All posts tagged "Pz Myers"

PZ Myers has a really cool blog post up now about a new theory of menstruation put out in a paper by Emera, Romero, and Wagner, who appear to be actual biologists, instead of those psych profs and anthropology profs who get called "evolutionary biologists" every time they wank off in public with unevidenced theories about how we evolved to have 50s-era gender roles. It's one of those things I want to flag for feminists particularly, because I think really understanding the scientific discourse around human female biology can go a long way to chilling some of the uglier debates that go on about "nature" and things like reproduction, menstruation, etc. Basically, the problem for biologists regarding human menstruation is that it's surprisingly uncommon for mammals to have monthly menstruation. Not all mammals---as PZ says, other primates, bats, and elephant shrews menstruate---but by and large, most mammals only build up a uterine lining after an embryo implants and begins the pregnancy cycle. On paper, this seems like the smarter move, survival-wise. It uses fewer resources and avoid the health problems that can accompany menstruation if you're not lucky enough to live in a hygienic environment. (Or, as PZ puts it, "filling a delicate orifice with dying tissue seems like a bad idea.") I'll add that it's particularly confusing for it to happen in humans, who are social animals who tend to be private about our body functions. How much so changes across cultures, sure, but overall, we're private animals. Finding ways to conceal menstruation in order to participate in public life has been a hassle for women throughout history, and unfortunately for many, the answer today is still "avoid leaving the house until it's over". So, the question is why: why would we evolve a unique-ish trait that is a physical and social burden to an extent that it also impacts our ability to survive and optimally reproduce? There's a lot of theories, but this new one is pretty interesting:

Everyone was having so much fun with all the um, Christian love, expressed towards PZ Myers, I had to have a part of it.

That's what I've come to believe. It's obvious that he thinks that "religious freedom" means "the right to demand a) the right to completely define an entire religion for yourself and eject anyone who has different views than yours and b) the right never, ever to be mocked, criticized, or looked at funny". But even when a number of atheists online were insisting that I was targeted by the Catholic League for harassment and economic hardship-distribution because I'm an outspoken atheist, I was skeptical. Nah, a believer could have totally made the jokes I did and get abused, I thought. I have no idea of Melissa McEwan believes in some kind of god, and she got it, too.

I'll admit - my favorite thing that Bill Donohue ever did wasn't try to get Amanda retroactively annulled from life. It was when he attacked a Catholic priest for saying something he didn't like. This is because the stated mission of the Catholic League is this: