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Bakker: The Great Ordeal SPOILER THREAD pt. II


kuenjato

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Sorry, themerchant - I didn't realize you were so touchy about things. I'll make sure to amend my thinking about you in the future.

We guessed at the axolotl tanks but it was a thematic guess. I don't think anyone expected literal deformities. Why would we? It's stupid. 

There is room for disagreement, but there's little room for shitty "it's just a fantasy, relax" dismissal. If it didn't bother you, awesome. Why comment about things that don't bother you with dismissals of arguments? 

I'm sure I have biases galore. One is that when you put realistic elements in your fantasy they stay realistic. Put it another way - if whale mothers exist just by wanting it, why don't we have impossibly beautiful women and incredibly buff men everywhere?

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21 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

Sorry, themerchant - I didn't realize you were so touchy about things. I'll make sure to amend my thinking about you in the future.

We guessed at the axolotl tanks but it was a thematic guess. I don't think anyone expected literal deformities. Why would we? It's stupid. 

There is room for disagreement, but there's little room for shitty "it's just a fantasy, relax" dismissal. If it didn't bother you, awesome. Why comment about things that don't bother you with dismissals of arguments? 

I'm sure I have biases galore. One is that when you put realistic elements in your fantasy they stay realistic. Put it another way - if whale mothers exist just by wanting it, why don't we have impossibly beautiful women and incredibly buff men everywhere?

It's more incredulity that someone who has written thousands of posts and hundreds of thousands of words on the "evils" of Bakker would accuse someone of having a bias towards him. Like when John Kerry said to Putin to keep out of other countries internal affairs. Brass Neck is the expression over here, I'm surprised and amused at the brass neck you have, not touchy about it. 

So you don't like "literal deformities" cause they are "stupid" and the other argument ( "it's just a fantasy, relax") is "shitty".Which isn't my argument anyway.

Am i meant to respond to these "points"? The argument you present is a straw-man you won't be able to quote me making it as it only exists in your mind.

Everything in the book exists at the "want" of the author, so if you don't have buff men and beautiful woman,  it shouldn't be too hard to guess why? The author didn't want it. I have no idea what value you think that point has.

Do you think the whale mothers on top of all the previous trauma the books have caused you will stop you spending time and effort to be one of the first people in the whole world to read the book? With regards to TUC? What place were you for the great ordeal? 10th person to read it in the world, three in front of Likaro i heard? lol :)

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2 minutes ago, themerchant said:

So you don't like "literal deformities" cause they are "stupid" and the other argument ( "it's just a fantasy, relax") is "shitty".Which isn't my argument anyway.

Sorry - were you actually making any arguments? I thought you were just doing a random drive by dismissal. What arguments were you making, actually? 

Literal deformities are a very stupid idea from a rational perspective when the males do not have any actual deformities and phenotypically look almost precisely like they did 2000 years ago, to the point where they are identifiable as likely descendents of someone who lived 2000 years ago. It goes against the most basic of thoughts about parenting and animal husbandry. 

2 minutes ago, themerchant said:

Am i meant to respond to these "points"? The argument you present is a straw-man you won't be able to quote me making it as it only exists in your mind.

Everything in the book exists at the "want" of the author, so if you don't have buff men and beautiful woman,  it shouldn't be too hard to guess why? The author didn't want it. I have no idea what value you think that point has.

Okay, I'll explain it a bit more to you then.

The excuse that Bakker gave for the whale mothers was twofold. One was that it was a fantasy, so you shouldn't sweat the details and don't worry about things like consistency. That's not a very satisfying answer, especially if you think that other parts of the book are there for deep meaning and whatnot. The other excuse was that it's an intentional world, and as a result things happen the way people want them to happen. The premise here is that the whale mothers occurred because the Dunyain really wanted them that way, and science, genetics, or any plausible breeding systems are immaterial. Sort of a willful Lamarckian evolution, but only towards one sex. 

If the excuse is that you can make progeny into the shape and behavior that you desire by simply really wanting it, why aren't all progeny similarly affected? Every culture has some concept of what ideal looks and sizes are like and certainly it's reasonable to think that all humans are going to want their kids to be ideal in some way. Why wouldn't you have this happen other places than Ishual? 

 

 

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Why did Bakker bring Cnaiur back? He's a great character in PoN but his arc is resolved. It makes sense that the Consult would make use of him, but what's the narrative point of him? He spent the whole trilogy raging against himself, the world, and Moenghus before getting an excellent resolution. Is he going to spend the next books raging against himself, the world, and Kellhus?

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Just now, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

Sorry - were you actually making any arguments? I thought you were just doing a random drive by dismissal. What arguments were you making, actually? 

Literal deformities are a very stupid idea from a rational perspective when the males do not have any actual deformities and phenotypically look almost precisely like they did 2000 years ago, to the point where they are identifiable as likely descendents of someone who lived 2000 years ago. It goes against the most basic of thoughts about parenting and animal husbandry. 

Okay, I'll explain it a bit more to you then.

The excuse that Bakker gave for the whale mothers was twofold. One was that it was a fantasy, so you shouldn't sweat the details and don't worry about things like consistency. That's not a very satisfying answer, especially if you think that other parts of the book are there for deep meaning and whatnot. The other excuse was that it's an intentional world, and as a result things happen the way people want them to happen. The premise here is that the whale mothers occurred because the Dunyain really wanted them that way, and science, genetics, or any plausible breeding systems are immaterial. Sort of a willful Lamarckian evolution, but only towards one sex. 

If the excuse is that you can make progeny into the shape and behavior that you desire by simply really wanting it, why aren't all progeny similarly affected? Every culture has some concept of what ideal looks and sizes are like and certainly it's reasonable to think that all humans are going to want their kids to be ideal in some way. Why wouldn't you have this happen other places than Ishual? 

 

 

No I was quoting your "arguments", a drive by dismissal? Like saying  "It's really, really hard for you to even consider the notion that Bakker got something wrong, isn't it?"

Rather than making up our own interpretation of what Bakker said i will quote him. First we have the one you categorise as "it was fantasy, shouldn't sweat the details", but appears to be why pick that particular "natural impossibility" over others, as opposed to "don't sweat it's fantasy"

" I get the idea of big picture credibility arguments, but these kind of disputes in fantasy fiction often strike me as opportunistic. You could argue the natural impossibility of any number of things in ALL fantastic narratives, so the question has to be why this one thing? If people buy skin-spies, why do they draw the line at whale-mothers? "

The 2nd one which you categorise as " it's an intentional world ". Not sure how these two jive? Perhaps you can quote his words instead of using your own?

" The Dunyain possess an artificially selected genetic mutation that only cues whale-mother dimorphism in the presence of estrogen in certain concentrations. After all, gender dimorphism is a characteristic of all species possessing gender (mammals included), in many cases far more radically than suggested here. " This the ad hoc rationalisation.

I haven't read this "intentional world theory excuse", can you quote it?

I fully accept it may be my ignorance of genetics that means i'm just not getting the dissonance on this subject, Bakker doesn't seem to think it is impossible from a biological standpoint. We also have no real world comparison for Non-men genes. What effect that would have I have no idea.

 

 

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21 minutes ago, PapushiSun said:

Why did Bakker bring Cnaiur back? He's a great character in PoN but his arc is resolved. It makes sense that the Consult would make use of him, but what's the narrative point of him? He spent the whole trilogy raging against himself, the world, and Moenghus before getting an excellent resolution. Is he going to spend the next books raging against himself, the world, and Kellhus?

Judging by how team Yatwer jobbed, so Kellhus can look extra cool when he kills him.

I am admittedly being childish over the resolution to that subplot. It's just frustrating to spend years speculating about the WLW and Psatma only for them to end like that. I know not every part of the books can have a grand slam of a finale, but bleh.

