Nature and the mysogynistic male twin (satirical title)

Please excuse my awful "clickbait-esque" title
got to get your attention somehow , if i'd used the article title you'd have likely yawned and went to read something more racy!
Will change if necessary

Reading on science daily today Prenatal testosterone linked to long-term effects in females who share womb with male twin and found this interesting article on twins and testosterone levels in the male twin causing long term affects on the female twin !

it appears that testosterone in female male twin pairings gives rise to problems later in life for the female twin (culturally dependent)
no such affects are noted when male male and female female sibling pairs and studies results are inconsistent

Satire:
I hear feminists gritting their teeth on this one , how can mother nature be so mysognyistic not allowing female twins to have an equal footing from the jump!

the odd thing is research doesnt appear to show any such hormone transfer from female to male

this is indeed eye opening research , it only happens with female male twins also this is very interesting it appears that the womb favours the male over the female in twins , but what possible reason could this be for , what evolutionary advantage does this give to the male ?
Why does this happen at all ?

During sensitive developmental periods in utero, steroids produced by the ovaries and testes, including testosterone, help establish biological differences between males and females. Previous, smaller studies have suggested that such exposure to opposite-sex hormones can lead to lasting changes in behavior and other traits. On the other hand, it has also been noted that socialization effects -- or being a female raised alongside a twin brother -- could likewise explain the different behaviors and outcomes shown by past studies.

To separate the effects of fetal testosterone from postnatal socialization, the research team repeated their analyses focusing only on female twins whose twin sibling -- either twin sister or twin brother -- died shortly after birth, and thus they were raised as singletons. The results were unchanged in this sample, providing strong evidence that the long-term effects that the study documents are due to prenatal exposure, rather than postnatal socialization.

the prenatal testosterone has a long lasting affect even when the male offspring dies after birth.
Looking at the reasons why this happens

The near-doubling of twinning rates in many countries since 1980 -- a result of women conceiving later in life and increased reliance on in vitro fertilization (IVF) -- means that an increasing number of females worldwide are exposed to prenatal testosterone from their male twin.

and they conclude with

"Basically we find that there are some very interesting long-term biological effects of being a sister to a twin brother," Kuzawa said. "But whether we view those effects as 'positive' or 'negative' may be culturally dependent."

and

"We certainly do not advocate against delayed reproduction or the use of IVF, which are complex decisions made by individuals balancing a range of personal factors," Karbownik said.

I guess this just goes to show we should be careful of what hormones we give our children which they don't naturally already receive
as we clearly dont have a full picture of how this can affect them in later life!

The "twin testosterone-transfer hypothesis," sure is a strange one , I think its amazing how science picks up on these things
like amazing how someone thought I will test this out and see if it has a real affect!

here is a paper on the the hypothesis and its evaluation
Evaluating the twin testosterone transfer hypothesis: a review of the empirical evidence

and the wiki
prenatal testosterone transfer

read the full article as its interesting research , never even heard of this until today!

Anyone a twin ? anyone even rarer a male /female twin , have you noticed any affects mentioned in your female sibling ?

a reply to: sapien82

So more "tomboys" in future? Wait till they get to school and are encouraged to be the opposite sex or "gender fluid".

Or in other old news today - increase of plastics and hormones and other goodies like Soy and antibiotics have been shown to reduce sperm count.

Another way of looking at it - Natures saying you will need more testosterone to create the new armies to wipe yourselves out and give the Planet a rest

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

its fascinating though don't you think , why would nature do this in twins ?

Surely there must be an evolutionary advantage for the species otherwise why does this happen ?

As for the tomboys, well I don't think they do too badly, most I know are great women and have stable relationships and decent jobs , but like the research said its localised to Norway so may not even apply in the UK

With what you suggest and I think this maybe something Ive thought about before

What if , humanity is receiving biofeedback from nature or the earth system itself and telling us to become infertile
or a percentage making us infertile to reduce damage to our host system ?

making males less fertile women less fertile , or are we just doing it to ourselves with all our fancy technology ?

a reply to: sapien82
It makes sense...maybe it's just because pregnant women produce testosterone at a later point during pregnancy, usually after the hormones that produce female traits, that the female fetus in male/female twins ends up with more testosterone while the male doesn't end up with extra female hormones.

I mean...I don't understand why this would be surprising.

This is a couple recent studies i've read now with 'surprising' results about genetic differences between women and men, the last one was about the efficacy of certain drugs and 'surprisingly' they found certain drugs affect men and women differently.

The worrying thing is the fierce criticism, death threats and silencing scientists have been getting because of studies like this.

a reply to: dug88

now that is just despicable how could someone try to ruin the career of someone who is doing nothing but trying to help others by investigating and researching and through scientific method would reveal more answers and possibly cures !

If there was one thing we could do less with is the type of activist who reacts so horribly to the truth and then tries to ruin the lives of others , when their aim is nothing but compassionate in scope!

and if they discovered that the condition was actually psychological , what would they do then ?

I find that practice regressive and will only serve to stall progress , activists shouldn't be able to target people like this especially if their aim is to relieve the suffering of others!

