Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic
Biologists now think there is a larger spectrum than just binary female and male The baby was fine—but follow-up tests had revealed something astonishing about the mother. Her body was built of cells from two individuals , probably from twin embryos that had merged in her own mother's womb. And there was more . One set of cells carried two X chromosomes , the complement that typically makes a person female; the other had an X and a Y . Halfway through her fifth decade and pregnant with her third child, the woman learned for the first time that a large part of her body was chromosomally male . “That's kind of science-fiction material for someone who just came in for an amniocentesis,” says James Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary— their sex chrom...