14 DAY TRIAL // The second episode of BBC Two's “Countdown to Life: The Extraordinary Making of You, Against the Odds,” set to air this September 21 at 9 p.m. on the dot, tells the story of how boys in a remote village in the Dominican Republic are sometimes born looking like girls.
It's not that they seem frail or slender somehow and so this is why they are mistaken for girls. Let's face it, kids all look alike until they become teenagers. The reason these boys are said to be born looking like girls is that, during their first few years of life, their organs of reproduction look female.
It all comes down to a peculiar condition
These boys all suffer from a rare condition known to medical experts as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency. Genetically, individuals born with this condition are male, meaning that they carry an X and a Y chromosome in each of their cells.
However, their body does not produce enough of a hormone called dihydrotestosterone. This hormone plays a crucial role in male sexual development, and so not being exposed to enough of it means the body fails to form external male genitalia before birth, IFL Science explains.
Instead, genetically male children are born with external reproductive organs that seem female. Quite often, their own family think them to be girls, and so they are raised as girls during their first years of life. They are even given girl names.
“I never liked to dress as a girl and when they bought me toys for girls I never bothered playing with them - when I saw a group of boys I would stop to play ball with them,” Johnny, formerly known as Felecitia, remembers his childhood as a girl.
Everything changes in their adolescence
Although born with external genitalia that appear female, boys suffering from this condition are at long last recognized as what they really are when they reach adolescence.
Apparently, it is when they are about 12 years old that their voice begins to grow deeper, their chest becomes wider, they gain muscle mass, and their genitalia change, becoming male.
This happens because, during this time of their life, their body is flooded with testosterone. As a result, they develop the secondary characteristics of their gender.
Because it is only as teenagers that their genetical gender becomes clear, the boys are known to people in their home village of Salinas as “Guevedoces,” which translates as “penis at 12.”
Specialists say that, although their anatomy eventually catches up with their genetics, the boys don't grow much facial or body hair. Besides, many are infertile.
The condition is caused by a genetic mutation
Studies have shown that 5-alpha-reductase deficiency is the result of mutations involving a gene dubbed SRD5A2. The condition has so far been documented in the Dominican Republic, Turkey, Egypt and Papua New Guinea.
Children inherit this condition from their parents. Usually, the mother and the father each carry a copy of the mutated gene. Since it takes two copies to develop the condition, however, they do not show any symptoms, medical experts say.