Conception

Brace yourself: it’s time for The Talk. Today on learnalittle, clear up those misconceptions about conception.

Natural conception (or fertilization) requires sexual intercourse between a male and female. Healthy men typically release around 300 million sperm into the vagina during ejaculation.  Sperm are the male gamete (reproductive cell) and have pinched, oval-shaped heads. A sperm swims using a flagellum tail that continuously whips back and forth. Despite this ideal structure, about 60% of sperm are imperfect even in the healthiest men. Many have multiple tails, are unable to move, or are otherwise defective. These sperm never escape the vagina, destroyed by its acidic 4.5 pH within hours. Their more successful siblings head toward the cervix.

Gender, Sex, and Sexual Orientation

Pansexual, third gendered, intersex – there’s a lot of terminology out there to describe how people identify themselves. To make things a little less cloudy, today’s post explores the terms surrounding gender, sex, and sexual orientation.

Biological sex is determined by an individual’s chromosomes and genitals. The vast majority of men have an XY chromosome pair, while women have XX. However, there are intersex individuals, whose chromosomes and/or genitals don’t develop in the expected way. Chromosomally, a person may be XXY, XXX, XX male, XY female, or several other variations. Physiologically, persons with chromosomal syndromes and non-chromosomal developmental differences might express few (if any) overt symptoms, have slightly feminized or masculinized features, or be sterile with ambiguous genitals.