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Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

nautil.us

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Re: Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

#121

Post by bequanna »

RajT88 wrote: post #76
31337Logic wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is at this point, I believe, that it is entirely worth reminding ourselves that humans are, in fact, animals.

It's usually worth reminding ourselves of. I'm not sure what you're getting at here though.

The point I think the parent is trying to make is that there are now many people who see all of human behavior as some sort of construct vs. innate behaviors that exist all over the animal kingdom.

In fact, very few behaviors are specific to only humans.

We aren’t that special. At the end of the day, we’re just very clever mammals.

Re: Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

#122

Post by Guid_NewGuid »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #99
SubiculumCode wrote: post #18

Throughout the history of biology, psychology, cognitive science, and neurosciences, there has been a constant back and forth between those who would exaggerate sex differences, and those who would understate sex-differences as purely social constructs with no affect on biology other than what is caused via experienced socializations. The truth is more complicated than any of those extremes. Important differences in…

I also find it interesting that the generally smart and data driven crowd at HN is so ideological driven when it comes to the reality of diversity in sex phenotypes, which are about 1% of the general population, and about 15% of those with autism.

Yeah the culture war seems to be seeping in everywhere and particularly badly on these topics as the bulk of comments on this article seem to show.

At the boundaries even in humans this stuff gets really fuzzy and has real world implications for people who get barred from their careers or forced to undergo medical procedures to be more easily categorised[0][1].

While it might be a rare scenario (between 0.08% and 1% seems to be Wikipedia's intersex estimates depending on definition) a system is only as good as its protection for the minority case.

And from an intellectual curiosity standpoint this is kinda cool and interesting right? Like this breaks our lazy categorization and shows that the world is so much more intriguing than our dumb models.

And instead of 'intellectual' and 'curious' discussion we get the equivalent of a Tennessee GOP rally about school bathrooms...

[0]: https://apnews.com/article/europe-cape-town-africa-south-afr...

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone_regulations_in_...

Re: Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

#123

Post by swalling »

rayiner wrote: post #25
cantSpellSober wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're describing a difference in sex vs gender. From the linked article: > Gender [...] involves a set of behaviors and norms that shape how men and women act, prescribe how they ought to be, and specify what it means to be a man or a woman > ... Unlike in any other animal, gendered behavior in humans is wildly different across cultures Sex needs a definition too: > Sex appeared to be purely, simply genetic—until 1…

The assertion that gender is “socially constructed” does merit the anti-woke talking point. Mammals have social roles based on biological sex: female penguins do one thing, male penguins do a different thing. Gender in humans isn’t fundamentally different. Like everything else, humans have layered social and cultural constructs on top of sex and gender. For example, cultures have different ways of marking the transit…

It’s not true that biological sex is completely deterministic in the behavior of non-human animals. For instance: there are gay penguins where two males will adopt eggs to hatch and raise chicks. Homosexuality and associated behavior changes are observed in a wide array of species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

Conservatives trying to use biology to argue that gender and sex are fully equivalent is akin to 19th and 20th century attempts to use evolutionary theory to support racist social policies. It's not only wrong morally, it's bad science.

Re: Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

#124

Post by mantas »

paulddraper wrote: post #106
mantas wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For starters why are single sex sports and single sex changing rooms so controversial? Because men are much stronger physically due to genetical differences. Just check out top records in various sports.

You're in violent agreement.

[flagged]

Re: Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

#125

Post by Spivak »

fauxpause_ wrote: post #61
giantg2 wrote: post #11

"(a system that’s distinct from our diverse gender identities)" Please don't take this the wrong way, this is a genuine question. Is there an explaination somewhere of what purpose gender identities serve and what benefits that provides (ie why don't animals need them)? Aside from reproduction, I don't see how gender would really influence anything.

Humans are relatively unique when it comes to sexual relationships. We’re very developed and our social roles are hugely important. It’s not crazy to think that there are aspects of our sexual identities that don’t appear in other animals. We’re not unique in being unique. Consider our relatively close relative, the bonobos, in which they’re all bisexual sluts. Gender is sort of a natural thing in human identities, e…

> They often “get it wrong” and the individual will later feel they are the wrong gender WITHOUT necessarily knowing they were intersex at birth.

You see a similar phenomenon with trans people too. By a huge margin trans people know they're the wrong gender at age 5-6 well before they have any idea what boys vs girls even means. And it can't be they go with whatever people say they are because otherwise they wouldn't reject it. It's not something socialized. The expression is cultural -- boys have short hair, girls wear makeup, but the identity is fixed.

