Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by mrpg on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-touch-my-genitals dept.

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Male mice grow ovaries instead of testes if they are missing a small region of DNA that doesn't contain any genes, finds a new paper published in Science.

The study, led by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute, could help explain disorders of sex development in humans, at least half of which have an unknown genetic cause.

Mammals will develop ovaries and become females unless the early sex organs have enough of a protein called SOX9 at a key stage in their development. SOX9 causes these organs to become testes, which then direct the rest of the embryo to become male.

Source: https://www.crick.ac.uk/news/science-news/2018/06/14/non-coding-dna-changes-the-genitals-youre-born-with/

Sex reversal following deletion of a single distal enhancer of Sox9 (DOI: 10.1126/science.aas9408) (DX)


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:02AM (17 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:02AM (#702395)

    Would those cures fit into your narrative? If a portion of humans naturally turns out to be homosexual, if it's just part of the normally occcurring variation between individuals, why would there be a need to cure anything?

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:53AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:53AM (#702405)
    Matter of preference? Maybe some homosexuals might prefer not to be homosexual even without outside pressures.

    All sorts of people in the world... There's a guy who is modding himself to look more and more like a lizard even if he wasn't naturally born looking like one.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:27AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:27AM (#702441)

      Matter of preference? Maybe some homosexuals might prefer not to be homosexual even without outside pressures.

      And how are we going to identify these "some"? Gene modification on this fundamental level likely needs to be done before the fertilized egg starts cell division.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:56AM (9 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:56AM (#702406) Journal

    Homosexuality defeats the purpose of sexual differentiation, which is to facilitate gene mixing at procreation. That makes it not only abnormal but wrong. Wrong things often occur in nature, statistically speaking, this does not make them less wrong. Appeal to nature would justify any crime, for example.
    Calling the above a narrative does not make it one.

    There is no need to cure homosexuality from the societal POV unless the number of orthosexuals dwindles to the point of hurting variation.

    From the point of view of the individual, instead, homosexuality prevents YOU to procreate without needing The System, which adds another point of failure to your already threatened existence as an individual vs. a drone. Since it is YOUR life, it's not my business to dictate anything, but I would be concerned when the most obedient bowing to the system is considered an alternative lifestyle.

    Finally, lumping homosexuals with bisexuals does not make any sense, and it is promoted to cover the real issue. Bis don't have the problem at all. The correct categorization is orthosexuals, deviants (people with strange tastes but otherwise able to procreate), handicapped (asexuals, homosexuals, old people, kids).
    Needless to say (no, it's not needless for you brainwashed meatbags), as the categorization clearly shows, there is no sense in persecuting any category.

       

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @09:32AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @09:32AM (#702468)

      From the point of view of the individual, instead, homosexuality prevents YOU to procreate

      So what? From the point of view of the individual, there's nothing wrong with not procreating if you don't want to.

      And from an evolutionary standpoint, it is a boon if those who don't want to procreate don't procreate.

      • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:27PM (2 children)

        by Bot (3902) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:27PM (#702512) Journal

        > there's nothing wrong with not procreating if you don't want to.
        A corner case, which does not explain all the fuss about adoption by same-sex couples.

        --
        Account abandoned.
        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:19PM (1 child)

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:19PM (#702695) Journal

          Adoption is not procreation.

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:37PM

            by Bot (3902) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:37PM (#702729) Journal

            It is the closer thing when you can't procreate. Inability which is a temporary condition, sure. In case in-vitro birth became doable without fuss and without manipulation of genetic material to produce a docile meatbag, the whole problem would cease AFAIC.

            --
            Account abandoned.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:09PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:09PM (#702723)

        And from an evolutionary standpoint, it is a boon if those who don't want to procreate don't procreate.

        Wrong. The more intelligent and/or educated a person is, the less they're interested in procreation. To the point that two uni grads have less then 2 children on average in most countries and globally. So, give it a few years and you end up with a net reduction in intelligence.

        The reason is pretty simple: Raising kids is time demanding and difficult and only extraordinary means can alleviate some of the difficulties. So, smart people see no gains and only risk, and slap on a condom. Stupid people just boink away fearing skyfather will zap them dead and roast their non-alcoholic spirits for eternity.

        A few generations later, everyone are idiots and religions. So, as it turns out, the bible thumpers were right, education is evil and the meek shall inherit the earth. Yay to statistics!

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @10:51AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @10:51AM (#702491)

      I suppose that means that these cures would indeed fit into your narrative. I only used the word narrative because you did. It's cheap rhetoric to call opposing opinions a narrative and pretend your own opinion is something else. And it even doesn't make much sense if you would actually take the trouble to think about it. If the gene mixing you're concerned about produces the capability to turn out homosexual than you can be pretty sure that there is an evolutionary advantage connected to it. Evolution would have filtered it out of the population over the generations if there wasn't. I don't know what it is, but I can imagine it may have a relation to the ability of males to work together with other males rather than just seeing competitors, and the same goes for females. And it's also worth noting that most sex doesn't produce children, a couple that has sex once a week does not produce 52 children a year. Sex has social functions too, such as releasing tension, it's not just about gene mixing.

      But don't worry, I don't feel a need to cure your ignorance, so I'll leave it at this.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:46PM (2 children)

        by Bot (3902) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:46PM (#702518) Journal

        > It's cheap rhetoric to call opposing opinions a narrative

        It is also correct. You say it yourself, "opinion". Mine were not opinions. This is an opinion: the very choice of word "heterosexual" is doublespeak. This is a fact: heterosexual is etymologically recent and should be defining non-orthosexuals, respecting the traditional dualism between ortho- and hetero- prefixes.

        In fact your objection was on one aspect and offered an anthropomorphization of evolution clearly clashing with that other fact, that genetic disorders persist no matter their long term usefulness. Skin that ruptures, anemia, stuff like that. Because their usefulness is potential, under special circumstance (like phobias are), I guess, or because they are unavoidable side effects of variance. So, sorry I reject your objection. All the rest is fluff.

        --
        Account abandoned.
        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:03PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @02:03PM (#702541)

          The word heterosexual originates from Richard von Krafft-Ebing's book Psychopathia Sexualis from 1892, the word orthosexual from William Haver's The Body of This Death: Historicity and Sociality in the Time of AIDS, 1992. Orthosexual is etymologically far more recent than heterosexual. Did you perhaps mean to say that the word ortosexuals should be defining non-heterosexuals?

          • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:51PM

            by Bot (3902) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:51PM (#702733) Journal

            The use of ortho and hetero, see orthodoxy, orthography, predates the hetero/homo use.
            My argument is that hetero/homo avoids making a judgment on normality, which ortho/hetero would have done, but reverses the connotation of hetero. Not the most straightforward way to express oneself.

            On one hand the science is not about judgement, on the other hand it's not a moral judgement and in other cases science makes use of the added connotation, see orthodontics.

            --
            Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:18AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:18AM (#702437)

    Just wait until radical feminists suggest that it be used to cure being male...

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:37AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @08:37AM (#702447)

      Around here, it's a lot more likely that a bunch of radical MRA incels will suggest it will be used to outlaw being female.

    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday July 04 2018, @11:48AM

      by MostCynical (2589) on Wednesday July 04 2018, @11:48AM (#702499) Journal

      "Male" will be fine
      "Masculine" will be the problem.

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex