Y are men necessary?

Two new books on genetics explore how the Y-chromosome divides males from females -- and ask whether male humans are headed for the biological dustbin.

By Gavin McNett

Jun 5, 2003 | You walk into the bookstore and there's a book on display called "Dust: A Universal History." It's really interesting. It follows the history of dust from the big bang to the rise of human civilization in the dusty regions of the Middle East to the invention of commercial dusting sprays and chemical-impregnated dust cloths. And then a chapter, "Dust to Dust," describing the slow work of wind and water, and (finally) of entropy itself, returning all that's solid in the universe into dusty particulate matter. And there you have it all, pretty much. Dust -- who knew?

Then you're in the bookstore and there's this other book on display called "Bagels: The Story of Human Civilization." And it's really interesting. It starts with the cultivation of the sesame seed (circa 4000 B.C.), skimming cursorily over the oft-told tale of wheat farming. You learn of the codification of kosher dietary laws, and of the early trade routes of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), from whose pods come the edible poppy seed. The recurring clashes between lactose-tolerant and lactose-intolerant peoples. The toroid: According to some scientists, the shape of the bagel is the shape of the very universe itself. The very universe. Well, gosh. Bagels -- who knew?

Then, some time later, you walk in and there's a book on display called, "Lint: A Head-Exploding Typhoon of Unlikely Connections, Showing How the Entire Universe Is Made of Nothing but Lint (Including You)." And clearly this trend is getting out of hand. You turn to the last chapter to see what sort of scientists might be saying that the universe is made out of...? Oh, string theory.

I'm just making all this up, of course. But ever since Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel," there's been a small avalanche of books like these; they start with tiny little monads of topics, and wind up trying to account for vast swaths of human or natural history (or both). Some are great, like Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book and Mark Kurlansky's "Salt: A World History." Barbara Freese's book, "Coal," is really good. Other times, you get books like Steve Jones' "Y: The Descent of Men."

Jones is a sharp writer, a British geneticist with a measured style and a dry wit. He's also known for a certain boldness: His last jaunt was "Darwin's Ghost," a chapter-by-chapter revisiting of Darwin's "Origin of Species" that sought to bring the classic text to a wider readership, while updating it with everything that biologists have learned in the meantime. "Y: The Descent of Men" (the title is a riff on Darwin's later work, "The Descent of Man"), is a treatise on the Y-chromosome, the microscopic squiggle of DNA that divides maleness from femaleness, and on how it has affected the course of all life on the planet, including all of humanity (including you). Which it certainly has -- there's no doubt of that. And the Y-chromosome's workings on the cellular level are explained in lucid detail in David Bainbridge's very pleasurable and absorbing new book on the X-chromosome, "The X of Sex" (about which more anon).

Jones' conclusions are, however, somewhat far-reaching. The book says that because the Y-chromosome is really small and contains only a bit of genetic information, compared to the voluptuous female X-chromosome, all males are useless and inferior and destined for the dustbin of history.

Now, let's just allow that to hang in the air for a moment. Jones is staring at his computer monitor now with his jaw adrop, screaming how that's not fair and there's an awful lot more to it than that. And indeed there is. But "Y: The Descent of Men" is being touted as something of a companion volume to Natalie Angier's "Woman: An Intimate Geography." And when Jones says "males," he means not only the abstract principle of biological maleness, but male bodies and male humans. Like Jones and me, for instance, and possibly you as well. Certainly someone you know. We're talking about going from a microscopic scrap of proteins to a biological refutation of slightly less than half the human race.

He's screaming again. We'll settle Jones' objections later.

The book does that fairly boldly, tending to use terms like "the Y chromosome," "sperm," "maleness" and "males" as though they were interchangeable, and giving human motives to cells and reproductive chemicals (and vice versa). Wherever you find that chromosome in nature, it suggests, you find a stadium full of Promise Keepers baying sea chanteys with their dicks out, a Texas barroom full of drunken NASCAR fans with their hands all over the waitresses, a firehose of testosterone and a rain of beef jerky. For instance, in Chapter 1, "Nature's Sole Mistake," Jones is writing about the fact that the Y-chromosome doesn't alter its genetic code from generation to generation: "Males evolved to stop females from degenerating into clones, but in their own intimate selves have suffered the same fate." From the same chapter, a few lines down: "Males are, in many ways, parasites upon their partners ... Like all vermin, from viruses to tapeworms, they force their reluctant landladies to adapt or to be overwhelmed."

Next Page: Look, Jones, weren't you writing a book about science, before your editor got her claws into the project? Hmm?

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