# Mushrooms have over 30,000 sexes



## Simpson17866 (Dec 3, 2014)

How we evolved into male and female | The Seattle Times

According to scientists, the very first organisms to dare engage in sex were more like Adam and Steve than Adam and Eve.

That’s because sex was invented before heterosexuality — before males or females, for that matter. The first sexual beings to emerge perhaps 2.5 billion years ago were what biologists call isogamous — which is a little like being gay, except everyone is somewhere between male and female.

Many organisms, including some fungi, algae and single-celled pond-swimmers, still practice isogamy. In doing so, they offer clues to the mystery of why and how the sexes ever evolved.

To understand life before the advent of males and females, you need a universal definition of each: Males produce a smaller sex cell (sperm or pollen) than their female counterparts.

Isogamous algae, on the other hand, still have sex but instead of mixing sperm and eggs they mingle sex cells of roughly the same size — generically known as gametes.

What scientists find puzzling is that most of them still use a system of two sexes — in their case plus and minus rather than male and female. Though plus and minus create the equal-sized sex cells, plus mates only with minus and minus with plus.

Such pickiness is an enormous paradox, says Laurence Hurst, a biologist at the University of Bath in England. Without sexes, you wouldn’t have to limit your choice of a mate to half the population. Anyone would be fair game.

Some organisms do expand their sexual options by having many sexes — 100 for some pond-swimming protozoans. Mushrooms use 30,000 and can mate with any but their own.

Oddly, however, most sexual beings have just two sexes — the loneliest number when it comes to finding a mate. Why restrict our options?

One leading theory goes back to the bizarre nature of certain machinery we all carry around in our cells — little engines known as mitochondria that help convert food to energy.

It’s become clear in recent years that mitochondria are no mere built-in features but a sort of friendly parasitic bacteria living with us in a symbiotic relationship. They propagate as your cells divide and, in animals, pass from mothers to offspring through eggs.

And while they seem to be working for us, they have no binding contract to continue to do so. Because they carry their own DNA, they can mutate, the scientists say, so you could in theory get a new strain of mitochondria that’s very good at replicating, but not very good for you.

These new unfriendly mitochondria could start to spread through the human population at our expense.

One way to prevent such a spread is to avoid mixing mitochondria when you have sex.

That’s not a big problem for us, since males simply shed most of their mitochondria when they make sperm. That way you only get them from your mother.

But if you’re isogamous, you’re exchanging same-sized gametes instead of sperm and eggs. So to keep mitochondria in check many organisms kill the ones from their mates.

“It’s a little like using a condom,” says Hurst. Killers only mate with non-killers and you end up with two mating types.

For some, that situation set the stage for that great seismic shift when living things began to emerge as male and female, thus ushering in everything from the Age of Chivalry to divorce court. But that’s another story.​


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## Dante Scioli (Sep 3, 2012)

Simpson17866 said:


> a universal definition of each: Males produce a smaller sex cell (sperm or pollen) than their female counterparts.


Oppression detected.


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## Simpson17866 (Dec 3, 2014)

Dante Scioli said:


> Oppression detected.


 How so?


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## ae1905 (Jun 7, 2014)

imagine the problem mushrooms must have with public washrooms...30,000!...you'd wet yourself before you found the right room...maybe that's why they're called mushrooms?


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## Dante Scioli (Sep 3, 2012)

Simpson17866 said:


> How so?


Sigh.



Simpson17866 said:


> Males produce a smaller sex cell (*sperm* or pollen) than their female counterparts.





Simpson17866 said:


> Males produce *sperm*


Hence if you produce sperm, you are male. It doesn't matter what you identify as. Hence oppressive patriarchy-science.


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## StrangeHours (Nov 3, 2016)

Wow! 30,000??? That must result in quite a titillating sex life... :shocked:


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Not sure the point of this thread.... What if we found species in nature who raped or killed its young, or subjugated their females, would you make a thread on that?


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## piano (May 21, 2015)

has facebook been notified yet?


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## Larch (Oct 14, 2015)

I really enjoyed ready the article - it's cool biology! I remember in university learning about how mitochondria were originally symbionts, and it was nice seeing it mentioned in a popular, non-technical article, above. 

Looking at biology, it's amply clear that sex is actually very fluid even in many vertebrates, for example there are some lizards who reproduce without males (parthenogenesis), and there is more that one way these lizards accomplish this.



Wikipedia said:


> *Lizards*
> 
> There are at least eight parthenogenetic species of Caucasian rock lizard in the genus _Lacerta_.[SUP][4][/SUP][SUP][5][/SUP] This genus is unique in containing the only known monoclonal parthenogenetic species, _Lacerta rostombekovi,_ where the entire species originates from a single hybridization event. In all other cases of unisexual reptilian species that have been examined, multiple separate asexual lineages are present.[SUP][1][/SUP] As true parthenotes, Lacerta do not require stimulation from sperm to reproduce.
> The best-known and perhaps most evolutionarily derived example of parthenogenesis in reptiles occurs within the Teiid genus of whiptail lizards known as _Cnemidophorus_. This genus contains at least 13 truly parthenogenetic species, which originate from hybridization events between sexual _Cnemidophorus_ species.[SUP][6][/SUP]Parthenogenetic whiptails are unusual in that they engage in female-female courtship to induce ovulation, with one non-ovulating female engaging in courting behavior normally seen in males while the ovulating female assumes the typical female role. While sex hormone levels in parthenogenetic _Cnemidophorus uniparens_ mimic the cycles seen in their sexual relatives, their nervous systems appear to have evolved unique responses to female sex hormones. Male-like behavior in _C. uniparens_ is correlated with high progesterone levels.[SUP][6][/SUP] This female-female pseudocopulation has also been found to enhance fecundity. A triploidparthenogenetic species in the genus _Aspidoscelis_, formerly part of _Cnemidophorus_, has been fertilized with sperm from a sexual species in the same genus to produce a new tetraploid parthenogenetic species in laboratory experiments. Such experiments provide evidence that even truly parthenogenetic species are still capable of incorporating new genetic material and may therefore be capable of evolution.[SUP][7][/SUP]
> ...




Also, many species of fish change sex in one or both directions throughout their lives, including anemone fish, where the largest individual in a group is female (but it was male when it was younger). 



Wikipedia said:


> In a group of anemonefish, there is a strict dominance hierarchy. The largest and most aggressive female is found at the top. Only two anemonefish, a male and a female, in a group reproduce through external fertilization. Anemonefish are sequential hermaphrodites, meaning that they develop into males first, and when they mature, they become females. If the female anemonefish is removed from the group, such as by death, one of the largest and most dominant males will become a female. The remaining males will move up a rank in the hierarchy.



These guys are almost certainly a pair, but if the large female dies, the smaller male will probably become a female and the largest juvenile will become a male.















FearAndTrembling said:


> What if we found species in nature who raped or killed its young, or subjugated their females, would you make a thread on that?


That exists in non-humans, too. :dry:

The Dark Secrets That Dolphins Don't Want You to Know


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## Denature (Nov 6, 2015)

It's almost as if life on Earth is diverse and different species of organisms are much different than us (_**** Sapiens_) when it comes to reproduction. Who knew?


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## Necrofantasia (Feb 26, 2014)

ae1905 said:


> imagine the problem mushrooms must have with public washrooms...30,000!...you'd wet yourself before you found the right room...maybe that's why they're called mushrooms?


Pizza will never look the same way anymore...

And I was totally okay with the fact mushrooms are essentially fungal gonads.


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## yet another intj (Feb 10, 2013)




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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

Dante Scioli said:


> Oppression detected.





Simpson17866 said:


> How so?






> Mushrooms use 30,000 and *can mate with any but their own*


30'000 genders and homophobia still exists.


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## bigstupidgrin (Sep 26, 2014)

I only acknowledge 15,650 of those genders. Don't crush my free speech please XD.


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## Amy (Jan 15, 2015)

Guys your trollings are funny, but I don't get them. The point of this thread is to show how gender/sex is not something black and white as we usually think. Why are you talking about oppression?


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## ae1905 (Jun 7, 2014)

Nell said:


> Pizza will never look the same way anymore...



or taste :bored:

you know where ewwmami comes from now :shocked:

aren't you glad there's still sweet, sour, salty, and--intps' favorite--bitter? :wink:


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## BlackDog (Jan 6, 2012)

Santa Klara said:


> Guys your trollings are funny, but I don't get them. The point of this thread is to show how gender/sex is not something black and white as we usually think. Why are you talking about oppression?


