Quote:
Originally Posted by henry quirk
"womanhood is not defined by a lack of a penis"
Agreed. It's defined by chromosome.
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Not to put too fine a point on it, no it's not. The X chromosome only defines the female physical structure in a species. A molly (female cat) isn't a woman but it is a female. She has a body that can have babies and hormones that trigger estrus (her period) and she's slutty when there's toms around, etc. But she's not a woman (universally defined as a human) nor is this 'womanhood'. All of that behavior is largely based on hormones and what these hormones are instructing the body to do and where we humans differ from that is through the ability to recognize what we're doing and suppress/divert that behavior (in some cases) to somehow influence a social interaction. Manners and religious tenets are some methods of altering that behavior and neither of those have anything to do directly with which chromosome you won.
Womanhood, as it's generally defined, is comprised of societal expectations, pretty much everything that is expected of, allowed, given to or taken from a woman because the body that human has dangly bits on the chest and not between the legs. There are manners/mannerisms for women that men don't exhibit (and the other way around), there are expectations for women that men aren't expected to do, etc.
During embryo formation, there's a ton of things that can go awry and one of them is the formation of a human chimera. This can happen when a zygote or even an embryo absorbs a second (or more) embryos. This is how we get people with two different blood types in their body or two completely different types of hairs on their head (ie a blend of fine Norwegian blond and thick Mediterranean brown). If something as invisible to the eye as a blood type can be blended that way, I don't see why all or part of an XX zygote's endocrine system couldn't be absorbed by an XY zygote. If this XY comes to full term and gets born, you'll have a male human baby that will eventually be getting the hormone cocktail that a female human should have and less or none of what a male should have.
All that would be well and good in terms of survival, with the possibility that it'd be less likely for him to mate because he wouldn't give off the visual and hormonal triggers that would attract the female humans. It would also go unnoticed until after the child has started school and truly begins his social training, interacting regularly with other males and females of similar age. But the issue is, once he's old enough to start seriously taking in the role his apparent gender plays in society, he's not going to feel right about it because no one else like him will seem the same way. He'll be steered towards things that a young XY male with XY-expected hormones should be interested in, but he'll find himself more interested in what the XX-expected hormones are telling him. Then, over time, society will either tell him "No, you're wrong! Shape up, you little pussy!" or "Be who you are, free spirit!" or both at once, depending on what the parents and immediate surroundings are like. So, he'll pretend all his life, for fear of societal repercussions, or he'll act on it, despite the societal repercussions. Or he'll kill himself because that'll seem easier than choosing.
In a nutshell (see what I did there?), this kid is gonna have a bad time either way and it all began waaaay before any concept of woman- or man-hood came into it.