That is why I chose this one. The news is making the rounds again under the title, "Human penises are shrinking because of pollution", but unfortunately all articles from the major news sites are of very poor quality.
It might be that toxic masculinity is correlated with an obsession over penis size or sometimes at least talking about it, or thinking that it matters when it doesn't.
The misandrists are thinking the only reason men would be concerned with damage to their bodies due to chemicals is because men have “toxic masculinity”.
But they aren’t, at least in our present culture decoupled, so people have a sense of whether the feel aligned in form and physiology with their gender identity. We’re going to find out in future decades as people experiment with gender identity and physical transformation how much this can be deconstructed, how much
of what we think of as gender is an association of things that often went together in the past, how much is about social perception, how much is about your own feeling of inhabiting your body, and how much is a free space for you to author
They aren't completely decoupled, no. But historically gender has varied wildly while sex hasn't, so it's intrinsically significantly decoupled from sex itself. Since the extent of that coupling is currently unknown the scientists provide an answer that reflects the uncertainty.
What we know for sure is that it's at least significantly decoupled, and almost certainly not completely decoupled.
That's one way to cash out the distinction, but "gender" can also mean sex. This usage (at least in English) dates back to the 13th century.
At best, it's ambiguous. You can't really know what someone means by "gender" without context, such as the mentioning of the sex/gender distinction. "Gender" has become somewhat of an auto-acronym.
If gender is social/cultural and there are infinite genders and it is a spectrum, what makes gender different from personality? How is that term useful in a way different from personality, and why should pronouns be altered for it?
This if often claimed but there seems to be no evidence for it. If anything, all efforts to change humans using social techniques have failed. Take gay conversion therapy, for instance. It just doesn't work. There is no evidence for it. We just can't mold ourselves using social pressure -- because it's really down to biology.
Presumably it’s about the fact that the gender one identifies with can differ from their biological sex (e.g., a person born as male may identify as female).
On one hand, an argument can be made that the freedom to identify with a gender different from one’s biological sex enables individuals to live more fulfilled lives that are not defined by gender stereotypes they’d otherwise be forced to live within.
On the other hand, an argument can be made that the distinction between gender identity and biological sex actually strengthens gender stereotypes and potentially hurts equality (e.g., women were historically supposed to be soft and pretty and under-achieving, so a female who doesn’t want to fit that stereotype would feel pressured to identify as a male rather than be her own unique person), and that there’s no clear consensus regarding a self-sufficient definition of what a gender is that doesn’t recursively involve biological sex.
Biology affects biological sex. For most people this means XX or XY chromosomes. There are probably some nuances of expression and phenotype in there too, and obviously some people's chromosomal situation does not fall into either of those buckets.
It's likely not possible to find widespread agreement on this, but I think the modern concept of gender is more or less about how you align with the traditional male and female roles in society (doesn't have to be in the binary sense). I don't think there's a known right answer for how much of this alignment comes down to "nature", and how much to "nurture". What's clear is that some people do not mentally identify with the sex and/or gender labels and/or roles that their chromosomes would traditionally assign to them.
The "biology doesn't care about your feelings" arguments are stupid because they don't amount to any more than excuses for ignorance—biology obviously can't fully explain gender as in gender roles. In fact, pretty much all the arguments I've seen against accepting transgender folks' identities rely on being obtuse about definitions to some degree.
that is the issue of social policy (i'm for accepting of whatever identities people have, whether it has scientific basis or not) while the article is supposedly about scientific findings
>obtuse about definitions to some degree
that is my point. It is an science related article and thus it is the context where significant degree of precision and obtuseness with definitions is kind of expected. Slipping in such a blanket imprecise statement is what i tried to point to.
I don't really think it's inappropriately imprecise, though. It's just an acknowledgement that the link between biological sex and gender self-identification is not well understood at this time.
>biology obviously can't fully explain gender as in gender roles
Biology also doesn't explain the racial roles American society used to have when it was segregated, but race is still biological and no amount of growing up around the conditions which are stareotyped as belonging to a certain race or speaking in the dialect a certain race speaks or feeling that you truly are of a certain race actually makes you of that race.
Depends? Playing baseball and getting hit in the gooch with a bad bounce is common occurrence. If you never played baseball or a sport where you are not gratuitously hit by object or person the gooch isn't really in the popular vernacular. Come to think of it, I wonder what Cricket players call it... lol.
