Male and Female Genes Work Differently. That Shouldn’t Be Controversial.

istock.com/fotohunter

Male and Female Genes Work Differently. That Shouldn’t Be Controversial.

In 2017, even publishing a study showing male and female genes behave differently is controversial.

Men and women are more biologically different than previously believed, according to a study published in bmc Biology in February.

Jenny Graves, a geneticist from Australia who won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science this year drew attention to the piece in an article in Conversation, published October 31, noting, “These new data pose challenges for science, medicine and maybe even gender equity.”

Graves started out by explaining that, until recently, many people believed the differences in male and female biology came from a single chromosome pair—the X (female) and Y (male).

In total, there are around 20,000 genes contained in the human body. The Y chromosome contains only 27 genes. It was supposed only one of these 27 genes contained the code which distinguishes men from women. In essence, it was believed that one out of the 20,000 genes made men, men and women, women.

This study says that’s wrong. One third of the genes that the authors looked at behaved differently in women and in men. To put it simply, the way that genes—the building blocks of life—behave in men and women is different across the board, not just in an isolated case. Or in other words, men and women are different in many, many different ways.

To the man on the street, this is obvious to the point of banality. Yet among scientists, Graves says, it poses challenges for “science” and “gender equity.”

Here’s how Graves summarized the paper:

In their new paper, the authors Gershoni and Pietrokovsk looked at how active the same genes are in men and women. They measured the rna produced by 18,670 genes in 53 different tissues (45 common to both sexes) in 544 adult postmortem donors (357 men and 187 women).

They found that about one third of these genes (more than 6,500) had very different activities in men and women. Some genes were active in men only or women only. Many genes were far more active in one sex or the other.

A few of these genes showed sex-biased activity in every tissue of the body. More commonly, the difference was seen in one or a few tissues.

Most of these genes were not on sex chromosomes: Only a few lay on the Y or the X. …

Confirming an earlier report, some sex-biased genes were involved in brain function, reopening the debate about differences in male and female behavior.

Then she concluded with the implications: “What do these new insights mean for our progress toward gender equity?” she asked. Should she use them to provide some much-needed sanity on the biological differences between men and women? Should she use them to point to the beautiful and necessary strengths and traits of each different gender? No. Instead, she called on readers to avoid using these facts to push back against the progressive “advancements” of the past decade: “A bad outcome could be appeals to return to outdated sexual stereotypes.”

That twist is typical of “science” on this subject. Any conclusion must be made to fit the beliefs of the day—in this case, that there are no differences between a man and a woman, except for the obvious biological ones.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry addressed this problem in his article “The Evidence Shows Family Is Under Attack” in the July issue of the Trumpet magazine. In that article, he discussed British journalist Melanie Phillips’ book, Guardian Angel.

“Although many characterize her as a political conservative, Phillips says she is simply an advocate for what the evidence shows,” Mr. Flurry wrote. “And the evidence she dug up from statistics, from experts, from politicians showed that introducing cultural Marxism into schools and intentionally providing government incentives that break down the family hurts students, hurts children and hurts society.”

There is abundant evidence that men and women are different, that families work best with one of each as parents. Yet it is too often ignored in favor of modern dogma.

Men and women are different—for a very important reason. In 2008, Trumpet managing editor Joel Hilliker wrote:

These relentless efforts—which are only the latest and most extreme in a drive over the past half century in particular to equalize the sexes—have completely obscured an important question.

Why are people male and female?

Have you ever thought about that?

It is a conundrum that both creationists and evolutionists must wrestle with.

It is an important question. For more on the reason for the very real differences in the genders, see his article “Is Sex Meaningless?