Website: RH Reality Check

The website RH Reality Check has the tagline "Information and Analysis for Reproductive Health" and describes itself as a resource for "evidence-based information, provocative commentary, and interactive dialogue". However, the commentary on the site doesn't seem to be limited strictly to reproductive issues, but covers feminist, political, and other issues, such as today's post on a moral double-standard displayed in a New York Times movie review ("Girls Particularly Cautioned"). Men's roles are not entirely neglected: there seems to be substantial coverage of the role men can and should play in feminist politics. Two of the members of the five-person team responsible for the site are men.

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Author Bias Alert: I still find myself having a knee-jerk reaction that I'm pretty sure isn't useful to "feminist"-labeled sites. I catch myself looking for inclusion of "men's issues," but I'd be hard-pressed to give you a list of what I'm looking for. I was only able to comfortably call myself a feminist after writing DB for two years. So, I keep finding myself looking for male inclusion in feminist writing, and preferably some that doesn't paint all heterosexual men as "the enemy." I feel like RH Reality Check is doing a reasonably good job with that, but I still catch myself thinking "why aren't they covering men's issues?" Of course, sexism is a men's issue, in that it hurts and hampers men in some ways while privileging them in others. At any rate, my research has turned up blog posts from this site several times recently, and I've been pretty impressed by it so far. I thought it deserved a spotlight, rather than just a link in a related article (because no one ever clicks on the links). If you're interested in feminist blogs in general, you should check out the site's blogroll, which is extensive (bottom-right of the About Us page).

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Fear conditioning

Maren et al (1994) demonstrated a difference in conditioned fear response between male and female rats: male rats displayed longer freeze times, signaling a stronger fear response. Anagnostaras et al (1998) found that testosterone was not a contributor to this effect. Estrogen does affect the conditioned fear response, as ovariectomized female rats have a similar response to male rats (Gupta et al, 2001). However, there may be differences based on fear stimulus. The three studies above used electric shocks to condition fear. Gresack et al (2009) used an auditory stimulus and found that female rats spent more time frozen.

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So, to sum up the studies above: male rats seem to develop bigger fear responses, and keep them longer, than female rats, except in the most recent study, which seems to be reversed. This confuses me, and makes me think I'm misreading the studies. I fully admit that these are dense and I may have misinterpreted them. But in humans, women are more prone to fear and anxiety disorders (10/31/06), so I have to wonder what else is at work here.

You know, I sometimes feel like I've exhausted the topic of sex and gender differences, and then I trip over something like this, and I'm awed by how much information there is out there. It's a little terrifying, in a good way.

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Need For Cognition

The University of Illinois-Chicago paper, The Chicago Flame (2009), profiles an undergraduate research project which examines the personality trait "Need For Cognition" (NFC) in jurors. NFC is assessed by endorsement of items like "I enjoy puzzles." Applied psychology/biology student Maria Vargas examined whether this trait affected outcomes in participation within juries depending on gender distribution. Vargas suggested that the greater the proportion of men on a jury, the less important NFC is to the participation of individual jurors, because competitive drives appear to take over.

A NFC measure was first introduced in 1982. The measure's authors, Cacioppo and Petty (1982) reported no gender differences, and Darley and Smith (1995) concurred. However, Tanaka et al (1988) found that women scored slightly higher on the "cognitive persistence" subscale (1 of 3). An individual who tends to evaluate a situation "multidimensionally" vs. "unidimensionally" is described as "cognitively persistent".

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It looks likely that there is not a significant gender difference in NFC. That's why I find it so puzzling that the Flame article focuses on the gender composition of the juries. What is missing from the article is whether women with high NFC behave differently in jury deliberations than men with high NFC. The article does note that women in general participate in juror deliberations with fewer comments, but not how or if this varies with NFC. It's a student paper article about student research, so I can't tell if this is a weakness in the reporting or in the experiment. The main reason I'm even writing about it is that I haven't mentioned NFC before, and I thought it was an interesting construct.

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Beauty Standard

Beverly McPhail, writing for the Houston Chronicle (2009), uses the example of Susan Boyle to illustrate how beauty is not only an advantage, but perhaps a necessity, for women "in a world that defines female value and worth solely by appearance"*. McPhail cites a recent review by Kwan and Trautner (2009), which calls "beauty work" -- effort invested in physical appearance -- "nearly compulsory" for women. Kwan and Trautner's findings on gender roles in "weight" were discussed in March (3/20/2009).

McPhail suggests that we, as a culture, should "make over our appearance-obsessed culture". However, there may be a neurological explanation for the double standard: Cloutier et al (2008) found evidence for activation of reward areas of the brain when subjects viewed images of attractive opposite-sex targets: the effect may be different in men, because men (rating only women's faces) recruited orbitofrontal cortex in addition to other reward areas. (NB: it seems I misreported the Cloutier study in September, by suggesting that OFC recruitment applied to male targets, rather than male participants. See 9/3/08.)

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I'm guilty: even warned about the surprising performance by Susan Boyle, when I watched the video, I was shocked. That woman's got quite a set of pipes. Still, I wonder how much of my reaction to the video was a reaction to the judge and audience reactions. I think without the judge responses, I would have had a mild moment of disconnect. I feel like the validation of the "surprise" response is part of the problem, as much as the surprise response itself.

* This sentence appears to be paraphrased from Kwan and Trautner, who used the word "regime" and attribute it to Tseëlon (1993).

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Sexual Fluidity goes both ways

Mary Fischer, writing for Oprah.com (2009) and excerpted on CNN (2009), cites research by Lisa Diamond (see 1/17/08) and J. Michael Bailey (see 6/24/08 and 4/11/07) to discuss a "trend" for women's bisexuality. Blogger Rachel Kramer Bussell, on The Daily Beast (2009) suggests that fluidity may be gaining steam in male culture, even if it's "just an act."

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Now, the unifying idea between both columns -- and neither of these are scientific sources -- is that greater social acceptance of non-heterosexuality is allowing people to express behaviors and feelings that they might otherwise repress. I will not go off on a J. Michael Bailey rant again (even if I break my jaw via tooth-grinding rage). My points from 2007-2008 still stand, and it looks like it will be too nice today for me to spend it angry. But I am a little baffled to see two pieces this week discussing the trendiness of bisexuality, and having them be aimed at both men's and women's sexuality. It makes me wonder how much "safer" a topic is rendered by having it be a "trend". I'm reminded of the statement: "it's just a phase." The minimizing word "just" seems telling there. It's a word I've been working to cut from my own vocabulary, having caught myself using it 3-4 times in a single sentence. But it seems to me that if these are otherwise-repressed urges, expecting them to go away if social conditions change is unrealistic.

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Vacation revisited

Michelle Goodman, blogging for Nine to Thrive (2009), writes about guilt over vacation time. Goodman cites an Expedia survey (2009) (conducted by Harris Interactive) which found that women were more likely to feel guilty about taking time away from work than men. Men were also more likely to take a 2-week vacation. However, what Goodman doesn't note is that women receive fewer vacation days than men (about 2 fewer days per year on average). Goodman does mention that women are less likely to work over 40 hours per week (44% of men vs. 29% of women), but doesn't tie this in with a decrease in benefits (there may be no such correlation: it is not noted in the study).

As mentioned in a previous post (12/20/07), men and women seem to take the same number of vacation days per year, but men leave more vacation unused (because they have more). Women may also save vacation time to take care of sick family members, which would leave them with less to take in long blocks.

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I have to admit that the only times I've taken more than 5 work days off have been medical leaves: I took a couple of weeks off for my mastectomy, and again for my hysterectomy. I usually take my "big" vacation around the winter (Xmas/New Year) holidays, which ends up with me using relatively few vacation days: it only took 5 vacation days to cover a 13-day absence in 2007.

I was just commenting to my partner last night that I have a harder time setting work/life boundaries than he does. I've been working late quite a bit over the past few months, and I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to get back down to 40 hours if I decide that's my goal. Any time I haven't been paid by the hour, I've had this problem. It's funny, though: as an hourly worker, I had an incentive to work more. On salary, worker longer hours makes my time worth less.

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Friendship

An article in Monday's New York Times (2009) points out that social networks may provide many health benefits, specifically noting higher rates of breast cancer survival among nurses with 10 or more friends (Kroenke et al, 2006). While the NYT article does not suggest any gender difference, a study by Shye et al (1995) found that friendship had different protective effects for men and women. Both men and women's mortality rates were affected by social support, but the support effect was mediated in men by health status: "no such indirect effect was found for women". Men also seemed to receive benefits from a smaller group of friends in this 15 year study.

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Two things jump out at me about the Shye study: three if you count the fact that it's a study on friendship by someone named "Shy". First of all, if there's no mediation by health status, that sounds to me like women with more friends are living longer while being just as sick as those who die lonely. Secondly, I think that there may be a relationship between men's already shorter lifespans and the size of the friend groups they need: they're not likely to outlive as many of their friendships.

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lawyer compensation

Lawyers are another well-studied group of professionals. Noonan et al (2005) found that female lawyers tended to earn less than male lawyers, but worked fewer hours, and had fewer years in private practice. In the UK, Wass and McNabb (2006) suggested that the longer hours worked by male lawyers give them a chance to do more "non-chargeable work" -- a type of experience highly valued in promotion prospects. Wass and McNabb cite Crompton and Sanderson's Gendered Jobs and Social Change (1990) in pointing out that earnings inequality is higher in professional careers than in employment in general.

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This is another paragraph I cut out of the post on self-employment pay rates (4/8/09). I found it especially interesting that the earnings inequality increases with education, rather than decreases, especially considering the fact that women are overtaking men in college graduation rates. Maybe it's just that there is a wider range of earnings within professional careers, but it struck me as counterintuitive.

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self-employment [filler]

Clain (2000) found that self-employed women tended to have less desirable "personal characteristics" than wage-and-salary women employees, while the reverse was true for self-employed men: "There is some suggestion that women may place a higher value on nonwage aspects of self-employment than men do."

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I keep thinking that I'll take the day off from DB when there's a work holiday, but then I forget to announce that there will be no Monday post, and I feel a little awkward skipping it. I suppose if I were self-employed, I would have no days off. Maybe that attitude is part of what Clain is talking about. This tidbit was going to be part of the post on pricing structures for the self-employed (4/8/09), but I determined that it wasn't really on topic. I do wonder about gendered career segregation among the self-employed: are women more likely to do sales or service? Are men more likely to hang out a shingle as a professional (architect, lawyer, doctor)? I have no evidence either way, but I have my suspicions.

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Marriage same-sex differences

The proportion of legally-recognized same-sex couples who are male or female appears to vary by country.

• In the U.K., civil partnerships have been legal since 2005. The Social Trends Report discussed yesterday (4/16/09) includes these partnerships same-sex couples in their "married" couple data, while unregistered same-sex couples are included in "cohabiting" couple data. Men were slightly more likely (55% to 45%) to register a civil partnership in 2007.
• In the United States, lesbians are more likely to marry than gay men, according to Gates et al (2008). For example, in Massachusetts (where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2004), 51% of all same-sex couple are female, but 64% of same-sex married couples are female.
• In Canada, same-sex marriage has been legal since 2005. According to Statistics Canada (2006), 53.7% of Canadian same-sex marriages were between men. The StatCan release claims that this proportion is similar to same-sex marriage rates in Australia and Ireland, although female couples are more common in New Zealand.
• In Spain, same-sex marriage was legalized in 2005. According to a June 2007 Ministry of Justice announcement (see Wikipedia), 71% of these marriages were between men.

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I was discussing same-sex marriage statistics with a coworker this morning, and we both predicted significantly higher numbers of marriages for women. Well, we were right for our own state, but not so much for the rest of the world. I find myself wondering whether male privilege or cultural homophobia plays into who feels safe getting married, or who feels unprotected without marriage. I don't want to make assumptions about the levels of homophobia in various countries or regions -- but who am I kidding? I definitely do make those assumptions, and I feel like the higher rate of male-marriage in Spain is a reflection of it.

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Family Structure

Yesterday, the British Office of National Statistics released the annual Social Trends report (#39, 2009, pdf). This year's report made headlines with the finding that, in the most recent cohort (aged 25-29), more women reported having children (30%) than marriage (24%) (Belfast Telegraph, 2009). The most recent similar numbers from the U.S. Census (2004)show a much higher rate of marriage in women of similar age: 50.2%, compared to 37.3% of men.

The two-married-parent-family is still the most common family type in the U.K., making up about 64% of households with dependent children; single mothers are the next most common at 22%, followed by unmarried cohabiting couples at 13%. Single fathers made up less than 2% of these families.

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Amusingly enough, I received an email while writing this post from the Alternatives to Marriage Project (which I'd been thinking about, unsurprisingly). It seems today is "National Healthcare Decisions Day". I'm constantly surprised by the number of documents it takes to stand in for a single marriage certificate (and how some parts are not currently legally replaceable). Meh. My feelings on the entire institution are mixed enough that I don't feel safe talking about it.

Related: 7/2/07 "Changing Face of Marriage"

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Tax Day

According to Marist Polls (2009), American men and women are about equally likely to wait until April 15th to file their taxes (19% to 21%, respectively). In the 2009 poll, conducted April 1st - 3rd, women had a higher degree of uncertainty about whether they would receive a refund: 10% of women vs. 4% of men were unsure. Men were also more likely to expect a refund (60% vs 52% of women). This perhaps explains the difference between men and women in their predicted uses of refund money: 19% of men vs 11% of women said they expected to buy something with refund money, instead of saving it or paying off bills (among those expecting a refund). In a Canadian sample, Torgler (2003) suggests women have better "tax morale" (desire to pay taxes), and are therefore less likely to cheat on their taxes.

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The Marist poll found much greater differences by region than by any other factor, but I was surprised that I didn't see a division of "waiting to file taxes" by "expecting a refund." This always struck me as the primary determining factor in when you file for taxes: you should wait to pay, but collect a refund as soon as possible. There did seem to be an effect on filing date by income, but increases in income did not seem to affect expectation of a refund: maybe the tax complexity is the determining factor?

Last Year: a "man tax" proposal

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Weight and Career

Last week, we ended up having a very active discussion about obesity (4/9/09), in which Ukelele said "it seems like men have a lot more leeway to get fat without social disapproval". A study recently published in Equal Opportunities seems to back up this statement. Roehling et al (2009) found gender differences in rates of obesity among CEOs. There were more obese men among CEOs than in the general population, but fewer obese women. Last year, in Nature, Andreyeva et al (2008) noted that Americans reported being a victim of more height and/or weight discrimination compared to 10 years ago. Men's rates of perceived discrimination on weight/height nearly doubled (from 4.1% to 8.1%), while women's much higher rates also increased (from 10% to 15.5%).

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I think it's a mistake to combine weight and height discrimination, because I feel like the difference between men and women would be even more distinct if only weight was taken into account. Taller stature does seem to increase both men's and women's career prospects, but this effect seems to be stronger in men (5/10/07). However, since we're looking at discrimination from self-report, it's possible that the numbers would come out differently than they do in analyses of career achievement.

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Murder Most Unusual

The murder of an eight-year-old girl in California has been making headlines over what local law enforcement is calling an "anomaly." According to ABC news (2009), police Sgt Tony Sheneman told "Good Morning America" that: "it's unusual for it to be a woman statistically and according to the FBI," but the prime suspect appears to be Sunday School teacher Melissa Huckaby. Early profiling had postulated that a male sex offender was responsible for the girl's disappearance. Criminal profiler Pat Brown, on the blog Women in Crime Ink (2009), addresses charges of sexism that have been leveled at the initial profiles presented on television, pointing out that accuracy is nearly impossible in 30 seconds with incomplete or inaccurate information.

While the FBI tables (2007) do show that the vast majority of murders are committed by men (by nearly an order of magnitude), they also show that more men are more likely to be murdered than women (see also: 11/2/06). The tables do not show what percentage of women's victims are children.

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I do get a little disgusted by the titillation factor when a woman is accused of a violent crime (see 8/17/06). But it was the phrasing by Sgt Sheneman, quoted on news radio this weekend, that caught my attention. At the time, I wasn't aware that he was trying to justify earlier speculation. Is this gender profiling, and somehow unfair to men? On the other hand, how much does it narrow down your suspect pool to say "we think it's a man?"

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What makes you happy?

Last month, we discussed the "ambition gap" in young workers (under 29), described as the difference between men's and women's desire for additional work responsibility (3/27/09). However, a recent paper by University of Bristol researchers suggests that there may be a difference between what people report wanting, and what they report as a contributor to their happiness. Khattab and Fenton (2009) interviewed 1,100 young workers in the UK (ages 20-34): women were far more likely than men to list "satisfaction with home" as a contributor to life satisfaction. In contrast, men were more likely to list "job as part of a career plan". "Living with partner" was equally important to men and women.

It may be worth noting that the study was conducted in Bristol, an area undergoing significant economic shifts at the time of the interviews. Another article based on the same interviews (Fenton & Dermott, 2006) determined that 40% of the women vs. 7% of the men were in part-time employment.

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It's all about how you ask the question, isn't it? Personally, I would like to know more about how they asked for determinants of life satisfaction. I can't find details on this in either of the articles by Fenton above. If given a list with "satisfaction with home" on it, I'd interpret that to mean the quality of my living accomodations, especially when partner and health are additional options. I didn't see any mention of "friends" either, which strikes me as odd. The conclusion that work is less important to women strikes me as ill-founded in the 2009 paper, but I didn't see any discussion of work being less important to part-time workers.

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Obesity [draft]

So, I'm running really behind schedule today, and I have to go to a meeting in a few minutes. So, today's post appears to be in reverse order, because the section below has basically no evidence to back it up. As always, the top section of DB is "fact", and the bottom section is my opinion. I wrote this off the top of my head on the subway, with the expectation that I'd find sources to back it up. It's mostly opinion, with some half-remembered tidbits from skimmed abstracts over the past few years. The only fact I can state with certainty is that I wasn't prepared today, and I'm running too late to correct it.

I do want to mention that the CDC (2009) does state that women have a slightly higher obesity rate than men (35.3% to 33.3%) but the difference does not seem nearly high enough to support the post I tried to write. Perhaps the most interesting part of today's post is the way my own prejudices are revealed.

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In the United States, more women than men are classified as obese, despite a far higher rate of eating disorders among women. One explanation for this disparity is that the standard used to determine obesity may be unfair to women, setting a goal weight that is unachievable or even unhealthy. Others have suggested that the high rate of eating disorders actually worsens the "obesity epidemic" among women, as thousands of women use unhealthy diets for weight control, inevitably "bouncing" back to an above-healthy weight, and changing their metabolisms for the worse. As previously noted, there is evidence that men are more physically active than women at all stages of life. Increased physical activity, combined with fewer dramatic changes in eating patterns, may protect men from obesity to some extent, but the rate of obesity in both sexes continues to rise.

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Price point

In previous posts, we've discussed how women typically do not negotiate for higher salaries as much (or as effectively?) as men (see 4/13/07, 7/31/07, & 5/1/08; counterpoint: see 7/8/08). This pattern seems to hold true for the self-employed as well: Cron et al (2009) found that women veterinarians tended to use "compassionate pricing" more often than men. However, there seemed to be an offset to this effect through increased customer loyalty. Graham et al (2007, with Cron) suggest that this is also true for other self-employed professionals, such as lawyers and architects, although this study also used a veterinary sample. Studies of pricing differences among other professionals do not seem to be readily available.

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"Compassionate pricing" is a phrase used only by Cron, and those who cite his work, apparently, and I suspect I'd find more groups studied if I could figure out what other people had called it. I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode Fear of Flying where a psychiatrist charges on a "sliding scale" ("Keep sliding", Homer replies). Unfortunately, searching for "sliding scale" doesn't seem to turn up differences in pricing habits among mental health providers. What other services might be priced differently by male and female practioners?

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Recession's impact on women

A story in today's Metro (2009) points out several weaknesses in the claims that the recession has a greater effect on men (see 3/16/09, 1/13/09). The story points out that women may be more likely to work in unreported jobs (such as nannies and housekeepers), or in part-time jobs. A Salt Lake City Tribune (2009) article also points out women's disproportionate involvement in multi-level marketing and home sales (see 9/4/06). Since women in these kinds of jobs are not counted as "in the workforce", the impact of the recession on their livelihood may be desperately underreported. In these cases, women who lost income from this type of work would be uneligible for unemployment benefits. This is not a new complaint: Pearce (1985) argued that unemployment insurance was created "with male family heads and full-time workers as its intended recipients".

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I don't believe that anyone in my birth family is listed as a member of the "workforce", come to think of it. I think that arts and crafts is probably the best way to describe their home business, although "eclectic" is probably more accurate. I do think that the Metro story is setting up a bit of a straw man with the statement "80% of on-the-books jobs lost from Nov. 2007 to Nov. 2008 were held
by men." I've seen people quoting the gender distribution in particular fields, but I haven't seen that statistic used anywhere else.

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Biological Clocks

Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog (NYT, 2009) points to yet another interesting study: Saha et al (2009) suggests that children fathered by older men may not be as smart as those with younger fathers. Belkin also points evidence for increased risk of autism among older fathers' children (Reichenberg et al, 2006; Cantor et al, 2007). These studies, Belkin argues, point to the need for a male "biological clock", with men making a greater priority of starting families at a younger age. In contrast, Chen et al (2008) argue that maternal confounders may be upsetting the congenital anomaly data, and suggest that it is the children of teenaged fathers who are at greatest risk.

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You know, I spent a certain amount of time this weekend annoyed at Jenny McCarthy. I only recently found out that she's a major spokesperson for the autism-linked-to-vaccines crowd, and people not vaccinating their kids is sort of a hot-button for me, probably past the point of rationality. I'm forcing myself to read the evidence for this link, in small doses, but I'm not finding much to convince me at this point. However, I do wonder if there is a link between countries with high vaccination rates and later average age of starting a family.

However, mostly I wanted to post about this after the discussion a couple of weeks ago with Ukelele (3/20/09) about how mothers get blamed for everything; a parenting post with a paternal focus felt long overdue.

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Child gender preference

Goldberg (2009) claims that gay couples and straight couples may differ in their preference for adopting a child of a specific gender. Among the adoptive parents interviewed, gay men were most likely to express a desire for a boy or a girl, while heterosexual men were least likely to express one. Heterosexual couples were less likely to express desire for a male child than homosexual couples. Participants were recruited from adoption agencies in "states with a high percentage of lesbians and gay men" and through the Human Rights Campaign FamilyNet e-mail list. Altogether, 93 heterosexual couples, 61 lesbian couples, and 48 gay male couples were included in the study.

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In a previous post, we explored the fact that men were more likely to adopt a child than women, often adopting their wife's children from a previous relationship 8/28/08. At the time, I expressed disappointment that there was so little detail on fathers in adoption. Well, here's fathers. Lots of fathers, who don't have any other children. I think it's sweet, but I'm not sure how I would have addressed the statistical analysis. The idea of combining "preference for girls" and "preference for boys" into a "preference for a gender" variable strikes me as wrong somehow, but I can't put a finger on why.

The percentage of straight couples pursuing international adoption (36%) was higher than the percentage of gay couples (10%) or lesbian couples (20%). I'm ashamed to admit that this surprised me.

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Health Insurance

NPR (2009) reports that individual health plans for women in California are up to 39% more expensive than health plans for men, based partially on women's tendency to visit doctors more often than men. Ten U.S. states ban differential health care pricing for men and women, and California is considering such a ban, according to the NPR article. Concerns about differences in health insurance are hardly new: Miles and Parker's review (1997) points out several factors, such as part-time work, lower wages, and relative longevity, that make it more likely that a woman will be uninsured or underinsured during her lifetime. Glied et al (2008) points out that rates of insurance coverage have declined for both men and women since 1980, the sources of insurance for women have changed in a way that men's haven't: women in 1980 were more likely to be covered as dependents.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2007), 13.9% of U.S. women and 16.7% of men were uninsured in 2006.

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I spent the years between 1997 and 2002 with spotty-to-no health coverage. In retrospect, it felt like longer than that. Since 2002, I've had the same employer health care, and covered my partner under the plan for a while. The plan is based in Massachusetts, one of the states with a ban on sex-based rates, but what sex I'm listed as with my insurer seems to be in constant flux (depending on what service I've most recently had). It makes me (extra) glad I'm not on an individual plan in California: I imagine the billing headaches would be enormous.

Since 2003, I've seen some medical professional at least twice a year for various monitoring and checkups (4x if you count dentists). It's not unrelated that I started my medical transition in 2003, but not all of my annual visits are transition-related. Some of them are female-body-related, and I tend to think of those when I think about the higher cost of health care for women. On the other hand, I've recently been told that I'm not seeing a doctor enough. My primary care physician recently declined to renew a prescription because I hadn't seen him in a few years. Whoops. With two specialist visits a year, an annual physical really didn't cross my mind.

Since men and women's care costs insurers different amounts, is it fair to bill them differently?

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Gene-splicing

Researchers report today that they have confirmed the theoretical possibility of combining male and female DNA. Durr et al's (2009) article stresses that creating such a male-female hybrid in humans would be highly unethical, but subtly hints that work with animal models may already be underway. The offspring would almost certainly be sterile, without access to normal means of reproduction. Even so, this work runs counter to the commonly accepted theoretical framework (see the seminal work by Southey, 1820) which had theorized too many differences in male and female makeup for such a combination to be possible.

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I'm normally pro-science to a fault, but I have to say that I find this line of research a little troubling. Even if the application is restricted just to animals, it seems really sketchy to try to make a creature out of half male and half female genetic material. I'm sure we could learn a lot from it, assuming they did create a viable hybrid, but it wouldn't be applicable to normal people. Would the ethical debt be worth the satisfied curiosity?

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