In every way, Johnny is physically and biologically male. But, astonishingly he did not grow a penis until he hit puberty.
He is one of many children who live in Salinas, an isolated village in the southwestern Dominican Republic, who are seemingly born female, only to become men in their teenage years.
Although Johnny’s story may seem extraordinary, cases of little girls turning into boys are so prevalent in the village that it is no longer considered abnormal. The children are simply referred to as the ‘guevedoces’ – which literally translates as ‘penis at 12’
Johnny, 24, was originally named Felecitia by his parents and brought up as a girl.
Like the other Guevedoces, Johnny was brought up as a girl because he had no visible testes or penis and what appeared to be a vagina. It is only when he approached puberty that his penis grew and testicles descended.
Johnny, once known as Felicita, remembers going to school in a little red dress, though he says he was never happy doing girl things.
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[SIZE=3]Catherine and his cousin Carla, Guevedoces in the Dominican Republic[/SIZE]
Like the other Guevedoces, Johnny was brought up as a girl because he had no visible testes or penis and what appeared to be a vagina. It is only when he approached puberty that his penis grew and testicles descended. Johnny, once known as Felicita, remembers going to school in a little red dress, though he says he was never happy doing girl things.
“I remember I used to wear a little red dress,” he said. “I was born at home instead of in a hospital. They didn’t know what sex I was. “I went to school and I used to wear my skirt. I never liked to dress as a girl. When they bought me girls toys I never bothered playing with them. All I wanted to do was play with the boys.” “They used to say I was a devil, nasty things, bad words and I had no choice but to fight them because they were crossing the line.”
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[SIZE=3]Johnny, who was seemingly born as a girl but turned into a boy aged seven[/SIZE][SIZE=3][/SIZE]
A little girl named Carla is currently going through the same transformation, aged nine. Despite being brought up as a girl, his mother noticed that from the age of five he was more inclined towards the rough and tumble play of little boys. He has recently had his hair cut shirt after wearing plaits for years. Many decide not to change from their female names, so some men in Salinas have names like Catherine.
“I feel like a man now,” he said.
“When she turned five I noticed that whenever she saw one of her male friends she wanted to fight with him. Her muscles and chest began growing. You could see she was going to be a boy. I love her however she is. Girl or boy, it makes no difference,” his mother said.
Many decide not to change from their female names, so some men in Salinas have names like Catherine.
The guevedoces were first discovered by a Cornell University endocrinologist Dr Julianne Imperato in the 1970s who travelled to Dominican Republic after hearing strange rumours about girls turning into boys.
So why does it happen?
Well, one of the first people to study this unusual condition was Dr Julianne Imperato-McGinley, from Cornell Medical College in New York. In the 1970s she made her way to this remote part of the Dominican Republic, drawn by extraordinary reports of girls turning into boys.
When she got there she found the rumours were true. She did lots of studies on the Guevedoces (including what must have been rather painful biopsies of their testicles) before finally unravelling the mystery of what was going on.
When you are conceived you normally have a pair of X chromosomes if you are to become a girl and a set of XY chromosomes if you are destined to be male.For the first weeks of life in womb you are neither, though in both sexes nipples start to grow.
Then, around eight weeks after conception, the sex hormones kick in. If you’re genetically male the Y chromosome instructs your gonads to become testicles and sends testosterone to a structure called the tubercle, a small bump between the legs, where it is converted into a more potent hormone called dihydro-testosterone This in turn transforms the tubercle into a penis. If you’re female and you don’t make dihydro-testosterone then your tubercle becomes a clitoris.
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When Imperato-McGinley investigated the Guevedoces she discovered the reason they don’t have male genitalia when they are born is because they are deficient in an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase, which normally converts testosterone into dihydro-testosterone.
This deficiency seems to be a genetic condition, quite common in this part of the Dominican Republic, but vanishingly rare elsewhere. So the boys, despite having an XY chromosome, appear female when they are born (i.e. they appear to be born female with no testes and what appears to be a vagina). It is not until puberty, when another huge surge of testosterone is produced, that the male reproductive organs emerge. What should have happened in the womb happens around 12 years later. Their voices deepen and they finally grow a penis. At puberty, like other boys, they get a second surge of testosterone. This time the body does respond and they sprout muscles, testes and a penis.
Imperato-McGinley’s thorough medical investigations showed that in most cases their new, male equipment seems to work fine and that most Guevedoces live out their lives as men, though some go through an operation and remain female.
For Johnny it happened at the age of seven. He claimed that he had never felt like a little girl and was far happier after he fully became a boy. “When I changed I was happy with my life,” he said.
The discovery of a small community in the Dominican Republic, where some males are born looking like girls and only grow penises at puberty, has led to the development of a blockbuster drug that has helped millions of people.
Another thing that Imperato-McGinley discovered, which would have profound implications for many men around the world, was that the Guevedoces tend to have small prostates.
This observation, made in 1974, was picked up by Roy Vagelos, head of research at the multinational pharmaceutical giant, Merck. He thought this was extremely interesting and set in progress research which led to the development of what has become a best-selling drug, finasteride, which blocks the action of 5-alpha-reductase, mimicking the lack of dihydro-testosterone seen in the Guevedoces.
Finasteride as it is an effective way to treat benign enlargement of the prostate, a real curse for many men as they get older. Finasteride is also used to treat male pattern baldness.
A final interesting observation that Imperato-McGinley made was that these boys, despite being brought up as girls, almost all showed strong heterosexual preferences. She concluded in her seminal paper that hormones in the womb matter more than rearing when it comes to your sexual orientation.
This is still a controversial topic and one I explore later in the film when I meet Mati, who decided from the earliest age that though “he” looked like a boy, Mati was really a girl. As for Johnny, since he developed male genitalia he has had a number of short term girlfriends, but he is still looking for love. “I’d like to get married and have children, a partner who will stand by me through good and bad,” he sighs wistfully.
Further cases have since been seen in the Sambian villages of Papua New Guinea although the Sambians view the children as flawed males and they are often shunned, unlike the Dominicans who welcome the transformation with widespread celebration.
“Guevedoces are also sometimes called “machihembras” meaning “first a woman, then a man”. When they’re born they look like girls with no testes and what appears to be a vagina. It is only when they near puberty that the penis grows and testicles descend.
Around one in 90 children in Salinas are guevedoces and although they resemble sexually normal males, subtle differences do still exist in adulthood. Most have decreased amounts of facial hair and smaller prostate glands relative to the average male.
It is thought that the condition has persisted through generations because of the isolation of the villagers. Because the disorder is so widespread and accepted, the Dominican Republic now believes that there are three sexual categories, male, female, and pseudohermaphrodite.
You forgot PNG, mentioned in there towards the end. But, why?