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Thursday, January 10, 2013

Sex We Were All Women Once

Posted by Dan Savage on Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 12:11 PM

Genius:

Via JoeMyGod.

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@21 I wonder if we get the same restorative testosterone peak then?

And also, that's why it makes you nauseous/hurts up in your abdomen, when you get hit in the balls.

Posted by gnot on January 11, 2013 at 7:47 AM

I fucking love science <-- check out the facebook page. Cool stuff there. I am not affiliated.

Posted by Barbara on January 11, 2013 at 5:34 AM

@4, yes, women do wake up with engorged clits. I read something very recently about how both men and women wake up hard. Of course, it's just less noticeable for us.

Posted by Write or Wrong on January 10, 2013 at 10:34 PM

I thought fetuses weren't people.

Posted by Corydon on January 10, 2013 at 6:22 PM

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. We were all fish once.

Posted by mint chocolate chip on January 10, 2013 at 4:34 PM

Also someone who's Y chromosome does not activate and is born identifiably female will be treated as and raised as a female. This video mixes up DNA, sex, and gender and treats them as all the same. It really didn't need to but unforntunetly did.

Posted by Spike1382 on January 10, 2013 at 4:10 PM

I appreciated that they commented that some consider that stage of development gender neutral, but I wish they'd put more emphasis on it. A lack of penis/testicles does not make one a woman any more than a lack of breasts makes one a man. Prior to the development of the sex organs, the gonads truly are gender neutral. So, phenotypically speaking, the organism is neither male nor female.

Posted by DarthKelly on January 10, 2013 at 2:44 PM

@10: Yes.

Posted by Ipso Facto

on January 10, 2013 at 2:30 PM

@13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development…

Posted by cgd on January 10, 2013 at 2:12 PM

@13 I think he's mostly making a semantic argument. The undifferentiated glands in a five week old embryo are just called "gonads" not "ovaries." Calling them ovaries is a bit like calling a five week old XX embryo a "woman."

Posted by GermanSausage on January 10, 2013 at 2:07 PM

@12 Being generous, I'll assume you're speaking from a more educated position than the intro bio most of us learned in college. Please, educate us.

Posted by wxPDX on January 10, 2013 at 1:49 PM

Oh, bullocks. The ovaries don't turn into testes. This is what you get out of science for dummies like "everybody started out female."

Posted by cgd on January 10, 2013 at 1:47 PM

Genesis 1:26
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness..."

ipso dipso.... there are boy gods and girl gods.

Posted by monotheism is relative on January 10, 2013 at 1:41 PM

In the first Creation story of the Bible (before the one with Adam and Eve), we have this:

Genesis 1:27
"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

So... mankind, male AND female, are in the image of God. Ipso facto, God resembles a 5-week old fetus?

Posted by Brooklyn Reader on January 10, 2013 at 1:17 PM

I would hope that a lot of this is not news to anyone that passed 8th grade biology in a public school.

Still, it's entertaining, and an easy, informative vid to point to when the question is posed about why men have nipples. Thanks for sharing, Dan.

Posted by Knat on January 10, 2013 at 1:16 PM

Some of us were making the proper choices, even in the womb. What?

Posted by wisepunk on January 10, 2013 at 1:13 PM

Apparently, all men are just variations of the female form.

Posted by SeattleKim on January 10, 2013 at 1:06 PM

It is proper that the video acknowledges that not everyone considers these embryos to be truly female. That totally deflated all my complaints. This thing was very expressive and memorable.

The SRY does stunt female traits. It also promotes male ones.

Posted by DRF on January 10, 2013 at 12:59 PM