At a conference in 1969, Jost explained: ‘Becoming a male is a prolonged, uneasy and risky adventure; it is a kind of struggle against inherent trends toward femaleness.’ The masculine journey was seen as a heroic quest worthy of investigation. In contrast, the now-famous French embryologist referred to females simply as the ‘neutral’ or ‘anhormonal’ sex type. Ovaries and oestrogen were considered irrelevant to our story: inert and insignificant. Our sexual development was unreactive and scientifically trivial. Females basically ‘just happened’ because we lacked the embryonic balls to be male.