Surprising but welcome: Some of us are fine with technical terms, others have their eyes glaze over. Using common slang makes the polysyllabic immediately apprehensible.
(I laughed too. Especially considering taint t'aint been a word all that long, eh?)
Some points are that it's going back up again and is largely caused by poor sleep health. Beyond that, I haven't looked this up but what is the actual relationship between lower sperm count and fewer children? I mean, you have maybe 2-3 children and millions of sperm, surely they are not linearly related.
Effects on mothers could matter a lot more, but also maybe they just don't want to do it.
> what is the actual relationship between lower sperm count and fewer children? I mean, you have maybe 2-3 children and millions of sperm, surely they are not linearly related.
Indeed they are far from it. If you "only" ejaculate a few million, you are practically infertile. Even with reproductive assistance like IUI, the chance of conception is something like 1% at a level of 2 million sperm post wash (i.e. when they've selected the most viable sperm).
34 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 83.1 ms ] threadThe misandrists are thinking the only reason men would be concerned with damage to their bodies due to chemicals is because men have “toxic masculinity”.
Misandry is popular in some circles.
then what gender is if not biology? Does it mean it is nurture instead of or as a significant addition to nature?
What we know for sure is that it's at least significantly decoupled, and almost certainly not completely decoupled.
At best, it's ambiguous. You can't really know what someone means by "gender" without context, such as the mentioning of the sex/gender distinction. "Gender" has become somewhat of an auto-acronym.
On one hand, an argument can be made that the freedom to identify with a gender different from one’s biological sex enables individuals to live more fulfilled lives that are not defined by gender stereotypes they’d otherwise be forced to live within.
On the other hand, an argument can be made that the distinction between gender identity and biological sex actually strengthens gender stereotypes and potentially hurts equality (e.g., women were historically supposed to be soft and pretty and under-achieving, so a female who doesn’t want to fit that stereotype would feel pressured to identify as a male rather than be her own unique person), and that there’s no clear consensus regarding a self-sufficient definition of what a gender is that doesn’t recursively involve biological sex.
It's likely not possible to find widespread agreement on this, but I think the modern concept of gender is more or less about how you align with the traditional male and female roles in society (doesn't have to be in the binary sense). I don't think there's a known right answer for how much of this alignment comes down to "nature", and how much to "nurture". What's clear is that some people do not mentally identify with the sex and/or gender labels and/or roles that their chromosomes would traditionally assign to them.
The "biology doesn't care about your feelings" arguments are stupid because they don't amount to any more than excuses for ignorance—biology obviously can't fully explain gender as in gender roles. In fact, pretty much all the arguments I've seen against accepting transgender folks' identities rely on being obtuse about definitions to some degree.
that is the issue of social policy (i'm for accepting of whatever identities people have, whether it has scientific basis or not) while the article is supposedly about scientific findings
>obtuse about definitions to some degree
that is my point. It is an science related article and thus it is the context where significant degree of precision and obtuseness with definitions is kind of expected. Slipping in such a blanket imprecise statement is what i tried to point to.
That's why science on gender always has small degrees of precision and is obtuse. It's moreso a question of soft science than hard science.
I don't think there's anything obtuse with associating the terms woman and man with their respective gametes.
Gametes serve the teleology of reproduction, through which we get the continuation of human life.
Gametes don't exist on a spectrum. They're a binary.
This is basic science.
Biology also doesn't explain the racial roles American society used to have when it was segregated, but race is still biological and no amount of growing up around the conditions which are stareotyped as belonging to a certain race or speaking in the dialect a certain race speaks or feeling that you truly are of a certain race actually makes you of that race.
(I laughed too. Especially considering taint t'aint been a word all that long, eh?)
Some points are that it's going back up again and is largely caused by poor sleep health. Beyond that, I haven't looked this up but what is the actual relationship between lower sperm count and fewer children? I mean, you have maybe 2-3 children and millions of sperm, surely they are not linearly related.
Effects on mothers could matter a lot more, but also maybe they just don't want to do it.
Indeed they are far from it. If you "only" ejaculate a few million, you are practically infertile. Even with reproductive assistance like IUI, the chance of conception is something like 1% at a level of 2 million sperm post wash (i.e. when they've selected the most viable sperm).
> And I have not read Count Down yet, though it's on my to-do list.
What's funnier is that whatever "safe" substitute humans will devise will prove to be more harmful a couple of generations hence.