Some simple questions about AIS

I have a CAIS (complete androgen insensitivity syndrome) girl character in a story I’m working on. So far I’ve been playing her as a girl that happens to have CAIS(After all she didn’t know until puberty she even had AIS). But I’m curious other than a lack of periods is there any other way the CAIS experience is different from an XX girl?

On a related note, what are some parental reaction to having a AIS daughter have you heard about?

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edited 10th Jul '16 12:23:09 AM by war877

I very much doubt it. Considering that the people with XY karyotype are born phenotypically female when affected by CAIS, the starting assumption is that they are girls and you only change it if they happen to be transgender.

That said, miiohau, the symptoms are very much the same (only potentially more pronounced) than in girls with naturally very low levels of androgens ... in some aspects, because with others it's a mixed thing. Wikipedia actually has a decent article about it so I recommend that you start by getting through it.

They are more likely to suffer from health problems like gondal tumours and decreased bone density. That's about all I know.

I've seen various threads like this for various conditions? Anyone think we might want a general thread for writing medical conditions?

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There is a medical thread.

Edit: There is also a high chance of vaginal hypoplasia, I think. Which would make penetrative sex difficult.

edited 10th Jul '16 12:23:48 AM by war877

One of my relatives, Sam, has CAIS. It has caused them a lot of health problems. They present more masculine than feminine, and they are very uncomfortable with people calling them a woman. I don't know if this is the experience of all people with CAIS, but that's how it is for Sam. They are also a huge NASCAR and Texas sports fan, they love poetry, and they advocate for immigrant children in their city. People are more than what their bodies do to them, and your characters should be, too.

No war877, a person with CAIS is, without any treatment, phenotypically female. Their organism does not react to male hormones, and thus only the female ones are received, which means that their body functions on those by default which makes them phenotypically female. It is a bit more messed up if you try to get into it in-depth, but with no male hormones it's hard to be phenotypically male by default as hormones are a very important factor in determining how your body functions (which means, what it phenotypically is). And if you want to go about "biologically" anything, then you pretty much go into a mess because there are enough ways to categorise someone as "male" or "female" that just saying "biologically [whatever]" gives you nothing.

Case in point, anatomy would be biology, and so would the phenotype be biology, and so would the genes be biology. And you could have a trans person on hormone reassignment therapy, born with male sexual characteristics and with an XXY karyotype. This person would anatomically be male, phenotypically possibly already female, and genetically a mess (though technically male); so, biology-wise, this person would be ... yeah, you can't answer that just like that.

Which is why I said that someone with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, assuming it is present from the very beginning, is assumed to be female and treated as a girl until the person says otherwise. Because insensitivity to androgens means that regardless of whether the person has ovaries or testes their development as a foetus will align closer to that of females rather than males, as hormones are rather important in the development of foetuses.

Now, if the person gets treatment, then yes, it does get more complicated. But the original question was about a female character with CAIS, so your ... well, it seems to be an attempt to hijack it and change the word to "male" instead, is only making it more confusing now. You don't need to rename "girl" to "boy", there's already enough studies done on the topic that even Wikipedia actually has a decent page full of info about it (and it's actually written on that very page that "All affected individuals are phenotypically female; they develop a normal female habitus, despite the presence of a Y chromosome." and this one sentence has six sources which means it's not taken out of someone's bottom parts).

edited 9th Jul '16 2:54:17 PM by Kazeto

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So... Do you think your last post is off topic or on topic?

edited 10th Jul '16 12:25:07 AM by war877

Ok, it seems the consensus is more experience with medical care including surgery to remove those cancer prone gonads. The main reason I started this thread was because I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing some important part of the experience.

@Kazeto I have read the wikipedia article but it geared to the medical side. I needed to know what it is like to live with it. @Spacealien I'm trans, so I understand people are more than bodies. But with her being XY and CAIS not being represented that often (I can only think of one other and I read trans* webcomics) and all the information I can find saying they usually identify as female (or at least female compatible). I'll remember Sam's story in case there a place where it can naturally come up (Possible since she is LGBT lesbian specifically).