X-celling Over Men
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: March 20, 2005

Men are always telling me not to generalize about them.

But a startling new study shows that science is backing me up here.

Research published last week in the journal Nature reveals that women are genetically more complex than scientists ever imagined, while men remain the simple creatures they appear.

"Alas," said one of the authors of the study, the Duke University genome expert Huntington Willard, "genetically speaking, if you've met one man, you've met them all. We are, I hate to say it, predictable. You can't say that about women. Men and women are farther apart than we ever knew. It's not Mars or Venus. It's Mars or Venus, Pluto, Jupiter and who knows what other planets."

Women are not only more different from men than we knew. Women are more different from each other than we knew - creatures of "infinite variety," as Shakespeare wrote.

"We poor men only have 45 chromosomes to do our work with because our 46th is the pathetic Y that has only a few genes which operate below the waist and above the knees," Dr. Willard observed. "In contrast, we now know that women have the full 46 chromosomes that they're getting work from and the 46th is a second X that is working at levels greater than we knew."

Dr. Willard and his co-author, Laura Carrel, a molecular biologist at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, think that their discovery may help explain why the behavior and traits of men and women are so different; they may be hard-wired in the brain, in addition to being hormonal or cultural.

So is Lawrence Summers right after all? "Only time will tell," Dr. Willard laughs.

The researchers learned that a whopping 15 percent - 200 to 300 - of the genes on the second X chromosome in women, thought to be submissive and inert, lolling about on an evolutionary Victorian fainting couch, are active, giving women a significant increase in gene expression over men.

As the Times science reporter Nicholas Wade, who is writing a book about human evolution and genetics, explained it to me: "Women are mosaics, one could even say chimeras, in the sense that they are made up of two different kinds of cell. Whereas men are pure and uncomplicated, being made of just a single kind of cell throughout."

This means men's generalizations about women are correct, too. Women are inscrutable, changeable, crafty, idiosyncratic, a different species.

"Women's chromosomes have more complexity, which men view as unpredictability," said David Page, a molecular biologist and expert on sex evolution at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.

Known as Mr. Y, Dr. P calls himself "the defender of the rotting Y chromosome." He's referring to studies showing that the Y chromosome has been shedding genes willy-nilly for millions of years and is now a fraction of the size of its partner, the X chromosome. "The Y married up," he notes. "The X married down."

Size matters, so some experts have suggested that in 10 million years or even much sooner - 100,000 years - men could disappear, taking Maxim magazine, March Madness and cold pizza in the morning with them.

Dr. Page drolly conjures up a picture of the Y chromosome as "a slovenly beast," sitting in his favorite armchair, surrounded by the litter of old fast food takeout boxes.

"The Y wants to maintain himself but doesn't know how," he said. "He's falling apart, like the guy who can't manage to get a doctor's appointment or can't clean up the house or apartment unless his wife does it.

"I prefer to think of the Y as persevering and noble, not as the Rodney Dangerfield of the human genome."

Dr. Page says the Y - a refuge throughout evolution for any gene that is good for males and/or bad for females - has become "a mirror, a metaphor, a blank slate on which you can write anything you want to think about males." It has inspired cartoon gene maps that show the belching gene, the inability-to-remember-birthdays-and-anniversaries gene, the fascination-with-spiders-and-reptiles gene, the selective-hearing-loss-"Huh" gene, the inability-to-express-affection-on-the-phone gene.

The discovery about women's superior gene expression may answer the age-old question about why men have trouble expressing themselves: because their genes do.

And let you women be right. Actually, I think that one proves my simplistic point

Lots of loaded language in the quotes and the article, e.g. women's "superior gene expression".  However, you could just as easily spin the scientific results to talk about how the "complexity" of women shows that their gene expression is hopelessly confused and therefore inferior.

And the results could be described in any number of other ways to "prove" the innate superiority of men.

The problem with women who think that women are superior to men is that their attitudes tend to make some men feel that it is OK to say that men are  superior to women.  

Neither attitude is accurate or helpful.

  How to Shower Like a Woman

Take off clothing and place it in sectioned laundry hamper according to lights and darks.

Walk to bathroom wearing long dressing gown. If you see husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas.

Look at your womanly physique in the mirror - make mental note to do more sit-ups/leg-lifts, etc.

Get in the shower. Use face cloth, arm cloth, leg cloth, long loofah, wide loofah and pumice stone. Wash your hair once with cucumber and sage shampoo with 43 added vitamins. Wash your hair again to make sure it's clean.

Condition your hair with grapefruit enhanced mint conditioner.  Wash your face with crushed apricot facial scrub for 10 minutes until red!

Wash entire rest of body with ginger nut and jaffa cake body wash. Rinse conditioner off hair. Shave armpits and legs.

Turn off shower. Squeegee off all wet surfaces in shower.

Spray mold spots with Tilex.

Get out of shower. Dry with towel the size of a small country.

Wrap hair in super absorbent towel. Check entire body for zits; tweeze hairs.

Return to bedroom wearing long dressing gown and towel on head. If you see husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas.


How To Shower Like a Man

Take off clothes while sitting on the edge of the bed and leave them in pile.

Walk naked to the bathroom. If you see wife along the way, shake wiener at her making the 'woo-woo' sound.

Look at your manly physique in the mirror. Admire the size of your wiener and scratch your ass!

Get in the shower. Wash your face. Wash your armpits.



Blow your nose in your hands and let the water rinse them off.

Fart and laugh at how loud it sounds in the shower.

Spend majority of time washing privates and surrounding area. Wash your butt, leaving those coarse butt hairs stuck on the soap.

Wash your hair. Make a Shampoo Mohawk. Pee.

Rinse off and get out of shower. Partially dry off.



Fail to notice water on floor because curtain was hanging out of tub the whole time.

Admire wiener size in mirror again. Leave shower curtain open, wet mat on floor, light and fan on.

Return to bedroom with towel around waist. If you pass wife, pull off towel, shake wiener at her and make the 'woo-woo' sound again.

Throw wet towel on bed.


If there is anyone among you who did not laugh at the truth behind this, there is something so very wrong with you

Before I gave up dairy, I liked cold pizza in the morning too!  And I still like Maxim!  (For the articles of course...)

I stopped reading this garbage once I saw that it was a study from Duke University.  Trust nothing that comes from that institution.  After too many bungled surgeries (where they don't even pay attention to the patient's blood type) and incredibly stupid and wasteful studies like this one, everyone should be wary of anything that comes from them.  Like I tell their fans, they should stick to the only thing they do well...making mayonnaise.

The notion that men would "disappear" is a bizarre interpretation.  That's not what the ramshackle Y-chromosome means.  

In some animals, there is *no* male gene.  Lack of a Y chromosome in the future will not mean males will disappear.    

I don't doubt the other conclusions-- women are endlessly interesting and surprising.  The strange operation, and the variety of expression for the Y-chromosome is fascinating.  

That the man's chromosome would be a such a disorganized mess is a hilarious biological joke.

Extremely stupid and wasteful? The discovery that many genes are not shut down is very important.  

What you can't stand is some of the humor made around it.  My mojo isn't threatened by the fact that fewer genetic instructions were used to develop me.  If yours is, just remind ourself that you're still stronger.

It also may be good to remind yourself of the forgotten fact previously reported: that the male brain has 30 percent more neurons.  You might use the extra ones to lighten up.