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Behavioral sexology: Ten cases of genetic male intersexuality with impaired prenatal and pubertal androgenization

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Abstract

Ten patients with the 46,XY chromosome constitution and partial androgen insensitivity were born with hermaphroditic, incompletely differentiated genitalia, more female-looking than male. On was reared as a girl, one as a hermaphroditic girl, and eight as boys, one of them reassigned from girl to boy at age two. The gender identity in each case differentiated concordantly with rearing as masculine, feminine, or ambivalent. Vigorous and competitive energy expenditure was neglected in childhood, except in two boys striving to succeed. Dominance assertion, leadership, and offensive attack were absent, but defensive fighting in boyhood sometimes occurred. Eroticism was heterosexually concordant with the sex of rearing, thus failing to support a simple or exclusive hormonal hypothesis in the etiology of homosexuality. The function and reaction threshold of the visual image in erotic dreams and erotic arousal, as compared with touch, seemed to correspond more closely with the eroticism of normal females than with that of normal males. Orgasm was variously reported as gradual or as a spasmic peak of feeling and, in some cases, without fluid discharge. Rehearsal of parentalism was not prominent in the play of the eight reared as boys and was variable in the adult ambitions of all ten patients. Psychopathology was conspicuous by its rarity. Occupational achievement was high and commensurate with IQ. There was probably a selection bias in favor of high IQ. The tendency to verbal vs. nonverbal superiority may be a function of high IQ rather than of sexual dimorphism. The Human Figure Drawing Test accurately reflected gender identity.

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Supported by USPHS Grant No. HD00325 and by funds from the Grant Foundation.

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Money, J., Ogunro, C. Behavioral sexology: Ten cases of genetic male intersexuality with impaired prenatal and pubertal androgenization. Arch Sex Behav 3, 181–205 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541485

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541485

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