Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome by Pratiksha Singh

Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome affects every 2-5 people out of 100,000 people that are genetically male[1]. Having this syndrome means that the person is born with “ambiguous genitalia.” Which means that they have both a clitoris as well as a penis. One is usually bigger than the other but both are present. I feel like this is hard for many children to deal with as well as their parents. Parents have the choice of subjecting their child to corrective surgery at a young age. [2]If I was a parent I wouldn’t know which gender to pick because both are present and I wouldn’t want to force my child to grow up as a boy or a girl if they weren’t comfortable with being what I chose.  Children usually determine what gender they want to be after they go through puberty. I feel like it would be really hard for them to go through all of that because they could be spending their whole life up until their teenage years being a girl, when they really prefer to be a boy. It was also be really difficult with the social aspect of things. The world today isn’t very accepting of people that are “different” and if one day a kid was a boy and the next they were a girl, society would have a hard time accepting them and treating them equally. Some children are given hormones at a young age to help them develop breasts if they are a girl or muscles if they are a boy. 1 I think this would be helpful when it comes to “looking right” in society but once the child goes through puberty and decides what gender they are more comfortable being then they would have to have corrective surgeries and start taking hormones for the opposite sex which could be stressful and frightening for the child. Today’s society is really harsh on people that are different and aren’t just like everyone else. These kids were born that way and couldn’t help it, yet people probably still make fun of them, don’t hang out with them, make weird faces at them, and probably many many more things. These children are already confused about what gender they are and how they want to live their lives, not having friends to support them and being made fun of at school or looked at in a funny way will not help them get through life at all.  

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[1] , "Genetics Home Reference," Androgen insensitivity syndrome, http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome (accessed January 22, 2014).

[2] , "Intersex Society of North America," Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (PAIS), http://www.isna.org/faq/conditions/pais (accessed January 22, 2014).