Men more evolved? Y chromosome study stirs debate

thedarkmrpickles · 2010-01-14T17:31:55+00:00

From a philosophy of biology standpoint, this study is correcting the rather stupid idea that the Y chromosome was "going away" or decaying -- for many years, that was how geneticists tried to explain how small the Y chromosome was in comparison to the X chromosome.

Which is weird, because you don't really need to explain why the Y chromosome is small compared to the X chromosome, because it doesn't really matter what size it is. The size of the chromosome has zip to do with the function of the genetic material it contains. But "bigger is better" is just another cultural narrative that gets stuck in people's brains, and gets imposed on things it doesn't apply to.

So I liked that this study is helping to dispel that stupid idea. But I facepalm to see that this study is being interpreted culturally in this way -- men are more evolved than women? How does that make any kind of sense? We are members of the same species. Not to mention the fact that "more evolved" is a nonsense phrase.

Evolution is not a progressive path towards an apex. To understand it that way is to understand it based on 18th century ideas of the Great Chain Of Being, with humanity at the top. This is wrong-headed according to how we understand evolution now. Evolution by natural selection is the process by which species become adapted to their environments, become fit with respect to their environments, and should the environment change, the species will necessarily change with it.

And it doesn't have anything to do with gender relations. The Y chromosome just carries the genes that biologically differentiate males from females, causing children who carry those genes to develop in the male direction. Children when two X chromosomes can develop into males if the SRY (sex-determining region Y) gene is translocated onto the X chromosome. Children with a Y chromosome can develop into females if the SRY is damaged. This is pure biology.

So I came here to defend the biology and ask you guys to try and disentangle the science parts from the cultural parts. You may be right about the critiques you've given about the way the article is written, but it doesn't make any sense to say that men are more evolved than women, or that women are more evolved than men, or that humans are more evolved than starfish.

Kuonji · 2010-01-14T01:44:42+00:00

"Before men get too impressed with themselves..."

Heh. Even in an article about men evolving faster than women, there can't help but be snarkyness from the writer.

tomek77 · 2010-01-14T08:39:33+00:00

It's not that surprising really: at each generation, only a minority of men have children, while the overwhelming majority of women do (look it up, if you didn't know). In other words, women pass their genes very easily while men don't. So the evolutionary pressure on men is a lot stronger than on women: the man-only Y chromosome surely reflects that.

Title	Men more evolved? Y chromosome study stirs debate
Author	xbillybobx
Upvotes	6
Comments	24
Date	January 14, 2010 12:21 AM UTC (16 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/apbwl/men_more_evolved_y_chromosome_study_stirs_debate/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/men-more-evolved-y-chromosome-study-stirs-debate.1051209 https://theredarchive.com/post/1051209

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