I’m so sorry that you took my comments in the way that you did, but I really didn’t mean to offend you, I really didn’t.  I realise that you can die from this condition and I was never going to underplay this issue.  It’s a very serious condition and I would never suggest otherwise.  You ask if I would "do this" to another medical condition - well, I don’t believe that I have done anything wrong, and if another medical condition appeared to have some relevance to my essay then yes, I would refer to it.  You said that I’m ignorant and maybe I am, but I think that I would be more ignorant if I made no reference to this condition in the first place.  As far as I am aware, the fact remains that female children produce too much of the male hormone, androgen, which can cause masculine attributes, which is a biological blurring of the sexes, however slight.  I am fully aware that it is not necessarily to do with gender and sex but to do with the adrenal gland, but it does affect the genitalia which is the way you tell whether a baby is male or female and, according to the information I have read online, it can be difficult to discern whether a baby born with CAH is a boy or a girl at first glance.  This is what I am referring to in my essay.

I can’t stress how sorry I am to have upset you.  I know that you must have to deal with people who have no idea what they’re talking about all the time, but the thing is I did try to understand it just a little before I posted my message.  I’m really not implying that you are strange or anything like that, and I feel awful that you think I’m using you and your fellow sufferers in a bad way; I can only promise you that that really isn’t my intention.  I am aware that there’s a lot more to do with CAH than the gender aspect, but it’s just that particular aspect which has relevance to me.

And as for my medical friend, she told me that it was an adrenal condition, and she didn’t say anything wrong - you said that you hope she learns a bit more but I don’t know what you mean by that.  She didn’t give me any incorrect information - she told me that it was caused by the adrenal gland sending out too many male hormones and she said that it can cause female babies to have male genitalia, or at least what appears to look like male genitalia.  And that’s what it says on this and many other websites, so there’s nothing wrong with what she said.

Maybe when I explained the whole feminism thing I wasn’t quite clear - it’s probably difficult to understand how I could relate the two issues in any sensible way in my essay, but it does make sense in context!  I’m not saying that the advent of feminism and the discovery of this condition have anything to do with each other - that would be ridiculous - but I am saying that in the past this was probably a condition which was not treated with the compassion and understanding which it deserves, and that hopefully in this day and age, now that we are more open about such issues, research can be developed, and it is less taboo than it no doubt was before.  Simultaneously, as feminism has developed more and become more widely accepted, studies into the distinctions and similarities between the sexes are being more thoroughly investigated.

Once again I am so sorry for offending you, because it really was the last thing I intended to do.  This essay is not about CAH, it simply refers to it; the only reason I posted a message on here was because I wanted to get my facts right, as I didn’t want to undermine my comments on what is a very serious and life-altering condition by saying anything which wasn’t true.  I hope you can understand that.