Sperm Count Zero
gq.com
gq.com
The bit about AGD was also pretty crazy — followed by the bit about men becoming less male. Some fear-mongering there no doubt, but a topic which in this era is more likely to be met with scoffs of “good riddance” rather than alarm bells.
This is pretty obvious without any research (papers). The difference between my generation and our children is already staggering in this regard. Not sure if that's just change in culture or physiological though; maybe a bit of both?
A couple days ago I shared a NYT article with my wife because it was such a strange window into evolving gender standards [1] and the next day a friend of hers shared another story which took it to a whole new level [2].
I could not help but tie it all together in my mind with TFA and dropping testosterone levels, but god help me for admitting it here.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/style/modern-love-he-aske...
[2] - https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/imagining...
Makes me a little ... queasy.
FWIW I’m not particularly bothered by the concept that a little kid may want to wear dresses. It’s just the tone in the story seems a bit ... not reputable.
Take myself for example, and imagine what that mother would have thought: Up until ~14 I wore various old shirts from my parents to bed and on weekends, which were long enough to look like a dress on me, but it had nothing to do with liking dresses. It had to do with regular clothes being too stifling to be comfortable on the weekend, pajamas being too warm, and me not having confidence to just go around in only underwear.
Kids don't put themselves in news articles. It's the parents who do it, but they always say the child spontaneously behaved that way.
I see that young people today are absolutely behaving different than my generation but also than my parents and grandparents and great grandparents. I mean to say that my father, grandfathers and great grandfathers were all rather similar while they are all really different than the current generation. I think I like the current situation better. But yes, this needs solid studies if someone someone would be interested in finding the cause; not guessing or speculation.
Said every parent about their children's generation since the dawn of human civilization..[0], [1]
0. http://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaint...
My first thought was that this may also cast light on the rise of the trans rights movement. If men are becoming less male, surely this relates to so many people saying "I'm really a woman trapped in a man's body." or vice versa.
This may also help explain why trans people are so often met with open hostility as "freaks" etc. No, I am not defending their mistreatment.
But given how charged a topic that is, I imagine bringing it up will get my comment flagged to death, not taken seriously.
I'm a fairly traditionally feminine woman and spent a couple of decades as a homemaker and full-time mom. I am routinely met with open hostility from self proclaimed trans activists, feminists, etc.
I personally like "manly men" and that's also not a PC thing to admit to. So I will suggest it isn't just men the world is saying "good riddance" to. It's also women in some sense.
If you want to argue that, please stop and think before dismissively attacking me. People talk all the time about how gender is a social construct and is not merely the bits between your legs. I stayed home with my kids and that had a profound impact on how I think about many things. And the way I think is alien to that of career women and they are frequently openly hostile to it.
Hostility towards what? I assume they attack a view you hold, rather than your being a stay-at-home mother.
I've been accused on HN of being transphobic for attempting to speak about women's issues. I don't really care to dig up a whole lot of examples to convince skeptics. I was homeless for nearly 6 years and only asking for help with trying to figure out how to make money online. I got damn little support and was actively dismissed, especially on a different forum that likes to imagine it is female friendly. I don't think it really is.
Anyway, those painful experiences made it quite clear to me that a lot of people literally would like to see me dead. I'm aware that callous indifference isn't something most people will take seriously as a form of attempted murder, so I don't actually want to talk about this. Additional hostile dismissal of my opinions of my experiences won't change my opinions and, ironically, are unlikely to be seen as supporting evidence for my point.
I spent 9 months being extremely supportive of a MtF trans youth in crisis who expected and demanded that I be totally accepting of who and what they were. Then they had a cow and shit all over me for mentioning that "pretty boys" weren't my cup of tea and reamed me out about how that's prejudice.
So their preferences and predilections must be unquestioningly validated. Mine? Just another BS excuse for the individual to heap more verbal abuse on me.
We eventually parted company. Last I heard, they are still telling lies about me to other people.
That's absolutely not the inclusiveness that so many people claim they want. It's hypocrisy. What they really want is to preserve the Lord Of The Flies pecking order where people on top get to shit all over people on bottom, but they want to be the people shitting on others, not the people being shit on.
It's not actually an attempt to create some lovely egalitarian society. It's more like a desire for revenge and that revenge is frequently aimed at individuals who didn't actually harm them.
We were most likely discussing someone who is a member of Hacker News that she wanted to encourage me to marry, never mind that she believed he was married to someone else (according to him at the time, he wasn't married, but he is a family man). So, basically, admitting that I didn't find him repulsive was a good excuse to heap verbal abuse on me. Par for the course for the relationship. There was no means for me to do anything right.
Out of respect for innocent bystanders, such as his children (including one that likely reads Hacker News), I don't want to discuss this any further.
It isn't evidence that my thoughts are nutso and irresponsible behavior.
> I personally like "manly men" and that's also not a PC thing to admit to. So I will suggest it isn't just men the world is saying "good riddance" to. It's also women in some sense.
I think, in this context, we need better and likely newer vocabulary. I don't believe that others would despise you or any other woman or man or an intersex person or someone in transition for liking certain characteristics (physical and/or behavioral) traditionally and historically associated with men.
The issue seems to be — while we're untangling all the discrimination, stereotyping and prejudices — that the current and older terms (like "manly man") reek of all these negative things that are being questioned (where newer ways are being sought to deal with). The impact of such broad terms is wider than what people may generally think of.
To make a comparison (which may be taken differently by different people), it's like using the "N" word and assuming that even a neutral or seemingly positive reference should be accepted by others.
Language is changing all the time and adapting to the times. In this particular case, I believe we should break down what something like "manly man" means into constituent parts and try to use decoupled (from the original term), yet concise and non-triggering, ways of expressing the same. It may not be easy. It may sound weird at first. But it's something we need as a society.
Lest this be dismissed as "oh, we just need new words to fix the world", I'd like to reiterate that the basis is to allow thoughts to change.
Contrary to popular opinion, manly man and misogynistic asshole aren't actually synonyms.
P.S.: I also believe that short pieces of written words and sentences can be misinterpreted online, and probably malice attribute to where there is none.
What about trans-women that want to be called women? Who see being called "trans" or "man" as an insult?
Isn't this the same kind of gate-keeping as the people who insist trans-women are men?
neither side might accept the new vocab precisely because they are a) reinforcing the old concept, or b) reinforcing an inverted version of the old concepts. Neither wish to create a new category, just define the same old ones.
It is simply just that it does not require to be a 'manly man' in these days to have the same amount of "success", as it required in the old times. For example, take the whole mating game. Earlier, you had to look good/manly, need some quick thinking, timing and wit to pick up women. But now those things are not so much required.
I think multiple factors have contributed to this. But I think the all encompassing one is capitalism. And things like these are the an emergent result, of trying to maximize profits, and thus it is molding the very source that it generate the profit from, namely the human population. Simply put, much less profits can be made from a manly (manliness being comprised of things like but not limited to, looks, having some individuality, own principles and views and a taste for independence) and intelligent population than it can be made from a feeble/stupid, but heavy earning population. I am not saying that there is some conspiracy that is trying to accomplish this. But it might be a case of a death by a thousand paper cuts. I mean, like every time you try to sell something to the public, by social conditioning, you might be inadvertently contributing to things like this...
there's nothing political about liking what you like. You don't need to justify yourself, your preferences or their reasonings to anyone. That's half the point of the sexual liberation movement.
> I'm a fairly traditionally feminine woman and spent a couple of decades as a homemaker and full-time mom. I am routinely met with open hostility from self proclaimed trans activists, feminists, etc.
for raising kids? i didn't realize investing in future generations was controversial. You have just as much right to exist and go about your life as they do or anyone else.
I'm not sure about that. The Internet "manosphere" (for lack of a better term; consider it the all-encompassing phrase for both harmless and not-so-harmless subcultures like weightlifting, PUA, redpillers, the alt-right, etc.) seems more obsessed with masculinity than anyone I can recall seeing in previous decades. "Plastics in the water are destroying men" has been a ha-ha-only-serious topic in those circles for a while now and this will only solidify it. For better or worse, there are enough people concerned about this stuff that I doubt it will get handwaved away.
Just a hypothesis, could make for interesting research.
joeytcheng.com
Fatherhood is the best startup I ever did.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110531162142.h...
Not really - for example most “manly-men” can agree heavy drinking decreases testosterone levels.
This is something that baffles me. The biggest, strongest mammals are herbivorous - elephant, bull, bison... Even the best carnivorous animals meditate for a few hours and seek divine help before messing with these guys.
Why is eating grass, not a manly-man activity?
If you want to make a statement like this, don't bother unless you have evidence.
It's also usually better to frame it around the evidence, like "this study from UCLA found that higher consumption of animal products led to decreased testosterone levels". This way, the discussion will be focused on the evidence or the conclusion you drew from it.
Does it? As far as I can tell high levels of saturated fat increases testosterone levels.
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-effect-of-animal-protei...
> After the intake of cow milk, serum estrone (E1) and progesterone concentrations significantly increased, and serum luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone and testosterone significantly decreased in men
The first one seems to be about low carb vs high carb - where was the meat + carb vs no meat + high-carb comparison?
The second seems to be specific to milk and not animal products in general.
[1] Clinical studies show no effects of soy protein or isoflavones on reproductive hormones in men: results of a meta-analysis.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19524224
[2] Soybean isoflavone exposure does not have feminizing effects on men: a critical examination of the clinical evidence.
A 60-year-old man was referred to the endocrinology clinic for evaluation of bilateral gynecomastia of 6 months' duration. He reported erectile dysfunction and decreased libido. On further review of systems, he reported no changes in testicular size, no history of testicular trauma, no sexually transmitted diseases, no headaches, no visual changes, and no change in muscular mass or strength. Initial laboratory assessment showed estrone and estradiol concentrations to be 4-fold increased above the upper limit of the reference range. Subsequent findings from testicular ultrasonography; computed tomography of the chest, abdomen, and pelvis; and positron emission tomography were normal. Because of the normal findings from the imaging evaluation, the patient was interviewed again, and he described a daily intake of 3 quarts of soy milk. After he discontinued drinking soy milk, his breast tenderness resolved and his estradiol concentration slowly returned to normal.
Also there is a clear explanation of why so much plant products have hormonal disruptors in it, to modulate the fertility of herbivore, but it's not a story NutritionFact would tell you
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1474615/
Plants have physical and chemical mechanisms for defense from attack by animals. Phytochemical defenses that protect plants from attack by insects include antifeedants, insecticides, and insect growth regulators. Phytochemical options exist by which plants can modulate the fertility of the other major group of plant predators, vertebrate herbivores, and thereby reduce cumulative attacks by those herbivores. The success of such a defense depends upon phytochemical mimicry of vertebrate reproductive hormones. Phytoestrogens do mimic reproductive hormones and are proposed to be defensive substances produced by plants to modulate the fertility of herbivores.
Also, does this apply to China/India or just Western world? If no then I would worry about all the tech that has gotten in to our lives like plastic everywhere, RF radiation through wifi, chemical infested food and toys etc.
1. https://resolve.org/infertility-101/what-is-infertility/fast...
All of these are common in China as well. There is a lucrative business in importing baby formula from Western countries due to past food safety scandals.
But maybe the differing onset of that kind of pollution would still allow treating it as a natural experiment.
Less sperm competition and increased fertility due to medicine would both do that.
Not selective pressure, but lack of it.
When you take away selective pressure for a specific trait, organisms become weaker on average in respect to that trait; when a trait loses importance, populations divert their resources to different traits.
