GC: If only two "men", only two "women" or someone on their own can create an embryo/baby, then there is no difference between "man" and "woman", "egg" and "sperm", and they are man-made socially constructed categories that don't actually exist. If you disagree, please explain your reasons

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      [–]MarkTwainiac 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      I remember a GC told me that definition is only true for males, because females come with all the gametes, and just release them, they don't produce gametes.

      It was I who said that. Also, to be precise, I said that female humans are born with all our eggs intact - I didn't say it about any other animals or plants. I am not versed in what happens in all sexually reproducing species, just somewhat familiar with what happens in humans.

      https://www.naturalcycles.com/cyclematters/5-facts-about-the-female-egg-cell

      Further, I didn't say that female humans "just release" our eggs, I said we mature and release them. The maturation process is of prime importance, and it's pretty complex.

      https://www.yourhormones.info/glands/ovaries/

      BTW, I have contacted a number of biologists and persons who write/talk about biology about the bias I think is inherent in the choice to use the "produce gametes" lingo. IMO, it represents a mindset that sees the male of the human species as the default and the norm. But no one has ever replied to my concerns so far. Perhaps in the future...

      [–]comradeconradical 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      Some thoughts in light of your post and this comment:

      Obviously reproductive capacity and production of gametes is a major aspect of sex, but sex goes beyond reproduction as well. As many other GC, scientists, and doctors have said before, sex influences all levels of your biology, effecting every cell, effecting your physical and mental functioning. The way disease manifests differs from males to females. Different symptomologies, needs, treatment efficacities, etc. Even the ability of your cells to differentiate between male and female occurs in utero and is not a simple 'male/female' switch, but a complex biological cascade. And then, this development effects far more than just the gametes you produce.

      So, even if gametes could be completely artificially lab-made and 'pregnancy' be conducted in tubes in institutions a la Brave New World, material sex based reality still has obvious and measurable impact on our lives.

      I also think that artificially changing these cells is not a good argument for a male body producing female gametes because it's not the male body doing that, it's a transhumanist sci-fi idea that fails to take the intricacies of pregnancy and child-mother bonding into account among other factors. And, the male body could not magically support pregnancy either. Gametes are one aspect of sex, but a condition that destroys your ability to carry gametes doesn't change your sex. Not every female reproduces, this doesn't mean she isn't female.

      It's strange that QT seeks to abolish such a basic principle of life, particularly with these hypothetical "thought experiment" questions, all the while advocating to enforce stereotypical social constructs of gender. Especially when there are so many concrete questions that could and should be addressed concerning these concepts. It's a bit baffling.

      [–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      My confusion comes from the fact we all are a bunch of cells as embryos, during embryonic development, the stem cells become egg or sperm. That's what they do in the lab, they take the stem cell of someone, and turn it into sperm or egg, which is exactly what happens in embryonic development. They are redoing what happened to everyone of us when were were embryos in the lab now, recreating the same situation.

      During embryonic development, stem cells become egg or sperm? I think you've got it backwards. Egg + sperm is what leads to embryonic development in the first place. According to Oxford dictionary and all other sources, an embryo is

      an unborn or unhatched offspring in the process of development, in particular aa human offspring during the period from approximately the second to the eighth week after fertilization (after which it is usually termed a fetus).

      Also, during embryonic development and every other phase of life, all cells have sex chromosomes, and these sex chromosomes have wide-ranging effects.

      https://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/I.htm

      Research on rodent and primate pre-implantation embryonic stem cells shows that

      differential expression patterns are established in early embryogenesis, before hormonal influence is unleashed. At the level of pathway analysis, these expression differences integrate distinct networks and are dependent directly or indirectly on the sex chromosome complement. Thus, substantial contributions to sex-related differences occur prior to and possibly upstream of [prior to] gonadal sex determination.

      Our datasets from XO ES cell lines are an important platform for understanding the impact of sex chromosome aneuploidies on pre-implantation embryogenesis and lineage determination. They will also contribute to refining the direct and indirect mechanisms by which the sex chromosomes interact with the autosomal component of the genome.

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5561606/

      This paper - called Sex-Specific Gene Expression Differences Are Evident in Human Embryonic Stem Cells and During In Vitro Differentiation of Human Placental Progenitor Cells - said significant, extensive and surprising amounts of sexual differentiation are evident in human embryonic cells and in the precursors of placental cells at 6-7 days after fertilization, prior to or at the start of embryonic development.

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6916123/

      [Edited to add: whilst the placenta is often described as an extra organ that a woman develops in order to gestate a pregnancy, all the cells in the placenta actually come from the offspring, not from the mother. Which is why genetic testing, including determining sex, of human offspring can be done early in utero via CVS, which involves snipping off a tiny bit of the part of the placenta known as chorionic villi. Today, the recommended time to do CVS is 11-15 weeks, but I had CVS in 1991 at 8 weeks.]

      our results support the role of the sex chromosomes in establishing sex-specific networks early in embryonic development

      https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28818098/

      BTW, apparently amongst scientists who use embryonic stem cells (ESCs), there's a history of widespread bias against researching XX cells as extensively as XY cells, which means that in stem cell research female stem cells are getting the same second-class treatment that female people and our health problems get in all other areas of medicine, science, politics and society:

      Female pluripotent stem cells differ from males genetically, epigenetically and functionally (Choi et al., 2017a; Choi et al., 2017b; Ooi et al., 2010; Schulz et al., 2014; Yagi et al., 2017; Zvetkova et al., 2005). Despite this, the vast majority of ESC research has been performed on male lines, leading to a substantial imbalance in our understanding of sex-specific pluripotency.

