Category: gender

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How the Other Half Lives

My friend Lynne alerted me to a post about the uselessness of women. I wish I could say it surprised me, even a little, but essentialism is essentialism is essentialism, whether that’s expressed in “women should rule the world” attitudes or “women are useless” attitudes. To me: same coin, different sides.

What amazed me even more was this post on the same blog about terminology in this “manosphere.” I hate to say it, but the stuff is so pathetic I just feel sorry for them in their hateful little world. Okay, not really, but I can’t even imagine what it’s like to live in that tiny a brain.

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Don’t Save Bryan Fischer’s Life

I really just want to stick this guy in a room full of FDNY firefighters and have him explain to them how saving lives is feminine.

Bryan Fischer, the “Director of Issues Analysis” for the conservative Christian group the American Family Association, was unhappy yesterday that President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to a soldier for saving lives. This, Fischer wrote on his blog, shows that the Medal of Honor has been “feminized” because “we now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.”

The stupid just continues to spread.

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A Boy’s Name?

A girl named Randi was beaten for having a boy’s name.

“They started talking about me like I was a man,” she told local news station WREG. “That I shouldn’t be in this world. And my name was a boy name.” The four girls and a boy surrounded her after a Fellowship of Christian Students meeting, and, she said, kicked her in the rib and leg, hit her in the face, sat on her, pushed her face into the floor, and threw her onto a cafeteria table.

It really makes you wonder what they’re teaching kids in a Fellowship of Christian Students. I guess they didn’t get to the “don’t beat people up” meeting yet.

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Macho Ears

Even the talented Scott Turner Schofield has to go to the supermarket:

and has to ask: I’m sorry, what did you just say about the commercial construction of gender? In the supermarket, you say? No!

Sleep Pretty or Hearos? Pink or blue? Really?! Wouldn’t sizes be more appropriate? Do they block out only masculine or feminine noise?

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This Halloween’s Gender Story

Every year there’s a Halloween gender “problem,” but now, at least, there are moms who tell other moms to “back off.”

I can’t tell you how many people sent me this story, but I know it made plenty of us cry. In the good way.

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One Gene Away

I’m not going to try to re-phrase this article about how ovaries/testicles are determined by a single gene. Better you read it from the source:

As embryos, our gonads aren’t specific to either gender. Their default course is a female one, but they can be diverted through the action of a gene called SRY that sits on the Y chromosome. SRY activates another gene called Sox9, which sets off a chain reaction of flicked genetic switches. The result is that premature gonads develop into testes. Without SRY or Sox9, you get ovaries instead.

But Henriette Uhlenhaut from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory has found that this story is woefully incomplete. Maleness isn’t just forced onto developing gonads by the actions of SRY – it’s permanently kept at bay by another gene called FOXL2.

Uhlenhaut developed a strain of genetically engineered mice, whose copies of FOXL2 could be deleted with the drug tamoxifen. When she did this, she found that the females’ ovaries turned into testes within just three weeks. The change was a thorough one; the altered organs were testes right down to the structure of their cells and their portfolio of active genes. They developed testosterone-secreting Leydig cells, which pumped out as much of the hormone as their counterparts in XY mice. They only fell short of actually producing sperm.

Uhlenhaut found that FOXL2 and SOX9 are mutually exclusive – when one is active, the other is silent and vice versa. The two genes are at opposite ends of a tug-of-war, with sex as the prize. FOXL2 sticks to a stretch of DNA called TESCO, which controls the activity of Sox9. By sticking to TESCO, FOXL2 keeps Sox9 turned off in the adult ovary. Without its repressive hand, Sox9 switches on and sets about its gender-bending antics.

and

Uhlenhaut’s work isn’t just of academic interest. It could also help to treat disorders of sexual development. It could also change how gender reassignment therapies are done, paving the way for gene therapies rather than multiple painful surgeries.

Emphasis mine. That is such a goddamned cool idea.

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Link Between Trans & PCOS?

Paula Puffer, speaks with Walter Futterweit, MD, OBGYN.net PCOS Pavilion Editorial Advisor

Audio Link *requires RealPlayer – free download
http://av.obgyn.net/ramgen/PCOS/PCOSsandiego_futterweit2.rm

Barbara Nesbitt: “Hi, this is Barbara Nesbitt, and I am at the PCOS Conference in San Diego. I would like Paula Puffer, who is the web-mistress of the PCOS Support website and also the Coordinator of OBGYN.net PCOS Pavilion, to say hello, and she’s going to do an interview.”

Paula Puffer: “Hello, this is kind of a spur of the moment thing so I really don’t have any set questions but I’m sitting here with Walter Futterweit who is with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. In some of my work as PCO Support web-master, I’ve had the privilege of putting up Dr. Futterweit’s articles on our bibliography of professional journal articles, and one of the things that I found quite interesting is that he has done research with women who want to become men and PCOS and how the changes with the hormones and stuff have affected them and affected their ovaries.”

Dr. Walter Futterweit: “This is quite a diversion to talk about this subject at this momentous meeting here in San Diego. I must say that a lot of this work is still ongoing, and as a member of the Harry Benjamin Foundation, which is a group of specialists interested in gender patients and the treatment prior to and post-sex reversal surgery, I’ve had occasion to study at least eighty women who were desirous of becoming men. During that time, we found that 27% had features of polycystic ovary prior to treatment with male hormone and after the treatment with testosterone, 75%-80% had enlarged polycystic ovaries which were exactly identical to those found in women with polycystic ovary syndrome. So this is quite a significant percentage and makes us think again of other potential pathological or physiological derangements that may occur not just in terms of altering the mindset of genetic females but what it is that also may be a factor in the causation of PCOS.”

Continue reading “Link Between Trans & PCOS?”

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Princess Boys

I love the term ‘princess boy’ – it’s really nice to see another name for them that’s a little more affirming.