Male Labmate: Isn’t it kind of funny that a feminist blogger is researching the Y chromosome?
Me: I’m just doing it so I can scientifically prove that males are inferior.
Or so I can study human evolution on a haploid chromosome. Something like that.
25 comments
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Andie
January 13, 2011 at 5:01 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
…Wah wah.No, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t even qualify as ‘kind of funny’. Good luck with your labmate. Sounds like a peach.
Epistaxis
January 13, 2011 at 5:16 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
You should have said “I’m trying to find the cure.”
Dave Wright
January 13, 2011 at 5:19 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Does that mean that male birds are superior to female birds, since it’s the females that have unpaired sex chromosomes?
Laura
January 13, 2011 at 5:22 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I like you and your blog very much, Jen, but I don’t find either comment even remotely funny. No offense intended, but I am a woman who doesn’t have any appreciation for simplistic put-downs of either gender, nor insinuations that one is superior to the other. Claims like that, even in jest, certainly don’t help any cause striving for equality.
LadyAtheist
January 13, 2011 at 5:27 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
You should remind him that only the males were studied in virtually every important medical study, ever… until like 30 minutes ago.
MolecularFossils
January 13, 2011 at 5:39 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I had the same kinds of questions when I was doing ovarian cancer research as an undergrad.
Sam Barnett-Cormack
January 13, 2011 at 5:54 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Well, quirky in a not-really-at-all-paradoxical-or-ironic-but-in-those-directions sort of way, perhaps…What’s more ironic is, taking LadyAtheist’s point above, studies in all areas have generally been more likely to focus on men, but the Y chromosome is still relatively mysterious.On an entirely separate note, I find myself (after a circuitous train of thought that I don’t think people need describing) wondering if there are any organelles other than mitochondria (and chloroplasts in plants) that have their own little genome.
John Small Berries
January 13, 2011 at 6:16 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Of course, if men were to research the X chromosome, perhaps we’d finally be able to understand women.
Jen
January 13, 2011 at 6:27 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
…I DID find it funny. I guess I’m just an asshole too, then. Oh well
Andie
January 13, 2011 at 6:34 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Or I’m a humorless robot. Stupid cold has me set to auto-snark. No offence intended.
Thomas Everett Haynes
January 13, 2011 at 6:40 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
And we cant have sarcasm across either gender? If equality is what you crave than take it, men joke and make fun of EVERYTHING to give each other a hard time, so why not interact with them in the way they interact with others?
Andrew Hall
January 13, 2011 at 6:54 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Totally off topic, but I checked out that OK Trends link and found the article interesting.
Caliguy7281
January 13, 2011 at 7:56 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Well at least your Labmate knows what he’s in for now. P.S. Got my Skepticon calendar. Thanks for the heads up on those I didn’t even know they existed.
Kevin Lyda
January 13, 2011 at 8:06 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
And half of ourselves.
Lodevijk
January 13, 2011 at 8:07 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Har har, “mate”.
Valhar2000
January 13, 2011 at 9:14 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
It’s probably one of those “you had to be there” things.
Valhar2000
January 13, 2011 at 9:22 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Actually, only one X chromosome is ever active in any one cell (duplicate chromosomes tend not to work well, e.g. Down Syndrome), so in that respect we’re all pretty much the same.
cr0sh
January 13, 2011 at 9:59 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I seriously hope you dead-panned it, in that “Narbonic” mad-scientist kind-of-way…
Drakk
January 13, 2011 at 11:38 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
C’mon, I’m a guy and I realised it was sarcasm. And found it funny.We need a punctuation mark for sarcasm.
Eric_Rom
January 14, 2011 at 12:33 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
MUCH more likely.
Eric_Rom
January 14, 2011 at 12:36 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
This one and Andie can start a comedy club.
Dave Wright
January 14, 2011 at 2:03 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Mitochondria – the short answer is “no”.
syl
January 14, 2011 at 3:47 AM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I…
Sam Barnett-Cormack
January 14, 2011 at 1:14 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Generally, I believe both copies of a chromosome express, although for any given allele they may not affect the phenotype.Take even a simplistic view of dominance. Say for one gene the dominant allele is on copy A of the chromosome, and for another gene the dominant allele is on copy B. Both chromosomes are thus affecting phenotypes. It gets even more complex if you consider the real world of co-dominance and such things.
Ava Trimble
January 15, 2011 at 9:57 PM (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Sigh. Yes, there’s inappropriate humor out there, some of it relating to the inferiority of one gender or another….but there’s also just, you know, humor. Humor is useful: it helps us communicate, it helps us bond, it helps us explore ideas and taboos and areas of discomfort. Obviously Jen does not think women are inferior to men, and unlike some vocal feminist types, she also doesn’t think that men are inferior to women – this is not a situation of someone claiming “it was just a joke” as an excuse to say something nasty. It was, in fact, a joke. And joking about uncomfortable things is a great way to point out inherent absurdity….and be entertained/entertaining. There is nothing wrong with making a joke like this, and getting unduly offended by this sort of thing is precisely the kind of nonsense that gets progressive/leftist extremists….well, laughed at and ignored. Which is hardly the result we’re looking for, yes?Anyway, I thought it was funny. I feel quite confident that you don’t need it, Jen, but you officially have my permission to keep being funny about sexism. Doesn’t that make you feel better?! :D