Yesterday night as I surfed the television, my remote stayed with a debate on CNN-IBN and its celebrated 10 pm show – Face the Nation. The episode was on sex, secret of male potency and its sociological repercussions. The debate was allegedly instigated by a demand from a veteran Tamil actress turned politico, Manorama. She allegedly wanted males to provide a “sexual potency” (limited to their ability to produce offspring, as far as I could reckon from Manorama’s statement) certificate along with a HIV negative certificate as a pre-nuptial testimony for marriage.
A simple suggestion debated by two sexologists (one male, one female), the anchor (a lady) and a lady social activist. Interesting as the debate was, it takes me back to a topic on which I wanted to blog for a long time – How gender comes to be. Science about this topic that all of us should have read in or up to STD X, religious beliefs and lastly, why we maybe entirely swayed, probably wrongly, in some of our learned notions, constitutes this blog.
Men and women have procreated for many thousands of years and going by the current population at least a few billion times in the last hundred years. School science tells us that men produce X and Y type of chromosomes while women produce X and X type of chromosomes. If my memory serves me right, the human DNA was first modelled by Watson and Crick who suggested the double helix structure. Somewhere down the line in my school science I seem to have picked up the notion that chromosomes are a larger unit and DNA is the smaller component.
Having preambled thus, let me place a few questions –
Q1. What scientific tools did Watson and Crick (I use the names W and C representatively, for want of information and research ability. I am sure CNN-IBN has better resources) have in 1900-1940, that allowed them to confirm that the male spermatozoa has an unknown mix of X and Y chromosomes? In other words, how are X and Y individual chromosomes separated from one another or discriminated or distinguished actually? Is it possible with today’s technology to extract a vial full of only ‘X’ chromosomes, and a vial full of only ‘Y’ chromosomes from a combined solution of X and Y chromosomes as is available from a “potent” healthy male? I presume (logically and from the science I have been taught) that one vial of female eggs will yield entirely X chromosomes.
Q2. I have been brainwashed since STD VII, when I remember myself a-la-Rishi Kapoor in मेरा नाम जोकर, listening attentively to my biology teacher and wondering how the spermatozoa from the scrotal sac in Chapter VI found its way into eggs produced by ovaries in Chapter VII, to produce either a male child or a female child in Chapter IX or maybe Chapter XII of the science book. Between battling my hormones, my desire to stand first in the class, I was blissfully unaware that the board exam of STD VII in the Gujarat Secondary Education Board had just been annulled. Coming to my question, though I now know the nitty-gritty of the process of how this happens, I am still mystified as to how I am responsible for an Ambujavalli and a Jayalaxmi instead of a Narasimhan and a Janakiraman? In other words, after seventeen years of post degree professional experience in bleeding edge technology, not to mention software, statistics and some latin and greek, why should I suffer the accusation of society that I, alone, am responsible for the birth of my daughters (the fact that they are not sons, or a son and a daughter as my STD VII science would have me believe) and not my wife? That all this is not a mere error of convention.
Q3. Is modern science and technology mature enough to produce me and my wife, by mutual consent, a son, without resorting to legal caveats, without probabilistic techniques, without cheating and saying, “अल्लाह की देन है भाई रख लो ”, after the event, so that my thirst for equality is satisfied, if not my ego? This has to be with surety, not the false bravado that parents today show when they explain to their children that father’s sperm is the sex discriminant!
A simple suggestion debated by two sexologists (one male, one female), the anchor (a lady) and a lady social activist. Interesting as the debate was, it takes me back to a topic on which I wanted to blog for a long time – How gender comes to be. Science about this topic that all of us should have read in or up to STD X, religious beliefs and lastly, why we maybe entirely swayed, probably wrongly, in some of our learned notions, constitutes this blog.
Men and women have procreated for many thousands of years and going by the current population at least a few billion times in the last hundred years. School science tells us that men produce X and Y type of chromosomes while women produce X and X type of chromosomes. If my memory serves me right, the human DNA was first modelled by Watson and Crick who suggested the double helix structure. Somewhere down the line in my school science I seem to have picked up the notion that chromosomes are a larger unit and DNA is the smaller component.
Having preambled thus, let me place a few questions –
Q1. What scientific tools did Watson and Crick (I use the names W and C representatively, for want of information and research ability. I am sure CNN-IBN has better resources) have in 1900-1940, that allowed them to confirm that the male spermatozoa has an unknown mix of X and Y chromosomes? In other words, how are X and Y individual chromosomes separated from one another or discriminated or distinguished actually? Is it possible with today’s technology to extract a vial full of only ‘X’ chromosomes, and a vial full of only ‘Y’ chromosomes from a combined solution of X and Y chromosomes as is available from a “potent” healthy male? I presume (logically and from the science I have been taught) that one vial of female eggs will yield entirely X chromosomes.