Eg. 100 years ago, 20% of children would die as infants. Imagine all of those children died of a mutation which causes half the usual sperm count, together with a lack of resistance to polio/cholora.
Now that polio/cholora don't exist, all those people survive, and within 3 generations, nearly everyone has at least a grandparent with that 'low sperm count' mutation.
That wouldn't be a steady state. A gene that powerfully negative, with no upsides, would decrease in prevalence by a significant amount every generation.
> Now that polio/cholora don't exist, all those people survive, and within 3 generations, nearly everyone has at least a grandparent with that 'low sperm count' mutation.
Everyone has an ancestor with the gene. But they only have a 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 chance of inheriting it from that specific ancestor. Generation to generation, the percentage of people with the gene will be almost identical. Just like eye and hair color.
May have auto-play audio:
That’s about the time high speed pornography became available en masse. Coincidence?
But when they got into the other physiological symptoms, that definitely isn’t gonna explain it.
Other parts of the world do not show a statistically significant trend, although the article suggests these data are not good enough to draw strong conclusions.
https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article-abstract/doi/10.1093...
Lay people need to understand that this is not just some off-the-cuff casual theory, but a very-well-researched 30-year-trend.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855796
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16245784
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15061484
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109328
It's amazing that even gq is now spamming HN.
Edit: it's true that his submissions aren't primarily about IT topics, but people continue to find them interesting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938276
And a few other times over the past week:
Oh wow. This suggested correlation is pulling your hair out. First, there are two data points for the "men total sperm count" dataset. I can hardly imagine there are no measurements bewtween 1970 and 2010. Analysis of this data: Sure, you can draw a line. An exponential decrease is much more likely, thought. This would look much less or much more dramatic. Never trust statistics you haven't counterfeited on your own.
Obviously, the "global plastic production" follows an exponential. And probably any other metric such as "global number of people" or "global number of cars" would exhibit a similar curve. You can correlate everything if you want...
Or is this being considered in these studies?
https://molecularcytogenetics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
Stindl, Reinhard - The paradox of longer sperm telomeres in older men’s testes: a birth-cohort effect caused by transgenerational telomere erosion in the female germline [2016]
Citations here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1431836715271366014...
Which leads us, among other things, to the following papers:
https://journals.lww.com/co-obgyn/Abstract/2018/06000/Should...
Balmori, Carlos; Varela, Elisa - Should we consider telomere length and telomerase activity in male factor infertility? [2018]
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/05/276030
Delgado et al. [22 Authors in total!] - The contribution of parent-to-offspring transmission of telomeres to the heritability of telomere length in humans [2018]
And to this:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/02/20/1707337115.long
Xie et al. [28 authors in total!] - Epigenetic alterations in longevity regulators, reduced life span, and exacerbated aging-related pathology in old father offspring mice [2018]
Which itself has citations, here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1010309427616177024...
Leading us, pardon the pun, to, among other things, this:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X1...
Maloney et al. - Latent consequences of early-life lead (Pb) exposure and the future: Addressing the Pb crisis [2018]
As the first handful articles I've linked here now show, we have a hell of a lot more issues than just endocrine disruptors: evolution will mess with us, come hell or high water!
PLUS endocrine disruptors already causes a lot of problems, as the OP article outlines, AND as that last article I linked also shows us.
Is it possible that these phenomena relate to the seemingly explosive rise in transgenderism? Particularly MtF, which is much more common than the reverse. Perhaps for those with already low male:female hormone ratios, if they are tipped further by these endocrine disruptors, especially during development, they might really have a brain that feels more female.
I wonder why.
According to my very weak understanding, it's easier to prevent that from happening than it is to accidentally introduce enough xenoandrogens to cause a XX fetus to develop male sexual characteristics.
Maybe somewhere there's an ice core that's saved representative water from the decades?
Regarding estrogens from BC in the water, some fish findings are quite suggestive:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/birth-control-pill-threat...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160304092230.h...
