From: eeb1@quads.uchicago.edu (e elizabeth bartley)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Haploid humans rant
Date: 14 Dec 92 02:37:55 GMT
Reply-To: eeb1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

Disclaimer: anyone who takes this article entirely seriously has
obviously already had a lobotomy, as has anyone who doesn't even think
about the questions it raises.

In article <1992Dec11.162310.1683@ncsu.edu>
jjprice@eos.ncsu.edu (JEFFREY JAMES PRICE) writes:

>Susan....While a sperm and egg are part of a human...they have to
>unite in order for a human life to be created...You don't think that
>a piece of your hair is human or a skin cell is human..all of these
>are part of you but when an egg and sperm unite them form a human..

Again and again and *again* on talk.abortion I see such instances of
diploid bigotry.  Sperm, eggs, and polar bodies are not "part of a
human"; each of them is a human in and of itself.  They are not only
mindless but even brainless humans, but they are humans.  More
precisely, they are haploid humans.

Haploid humans is a term underused in conventional biology,
undoubtedly because of the unconscious influence of diploid bigotry;
we recognize the haploid members of some other species (notably
insects) but because we see so much more to being human than having
human DNA, we fail to recognize the helpless haploid members of our
own species.

Read carefully as I explain the OneTrueHumanBiology, and ponder well
your definition of the term "human".

Jim Purdon has pointed out on t.a. in the past (thank you for
converting me to the Cult of the Gametes, Jim!) that the human species
alterates between generations of diploid and haploid organisms.  A
diploid male or female has haploid offspring by asexual reproduction.
We call the haploid offspring of female diploid humans "eggs" and
"polar bodies" and the haploid offspring of male diploid humans
"sperm".  English does not possess the proper gender terms to use for
haploid humans (yet another display of diploid humans' prejudice
against haploid humans!); in this post, I use the term "female-neuter"
for eggs and polar bodies, "male-male" for sperm with a Y chromosome,
and "male-female" for sperm with an X chromosome.

Regrettably, haploid humans have a very short life expectancy.  Eggs
can only survive for about a day, polar bodies usually survive less
than that before being eaten by the eggs, and sperm of both genders
can only survive for five or six days at most.  Also regrettably,
haploid humans (like both haploid and diploid members of many species
-- salmon, mayflies, etc.) die immediately after reproduction.  This
reproduction is sexual reproduction between a female-neuter egg and a
sperm of either gender (polar bodies are uniformly infertile).  If the
sperm is male-male, the result is a male diploid human; if
male-female, the result is a female diploid human.  In either case, we
refer to the diploid human as a "zygote".

The development of diploid humans is reasonably well known on
talk.abortion; if the diploid human survives long enough the "zygote"
becomes an "embryo" and then a "fetus" and is removed from its female
diploid human grandmother.  After this event, termed "birth", the
diploid human must still wait several years (anywhere from nine to
eighteen, depending on the individual and whether the haploid human is
male or female) before sexual maturity, when he or she then begins
producing haploid human offspring.

So the readers of talk.abortion can now see why this brutal
discrimination against haploid humans MUST end.  Remember, boys and
girls, sperm, eggs, and polar bodies are people too.

--
"A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes."   - Robert A. Heinlein
-- 
E. Elizabeth Bartley

Pro: Sandman, Cerebus, old New Mutants, Claremont, Gaimon, Moore, Nexus
Anti: Louise Simonson, constant resurrections, X-Factor, Marvel
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,alt.abortion.inequity,soc.men