All right, I have to ask, where on earth did SEX and GENDER come from?

Question

I mean, come on, with males and females, everything "fits". What's the evolutionary explanation for that?

Answer 1

Interesting question AC, and in line with your questioning of evolution (which is good), I hope you apply the same critical way of thinking to your faith.

First off, there are many ways to reproduce beyond your basic male/female way. That the male/female sex thing seems so prevalent is because it was a successful strategy of early mammals. It worked, which is why we see it so often, and why everything 'fits'. Also, and this is pure conjecture, but in our human reproduction cycle we combine the DNA from two parents to form a hybrid child. Introducing more factors (three or more parents) would complicate the process and less factors (one self-replicating parent) would make us something else than mammals.

Then there is asexual reproduction; bacteria divide asexually via binary fission; viruses take control of host cells to produce more viruses. Arguably the most successful forms of life as the world is literally crawling with them.

There are even differences in ways to sexually reproduce, if you are interested, start out with this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproduction

Answer 2

Claim CB350:
Sex is too complex for its origin to be explained by evolution. Males and females would have to evolve independently, and any incompatibility in any of the physical, chemical, or behavioral components would have caused extinction. Furthermore, evolutionary theory predicts that asexual reproduction would be favored because asexual species can reproduce faster.
Source:
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, pp. 14-15.
Response:

1. The variety of life cycles is very great. It is not simply a matter of being sexual or asexual. There are many intermediate stages. A gradual origin, with each step favored by natural selection, is possible (Kondrashov 1997). The earliest steps involve single-celled organisms exchanging genetic information; they need not be distinct sexes. Males and females most emphatically would not evolve independently. Sex, by definition, depends on both male and female acting together. As sex evolved, there would have been some incompatibilities causing sterility (just as there are today), but these would affect individuals, not whole populations, and the genes that cause such incompatibility would rapidly be selected against.

2. Many hypotheses have been proposed for the evolutionary advantage of sex (Barton and Charlesworth 1998). There is good experimental support for some of these, including resistance to deleterious mutation load (Davies et al. 1999) and more rapid adaptation in a rapidly changing environment, especially to acquire resistance to parasites (Sá Martins 2000).

References:

1. Barton, N. H. and B. Charlesworth, 1998. Why sex and recombination? Science 281: 1986-1990.
2. Davies, E. K., A. D. Peters and P. D. Keightley, 1999. High frequency of cryptic deleterious mutations in Caenorhabditis elegans. Science 285: 1748-1751.
3. Kondrashov, Alexey S., 1997. Evolutionary genetics of life cycles. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 28: 391-435.
4. Sá Martins, J. S., 2000. Simulated coevolution in a mutating ecology. Physical Review E 61(3): R2212-R2215.

Further Reading:
Judson, Olivia, 2002. Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation, New York: Metropolitan Books.

Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan, 1990. Origins of sex: three billion years of genetic recombination, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Wuethrich, Bernice, 1998. Why sex? Putting theory to the test. Science 281: 1980-1982. See also several related articles in the same issue.

Answer 3

I find this an interesting question.

In fact, Evolution is the big winner here. as long as being just reproduce by dividing in two (think amoebas, and primitive beings), there is very little biological change (aka evolution) possible, because each being is the exact copy of the previous one. Like cloning: change occurs in these cases because of the occurrences in the being life (education, accidents, etc).

On the other hand, a sexed type of reproduction mixes the genetics of two beings - each time it spins the roulette!! the outcome will be stronger, weaker, smarter, taller, smaller... and little by little, the stronger and more apt to survive will also emphasize their qualities and reproduce more. Note that mammals - but also most multicellulars forms of life - benefits from a sexed reproduction... including some that can manage to change sex naturally (kommodo lizards... and others) if the community is lacking males/females.... a way to perpetuate no matter what. Survival and evolution are the key.

So in fact, sex is THE big invention of evolution: without it, we would still be amoebas. Not a condition I personally fancy much.

Answer 4

It fits, because if it didn't - those people would not get to get kids. That's precisely evolutionary theory for you: only those procreate, that 'fit'.

Answer 5

Hiya A.C. Well everything does fit perfectly! God made girls from sugar and spice and all things nice! He then made boys from slugs and snails and puppie dogs tails! You see slugs and sugar go great together as do spicey snails!

Answer 6

Sometimes everything doesn't fit. Have you heard of John Holmes or Ron Jeremy???

Answer 7

Sex evolved in early multicellular animals as a defence against parasites.

Gender is a grammatical term referring to nouns and adjectives.

Answer 8

Sex was invented by a prurient God.

Answer 9

huh? like word orgin?

Answer 10

true that, i cant explain the evolutionry side of it