Online Intersex Communities: Virtual Neighborhoods of Support an ...

But at puberty these children’s testicles begin to produce additional testosterone, and the 5-AR enyzme is not required at that time to convert that testosterone properly. So roughly at 12 or 13 years of age 5-AR children, perceived to be female, become very clearly male. As Dreger notes, “[T]he body grows taller, stronger, more muscular…testes descend…and the penis/clitoris grows to look and act more like a penis” (Hermaphrodites 39).

Because this intersex condition has always occurred in the Sambian culture, where medical technology is limited, those born with this condition are not treated. In fact, they occupy a special place within the culture. For them, as Gilbert Herdt writes, the Sambia “have created an historically divergent third sex category, neither male or female” (420). In fact, the Sambia call 5-AR people kwolu-aatmwol, or “female thing changed into a male” (Herdt 68). In the Dominican Republic 5-AR also occurs so often that prevailing rhetoric has generated a name for those that are neither male nor female. 5-AR children not fully developed are called guevedoche, or “penis at 12” (Herdt 68).

Clearly, therefore, cultural biases and the discourses that reflect and maintain them determine what is considered sexually ambiguous or not, acceptable or not, normal or abnormal. Why? According to Alice Dreger, a person who does not properly perform that which is considered normal, such as the hermaphrodite or intersex person,