Q2. I have been brainwashed since STD VII, when I remember myself a-la-Rishi Kapoor in मेरा नाम जोकर, listening attentively to my biology teacher and wondering how the spermatozoa from the scrotal sac in Chapter VI found its way into eggs produced by ovaries in Chapter VII, to produce either a male child or a female child in Chapter IX or maybe Chapter XII of the science book. Between battling my hormones, my desire to stand first in the class, I was blissfully unaware that the board exam of STD VII in the Gujarat Secondary Education Board had just been annulled. Coming to my question, though I now know the nitty-gritty of the process of how this happens, I am still mystified as to how I am responsible for an Ambujavalli and a Jayalaxmi instead of a Narasimhan and a Janakiraman? In other words, after seventeen years of post degree professional experience in bleeding edge technology, not to mention software, statistics and some latin and greek, why should I suffer the accusation of society that I, alone, am responsible for the birth of my daughters (the fact that they are not sons, or a son and a daughter as my STD VII science would have me believe) and not my wife? That all this is not a mere error of convention.
Q3. Is modern science and technology mature enough to produce me and my wife, by mutual consent, a son, without resorting to legal caveats, without probabilistic techniques, without cheating and saying, “अल्लाह की देन है भाई रख लो ”, after the event, so that my thirst for equality is satisfied, if not my ego? This has to be with surety, not the false bravado that parents today show when they explain to their children that father’s sperm is the sex discriminant!
If the answer is to question 3 is, “Yes, this can be demonstrated and repeated consistently” , then I presume we are on our way to disentangle religion from science and economics and politics and everything else as we indeed do with panache in all our schools (including the Universities and the Academe). We can then attempt a reconciliation of the many mysteries of creation, for the first mystery would have been truly, correctly and reliably resolved. We can then anoint science and scientific evidence as the sole arbiter for dispensation of justice and I will volunteer for the crusade. Else, let us enjoy the material world, while it lasts, for who knows once gone, it may return no more!
Now, to come to some calm intellectual discussion (see my other blogs on how I discriminate between mind and intellect) -
1. We can always pour a host of sperms and eggs into a crucible & hope for a result. That is what nature does and what we did for centuries and that is exactly what we do in a lab to produce a test tube baby. Surrogation is little different. (Luckily, I was born before that first Indian test tube baby so if I were in the media business I could possibly hunt her down and ask her how she feels, but more importantly tell he that I feel no different)
2. We can clone, maybe? But, my clone will have X and Y chromosomes. Uma’s will have X and X chromosomes. And we will never know which of the following scenarios is true –
a. If it is my ‘X’ that chooses Uma’s ‘Y’
or
b. If it is Uma’s ‘X’ that chooses my ‘Y’
or
c. Is it one or many my ‘X’ that chooses one of the two (or many) Uma’s ‘X’
or
d. Is it one or many of Uma’s ‘X’ that chooses one or many of my ‘X’ or ‘Y’
Or, lastly but most importantly,
e. Do mine and Uma’s chromosomes select each other to maximise their chances of survival in the future by some Unknown Prescience.
1. We can always pour a host of sperms and eggs into a crucible & hope for a result. That is what nature does and what we did for centuries and that is exactly what we do in a lab to produce a test tube baby. Surrogation is little different. (Luckily, I was born before that first Indian test tube baby so if I were in the media business I could possibly hunt her down and ask her how she feels, but more importantly tell he that I feel no different)
2. We can clone, maybe? But, my clone will have X and Y chromosomes. Uma’s will have X and X chromosomes. And we will never know which of the following scenarios is true –
a. If it is my ‘X’ that chooses Uma’s ‘Y’
or
b. If it is Uma’s ‘X’ that chooses my ‘Y’
or
c. Is it one or many my ‘X’ that chooses one of the two (or many) Uma’s ‘X’
or
d. Is it one or many of Uma’s ‘X’ that chooses one or many of my ‘X’ or ‘Y’
Or, lastly but most importantly,
e. Do mine and Uma’s chromosomes select each other to maximise their chances of survival in the future by some Unknown Prescience.
The last scenario is the religious perspective which science seeks to validate. The rest of us enjoy the aftermath of the pleasures of unknown creator(s).
Sociologically, the above scenarios have been played out in the form of marriages. While arranged marriage represents the first four, love marriage represents the last. Some religious (should I say, quasi-religious) texts and anthropological data have shown prevalence of as many forms of marriage as there are spermatozoa / eggs in a single attempt at procreation. However, the question of success of the marriage remains mystical.
A discriminating married couple seeks the last option irrespective of what mode amongst the same five was allowed to them in the society of their times. Therein lies the key to the success of their marriage. This does call for debate, arguments, and even fights/abuses, but as long as the law of the land respects the last scenario, it has done its duty and progressed itself. Beyond this, law maybe attempting to play GOD!
A word for the anchor, in fact a couplet from Ghalib –
हमको मालूम है ज़न्नत की हकीकत लेकिन,
हमको मालूम है ज़न्नत की हकीकत लेकिन,
दिल के खुश रखने को सागरिका यह ख्याल अच्छा है.
Speculation-
The secret of gender is that the lesser ego asserts itself through recrimination after intercourse by manifesting. Rarely are the egos so equally matched so as to annul themselves and still Manifest and evcn more rarely, are they equally absent so as to be Unmanifest.
The secret of gender is that the lesser ego asserts itself through recrimination after intercourse by manifesting. Rarely are the egos so equally matched so as to annul themselves and still Manifest and evcn more rarely, are they equally absent so as to be Unmanifest.
Possibly, Sigmund Freud stumbled upon this secret, but the society of his time was as afraid of Truth as it always has been. His published works are legend of yore, I must confess I haven't read any.
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