RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons

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VaguelyCurious -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/13/2010 3:03:01 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl Makes me wonder why this is appearing on an on line newspaper and not in a medical journal. ...because that's what Maria was reading, so that's what she posted. Valerie J Grant showed up as having been published in the British Medical Journal, the Journal of Medical Ethics and Current Anthropology in the quick JSTOR search I ran-she's not a nutjob, she's been published in well-respected, peer-reviewed papers, although I didn't see the research mentioned in the article (but JSTOR may well just not have a subscription to whatever it's published in and the Times sucks at citation).

tazzygirl -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/13/2010 3:11:21 PM)
I never said she wasnt respected. I asked why we werent reading the study and results instead of a fluff piece in an on line newspaper.

crazyml -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/13/2010 4:05:16 PM)
I don't think that being published in respected, peer-reviewed, journals is necessarily a guarantee that a person isn't a nutjob ;-) As others have pointed out - there is some evidence (in cows) that very elevated levels of testosterone in ovarian follicles can have an impact on sex (I've not read the paper so can't say how strong this evidence is). The good Doctor is an evolutionary psychologist. These people are known wackos. Just sayin.

VaguelyCurious -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/13/2010 4:25:39 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: crazyml I don't think that being published in respected, peer-reviewed, journals is necessarily a guarantee that a person isn't a nutjob ;-) You know exactly what I mean and you're just being difficult. But fine, fine, just for the difficult man: She's published in reputable medical journals, so she's not an armchair nutjob. [8D]

littlewonder -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/13/2010 6:05:14 PM)
reminds me of a news story I was just watching on tv where twin girls were born and later in life one of them went on to get a sex change. Both girls were brought up in the same way with the same parents, everything the same. So why did one decide to become a man while the other is happy in her female body? One doctor theorized that it happened in uterus. The mother had a near fatal accident when she was pregnant and the thought is that adrenaline levels overloaded into one of the babies and not the other forcing testosterone to be released in high levels into the one that got the sex change. So I think it's very possible that this could be true....that dominant women have a higher percentage of sons...more adrenline, more testosterone to release. Makes sense to me.

crazyml -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/13/2010 6:38:11 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: VaguelyCurious quote: ORIGINAL: crazyml I don't think that being published in respected, peer-reviewed, journals is necessarily a guarantee that a person isn't a nutjob ;-) You know exactly what I mean and you're just being difficult. But fine, fine, just for the difficult man: She's published in reputable medical journals, so she's not an armchair nutjob. [8D] Oh I see... so you're only allowed consideration if you're a published nutjob eh? Well I'm alright - I'm in the British Library, me.

allthatjaz -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 2:53:51 AM)
That's fascinating littlewonder. I thought the subject was interesting and definitely food for thought. Science is only truth when it has been proved without doubt and although this particular science has a long way to go, I believe its worth keeping an open mind. Up until recently they believed there was no point, apart from pleasure and lubrication, in the female orgasm but research has shown that during ovulation, a woman's cervix dips and opens to aid the mail during orgasm. I'm all for moving forward in the leanings of the human body.

