Chemical Pollution Is Destroying Masculinity 773
myrdos2 writes "A host of common chemicals is feminizing males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people. Many have been identified as 'endocrine disruptors' or gender-benders because they interfere with hormones. Communities heavily polluted with gender-benders in Canada, Russia, and Italy have given birth to twice as many girls as boys, which may offer a clue to the mysterious shift in sex ratios worldwide. And a study at Rotterdam's Erasmus University showed that boys whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea sets rather than with traditionally male toys. It also follows hard on the heels of new American research which shows that baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminized genitals. It is calculated that 250,000 babies who would have been boys have been born as girls instead in the US and Japan alone. And sperm counts are dropping precipitously. Studies in more than 20 countries have shown that they have dropped from 150 million per milliliter of sperm fluid to 60 million over 50 years."
Cultural influence (Score:5, Insightful)
The choice of playing with dolls, tea sets or cars is CULTURAL and not genetic. This have been proved in numerous scientific researches.
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the religious right are hard in their belief that it is a "choice" and not a matter of biology. I don't choose to be straight, so I can't imagine how anyone could choose to be gay.
Good (Score:2, Insightful)
Too many people on this rock anyways. Imagine the disparity in China, which is, by and large, and enormous polluted sewer.
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:5, Insightful)
So will the religious right now be against pollution? I guess not, the religious right are also against science.
Thats not entirely true. They are against science that does not promote a given point they are trying to make. If it happens to agree with something they like the sound of, they generally quote findings as if the conclusion was known to them for quite some time.
So in this case it would constitute proof pollution is Gods punishment for everyone being gay.
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Trust me. I'm married. You wouldn't. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happily married. But one thing being married has taught me -- women are complex, emotional creatures who need a whole lot of care and feeding (well, actually, I knew that before I got married, but you learn it better after you're married). Taking care of one spouse is difficult enough.
What you want is polyamory, not polygamy. That way you get to have sex with the other women, and you only have take care of one. ;)
No comparisons (Score:1, Insightful)
I see no comparisons of polluted to non-polluted areas. Also, there is no attempt whatsoever to identify the cause of the incomplete observations. This looks like an environazi scare piece.
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends on a lot of other factors besides government encouragement.
See it like this: Polygamy is here, today. Depending on your culture or country, it might be officially sanctioned (muslims if n=4, or mormons) or not (most of the west, anything else that's catholic). But reality is that it simply takes different forms. In the west, for example, the rich manager simply has an affair. More often with knowledge of his wife than you'd think.
The common factor is that requires the ability to financially support two wives. That's why in muslim countries, even though they can have up to four wives, the vast majority only have one. They simply can't afford a second one. And that's why in western society, a lot of rich men do have two (or more) wives, going by different official terms, because they can afford to.
So - you still happy? :-)
Re:That sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cultural influence (Score:5, Insightful)
When my daughter was born, my wife and I were very adamant that she wouldn't have any cultural stereotypes imposed on her. Everything was very gender neutral, but she still ended up being obsessed with Barbie and pink stuff.
Some years later we had a son, and treated him with the same neutrality (and he had an older sister who was always dressing him in pink) - his first word was 'digger'.
You may be right - but you'll have a hard time convincing me.
Y-chromosome (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cultural influence (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a little of both. Much of human behavior is driven by instinctual needs. Men instinctually find women with wide hips attractive because women with wide hips have the best chances of having a successful child birth. Girls are instinctually taken to playing with dolls because they are nurturers by nature.
OTOH, in cultures where playing with dolls is acceptable for boys, boys will play with dolls, too.
That's because gender is not binary. Girls have a masculine side and boys have a feminine side. The human male has both testosterone and estrogen, the same is true of the human female. It's mostly a matter of how much of each hormone is present in the body that determines how effeminate a boy will be vs. how much of a 'tom boy' a girl will be.
Culture and upbringing also play a crucial role, however. Men are culturally shamed into not embracing their feminine side and women were once typically culturally shamed into not embracing their masculine side. Since then, we as a culture have begun embracing the 'strong' woman and the metrosexual man -- roles are changing.