On a more serious note, he might betray the Consult and join Proyas if he takes Akka's words to heart. He was none too thrilled about the Serwe skin-spy hiding Ishual's fate.

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10 minutes ago, PapushiSun said:

Why did Bakker bring Cnaiur back? He's a great character in PoN but his arc is resolved. It makes sense that the Consult would make use of him, but what's the narrative point of him? He spent the whole trilogy raging against himself, the world, and Moenghus before getting an excellent resolution. Is he going to spend the next books raging against himself, the world, and Kellhus?

Probably be just the one book.

 

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17 minutes ago, R'hllors Red Lobster said:

So, about that 'discussing the people instead of the books'...

If we're talking about beautiful children, let's get back to shipping Cnaiur and Proyas... I mean c'mon :wub:

See how hard it is not to do it ;)

I think Proyas and Cnaiur producing children together might be another cause for complaint.

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10 minutes ago, themerchant said:

Rather than making up our own interpretation of what Bakker said i will quote him. First we have the one you categorise as "it was fantasy, shouldn't sweat the details", but appears to be why pick that particular "natural impossibility" over others, as opposed to "don't sweat it's fantasy"

" I get the idea of big picture credibility arguments, but these kind of disputes in fantasy fiction often strike me as opportunistic. You could argue the natural impossibility of any number of things in ALL fantastic narratives, so the question has to be why this one thing? If people buy skin-spies, why do they draw the line at whale-mothers? "

That's not the quote I am referring to. The quote I'm referring to comes from here later down the page:

Quote

 

But why should anyone on earth care about this outside of hard SF? The easiest counterargument to make is an imperative: Relax! Try to enjoy a narrative that goes far greater lengths to be believeable than most any other epic fantasy out there. All this is interesting in its own right, but as a criticism it simply misses the point… the whole genre, you could say.

Either way, the assumptions simply do not hold. I’m sure in a purely causal universe very little about the Dunyain is ‘scientifically creditable.’ But as it turns out, intentionality objectively exists in the World. Wanting something to happen actually influences outcomes.

So in this we have both parts - the intentionality existing and wanting something to happen influencing outcomes and the 'Relax!' part. 

So you tell me - what part was I 'making up' here? 

An aside: the reason I draw the line at whale mothers is that the Inchoroi are already spacefaring aliens who have shown significant manipulation of genetics and organic materials over and over again, and that's their schtick. Them having tech I don't understand is quite reasonable. The Dunyain have acorn paste, steel weapons (though apparently no mines) and play tiddlywinks to determine who breeds. It is much more difficult to suspend disbelief, especially when the only way they have to modify their offspring is through natural breeding methods. 

Another aside: you quoted from that spot - why not read further and see the part I was talking about? Why assume I'm making things up when you could just read on?

10 minutes ago, themerchant said:

" The Dunyain possess an artificially selected genetic mutation that only cues whale-mother dimorphism in the presence of estrogen in certain concentrations. After all, gender dimorphism is a characteristic of all species possessing gender (mammals included), in many cases far more radically than suggested here. "

This, by the way, is an incredibly ignorant argument, as Jurble later destroys. While sexual dimorphism does exist in species it does not exist in any mammalian species to the degree that it does here, nor does it keep one phenotype precisely the same while heavily modifying the other. Also, as has been pointed out, they lucked out on some bizarre sport mutation that just happened to be in their tiny community? That's possible, but insanely implausible. Multi-x or wiping out any non-sport creatures is far more plausible.

And that doesn't get into the other part that is silly, which is the importance of healthy mothers for prenatal and natal care, which includes things like exercise, sunlight, etc. The axolotl tanks get away from that because they're not trying to make new babies, they're trying to make clones - and they've also got like 40,000 years of tech. The Dunyain have acorn paste.

10 minutes ago, themerchant said:

I fully accept it may be my ignorance of genetics that m eans i'm just not getting the dissonance on this subject, Bakker doesn't seem to think it is impossible from a biological standpoint. We also have no real world comparison for Non-men genes. What effect that would have I have no idea.

