Good biologists understand the complexity of sex determination & differentiation

I’ve been saying all along that good biology doesn’t categorize sex into two inflexible bins, but what does that matter — I’m just one weirdo liberal biologist at a liberal arts college, so I can be ignored. When our awful president puts out an executive order decreeing that there can be only two sexes, it’s only reasonable to ask other, bigger named biologists whether that reflects a scientific consensus.

HuffPost reached out to seasoned biologists around the country to help make sense of Trump’s definitions of sex, gender and “reproductive cells.”

They don’t know what he’s talking about, either.

Yeah, it doesn’t. They should have just asked me, or just about anyone teaching biology at the college level. Or look, they talked to experts in reproductive biology!

“Lots of folks are wondering the same thing!” Dr. Francisco Diaz, director of the Center for Reproductive Health and Biology at Pennsylvania State University, said of the Trump White House’s understanding of how biology works.

Embryos are “neither male nor female” by Trump’s definition, Diaz said, since there are no germ cells present at conception. Germ cells are reproductive cells that later become eggs and sperm, and that are set aside early in embryonic development.

“How about men after vasectomies? No germ cells there, are they still male?” asked Diaz, who is also an associate professor of reproductive biology at the university. ”Are postmenopausal women still female?”

“Not a super tight definition!” he concluded. “The ‘at conception’ wording seems forced to define personhood as beginning at conception and not really to define sex.”

They asked anthropologists!

Dr. Richard Bribiescas, an anthropology professor at Yale University and the president of the Human Biology Association, said the order’s definitions of “sex” and “gender” ignore all kinds of variations that take place in human development.

“Woman/man, boy/girl are gender identities that do not necessarily align with biological characteristics of sex,” he said in an email. “Genders are components of human variation that are influenced by culture, identity, and many other non-biological factors. To illustrate the difference between sex and gender, we can talk about male/female chimpanzees (our closest evolutionary relative) but it would be non-sensical to discuss chimpanzee women, men, boys or girls.”

Trump’s definitions of “female” and “male” are also flawed, said Bribiescas, because he is tying them to something called “anisogamy” in biology, or the observation that females of some species, including humans, tend to produce larger gametes (the reproductive cells that come from germ cells) compared to males.

Anisogamy is not a universal rule in biology, he said. But Trump’s executive order defines females as people belonging to the sex that produces “the large reproductive cell” and males belonging to the sex that produces “the small reproductive cell.”

The size of a person’s gametes is “just one characteristic among many (ie., genetic, hormonal, developmental, physical) that is used to describe sex,” Bribiescas said. “Clearly, this order is not fully informed by current biological science.”

They asked health experts!

Some health experts said the problems with Trump’s definitions of sex and gender go beyond his ill-informed understanding of embryonic cells. Put simply, neither sex nor gender is a simple binary.

This executive order “is highly problematic from a biological standpoint because it overly simplifies what we know to be an incredibly complicated developmental process,” said Dr. Josh Snodgrass, a professor of anthropology and global health at the University of Oregon. “It’s just not that simple from a genetic standpoint, and then becomes even more complicated with time under the influence of hormones, environmental exposures, and social experiences.”

They asked the president of the Human Biology Association!

Snodgrass, the past president of the Human Biology Association, noted that Trump’s order also doesn’t account for people who are intersex, which means they are born with genitals, chromosomes or reproductive organs that don’t fit into the typical male/female sex binary.

“This reads to me as coming from people who desperately want the world to be simple — for sex to be a simple binary and for us to return to some imagined time when this was more broadly accepted,” he said. “The problem is that it’s not only science that shows us that human biological variation is more complicated, but other cultures do and have also appreciated this for thousands of years.”

Snodgrass added that there is one more thing missing from the executive order that belongs in all conversations about sex and gender: empathy.

“The authors of this executive order seem like they are trying to twist science to fit their worldview, but that this worldview is painfully out of step with reality,” he said.

I tell you, it’s exhausting dealing with all these people who write to me to explain how biology works…and I’m cis. I don’t know how trans people deal with it, especially since stupidly flawed ideas about biology are being used to legally discriminate against them.

