Emma Hilton Profile picture
May 27, 2019 19 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Clownfish. Sequential hermaphrodites. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Anglerfish. Extreme dimorphism. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Seahorses. Female fucks around while male carries babies. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Birds. Non-XY genetic determination. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Crocodiles. Sex determined by environmental temperature during development. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Platypus. Five pairs of sex chromosomes. X1X1X2X2X3X3X4X4X5X5 (female) and X1Y1X2Y2.... (male), where X3 and X5 look more like a bird (non X) than a mammal. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Hyena. Females have pseudo-penis which she internalises during mating. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Lily. Hermaphrodites. How to recognise the female part: it makes large gametes.
Flatworms. Hermaphrodites. They penis fence to determine which takes the male role. Most of the time, no-one wins and they each, perhaps dejectedly, spaff (😉) over the other. How to recognise the female part: it makes large gametes.
Bees. Males are missing an entire genome copy. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Asparagus. No sense of sexed self and no plausible mechanism for social construction of gender. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Tuatara. Sex determination so extremely temperature sensitive that climate change is causing them to be all male. How to recognise the male: he makes small gametes. He can also be seen looking annoyed at enforced incel status.
I’m pinning this. Please add requests. Also, any examples you see touted as an argument against sex. What was the strawberry one?
Peafowl. Sexual selection gone mental. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes. And she’s not a massive freaking showoff, like this fella...
Mushrooms. Delicious. How to recognise the female: there are no females (‘there is only Zuul’). ‘Female’ and ‘male’ are predicated on two and only two differential gametes, and fungi don’t have them thingies, settling instead for equivalent gametes labelled +/-, or A/B, or yawn.
Fun fact (not really): the truly unique structure of the female hyena reproductive system, whereby she is sole arbiter of when to allow intercourse, suggests that female hyenas cannot be raped.
Straw-not technically a berry-berries. Delicious hermaphrodites. Genetic sex determination is polygenic and may reasonably be described as a (limited) spectrum. How to recognise the female part: it makes large gametes.
Head lice. Annoying buggers. The female transmits chromosomes she inherited from either her mum or dad; the male *only* transmits chromosomes he inherited from his mum. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.

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More from @FondOfBeetles

Nov 13
Why male advantage in sport is not a social construct: height.

Height is a key difference between males and females. What is nature v nurture? What does that mean for sport?Image
Bigger skeletons are most obviously driven by longer bone growth. Key bones like those in your thigh (“long bones”) grow from their end to get longer, making you taller. Image
The site of bone lengthening is called the “epiphyseal plate” or “growth plate”. Here, cells divide/enlarge, making new tissue that pushes the bone ends apart. This tissue calcifies and is replaced by bone, leading to lengthwise growth. Image
Read 21 tweets
Nov 11
Ok, my charity wears off.

Bekker’s presentation of the “Hilton and Lundberg” argument is nonsense.

At no point have either of us, or anyone else we work with, reduced male advantage to simply muscle mass/strength. @TLexercise @Scienceofsport Image
In the contrary, we have consistently argued that male advantage stems from many physical then functional outcomes of male development.

We spent hours (actually days 😂) creating this graphic, trying to highlight key areas of physicality that underpin male advantage.

HowTF is this reduced to “it’s all muscle”?Image
In our original paper, we had a table upfront, highlighting (in a less pleasing presentation) the same type of metrics. Image
Read 7 tweets
Nov 11
I’m going to put my charitable hat on, and try to elucidate - maybe even, as good practice, steelman - an opposition argument.

Specifically, this one: Image
Let’s set a concrete example: the 10 second barrier (100m sprint).

Wiki - allowing for small errors - tells me that around 200 male sprinters have broken it. We know, of course, that no female sprinter has been close (Flo Jo record 10.49s).
For the following, I’m going to ignore the premise that humans might be close to biomechanical limits over a 100m sprint. It’s just an illustration.

If we follow world record progressions, we see trends (not just in sprinting, the graph below is from a swimming event). Image
Read 18 tweets
Nov 4
As the latest on Olympic boxer Imane Khelif is reported, a diagnosis of 5ARD is almost certain. I and others first raised the likelihood of this DSD a few months ago.

Understanding how the developmental biology of DSDs interacts with sports categorisation is crucial.
I spoke about this with Andrew Gold during the competition:

And I recently gave a talk at a meeting, on DSDs, male advantage and sports categorisation. I will add some slides below.
Read 15 tweets
Nov 4
In August, we were invited by the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports @WileyGlobal to make an argument for screening for eligibility into the female category.

We proposed a cheek swab screen of DNA, performed before an athlete is thrust into the spotlight, with follow up care in the case of unexpected results.
@WileyGlobal This month, two responses to this editorial have been published side-by-side.

The first was an argument against our proposal:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
@WileyGlobal The second was our response to those arguments:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
Read 11 tweets
Oct 29
Ricin is extremely bad for people.

So bad, it’s a viable way to way to wipe out populations.

So bad, it’s regulated at the same level of weapon as sarin and mustard gas.

So bad, the ricin lab at my alma mater was more heavily-regulated than the HIV (live, infectious) lab.
Anyone found with some home stash of ricin has no defence.

It comes from castor beans (common enough). But you don’t accidentally grind them up and extract the toxin as a kitchen experiment.
Ricin is a toxin that targets ribosomes. These are the molecules that, in each cell, make proteins.

Proteins are how your cells do their jobs. Stopping proteins being made is very bad.
Read 7 tweets

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