Carole Hooven, Ph.D.

More feminine, I would say, than other women who have testosterone.

No, no.

There's incontrovertible evidence that estrogen is not the masculinizing hormone acting via the estrogen receptor in early development in humans.

But then you're raising all these questions about the role of estrogen in adulthood.

And I think so this one study is interesting and I think it is important, but I couldn't say with authority exactly how.

It's important for bone, you know, it's important for the body.

But in terms of behavior, I believe it's important for sexual behavior.

But we do have these guys who don't make estrogen who seem to be normal.

Sorry, yes.

And I should mention also that in these women who have complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, they seem to be sexually normal.

There's no differences in sex drive and orgasmic capacity, even though they have zero testosterone.

That's interesting.

And there's limited data, I should say, because it's a rare condition.

But what we do have suggests that

They have estrogen and that the estrogen somehow compensates.

From the studies that I have seen, yes.

I don't know if maybe the peak isn't as high in puberty or something like that.

Maybe there are differences there, but I don't see that in the literature.

Do they shave their legs?

They don't have to.