Why boys are turning into girls

[Christa]

Here's something rather rotten from the State of Denmark. Its government yesterday unveiled official research showing that two-year-old children are at risk from a bewildering array of gender-bending chemicals in such everyday items as waterproof clothes, rubber boots, bed linen, food, nappies, sunscreen lotion and moisturising cream.

The 326-page report, published by the environment protection agency, is the latest piece in an increasingly alarming jigsaw. A picture is emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm counts and feminising male children all over the developed world. And anti-pollution measures and regulations are falling far short of getting to grips with it.

Sperm counts are falling so fast that young men are less fertile than their fathers and produce only a third as much, proportionately, as hamsters. And gender-bending chemicals are increasingly being blamed for the mystery of the "lost boys": babies who should normally be male who have been born as girls instead.

The Danish government set out to find out how much contamination from gender-bending chemicals a two-year-old child was exposed to every day. It concluded that a child could be "at critical risk" from just a few exposures to high levels of the substances, such as from rubber clogs, and imperilled by the amount it absorbed from sources ranging from food to sunscreens.

The results build on earlier studies showing that British children have higher levels of gender-bending chemicals in their blood than their parents or grandparents. Indeed WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund), which commissioned the older research, warned that the chemicals were so widespread that "there is very little, if anything, individuals can do to prevent contamination of themselves and their families." Prominent among them are dioxins, PVC, flame retardants, phthalates (extensively used to soften plastics) and the now largely banned PCBs, one and a half million tons of which were used in countless products from paints to electrical equipment.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/6418553/Why-boys-are-turning-into-girls.html

[endless october]

1. generally, stuff like this has several helpings of hyperbole to each helping of science, but...

some of the hormone / plastics stuff seems to be fairly solid.

i think one obvious solution is to return to bottling soda and other drinks in glass. it's MUCH better for the environment as well. not to mention, it just tastes better.

widespread use of hormones (and antibiotics) in meat is something i wouldn't mind seeing curbed as well. it just makes good sense to do that.

[imdjh]

4. A couple of years ago, I would have said, "Oh bullshit." to the glass thing.

But last year my mother hosted dessert and coffee after Thanksgiving elsewhere and used real cups. It was a whole new experience to drink the coffee from that thin edged delicate china cup. It really tasted different from my big mug. And again, not too long ago I poured myself a coke in a real glass, rather than my southern drinking bucket, and it tasted better.

[Warpy]

16. Just making your own soda in plastic bottles

and drinking it before the chemicals have time to leach into it in any appreciable quantity is a different experience.

[imdjh]

2. And all this time we thought it was helicopter parents and elementary school teachers.

[Chemisse]

3. And imagine all this during pregnancy when gender is developing

Now we just need to actually DO something about it.

[imdjh]

8. Not surprisingly, it raises other questions.

Is the "thug culture" simply a fashion, a reaction, or the flip side of the phenomenon? Why are young men realizing, affecting, or glorifying the masculinity of the lowest rungs of society? Is this condition somehow focussed outside the lowest caste?

Is it at all relevant that there are entire societies where the men appear to westerners as feminine (Like some SE Asians) or is that simply interpretation?

[patrice]

12. Good question re "thug culture".

[imdjh]

15. Up to this point, I have blamed that on Phil, Oprah, and elementary school teachers.

The cultural attack on boydom in our society is well established, long before I was a child. It starts in September, now August, when boys are rounded up and herded into classrooms where they are supposed to behave like and in compatibility with female teachers and classmates. Not satisfied with emotional humiliation, physical punishment, and general adult on child intimidation, they brought drugs into the equation in the 1970's.

[smoogatz]

5. A bit less fertility might be a good thing, in the short-medium term.

I'm just sayin'.

[cascadiance]

6. Hmm. Maybe we can sell these chemicals to China...

They need more women in their society (with more of their families "choosing" to have men rather than women for traditional cultural reasons). Perhaps a way of reversing the trade deficit.

[struggle4progress]

7. For those who want better reporting than The Torygraph offers, here's The Guardian:

Two-year-olds at risk from 'gender-bending' chemicals, report says
• EU council urged to look at cumulative effect
• Campaigners fear controls will not be tough enough
* Owen Bowcott
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 21.27 GMT

Two-year-old children are being exposed to dangerous levels of hormone-disrupting chemicals in domestic products such as rubber clogs and sun creams, according to an EU investigation being studied by the government.

The 327-page report says that while risks from "anti-androgen" and "oestrogen-like" substances in individual items have been recognised, the cumulative impact of such chemicals, particularly on boys, is being ignored.

The EU's environment council of ministers is due to agree on a regulatory approach to the use of so-called "gender-bender" compounds before Christmas. On Monday, EU officials will try to work out a strategy for creating risk assessments of products causing concerns. Environmental campaigners fear controls will favour industry and not be sufficiently robust.

Phthalates, one of the main anti-androgen chemicals, which are used as softeners in soap, rubber shoes, bath mats and soft toys, have been blamed for blocking the action of testosterone in the womb and are alleged to cause low sperm counts, high rates of testicular cancer and malformations of the sexual organs ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/06/health-eu

[imdjh]

9. If sunblock is doing it, the white race is doomed.

Not because the white race needs sunblock, but because white parents have been dipping their kids in it for about 20 years now. My mother carries it in her purse.

[struggle4progress]

11. "Race" is a superstition, doomed to fade away like all superstitions

[imdjh]

14. Some things change. Some don't.

The fact that the races have and will change over time doesn't mean that race is nonexistant nor that it will disappear any time soon. A hundred years from now, there will be more racial mixes perhaps, difficult to jam into the four or five major racial categories, but people will sort out along familial lines one way or another. We see this in many racially blurred societies.

[rbixby]

10. Does this have anything to do with the 'emo' movement?

Guys in girl pants and wearing lots of eyeliner and whatnot?

[1monster]

17. You mean like this? You know, the androgynous look that was big in the '70s?

[imdjh]

18. Yeah, but those guys didn't shave their armpits, legs, and privates into a state of icky....

.... prepubescent emulation.

[Codeine]

21. Not prepubescent emulation,

just better hygiene. I feel cleaner when shaved, and I'm neither emo nor effeminate.

[salvorhardin]

19. I think the emo look had several cultural influences

But all of them can be traced back to David Bowie's androgynous alien period. I'm not sure what Bowie's influences were in this regard apart from booze and drugs. Directly though, Emo was said to be in direct reaction to the increasing violence in the hardcore Punk scene.

The "look" isn't limited to the U.S. either. Take a look at the Visual Kei music scene in Japan starting in the 1980s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_kei

[blueworld]

13. and 92% of Americans have BPA's in their system...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Great Kristoff article here.

[YoungAndOutraged]

20. This is a good thing, right?

:sarcasm: