#american society of human genetics

[tenth-sentence]

From the rostrum of the American Society of Human Genetics, Jérôme Lejeune made his position on abortion clear: if the American biomedical community truly sought to decide which embryos were not worthy of eventual birth, it should establish a new research entity, "the National Institute of Death".

"In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity" - Daniel J. Kevles

[whats-in-a-sentence]

In 1950, in the United States, a corps of enthusiasts formed the American Society of Human Genetics, and in 1954 they established the American Journal of Human Genetics.

"In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity" - Daniel J. Kevles

[phoenixcatch7]

I know the fandom generally hand waves tawky tawnys back story because 'powerful and eccentric gentlemanly tiger shapeshifter' is pretty cool as is, give or take a stuffed animal or two, but I looked it up out of curiosity and???

Not only does this man (tiger) have many (many) WILDLY varying backstories (on brand tbh) a lot of them deal with quite uh, intense dehumanisation (de-sapient-isation?).

I'm not even joking, in one they have him as a member of an alternate reality where humans died out and humanoid animals rule, except tigers are still kept in zoo cages and denied basic rights. Tawny nearly gets executed for wearing clothes and reading a self help book, and is forcibly stripped naked and locked up again, meeting the marvels when they're tossed into his pen under the assumption that he'll eat them. WHAT?!

In his first appearance (in the 1940s) he's a side character, a bipedal bengal tiger migrating from India to America to, quote, 'integrate himself into American society'. Despite his kindness and politeness, he's met with fear and discrimination, to the point marvel shows up and realises he's chill and helps him get a job as a tour guide for a museum. The writers surely weren't trying to say something with that, no.

Other origins include:

A normal tiger accused of killing a person, granted the ability to walk and talk like a human by a 'local hermit' with a serum to help clear his name.

Mary's mass produced tiger teddy containing a scarab necklace that contained black Adam's powers (?) that was briefly brought to life by satanus as a six legged pooka (English/Celtic/Irish ghost fairy??) to fight his sister blaze and eventually 'earning' permanent personhood from the wizards friend Ibis for being so good at his job.

Random magic tiger who joined a wartime superhero group fighting mind controlled supers and once killed the leader of the Tiger men and took his place.

Random tiger at the zoo Billy thought was cool and tried to turn into a smilodon by sharing his powers, failed. Never left the zoo.

Ifrit tiger who liked to disguise himself as a stray cat or homeless person, who helped Billy when he became homeless.

Enchanted tiger kept on a lead by Pedro, who transforms with him into a smilodon. Quality of life dubious, because this was flashpoint.

Genetically enhanced bengal tiger saved from mind control.

Meta human (maybe??)

A mystical tiger and 'servant of Shazam'

Now that is a roster. The word tiger has lost all meaning to me. Give this guy some civil rights.

I reckon in any universe where one is true tawny would tell the rest as stories to anyone who asked XD. Keep them in their toes lol.

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Thanks to my post about the 28th, it’s come to my attention that a significant portion of humanity don’t read history books for fun, so here’s a few broad strokes of what, exactly, is going on with the cultural connotations of race within Dracula, as understood by an American:

European racism of the day was predominantly based on cultural ethnicity rather than skin color, and one of the main sliding scales (other than how old and prestigious the ancestry was) was how far west you were on the Eurasian continent. The further east you went, the less “civilized” things became, until you hit Asia and Oceania and just became inundated with absolutely rancid racist caricatures. Stuff from the “Orient” was there for exotic/shiny toys and moral lessons about how much better the West was, and not much else, so you can imagine what depictions of actual Asian people thus became.

(We’re faced with this east vs. west scale in Jonathan’s very first entry: Budapest straddles the line between the “civilized” western part of Europe and the “uncivilized,” opulent, and exotic world of eastern Europe. Jon is going from the known and familiar city into the mysterious, unfamiliar wilderness, an extremely common Gothic horror archetype.)

Both the fear of the unknown and the exoticizing/othering of Eastern Europe play heavily into Dracula’s themes, with the sexually predatory Count Dracula coming to England to do all sorts of unspeakable sordid things to innocent English women. (Not exactly Stoker’s finest hour, but this was a typical attitude of the day.)

Following that, it was also thought at the time that one’s moral character was essentially genetic. Certain people of certain races were predisposed to be “better” or “worse,” and your own moral character was also influenced by your parents’ status in society and behavior. A prostitute mother or a criminal father meant you would inherit their dubious moral quality, which is partially where “this person has bad blood” comes from. Bad blood is literally the negative morality passed onto you from your parents: you’ve inherited the bad qualities carried in their blood.

Linking back to the east-west thing, the further east you go -you’ve guessed it- the worse this supposed ancestral bad blood gets. People of “lesser” races included the Romani, Jews, Slovaks (and sometimes the Russians), and they were just supposed to be, like, naturally inclined to be bad. They were Programmed For Crime from the moment they were born, so you didn’t need to explain why such a character was evil when they showed up in your novel: I mean, they’re [INSERT RACE], aren’t they? It’s in the blood. No explanation needed. Everybody knows that. 

