But imagine puberty came with a sudden gender transformation. It’s a concept that seems as if it were right out of science fiction but for a small community in the Dominican Republic it’s common for girls to hit puberty and quite literally transform into boys.
The new
BBC Two series “Countdown to Life” looks at the fascinating phenomenon of children in this community who are born girls and then spontaneously develop penises once they’ve entered puberty. They are called
guevedoces, which loosely translates to “penis at twelve.” They are also sometimes referred to as
machihembras, which means “first a woman, then a man.”
During interviews in the documentary, several of the children report not feeling like a girl, even before hitting puberty and growing a penis. Johnny, formerly Felicita, told the filmmakers that when he was young he’d go to school in a little red dress but was never happy participating in activities that interested girls.
"I never liked to dress as a girl, and when they bought me toys for girls I never bothered playing with them—when I saw a group of boys I would stop to play ball with them,"
he told the filmmakers. Kids at school bullied Johnny once it became clear that he was a guevedoces.
According to the filmmakers,
one in 90 boys in the communities in the Dominican Republic is a pseudo-hermaphrodite. Researchers at the
University of California Berkeley say this condition has also been identified in children living in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea. Local physicians have become more attuned to identifying which girls may turn out to be
guevedocesat the onset of puberty but that doesn’t mean it’s now less common.