So we've been studying endocrinology.

And I thought, what with all the images our lecturers have inundated us with over the past couple of weeks, I can't not write a post about it. Malformed genitalia, overgrown genitalia, wrong sex, both sexes in one, little boys with Herculean bodies (my goodness, how many times have we seen that slide? Isn't it starting to border on slightly dodgy? And are the poor boy's ankles really tied together or am I imagining things?!)--yeeeeeah, for the first time I'm really glad that I sit at the back of the lecture theatre and most of the time my vision is blurry because my contact lenses slide in all sorts of wacky places and I can't be bothered putting eyedrops in because I'll only lament about my poor damaged short-sighted Asian eyes when I'm sixty plus.

Despite all the aforementioned, endocrinology really is reasonably interesting, not least because of the gender-related diseases. I hope I'm not the only one who finds these bits (ew! bits! -giggles like a schoolgirl-) fascinating in an uneasy way. Maybe I am. Maybe I have some deep-seated, voyeuristic, sex-obsessed Freudian complex! Or, maybe I'm just a pervert.

I didn't expect it to be so common. 1 in 500 people have Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, where genetically they are male (XY sex genes) but their cells don't respond to testosterone and other male hormones. The result depends on how insensitive they are. In some it's only partial, so they develop as intersex, with both male and female characteristics.

Others are completely insensitive, and they have fully female features. In fact, many people with complete AIS tend to grow very tall (180cm), with long limbs, big boobs, ie. the typical femme fatale. Which is why lots go into careers like modelling, acting, athletics, etc. Apparently a number of famous females have AIS. Jamie Lee Curtis? (Or at least my friend Google says so.) And others! Like this lady athlete who underwent sex testing at the Olympics and found out she was genetically male. She was allowed to compete but when she went home she lost her job and her boyfriend. Now they don't do sex testing at the Olympics anymore.

I guess what really struck me about all this was that I hardly knew about the existence (and certainly not the prevalence) of such syndromes before now. And to imagine it--being seriously confused about your gender would completely undermine your personality. The little M and F letters with bubbles/checkboxes next to them are absolutely everywhere. Facebook profiles, enrolment forms, the front page of exams booklets, online surveys. Having to choose your gender would be so different from being born with one. And imagine being a little girl who hits puberty and suddenly starts becoming a man. (Note to self: look up Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex.)

So yeah! See? You can excuse me for blogging a bit about academia, because surely it's worth a thought or twenty. Methinks we are next going to learn about conditions where people are phenotypically male but genetically female--the other way around, I suppose.

Ooh-ooh, yeah! There was also this stuff about how sex hormones influence the way our brains work and our conception of our own gender, but I won't go into that because I'm starting to sound like an overexcited, bespectacled adorable little nerd (ie. my true self!)...=D

Disclaimer: Yeah, I may have got stuff wrong. Don't trust me. Use Wikipedia...=D