For reasons that boggle even my own mind, this morning I found myself reading up on a few urban legends / hoaxes / etc. on the Internet and felt the need to update myself on the old chestnut “Is Jamie Lee Curtis genetically male but still has a vagina?” …so there’s that.
At any rate it led me to an entry on about.com about that exact issue, in which essentially a bunch of paragraphs are wasted explaining what a hermaphrodite vs. someone with Klienfelter’s Syndrome vs. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome – and then an interesting little bit popped up – about an op-ed published in the Baltimore Sun in 1996 by an associate professor of Anthropology (who are all experts on genetic conditions) at Brown University, in which this sentence appears:
The film star Jamie Lee Curtis is one well-known individual who is genetically male, but phenotypically female.
According to the about.com guy, this is the only printed “proof” that JLC is genetically male, as no one on Earth seems to be able to produce a shred of medical documentation to demonstrate one way or the other (because they’re private, law-protected documents). Furthermore, the about.com guy apparently spoke to/read something else by the associate professor and had this to say:
First, according to Professor Beeman the pertinent sentence was deleted from the published article. Second, the reason it was deleted was that Beeman’s attempts to track down the plastic surgeons to whom intermediate sources had attributed the statement were “totally unsuccessful.” In other words, Professor Beeman had simply repeated an item of scurrilous gossip.
Hey way to go op-ed guy! And kudos to you for having that sentence deleted from the op-ed due to your followup work.
…except, hold on, if you actually read through the op-ed on the Sun’s website, assuming it’s the final printed version, the sentence most definitely still appears within the paragraph that contains it.
Is op-ed guy lying? Did he lie? Did he not request the line removed? Who lied? Is the Baltimore Sun deliberately leaving the sentence in there to perpetuate the myth that JLC is a man, negatively impacting sales of Activia, due to Tribune’s longstanding hatred of Dannon and the 2004 smash hit comedy Christmas with the Kranks? I demand answers. The citizens of Baltimore must demand better from their maybe-they-left-it-in-there-on-purpose local publications and “mainstream media” like “The Sun,” and *especially* its associate professors of Anthropology at Brown University in New York City! Outrageous!
The bread crumbs are being gathered. This doesn’t stop here. I’m through the looking glass people. ….conspiracy something something.
You’re playing with fire, man! Leave it alone!
Andy’s right. Think of your family.