50 shades of gay I wanted to be brief. I wanted
to be simple. 50 may not be enough. My definition of gay is the
entire spectrum between the extremes of
male and female. Each axis in the spectrum will
be descriptions of the physical, mental,
emotional and psychological aspect. Along the way we will pass
through some naming conventions. In the LGBTQ spectrum of
classifications the assumption by society
is that this constitutes about 10% of the
human population. Each letter represents
an attitude of self-identity. The prefixes
Homo and Hetero refer to the sameness or
opposite characteristics of attraction. Homo means same, such as two
males or two females attracted to each
other. Hetero means opposite, such as
male and female attraction. Anti-or just the letter a is a prefix that
means "not". Examples in the English
language would be antisocial and asexual. Bi is a prefix indicating two,
indicating a person might demonstrate
characteristics of the two main features.
A person might feel attraction to either
sex or gender. Mono is a prefix for one and
only one. partner
you would be connected to either by
marriage or emotional agreement. Example:
monogamous, meaning only one partner. Poly is a prefix meaning two or
more. Example: polygamous or poly amorous. Phobe
or phobic is the syllable that denotes
fear, hate or uneasy association. Examples homophobic. Lesbo
refers to the mythical island in the A siren was a fictional female
creature that could seduce men by their
melodious singing. They were thought to be
irresistible therefore sailors crashed the
boats against the rocks trying to draw
close. Amazon is the term used to
describe warrior type women. In ancient
days they removed one of their breasts in
order to be more proficient with a bow and
arrow. In modern days a woman might be
called Amazon if she were powerful and
aggressive. Q is for questioning. This
starts in early childhood and can extend
the lifespan of an individual. It is the
most perplexing during puberty and at
those times in a person's milestones when
rethinking your purpose in life may be in
question. Trans is for transitional. It is
the most complex to comprehend as it
defies definition. I did meet a classic
transsexual in my life who was able to
articulate all the possibilities and wrote
a very interesting paper to her physician
and counselor. She has expressed to me
that she does not like the transsexual
community because they are intent and
trying to make her conform to a sameness that she
rejects. In order to give you an example
of how she names the phases of her
identity, she was born in What's
in a name? In many societies getting a new
name fixes a lot of stuff. A female can
take the last name of her husband.
Children may add the suffix to their name
indicating their age in the community.
Examples are John versus Johnny, Tom or
Thomas versus Thomasito
or Tommy. The whole spectrum of nicknames
can be self-induced or foisted upon by
friends or enemies. When my trans friend begin
to identify herself as a Jew, she
requested the name "Shosha",
which has a Hebrew meaning. She was a
Russian, American, male/female
transitioning Jew who only had to cut her
hair in an androgynous fashion to be
properly acceptable to anybody in any
community. I think she pulled it off in a
grand fashion. She can sit or stand it any
crowd and nobody comes up as high as her
shoulders. Her external clues for gender
are by the way she walks and talks and
sings. Her smile is her best calling card. In order to
go further with going to have to get
physical. The following clip is from
this link: http://www.ingender.com/gender-info/conception2.aspx The main event of
conception is the uniting of the mother
and father's chromosomes to form a new,
unique human being. Let's delve into the
fascinating world of your chromosomes. All
of your body's cells contain chromosomes,
which are packages of DNA strands; DNA
holds the map of your genes. If you're a
human, 46 is the magic number: we have
46 chromosomes, in 23 matched pairs. One
chromosome in each pair was contributed
by your father, and one by your mother.
Every cell in your body contains your
complete genetic blueprint, or
your genome, in the 46
chromosomes in its nucleus. A sex cell (egg or
sperm), however, is an exception. Rather
than a complete set of 23 pairs of
chromosomes, an egg or sperm has only
23 single chromosomes.
When the two unite, the chromosomes
combine, giving the new cell the proper
number of 46 chromosomes. Take a look at
the 46 chromosomes in one of your
normal cells (not an egg or sperm).
What a chromosome actually "looks
like" is a complicated question, but
we can represent them kind of like
this: Some
chromosomes are larger than others,
because they contain more DNA. All
chromosomes are part of a matched
pair, one from your mother, and one
from your father (which I illustrated
here by coloring them pink and blue).
The pair is "matched" because they
contain the same genes -- for example,
both of your parents contributed a
gene for eye color, and of the color
of your eyes depends
on which gene is dominant. The
Sex Chromosome: XX or XY The
last chromosome is different. It's
called the sex chromosome, and it
determines whether you are female or
male. If you're female, we call this
chromosome XX, and as you can see, it
is a nicely matched pair like the rest
of the chromosomes. If
you're male, the last pair of
chromosomes is called XY, and they're
not a matched pair. The X chromosome,
contributed by the mother, matches
up with a much smaller Y chromosome
contributed by the father.
For reasons that aren't fully
understood, the X chromosome contains
far more genetic material than the Y,
and thus it is larger in size. In
2003, the Y chromosome made headlines around
the world when it was mapped by
the Human Genome Project. Oocyte Now
take a look at the chromosomes in an
egg. We see only half of the usual
number of chromosomes. Why didn't I
color these chromosomes pink, since
they all come from the mother? The
answer is that the mother doesn't just
pass along a copy of the chromosomes
she received from her mother, but new,
unique chromosomes that contain a
mixture of the genes from both of her
parents, ensuring that each oocyte, and
each child, is genetically unique. Notice
that the last chromosome, #23, is the
big X chromosome. Because the mother's
own 23rd chromosome is XX, the egg's
23rd chromosome must always also be an
X, because the mother only has X's to
contribute. So any egg can become a
baby boy or a baby girl, depending on
whether the father's sperm contributes
an X or a Y to pair with the mother's
X. Here
are our friends the chromosomes again,
this time from a sperm. And again,
these chromosomes aren't a copy of any
of the man's original chromosomes, but
a unique mixture derived from each
pair, bestowing traits from both of
his parents to each sperm, and thus to
each child. Notice
that the last chromosome, the sex
chromosome, is either an X or a Y in a
sperm cell. This is possible because a
man has an XY pair as his own 23rd
chromosome, so a choice is possible
when a sperm cell is formed. Technically,
I should call the two types of sperm
"X-chromosome-bearing spermatazoa"
and "Y-chromosome-bearing spermatazoa",
but I always just say X-sperm and
Y-sperm. If
all this talk has put you into a
chromosomal coma, wake up! This next
part will be on the quiz. It
seems reasonable to think that if some
men only have sons, they may only have
Y sperm, or that fathers with all
girls might have only X sperm. But in
fact, years of testing have shown that
virtually all men have a nearly equal
number of X and Y sperm -- even men
who have fathered only boys or girls. The
explanation for this is that the
process by which sperm are formed -- spermatogenesis -- guarantees
that an equal number of X and Y-sperm
are produced. This is because X-sperm
and Y-sperm aren't manufactured
separately, but result from the
division of an XY parent cell. Normal
cells in your body are reproducing all
the time, by a process called mitosis: the
cell's DNA replicates (makes an exact
copy of itself), then divides down the
middle, resulting in two cells that
are identical to the original cell.
Remember seeing cells divide in
biology class? This
process of mitosis won't work for
creating sperm cells,though,
because sperm cells are special in two
ways. First, they have only half the
usual number of chromosomes. And
second, they're each genetically
unique, not exact copies like normal
cells. (If sperm and egg cells were
just identical copies, all of a
couple's offspring would be clones of
each other.) The
answer is a specialized form of cell
division called meiosis, used
only in the formation of sperm cells
(spermatogenesis) and oocytes (oogenesis). In
the testes, sperm is produced by cells
called spermatagonium. These cells
reproduce themselves in the usual way,
by mitosis, so that a man doesn't run
out of them; after all, he'll be
producing sperm his entire life,
starting from puberty. But
some spermatagonia
will undergo meiosis, in which a
single spermatagonium
divides into not two, but four sperm
cells. Here's an overview of what
happens (this is the good part): At
first, the cell has the normal 46
chromosomes, scattered around the cell
nucleus. (Pretend that the 6
chromosomes I've shown here are
actually all 46. Pink chromosomes come
from mom, blue from dad.) The
chromosome's DNA replicates itself
(shown by the 2 black lines inside
each blob in the picture). The cell
still has the normal number of 46
chromosomes, but twice the DNA. So
far, this is just like what happens
during normal mitosis, but something
new is about to happen. The
chromosomes next match themselves up
in corresponding pairs, the only
occasion they do so. Because this is a
man, of course chromosome pair #23 is
XY. (Again, you can pretend that pairs
3 through 22 are also shown here.) Chromosome
pairs exchange sections of DNA between
themselves, in a process called crossover, thus
mixing up genes from both parents. We
now have new, unique chromosomes. The
cell divides! The new cells have 23
chromosomes each, and the genetic code
is further shuffled by mixing and
matching chromosomes into the new
cells. One cell must get the X, and
the other the Y, from the 23rd
chromosome of the parent cell. The
new cells have the right number of
chromosomes for a sperm cell, but
still twice the DNA (from the
replication at the beginning). So... Each
cell divides yet again, yeilding two
X's and two Y's. Called spermatids, these little
round cells will develop a midpiece and
flagellum on their way to becoming
mature sperm cells: 2 X-sperms, and 2
Y-sperms. This
whole process takes about 74 days, but
don't worry that there won't be any
sperm ready on the big day --
thousands of sperm mature every
second. The birds, bees and
mules Horses
and asses have a different chromosome
count. Crossbreeding the two animals
produces a mule, completely different
from either one of those that made up
the mixture. But,
to understand why this is a problem,
we need to understand how sperm and
eggs are made. And to understand that,
we need to go into a bit more detail
about chromosomes. Remember,
we have two copies of each of our
chromosomes -- one from mom and one
from dad. This means we have two
copies of chromosome 1, two copies of
chromosome 2, etc. However, this isn't
entirely true for the mules. The
mule has a set of horse chromosomes
from its mom. And
a set of donkey ones from its dad. These
chromosomes aren't really matched sets
like in a horse, a donkey, or a
person. In these cases, a chromosome 1
is very similar to another chromosome
1. It looks pretty much the same and
has nearly the same set of A's, G's,
T's and C's. For example, two human
chromosome 1's differ only every 1000
letters or so. But
a donkey chromosome doesn't
necessarily look like a horse one. And
the poor mule even has an unmatched
horse chromosome just sitting there. To
make a sperm or an egg, cells need to
do something called meiosis. The idea
behind meiosis is to get one copy of
each chromosome into the sperm or egg. For
example, let's focus on chromosome 1.
Like I said, we have one from mom and
one from dad. At the end of meiosis,
the sperm or egg has either mom's or
dad's chromosome 1. Not both. This
process requires two things. First,
the chromosomes have to look pretty
similar, meaning they are about the
same size and have the same
information. This will have to do with
how well they match up during meiosis. And
second, at a later critical stage,
there has to be four of each kind of
chromosome. Neither of these can
happen completely with a mule. Let's
take a closer look at meiosis to see
why this is. The first step in meiosis
is that all of the chromosomes make
copies of themselves. No problem
here...a mule cell can pull this off
just fine. So
now we have a cell with 63 doubled
chromosomes. It is the next step that
causes the real problem. In
the next step, all the same
chromosomes need to match up in a very
particular way. So, the four chromosome 1's
all need to line up together. But this
can't happen in a mule very well. Like
I said, a donkey and a horse
chromosome aren't necessarily similar
enough to match up. Add to this the
unmatched chromosome and you have a
real problem. The chromosomes can't
find their partners and this causes
the sperm and eggs not to get made. So
this is a big reason for a mule being
sterile. But how is the silly thing
alive at all? Well,
there are a couple of reasons. First,
having an odd number of chromosomes
doesn't matter for every day life. A
mule's cells can divide and make new
cells just fine. Which is important
considering a mule went from 1 cell to
trillions of them! Chromosomes
sort differently in regular cells than
they do in sperm and eggs. Regular
cells (called somatic cells) use a
process called mitosis. Mitosis
is like the first step of meiosis. The
chromosomes all make copies of
themselves. But instead of matching
up, they just sort into two new cells.
So for the mule, each cell ends up
with 63 chromosomes. No matching needs
to happen. And our lone horse
chromosome is fine. The
other reason a mule is alive is that
nothing on the extra or missing
chromosome causes it any harm. This
seems obvious at first except that
usually having extra DNA causes severe
problems. In people, extra chromosomes
usually result in miscarriages.
Sometimes though, a child can survive
with an extra chromosome. For
example, people with an extra
chromosome 21 have Down syndrome.
Having all of the extra genes on that
extra copy of chromosome 21 cause the
symptoms associated with Down
syndrome. So
having extra chromosomes often leads
to real problems. But the mule is by
and large OK. The
extra genes must not be that big a
deal for the mule. In other words, the
extra genes on the horse chromosome do
not cause problems for the every day
life of a mule. So
mules are sterile because horse and
donkey chromosomes are just too
different. But they are alive because
horse and donkey chromosomes are
similar enough to mate.
Chromosomes:
Your Genetic Blueprint
23 Chromosome Pairs
Chromosomes
in the Egg
23 Single ChromosomesChromosomes
in the Sperm
Sperm
23 Single ChromosomesSpermatogenesis:
Equal
X's and Y's For All!
A mule gets 32 horse
chromosomes from mom and 31 donkey
chromosomes from dad for a total of 63
chromosomes. (A horse has 64 chromosomes
and a donkey has 62).A horse and a
donkey can have kids. A male horse and a
female donkey have a hinny. A female
horse and a male donkey have a mule.