How much of this is nurture vs. nature is a matter for debate and will probably be strongly debated for a long time.
Re:That sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Your wife is a lucky woman. :-)
Re:That sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Polyamory implies multiple relationships. Relationship == having to listen.
The sweet spot is multiple NSA partners and one best girl.
Silly homophobic scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
Studies in more than 20 countries have shown that they have dropped from 150 million per milliliter of sperm fluid to 60 million over 50 years
Ahem... I blame internet porn!
So what are the odds that this research was funded by some fundamentalist religious group ? No one just randomly sets out on random research, someone has to pay the bill, which usually (always) means there's something to be gained from the results. Today's world is anything but altruistic.
Re:Well, it could be worse. (Score:1, Insightful)
>> If we had more men than women, wouldn't there be more aggression?
>Why?
C'mon, just above we were stereotyping the religious right, and now we're trying to make sweeping generalizations about men and women. This is Slashdot, home of leftist atheist nerds, i.e. the babbling imbeciles of the geek community, try to play along.
Re:Cultural influence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd predict you're going to have a hard time convincing the gay rights movement that they're gay because of pollution too :-)
Its not the most glamorous defence of a lifestyle, is it?
Re:That sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
>>> women are complex, emotional creatures who need a whole lot of care and feeding
This is why you need to look for the independent women who take care of themselves. "Honey my car is dying. I need to buy a new one." "Okay. Good luck!" and off she goes.
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:5, Insightful)
The religious right is against millions-of-years-ago storytelling that masquerades as hard science. As we all should be.
As opposed to thousands-of-years-ago storytelling that they take as gospel?
Re:Unfortunately, in reality most likely different (Score:5, Insightful)
It goes deeper than that though - "attractive" meant "the guy who could kill or maim his rivals".
Look at animal species that are polygamous - even the "docile" herbivores engage in violence as the males compete for females. In species that engage in pair-bonding, violence is much less common.
Monogamy (enforced by law/church) was a way of reducing societal violence.
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:2, Insightful)
I suspect there's very little evidence indeed.
Truth is, much of this article smacks of the extreme feminist propaganda I've seen in place around the net. It's part of the whole "God is a woman, men are dying out and women will take over the planet" craziness you occasionally see in extreme feminists.
If I remember correctly, the extreme feminists (extreminists? exfeminists? crazy bitches?) have been bandying about similar "statistics" for YEARS now, and they were proven false several times over. I wouldn't be surprised to see these results falsified soon enough as well.
Re:That sucks (Score:1, Insightful)
Yah, but the males that are left have 2x better odds. TWOOOOO GIRLS FOR EVERY GUY
Except 250,000 of those girls have XY chromosomes. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Cultural influence (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
They'd choose "hollowed out wood bowl" and "hand-made spear". Even in Africa the sexes take on different tasks (women stay home; men hunt). It's hard for me to imagine it being different. Can you picture a pregnant woman chasing down a wild boar? Not me. Like it or not, biology is not the same.
Re:That sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
ah but see now they won't need to bug you.. they can talk amongst themselves. Leaving us time to play WOW : )
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
No you wouldn't, because you can only have sex so many times in a given day.
Two words: Coolidge Effect
Re:Y-chromosome (Score:5, Insightful)
The XY zygotes could fail to develop into males (as described in other replies which actually understand biology), or they could simply spontaneously abort -- in which case, the parents would try again.
If XY has a higher failure rate, then from a demographic standpoint there is a batch of babies that "should have" been males, but were born females because the male embryos failed. In this case, it wouldn't be about one physical baby that should have been male, but was born female -- but one kind of "demographic slot" should have been filled by a male baby, but got filled by a female baby instead.
Number 11+ (Score:3, Insightful)
This, and many other phenomena occurring due to overpopulation/pollution/etc. didn't make it into the previous story "This Is The Way The World Ends". The ones that did make it were for the most part enormous explosions and such (alien invasion? come on.) Those things are highly unlikely but spectacular. The truth will be spectacular only in retrospect, if there is anyone left to retrospect.
Re:That sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
Mormons have not officially sanctioned polygamy in over a century.
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:5, Insightful)
<irony>
It's clear from your neutral, non-emotionally charged and logical words and arguments that you are not at all pushing an agenda.
</irony>
Having been raised in a deeply catholic country and having studied science at an University along with some colleagues and even teachers which were both scientists AND Christians it never ceases to amaze me how the US seems to produce scores and scores of uneducated, anti-education, ignorant and even downright dumb "believers", incapable of reconciling religion with science.
Quick hint: it's perfectly possible to believe both in God and in the Big-Bang - they're not at all mutually exclusive as long as you look at the bible as a book full of allegories instead of trying to believe that the English translation is literally the word of Jesus.
Re:Cultural influence (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily. An infant has no "choice" in the matter of what toys they pick up. Toys are given to them by--you guessed it--the parents.
Most parents, firm believers (consciously or not) in gender roles, go ahead and ascribe gender roles to their children based on the kid's biology (If Jimmy has a penis, he gets the toy soldiers).
Later in life, if Jimmy wants a toy tank instead of a chemistry kit, we wouldn't say, "well, since he's a boy, he prefers more aggressive toys." I think it'd make more sense to say, "he's been raised in a culture that appreciates military-based toys."
So why should the toy soldier and doll-house be any different of an example?
Re:The right is against pollution.. (Score:3, Insightful)
What environmental legislation did Clinton sign?
\
I dunno, what environmental legislation did that republican congress pass?
Re:Cultural influence (Score:2, Insightful)
That only explains why the cultural difference came into being. It is still a cultural difference.
If you raise a girl as a boy, she'll probably prefer toy cars and guns. If you raise a boy as a girl, he'll probably prefer dolls.
Biology explains why our culture devoloped the way it is. Do not confuse that with a cultural difference being biological.
Re:Cultural influence (Score:4, Insightful)
If the task changes from one society to another, then that's cultural.
What I am questioning is what task is chosen and not that it's different tasks for girls and boys. The what part is cultural and therefore is not a good reference for scientific research.
There is no question regarding roles and sexes in every society, but people learn their sex roles from their society. They are not born with them. The proof for that is the fact that sex roles differ from one culture to another
Re:Unfortunately, in reality most likely different (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. No wife on Earth, and virgins promised in heaven leads to ...
Re:Cultural influence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cultural influence (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cultural influence (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cultural influence (Score:4, Insightful)
Please, don't take things from granted as if they were science just because they sound good.
I would say the same to you as you argue citing some research that sounds good for you ;-)
What those studies had proved is that in western society, gender roles are clear and passed to yougsters very early.
You can't study one culture and make general assumptions. Those researches are on the same level as : "people that eat x get more of y disease". Correlation is not causation.
Re:Mormons, or FLDS? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cultural influence (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cultural influence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
You could reduce that problem by marrying sisters. Don't know how they would feel about it, but most polygamous marriages tend not to actually be about sex; they generally sleep apart.
Re:Cultural influence (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you completely prevent your daughter from watching TV -- where she would encounter a steady stream of images of little girls dressed in pink and playing with dolls?
Did you prevent her from reading kids books, which are brimming with descriptions (and illustrations) of little girls wearing pink and playing with dolls?
Did you keep her out of all malls, toy stores, and clothing stores, which display row upon row of pink clothes and dolls in the "Girls" aisles?
Did you keep her locked in a basement, where she would never meet other little girls (whose social approval she would subconsciously seek) dressed in pink and playing with dolls?
Did you prevent her from interacting with relatives who disagreed with your philosophy, and got her dolls and pretty pink dresses?
Of course you didn't.
Societal gender norms creep into every household through a hundred back doors. You can't stop them. And unless you wore pink and played with dolls in front of your little girl, and your wife never did, you were probably doing nothing to counter their influence. Being neutral is not the same as working against.
And by the way: just a hundred years ago, pink was considered a boy's color, and blue was for girls [google.com].
Sorry, but the GP is correct: the whole "girls love pink" thing has long been accepted as cultural, not genetic, and a hundred years from now it could very well swing the other way.
Re:I, for one, (Score:2, Insightful)
Hrm... will they all be wearing thigh high boots and carry whips?
could be a good time.
Re:I for one applaud the news (Score:4, Insightful)
AS opposed to what? Sitting around and nitting with Grandma while listening to some R&B? I'll concede that the mid 1960s through the 1970s, rock was untouchable, but if you think today's slop called rock can even hold a candle to country, you are sadly not very open minded.
Country? You mean that Nashville twaddle with the metrosexual men with shaved chests wearing their little cowboy hats like cornpone fetish night at the gay bar?
Modern country is over-processed, undernourished crap, just like what's become of commercial rock and numetal. Gimme the old stuff like David Allen Coe.
Let's just agree that commercialism sucks because you'll never convince me that Nashville country is good. :)
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The real downside is that women who live togather tend to have synchronised menstral cicles. Imagine your pain on that one weekend off when you get home to find 5 wives and nobody to screw.
Or worse. 5 wives with PMS all bent on "discussing" your failures with you.
Re:Cultural influence (Score:3, Insightful)
Did you raise you kids in a sterile box without connection to the outside world?
I didn't think so.
A person may turn off its own conscious influence on his/her child but it can't turn off the subconscious.
Or did you and your wife started acting androgynously and asexually around your kids?
And even if YOU did do something extreme as that - what about the TV? Cousins? Friends? Neighbors? The outside world.
You know - the REAL influence on the children, not that "parenting" crap.
Re:That sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:5, Insightful)
That really is it in a nutshell.
A lot of American atheists are fighting against that literal minded Fundamentalist thinking... and to be fair, the cultural environment has an awful lot of that. It was a a REAL eye-opener for me (years and years into my mush agnosticism) when I read an interview with some Anglican Bishop where he says something like "well, of course the stories about Jesus aren't literally true..."- that a high ranking member of the clergy of a very established Christian group could even say that took me aback.
So then you get into, why believe at all? Is it a pragmatic, useful stance for moral guidance? Or is there an inescapable supernatural element? And - and this is crucial - are the *other* books full of allegories about equally as true, or do you think that one specific one or group is special in its connection to the truth?
Re:Cultural influence (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, because you're your child's only cultural influence...
Re:Cultural influence (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Y-chromosome (Score:5, Insightful)
That is absolutely not true. It has been long established they you can not "Treat" Homosexuality by playing with hormones. It had been tried for years with no real success. The "Treatment" the medical community used to give homosexuals was absolutely inhumane. If constant does of mind altering drugs, hormones, electroshock "therapy", and physical and verbal abuse can not change a persons sexual preference I'm of the opinion that nothing will.
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:4, Insightful)
They are against science that does not promote a given point they are trying to make.
That *IS* being against science. Science is not a bunch of facts, it is a process. If you pick and choose your data to support your hypothesis, you are not following that process. That is being against science.
Re:Mormons, or FLDS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, sorry for not differentiating the various small sects within one group of a specific subtype of one of the many abrahamic religions. Couldn't bother to. :-)
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:4, Insightful)
As a transplant from a more urban area of the US (Massachusetts), my personal theory is that the Atheistic scientists in the more urban centers tend to provoke the religous with their talk of science disproving God somehow (The lack of evidence while convincing, is never proof in and of itself). This leads to a tendancy toward radicalization (or fundamentalism) among those who feel as though they are being attacked. Then the willfully ignorant become more promenant for predicting this persecution all along, and then we get things like the creationist museum that recently opened.
Maybe the religious shot first, probably depends on who you ask, But I hold those that intentionally bait the religious with indifensible scientific stances to be as responsible for the present situation as the most vocal of the religous fundamentalists that are unwilling to accept any science that disagrees with stories originally told before the advent of heliocentricity. Religion and science are two different fields with two different goals. Science asks "HOW" and religion asks "WHY". Anyone attempting to use one to inappropriately draw conclusions within the others bailiwick are just full of shit.
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Insightful)
Although now that the story has finally appeared here, its comment section is all dumb jokes.
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:3, Insightful)
You missed one point though.
Unlike the professors who do "research" for attention and say the Y chromosome is disappearing, and there will be no men, the articles about this study say it's a problem and suggest we do something to fix it.