It would be quite difficult to determine if transgenderism is more common now than it once was, or if we're more open to recognizing and helping people who are transgendered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_defects_of_diethylstilbe... - section: sexual differentiation
No. Being transgender is not the result of having imbalanced hormone levels. The proof is the fact that giving trans women testosterone doesn't "cure" their gender dysphoria (it may actually make it worse), and same goes for giving trans men estrogen.
> Particularly MtF, which is much more common than the reverse.
Not true. This is an artifact of the fact that, for decades, sexologists were primarily only interested in studying MtF people, and that the transgender population was only measured in terms of who was allowed to transition (and, like the sexologists studying it, the doctors who prescribed hormones significantly favored MtF patients).
It turns out that when you remove the gatekeeping bullshit and actually measure the real trans population, not just the population of people allowed to medically transition, people transition in both directions at approximately the same rate (meaning the MtF population is about the same size as the FtM population).
Interesting! I was wondering about this the other day. Do you have any links?
What's that meant to mean?
When and where would you like to see more violence? I'd like to see less.
Think about it. Alexander Hamilton died in a gun duel with someone. Can you even imagine something like that ever taking place in the modern day between politicians? Violence just simply is not allowed to be a solution for problems in the modern day even though it is often extremely effective. I'm not trying to argue for bombings or any sort of mass killings obviously, but that we just seem to be afraid of considering it as a solution to problems, even when that is the primary power our government has over us.
[1] https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-29/world-actually-becomi...
I'm very confused. Are we in the same world?
so many of the issues we constantly discuss on these forums could easily be solved with a bit more political violence.
Wow. Such as? Can you be specific? What you are saying sounds fairly dark and ominous. You think duels were "extremely effective" solutions to problems? It certainly is not obvious to me that you're "not trying to argue for bombings or any sort of mass killings". Why would that be 'obvious' to any reader of what you've said? What sort of 'political violence' do you mean? I guess a lot more violence would be even better at times, to solve those pesky problems where the normal amount isn't so effective?
we just seem to be afraid of considering it as a solution to problems, even when that is the primary power our government has over us.
I don't see the logical connection between the two halves of that. At all. Is it that thing where people in the US seemingly can't abide the police having guns and people not having them?
Afaik the issue this thread is about is primarily an issue in modern western societies, so that is what I am referencing specifically. The article I linked suggests that violence is at near all time lows in such societies.
Wow. Such as? Can you be specific? What you are saying sounds fairly dark and ominous.
I literally gave an example in my post. Horrible corrupt politicians resurrecting from the dead to fake support for a massively unpopular policy? They are going to get away with literally no consequences. You don't see any issues with this?
You think duels were "extremely effective" solutions to problems?
Nope, I don't. This was an example of how violence has been de-emphasized. The fact that something like this feels simply unfathomable in the current day shows how far off we really are. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing a specific few of our politicians face off in a duel. Maybe then we could replace them with people not bought off by corporations.
What sort of 'political violence' do you mean? I guess a lot more violence would be even better at times, to solve those pesky problems where the normal amount isn't so effective?
I would prefer if it was used in situations where rule of law is proving to be ineffective. It just feels like the right to vote is not proving to be enough leverage in our current society. Take the Equifax hack. What basically amounts to criminal negligence of the data nearly every american gave them (essentially) unwillingly. These people are just going to walk? I'm not saying kill them or anything... but where are the protests? The broken windows? Why aren't there offices being stormed with protests? Like what is happening? The only possible explanation I can come up with is that people have been pacified. They've been taught that getting fucked over is just the normal way. Businesses and politicians are sociopathic and that's just the nature of the world. Don't do anything, don't fight back, just take it.
I don't see the logical connection between the two halves of that. At all. Is it that thing where people in the US seemingly can't abide the police having guns and people not having them?
Violence is an important tool to impart change. Why should the government be the only ones allowed to wield it? Is law enforcement truly the only incarnation of violence we are going to view as socially acceptable? Why should that be the case?
Why. Why this self hate. What have we done to deserve this incredible vicious hatred?