I’m going to have to blame the neo-liberal cabal of Dawkins-Pinker-Coyne for spreading the anti-trans propaganda and presenting their authority as superior to all of modern biology. Ignore them.

Shut the hell up Ben

Ben Shapiro chose to go after Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde. Unfortunately, he chose to do so by making up facts about history and Christian theology in a nasty, dishonest, bitter tirade, claiming she spoke absolute nonsense wokeness when she asked for mercy for the weak, and made a series of claims about what is and isn’t in the Bible.

Unfortunately for Ben Shapiro, that is, because a scholar of the Bible, Dan McClellan, responded with a savage multiple skewering. It’s good to see.

It’s enlightening to see how little Ben “facts not feelings” Shapiro cares about facts.

The price of eggs is too damn high!

Time to fire the president.

A dozen large, Grade A eggs cost an average of $4.15 in the U.S. last month – a nearly 37% increase from the year before – according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a much larger jump than the 2.5% increase of overall food prices.

The last time that average price was above $4 was two years ago, when the cost for a dozen eggs spiked to a record $4.82.

I mean, Trump’s the guy who goes from store to store and sets prices, right? Or are we now ready to dismiss that simplistic, direct connection out of hand?

In this case, there may be an indirect connection — the price is partly the result of the bird flu.

The egg industry has been impacted by a surge of bird flu cases in recent weeks. More than 13 million egg-laying hens died in December due to the virus – the most of any month last year – according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And another 3.3 million died in early January.

The losses are a big factor in higher egg prices, said Jada Thompson, a poultry economist at the University of Arkansas who researches how diseases impact markets.

“One of the hard parts is there’s this regional concentration of production,” Thompson said. “And so when a disease is going through and hitting farms in that area, it’s gonna affect multiple farms, and that’s gonna affect the supply of eggs – and that supply then will affect our prices.”

Everything is connected. Do you think censoring the NIH and putting science deniers in charge of our health might have consequences?

Just you wait until the next lockdown. They have a model plan to stop the virus in its tracks.

The virus has an extremely high fatality rate in birds, Sato said. Many birds die within a day or two — so when bird flu is confirmed on a farm, it affects the entire flock.

“Essentially, all of the birds that’s on that site will be depopulated, meaning they’ll all be put down, in order to control the virus and to make sure it’s contained in one area to not spread to other premises,” Sato said.

Oh no, not Thunderf00t!

It’s been over a decade since I even thought about Thunderf00t AKA Phil Mason. He had a blog here on FtB for about 3 days before he flamed out spectacularly — he decided to use his opportunity here to screech about feminism, and rant about all us cucks and how contemptible the site was. He was an embarrassing disaster, and we kicked him out (although, unfortunately, he kept his password to the backchannel and copied all the private discussions we’d had about this mess, and dumped them to the denizens of the slymepit.) He was a truly awful, obsessive, immoral person, we discovered.

Now Rebecca Watson picks at the scab and tells us what Thunderf00t is obsessed with now. It’s Elon Musk. I can’t fault him for that, but I can fault him for being so bad in his arguments. He is objectively bad at making arguments about anything.

Would you believe Thunderf00t still has one million subscribers on YouTube? Getting booted off freethoughtblogs didn’t do him any harm at all.

What fathers are supposed to share with their sons

Bryan Johnson, that weirdo millionaire who wants turn aging backwards, taking megadoses of supplements and transfusing himself with blood from his son, has another game he plays with his kids: plethysmography! Every night they strap a measuring device on to their penises, and then the next morning they compare the frequency and duration of their erections.

So far, the kid is winning.

How many of you would make this effort for your kids? And still aren’t in prison?

Stuffing a gag in the mouth of science

Yet another consequence of the election: scientific meetings are being shut down.

Several meetings of National Institutes of Health study sections, which review applications for fellowships and grants, were canceled without being rescheduled, according to agency notices reviewed by STAT. A Feb. 20-21 meeting of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, a panel that advises the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services on vaccine policy, was also canceled. So was a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria that was scheduled for Jan. 28 and 29.