The assumption of the time was that such people were literally born bad, which of course naturally justified how they were treated. When they showed up on a page, you were supposed to distrust them on sight. 

Occasionally, low-class people were also treated as a race all their own, like poverty was some kind of moral failing. After all, the older, more prestigious, and wealthier your family was, the better their inherent moral quality, so poor people are obviously uncouth and have bad blood, right? 

(It’s an extremely stupid circular way of thinking, but that’s bigotry for ya.)

Dracula is a nobleman with old lineage, but he’s also steeped in the flavor of Eastern Europe: “barbaric” and proud, yet initially treating Jonathan with extreme courtesy; threateningly exotic and yet also familiar with English customs. As we go through the book, you’ll see that he almost exclusively hires Romani, Jewish, or extremely poor for his henchmen: he’s a force of evil that uses other “evil” tools, who bend easier to his will than “normal” people of “proper” races. 

(By all means, please pause here a moment to scrub yourself of the nauseating feeling that such a bullshit attitude evokes.)

In any case, Dracula himself is a pretty good example of all these racial ideas converging, which was also why he made such an effective monster to the Victorians: there’s just enough that’s familiar and proper in him that they couldn’t quite properly Other him, which links back to the transformative horror of vampirism turning something formerly good into something very very bad, which with their worldview of “you are born with this moral code because of racial predisposition and lineage” is just shocking. You mean this Eastern European man can infect our formerly good and pure citizens and make them act his way, just by an act of force? Uh-oh.

Anyways TLDR Dracula is a book steeped in the cultural traditions and expectations of the day which means that it’s lovely horror but also an absolute crock of shit at times due to racism (and several other -isms, which I will not cover here because I am trying not to make this an essay). 

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #36 – Life Does Not Allow Us To Meet by He Xi

I read this basically entirely because it got a hugo nomination, and assuredly would never have tried it otherwise – I literally wouldn’t even have heard of it, let alone be able to get my hands on a (digital) copy. So I went into this with frustratingly little context. Overall I’d call it an interesting read if not necessarily a loveable one.

The story follows a trio of explorers being sent to the colony of Caspian Sea, decades after the previous attempt to check on its progress was lost in a freak FTL accident. The planet, seeded with a population of genetically engineered ‘pioneers’ - humans modified to thrive in its environment - needs to be graded for suitability, and the colonists introduced to advanced technology and welcomed into humanity. Unsurprisingly, things do not go according to plan – the last mission’s destruction wasn’t as reported by the lone survivor, and the population has strayed increasingly far from the plan the Constitution of Earth demands.

Its heritage is of course entirely different, but the story was just incredibly reminiscent of old Golden Age American sci fi to me. The reason is some combination of style and content, I think. It’s overwhelmingly a novella of dialogue and exposition – pages at a time are dedicated to one character explaining a principle of the story’s science or technology to another. With the exception of the very final reveal, the whole plot is dialogue explaining the laws which the story is an expression of or decisions that they had already made – ‘action’ in any sense is in very short supply (despite the genocide). Reminded me of reading my dad’s ratty old paperbacks in the basement as a kid. Oddly nostalgic reading experience.

Prose-wise the story does come across as slightly stilted? Or maybe distant is the better word. Characters emote and have strong reactions, but in nearly every case it felt a bit tell-not-show. I’m not sure how much of that is from the original and how much is an artifact of translation (such is life for the tragically monolingual). While I mean, I’m fairly certain the translation could have been more graceful in places (I simply do not believe that referring to the original colony ship as Big Ship as a proper noun reads the same in English as whatever the original Mandarin was), but beyond that.

Speaking of being in translation – this is a story that made me desperately wish I was more properly familiar with the Chinese SF scene. If only because my initial reaction to it is that it’s obviously in conversation with the whole Three Body Problem series, but also those are literally the only two works of Chinese science fiction I’ve read so I really have no knowledge at all of the wider context they’re both swimming within.

Regardless, Life’s presentation of alien life absolutely does rhyme with Three Body’s, right down to the same examples of historical genocides being used to make the point. The xenophobia is presented as policy rather than an actual law of history, but it feels like a very intentional reference (and the story clearly considers it at least plausible if not necessarily self-evident). Which is what drives the central moral drama of the story – that despite the most careful possible genetic engineering, stellar radiation has left the pioneers of Caspian Sea incapable of reproducing with earth-born humans, and so made them functionally a different species. And thus, by the constitution of earth, axiomatically a potential threat to the survival of humanity that must be exterminated out of hand.

Going from Children of Memory (a series motivated in large part by wonder and joy at the idea of truly nonhuman intelligence, and possessed of ironclad faith in the potential of cosmopolitan, liberal societies to integrate wildly disparate parts) to this was something of a shock.

The book’s vision of humanity is kind of interesting, honestly. Subspecies modified to thrive on different planets, but capable of interbreeding to ensure some level of biological solidarity or shared destiny or something. Not making drastic changes to the appearance, even if it means awkwardly hiding gills under arm pits or not even trying to colonize worlds that would require exuding a thick mucus layer, basically explicitly to make sure that everyone will still find each other fuckable. Fascinatingly shallow, almost?

Anyways yes, interesting ideas and central drama, let down some by prose and execution. Very Asimov.

[misfitwashere]

Friends,

Trump called attention to the discrepancy between his height (reportedly 6-foot-3) and Kamala Harris’s (5-7½ in heels), insisting that no accommodation be made to appear closer in size.

“No boxes or artificial lifts will be allowed to stand on during my upcoming debate with Comrade Kamala Harris,” he wrote, adding that such accommodations would be “a form of cheating.” There’s no evidence Harris has sought such things. 

Nicholas Rule, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto who researches social perception and cognition, said Harris’s shorter height will be irrelevant tonight because she exudes “Tall Energy,” which he defined as “the confidence that comes from being above average height.”

I am 4-feet-10. At my highest, I was 4-feet-11. I doubt I have “Tall energy.” But if I were on the stage tonight with Donald Trump, I’d demolish him. 

To be sure, when it comes to choosing leaders, our society is exceptionally heightist. 

When I ran for the Democratic nomination for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, it seemed that the only attribute reporters wanted to cover was my height. Regardless of what I said in my speeches, the Boston Globe ran photos of me standing on boxes so I could see over the podium. The right-wing Boston Herald ran a headline on its front page charging “Short People Are Furious with Reich” because I had joked about my height on the campaign trail. 

None of it helped me with that election. But I didn’t lose because of my height. I lost because I was a lousy campaigner.

Research shows that voters do prefer taller candidates. A paper published in 2013 by psychologists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands analyzed the results of American presidential elections dating back to 1789. They found that taller candidates received more votes than shorter ones in roughly two-thirds of all elections. And the taller the candidates were relative to their opponents, the greater the average margin of their victory. 

Among presidents who have sought a second term, winners have been two inches taller, on average, than losers. The authors conclude that height may explain as much as 15 percent of the variation in election outcomes. 

It’s similar in the private sector. A survey of the heights of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies showed they were on average six feet tall -- about 2.5 inches taller than the average American man.

Why are we so heightist? Probably because of some genetic trigger in our brain that told early humans they needed the protection of very big men. Other things being equal, large males are more to be feared and they live longer. An impulse to defer to them, or prefer them as mates, makes evolutionary sense.

In Size Matters, Stephen S. Hall writes that in the eighteenth-century Frederick William of Prussia paid huge sums to recruit giant soldiers from around the world, thereby giving tangible value to matters of inches, and revealing “the desirability of height for the first time in a large, post-medieval society.”

But hey, I’m okay with giant soldiers, big security guards, and massive CEOs. I don’t care if I lack “Tall energy.” I’m fortunate to have grown up (or at least grown upward) in a society that values brains at least as much as brawn.

Kamala will win tonight, and she’ll go on to win the election in 55 days — not because of her “Tall energy,” but because she’s smarter, tougher, and better in every way than her large, stupid, decrepit opponent. 

[transmutationisms]

do you have further thoughts on darwin as a lamarckian?

what's defined as 'Darwinian' versus 'Lamarckian' in the Anglo and Francophone literature has very little to do with anything Darwin or Lamarck themselves wrote or thought. Lamarck's name and evolutionary intellectual milieu were already associated with various strains of republican, materialist, and atheist sentiment throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, and under the Third Republic, many French liberals took up an overtly nationalist 'neo-Lamarckian' party line for this very reason, seeking to contrast an invented French priority claim to the evolutionary treatises Darwin published in 1859 and 1871. additionally, the legacies of Kammerer and Lysenko have really altered public perception of Lamarck and 'Lamarckian' mechanisms of heredity. meanwhile Darwin took great care to claim he was NOT engaging in "Lamarck nonsense" when he finally published On the Origin of Species, and generally his proponents and popularisers, especially in the London set, also quite liked this narrative. then in the 1960s with the birth of the 'Darwin Industry' in historical scholarship, the then-dominant theory of genetics combined with the English nationalist interest in Darwiniana made it popular and even profitable to claim a sharp distinction between 'Darwinism' (non-teleological, mechanistic, natural selection) versus 'Lamarckism' (purposive, inheritance of acquired characters). interestingly, these days there is a vogue for claiming that research into epigenetics is 'redeeming' Lamarck over Darwin, though I wouldn't put much stock into it; it's still based on a poor reading of both men's actual ideas and anyway, analogous claims were also fashionable during the early 20th century, particularly among certain American biologists but even in the English set as well.

anyway since arguably the main point of contention here concerns the 'inheritance of acquired characters': Darwin also believed in this, as did virtually anyone advocating for evolutionary ideas from the mid-18th century onward. it was not controversial and is still not controversial, except in its cartoonishly extreme forms like Cuvier's line (propagated by Lyell and then to Darwin) about Lamarck thinking that a giraffe could just magically wish itself to have a longer neck and then pass that along to its offspring. this is not what he thought (he conceived of biological change on a massive, multigenerational timescale and considered it mediated by habitual actions).

more to the point it decontextualises evolutionary theory from its home base in discourses on animal and plant breeding, which matters because the idea that humans could alter the forms, behaviours, and temperaments of living beings was from the get-go also applied to ideas about the alteration of the human species. these proto-eugenic Enlightenment ideas make clear the political stakes of the nineteenth century debates over evolution, which gradually coalesced into what we now recognise as the overtly eugenic positions of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries (where French positions tended to lean more toward natalist, associationist, 'positive' eugenics and English positions in a more Malthusian, 'negative' direction). so yes Lamarck was a 'Darwinist' and Darwin was a 'Lamarckian' but what's more critical here imo is that this simple nationalist narrative of precursors and priority claims greatly distorts our ideas of what it even meant to be an 'evolutionist' (transformiste) and how these biological ideas were ideological, eugenic, and racial from day 1. as Emma Spary points out, we would really be better off understanding 19th century 'evolution' as situated in a broader matrix of concerns about how to engineer a 'better' society, and how the ideal citizen and indeed human was defined and justified in biological terms.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Charlie Rose: Listen to this, I hate to read too much, but this is, it's almost like they've been reading your book. This is from the New York Times for Friday May 24. "Americans flunk science, a study finds."

"Less than half of American adults understand that the Earth orbits the Sun yearly, according to a basic science survey. Nevertheless, there is enthusiasm for research, except in some fields like genetic engineering and nuclear power that are viewed with suspicion.

Only about 25 percent of American adults got passing grades in a National Science Foundation survey of what people know about basic science and economics."

I mean, this is singing your song isn't it?

Carl Sagan: Well, it's certainly what I'm talking about in "Demon-Haunted World." My feeling, Charlie, is that it's not that pseudoscience and superstition and new-age so-called beliefs and fundamentalist zealotry are something new. They've been with us for as long as we've been human. But we live in an age based on science and technology with formidable technological powers.

Rose: Science and technology are propelling us forward at accelerating rates.

Sagan: That's right, and if we don't understand it - and by we, I mean the general public - if it's something that, oh I'm not good at that, I don't know anything about it, then who is making all the decisions about science and technology that are gonna determine what kind of future our children live in? Just some members of Congress? But there's no more than a handful of members of Congress with any background in science at all. And the Republican Congress has just abolished its own office of Technology Assessment, the organization that gave them bipartisan competent advice on science and technology. They say, we don't want to know don't tell us about science and technology.

Rose: Surprising because Gingrich is genuinely interested, I think.

Sagan: He is, no question.

Rose: ... you know out of his own intellectual curiosity. Does the President still have a science adviser, at the White House?

Sagan: He does, he does, John Given. And the Vice President is scientifically literate, yes.

Rose: He's well known for being scientifically-- a science maven. I mean, you blast them all. Creationists, Christian Scientists who you say would rather allow their children to suffer than give them insulin or antibiotics. Astrologers come in for particular scorn on your part.

Sagan: Well, I wouldn't say scorn, just derision.

Rose: A more generous version of scorn. But what's the danger of all this? I mean, you know, this is not the thing--

Sagan: There's two kinds of dangers. One is what I just talked about, that we've arranged a society based on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is gonna blow up in our faces. I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy, if the people don't know anything about it.

And the second reason that I'm worried about this is that science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along. It's a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on. It wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in a constitution or a bill of rights. The people had to be educated and they had to practice their skepticism and their education. Otherwise, we don't run the government, the government runs us.

[aleck-le-mec]

It's wild to me how some able-bodied people only think of disabled culture as a concept and they haven't ever actually experienced it. To me the biggest tell that somebody has never experienced disabled culture is their lack of knowledge about something I call Societal Manufactured Disability Theory.

This theory posits that an aspect of disability is manufactured by societal norms, stigmas and labeling.

People with disabilities like myself will tell you that people do treat you differently based solely upon the fact that you are disabled. When my hand writing is too messy to read do to Dysgraphia people assume I'm not trying hard enough to be neat, and if I'm lazy enough to slack with hand writing I must always be lazy. When I tell people I have Dyslexia they think I'm less intelligent, unable to read or incapable of understanding the written word. When I tell people I have a connective tissue disorder which is an invisible disability they think I'm a liar, scheming to take resources away from "real disabled people".

The societal norm here in America is to push forward, laziness is not an option we see it repeatedly in the rhetoric surrounding young people. News sources constantly talking about how "no one wants to work these days" or "young people are taking everything for granted".

There is a huge stigma around having Dyslexia that most people don't notice. In American society where we have a 79% literacy rate it is expected that you can read, so when you can't or you have trouble people think you have a lower IQ. Dyslexia can be genetic so I'm actually a fourth generation Dyslexic from my dad's side with all of them men being the ones to pass it down. My dad has always said that my great grandfather had no support for his Dyslexia, nobody cared and in fact the term Dyslexia was only coined in 1887. When my dad went to school they attempted to alleviate some of the symptoms of Dyslexia by making him watch his hands as he crawled on the floor, believing that the root of the problem was in a lack of eye coordination. To this day I and many other Dyslexics will avoid talking about our diagnosis because of the stigma behind it. I have had many experiences in my life where as soon as people learn that I am Dyslexic they assume that I can't spell anything or that they need to read everything to me. That's what stigma does, it makes people hide away just so they can live in peace and be respected.

It is extremely common for people with invisible disabilities to be labeled as liars, this is mostly due to a lack of education and representation. The general public's idea of disability is limited, but the truth is that disability is one of the most dynamic aspects of human beings. Invisible and dynamic disabilities make up the majority of disabilities; in fact, 1 out of every 3 Americans is in fact disabled. When people see me, a young, healthy-looking man, they never think I'm disabled. If I tell them I am, they may think I am lying. People generally do not like liars, and having such a label attached to your name can be detrimental to your social integration.

You can see that none of those setbacks I mentioned are symptoms of my disabilities. The perceived deviance, stigma, and labeling are not things you'll find on a medical report. However, they do harm me socially and potentially medically when it comes to stigma; these things disable me. Thus, part of my struggle as a disabled person is manufactured by society itself, in the norms we hold and the way we treat others.

I have come to that conclusion repeatedly, as have almost every other disabled person. It's a conclusion that is often reached in the community as a whole. However, it is in able-bodied culture where these stigmas, labels, and perceived attacks originate. So, if someone is completely averse to accepting the Societal Manufactured Disability Theory, it suggests that they have probably never fully been a part of any aspect of disability culture.

[tenth-sentence]

He outlined a new research programme which included studies in human chromosome mapping, human genetic aberrations, and cytogenetic studies on human cell and tissue cultures.

"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture" - Jon Turney

[bodyhorrorbeatdown]

BODY HORROR BEATDOWN BRACKET!

that was fast! here are the matchups for round 1, all randomly shuffled! (english) titles are in bold.

Splinter vs. Videodrome

Martyrs vs. Ginger Snaps

鉄男/Tetsuo (Tetsuo: The Iron Man) vs. The Blob (1988)

Castle Freak vs. Cabin Fever

Grave (Raw) vs. Frankenhooker

District 9 vs. An American Werewolf in London

Evil Dead (2013) vs. Akira

The Fly (1986) vs. The Quatermass Xperiment

Braindead/Dead Alive vs. From Beyond

American Mary vs. Old

ギニーピッグ マンホールの中の人魚/Ginī Piggu: Manhōru no Naka no Ningyo (Guinea Pig: Mermaid in a Manhole) vs. Altered States

Bad Biology vs. The Void

The Stuff vs. Beetlejuice

La Piel Que Habito (The Skin I Live In) vs. Eraserhead

Barbarian vs. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

Coraline vs. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Mad God vs. The Thing (1982)

Alien vs. Crimes of the Future

The Incredible Melting Man vs. Silent Hill

Suspiria (1977) vs. The Evil Dead (1981)

Gwledd (The Feast) vs. Jacob's Ladder

Society vs. The Faculty

The Exorcist vs. The Autopsy of Jane Doe

How to Get Ahead in Advertising vs. Annihilation

Repo! The Genetic Opera vs. Color Out of Space

東京残酷警察/Tōkyō Zankoku Keisatsu (Tokyo Gore Police) vs. Hellraiser (1987)

Uzumaki vs. Fresh

The Return of the Living Dead vs. Stung

Street Trash vs. The Human Centipede (2009)

Spring vs. Slither

Jennifer's Body vs. Brain Damage

Tusk vs. Possessor

[intersexcat-tboy]

Examining Miscalculations and Intersex Definitions Regarding Sax's .018% Claim

The debate surrounding the definition of intersex and their characteristics has been a topic of debate within various professional fields, advocacy organizations, and studies for decades. Amidst this discourse includes a response from Dr. Leonard Sax, who claims to provide a "clinician's standpoint" despite lacking specialized expertise in these conditions, having only served as a primary care physician.

However, his arguments stand in stark contrast to those of Fausto-Sterling, a world-renowned professor of biology and gender studies. Furthermore, they diverge significantly from the consensus among major health associations, medical organizations, intersex rights groups, and human rights organizations.

Leading/Major Health Associations

The definition of intersex is resoundingly clear among leading health associations. The World Health Organization recognizes that intersex individuals are those "born with natural variations in biological or physiological characteristics, including sexual anatomy, reproductive organs, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit traditional definitions of male or female." Similarly, the National Institute of Health acknowledges individuals who are "born with, or who develop naturally in puberty, biological sex characteristics that are not typically male or female." The National Health Services emphasizes that intersex "involves genes, hormones, and reproductive organs, including genitals, and a person's physical sex development can differ internally, externally, or both."