If you really want evidence, just read up on it.
Bisphenol A is a well-known one. This is nothing new. You get articles about this about once a year or so. The issue is what you can do to avoid all the nasties that attack your endocrine system out there.
Tips for men/parents/parents-to-be, regardless of your sex or that of your child/child-to-be:
Avoid soy/flax/etc.
Avoid fish.
Avoid milk products, or buy hormone free.
Buy hormone free meats.
Don't use cosmetics (including lotions), especially scented ones.
Buy organic foods when possible, and don't go huffing that can of RAID.
Avoid plastic food containers, specifically those with a 7 or 3, unless they are labeled as Bisphenol A (or BPA) free. This is basically impossible, so see the following few notes.
Do not microwave food in plastic containers / while covered with plastic wrap.
Do not re-use plastic bottles.
Do not put plastic food containers in the dishwasher.
The vast majority of the shit you get will be from what you eat, though you can also absorb it through your skin or by breathing in delicious fumes.
Basically, live like a lumberjack (that's okay).
These are observed effects of chemical pollution. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cultural influence (Score:5, Insightful)
And speaking as a livestock person with several decades and multiple generations' experience -- I agree with you. Cultures, by way of what's valued in individuals, exert selection pressure for and against certain phenotypes, which in turn tends to promote or eliminate the associated genotypes. This is most obvious in dogs (and to a lesser degree, in other livestock), where various breeds WITH DIFFERING INSTINCTS developed in response to selection pressure for various functions -- which is to say, a directly applied form of "culture".
A human culture that valued stay-at-home moms and denigrated "working girls" might likewise select strongly for genes that produce a temperament of demure mothers who never let their kids out of their sight. Whereas a culture that valued (or required) working moms might select for a more-independent female that's more willing to dump the kids in daycare.
It only takes a few generations for such selection pressure to have a profound effect on the relevant part of the gene pool.
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the reason gay men act feminine at times has more to do with them letting go of the macho image that straight men try to portray, especially in the United States, which is why European men are often accused of "acting gay"; because they don't worry about acting "macho" as much as American men do. Europeans in general don't have such a deep seated fear of being branded as gay. This hasn't always been the case in the United States either. Watch some old B&W movies and note how much more "gay" the male actors tend to be than they do today.
Re:What does the drop in sperm count imply? (Score:3, Insightful)
First, that's an average. Second, a hell of a lot of sperm don't make it.
Even with 150 million, conception is definitely not a sure thing. With half that many, it's harder still. With a quarter as many... you get the picture.
It only takes one. But that one has to make it, upstream, to a certain place, at a certain time.
Re:Is one of those chemicals... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That sucks (Score:1, Insightful)
'complex emotional creature' is just an euphemism for 'it's ok for me to be an irresponsible, self-centered brat and society should force males to worship me for it'
Re:About time somebody noticed (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't blame him, it's your own hyperbole that is at fault. You said that the EPA has failed utterly. If it has failed utterly then we might as well get rid of it.
What you're really trying to say is that the EPA isn't perfect and lets some things slip. That is, the EPA hasn't failed utterly, but needs to be improved.
Clarity often improves our ability to communicate and prevents these needless quarrels.
Re:That sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, who wants to sleep in a room with half a dozen other people snoring!
Re:Pollution = More Gay Men (Score:3, Insightful)
As a gay man, I have already done some of this research, and I can tell you without a doubt that gay men are NOT physically more feminine in general than straight men. There are masculine and feminine men in both camps, and I don't see any masculine/feminine bias in either direction. And there is certainly no bias towards a smaller penis size in gay men.
I knew this.
I think the reason gay men act feminine at times has more to do with them letting go of the macho image that straight men try to portray, especially in the United States, which is why European men are often accused of "acting gay"; because they don't worry about acting "macho" as much as American men do. Europeans in general don't have such a deep seated fear of being branded as gay. This hasn't always been the case in the United States either. Watch some old B&W movies and note how much more "gay" the male actors tend to be than they do today.
Wow, that makes so much more sense. Men here really are locked into this homophobic machismo... aren't they? It's really... stupid.