The scope of the cancellations was unclear. It was also unclear whether they were related to the Trump administration’s freeze on external communications until Feb. 1.

Let’s stop all progress on research into vaccines and antibiotics. It’s not as if we’ll ever have another pandemic.

You know, this is going to get depressing fast. Every morning I’ll be getting up first thing in the morning to the latest horrible, evil act executed by this administration. I’m going to have to think of something to break this spiral of doom whirling away in my brain.

Here’s an appropriate comic.

Just change that last word from “January” to “United States of America.”

A Christian acting like they tell us a Christian is supposed to act

I’m bewildered. I’m an anti-theist, so it makes me uncomfortable when I see a priest acting charitably and kindly and proposing that people should follow a higher moral calling. I am forced to admit that there are good people in the priesthood. Like Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde.

Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and their spouses were in attendance for the church service at the progressive institution, and had to listen as the Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop at the cathedral, delivered a direct appeal to the president to conclude her sermon.

“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families—some who fear for their lives,” Budde said, but didn’t stop at LGBTQ rights, going on to address Trump’s plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

“The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals—they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” Budde continued.

The bishop then called on Trump “to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”

I did have some of my biases confirmed, because Trump and Vance squirmed and scowled and generally acted like demons listening to the Lord’s Prayer. The words burned! You can tell they’re already dreaming of their vengeance, because how dare an Episcopalian bishop suggest that citizens should not fear for their lives? Their little gang of followers sitting behind them look stupefied.

Of course, Trump went home and banged out a rant, demanding an apology. He’s not used to people criticizing him.

The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!

Lies from beginning to end. “So-called Bishop”? How dare she bring politics into a prayer for the presidential inauguration? There has not been a giant crime wave caused by immigrants. The service couldn’t have been that boring, since she stirred up a few members of the crowd.

She is pretty good at her job, since she made this hard-core atheist feel some charity towards her faith.

Now, please, if only our media would stop pandering to the madman and publish sincere criticisms of him every time he plays the petty tyrant, that is, every day. Make him squirm all the time.

AiG ❤️ Dawkins & Coyne

Answers in Genesis is thrilled at everything Trump promises to do. You know what else makes them happy? That Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne have embraced a Biblical worldview, finally realizing that sex is binary and simple, just like the Bible says. Skip ahead to about 7:30 if you don’t want to hear them fawning over Trump, don’t bother listening at all if you don’t want to hear their appreciation of Dawkins and Coyne (also some guy named Pinky or Pink…they knew there was “pink” in the name).

It doesn’t mean much. These are creationists, they always pick and choose which words they’ll hear. But isn’t it interesting that some New Atheists are converging on a dogmatic religious view?

Putting biology in perspective

This is some nice art illustrating the relative number of species in each clade in a particular environment. Insects, illustrated by a ginormous beetle, are the most diverse group, but spiders and other arthropods make a good showing, with that colorful mite on the left. Tetrapods are relatively insignificant — I suspect part of the reason for that is that we have exterminated so many of our fellow terrestrial vertebrates. Molluscs are surprisingly successful, but I’m not at all surprised at the size of those fungi.

I do not begrudge the insects their dominance, because after all, that’s spider food.

Our government has officially gone full TERF

Never go full TERF. Here’s another Trumpian declaration:

(a) “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity
(b) *Women” or “woman” and *girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively
(c) “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.
(d) ‘Female’ means a person belonging) at conception;to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception; to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.

I disagree, though. He’s not declaring all Americans female; he’s instead declaring that we’re all trans, because we changed from an undifferentiated state to whatever sex we’re assigned at birth. Unfortunately, his argument is built on a falsehood, because obviously sex is not immutable, it changes during fetal development, and we get another major shift at puberty (why do all the TERFs ignore puberty? It’s right there in our faces, everyone goes through it, and we definitely change at the cellular and gross morphological level). We can also trigger profound changes with hormones, and more subtly, brains can have properties of either, both, or no sex. You cannot reduce complex human identities to a single cell type produced by a single organ, although these regressive dimwits will try desperately.

Do I need to mention that you are not producing any reproductive cell, small or large, at conception?