Scientist claim to have discovered a new gender of human which is neither male nor female.
It leaves those with the condition sensing ‘phantom genitalia’ of the opposite sex.
A group of people with the previously undiagnosed ‘alternating gender incongruity’ (AGI) said they can switch involuntarily from male to female and vice versa instantly.
‘The majority of bigender individuals experience phantom breasts or genitalia corresponding to the non-biologic gender when they are in a trans-gender state’, according to the astonishing survey by a respected neuroscientist.
Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, and student Laura Case, interviewed 32 people from an online bi-gender forum for their study.
One of those affected by the condition told researchers: ‘If I’m in male mode and I see someone crying, I’ll think more along the lines of “Man up…” while if I’m in girl mode I’ll think more long the lines of “Oh sweety,”’ according to the Huffington Post.
Another said: ’I sometimes wake up thinking I have a penis,’ says one female respondent, ‘or that I have no breasts.
‘I usually end up in tears and I can’t get out of bed because once I get up I’ll know for sure it’s not really true and it’s just my mind playing tricks on me, so I just lie there and cry.
‘It’s strange though because I normally don’t even want to have a penis.’
Of those surveyed – 11 of whom were women, 21 men – about a third said that gender switching was predictable.
A majority said they switched weekly and 14 said the transformation occurred once or more a day.
The authors said their preliminary study found that ‘between the two extreme ends of human sexuality – male and female – lie a poorly understood and poorly studied spectrum of ambiguously defined sexual identities that are very much a part of the human condition but defy rigid classification’.
Dr Ramachandran told the Huffington Post: ‘These results are suggestive but not conclusive.
