Currently: procrastinating on Staiger's paper
"The autosomes are the chromosomes which are neither X nor Y, and of them there are twenty-three pairs in the body cells. Female sex is assured by the presence alongside them of a pair of chromosomes which look exactly like them, but are in fact sex-determining, and are designated as XX. Instead of an XX pair added to his twenty-three pairs of autosomes the male has XY. The Y-chromosome has a negative function: when a Y-carrying sperm fertilizes an ovum, it simply reduces the amount of femaleness which would result in the formation of a female fetus. Along with his maleness, the fetus inherits a number of weaknesses, which are called sex-linked, because they result from genes found only in the Y-chromosome. Strange deformities like hypertrichosis, meaning excessive growths of hair mainly on the earns, horny patches on hands and feet, barklike skin and a form of webbing of the toes are some which are less well-known than hemophilia, which is in fact the result of a mutant gene in the X-chromosome which the Y-chromosome cannot suppress, so that it is transmitted by females, but only effective in males."
"There is much evidence that the female is constitutionally stronger than the male; she lives longer, and in every age group more males than females die although the number of males conceived may be between 10 and 30 percent more. There is no explanation for the more frequent conception of males, for female-producing spermatozoa are produced in the same number as male-producing ones. It is tempting to speculate whether this might not be a natural compensation for the greater vulnerability of males."
-The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer
Dude! Lolz @ Germaine Greer. Whether or not this was intended to read like a satire of a science textbook's account of differentiation of sexes is irrelevant. It calls into question the scientific method of positing human explanations as natural law.
Plus it's redemptive: I'm not a female chauvinist, I'm just better.
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