completely reliable, but it seems that most
often true hermaphrodites have two X chromosomes. Quite rarely they are
XY, and occasionally they contain mixtures of XX and XY tissue (or other
more bizarre groupings of X and Y chromosomes) (Federman 1967). These
data are unreliable in that it is virtually impossible with limited tissue sampling
to eliminate the possibility of genetic mixtures—i.e., mosaics. The
most up-to-date work in this arena uses molecular approaches, which can
demonstrate the presence or absence of particular genes that are too tiny to