Male Labmate: Isn’t it kind of funny that a feminist blogger is researching the Y chromosome?
Me: I’m just doing it so I can scientifically prove that males are inferior.
Or so I can study human evolution on a haploid chromosome. Something like that.
…Wah wah.No, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t even qualify as ‘kind of funny’. Good luck with your labmate. Sounds like a peach.
You should have said “I’m trying to find the cure.”
Does that mean that male birds are superior to female birds, since it’s the females that have unpaired sex chromosomes?
I like you and your blog very much, Jen, but I don’t find either comment even remotely funny. No offense intended, but I am a woman who doesn’t have any appreciation for simplistic put-downs of either gender, nor insinuations that one is superior to the other. Claims like that, even in jest, certainly don’t help any cause striving for equality.
You should remind him that only the males were studied in virtually every important medical study, ever… until like 30 minutes ago.
I had the same kinds of questions when I was doing ovarian cancer research as an undergrad.
Well, quirky in a not-really-at-all-paradoxical-or-ironic-but-in-those-directions sort of way, perhaps…What’s more ironic is, taking LadyAtheist’s point above, studies in all areas have generally been more likely to focus on men, but the Y chromosome is still relatively mysterious.On an entirely separate note, I find myself (after a circuitous train of thought that I don’t think people need describing) wondering if there are any organelles other than mitochondria (and chloroplasts in plants) that have their own little genome.
Of course, if men were to research the X chromosome, perhaps we’d finally be able to understand women.
…I DID find it funny. I guess I’m just an asshole too, then. Oh well
Or I’m a humorless robot. Stupid cold has me set to auto-snark. No offence intended.
And we cant have sarcasm across either gender? If equality is what you crave than take it, men joke and make fun of EVERYTHING to give each other a hard time, so why not interact with them in the way they interact with others?
Totally off topic, but I checked out that OK Trends link and found the article interesting.
Well at least your Labmate knows what he’s in for now. P.S. Got my Skepticon calendar. Thanks for the heads up on those I didn’t even know they existed.
And half of ourselves.
Har har, “mate”.
It’s probably one of those “you had to be there” things.
Actually, only one X chromosome is ever active in any one cell (duplicate chromosomes tend not to work well, e.g. Down Syndrome), so in that respect we’re all pretty much the same.
I seriously hope you dead-panned it, in that “Narbonic” mad-scientist kind-of-way…
C’mon, I’m a guy and I realised it was sarcasm. And found it funny.We need a punctuation mark for sarcasm.
MUCH more likely.
This one and Andie can start a comedy club.
Mitochondria – the short answer is “no”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I…
Generally, I believe both copies of a chromosome express, although for any given allele they may not affect the phenotype.Take even a simplistic view of dominance. Say for one gene the dominant allele is on copy A of the chromosome, and for another gene the dominant allele is on copy B. Both chromosomes are thus affecting phenotypes. It gets even more complex if you consider the real world of co-dominance and such things.
Sigh. Yes, there’s inappropriate humor out there, some of it relating to the inferiority of one gender or another….but there’s also just, you know, humor. Humor is useful: it helps us communicate, it helps us bond, it helps us explore ideas and taboos and areas of discomfort. Obviously Jen does not think women are inferior to men, and unlike some vocal feminist types, she also doesn’t think that men are inferior to women – this is not a situation of someone claiming “it was just a joke” as an excuse to say something nasty. It was, in fact, a joke. And joking about uncomfortable things is a great way to point out inherent absurdity….and be entertained/entertaining. There is nothing wrong with making a joke like this, and getting unduly offended by this sort of thing is precisely the kind of nonsense that gets progressive/leftist extremists….well, laughed at and ignored. Which is hardly the result we’re looking for, yes?Anyway, I thought it was funny. I feel quite confident that you don’t need it, Jen, but you officially have my permission to keep being funny about sexism. Doesn’t that make you feel better?! :D