I am male[1]: which is to say, ‘I’ am stunted in my development: a stalled female.

If the current scientific consensus on genetic determination of sex is accurate, this body (not I) has been following this developmental pathway for almost seventy years, from the moment its embryonic gonads ceased to be ‘indifferent’. 

Of course, the many other epigenetic and environmental determinants of physical attributes have steered and channelled the development and decline of this fruiting-body.  Muscle has come and gone.  Facial hair has been mastered (it took over thirty years): a tonsure has ‘evolved’ in parallel.  I have testes and a penis: each still seem to (more or less) function though the plumbing was disconnected in 1989.

As if in compensation, in patriarchal societies, ‘I’ get to keep my name – Bolland –  (and (allegedly) pass it on) on marriage.