Major/Leading Medical Associations

Major medical associations provide crucial insights into the understanding of intersex variations. The The American Medical Association adopts a broader definition, recognizing those with "a congenital condition with inconsistent chromosomal, gonadal, or anatomic sex development." Likewise, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (PDF - which trains and accredits physicians in Australia and New Zealand) recognizes the significance of "congenital variations in a person's physical, hormonal, or genetic characteristics that do not match strict medical definitions of female or male sex." Additionally, the Center for Disease Control highlights the concept of "variations in physical sex characteristics, including anatomy, hormones, chromosomes, or other traits, that differ from expectations generally associated with male and female bodies." The International Symposium on Disorders of Sex Development notes there to be over 40 conditions

Leading Intersex Rights organizations

Intersex rights organizations, including Intersex Human Rights of Australia and Brújula Intersexual in Mexico, explicitly disagree with Dr. Leonard Sax's narrow definition of intersex individuals. They align themselves with more inclusive perspectives. For instance, Intersex Society of North America (working with) InterACT still use Fausto-Sterling's estimates over a decade later. Intersex Campaign for Equality in the United States also uses Sterling's estimates, believing the figures may even be higher than 2%. Intersex Asia and Intersex Russia both use estimates ranging from 0.5%-1.7%, Russia even including PCOS by name (which would be higher than 1.7%). InterAction from Germany's Intersex Rights suggests a range of 1-2 individuals per 100 births, highlighting how the medical community tries to "keep the frequency as extremely low as possible". Stop Intersex Mutilations from France posits there are over 40 variations and also suggests the prevalence might surpass 1.7%. Additionally, OII Europe presents prevalence estimates of 1:200 and 1.7% in their materials.

These organizations stress that intersex variations encompass a wide spectrum of biological and physiological characteristics beyond chromosomal ambiguity, challenging Sax's limited viewpoint.

Major human rights organizations

unequivocally support intersex individuals. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights emphasizes that intersex individuals are "born with a wide range of natural variations in their sex characteristics that don't fit the typical definition of male or female." Amnesty International notes that intersex encompasses "a wide umbrella of natural variations" (1.7%) and human rights abuses faced by intersex individuals. Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights Campaign underline the broader definition of intersex, acknowledging variations in genitalia, chromosomes, gonads, internal sex organs, hormone production, hormone response, and secondary sex traits, noting 1.7% as a prevalence rate. These human rights organizations underscore the importance of acknowledging intersex variations to ensure the protection of human rights.

Other Medical Orgs

Additional medical organizations like the Société Internationale d'Urologie (PDF) (an international professional organization dedicated to the field of urology), and the National Society of Genetic Counselors (uses 1.7%, says sex is not based on chromosones) adopt definitions that align with broader medical perspectives, they recognize the complexities of intersex conditions and advocate for understanding beyond binary definitions. Furthermore, the Endocrine Society acknowledges CAH to be part of a continuum of disorders, acknowledging the variations in severity.

Examining oversights: Discrepancies in Calculations

What's interesting is that even within Sax's own criteria, defining intersex as when 'the chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female,' there's an evident inclusion of conditions like 'sex reversals' and ambiguous genitalia. However, Sax overlooks contributors such as mixed gonadal dysgenesis (MGD), as well as Swyer Syndrome and de la Chapelle syndrome, despite the former being the second leading cause of ambiguous genitalia.

Let's do the math

CAH (.0077) + CAIS (.0076) = .0153

+ ovotestes (.0012) + Idiopathic (.0009) = .0174

+ PAIS (.00076) = .01816

Fausto-Sterling includes de la Chapelle syndrome and MGD, although not as separate statistics. MGD is amalgamated with Turner's statistics, and de la Chapelle syndrome is grouped with other sex chromosome variations. However, Sax completely disregards these conditions when he discards several categories from his estimates, effectively throwing out qualifying numbers and ignoring their potential impact on the overall prevalence of intersex conditions.

While newer studies suggest a prevalence of .004 for de la Chappelle, we also have to consider that neither study includes Swyer Syndrome (+.00125), and PAIS is now recognized as at least as common as CAIS, with the latter being less likely to cause ambiguous genitalia at birth, and more likely to be identified in childhood.

The leading causes of ambiguous genitalia are CAH (.0077), PAIS (.00076), MGD (.005) and ovotestes (.0012), which places us just below (.01466) the ambiguous genitalia observed at birth from Mothers And Babies Reports from Australia, if we account for 15% (0.0006) of de la Chapelle births having ambiguous genitalia, it brings ambiguous genitalia at birth to a total of .015% found before.

If he includes CAH, PAIS (since CAIS is often not identified until childhood), ovotestes and idiopathic causes under his definition of intersex, it leaves us with .005% of births with ambiguous genitalia without a possible causing condition. This gap can easily be explained by his exclusion of MGD and de la Chapelle syndrome.

If we count only CAIS (.0076) and CAH (.0077), and the newer study estimate of de la Chapelle (.004), it already surpasses Sax's estimate at .0193.

With the addition of ovotestes (.0012), idiopathic (.0009), MGD (.005) and Sawyer syndrome (.00125) it brings us to .022%. With older estimates of PAIS (.00076), .0234%; with newer ones (.0076), just a bit above .03%, which is over two thirds an increase of Sax's original estimate.

