critical thinking / gender / science / sex / sexual orientation

“They look like girls, but act and think like boys”

Jender9 Comments

Quote from a scientist, discussing behavior of worms that have been genetically manipulated to be attracted to “the same sex”.  So what it is to act and think like a “boy” is to be attracted to “girls”.  Problematic enough (especially since the claim is that these *worms* act and think like boys, which seems to me pretty insulting to boys).  But it gets more so:

There are no true females and only one in 500 nematodes is male. Most are hermaphrodites, with both male and female organs. Jorgensen and White loosely refer to hermaphrodites as females because they produce offspring.    

What it is to be a “girl” is to produce offspring. So, being “a girl” is a matter of reproductive ability, and acting like “a boy” is a matter of who you’re attracted to. Good to know.Still, the study seems to show that, at least for some worms, sexual orientation is genetically “hard-wired” in the brain. This may be interesting and useful once we free it from the desperate attempt to describe it in terms of ill-defined sex/gender categories.

9 thoughts on ““They look like girls, but act and think like boys””

  1. Another complication: in the linked article, Professor Erik Jorgensen, scientific director of the Brain Institute at the University of Utah and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is quoted as saying “Humans have free will, so the picture is more complicated in people.”

    This man needs a philosophy course.

  3. so, now I”m a girl for having a period and a boy for having crushes on girls, huh? Better introduce this guy to me!

  6. GOD gives choice, so we are who we are, we love who we love, but incase of chemical imbalnce, to act on delusion of – and not moral sense, than it is up to us as beings to solve this, to correct the incorrect, but we must think before we act, THIS–those GOD make mistakes, NO. so respect one’s choice.

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