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Intersex

Authoring team

An individual's gender may be defined at several levels:

  • at the genetic level - the presence of one or more Y chromosomes usually defines a male
  • gonadal sex - gender is assigned according to the histological characteristics of the gonads
  • ductal sex - females retain derivatives of the Mullerian ducts, males retain derivatives of the Wolffian ducts
  • genital sex - depends on the appearance of the external genitalia

Sexual ambiguity is present when these various methods of gender assignment are not concordant.

There are two main classes of intersex disorders:

  • true hermaphrodites
  • pseudohermphrodites

It is also important to consider ambiguous genitalia in this context.

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