There is overwhelming support for a more comprehensive understanding of intersex variations that emphasizes the importance of respecting a wide range of biological and physiological characteristics beyond mere genital and chromosomal definitions. This approach is essential in safeguarding human rights and ensuring equitable treatment for all individuals

TLDR;;

The collective stance of experts and organizations, spanning from health associations to human rights advocates, sharply contrasts with the limited definition created by Sax. He claims to know other clinicians' thoughts, without any evidence to back it up. As stated previously, he also lacks education and clinical experience on intersex individuals, he is a family doctor.

[elbiotipo]

some stuff that inspires me when I write the Biopunks, in no particular order:

Argentine and Latin American memory: the weight of everything that came before us, all our victories and struggles, dictatorships, crises, revolutions and democracies. The characters are young, and yet they are defined by things that happened decades before they were born.

60s-70s counterculture: revolutionary students and hippies, the connection between ecology (bioengineering in this case) and spirituality, self expression in a repressive culture, the hope for a better world, for the world revolution... and how it all faded away and the legacy it left behind (papá cuentáme otra vez...)

Argentine Rock: A bit too wide since it covers everything from Te Hace Falta Vitaminas to Inconsciente Colectivo, but every chapter is titled after an Argentine rock song, it's intended to be the soundtrack.

Pirates of Silicon Valley: the movie yes, but more accurately the whole PC revolution, the dichotomy of open vs. closed source (in genomes this time), hacker (biohacker) culture, the rise of megacorporations vs academia vs subcultures... but this time it's genetics...

Neon Genesis Evangelion: for real, don't laugh. Exploring what they didn't talk about much: what is a world with billions dead? Ruined flooded cities contrasted with bright futuristic buildings, the UN taking over after a worldwide catastrophe with helicopters patrolling the skies, the contrast between high technological infrastructure and a mostly normal life.

Argentine fútbol: the canchita de barrio, even if it's a biotech club this time! Competition among institutes and among countries, the bioclub as a nexus for young people, pride on the camiseta, old glories, the joy of winning for your team... even if it's a bunch of nerds, it's really a story about a team on the C Nacional who wants to revive its old glories...

Art Nouveau: Not exactly the one from the early XX century, but the main art style everywhere. There were never real Art Nouveau skyscrapers and major buildings, now they are everywhere, and they are complemented and even made of biotechnology too, and how it contrasts with the sharper, more practical style of the post-Ecocide world.

Transhumanism: trascending the human form yes, but also all that's associated with it: the deep view of humanity's future, the potential of technology to change the nature of Homo sapiens and the biosphere itself, space colonization, inmortality, AIs and new sentient species, things that looked like fantastic dreams now are practical problems as technology advances...

Enviromental restoration: The world is not over, not if we have anything to say about it! A healing Earth and the scientific, technological, but also social, political and even spiritual debate on what shape should it take. Whole armies of people dedicated to regrowing forests, cleaning oceans and recovering wastelands, and what does it mean for a society which adopts an almost warlike approach to enviromental conservation and restoration.

Argentine Academia: of course, since I'm on it. The eternal stress of writing grant plans and struggling with your director, trying to make the best of your little funding, making your obsolete equipment to last as long as possible, and managing great things with it.

[pittieandpoodle]

idk, pitbulls have such a complicated history (in america i’m american this post is us centric i’m sorry but i’m american so it’s what i know) that several things can be and are true at once

pitbulls are not inherently dangerous and violent and many of them do make excellent family pets

historically, pitbulls were bred for dog aggression and high prey drive, but not for human aggression

more recently, there’s been an increase in human-aggressive pitbulls, even though this is technically against breed standard

when pitbulls attack, it’s likely to cause a lot of damage due to their size, strength, and tenacity

not all pitbulls will attack dogs/animals/humans

some pitbulls will attack dogs/animals/humans

pitbulls are responsible for a portion of fatal dog attacks

pitbulls are not the only breed associated with fatal dog attacks

some pitbulls require experienced owners/handlers to provide them with a fulfilling, safe life

some pitbulls are happy with a first time dog owner and will likely never have a problem with safety or aggression

socialization is key to raising a pitbull

you cannot change the genetics of the pitbull you have

it’s almost like… this is an incredibly nuanced and complicated topic, and the “solution” to the “problem” of modern pitbull ownership is widespread, intense education for owners, rehabbing the shelter/rescue system (no more refusing to PTS dogs who cannot safely live in human society for the love of god), and establishing fair and enforceable guidelines for dog breeding.

to be quite honest, i don’t think i’ll live to see the day that pitbulls are not a controversial topic just by virtue of existing.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #19 – Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is the third book I’ve picked up as part of my whole aspirational ‘read a piece of non-SFF capital-l Literature every month’ New Years resolution. Of those three, it is the second I opened only to discover it actually is science fiction and/or fantasy after all. Which is just a very funny thing to happen twice, and also meant the book was significantly less outside my comfort zone than I’d expected. Which did make it quite a pleasant read.

