einsteinscircle_march102014As mammals we are obsessed with classifying individuals by sex:  pink for girl babies, blue for baby boys.  Baboons pry open the legs of their newborns to determine the same thing, but ….. what you see does not always determine who or what we are ….. sexual ambiguity can be as physiologic as it is anatomic ….. people don’t necessarily come in two clear-cut sexual flavors.

The  study of  gender identity in humans,  i.e.,  a person’s innate psychological identification as male or female, is ongoing.  In other  species ….. such as some fish ….. individuals change sex opportunistically: if the only  male in a breeding group dies, the dominant female becomes male.  In humans, some 1% of us are born “intersexual,” with ambiguous genitalia ….. challenging the notion of a simple, dichotomous universe of blue and pink.

Join us at Einstein’s Circle this  Wednesday when Dr. Alan Grindal talks about the physiologically complex issues of gender identity that help explain the emotional conflicts of sexual preference …. a somewhat unsettling notion that may change the way people think.

Click here for more information about the event.

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