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Sexual orientation is an enduring personal pattern of romantic attraction or sexual attraction to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. Patterns are generally categorized under heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality, while asexuality is sometimes identified as the fourth category.
The relationship between biology and sexual orientation is a subject of on-going research. While scientists do not know the exact cause of sexual orientation, they theorize that it is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences. However, evidence is weak for hypotheses that the post-natal social environment impacts sexual orientation, especially for males.
Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender. Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the individual's gender identity. Gender expression typically reflects a person's gender identity, but this is not always the case. While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role, such expression may not necessarily reflect their gender identity. The term gender identity was coined by psychiatry professor Robert J. Stoller in 1964 and popularized by psychologist John Money.
Hypospadias is a common variation in fetal development of the penis in which the urethra does not open from its usual location on the head of the penis. It is the second-most common birth defect of the male reproductive system, affecting about one of every 250 males at birth, although when including milder cases, is found in up to 4% of newborn males. Roughly 90% of cases are the less serious distal hypospadias, in which the urethral opening is on or near the head of the penis (glans). The remainder have proximal hypospadias, in which the meatus is all the way back on the shaft of the penis, near or within the scrotum. Shiny tissue that typically forms the urethra instead extends from the meatus to the tip of the glans; this tissue is called the urethral plate.
An epispadias is a rare type of malformation in which the urethra ends, in males, in an opening on the upper aspect of the penis, and in females when the urethra develops too far anteriorly. It occurs in around 1 in 120,000 male and 1 in 500,000 female births.
Cloacal exstrophy (CE) is a severe birth defect wherein much of the abdominal organs are exposed. It often causes the splitting of the bladder, genitalia, and the anus. It is sometimes called OEIS complex.
Virilization or masculinization is the biological development of adult male characteristics in young males or females. Most of the changes of virilization are produced by androgens.
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia due to 21-hydroxylase deficiency (CAH) is a genetic disorder characterized by impaired production of cortisol in the adrenal glands.
Intersex medical interventions (IMI), sometimes known as intersex genital mutilations (IGM), are surgical, hormonal and other medical interventions performed to modify atypical or ambiguous genitalia and other sex characteristics, primarily for the purposes of making a person's appearance more typical and to reduce the likelihood of future problems. The history of intersex surgery has been characterized by controversy due to reports that surgery can compromise sexual function and sensation, and create lifelong health issues. The medical interventions can be for a variety of reasons, due to the enormous variety of the disorders of sex development. Some disorders, such as salt-wasting disorder, can be life-threatening if left untreated.
The history of intersex surgery is intertwined with the development of the specialities of pediatric surgery, pediatric urology, and pediatric endocrinology, with our increasingly refined understanding of sexual differentiation, with the development of political advocacy groups united by a human qualified analysis, and in the last decade by doubts as to efficacy, and controversy over when and even whether some procedures should be performed.
Bladder exstrophy is a congenital anomaly that exists along the spectrum of the exstrophy-epispadias complex, and most notably involves protrusion of the urinary bladder through a defect in the abdominal wall. Its presentation is variable, often including abnormalities of the bony pelvis, pelvic floor, and genitalia. The underlying embryologic mechanism leading to bladder exstrophy is unknown, though it is thought to be in part due to failed reinforcement of the cloacal membrane by underlying mesoderm. Exstrophy means the inversion of a hollow organ.
The male reproductive system consists of a number of sex organs that play a role in the process of human reproduction. These organs are located on the outside of the body, and within the pelvis.
John Michael Bailey is an American psychologist, behavioral geneticist, and professor at Northwestern University best known for his work on the etiology of sexual orientation and paraphilia. He maintains that male sexual orientation is most likely established in utero.
Gender incongruence is the state of having a gender identity that does not correspond to one's sex assigned at birth. This is experienced by people who identify as transgender or transsexual, and often results in gender dysphoria. The causes of gender incongruence have been studied for decades.
Childhood gender nonconformity (CGN) is a phenomenon in which prepubescent children do not conform to expected gender-related sociological or psychological patterns, or identify with the opposite sex/gender. Typical behavior among those who exhibit the phenomenon includes but is not limited to a propensity to cross-dress, refusal to take part in activities conventionally thought suitable for the gender and the exclusive choice of play-mates of the opposite sex.
The relationship between the environment and sexual orientation is a subject of research. In the study of sexual orientation, some researchers distinguish environmental influences from hormonal influences, while other researchers include biological influences such as prenatal hormones as part of environmental influences.
Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender, or none of the aforementioned at all. The ultimate causes and mechanisms of sexual orientation development in humans remain unclear and many theories are speculative and controversial. However, advances in neuroscience explain and illustrate characteristics linked to sexual orientation. Studies have explored structural neural-correlates, functional and/or cognitive relationships, and developmental theories relating to sexual orientation in humans.
The hormonal theory of sexuality holds that, just as exposure to certain hormones plays a role in fetal sex differentiation, such exposure also influences the sexual orientation that emerges later in the individual. Prenatal hormones may be seen as the primary determinant of adult sexual orientation, or a co-factor.
Intersex people are born with natural variations in physical and sex characteristics including those of the chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies". Such variations may involve genital ambiguity, and combinations of chromosomal genotype and sexual phenotype other than XY-male and XX-female. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis allows the elimination of embryos and fetuses with intersex traits and thus has an impact on discrimination against intersex people.
Various criteria have been offered for the definition of intersex, including ambiguous genitalia, atypical genitalia, and differential sexual development. Ambiguous genitalia occurs in roughly 0.05% of all births, and atypical genitalia occurs in 0.5% of all births, usually caused by masculinization or feminization during pregnancy, these conditions range from full androgen insensitivity syndrome to ovotesticular syndrome, although the definition of what constitutes "normal" genitalia is largely arbitrary.
References
- ↑ Dreifus, Claudia (2005-05-31). "Declaring With Clarity, When Gender Is Ambiguous". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 8 June 2021. Retrieved 2024-05-26.
- 1 2 3 Kujath, Angie (2023-09-08). "Dr. William Reiner Receives 2023 Humanitarian Award". Association for Bladder Exstrophy Community. Retrieved 2024-05-26.
- ↑ Reiner, William G.; Gearhart, John P. (2004-01-22). "Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth". New England Journal of Medicine. 350 (4): 333–341. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa022236 . ISSN 0028-4793. PMC 1421517 . PMID 14736925.
- ↑ W. G. Reiner (2005-06-01). "Gender Identity and Sex-of-rearing in Children with Disorders of Sexual Differentiation". Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism. 18 (6): 549–554. doi: 10.1515/JPEM.2005.18.6.549 . ISSN 2191-0251. PMC 1421518 . PMID 16042322.
- 1 2 Bailey J (April 2003). The Man Who Would Be Queen (PDF). Joseph Henry Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-309-08418-5 . Retrieved 2020-07-15.
- ↑ Swidey, Neil (2015-08-20). "What makes people gay? (An update)". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 2015-08-20. Retrieved 2024-05-26.
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