The story follows Klara, an AF (Artificial Friend, a companion robot for children) in a broadly sketched and mildly dystopian future America. At first it just follows her life in the shop where she’s kept, observing the world around her and interacting with the store manager and the other AFs, but the meat of the book is her life with the family who buys her. Over time you learn that Josie, her child, suffers from severe and increasing health issues as a consequence of being ‘lifted’ (genetically enhanced, in some unclear way) in the womb. Klara, being solar-powered and having quietly developed a one-robot religion underpinned by a firm belief in the power and benevolence of Mr. Sun (and a moral opposition to Pollution, which obscures and drives him away) does her best to invoke his help in nourishing and restoring Josie. At the same time, she learns that her job is not just to comfort Josie but, should she die, to be her mother’s replacement goldfish and imitate her perfectly.

The setting is broadly sketched and never really exposited upon – it’s just not something Klara is particularly interested in – but it’s a very modern sort of dystopia. Much of the populace, even among the American professional elite, have been left ‘post-employed’ by robotic automation. The remaining meritocratic elite have embraced novel and risky genetic enhancements for their children, as the only possible way of ensuring they get into a good school and one of the few good careers left. There are fascist militia compounds off in the distance somewhere. The overall feeling is that of a society dimly aware it’s midway through collapsing, but with no ideas of how to arrest its fall. But since Klara has no interest at all in either politics or economics, we only see this as it directly intrudes upon the story, with nary a lecture or manifesto to be seen.

I’ve only ever read one other book by Ishiguro, so I really don’t know how much this generalizes, but the similarities to Never Let Me Go really were striking. Both books are set in really rather horrifying societies, but portrayed in an utterly normalized way by someone who never even thinks to question the real rules they live under. Which is even more striking because in both cases the protagonist is seen by society as only quasi-human – like a person, but existing only in relation to and for the benefit of the people who really matter. And in both cases the story follows the protagonist who lives their life moving through the role they were made for without ever really resisting it, let alone changing it. Not that the roles of ‘friend to sick child’ and ‘mandatory organ donor’ are exactly comparable but, you know.

A definition I’ve always kind of liked for what makes literary fiction, well, literary is that it’s as or more concerned with the beauty and presentation of its prose than it is on the information the prose is conveying. Not at all true in terms of how the term’s actually used (genre is marketing), but it works for me, and lets this book count as literature quite handily. The whole story is told quite tightly from Klara’s point of view, and it’s a pleasure to read. Even if it took me more than a few pages to really understand how she described scenes, always foregrounding the ways they were divided by grids or patterns of the sun’s light.

Portraying the normal human society through the eyes of a naive and somewhat alien narrator to get away without explaining everything is a classic sci fi trope for a reason, but it’s overall used really well here as well.

I’m still not entirely sure how to interpret the sudden intrusion of magical realism with the ending. But otherwise, really quite a good read.

[copaganda-clobberfest]

WELCOME

TO THE FIRST ROUND OF THE COPAGANDA CLOBBERFEST!

“You know that trope? That one trope *Everyone* hates? The trope in which a well meaning antagonist to our heroes, one looking out for the good of a certain community, suddenly does something horrible and drastic to make not only them, but the ideology they stand for the most villainous of all?”

NOW IS THE TIME TO BATTLE THEM OUT! Like Ken dolls, fighting for survival! Like your Polly pockets discarded in the closet, we’ll see which of these bitches jumped that slippery slope harder! Whose character did numbers on y’all, and blew up a bunch of grandmas and babies and hospitals with it!

ROUND ONE

SQUEALER from SHIN SEKAI YORI vs THE WHITE FANG from RWBY

Squealer propaganda (TW for disturbing themes, as well as spoilers for the anime)

“he is a human man who has descended from a long line of humans who were genetically engineered, tortured, studied like literal rodents, selectively bred, and worse by a population of other humans with psychic powers. to show that he is in the wrong, he slaughters the elderly, infirm, children, murders two 14 year olds in particular and uses their child as a living weapon, and lobotomizes his mother in an effort to be recognized as human and treated better than literal garbage.”

White Fang propaganda (TW for Racism, Branding, Slavery, Antisemitism):

“As a Jewish person, I stopped watching RWBY around the beginning of s5 when Adam (the main White Fang antagonist) said that the goal of the White Fang was to replace humans in society. It came SO shortly after those riots where people where chanting "Jews will not replace us" and it made me so sick to my stomach to watch a conspiracy theory like that actually play out on screen that I hard stopped watching a show I'd been highkey obsessed with for years.”

“The evilest moment the writers wrote for their literal “minorities are secretly just wanting power over the whites” scapegoat character involves said character revealing he was not only enslaved but also was branded with a cattle prod over his eye.”

“The White Fang is the only organization fighting for the rights of the Faunus, the in-universe minority group meant to be an allegory for poc, and they’re portrayed as ruthless terrorists who are conveniently less white than the privileged minorities who “redeem” them. A majority of the actual poc who are also Faunus have “allusions” to the Jungle Book, and if you know the Jungle Book’s author and the certain other thing he wrote, you’d Barf at how racist that really is. The white comfort is strong in this Texan show. Also, said terrorists in this show are based off the real-world Black Panther Party, which just makes this whole thing feel like a special on Fox News!”

“The first indigenous-coded character and she’s a terrorist. Like what real life native Americans are to this day dubbed as for simply wanting their rights.”

Always feel free to rb with more propaganda :)