Go to http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/gender-testing-athletes
Go through the exercise and say whether you decided that Jane was qualified or not qualified to compete in the athletic events. Give your reasoning. Also, after completing the exercise, briefly state, in your own words what you learned about CAIS.
Give your answer in the “leave a reply” section below
I decided she qualifies as female after the three tests because there could be another reason aside from SRY malfunction to explain what was observed. She had CAIS and should have developed into a male, as this didn’t happen due to her inability to respond to the predominantly male hormone androgen, she developed external female genitalia while retaining internal male organs. CAIS is a disorder that muddles the various perspectives through which to view gender and sex. People who have this are accepted by the scientific community as female. This largely reflects the necessity for applied science to acknowledge sociological differences between sex and gender, the first having to do with anatomy, physiology, and genetic make up. Gender is the alignment to an identity by a self-aware individual. Syndromes such as CAIS raise questions about our methods of classification. Are two genders broad enough for the array of genetic and anatomical variance that exists? Some cultures think not and our society is currently expanding it’s understanding of gender identity.
In the gender determining exercise we were asked to determine the gender of an individual who’s karotype was that of a male but who presented physically as a female. She had a mutation in the SRY gene and was there for resistant to androgynous hormones. I decided to qualify her because hormonaly AND physically she is much more similar to a female than a male.