Environmental Chemicals Are Feminizing Boys 614
pickens writes "Denmark has unveiled official research showing that two-year-old children are at risk from a bewildering array of gender-bending chemicals in such everyday items as waterproof clothes, rubber boots, bed linen, food, sunscreen lotion, and moisturizing cream. A picture is emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm counts and feminizing male children all over the developed world. Research at Rotterdam's Erasmus University found that boys whose mothers were exposed to PCBs and dioxins were more likely to play with dolls and tea sets and dress up in female clothes. 'The amounts that two-year-olds absorb from the [preservatives] parabens propylparaben and butylparaben can constitute a risk for oestrogen-like disruptions of the endocrine system,' says the report. The contamination may also offer a clue to a mysterious shift in the sex of babies. Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls: it is thought to be nature's way of making up for the fact that men were more likely to be killed hunting or in conflict. But the proportion of females is rising. 'Both the public and wildlife are inadequately protected from harm, as regulation is based on looking at exposure to each substance in isolation, and yet it is now proven beyond doubt that hormone disrupting chemicals can act together to cause effects even when each by itself would not,' says Gwynne Lyons, director of Chem Trust."
(s)he (Score:3, Interesting)
"The contamination may also offer a clue to a mysterious shift in the sex of babies. Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls: it is thought to be nature's way of making up for the fact that men were more likely to be killed hunting or in conflict. But the proportion of females is rising."
And how are these chemicals affecting animal population ratios?
Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, toys evolved to fit gender preferences.
The toy preference is also observed in apes: female chimps prefer dolls, male chimps prefer cars.
Re:Good news for Slashdot crowd (Score:4, Interesting)
Effeminacy has nothing to do with sexual orientation. If anything, a majority of homosexual men are _more_ masculine than heterosexual men.
Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:1, Interesting)
I can aspire to have anger issues? Be hero and join the military where I can shoot people? Be a local hero and hit and or throw and or catch a ball? Maybe something involving beating up and or shooting badguys.
The other option for males on TV are slobs or rude pigs. Almost all stupid.
Also, child rearing isn't a particularly female position beyond infancy. Girls simply got stuck with it because they gave birth so its their responsibility. And the idea that violence and aggression is a manly thing. Or that it is something we should hope to aspire to is complete BS.
When you hear the word 'manly' what are your first thoughts, I'd like to know what
Re:Rednecks? (Score:5, Interesting)
In short, yes.
Denmark has _no_ rednecks/chavs/illiterate underclass. Quite frankly it's amazing, and is mostly a result of huge investment in education after the second world war.
Re:Is it such a bad thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not being any sort of expert on human behaviour, I can only hazard a guess that this behaviour stems from the instinct that other women are potential opponents when they seek their ideal mate.
Regardless of that I personally support a change of behaviour to predominantly "feminine".
Re:Is it such a bad thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a perfectly ridiculous thought. Many of the listed 'masculine' qualities aren't masculine, and almost all of the 'feminine' qualities aren't feminine either. And this idea some people (seemingly including the OP) have that the world would be all sunshine and happiness and everyone would shit rainbows if we put women in charge is just delusional.
Well no.... (Score:4, Interesting)
You do have to wonder if the widening gap between rural and city male voting behavior might actually be attributable to exposure to these sorts of chemicals, in all seriousness.
Re:Good news for feminism (Score:3, Interesting)
I should imagine most of the feminist community ain't too happy about this; the news reporting is chock-full of gender essentialism.
Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:1, Interesting)
No, they are not gender roles taught by parenting.
When I was in my teens I fell for that empty old argument too and believed it for many years, but several decades of experience have shown me that it is a misrepresentation of the facts presented by the exceptionally feminine men (in whose interest it is to promote the notion that wimpy men are the norm) or by exceptionally competitive women ( in whose interest it is to promote the notion that women have been held back by a male conspiracy).
