[HN Gopher] Phthalates Threaten Humanity's Ability to Reproduce
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Phthalates Threaten Humanity's Ability to Reproduce
Author : mustafa_pasi
Score : 55 points
Date : 2021-03-24 20:10 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| adamcstephens wrote:
| At least this article doesn't make the absurd claim a recent
| Guardian article did. That reproduction could go to zero.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| 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.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Wow, what a title. It's like it was hand crafted to get the
| toxically masculine on board with environmental protection.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| What does that have to do with toxic masculinity?
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| 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.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Guessing it's because "Huge penises are more manly!"
| ergo, Save our penises! ergo, Stop pollution!
| klyrs wrote:
| Very rough caricature: nothing is scary
| (including/especially harm to others) until it threatens
| the wellbeing of one's penis.
| trhway wrote:
| >biological factors don't necessarily affect people's genders
|
| then what gender is if not biology? Does it mean it is nurture
| instead of or as a significant addition to nature?
| DoktorDelta wrote:
| As I understand it, Gender is the socio-cultural aspect, and
| Sex is the biological term.
| monkeycantype wrote:
| 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
| sudosysgen wrote:
| 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.
| vehemenz wrote:
| 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.
| strogonoff wrote:
| 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.
| caconym_ wrote:
| 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.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| >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.
| trhway wrote:
| >accepting transgender folks' identities
|
| 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.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Gender is an issue of social policy, psychology,
| neuropsychology, and biology. Sex is an issue of science.
|
| 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.
| caconym_ wrote:
| 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.
| xxxyyjj5 wrote:
| > rely on being obtuse about definitions to some degree
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| monkmartinez wrote:
| Did she really replace AGD or anogenital distance, with Taint and
| Gooch? My goodness, I laughed like a 12 year old when I read
| that!
| nielsbot wrote:
| "gooch"? Am I a square for never having heard that?
| [deleted]
| astrange wrote:
| A counterpoint thread to the part about sperm count:
| https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1372178337016201224
|
| 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.
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(page generated 2021-03-24 23:01 UTC)