The trolling occurs in the context of this forum, where transgender/non-binary topics are common and hotly debated. Although the apparent implication of the article is that sex is not black and white, it seems to shoot itself in the foot by demonstrating that in humans, well, yeah it kinda is. Hence the joke(s) that the article is oppressive due to its reinforcement of binary sex/gender.


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## niss (Apr 25, 2010)

Pluses or minuses, killers or non-killers, male or female. The paradox seems to be of our own manufacturing.


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

Santa Klara said:


> Guys your trollings are funny, but I don't get them. The point of this thread is to show how gender/sex is not something black and white as we usually think. Why are you talking about oppression?





BlackDog said:


> The trolling occurs in the context of this forum, where transgender/non-binary topics are common and hotly debated. Although the apparent implication of the article is that sex is not black and white, it seems to shoot itself in the foot by demonstrating that in humans, well, yeah it kinda is. Hence the joke(s) that the article is oppressive due to its reinforcement of binary sex/gender.


I do hope nobody ever tries to use mushrooms as evidence for gender diversity in humans.

If so, I'll tell them that male seahorses give birth then ask them to go lay an egg for me.


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## sinaasappel (Jul 22, 2015)

HAL said:


> I do hope nobody ever tries to use mushrooms as evidence for gender diversity in humans.
> 
> If so, I'll tell them that male seahorses give birth then ask them to go lay an egg for me.


Can I use this as my signature please?!


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## HAL (May 10, 2014)

GIA Diamonds said:


> Can I use this as my signature please?!


Heh, feel free.


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## Amy (Jan 15, 2015)

BlackDog said:


> The trolling occurs in the context of this forum, where transgender/non-binary topics are common and hotly debated. Although the apparent implication of the article is that sex is not black and white, it seems to shoot itself in the foot by demonstrating that in humans, well, yeah it kinda is. Hence the joke(s) that the article is oppressive due to its reinforcement of binary sex/gender.


Btw... what is oppression? This word doesn't make sense to me anymore. My brain is hurt


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## TechFreak (Sep 15, 2016)

ae1905 said:


> imagine the problem mushrooms must have with public washrooms...30,000!...you'd wet yourself before you found the right room...maybe that's why they're called mushrooms?


:rolling: LOL!


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## Amy (Jan 15, 2015)

niss said:


> Pluses or minuses, killers or non-killers, male or female. The paradox seems to be of our own manufacturing.


What do you mean?


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## Amy (Jan 15, 2015)

I just had to say that: all of this trollings will not have any effect because you guys are trolling the wrong person. Simpson is just a guy who believes that LGBT people should have equal rights like heterosexual people concerning to marriage. He is not part of LGBT people, just a person who defends their causes. The right people you should talk to is the people who say "I am a male/female but I identify as a female/male, therefore I am female/male. This thread is the wrong place do to that, tho some parts of the article are debatable :wink:


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## Simpson17866 (Dec 3, 2014)

Santa Klara said:


> The right people you should talk to is the people who say "I am a male/female but I identify as a female/male, therefore I am female/male.


 Are you aware that transgender is a biological reality, not a personal desire to play make-believe?


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## niss (Apr 25, 2010)

Simpson17866 said:


> Are you aware that transgender is a biological reality, not a personal desire to play make-believe?


I think you are framing the discussion to suit your narrative.


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## niss (Apr 25, 2010)

Santa Klara said:


> What do you mean?


The article highlights the lengths to which we will go to discover evidence that supports our thoughts on a matter.


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## Amy (Jan 15, 2015)

Simpson17866 said:


> Are you aware that transgender is a biological reality, not a personal desire to play make-believe?


I'm not saying they are playing, they are just confused.


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## Amy (Jan 15, 2015)

niss said:


> The article highlights the lengths to which we will go to discover evidence that supports our thoughts on a matter.


Sorry, I still can't understand


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## Simpson17866 (Dec 3, 2014)

Santa Klara said:


> I'm not saying they are playing, they are just confused.


 Have you informed the scientific community of your discovery? If you have evidence which contradicts the vast body of medical research saying that transgender is real, then I would think it would be your scientific obligation to share your evidence.


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## Wiz (Apr 8, 2014)

Well I'll be damned! If this isn't conclusive universal evidence enough to implement on humans, I don't know what is!!


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## HGy (Jul 3, 2016)

Simpson17866 said:


> Are you aware that transgender is a biological reality, not a personal desire to play make-believe?


That is a completely inaccurate statement. Gender Dysphoria is actually classified as a mental health disorder.


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## Sava Saevus (Feb 14, 2015)

HGy said:


> That is a completely inaccurate statement. Gender Dysphoria is actually classified as a mental health disorder.


I would not get into it with him. You'll be dealing with insanity as nothing logical will work to dissuade him.


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## HGy (Jul 3, 2016)

Saint Savage said:


> I would not get into it with him. You'll be dealing with insanity as nothing logical will work to dissuade him.


Youre right.


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## Simpson17866 (Dec 3, 2014)

HGy said:


> That is a completely inaccurate statement. Gender Dysphoria is actually classified as a mental health disorder.


 So was homosexuality is the DSM 3.

If you have scientific research that shows transgender is a mental illness, would you be interested in sharing your discovery with the scientific community? All of the research so far has shown that it isn't, rather that gender dysphoria is a _symptom_ of a mismatch that should be relieved with surgical and hormonal treatment.


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## starvingautist (Mar 23, 2015)

So many people are treating this as political, rather than scientific, material.. the article doesn't have a political tone, it proposes no agenda, and doesn't "shoot itself in the foot". This is all your preconception. It's a shame, because it's an interesting topic.

Just one thing though. Sex is not equivalent to gender. Human SEX is, to a large degree, binary. Human gender? It's like saying there are two possible personalities and that people of the same sex must have the same personality. Gender is the set of "expected" roles of a person of a particular sex - this varies from person to person and society to society.. it's not at all surprising that people might identify with the "opposite" or with neither - simply due to the fact that there are at least 16 personality types.

I wonder how it is that our relationship with mitochondria started. And 30, 000 sexes?? Fucking hell. I wonder what the advantages of that are. Come to think of it, sex won't actually be binary for much longer - same-sex parents can potentially have children together. [http://time.com/3748019/same-sex-couples-biological-children/]. Interesting.


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## Statecraft Demystifier (Dec 12, 2016)

Wiz said:


> Well I'll be damned! If this isn't conclusive universal evidence enough to implement on humans, I don't know what is!!


This made me laugh way too hard.


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## Statecraft Demystifier (Dec 12, 2016)

I will keep my opinion on this subject to a minimum (as there is not much to it).

The human frontal lobes are powerful; capable of madness through thought alone.


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## Kajada (Nov 19, 2016)

@Simpson17866 Well, actually, no. There are studies and research that confirm both that transgender is a mental illness and that it is some kind of physical or chemical abnormality at some point during development in the womb. You may only be interested in research that confirms your personal bias but that doesn't mean it's the only legitimate research available. And no, I will not provide you with links, if you're curious you can look it up yourself. Throwing that in there before you ask.

@starvingautist It sounds like what you're saying about gender vs sex (do correct me if I'm misinterpreting) is that sex is real, gender is not. Gender is basically a stereotype assigned to each actual sex but doesn't actually exist. Which means that when someone identifies themselves as non-gender conformative (or makes up their own gender pronouns or lack thereof) they're pretty much just being themselves and applying a made-up label to themselves in order to feel better about being non-conforming.

There's nothing wrong with not conforming to the expectations of one's sex. That's just called being oneself. But we are all still our sex biologically speaking unless we have a very rare genetic mutation such as intersex and the line is blurred a bit. That cannot be changed by science. At least not yet. I can't help but think that all of this obsession with properly identifying someone's gender vs their sex is reaching far too much for outside validation or confirmation, especially as it pertains to the demand for laws, forms, ID cards, bathrooms and the language used by society to arbitrarily and forcefully be changed to suit a very select few people, A majority of them being currently college or high school age millennials. One's self-proclaimed gender identity can change over time as one works or struggles to understand one's place in the world, preferences, sexual orientation and the way one wants to present oneself to the world. Why label oneself with some made up gender pronoun instead of just embracing who one is as a person? And why should the rest of society have to cater to such insecurities and uncertainties? 

Human beings are not mushrooms. Even if we come up with 30,000 gender identities it doesn't mean they're real.


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## Statecraft Demystifier (Dec 12, 2016)

Kajada said:


> @Simpson17866 Well, actually, no. There are studies and research that confirm both that transgender is a mental illness and that it is some kind of physical or chemical abnormality at some point during development in the womb. You may only be interested in research that confirms your personal bias but that doesn't mean it's the only legitimate research available. And no, I will not provide you with links, if you're curious you can look it up yourself. Throwing that in there before you ask.
> 
> @starvingautist It sounds like what you're saying about gender vs sex (do correct me if I'm misinterpreting) is that sex is real, gender is not. Gender is basically a stereotype assigned to each actual sex but doesn't actually exist. Which means that when someone identifies themselves as non-gender conformative (or makes up their own gender pronouns or lack thereof) they're pretty much just being themselves and applying a made-up label to themselves in order to feel better about being non-conforming.
> 
> ...


^^ respect point gained.

Let me elaborate on your points though for further understanding to those still engaged in the topic: ... oh that's right there's nothing else to add.


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## SolonsWarning (Jan 2, 2017)

Simpson17866 said:


> Have you informed the scientific community of your discovery? If you have evidence which contradicts the vast body of medical research saying that transgender is real, then I would think it would be your scientific obligation to share your evidence.


Do you mean to imply that mental illnesses are not real? Of course transgenderism is a real medical condition with real symptoms just like bipolar disorder or social anxiety. There is plenty of scientific evidence showing how the brains of people afflicted with this illness respond differently than normal brains. What do you even mean to question here?



Statecraft Demystifier said:


> Let me elaborate on your points though for further understanding to those still engaged in the topic: ... oh that's right there's nothing else to add.


I also second the notion that the quote in question is near perfect in its accuracy.


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## Simpson17866 (Dec 3, 2014)

SolonsWarning said:


> *Do you mean to imply that mental illnesses are not real?*


 Huh :confused2:



> Of course transgenderism is a real medical condition with real symptoms just like bipolar disorder or social anxiety. There is plenty of scientific evidence showing how the brains of people afflicted with this illness respond differently than normal brains. What do you even mean to question here?


 There's also plenty of scientific evidence that many healthy brains work differently from many other healthy brains.


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## SolonsWarning (Jan 2, 2017)

Simpson17866 said:


> Huh :confused2:
> 
> There's also plenty of scientific evidence that many healthy brains work differently from many other healthy brains.


I think you may misunderstand what constitutes a mental illness. There is no such thing as an objective brain. In fact even our senses are not perceived objectively. What we perceive as reality is at least two steps away from objective reality and therefore we all fall victim to an entire host of irrationalities. We might for instance fall victim to things such as depression, anxiety, body dimorphia, etc. These are normal for all people. What defines the mental illnesses of these names is not that a person experiences such issues ever, but that they experience them far more often than average. What you might refer to as, "healthy" would better be described as average, or a median point on a normal curve. What would be described as, "mentally ill" then is simply a matter of statistics. It is the regions perhaps 2+ standard deviations away from normal. In documents such as the DSM it is often described as the regions in which a logical flaw becomes so pronounced that it negatively affects our daily lives. In the case of transgenderism it very clearly falls into this definition because it affects a person's ability to have functioning romantic relationships due to the difficulty in reconciling their body and mind along with the sexuality of others. I believe you are falling victim to political ideology here and ignoring the science and I believe that is a very dangerous thing to do. We should allow facts to shape our ideology. When we go the other way and allow our ideology to shape which facts we choose to accept and ignore we become agents of irrationality and chaos and this can lead to some very bad things.


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## niss (Apr 25, 2010)

@Kajada and @SolonsWarning - 

Your posts in this thread have helped me understand the issue with much more clarity. Thank you for sharing your knowledge on this topic.


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## pwlife (Jan 4, 2017)

What, you're such a mushroomist! 

No really, great research. I don't even know why evolution brought it so far.


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## crazitaco (Apr 9, 2010)

Yes, but do they have 30,000 pronouns yet?
Those mushrooms need to get on our fucking level.


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## IDontThinkSo (Aug 24, 2011)

Thanks for bumping this thread ; now I understand better why the people who identify as queer have the intellect of a mushroom.


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