shallowdeep -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 3:55:48 AM)
Assorted thoughts: quote: ORIGINAL: VaguelyCurious You know that all your experiences are statistically irrelevant, right? I can't imagine why you would feel responses on this forum aren't going to be a perfectly valid statistical sample. It's not like those sorts of things should be done carefully, or anything, is it? :) quote: ORIGINAL: Missokyst Statistical data is easy to manipulate if you choose your subjects well. To a point, but with a study likely to survive peer review you aren't free to just selectively choose subjects. As quotable as Mark Twain is, statistics are on pretty firm footing. Stochastic processes inherently have some uncertainty, but the whole point of statistics is to be able to quantify that. Such efforts are, admittedly, frequently misunderstood. quote: ORIGINAL: VaguelyCurious She's not a nutjob, she's been published in well-respected, peer-reviewed papers, although I didn't see the research mentioned in the article (but JSTOR may well just not have a subscription to whatever it's published in and the Times sucks at citation). AND quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl I never said she wasn't respected. I asked why we weren't reading the study and results instead of a fluff piece in an online newspaper. Alright, I got curious enough to dig up the actual article from the journal Reproduction rather than researching the topic I should have been. Feel free to read the linked PDF if you want: Can mammalian mothers influence the sex of their offspring peri-conceptually? (DOI: 10.1530/REP-10-0137) (Just FYI, PubMed is usually a much better resource than JSTOR for recent medical research.) After skimming it some, I'm not particularly convinced. Grant's basic argument seems to be, "I think it would have been evolutionarily advantageous if things worked this way, so that's the hypothesis." The actual evidence in support isn't very compelling. The correlation between follicular testosterone levels and embryo gender in cows seems to have been on the fringe of statistical significance… and she dismisses a larger study that flatly contradicted her findings. That study, "Can Bovine In Vitro-Matured Oocytes Selectively Process X- or Y-Sorted Sperm Differentially?" was conducted by people with a background in biology rather than psychology and concluded, "Bovine oocytes, at least under the conditions used in this study, cannot preferentially select X- or Y-bearing spermatozoa." In fairness, she did have a faintly plausible reason for doing so. There is never even an attempt to explain how testosterone levels would possibly be able to achieve the hypothesized effect, just the somewhat suspect correlation. Based on past publications, she's apparently been pursuing this pet theory for at least two decades; it comes off like she's trying to fit data to the theory rather than vice versa. It would be surprising if there weren't some biological factors that could influence sex ratios other than chance, but it doesn't really seem like she's even isolated a likely causal mechanism, let alone proved it. In fact, the actual journal article pretty much admits that: quote: Unless such mechanisms can be convincingly demonstrated, no matter how much behavioural and theoretical evidence accumulates, the hypotheses will remain nothing more than hypotheses. On the other hand, having the ability to modify natural sex selection processes, if they exist, would provide advantages to both livestock industries and mammalian conservation programmes, both good reasons to pursue these studies in addition to their academic interest. I think she wants more funding. :) Something I also feel worth pointing out is that, even if her hypothesis happens to be correct, I'm not sure follicular testosterone levels necessarily determine dominance in people… Edit: I just noticed the newspaper article linked in the OP is from 2008, not recently. The journal article I linked was published last month... but it makes reference to Grant's 2008 paper as well as to a couple that have been published by others since then. The other paper I linked contradicting the findings was a direct response to Grant's 2008 paper. It seems she may have backed off her original position some since then, now admitting the idea is "controversial" right in the first sentence of her 2010 paper.

allthatjaz -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 4:22:05 AM)
Thank you shallowdeep for researching this a little deeper. Most excepted theories have become accepted because they were someones hypothesis and someone went to the trouble and spent some time on it to prove it conclusively. The subject being discussed here fall into the category of 'unproved theory' and at this stage makes for interesting discussion. Just to extend the discussion further, many studies have shown that the high levels of estrogen's in certain parts of the worlds oceans, have turned entire populations of fish female. If this is accepted as fact, then it is plausible that high levels of testosterone could produce a predominance of male births in the fish and if that can be accepted, then why should it not also apply to human births?

tazzygirl -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 6:03:22 AM)
In your example, the estrogen levels were discovered outside the fish, not within. I just find it interesting that someone would state its a woman who decides the sex of a fetus when it takes two... you know.. the x and the y.. chromosone to make a baby... and only one place to get an y.

allthatjaz -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 6:41:57 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl In your example, the estrogen levels were discovered outside the fish, not within. In my example the estrogen levels were found inside the fish. Fish found to be swimming in water that is polluted by sewage and contains large traces of estrogen from the female pill and HRT, became estrogen dominant fish. In other words their environment influenced their own hormone levels. The western world lives in a high estrogen environment. From the tap water we drink to the hormone fed meat we eat, to the plastics that gas out into our food. Feminized fish is only a very small part of a very big unfolding picture. quote: I just find it interesting that someone would state its a woman who decides the sex of a fetus when it takes two... you know.. the x and the y.. chromosone to make a baby... and only one place to get an y. I was brought up to believe that its the males sperm that decides the sex of the fetus. Of course his sperm is useless without an egg . We know that male sperm carry both X and Y chromosomes but whether male or female producing sperm ultimately fertilize the egg is out of his direct control. What she is saying is, its possible that the egg we produce (which are neutral) may directly look for and X chromosome or a Y chromosome sperm.