You haven't had much experience looking after children have you. Like it or not, boys are generally bigger, faster, competitive, more aggressive, more dominant. They seek to emulate big, fast, competitive, aggressive, dominant people (who happen to be mostly men).
Girls tend to avoid the rough and tumble games that boys get involved in (don't bring your friend's cousin who wears skirts and has boxing lessens into it. Yes there are exceptions, but generally what I have said is true).
You can see it in little kids as young as two years old. Yes, society notices the difference too and we emphasise the difference with clothing, manner etc. but the difference is there to begin with.
When I was a kid I wanted toy guns and cars and gadgets and robots. My sister wanted clothes and dolls, and diaries and cuddly toys.
Obviously, if we all eat more non organic foods and wear synthetic sweatshirts, things could change!
China Balance (Score:3, Interesting)
what about chemicals that are masculinizing girls? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyhow, if you take a look at the steroidgenesis diagram, you'll notice that testosterone is a precursor of oestrogen by way of aromatase:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Steroidogenesis.svg [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromatase [wikipedia.org]
Now, for those people who remember their organic chemistry and stoichiometry, rates of conversion reactions are increased with catalysts, and decreased with modulators. So, while aromatase will increase the rate at which testosterone converts into estrogen, an aromatase inhibitor will decrease conversion of testosterone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromatase_Inhibitor [wikipedia.org]
And it turns out that Aromatase Inhibitors are naturally occurring:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B8JGN-4TWSRR1-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1093611464&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2bb4c9b03794595de88508b47078c134 [sciencedirect.com]
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.fieldmuseum.org/research_collections/pritzker_lab/pritzker/people/people_images/stilbocarpapolaris.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.fieldmuseum.org/research_collections/pritzker_lab/pritzker/people/alumni_mitchell.html&usg=__Xc_RyM3WV_KmlfwEp0KCwul_DAk=&h=137&w=200&sz=9&hl=en&start=7&um=1&tbnid=jlXt6kpeBMYsJM:&tbnh=71&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3DBrassaiopsis%2Bglomerulata%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1 [google.com]
And there's a growing list of known aromatase inhibitors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exemestane [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastrozole [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letrozole [wikipedia.org]
So, simply put... what about the environmental chemicals that are masculinizing girls? Is it really just a matter of plastics feminizing boys? Or does it go both ways? Is it a matter of environmental toxicity in general?
Lastly, I'd also bring up the question whether feminization of boys is primarily caused by environmental chemicals, or if it's driven be completely different factors, such as 1) a cultural response to civil rights access for women, 2) decreased opportunities for war caused by nuclear detante, or 3) need for peaceful co-existance due to worldwide population increases a
Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just that the woman gave birth. One partner has to gather food / earn money / etc. Historically speaking, the man was more capable of doing this job because of his physical makeup. So the other job of caring for children fell to the female. Not to mention that, again historically speaking, the amount of time she was not caring for one infant or another was usually pretty small.
You could also argue there are other gender differences that make women more effective at caring for children that aren't just the result of socialization. I don't have a link handy, but I recall reading some research about how women (as a group) are better able to discern emotions by looking at the faces of other people. Stuff like that.
I'm not mentioning these to defend the idea that men should have no part in child-rearing. Not at all. But I think you oversimplify the reasons why this task has traditionally fallen to women.
What are the trade-offs? (Score:2, Interesting)
When you publicize the harm something can do, you also need to publicize the benefits compared to the next-best option.
[The numbers below are for illustration only and don't reflect any real numbers - i.e. they are totally made up]
"Oh noze, we must ban this or that chemical because 0.1% of our boys will grow up effeminate or be born with female parts" is alarming. But a statement saying "while these chemicals have their downsides, they save an estimated 20 lives a year" provides some context, and can shift the debate from "OMG ban them immediately" to "let's fund research into a better way to save those same 20 lives."
Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is pretty elementary stuff, religiously.
The Christian God created humans with "free will" (the ability to make choices contrary to what he would most prefer) because he finds it is more satisfying to be loved than to be obeyed.
I have to say that as often as I fantasized about having some kind of a sex-robot-of-servitude growing up, having a real-life human wife that __freely chooses__ me is more satisfying than any of the time I spent alone. I don't think replacing my wife with some kind of compliant automaton would be very fun at all. Infact, early in our marraige my wife made the point when she spent about 24 hours not offering any opinion, not initiating any conversation, and not objecting to anything I said. It sucked.
There are certainly men who expect to exert authoritarian control over their wife or other people they are in relationships with. But I contend that they're missing out.
Re:Jocks vs. nerds (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't come here for the average Slashdotter who, I agree, is a naive pimply-faced youth [funroll-loops.info]. The occasional useful discussion makes Slashdot worthwhile.
As for your post: I think it's certainly true that there are heritable factors for intelligence in the individual case. And obviously in the aggregate case too: after all, human beings as a whole were once far less intelligent [wikipedia.org], and a generic change led to our current state.
I just don't see any evidence for aggregate differences in heritable intelligence among the rich and poor in a given society, and think that social and nutritional factors play a far larger role in shaping the observed and obvious differences between the two groups in adult intelligence. Why? I don't see any evidence for a heritable difference. The two groups aren't far enough removed from each other genetically for there to have been much drift, and there's a fair amount of gene flow between them. And after social [wikipedia.org] upheavels [wikipedia.org], the ones in power end up doing better regardless of whether they are the grandchildren of kings or of peasants. Furthermore, when a child of a rich person is raised poorly, or vice versa, the outcome is appropriate for the social group of the child's rearing.
Given the same opportunities, I strongly suspect we'd see identical outcomes from the children of most people, on average.
Re:Mixed up: Biological Gender vs. Feminization (Score:1, Interesting)
It's not just a matter of decreasing viability of Y sperm, but also the viability of zygotes/fetuses who were fertilized by Y sperm.
Re:Jocks vs. nerds (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyhow, it's ironical that you make this argument here, where the archetypal slashdotter is a virgin geek that hacks computers in his mom's basement while the football players get all the girls...
It's worth noting that while we joke about this I suspect it's far from true. I know the plural of anecdote is not data, but I'm a geek who hacks computers, but not in my basement (it's a 120 year old house and the basement is unfinished), lost track of how many girls he's slept with around 5 years ago, has a son and a bisexual girlfriend who tells me she wants to move somewhere that polygamy is legal so I can take on a few wives and spread my intelligent genes around.
I think geeks in general tend to have more liberal views towards sexuality and by associating with like minded individuals we tend to find more opportunities to have gratifying sexual experiences.
Re:Rednecks? (Score:1, Interesting)
Denmark has _no_ rednecks/chavs/illiterate underclass. Quite frankly it's amazing, and is mostly a result of huge investment in education after the second world war.
Maybe not as a direct, de facto, class in society - no...
But don't forget that we do have a lot of people who still fall in those categories.
And these people tend to come from the lowest classes as far as I have experienced.
Not every Dane is well educated although almost everyone has the opportunity.
Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:3, Interesting)
Masculinity is obsolete (Score:1, Interesting)
This article almost comes across as being written by some kind of homophobe. Sure, avoid chemicals that are really dangerous, and while were are at it they want to "fix" the problem of feminine males. Wake up! The traditional male roles are slowly becoming obsolete and the male form is slowly becoming socially undesirable. (Ya know, according to the all mighty TV if you are born male you might as well go ahead and fill out a sex offender registration form because because your are sure to be a rapist, pedafile, pervert, or something)
It sounds like they want to blame this "problem" on some magic chemical that they can make go away, lest find themselves in a world surrounded by Ranma Satome-alikes.
Re:Rednecks? (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on which neck of the woods you live in.
Living in ultraliberal Massachusetts, a lot of time and energy goes into figuring out how to get the most education out a buck. Recently my local school system implemented "flexible tracking", in which kids are frequently tested and reassigned to different tracks on a subject by subject basis throughout the course of the day. If you tested ahead on a specific math skill you might be grouped with students needing drill on that subject in one period, then grouped with other students doing a challenge project in reading in the next. After the next test, you might be ahead of the average in the next math skill to be covered.
We were doing education reform years before most of the rest of the country. The promotion of education was written into our constitution by John Adams. As a result, our state rankings in things like literacy, math and science are consistently either first in the country or for practical purposes statistically tied with first. We have a relatively high per capita spending on students, but not anywhere near the highest. We have a relatively low student to teacher ratio, but not anywhere near the lowest. We also have a lot of poor urban school districts with all the problems they bring.
What we have is a lot of people who *care* about education, who think it's worth doing something about. It's easy to lose track of that, but when I travel to other parts of the country with lousy rankings, what I find is that people would like to bellyache about how bad the schools are, how incompetent the teachers are or how useless the administration is, but don't actually plan to *do* anything about these things. Politicians rail against the schools, and promise to institute "tough" standards (as if "tough" were a substitute for "intelligent"), but they don't have a plan to do anything with the data they get from the testing other than to close as many public schools as they can. Now I'm not against private education or charter schools, but the theme seems consistent. People don't can't be bothered to pay attention to the details. They don't want to be burdened thinking about it.
If you want an explanation for the "failures of our school system", I'll give it to you: times have changed, and the schools haven't kept up. We aren't competing with a war ravaged Europe and a world full of ignorant, impoverished countries. We're competing with modern Europe; with an India that has a middle class as large as our entire population; with China whose government has consciously played our relationship in a mercantilist zero-sum game, using favorable exchange rates and low wages to achieve economic power over us. Now tell me what we need to do to education to bring back the glory days of the 1950s, and you'll have redefined education reform for this century.
As for the "hollowing out" of our culture, I don't see it, although when I took my kids to the opera the other night, nobody was dressed in white tie. What we've had is not a "hollowing out" of our culture, but twin processes of democratizing high culture and the growth of commercial, popular culture. People spend a lot more time being entertained then they did in the 1930s or even the 1960s.
Reversion to the mean (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a strong genetic basis to this, and that's why eugenics tends not to work, among other things. Yes the nut doesn't fall far from the tree, and that's why tall parents have tall kids, but over time these traits revert back to the mean, and so you will see average/short kids being born to tall parents (mailman genes excluded, but this helps too).
Re: 106 boys for every 100 girls (Score:1, Interesting)
Agreed, crappy summary. Why give the "normal" rate in exact numbers and then NOT give the "new" rate? Why does slashdot let such bad summaries get through - are the editors afraid of doing any editing?
Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Rednecks? (Score:2, Interesting)
1) it treats all children the same...
Oh no, not this dead horse again...
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2463 [sciencebasedmedicine.org]
quoth above:
Students learn best when teaching styles are matched to their learning styles. This turns out to be an urban legend not supported by any acceptable evidence. It could backfire because students need to correct and compensate for their shortcomings, not avoid them. The authors cite a satirical story from The Onion about nasal learners demanding an odor-based curriculum.
And yet dancing around the real point (Score:3, Interesting)
The primary and most powerful source of feminizing chemicals in our water is the vast quantities dumped into our water supply in the urine of women on the birth control pill. Anyone who considers feminizing chemicals a real problem (instead of using it as an excuse to go after industry) would be seeking, first and foremost, to ban the birth control pill.
Re:Rednecks? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Rednecks? (Score:2, Interesting)
Since when are government employees highly paid?
In many European countries teachers are highly paid whether they are government employees or not. In Germany, for instance, being a high school teacher, is nearly as well remunerated as being an ordinary doctor or lawyer. Moreover the fierce competition to become a teacher restricts this career path to elite graduates. Quite to opposite from most anglophone countries.
Re:Rednecks? (Score:3, Interesting)