Dr. Marc Breedlove

And the answer is, well, interestingly, if you look at groups of women with CAH, they are more likely to be same-sex attracted, to be lesbians, than the population at large.

But most of them are straight.

But what's interesting about that is the older they get, as you keep surveying them, the higher the percentage of them report having a lesbian orientation.

So it's possible, first of all, that indicates that, yeah, maybe prenatal testosterone increases the odds of them being lesbians when they grow up.

And you also wonder, well, how many of them always had that same-sex attraction but, you know, were following the pathway society laid out for them?

And then as they get older, they say, well, no.

Screw this.

I know who I'm attracted to.

I don't have to fit the heterosexual mold.

And so that's entirely consistent with the idea that prenatal testosterone makes you more likely to be attracted to women when you grow up.

There's another syndrome that I know you've talked about, which is androgen insensitivity syndrome, sometimes abbreviated AIS.

And it turns out the gene for the androgen receptor that responds to testosterone and other androgens is on the X chromosome.

And it may sometimes be that a woman will have an X chromosome that has a copy of the androgen receptor gene that doesn't work.

and if she passes that X chromosome on to a daughter, then she's sort of duplicated herself.

What's interesting is when that X chromosome is given to a son, in other words, that egg with an X chromosome that has a dysfunctional copy of the angio-receptor gene, if it gets fertilized by a Y-bearing sperm, now we have an XY individual and

as you've explained clearly in your basics podcast, we know what will happen in development.

The Y chromosome will mean that the indifferent gonad will develop as testes.

The testes will secrete two hormones that are going to guide sexual differentiation in the periphery, one of them being anti-malarian hormone.

which is going to suppress the development of the malaria ducts, and therefore no oviduct, no uterus will form.

And the testes will also release testosterone, which normally would masculinize the body, but in this case, because there's no functional antireceptor to respond to it, the testosterone goes round and round, but the body doesn't respond.