Lady Looks Like a Dude

So I try not to get political on my blog. Politics really gets me worked up--just ask Annie. But there's an issue that I've felt strongly about for a long time, and the evidence is finally starting to conform to my beliefs. And, really, who doesn't want to gloat a little bit when they're proven correct?

There was an article linked on the Drudge Report today about athletes bound for the Olympics failing gender tests. You can read the article here. The article says that there are certain requirements that the athletes have to meet. I'm not going to go into much detail--you can read the article if you want--but the really interesting one is that men can compete as women if it has been more than 2 years since they had a "gender-reassignment" surgery.

The people caught in the middle are those with "chromosomal abnormalities": people who are born with too many chromosomes or manifest as one gender when they have the chromosomes of the other (i.e. a man with two X chromosomes). There may not be another sentence ever created that used the word "chromosome" that much.

I'm not really talking about people with chromosomal abnormalities. I feel bad for them and all, being freaks of nature and all that, but that's not where I'm headed.

When I read the article about the olympic athletes failing gender tests it reminded me of another article I read earlier in the week. It was about the effects of soy.

That's right: Soy. How long have I hated soy and called it the product of the devil? How many times did I try to talk people out of buying soy beans when I worked at Costco? How many lives have to be ruined by this evil ... is it a plant? I don't even know.

It turns out that soy is the cause of all the world's problems, and I'm not exaggerating. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little. The main issue is this: soy contains isoflavones and estrogen. I'm not going to bore you with numbers (this is probably boring enough) but I'll include links to a couple articles at the end of the post.

The increased estrogen isn't bad in small amounts, but in larger amounts it has some serious health consequences for both men and women. In women it's been linked to breast cancer (ever wonder why breast cancer rates have increased so dramatically the last 50 years?) In men there are new studies out linking it to decreased sperm counts and other fertility problems.

Most trouble of all, however, is soy-based baby formula. The one article I read said that babies who drink soy formula are getting the estrogen equivalent of 5 birth control pills.

What's the problem with estrogen in children, you ask? Estrogen inhibits the production of Testosterone (what makes men men). Without the proper balance of estrogen and testosterone the baby grows up genderally confused (yes, that's a word... maybe). As they grow up they have no gender identity (especially if they keep being fed soy products).

So, to summarize soy's evil influence on the world (and add a few things that I forgot to mention before):

• It causes breast cancer and other health problems in women (too much estrogen's just not good. Some articles suggest that it makes women more moody, and none of us need that).
• It makes men less able to procreate (I'm not sure I mind that soy-eaters aren't able to reproduce).
• It turns men into sissies. Really, it does. How many big, macho (that word is so 80's) vegans do you know? Guys are losing their manliness and turning into wimps which explains all the "guns hurt people" people out there.
• It allows vegetable-arians to get protein from a plant source rather than a meat source. The existence of soy enables people to be vegetarians (and the eating of soy makes them more likely to want to be vegetarians).
• It turns people in homersexuals. I'm sure there's more research that needs to be done here (and it will all be blocked by the rainbow coalition) but it sure makes sense that soy is having a profound impact in the production of homersexuals and other genderally ambivalent individuals.

Well, that's probably enough for now. Like I said, I hate to get political, but it seems that my long-held fears about soy are starting to be proven correct.

Read the article here.

And one more article here.