different samples and even with different syndromes that amount, hormonally, to much the same thing. Taken together with the increasing animal evidence, these findings suggested to Ehrhardt and her colleagues — and to many others as well — that humans too could experience psychosexual differentiation, affecting both behavior and the brain, as a result of masculinizing hormones acting near or before birth. This possibility received stunning confirmation in a series of discoveries made by endocrinologist Julianne Imperato-McGinley of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. These had to do principally with the analysis of a new syndrome of abnormal sexual differentiation that defied all previous rules. It was confined to three intermarrying rural villages in the southwestern Dominican Republic and, over a period of four generations, afflicted 38 known individuals from 23 interrelated families. It is clearly genetic but has arisen only recently due to mutation and intermarriage. Nineteen of the subjects appeared at birth to be unambiguously female and were viewed and reared that way. At puberty they first failed to develop breasts and then underwent a completely masculine pubertal transformation, including growth of a phallus, descent of the testes, deepening of the voice, and the development of a muscular masculine physique. Physically and psychologically they became men. The physiological analysis undertaken by Imperato-McGinley and her colleagues revealed that these individuals are genetically male — they have one X and one Y chromosome — but lack a single enzyme of male sex- hormone synthesis, due to a defective gene. The enzyme, 5-alpha-reductase, changes testosterone into another male sex hormone, dihydrotestosterone. Although they lack dihydrotestosterone almost completely, they have normal levels of testosterone itself. Evidently these two hormones are respectively responsible for the promotion of male external sex characteristics at birth and at puberty. The lack of “dihydro” makes for a female-looking newborn and prepubertal child. The presence of testosterone makes for a more or less normal masculine puberty. But for present purposes, the most extraordinary thing about these people is that they become men of their culture in every sense of the word. After 12 or more years of rearing as girls, they are able to completely transform themselves into almost typical examples of the masculine gender — with family, sexual, vocational, and avocational roles. Of the 18 subjects for which data were available, 17 made this transformation completely, the other retaining a female role and gender identity. The 17 did not make the transformation with ease. Imperato-McGinley reports that it cost some of them years of confusion and psychological anguish. But they made it, without special training or therapeutic intervention. Imperato-McGinley and her colleagues reason that the testosterone circulating during the course of growth in these men has a masculinizing effect of their brains. What are we to make of these extraordinary facts? For the immediate future, at least as far as I am concerned, nothing. It is simply too soon. Given present knowledge, for instance, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the observed differences between the brains of the two genders serve only physiological functions. The brains must be different to exert different control over different reproductive systems, having nothing at all to do with behavioral subtleties. Bqt I think this unlikely. If not now, then in the very near future, it will be extremely difficult for an informed, objective observer to discard the hypothesis that the genders differ in their degree of violent behavior for reasons that are in part physiological. If the community of scientists whose work and knowledge are relevant should come to agreement on this point, then it seems to me that one policy implication is plausible: Serious disarmament may ultimately necessitate an increase of women in government. Some women are as violent as almost any man. But speaking of averages there is little doubt that we would all be safer if the world’s weapon systems were controlled by average women instead of The Responses Ursula K. Le Guin In Dr. Konner’s informative, interesting and responsible article there’s one point that worries me a bit. At the beginning and end of the piece he speaks of the difficult intellectual reconciliation and the “formidable .. . balancing act” required of woman scientists who favor equal rights for women and men and whose by average men. I think it appropriate to end where we began, contemplating the women who have helped unearth these facts. Visualize them in their offices and laboratories, trying to sort out what it all means; how do they handle the dissonance their findings must engender? I suspect that they do it by making a reconciliation — not a compromise — but a-complex difficult reconciliation between the idea of human difference and the ideal of human equality. It is one that we must all make soon. ■ research indicates irreducible biological-level differences between women and men. Why, I wonder, did Dr. Konner choose to speak only of woman scientists? Given the tremendous m'ale- dominant hierarchy of the scientific establishment, there may not be a whole lot of male scientists whose interest in equal rights is intense enough to make them aware of such problems, but to imply, by speaking only of women, that there are no such men, is unfair, surely. And 28 Clinton St. Quarterly
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