Slashdot Mirror


Chemical Pollution Is Destroying Masculinity

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."

33 of 773 comments (clear)

  1. Cultural influence by danieltdp · · 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.

    --
    -- dnl
    1. Re:Cultural influence by PinkyDead · · Score: 4, 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.

      --
      Genesis 1:32 And God typed :wq!
    2. Re:Cultural influence by morgan_greywolf · · 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.

    3. Re:Cultural influence by rhyder128k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How did you isolate them from all cultural influences?

      --
      Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
    4. Re:Cultural influence by theaveng · · Score: 4, 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.

      --
      FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
    5. Re:Cultural influence by danieltdp · · Score: 3, 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

      --
      -- dnl
    6. Re:Cultural influence by danieltdp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They watch tv. They get friends. They had teachers. They learn from many sources! Parents are just the first reference.

      --
      -- dnl
    7. Re:Cultural influence by danieltdp · · Score: 3, 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.

      --
      -- dnl
    8. Re:Cultural influence by danieltdp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      BTW, contrary to what boys usually say: action figures are just dolls :-)

      --
      -- dnl
    9. Re:Cultural influence by Eryq · · 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 .

      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.

      --
      I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
    10. Re:Cultural influence by Reziac · · Score: 4, 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.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  2. Re:Pollution = More Gay Men by dilvish_the_damned · · Score: 4, 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.

    --
    I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
  3. Re:That sucks by morgan_greywolf · · 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. ;)

  4. Re:That sucks by Tom · · 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? :-)

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  5. Y-chromosome by dakup · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How can a boy though with one Y-chromosome become a girl? Does the chromosome change??

    1. Re:Y-chromosome by Evangelion · · 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.

    2. Re:Y-chromosome by tilandal · · Score: 4, 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.

  6. Re:That sucks by VoidCrow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your wife is a lucky woman. :-)

  7. Silly homophobic scientists by billcopc · · Score: 3, 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.

    --
    -Billco, Fnarg.com
  8. Re:Pollution = More Gay Men by geminidomino · · 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?

  9. Re:Unfortunately, in reality most likely different by schon · · 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.

  10. Re:That sucks by Anonymous Coward · · 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 : )

  11. Re:That sucks by srussia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No you wouldn't, because you can only have sex so many times in a given day.

    Two words: Coolidge Effect

    --
    Set your phasers on "funky"!
  12. Re:Pollution = More Gay Men by Aceticon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The religious right is against millions-of-years-ago storytelling that masquerades as hard science.

    <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.

  13. Re:Unfortunately, in reality most likely different by SickLittleMonkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Indeed. No wife on Earth, and virgins promised in heaven leads to ...

    --
    main() {1;} // zen app
  14. Re:I for one applaud the news by jollyreaper · · Score: 3, 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. :)

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  15. Re:That sucks by Forge · · Score: 4, Insightful
    That's not the downside of Polygamy.

    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.

    --
    --= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
  16. Re:Pollution = More Gay Men by kisrael · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    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?

    --
    SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
  17. Re:Pollution = More Gay Men by Hatta · · Score: 3, 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.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  18. Re:Mormons, or FLDS? by Tom · · Score: 4, 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. :-)

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  19. Re:Pollution = More Gay Men by crmarvin42 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Like most extreme interpretations of anything, (religion, eugenics, etc.) there exist a vocal majority that confuse the intelligent but inattentive that exist within their community. I'm a research scientist in the US at Purdue University, and MOST of the faculty and graduate students in my department are devoutly religious. Talk about activities done with their church groups and invitations to visit their church are fairly common, especially if you are a new student or recent hire.

    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.

    --
    Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
  20. These are observed effects of chemical pollution. by baffled · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Imagine how many effects aren't obvious.

  21. Re:Pollution = More Gay Men by GayBliss · · Score: 5, 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 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.