It's not really all that surprising in hindsight but humans seem to have an internal sense of their gender that's independent of their chromosomes. I mean if you swapped my body or did some weird gene therapy I would still know I'm a woman.

Trans folks seem to just be people for whom the firmware doesn't match the hardware. It's not even up there with the weirdest human things and now that we don't stigmatize it as much we're seeing that it happens wayyy more often than we thought it did.

Re: Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

#126

Post by Karawebnetwork »

howdysam123 wrote: post #73

[flagged]

Only a tiny minority of human beings are transgender. Even in cultures where the concept of a third gender is celebrated, it is a rare phenomenon.

Canada is the first country to provide census data on transgender and non-binary people: "Of the nearly 30.5 million people in Canada aged 15 and older living in a private household in May 2021, 100,815 were transgender (59,460) or non-binary (41,355), accounting for 0.33% of the population in this age group."

Re: Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

#127

Post by jghn »

rayiner wrote: post #25
cantSpellSober wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're describing a difference in sex vs gender. From the linked article: > Gender [...] involves a set of behaviors and norms that shape how men and women act, prescribe how they ought to be, and specify what it means to be a man or a woman > ... Unlike in any other animal, gendered behavior in humans is wildly different across cultures Sex needs a definition too: > Sex appeared to be purely, simply genetic—until 1…

The assertion that gender is “socially constructed” does merit the anti-woke talking point. Mammals have social roles based on biological sex: female penguins do one thing, male penguins do a different thing. Gender in humans isn’t fundamentally different. Like everything else, humans have layered social and cultural constructs on top of sex and gender. For example, cultures have different ways of marking the transit…

> female penguins do one thing, male penguins do a different thing. Gender in humans isn’t fundamentally different.

Do you know this to be true for the set of *all* penguins? Or just most of them?

Re: Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

#128

Post by fauxpause_ »

Spivak wrote: post #125
fauxpause_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are relatively unique when it comes to sexual relationships. We’re very developed and our social roles are hugely important. It’s not crazy to think that there are aspects of our sexual identities that don’t appear in other animals. We’re not unique in being unique. Consider our relatively close relative, the bonobos, in which they’re all bisexual sluts. Gender is sort of a natural thing in human identities, e…

> They often “get it wrong” and the individual will later feel they are the wrong gender WITHOUT necessarily knowing they were intersex at birth. You see a similar phenomenon with trans people too. By a huge margin trans people know they're the wrong gender at age 5-6 well before they have any idea what boys vs girls even means. And it can't be they go with whatever people say they are because otherwise they wouldn't…

Hmm wow that does not match my expectations but the average age of gender dysmorphia beginning appears to be about 6 years old for adult trans individuals. I would have expected a closer tie to puberty but it would seem you’re closer to the mark.

Re: Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

#129

Post by ramblenode »

giantg2 wrote: post #79
rsynnott wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean biological purpose? This may be the wrong question to ask; gender is arguably to a large extent part of _culture_, which is more or less the stuff that we've built on top of biology. There's no _biological_ reason that ancient Celtic women were allowed own property while contemporary ancient Roman women were a literal possession of their father or husband and ancient Greek women weren't really allowed lea…

I understand that historically. However, I would argue that those restrictions were actually by sex as changing gender was not really an option back then. Even if one tried, I assume most cultures would still enforce those ideas based on sex. We have very few restrictions on gender today, and the ones we do have still tend to exclude transgender individuals (combat roles, some levels of some sports, some bathrooms).…

> I assume most cultures would still enforce those ideas based on sex.

Hijra is a third gender used by people in India that was first documented several thousand years ago [0]. There are similar third genders in other Southeast Asian countries.

Galli: a priest/priestess in Hellenistic Greece and Rome that wasn't considered to be man or woman [1].

Muxe: third gender of Mexico that may have pre-dated Spanish colonization [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)#History

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galli

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muxe

Re: Animal Sex Determination Is Weirder Than You Think

#130

Post by karmakaze »

Although many species of jellyfish have some capacity to reverse aging and revert to a larval state, most of them lose this ability once they reach sexual maturity. However, Turritopsis dohrnii appears to be the only known species able to repeatedly revert back into a larval stage even after sexual reproduction.

If the above could be combined with the weird sex determination, then you could have a single organism that grows as one sex, reverts, then grows as a different sex, repeat.

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