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."
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday November 15, @08:59AM (#30105432)
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.
Quite frankly it's amazing, and is mostly a result of huge investment in education after the second world war.
It's important to note that the Danes are not genetically more gifted than the rest of us. The idiotic English chavs and the Danes were the same people a few tens of generations ago. The things that make us stupid are cultural anti-intellectualism and childhood malnutrition, not some inborn deficit that applies to whole swaths of people.
If we're heading for an idiocracy, it's not because idiots breed more. Their children have the same genetic gifts as anyone else, on the whole. Instead, it's our neglect of education. Really, it's appalling that teachers aren't some of our most highly-paid professionals.
Instead, it's our neglect of education. Really, it's appalling that teachers aren't some of our most highly-paid professionals.
The fundamental flaw of education is:
1) it treats all children the same. You should learn this, because you are 7 years old. Nothing else matters. You could be a grand master in chess, but you're not allowed to write cursive yet! You have been reading since you were 3? Well, forget it, you're going to learn it all over again!
2) No child left behind. We're treating everyone the same, and that treatment will be the one required for the dumbest. The smart ones are bored out of their skull? Who cares!
I'd also like to add #3: Parents taking little to no interest in their child's education, and expecting the schools to assume that role in its entirety, and intervening only to tell of the teacher who took away their little angel's cell phone because they were texting during class. I dunno about you, but my parents were very proactively involved in my education. They taught me reading, writing, and 'rithmetic before I set foot in kindergarten, and they never stopped assisting and requiring accountability. They encouraged me to think critically and ask questions. If I didn't know, they encouraged me to look it up - and then asked me what I learned after I did. They bought me stuff at yard sales to take apart and I had to identify the basic components inside. If I got in trouble with a teacher and my parents found out about it (and since my parents worked in the school I went to, that was inevitable), the other half would come when I got home, and it wouldn't be pretty. I survived the wooden spoon, I survived learning to eat a balanced diet, I survived homework, and I survived not watching TV until I was 5 or 6.
I don't want to be a parent before I am in a place to become one.
I was the same as you -- I wanted to wait until I could afford to be a parent, but guess what? You never can. I wound up realizing that, and was 33 before I became a dad. You think it's hard to get up at 3:00 AM to feed the baby at age 20, try it when you're over 30! I'm 57 and still not a grandparent. If there's one thing about my life I'd change, it would be waiting.
When I was a child of seven, my public librarian talked to me a bit, and gave me an adult card with a note to personnel that I was authorised to use the adult reading room, the music stacks, microfiche and all other facilities.
In high school, my swim team had to meet at the civic center pool about 1 PM to fit its schedule. Local people made the decision to move all of us to an 11 AM lunch, a decision that didn't need to be ratified by the superintendent of schools - in fact, it took only the team coach asking an assistant principal to set it up with the cafeteria staff, and they served 12 people an hour early to make it happen.
High school fencing was a club, (even though our club beat several college teams). We picked a schedule when the gym was empty, and had a couple of keys to it, which were carried at one point or another by just about everyone on the team, with no problems.
This was all 35 years or more ago. It seems totally absurd now to say practically every responsible adult I knew as a child bent 'the rules', knew which way to bend them, and it all worked pretty damned well, but that was the way of things.
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.
I taught high school for five years, and that was what I saw. Because all kids were tracked according to age rather than ability, you had a wide range of ability in every class. As a teacher, you've got a few choices:
1) Teach to the middle. Too hard for the dumb kids, to easy for the smart kids, but most kids get something out of it. 2) Teach too easy or two hard. 3) Try to teach to each kid's needs.
#3 is the one everyone would like to do. But it's ridiculously hard to do. I had kids in a class who were taking geometry and had algebra under their belt, and kids who couldn't multiply even with a calculator. Kids who didn't really understand what decimal places were all about. If I stop to give them instruction in the basic things that they need to learn the material I'm actually supposed to be teaching, I get questioned as to why I'm not teaching it. If your lessons are different for every kid, suddenly you need to prove that they're fair and appropriate for every kid. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for a lawsuit when you fail Johnny but pass Timmy, and they were learning different material.
My most successful classes were ones filled with homogeneous populations of kids. When they were all at about the same level, I could teach a lot of material very quickly. Treating all kids the same is a terrible failing in the US today. It's not the only one, but it's one of the leading causes of our issues.
As secondary cause is that teachers are given a tough job, but not the freedom to do it as it needs to be done. If I taught all the kids in my classes how to actually do science, they would have all failed the government-mandated science test. Why? Because it doesn't test whether or not you can do science, it tests whether or not you're motivated to remember facts about science that you have been exposed to and then scribble in a bubble.
What's the motivation for kids to do that? There isn't any. My master's thesis was on that very topic. Their test scores don't get sent to their parents, don't go on transcripts, and most of the time, don't even go back to their teachers. Yet those scores determine how well a school is functioning, from a government standpoint.
There are a lot of things broken about the US educational system. The top issue is that teachers can't just teach what kids need to learn. We have to jump through all these ridiculous hoops, and prove that we're poor teachers, because that what the test requires.
A good science teacher is not one who teaches kids to be masters at filling in bubbles on a sheet of paper with the wrote memory of facts. Fix the current methods of assessing teaching, and you're getting much closer to solving the root of the problem.
It's appalling but understandable when you consider that most teachers are government employees...
They are government employees in Danmark, too. In fact I'd imagine a higher proportion of them are, based on grandparent's point about investment on education - just who do you think did that?
But then again, that's not compatible with libertarian/conservative/far right agenda, so you ignored it and posted pointless propaganda for your pet ideology instead. Just as pretty much everyone else who has strong opinions - left or right - on these matters - or any matter, really - does. That's an unfortunate human trait, and one we really have to get rid of if we're to advance as a species.
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.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday November 15, @08:17AM (#30105156)
"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?
Commentary: Monkeys, girls, boys and toys: A confirmation Comment on “Sex differences in toy preferences: Striking parallels between monkeys and humans”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2643016/ [nih.gov]
Those are gender roles, taught by parenting. If you stick a child in a room with a bunch of girl and boy toys, without showing them which they should be playing with, they would play with all of them.
That's the popular ideal, but it's simply not true. Social experiments and have shown that even in isolated communities, even if every attempt is made to treat boys and girls the same (so as not to condition them one way or the other), the boys will prefer playing with traditionally-male toys, and the girls will prefer playing with traditionally-female toys.
Nature, it seems, is not always politically correct.
If you stick a child in a room with a bunch of girl and boy toys, without showing them which they should be playing with, they would play with all of them.
Ok Einstein, explain why male-to-female transsexuals that go on estrogen find they cry more, get reduced sex drive, and increased verbal ability, while the reverse is true for female-to-male transsexuals ( i.e testosterone increases libido, reduces their tendency to cry and shifts abilities from verbal to spatial orientation ).
There's been loads of studies done on how hormones impact psychological factors ranging from the effects of birth control pills ( they use estrogens and progesterones ) to the impact of hormone replacement therapy for women entering menopause. In order to make a long story short there's is little doubt that hormones influence us in all kinds of ways.
Seriously, between psychoactive substances like alcohol and caffeine, the impact of nutritional deficiencies such as a lack of iodine, and the impact of hormones like I mentioned above, it is very clear that biological factors have a very strong influence on our psychology. The effects may not correspond with common stereotypes and prejudice, and it certainly does not apply on an individual basis, but to claim it is just a matter of upbringing or social conditioning is demonstratively false regardless of how well it might fit with your preferred political ideology.
The girls play with dolls, boys play with cars dichotomy is a bit of a simplification to make a nice sound bite. There is some gender bias towards the type of toy: girls tend to be less interested in playing with toys representing inanimate objects, and much more interested in playing with toys that represent people, or at least animals, than boys are. The real difference, however, is in the style of play. Girls tend to construct elaborate social situations in their play (tea parties, for example) while boys play is much less socially structured and more geared towards action.
If you want the sound bite, when boys play with dolls they make them fight. When girls play with dolls, they make them talk.
The differences are not purely environmental. The pattern is seen across all cultures and, as a poster pointed out in another thread (including published paper), are seen in non-human primates as well.
PS: the Guardian and the Telegraph are newspapers. They are not known for publishing scientific papers. If you want actual scientific papers you will have to read scientific journals, where the link between certain chemicals, feminized male behaviour and male/female birth ratio changes are much better established.
Of course, genetic information evolved over the last two million years can help identify dolls dressed in red as "feminine" and dolls dressed in green and wearing a hard hat as "masculine"... except for 3000 years red was the "male warrior" color and only during the last 100 years were the "camo" colors fashionable in the army... and the same genes are helping young children identify plastic tanks or knifes as "male toys" while plastic beds, plastic baby carriages and plastic table sets are identified (due to genes, hormone concentrations or something else of physiological origin) as "female toys".
One theory about why transsexualism occurs has been that it is a hormone induced neurological change that occurs early in development. While science is far from concluded on weather this is the case, I can from personal experience state that it is not a fun place to be. If there's even a small chance that environmental toxins is contributing to its prevalence then this is a very serious matter and definitely justifies a careful approach on restricting the use of chemicals that can influence gender development.
To give a slight idea of how strong an effect these things can have on a persons general wellbeing, a Dutch study found 20% of female to male transsexuals had attempted suicide prior to initiating hormone treatment. In comparison the figures following treatment with androgens were just a few percent. Now try to imagine what the effects might be when you expose an entire population to a diffuse cocktail of chemicals that interfere with gender development and you should start feeling a bit uncomfortable about the situation...
Yet gender-benders are largely exempt from new EU regulations controlling hazardous chemicals. Britain, then under Tony Blair's premiership, was largely responsible for this - restricting their inclusion in the first draft of the legislation, and then causing even what was included to be watered down.Confidential documents show that it did so after pressure from George W Bush's administration, which protested that US exports "could be impacted".
i cant help wonder if the suicide attempt comes from trying to fit into a world that reacts pretty much like a "uncanny valley" ones you look like one gender, but behave like a different one.
this may also be why homosexuality is such a "hot" topic.
i guess we humans prefer our lives to work along the lines of "walks like a duck, quacks like a duck"...
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday November 15, @09:10AM (#30105510)
This article does not make sense.
Biological gender (dictated by the presence of an Y vs. X chromosome) is irrevocably determined at the moment a spermium merges with an egg, excluding very rare cases of extra chromosomes etc. External pollution by endocrine disruptor chemicals plays no role in this.
Exhibition of female traits in biological males is a completely different story, and there is increasing evidence that this may be linked to certain classes of chemicals.
However, I am not aware of any studies which link these chemicals to decreased viability of Y-sperm, which could be a reason for the decline of male births. The number of biological males feminized to a degree that they pass and spend their lifes as females, and is however far too low to account for this change.
Biological gender (dictated by the presence of an Y vs. X chromosome) is irrevocably determined at the moment a spermium merges with an egg, excluding very rare cases of extra chromosomes etc. External pollution by endocrine disruptor chemicals plays no role in this.
Exhibition of female traits in biological males is a completely different story, and there is increasing evidence that this may be linked to certain classes of chemicals.
However, I am not aware of any studies which link these chemicals to decreased viability of Y-sperm, which could be a reason for the decline of male births. The number of biological males feminized to a degree that they pass and spend their lifes as females, and is however far too low to account for this change.
Ah... such a simple world you live in. One baby has a Y, and it's male, and the other has an X, and it's female.
Actually, it's the SRY (sex determining gene) on the Y chromosome that initiates... I said INITIATES sexual distinction in males. Without this gene, the germ cell line "stripe" turns into ovaries. If there is a mutation in this gene, you will get an XY female with ovaries. If this gene is present and there are no mutations in this gene, then the germ cell line "stripe" becomes testicles.
The testicles produce androgen. Androgen drives the external development of the genitalia. If there is insufficient androgens, or insufficient response to androgens then the scrotalabial folds become labia, and the clitoris/penis precursor becomes a clitoris. If there are sufficient androgens, and response, the scrotalabial folds fuse into a scrotum, and the clitoris/penis precursor becomes a penis. The development of the external genitalia can also vary anywhere along a continuum between the two.
Separately, the testicles produce Anti-muellerian hormones, which prevent the development of the muellerian ducts, namely, the upper vagina, cervix, uterus, and fallopian tubes. If there is insufficient AMH, or insufficient response, the fetus will develop such organs regardless of the genetic makeup of the child, regardless of the external appearance of the genitalia. YES, there are MEN with UTERUSES, if they're AMH resistant.
Now... notice that none of this depends upon estrogen levels. That's because the mother floods the bodies of all children with estrogens. However, it's heavily dependent upon hormones that are produced in the testicles. There a number of chemicals that block androgens, and these result in birth defects, which is why you get in ads for things like Rogaine "pregnant women should never even TOUCH these pills."
There a hojillion different ways to define "biological sex" and none of them are conclusive, and none of them are guaranteed. There are women with XY, and men with XX (and they were born that way, and assigned their sex by doctors), there are women with high androgen levels (5-alpha-reductase deficiency) and men with low androgen levels, there are women with testicles, and men with ovaries, there are women without uteruses, and men with uteruses. The only thing left to define men from women biologically, is external genitalia... and that can be surgically altered.
So, seriously... you don't know anything... I hope this short lesson on sexual distinction in humans helps you out.
These reports come out every few years (re: DDT, et al.), and while they're not strictly incorrect, they tend to look at a very incomplete picture of what is going on. To be perfectly blunt, there's sexism going on in that these reports focus on just the environmental impact of chemicals on boys, and don't consider the larger picture of chemical impact on children in general.
Anyhow, if you take a look at the steroidgenesis diagram, you'll notice that testosterone is a precursor of oestrogen by way of aromatase:
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.
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
Social factors could perhaps have a role, but there's no evidence for it, as far as I know.
There is however a lot of evidence that environmental oestrogens have an effect on development, and much of this evidence is nicely summarised in the linked article.
Someone above wondered on the effect environmental oestrogens had on animals. In the Potomoc river (runs by Washington D.C) fish are observed to have transgender traits over and above any natural underlying statistic signal and it has been shown to be result of environmental oestrogens. So it does occur.
That could very well be true. Several years ago I heard stories about how estrogen-like chemicals could theoretically leach out of plastic bottled water containers under certain conditions.
Not any plastics, but polycarbonate is a polymer of Bisphenol A -- and Bisphenol A was investigated as a synthetic estrogen before it was used in plastics. We've know that it had serious biological effects since the 1930s, but I suppose that was just another inconvenient, profit-reducing fact.
Polycarbonate is everywhere [unreasonable.org], not just in water bottles but metal cans (to prevent the metal from contact with food contents),refrigerator shelves, baby bottles, microwave cookware, and eating utensils. And it's used industrially in a wide variety of applications. It's even used to coat children's teeth as an anti-cavity measure.
Exposure to Bisphenol A has been linked to breast cancer, insulin resistance, miscarriage, obesity, prostate enlargement, early onset of sexual maturation, hyperactivity, and increased aggressiveness, as well as increased risk of heart disease and diabetes [unreasonable.org].
I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah!
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.
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.
The parent post is quite incendiary, but makes very good points.
One of particular interest to me is the issue of the aforementioned companies using these chemicals and continuing to claim that they are not dangerous. A libertarian idealist would say that the information will get out (as it is, slowly) and if it concerns people (as it should) they will find somewhere else to buy sippy cups. But this seems inefficient to me, and it seems like in the meantime there is widespread, preventable harm being done.
Now, I think the hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations on the books do more harm than good, because 1) they tend to be so burdensome that small and innovative businesses are squeezed out by multinationals, who 2) have regulations written in their favor (someone else mentioned regulatory capture), and 3) we already have laws to punish fraud (such as marketing an unsafe item as safe). Yet I don't see a good answer to a problem like this one without regulation.
First, it is my understanding that no single product is solely responsible; it is due to the chemicals' presence in lots and lots of things, so wouldn't any single company's statement that their product is safe be kind of true, invalidating claims of fraud? Second, presumably a lot of harm is being done due to the widespread use of these chemicals, and the companies' reporting record is abysmal, so I find it unsatisfying to just say "you need to be aware of what you are purchasing." That's good in theory and probably worked well when goods were mostly made from natural items, but when everything is made out of 900 different kinds of plastic, organic compounds, synthetic materials, and who knows what else, you could spend eight hours a day trying to trace everything you use and still come up short.
So how would a real libertarian respond? To be clear, I like a lot of libertarian ideals, but there are instances where I don't see it working well. The common thread I see among them is "trouble caused by many people doing little things in aggregate."
A lot of gay men prefer "real" men to the stereotypical effeminate gay man. There's also a subculture of ultra-masculinity known as "bears" [wikipedia.org] (for an example check out the hilarious Bear Force 1 [youtube.com]). For some there's probably some overcompensating going on due to the fear of being seen as "less of a man" because of their sexual orientation.
You forgot the two-faced backstabbing, the bald-faced lies, etc. Women are evil to each other in their younger years.
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".
If that is how you feel by all means try to be more feminine. The rest of us prefer to have a choice in these matters, rather than have the choice made for us (indeed, forcing choices upon others is, according to your lists, a masculine thing, and therefore it has no place in the feminine society you seem so keen to create).
Besides, I like to think self-reliance, strength and competition are positive qualities. Many of the most famous artists were guys, so I'm not sure 'art' should be considered a 'feminine element', nor is there reason to believe that 'thoughtfulness' should be on that list of yours.
Maybe you could try pointing to some sources to convince us that you didn't just pull those lists out of you ass, then some more sources to show that the masculine elements are bad for society, and then some more to convince us that forcing emasculation on 50% of your citizens is ethical.
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.
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.
blah blah, and more polar bears exhibit hermaphroditic features, and there's a higher percentage of Florida alligators that are female, and girls are hitting puberty earlier these days, and, and, an
Well, I would think that, when you people are ignoring that animals in nature are all becoming genders, 10 year old girls are getting pregnant, that, you might look up from your Wii and say, "hey, you know, the whole planet is fucked up, and we might well, actually try to FIX IT." Sometimes when there is a fire, you have to yell more than once.
Solution (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Solution (Score:5, Funny)
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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.
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Re:Rednecks? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's important to note that the Danes are not genetically more gifted than the rest of us. The idiotic English chavs and the Danes were the same people a few tens of generations ago. The things that make us stupid are cultural anti-intellectualism and childhood malnutrition, not some inborn deficit that applies to whole swaths of people.
If we're heading for an idiocracy, it's not because idiots breed more. Their children have the same genetic gifts as anyone else, on the whole. Instead, it's our neglect of education. Really, it's appalling that teachers aren't some of our most highly-paid professionals.
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Re:Rednecks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, it's our neglect of education. Really, it's appalling that teachers aren't some of our most highly-paid professionals.
The fundamental flaw of education is:
1) it treats all children the same. You should learn this, because you are 7 years old. Nothing else matters. You could be a grand master in chess, but you're not allowed to write cursive yet! You have been reading since you were 3? Well, forget it, you're going to learn it all over again!
2) No child left behind. We're treating everyone the same, and that treatment will be the one required for the dumbest. The smart ones are bored out of their skull? Who cares!
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Re:Rednecks? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd also like to add #3: Parents taking little to no interest in their child's education, and expecting the schools to assume that role in its entirety, and intervening only to tell of the teacher who took away their little angel's cell phone because they were texting during class. I dunno about you, but my parents were very proactively involved in my education. They taught me reading, writing, and 'rithmetic before I set foot in kindergarten, and they never stopped assisting and requiring accountability. They encouraged me to think critically and ask questions. If I didn't know, they encouraged me to look it up - and then asked me what I learned after I did. They bought me stuff at yard sales to take apart and I had to identify the basic components inside. If I got in trouble with a teacher and my parents found out about it (and since my parents worked in the school I went to, that was inevitable), the other half would come when I got home, and it wouldn't be pretty. I survived the wooden spoon, I survived learning to eat a balanced diet, I survived homework, and I survived not watching TV until I was 5 or 6.
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Re:Rednecks? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't want to be a parent before I am in a place to become one.
I was the same as you -- I wanted to wait until I could afford to be a parent, but guess what? You never can. I wound up realizing that, and was 33 before I became a dad. You think it's hard to get up at 3:00 AM to feed the baby at age 20, try it when you're over 30! I'm 57 and still not a grandparent. If there's one thing about my life I'd change, it would be waiting.
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Re:Rednecks? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a child of seven, my public librarian talked to me a bit, and gave me an adult card with a note to personnel that I was authorised to use the adult reading room, the music stacks, microfiche and all other facilities.
In high school, my swim team had to meet at the civic center pool about 1 PM to fit its schedule. Local people made the decision to move all of us to an 11 AM lunch, a decision that didn't need to be ratified by the superintendent of schools - in fact, it took only the team coach asking an assistant principal to set it up with the cafeteria staff, and they served 12 people an hour early to make it happen.
High school fencing was a club, (even though our club beat several college teams). We picked a schedule when the gym was empty, and had a couple of keys to it, which were carried at one point or another by just about everyone on the team, with no problems.
This was all 35 years or more ago. It seems totally absurd now to say practically every responsible adult I knew as a child bent 'the rules', knew which way to bend them, and it all worked pretty damned well, but that was the way of things.
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Re:Rednecks? (Score:5, Insightful)
That was back when exercising discretion wasn't a one-way ticket to being sued.
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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.
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Re:Rednecks? (Score:5, Insightful)
I taught high school for five years, and that was what I saw. Because all kids were tracked according to age rather than ability, you had a wide range of ability in every class. As a teacher, you've got a few choices:
1) Teach to the middle. Too hard for the dumb kids, to easy for the smart kids, but most kids get something out of it.
2) Teach too easy or two hard.
3) Try to teach to each kid's needs.
#3 is the one everyone would like to do. But it's ridiculously hard to do. I had kids in a class who were taking geometry and had algebra under their belt, and kids who couldn't multiply even with a calculator. Kids who didn't really understand what decimal places were all about. If I stop to give them instruction in the basic things that they need to learn the material I'm actually supposed to be teaching, I get questioned as to why I'm not teaching it. If your lessons are different for every kid, suddenly you need to prove that they're fair and appropriate for every kid. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for a lawsuit when you fail Johnny but pass Timmy, and they were learning different material.
My most successful classes were ones filled with homogeneous populations of kids. When they were all at about the same level, I could teach a lot of material very quickly. Treating all kids the same is a terrible failing in the US today. It's not the only one, but it's one of the leading causes of our issues.
As secondary cause is that teachers are given a tough job, but not the freedom to do it as it needs to be done. If I taught all the kids in my classes how to actually do science, they would have all failed the government-mandated science test. Why? Because it doesn't test whether or not you can do science, it tests whether or not you're motivated to remember facts about science that you have been exposed to and then scribble in a bubble.
What's the motivation for kids to do that? There isn't any. My master's thesis was on that very topic. Their test scores don't get sent to their parents, don't go on transcripts, and most of the time, don't even go back to their teachers. Yet those scores determine how well a school is functioning, from a government standpoint.
There are a lot of things broken about the US educational system. The top issue is that teachers can't just teach what kids need to learn. We have to jump through all these ridiculous hoops, and prove that we're poor teachers, because that what the test requires.
A good science teacher is not one who teaches kids to be masters at filling in bubbles on a sheet of paper with the wrote memory of facts. Fix the current methods of assessing teaching, and you're getting much closer to solving the root of the problem.
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Re:Rednecks? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are government employees in Danmark, too. In fact I'd imagine a higher proportion of them are, based on grandparent's point about investment on education - just who do you think did that?
But then again, that's not compatible with libertarian/conservative/far right agenda, so you ignored it and posted pointless propaganda for your pet ideology instead. Just as pretty much everyone else who has strong opinions - left or right - on these matters - or any matter, really - does. That's an unfortunate human trait, and one we really have to get rid of if we're to advance as a species.
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Re:Rednecks? (Score:4, Funny)
I see that you have a strong opinion about people with strong opinions, and are posting pointless propaganda for your pet ideology.
(Oh, and :)
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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.
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(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?
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Not Dolls!! (Score:5, Funny)
For the last time, they aren't dolls, they're action figures!!
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Dolls and tea sets? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:5, Informative)
Those are gender roles, taught by parenting. If you stick a child in a room with a bunch of girl and boy toys, without showing them which they should be playing with, they would play with all of them.
That's the popular ideal, but it's simply not true. Social experiments and have shown that even in isolated communities, even if every attempt is made to treat boys and girls the same (so as not to condition them one way or the other), the boys will prefer playing with traditionally-male toys, and the girls will prefer playing with traditionally-female toys.
Nature, it seems, is not always politically correct.
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Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:5, Informative)
Ok Einstein, explain why male-to-female transsexuals that go on estrogen find they cry more, get reduced sex drive, and increased verbal ability, while the reverse is true for female-to-male transsexuals ( i.e testosterone increases libido, reduces their tendency to cry and shifts abilities from verbal to spatial orientation ).
There's been loads of studies done on how hormones impact psychological factors ranging from the effects of birth control pills ( they use estrogens and progesterones ) to the impact of hormone replacement therapy for women entering menopause. In order to make a long story short there's is little doubt that hormones influence us in all kinds of ways.
Seriously, between psychoactive substances like alcohol and caffeine, the impact of nutritional deficiencies such as a lack of iodine, and the impact of hormones like I mentioned above, it is very clear that biological factors have a very strong influence on our psychology. The effects may not correspond with common stereotypes and prejudice, and it certainly does not apply on an individual basis, but to claim it is just a matter of upbringing or social conditioning is demonstratively false regardless of how well it might fit with your preferred political ideology.
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Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:5, Insightful)
The girls play with dolls, boys play with cars dichotomy is a bit of a simplification to make a nice sound bite. There is some gender bias towards the type of toy: girls tend to be less interested in playing with toys representing inanimate objects, and much more interested in playing with toys that represent people, or at least animals, than boys are. The real difference, however, is in the style of play. Girls tend to construct elaborate social situations in their play (tea parties, for example) while boys play is much less socially structured and more geared towards action.
If you want the sound bite, when boys play with dolls they make them fight. When girls play with dolls, they make them talk.
The differences are not purely environmental. The pattern is seen across all cultures and, as a poster pointed out in another thread (including published paper), are seen in non-human primates as well.
PS: the Guardian and the Telegraph are newspapers. They are not known for publishing scientific papers. If you want actual scientific papers you will have to read scientific journals, where the link between certain chemicals, feminized male behaviour and male/female birth ratio changes are much better established.
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Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, genetic information evolved over the last two million years can help identify dolls dressed in red as "feminine" and dolls dressed in green and wearing a hard hat as "masculine" ... except for 3000 years red was the "male warrior" color and only during the last 100 years were the "camo" colors fashionable in the army ... and the same genes are helping young children identify plastic tanks or knifes as "male toys" while plastic beds, plastic baby carriages and plastic table sets are identified (due to genes, hormone concentrations or something else of physiological origin) as "female toys".
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Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Dolls and tea sets? (Score:4, Funny)
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Transsexualism (Score:5, Informative)
One theory about why transsexualism occurs has been that it is a hormone induced neurological change that occurs early in development. While science is far from concluded on weather this is the case, I can from personal experience state that it is not a fun place to be. If there's even a small chance that environmental toxins is contributing to its prevalence then this is a very serious matter and definitely justifies a careful approach on restricting the use of chemicals that can influence gender development.
To give a slight idea of how strong an effect these things can have on a persons general wellbeing, a Dutch study found 20% of female to male transsexuals had attempted suicide prior to initiating hormone treatment. In comparison the figures following treatment with androgens were just a few percent. Now try to imagine what the effects might be when you expose an entire population to a diffuse cocktail of chemicals that interfere with gender development and you should start feeling a bit uncomfortable about the situation...
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Blame Bush for continued lax regulation (Score:5, Informative)
FTFA:
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Re:Transsexualism (Score:4, Insightful)
i cant help wonder if the suicide attempt comes from trying to fit into a world that reacts pretty much like a "uncanny valley" ones you look like one gender, but behave like a different one.
this may also be why homosexuality is such a "hot" topic.
i guess we humans prefer our lives to work along the lines of "walks like a duck, quacks like a duck"...
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Mixed up: Biological Gender vs. Feminization (Score:4, Informative)
This article does not make sense.
Biological gender (dictated by the presence of an Y vs. X chromosome) is irrevocably determined at the moment a spermium merges with an egg, excluding very rare cases of extra chromosomes etc. External pollution by endocrine disruptor chemicals plays no role in this.
Exhibition of female traits in biological males is a completely different story, and there is increasing evidence that this may be linked to certain classes of chemicals.
However, I am not aware of any studies which link these chemicals to decreased viability of Y-sperm, which could be a reason for the decline of male births. The number of biological males feminized to a degree that they pass and spend their lifes as females, and is however far too low to account for this change.
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Re:Mixed up: Biological Gender vs. Feminization (Score:5, Informative)
This article does not make sense.
Biological gender (dictated by the presence of an Y vs. X chromosome) is irrevocably determined at the moment a spermium merges with an egg, excluding very rare cases of extra chromosomes etc. External pollution by endocrine disruptor chemicals plays no role in this.
Exhibition of female traits in biological males is a completely different story, and there is increasing evidence that this may be linked to certain classes of chemicals.
However, I am not aware of any studies which link these chemicals to decreased viability of Y-sperm, which could be a reason for the decline of male births. The number of biological males feminized to a degree that they pass and spend their lifes as females, and is however far too low to account for this change.
Ah... such a simple world you live in. One baby has a Y, and it's male, and the other has an X, and it's female.
Actually, it's the SRY (sex determining gene) on the Y chromosome that initiates... I said INITIATES sexual distinction in males. Without this gene, the germ cell line "stripe" turns into ovaries. If there is a mutation in this gene, you will get an XY female with ovaries. If this gene is present and there are no mutations in this gene, then the germ cell line "stripe" becomes testicles.
The testicles produce androgen. Androgen drives the external development of the genitalia. If there is insufficient androgens, or insufficient response to androgens then the scrotalabial folds become labia, and the clitoris/penis precursor becomes a clitoris. If there are sufficient androgens, and response, the scrotalabial folds fuse into a scrotum, and the clitoris/penis precursor becomes a penis. The development of the external genitalia can also vary anywhere along a continuum between the two.
Separately, the testicles produce Anti-muellerian hormones, which prevent the development of the muellerian ducts, namely, the upper vagina, cervix, uterus, and fallopian tubes. If there is insufficient AMH, or insufficient response, the fetus will develop such organs regardless of the genetic makeup of the child, regardless of the external appearance of the genitalia. YES, there are MEN with UTERUSES, if they're AMH resistant.
Now... notice that none of this depends upon estrogen levels. That's because the mother floods the bodies of all children with estrogens. However, it's heavily dependent upon hormones that are produced in the testicles. There a number of chemicals that block androgens, and these result in birth defects, which is why you get in ads for things like Rogaine "pregnant women should never even TOUCH these pills."
There a hojillion different ways to define "biological sex" and none of them are conclusive, and none of them are guaranteed. There are women with XY, and men with XX (and they were born that way, and assigned their sex by doctors), there are women with high androgen levels (5-alpha-reductase deficiency) and men with low androgen levels, there are women with testicles, and men with ovaries, there are women without uteruses, and men with uteruses. The only thing left to define men from women biologically, is external genitalia... and that can be surgically altered.
So, seriously... you don't know anything... I hope this short lesson on sexual distinction in humans helps you out.
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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
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Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:5, Informative)
Social factors could perhaps have a role, but there's no evidence for it, as far as I know.
There is however a lot of evidence that environmental oestrogens have an effect on development, and much of this evidence is nicely summarised in the linked article.
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Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:5, Informative)
Someone above wondered on the effect environmental oestrogens had on animals. In the Potomoc river (runs by Washington D.C) fish are observed to have transgender traits over and above any natural underlying statistic signal and it has been shown to be result of environmental oestrogens. So it does occur.
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Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:5, Informative)
Not any plastics, but polycarbonate is a polymer of Bisphenol A -- and Bisphenol A was investigated as a synthetic estrogen before it was used in plastics. We've know that it had serious biological effects since the 1930s, but I suppose that was just another inconvenient, profit-reducing fact.
Polycarbonate is everywhere [unreasonable.org], not just in water bottles but metal cans (to prevent the metal from contact with food contents),refrigerator shelves, baby bottles, microwave cookware, and eating utensils. And it's used industrially in a wide variety of applications. It's even used to coat children's teeth as an anti-cavity measure.
Exposure to Bisphenol A has been linked to breast cancer, insulin resistance, miscarriage, obesity, prostate enlargement, early onset of sexual maturation, hyperactivity, and increased aggressiveness, as well as increased risk of heart disease and diabetes [unreasonable.org].
The chemical industry, of course, assures use that BPA can never leach from polycarbonate in appreciable amounts. There is, however, a very interesting correlation between who funds the research and what results are found. [ehponline.org]
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Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:5, Informative)
The BPA situation is a textbook example of regulatory capture [wikipedia.org]. It's a sign of a sick society.
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Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:5, Funny)
What? The nerve! Everyone knows fathers are supposed to ignore their children at all times, even if they're on fire.
When my siblings and I were growing up our father would deliberately put us on fire to "toughen us up a bit".
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Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:5, Funny)
Your dad used to set you on fire? Luxury!
I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah!
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Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:4, Funny)
When you hear the word 'manly' what are your first thoughts, I'd like to know what /.'s reaction to the word is?
Just a sec, to ask me wife ...
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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.
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Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:It's the chemicals!? Bollox to that! (Score:5, Insightful)
The parent post is quite incendiary, but makes very good points.
One of particular interest to me is the issue of the aforementioned companies using these chemicals and continuing to claim that they are not dangerous. A libertarian idealist would say that the information will get out (as it is, slowly) and if it concerns people (as it should) they will find somewhere else to buy sippy cups. But this seems inefficient to me, and it seems like in the meantime there is widespread, preventable harm being done.
Now, I think the hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations on the books do more harm than good, because 1) they tend to be so burdensome that small and innovative businesses are squeezed out by multinationals, who 2) have regulations written in their favor (someone else mentioned regulatory capture), and 3) we already have laws to punish fraud (such as marketing an unsafe item as safe). Yet I don't see a good answer to a problem like this one without regulation.
First, it is my understanding that no single product is solely responsible; it is due to the chemicals' presence in lots and lots of things, so wouldn't any single company's statement that their product is safe be kind of true, invalidating claims of fraud? Second, presumably a lot of harm is being done due to the widespread use of these chemicals, and the companies' reporting record is abysmal, so I find it unsatisfying to just say "you need to be aware of what you are purchasing." That's good in theory and probably worked well when goods were mostly made from natural items, but when everything is made out of 900 different kinds of plastic, organic compounds, synthetic materials, and who knows what else, you could spend eight hours a day trying to trace everything you use and still come up short.
So how would a real libertarian respond? To be clear, I like a lot of libertarian ideals, but there are instances where I don't see it working well. The common thread I see among them is "trouble caused by many people doing little things in aggregate."
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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.
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Re:Good news for Slashdot crowd (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of gay men prefer "real" men to the stereotypical effeminate gay man. There's also a subculture of ultra-masculinity known as "bears" [wikipedia.org] (for an example check out the hilarious Bear Force 1 [youtube.com]). For some there's probably some overcompensating going on due to the fear of being seen as "less of a man" because of their sexual orientation.
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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".
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Re:Is it such a bad thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
If that is how you feel by all means try to be more feminine. The rest of us prefer to have a choice in these matters, rather than have the choice made for us (indeed, forcing choices upon others is, according to your lists, a masculine thing, and therefore it has no place in the feminine society you seem so keen to create).
Besides, I like to think self-reliance, strength and competition are positive qualities. Many of the most famous artists were guys, so I'm not sure 'art' should be considered a 'feminine element', nor is there reason to believe that 'thoughtfulness' should be on that list of yours.
Maybe you could try pointing to some sources to convince us that you didn't just pull those lists out of you ass, then some more sources to show that the masculine elements are bad for society, and then some more to convince us that forcing emasculation on 50% of your citizens is ethical.
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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.
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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.
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Well at some point... (Score:5, Insightful)
blah blah, and more polar bears exhibit hermaphroditic features, and there's a higher percentage of Florida alligators that are female, and girls are hitting puberty earlier these days, and, and, an
Well, I would think that, when you people are ignoring that animals in nature are all becoming genders, 10 year old girls are getting pregnant, that, you might look up from your Wii and say, "hey, you know, the whole planet is fucked up, and we might well, actually try to FIX IT." Sometimes when there is a fire, you have to yell more than once.
Just a thought.
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