Women: are you wearing pants? You have a disease!

[Clo]

"We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization…"

It's not that this is a grand plot to "fix" women, but the idea of desiring to "reduce" masculinization of females is a bit off. To what degree is this masculinization anyway? Because they say it in that sidequote, does aggression in a little girl count as her acting like a male? Is this bad? Because when I think of aggression in a child, I think of roughhousing, or tiny little spats, which I don't think is necessarily that horrible for a little girl. And they mention sexual orientation as well.

And really, if one reads this wrong (which people will do) it almost sounds like a suggested cure for homosexuality. I'm not saying we should go burn the people who put out this research, but if a female grows up a little masculine, what's so wrong with that? (Unless they have CAH, in which case there are other physiological problems that need to be treated). Is it right to believe that the next go around we should change the hormone levels in the womb to get it RIGHT? Right being a girl who comes out and isn't a little more aggressive and is attracted to men like she is supposed to be?

It's not healthy by any means to say that men should act like this and women should act like that, and the research, whatever intention there is behind it, inevitably does that.

Meyer-Bahlburg, who wrote “Sexual Orientation in Women with Classical or Non-Classical Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia as a Function of Degree of Prenatal Androgen Excess” says in ANOTHER paper:

"CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

And I guess, should we really be concerned if some women aren't going to fantasize about child-care and pregnancy? This suggests it's a biological norm for a little girl to pick up a baby doll. It's just everybody else's take on the research that is looking bad. Yes, CAH is a serious disease, and that should be treated. But this language that they're using doesn't really do the society any good.

When this sort of language is used, it should be called out for being wrong.