The purpose of the blog is to document my external learning of Developmental Biology. Enjoy!

Sunday, September 7, 2014

"Mom... What Am I?!"

People don't usually ask what they are in terms of gender. You know definitively if you are a male or female. But this wasn't the case in the Law and Order: SVU episode entitled 'Identity'.  

In this episode, the suspects were a set of identical twins that were a boy and girl. Honestly, that should raise a red flag right now. Identical twins can only be one gender. So that fact that it was both a boy and girl should suggest that some gender reassignment has occurred.

When the twin boys went in for circumcision, the doctor botched one of the twins circumcision. This led the parents to then raise that child as a girl. It was fine at first, but as the girl reached puberty, she found herself liking girls. She was very confused as who she was because she felt like a boy on the inside. She soon found out that she was actually a boy, and the 'vitamins' her parents have been giving her were actually estrogen pills. So the girl stops taking the pills so she can go back to her original gender: a boy.

It was an interesting episode that discussed the science and ethics behind gender roles and reassignment.

http://lawandorder.wikia.com/wiki/Identity_(SVU)

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