SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Defining Line Between Man and Woman
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)
What's the difference between a man and a woman? The question seems too silly to be science: Its answer is so obvious that every stand-up comic has a different way of saying it. ...
But the difference is only obvious most of the time. In some unusual cases, resulting from sex-change operations or medical conditions, the usual indicators of male and female can contradict each other in the same body. The best-known recent example is South African runner Caster Semenya, who has been put through "gender verification" amid suspicion about her muscular physique and low voice.
But the same confusion has cropped up in legal battles over who can be married to whom, and when the "M" on a driver's license can be changed to "F." It can also intrude painfully into the lives of ordinary people, when medical diagnoses reveal that their hormones, chromosomes or anatomy don't sit entirely on one side of the line.
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