Dr. Marc Breedlove

And so under the influence of this extra testosterone, the clitoris may grow to be bigger than the typical clitoris.

In some cases, in extreme cases, the phallus looks like a penis.

And the skin around that area that would normally form the labia

Again, there might be enough testosterone that it starts to look like a scrotum except of course there are no testes inside there because this is an XX individual.

So these individuals are identified at birth typically, especially in XX individuals.

And there's an easy treatment, which is, oh, they can't make, you know, you do the test and you go, oh, they can't make adrenal steroids, so we'll give them some.

And so for the rest of their lives, they take adrenal steroids orally and get the benefits of that.

And that shuts off.

the hyperactive adrenal glands so that it shuts off the role of the output of testosterone.

So this is what's known as an intersex phenotype.

And yes, you're right.

In the older literature, they were sometimes known as pseudohermaphrodite, with the idea being whether a hermaphrodite is an individual that can function and reproduce either as a male or female.

And so supposedly they were pseudo because they can't do that because they have only ovaries.

Well,

You can imagine, first of all, being called hermaphrodite, nobody liked that.

And if you ask them, well, is it better if I put this pseudo at the beginning, does that make you feel like you're being less stigmatized?

No.

But a much more accurate description is to say that it's intersex.

They have a phallus that's somewhere between a clitoris and a penis.

And the skin around there is sort of like a scrotum and sort of like labia.