VaguelyCurious -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 6:50:01 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl In your example, the estrogen levels were discovered outside the fish, not within. I just find it interesting that someone would state its a woman who decides the sex of a fetus when it takes two... you know.. the x and the y.. chromosone to make a baby... and only one place to get an y. That's like saying it's interesting to state that it's the consumer who decides whether to eat a red smartie or a blue smartie because there's only one place to get a red smartie and that's a packet of smarties... Just because only the man provides the chromosome which determines the gender of the baby doesn't mean that the man necessarily plays any part in determining the gender of the baby.

DesFIP -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 6:56:39 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: lizi Interesting article. I have 3 boys and am submissive. I am, however, a very confident woman who is comfortable taking charge. I can kind of agree with the author's theory that women have the type of children they are suited to raise, I feel very well suited to have raised boys. I definitely would have been more at a loss with girls. I think you've got cause and effect confused. You're more comfortable with boys because you have three of them. The first one taught you how to raise a boy. Those of us with each have to go through the learning process twice.

crazyml -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 7:23:28 AM)
Hmmm yes, you're right to a point. I suspect that the real answer will be that it's a combination of factors... men may have different balances of gonna-be-a-boy and gonna-be-a-girl sperm. The different characteristics of the boy and girl sperms (motility, speed, stamina) will have a bearing, and the extent to which an egg is "boy friendly or girl friendly". And if you really only want red smarties, I would be happy to procure a monocrhome tube of smarties for you (I has confectionery conneckshuns)

Killerangel -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 11:20:36 AM)
Interesting. I'd like to see if more research comes out.

Tantriqu -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 11:26:18 AM)
Similar to dommeliness being linked to ring finger length / submissive women tending to have longer index fingers.

tazzygirl -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/14/2010 8:36:33 PM)
quote: What she is saying is, its possible that the egg we produce (which are neutral) may directly look for and X chromosome or a Y chromosome sperm. I was not aware eggs swam. Now if she can prove that an egg prefers one over the other, which is rather perplexing since the dna is contained within the sperm, not on the outside. While i can understand your excitement at the possibility, i suppose, i simply cannot climb aboard with the hypothesis she has presented. There isnt enough "proof". And while you are on the drinking water kick, you may want to look at the effects of binge drinking on testosterone levels.

allthatjaz -> RE: Dominant women more likely to have sons (10/15/2010 4:50:52 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: tazzygirl quote: What she is saying is, its possible that the egg we produce (which are neutral) may directly look for and X chromosome or a Y chromosome sperm. I was not aware eggs swam. Now if she can prove that an egg prefers one over the other, which is rather perplexing since the dna is contained within the sperm, not on the outside. While i can understand your excitement at the possibility, i suppose, i simply cannot climb aboard with the hypothesis she has presented. There isnt enough "proof". And while you are on the drinking water kick, you may want to look at the effects of binge drinking on testosterone levels. Of course eggs don't swim but they do have penetrative walls. An egg is a receptor and science has already shown that our bodily receptors can be extremely fussy. I agree that there is nowhere near enough proof. Perhaps in the future she will be proved correct or perhaps she will be proved wrong. Until then I will keep an open mind. Its not actually a kick for me regarding drinking water! I lived in ignorant bliss regarding estrogen dominance until I was faced with a debilitating illness and a large operation. It was only my inquiring mind that made me look at the possible causes of my estrogen dominance (the main culprit of my illness) that I was able to counteract what was happening to my body. Your words insinuate that I'm on my own little mission. Your right, I am and its working! Some of us wander ignorantly on whilst our bodies are wracked with osteoporosis and cancer, some of us look for possible causes.

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