      Gee, you think this might have something to do with the fact that most of these scientists so interested in manipulating and "mastering" stem cells and outwitting "mother nature" are men?

      The first confirmed ESC line to be derived was male (Bradley et al., 1984). Subsequently, the ESC lines employed as workhorses cells for the field, E14, R1, J1 and Bruce4, were all male (Hooper et al., 1987; Kontgen et al., 1993; Li et al., 1992; Nagy et al., 1993). Strikingly, all of the 13 karyotyped ESC lines commercially available via the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) are male. This major imbalance has substantially hindered an understanding of how female and male pluripotency may differ and impeded study of female-specific processes in their native context, including X chromosome inactivation.

      Despite, or perhaps because of the uniqueness of female ESCs, they are underrepresented in the literature compared to studies performed on male cells. Given the therapeutic potential of ESCs and iPSCs, it is of paramount importance to remedy this and therefore we created the Xmas ESC system. Through the use of the dual fluorescent X-linked reporter alleles in Xmas ESCs we are able to infer both the karyotype and transcriptional status of the female X chromosomes, being the feature that genetically, molecularly and functionally distinguishes female ESCs from males

      https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/768507v1.full

      Also, I should point out that the trend of working with human embryonic cells is becoming passé. Coz in 2006, scientists figured out how to make cells that function as embryonic cells from adult stem cells and which have all the "pluripotent" capacities of embryonic cells. These are known as "induced pluripotent stem cells," or iPS cells. These kinds of stem cells used are preferred by many doing research and experimentation today because they don't raise the ethical issues that working directly with human embryonic cells inevitably lead to. Working with human embryonic cells means manipulating and usually destroying human embryos.

      Significantly, iPS cells have been shown to function very differently depending on their sex chromosomes too:

      The researchers discovered that female and male cells behave differently... and that this is due to their different number of X chromosomes – two in female cells and one in male cells.

      https://www.technologynetworks.com/cell-science/news/lets-talk-about-sex-chromosomes-and-stem-cells-299890

      https://www.cell.com/stem-cell-reports/fulltext/S2213-6711(18)30146-2

      [–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      we all are a bunch of cells as embryos, during embryonic development, the stem cells become egg or sperm. That's what they do in the lab, they take the stem cell of someone, and turn it into sperm or egg, which is exactly what happens in embryonic development. They are redoing what happened to everyone of us when were were embryos in the lab now, recreating the same situation.

      You seem to be suggesting that during the embryo stage of development, all human cells only become - and only have the possibility of becoming - either egg or sperm. This is not true. Embryonic stem cells have the capacity to differentiate into hundreds of different types of cells:

      Human embryonic stem (ES) cells capture the imagination because they are immortal and have an almost unlimited developmental potential (Fi

      After many months of growth in culture dishes, these remarkable cells maintain the ability to form cells ranging from muscle to nerve to blood—potentially any cell type that makes up the body. The proliferative and developmental potential of human ES cells promises an essentially unlimited supply of specific cell types for basic research and for transplantation therapies for diseases ranging from heart disease to Parkinson's disease to leukemia. Here we discuss the origin and properties of human ES cells, their implications for basic research and human medicine, and recent research progress...

      https://stemcells.nih.gov/info/Regenerative_Medicine/2006Chapter1.htm

      Your posts also indicate you don't think any part of the human body begins developing in the first 8 weeks of life other than the gonads (or the potential gametes that will reside in/issue from or be produced by the gonads? or sumpin' like that). This too is not true.

      Here's what happens in the first 4 weeks of human development:

      • All major systems and organs begin to form

      • The embryo looks like a tadpole

      • The neural tube (which becomes the brain and spinal cord), the digestive system, and the heart and circulatory system begin to form

      • The beginnings of the eyes and ears are developing

      • Tiny limb buds appear (which will develop into arms and legs)

      • The heart is beating

      By the end of the 8th week of human embryo development:

      • All major body systems continue to develop and function, including the circulatory, nervous, digestive, and urinary systems

      • The embryo is taking on a human shape, although the head is larger in proportion to the rest of the body

      • The mouth is developing tooth buds (which will become baby teeth)

      • The eyes, nose, mouth, and ears are becoming more distinct

      • The arms and legs can be easily seen

      • The fingers and toes are still webbed, but can be clearly distinguished

      • The main organs continue to develop and you can hear the baby's heartbeat using an instrument called a Doppler

      • The bones begin to develop and the nose and jaws are rapidly developing

      • The embryo is in constant motion but cannot be felt by the mother ***

      *** I don't believe this statement has ever been proven (and isn't hard to prove a negative anyway?) Indeed, many mothers would say our "lived experience" suggests it's a myth/belief/assertion made up by men that's not necessarily true. At all. Lots of women have reported having sensations in early pregnancy that we believe was movement of the embryo. Some women who've miscarried during the first eight weeks have said they could feel it happening. Lots of women can feel the moment we ovulate; if it's the case that we can feel when one of our ovaries releases an egg, why assume it's impossible for any of us to feel an embryo developing and moving in our uterus?

      https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=first-trimester-85-P01218

      BTW, before going any further down the rabbit hole of Dr Frankenstein scenarios that seem to have so captured your fancy, I think you would benefit by looking at some basic biology books online, as well as ones that explain/show how human embryos and fetuses develop. There's lots of illustrated material out their geared for expectant parents explaining what happens each step of the way.

      I suspect if you looked into these matters further you'd find it's really not the case that today scientists only need "a lab and technology" to create a brave new world where, as you put it,

      Everyone can produce sperm or egg, in the lab, if they take one of their somatic cells, or stem cells.

      https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1008676