It is not my intention to insult or slander the actress, but I have heard numerous rumors that Jamie Lee Curtis was born a hermaphrodite. I’ve tried to research this myself but the most conclusive answer I was able to glean was “maybe”. I must know!
Perhaps ‘maybe’ is the best you’re ever going to get; not everybody is entirely comfortable discussing the precise configuration of their genitals - just because she is an actress, she is under no greater obligation than the rest of us.
Wasn’t this answered in the column once?
I tried searching the various databases on TSD, but got not hits either for “Jaimie Lee Curtis” (tried a couple of spellings of her name) or for “hermaphrodite”. I thought it very odd that “hermaphrodite” did not return any hits, knowing the audience . . .
G’day
The rumour I heard was not that she was a hermaphrodite, but that she is genetically male with androgen insensitivity syndrome. But even if that were true, how would anyone know? Most AIS patients are themselves unaware of their condition until they go to a fertility clinic or attempt to compete in the Olympics.
My guess is that the rumour was started by someone jealous of Ms. Curtiss’s looks.
Regards,
Agback
According to the Discovery Channel, other documentaries, most biology teachers, and many other things I read and saw, Jamie was born with XY chromosones, and is, therefore, according to the World Olympics committe, a male.
To me, I consider her a female, that is what Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh chose to raise her, and who she is choosing to live as.
She looks very butch to me, with mannish features, and more so all the time. She looks like a man who has taken female hormones.
The doctors offices leaked out that she had xy chromosones.
Jamie, with xy chromosones, cannot bear children, and therefore, adopted 2 chidren.
As far as being a hemephrodite(having both sexes), that is just a rumor, and I dont believe so. She was not in the hospital very long as a baby, so if they did an operation to make her female , I dont know when it would have been done. In press releases and in the news, Jamie was announced as a “baby girl” as soon as she was born.
Alas, there is no evidence for any of the claims in Susanann’s post.
Uh, do you have a cite for that XY chromosome claim, Susanann?
Well she’s got a damn fine set of cans for a guy!
To echo Zoggie: is there a citation for Susanann’s information?
A search of the Discovery Chnnel and Discovery Health websites came up with nothing: I tried
“Jamie Leigh Curtis”, “intergender” and “hermaphrodite”. If there had been a program such as the one described (and maybe there was), you’d think something would come up under one of those searches.
The Snopes.com site listed by a previous writer provides an article saying that the story has been circulated, but was, as of the time of that writing, unconfirmed. A check of urbanlegends.com comes up with the same. The urbanlegends.com site adds that a Baltimore Sun article is sometimes cited as authority, but that the real article as published said nothing whatever about Curtis.
No offense is intended, but the assertion that Curtis made a statement sometime somewhere on a talk show is one I’ve heard before, and in and of itself it makes me suspicious.
For twenty years people have been telling me that an executive with Proctor & Gamble has “recently” admitted on a national talk show that his company gives financial support to organized Satanism. Similarly, I remember a time back in the late 1970s when “everybody knew” that Farrah Fawcett and/or Olivia Newton John had announced on The Tonight Show that she was gay.
It is entirely possible that Curtis is genetically male. But I remain highly doubtful that she has ever gone on record as acknowledging this.
And yes, I thought that this question had been addressed by Cecil in the past, and that he had said that condition in question was called “testicular feminization” (something else I looked for at the Discovery sites without success), and that Curtis had never confirmed the stories. A search of the Straight Dope archive came up with nothing though.
Cecil did write on it…
I just can’t find it.
He didn’t write a column on it – he commented on the question on the old AOL boards, which comment (along with others) is appended to one of his books.
“Most biology teachers”?? How many have you talked to?
And IIRC, Cecil’s answer was it’s “nunuvyerbizniz” or words to that effect. susanann’s comments do not fit with the medical model of testicular feminization (aka androgen insensitivity syndrome).
I read an article recently which suggested that babies born of ‘indeterminate sex’ are not as uncommon as you might think.
According to the research this journo had done - as many as 1 birth in 200 has ‘gender complications’ and 1 in 5 of those require the parents to make a ‘gender decision’ and the child to undergo follow-up surgery/hormone treatment etc. to “better determine their sex”.
Shocked me at the time - but when you realise that sex is a complex issue which cannot be totally determined by any one physical factor - I suppose ‘issues’ are not that unusual.
As for JLC - I’ve no idea, but with the 1/200 and 1/1000 figures - SOME ‘famous’ people have to be included surely…
TTFN
JP
It would be nice if susanann would, for once, return to a thread and back up fantastic and somewhat unbelieveable statements like that. Hey, a guy can dream.
Heckfire, Unc, I’d just be happy to find out what “chromosones, committe and hemephrodite” mean.
That’s a LOT of reckless data to spew without some sort of cite to back it up.
Most biology teachers are angry right now about those assertions (I’ve polled 53% of them already).
Even if she does have AIS, a few things about that condition should be pointed out:
1 - In the case of complete AIS, it often is not detected until puberty - the individual is, to all external appearances, female.
2 - By the time it is detected at puberty (lack of onset of menstruation), the individual has grown up thinking of themselves as female, whatever their chromosomes might say, and will probably continue to do so. Particularly since their external appearance will be that of a normally developed woman. Best that they think of themselves as a woman who happens to be infertile, similar to women who are infertile for any number of other reasons.
A program on NPR about this condition actually mentioned that many women who have it tend to be tall and quite striking in appearance, and have flawless skin, oddly enough (the doctor being interviewed commented that they often looked like fashion models). That, and the fact that JLC has adopted might be considered circumstantial evidence, but we can’t no for sure, and, at the end of the day, it’s really none of our business.
Background on AIS: