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I understand this comment is poo-pooing the idea of gender being separate from biological sex, but even biological sex is not as straightforward as having a Y c
by vore 3y ago
I understand this comment is poo-pooing the idea of gender being separate from biological sex, but even biological sex is not as straightforward as having a Y chromosome meaning you're a man, such as women with Swyer syndrome...
- dvt 3y agoWittgenstein would have such a field day with the semantic games we're playing these days. The disclaimer basically says: "man" has a purely subjective meaning, but we're going to keep using the word anyway because we know you know what we mean objectively. Kind of funny if you think about it. I think that's what the (̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶n̶u̶k̶e̶d̶) comment was pointing out.
- amluto 3y agoIt’s a wee bit silly given that the article has “Y chromosome” all over it. But this is an article about cancer, and one could just as easily imagine that testosterone levels, or estrogen levels, or amounts of various types of tissue, etc could affect incidence of various types of cancer. For example, brief searching found: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitiv... XY people with this condition have rather different cancer risk profiles than the general population of XX cis females or XY cis males.
- lr4444lr 3y agoI'm not poo-pooing that idea. The issue is the political (mis/dis/ab)use of language in all contexts. This is Nature journal, for goddakes, using the term "man" in a completely obvious biological convention to discuss chromsomal effects on cancer prognosis. They have no reason to latently apologize for that by acknowledging gender sex disparity in this piece.
- kanbara 3y agonot all men have xy-chromosomes and not all xy-chromosome bearing people are men. it’s really simple, tbh
- z3c0 3y agoI get what you're saying, but do you feel that you require that nuance to be acknowledged to understand what the article is getting at with the word "man"? I miss elegant, succinct language. George Carlin's point about "shellshock" vs "posttraumatic stress disorder" deserves mention here.
- vGPU 3y ago[flagged]
- eozoon 3y agoThink of it as men = "people with y chromosome" varible setting, or a "People with y chromosome (hereinafter referred to as men)" in a contract. The scientifically accurate way to describe the subject of the article is "people with y chromosome" but that is clunky to repeat so they want to designate a shorthand for it, while acknowledging that without proper definition the shorthand would be vague and not accurate description. I'd think defining your terms clearly is perfectly suitable for a scientific journal.
- NhanH 3y agoDefining unusual term is perfectly suitable for scientific journal. Men == people with y chromosome is something that has been used for thousands of year (in the context of scientific writing), and if you have to define it, you might as well define the term “define”. In the context of this paper, no one is gonna ask “what do you mean by men” if you remove that disclaimer. Sure, another paper that discuss some social issues with men might have to clarify whether it is the y-chromosome men or all men, but this isn’t the case here
- haldujai 3y agoTo be clear this isn't a research paper, it is a PR news summary designed to be accessible.
- Affric 3y ago> used for thousands of year (in the context of scientific writing) The Middle English word was "mannen" and in old english "mann" meant roughly the same as we mean with "human" now, i.e. without respect to sex. I don't think the paragraph will be looked back on as anything except a sign of troubled political times (rather than communicating anything of use with regards to the information in the article) but what you've written is incorrect.
- NhanH 3y agoI don’t mean the exact term “men”, just the generic word that is used to describe the concept of men.
- haldujai 3y agoIt's not necessarily obvious that the usage refers to sex, gender issues are fair game for nature as well. This also isn't a publication in nature, it's a PR/news release designed to be accessible. The statement you are quoting first appears after a paragraph talking about lifestyle and not the first usage of the word which could create ambiguity. The article also does not make an explicit reference to "sex" or "gender" at any point. > The issue is the political (mis/dis/ab)use of language in all contexts. While there may be some truth to this statement, this article isn't a particularly striking example.
- shwaj 3y agoIt is totally obvious that the usage refers to sex. The title is "How the Y chromosome makes some cancers more deadly for men", how much more obvious could it be? Pre-emptive edit: Given that this is a press release for a broader audience, rather than the primary research, I suppose there might actually be some readers who don't make the connection between "Y chromosome" and "sex".
- haldujai 3y agoDing ding ding. The research articles being cited both explicitly state "sex" and make no disclaimer. The statement reads as having been added after the fact due to potential ambiguity by not explicitly stating (gender|sex) once and/or misquoting by the audience intended to be reached ("Nature says gender = sex").
- causality0 3y agoIt's religious. If you have an opportunity to signify that you're on the right team and don't take it, it casts suspicion on you. Maybe you're one of those dirty transphobes.
- pryce 3y agoThe article literally shows in its second paragraph that "XY" entails male is not valid; it describes an extremely common occurrence of cells losing their Y chromosome. Outside of that example, for overall humans, when Y is present, and SRY isn't, advocates for chromosomal definitions fall flat. When SRY is present but not expressed, same thing. When SRY is expressed but receptors are insensitive to androgens, chromosomal definitions fall flat again. Aknowledging that there is a difference between "man" and the XY genotype, and being clear about the definitions the article will employ is not some concession to wokeness. It is a scientist being interested in their tools, their theories, and the limits of them, and an article in Nature is a perfectly appropriate place for this; just as much as we can and do to expect articles in nature to differentiate MSM and "gay man".
- dragonwriter 3y ago> This is Nature journal, for goddakes, using the term "man" in a completely obvious biological convention to discuss chromsomal effects on cancer prognosis. Its not an “obvious biological convention”, its a simplification that is seen as useful in the context of the article and it is very good to be clear about it, because in the biomedical world (not even considering gender identity issues) things like “a fertile woman with 46,XY karyotype and female phenotype” are actually observed and documented.
- ozr 3y agoIf it's so rare that it needs to be explicit defined as a medical syndrome, a disclaimer should be unneeded.
- coredog64 3y agoSwyer syndrome is exceedingly rare. Where else do we muddy the waters of understanding for a 1 in 100,000 exception?
- davidmurdoch 3y agoSome people are born with only one arm. It is for this reason that we can no longer describe humans as having two arms. /s
- cocochanel 3y agoI will steal this one.
- _thisdot 3y agoReminds me of Steve Jobs unveiling the first iPhone. He mentioned it doesn’t need a stylus, but something all of us are born with!
- fzeroracer 3y agoHowever, if it turned out that having two arms meant you were at a higher risk for a specific cancer, you would probably describe it as 'two arms leads to higher rate of X cancer' rather than 'all humans are at higher risk of X cancer' because it's burying the lede.
- yarg 3y agoSure, but their gonads don't produce eggs. They're socially female and in many ways physically female, but from a reproductive perspective (the reason for sexual dimorphism in the first place) they're not female. They're males with transformative hormonal disorders. Also, arguments regarding legitimate medical issues like this and CAIS are completely orthogonal to the ideological reason behind the caveat on the article.
- _thisdot 3y agoI’m sorry, it’s not clear to me who you’re talking about
- yarg 3y agoThen we both get to be confused by each other's comments.
- eozoon 3y agoThe article is talking about colorectal cancer and bladder cancer, y chromosome owners can get those cancers too whether or not they have female phenotype or not.
- yarg 3y agoI was replying to a subject forked sub-thread, so what I said isn't directly applicable to the article.
- fzeroracer 3y agoSo by your own argument, are men that are infertile not men, then? If so, then I believe we have quite the reckoning with how many people think they're men when they're not.
- yarg 3y agoThey're not complete men. They're the whimper at the end of a 4,000,000,000 year long bloodline (I say blood). Our ability to replicate is and ever has been and will remain the primary guiding factor of our evolution. The meek be damned, it's the fertile who shall inherit the earth.
- mjfl 3y agoI think the issue is that men can clearly observe people in public these days, saying that they are men, when they are clearly not men, and are women, without ambiguity or any intersex condition. You are not able to say this to them without offense and thus... tension right?
- idlewords 3y agoBiological sex is a pretty clear and straightforward concept if you don't happen to be girded up for ideological battle around it. The idea that clear semantic categories somehow lose validity if they're fuzzy at the edges is unique to the gender wars; no one seems to find it problematic to talk about sandwiches, or childhood, or the fruit/vegetable binary, all of which are way muddier categories than sex.
- haldujai 3y agoIs anyone seriously debating that sex isn't binary? Gender being different from sex is not a new concept, from the 2001 IOM report (predating the "gender wars"): The committee defines sex as the classification of living things, generally as male or female according to their reproductive organs and functions assigned by the chromosomal complement, and gender as a person’s self-representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions on the basis of the individual’s gender presen- tation. Gender is shaped by environment and experience. Not much has changed regarding sex from 2001, we've expanded the definition of gender which is clearly much more complicated. http://elibrary.pcu.edu.ph:9000/digi/NA02/2001/10028.pdf http://elibrary.pcu.edu.ph:9000/digi/NA02/2001/10028.pdf
- spinach 3y agoThere indeed are many people pushing the idea that sex isn't binary using things like Disorders of Sexual Development (intersex), other species that can change sex like clownfish (pretending this says something about humans), and also creating confusion between sex and gender and conflating them (such as how your sex is listed on ID, but people claim a gender, such as the opposite sex or non-binary, and have that gender listed as their sex).
- haldujai 3y agoI should have been clearer, sex is generally binary there are obviously rare exceptions like chromosomal abnormalities. Who's making these arguments? A quick Google scholar was not fruitful, do you have any sources or is this a fringe minority? > such as how your sex is listed on ID This presupposes that sex be listed on ID rather than gender. I don't follow this in the news so I'm not sure what the arguments are but at face value using the IOM definition from 2001 ("how that person is responded to by social institutions on the basis of the individual’s gender presentation.") gender seems like the more appropriate choice for identification.
- vGPU 3y ago> Fewer than 100 cases have been reported as of 2018. Irrelevant.
- acomjean 3y agoThey explicitly say that men=people with Y chromosomes in this article. Then they talks about “men” loosing the Y chromosome in some cells. “As men age, the proportion of Y-less blood cells increases, and an abundance of such cells has been linked to conditions including heart disease, neurodegenerative conditions and some cancers.” Sex and gender are lumped together in English and this creates some vagueness. Especially in the paragraph where they’re indicating that “lifestyle” plays a role in those differences in cancer rates.