More Awesome Breakthroughs In YE SCIENCE!

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Ballet Day
Chinese New Year
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Birthday - Charles Dickens Birthday (novelist)
Independence Day (Grenada)

 

I’ve seen this a few times from various sources. Check it out: Female Sperm!

 

In my capacity as a science fiction writer* I am COMPLETELY OPPOSED to this, on account of it’s screwing up my definition of male and female EVEN MORE, GOD DAMMIT. For me, the distinction is simple—if you’re going to use the terms female and male, when you boil away all the extra hormones and secondary characteristics and mechanics and hermaphrodites and culture and whatnot, then you’re left with “females produce ova, and males produce sperm.” With critters like mine, that’s the only distinction you can make, and even that gets really confusing when even more sexes show up.  Now what am I going to do?

 

On the other hand, this would rather help with the problem I’m having with that one character who absolutely refuses to be female, despite the fact that no adult in his species has male sex organs in any way, and he frequently lays eggs.

 

And on the not-sci-fi hand, how cool is this?

 

 

*More or less.

Comments

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Sex and gender oddities and alternatives fascinate me.

it sounds more ranty than I meant, sorry... this is more amused musing

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Wiiildd... and a bit hard to believe. Also, I don't think it poses much danger to the male/female classification system, as it's still something that requires scientific assistance rather than occurring in nature. Well, maybe you're looking at the "science behind the science" more than I am here.

What's odd, though, is while I was reading the article, it's all about how now gay couples can have their very own babies... which, yay! ...but I run into the same feeling of weirdness that I get about fertility science in general. Namely... as a species, we have made this planet unbearably full of ourselves. We are in no danger of having a baby shortage any time in the foreseeable future. In fact, we have rather more babies floating around than people willing/qualified to care for them, never mind about the resources they consume.

And yet, top minds are working out ways for us to have *more* babies, because everyone is still entrenched in this evolutionarily outdated addiction to having one's own personal genetic offspring. Frankly, considering what I've seen of humans, I'm really not sure all of us *should* be breeding. I know a good number of people who shouldn't. So... I always feel a bit weird reading about stuff like this. I mean, intellectually I understand that passing along one's genes is *a great huge life-shattering issue* for many otherwise rational people... but I still don't quite get it, or agree that it should be a critical issue for scientists to work on. Pity they can't instead work on a way of making parents willing to love and raise any offspring, not just their own. That would be a vast improvement to the human race.