_

originally posted by: dug88
This is a couple recent studies i've read now with 'surprising' results about genetic differences between women and men, the last one was about the efficacy of certain drugs and 'surprisingly' they found certain drugs affect men and women differently.

The worrying thing is the fierce criticism, death threats and silencing scientists have been getting because of studies like this.

These two sentences have no connection... the article in question speaks of doctors and researcher harassed for work on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome... nothing to do with differences with men and women i could see from the article.... well done in inventing a victimhood... akin to "Oh no the feminists are coming" or something like that. text book example of how ideologies and propaganda spreads because most readers are too lazy to actually look at what what you post or evidence you cite.

originally posted by: ErosA433

originally posted by: dug88
This is a couple recent studies i've read now with 'surprising' results about genetic differences between women and men, the last one was about the efficacy of certain drugs and 'surprisingly' they found certain drugs affect men and women differently.

The worrying thing is the fierce criticism, death threats and silencing scientists have been getting because of studies like this.

These two sentences have no connection... the article in question speaks of doctors and researcher harassed for work on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome... nothing to do with differences with men and women i could see from the article.... well done in inventing a victimhood... akin to "Oh no the feminists are coming" or something like that. text book example of how ideologies and propaganda spreads because most readers are too lazy to actually look at what what you post or evidence you cite.

Sorry here...

www.theguardian.com...

www.browndailyherald.com...

www.the-scientist.com...

a reply to: sapien82

Surely there must be an evolutionary advantage for the species otherwise why does this happen ?

A return off the amazon women?

What if , humanity is receiving biofeedback from nature or the earth system itself and telling us to become infertile or a percentage making us infertile to reduce damage to our host system ?

Sure could be the planet. But I would suspect its more local, ie let the masses get sick. More work and profits for the health industry, cradle to the grave dependence.

originally posted by: dug88
Sorry here...

www.theguardian.com...

There we go, not quite the same as what you posted the death threats are few and far between, but regardless, lets take a look.

The first link basically an opinion piece, I can write an opinion piece, it doesn't have to stand up to journalistic rigour really either and can contain pretty much 100% hearsay, but what ever. This piece calls knee jerk reactions as misplaced or misguided. This is true for both sides of the argument. It doesn't at all say that research is being prevented or stopped, it simply says that when research is done, the authors have to be careful not to jump on conclusions based upon their own bias and not let throw away comments slip through the cracks because they do not have scientific merit.

The one here is about working mothers and overloaded brain circuity.... the statement is kinda meaningless and yet does reinforce this whole thing of "Mothers need to be months and nothing else" This is where it is rightfully problematic. Women are not chicken farms and many women are capable of child rearing and working perfectly fine. Knew a professor who did it for example, she is also in research. I could write an opinion piece on how inspirational it is, but thats getting off topic.

www.browndailyherald.com...

Student news paper... rarely are they any good and more commonly they let naive minds run rampant, but lets go.

wow i get barely into the article and the published paper already sounds problematic, the language used to term the discussion of transgender issues as 'social contagion.' is deeply problematic, and the data for the publication came from highly bias sources, namely entirely from groups who believe that being gay or transgender is can be 'fixed' through counselling and the sources are entirely the parents of transgender youth, not them themselves. Boom, you now have three reasonably problematic issues with the publication. The author of the paper clearly was gunning for a specific answer and produced a hugely bias study.... so far i don't see the whole 'Feminists are stopping research' yet... also no death threats. So far its just "This research is pretty terrible and bias"

www.the-scientist.com...

This one, an author wrote two versions of the same paper, one was put on ArXiv, people saw it and where kinda upset at what it was stating and how it was stating it. A Journal (NYJM)'s chief editor then basically said "Oh you can publish it in my Journel" and then rushed it through with little to no peer review. A bunch of the editors and reviewers then questioned it because they were not happy that 1) it had barely been reviewed 2) it was no appropriate for the journal (the category was totally random and no such category had existed for its entire 24 year history) 3) none of the usual review panel where happy about the paper in terms of the quality of it. 4) It was handed to non-experts to perform the review... who basically didn't review it.

SOooo lots of problems beyond it just being 'shut down because it was controversial) What appears to have happened was that it was pulled because of a lack of following due process, more than someone trying to censor it.



SOOooooo threats of violence? Yeah I still don''t see it... What i see are edge cases in which really quite poor research or, poorly explained models where shot down for largely those reasons. It is important for the scientific process that research is of high quality in order to prevent wasted time or hypothesis that are false or have extreme bias perpetuating non-truths or bad assumptions. Thanks for finding those, it was an interesting read, but again, I don't see the extremes and the 'oh no the feminists and gays are shutting down research and debate' in any of those at all.

originally posted by: dug88
Sorry here...

www.theguardian.com...

www.browndailyherald.com...

www.the-scientist.com...

Hmm again not quite. One link is to gender disysphoria study - this is not feminism causing trouble there. One link has only the text "for fear of being labeled sexist". Then the one about the retracted paper... well a female mathematician did write in questioning the model's scientific merit, but did not call for it to be removed. Heck even male scientists were critical, the study ignored genetics for example.

As ErosA433 said, try not to invent outrage when only calm criticism is taking place.