Talk:Sex selection
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[edit] Natural Animal Sex Selection
Is there no article on animal sex selection? Specifically, many species of animals have unequal numbers of male and female progeny. For example, many species of bees produce significantly more females, or species of primates with male dispersal which have high-ranking females give birth to females and low-ranking females give birth to males. In the primates case, I don't think there is any biological understanding of how this process works, although it has been documented and understood from an evolutionary point of view. I came on to see if I could find an answer. let me know if you have one.
Also, shouldn't there be another page for this topic? If there isn't anything out there (which I couldn't find) I'll make one. Terry 05:00, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Is animal sex selection even practiced outside of zoos or shelters for endangered species? It doesn't strike me as something worthy of more then a footnote. -pstanton
[edit] merge suggestions
My vote is to keep sex selection separate from eugenics, but to merge into it the articles on gendercide and sex-selective abortion and infanticide, which describe controversial sex selective methods. Eugenics, to my (admittedly naive) thinking, connotes using genetic methods, while sex selection may involve less sophisticated or even after-the-fact techniques. Ojcit 18:55, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Eugenics was a movement from late 19th through mid-20th century that advocated eliminating "inferior" human specimens. In North America, that meant sterilyzing mentally incompetent persons. It lost, by association, whatever appeal it had when Nazism arose and pursued the elimination (i.e. murder) of "inferior races", Jews in the first instance, but also Gypsies.
Sex selection in China, India, and other parts of the world (most notably in Asia) has a different history and a different motivation and therefore probably deserves its own terminology. Some feminists might disagree with me on this distinction. Andrew
