What are the secondary sex characteristics of boys?

When boys reach a certain age, they begin to develop secondary sexual characteristics. First, their Adam's apple begins to grow larger and protrude outward from their mouths, and beards grow around them. At the same time, their voices become rough and their voices begin to become deeper. The performance of males and females is different, and they will gradually enter adulthood with puberty. At this time, schools will teach gender knowledge, and parents also need correct guidance.

Introduction

The symptoms in men are beard, prominent Adam's apple, thick bones, and deep voice; the symptoms in women are developed breasts, wide pelvis, abundant subcutaneous fat, and a shrill voice. In the animal kingdom, secondary sexual characteristics are also more obvious. For example, the rooster has a broad, bright red comb, thick, long and bright feathers, and a high-pitched crowing, while the female chicken does not have these characteristics.

The secretion of sex hormones by gonads is a prerequisite for the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics, otherwise the internal and external reproductive organs will always remain in a childish state. If a man has his testicles removed due to illness before puberty, he will not grow a beard in adulthood, will become fat, will have a high-pitched voice, and his penis will remain in the state of a child. After the testicles or ovaries are removed in adulthood, reproductive function is lost and some secondary sexual characteristics gradually degenerate.

After the rooster's testicles were removed experimentally, the rooster's comb shrank and turned red, its feathers faded and became thin and soft, and it lost the ability to crow. By transplanting the ovaries into a castrated rooster, the rooster can be transformed into a hen. Similar results were obtained in experiments using hens.

The sex hormones in the body are mainly secreted by the gonads. The adrenal cortex can also secrete a small amount of estrogen and androgen, but their effects are not obvious under normal circumstances. When there is an adrenal cortex tumor, the cells that secrete sex hormones proliferate excessively or the patient has been using sex hormones for a long time, women may develop masculine sexual characteristics such as beards and a lower voice due to excessive secretion of androgens; men may also develop feminine characteristics such as breast development.

Intersex

In human society, there are some individuals who are neither like men nor like women. He is said to be a man, but he has feminine characteristics; she is said to be like a woman, but in fact she has masculine characteristics. In medicine, people who have both male and female characteristics are called "hermaphrodites" or intersex people. There are many people with hermaphroditic sexual characteristics.

A survey in the United States shows that about 2,600 hermaphrodites are born in the United States every year. Due to the harsh social reality that only recognizes the two genders of either female or male, they will undergo surgery shortly after birth. An average of 5 such operations are performed every day in the United States in order to classify them into the socially recognized gender of either male or female.

People with "hermaphroditism" can be divided into "true hermaphroditism" and "pseudohermaphroditism". The distinction between true and false is based on the main sex glands in the body. People with "true hermaphroditism" have both male testicles and female ovaries in the same person. Both the ovaries and testicles in the body can have endocrine functions, that is, there are both estrogen and androgen in the body, but one of the hormones is usually dominant.

The external genitalia are often of ambiguous sex and may appear female or male, while the development of secondary sexual characteristics often depends on the dominant hormone. If estrogen is dominant in the body, secondary sexual characteristics tend to be female. If androgens are dominant, secondary sexual characteristics tend to be male. This type of person has a smaller penis above the urethra on the vulva, and two separate labia majora below. There is a small opening between the two labia majora that seems to be the vaginal opening, but is actually the place for urination.

This kind of true hermaphrodite has both male and female characteristics, with full breasts, an erect penis, sometimes nocturnal emission, and no beard. If you are a woman, your vagina is shallow and small, and your uterus is very small, so you are infertile. But some people have been found to have fertility function.

The difference between "pseudohermaphroditism" and "true hermaphroditism" is that in this type of person, there is actually only one type of gonad in the human body, either the male gonad or the female gonad. For those with male gonads, their external genitalia have female characteristics in appearance; for those with female gonads, their external genitalia have male characteristics in appearance. As a result, there are pseudohermaphroditic people who look like females but are actually males, or look like males but are actually females.