Now, the nonmen part is interesting. We don't know for sure that there are nonmen genetics in the Anasurimbor - it's possible, but it's not been confirmed. Furthermore, we don't actually know what the nonmen women looked like. Perhaps they also looked like whale mothers and were hugely dimorphic. That would be a fairly snazzy explanation, honestly. Then the breeding was quick - they got a kid from the Anasurimbor, it turned out to be a whale mom, and they saw how effective it was at breeding. Killed all the others and just bred from that one. 

Except, of course, that Bakker's response kills that dead.  

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14 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

I think you should maybe familiarize yourself with, um, Kalbear and Bakker's past interactions on these forums before you start making accusations.

What, like the one time where Bakker threatened to ban Kalbear from his blog for heaping abuse / making personal attacks on a poster there? Or are you just going to reiterate how awful RSB was for having a sock-puppet like 8 years ago?

This back-and-forth shit is so tiresome. I really like it with Kal goes deep with the ideas. And some of his crits of TGO are certainly legitimate from certain POV, though I dig the book a lot. All the prima donna drama is boring as fuck, though, and it consumes way, way, way too much space on these threads. 

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19 minutes ago, themerchant said:

See how hard it is not to do it ;)

I think Proyas and Cnaiur producing children together might be another cause for complaint.

Why? If you can have whale mothers, you can have ass babies and mpreg. Especially if they both want it enough. 

And this is the problem with saying things like 'relax' here - because when you start ripping out basic ways of how the world works without reasonable explanation, pretty much anything else goes too. 

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2 minutes ago, kuenjato said:

What, like the one time where Bakker threatened to ban Kalbear from his blog for heaping abuse / making personal attacks on a poster there? Or are you just going to reiterate how awful RSB was for having a sock-puppet like 8 years ago?

I still think it's incredibly weird what happened there, and that poster is still one of the only ones I keep permanently on ignore.

2 minutes ago, kuenjato said:

This back-and-forth shit is so tiresome. I really like it with Kal goes deep with the ideas. And some of his crits of TGO are certainly legitimate from certain POV, though I dig the book a lot. All the prima donna drama is boring as fuck, though, and it consumes way, way, way too much space on these threads. 

I'm sorry. Honestly, I shouldn't have gone there. I get really, really tired reading the threads over there and having people attack me and then play like I'm ignorant of what they're saying or that I should play nice, but solo was right; I shouldn't have gone that route at all. 

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Eh, I'm actually unaware of what you're talking about regarding the blog thing, although I can sympathize when you know you shouldn't go there but you do anyway. :P Also, when an author comes on a forum unde an alias to talk about hiw super smart he is and how we don't understand his genius, yes, I'm going to fucking bring that up eight years later.

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23 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

That's not the quote I am referring to. The quote I'm referring to comes from here later down the page:

So in this we have both parts - the intentionality existing and wanting something to happen influencing outcomes and the 'Relax!' part. 

So you tell me - what part was I 'making up' here? 

An aside: the reason I draw the line at whale mothers is that the Inchoroi are already spacefaring aliens who have shown significant manipulation of genetics and organic materials over and over again, and that's their schtick. Them having tech I don't understand is quite reasonable. The Dunyain have acorn paste, steel weapons (though apparently no mines) and play tiddlywinks to determine who breeds. It is much more difficult to suspend disbelief, especially when the only way they have to modify their offspring is through natural breeding methods. 

Another aside: you quoted from that spot - why not read further and see the part I was talking about? Why assume I'm making things up when you could just read on?

This, by the way, is an incredibly ignorant argument, as Jurble later destroys. While sexual dimorphism does exist in species it does not exist in any mammalian species to the degree that it does here, nor does it keep one phenotype precisely the same while heavily modifying the other. Also, as has been pointed out, they lucked out on some bizarre sport mutation that just happened to be in their tiny community? That's possible, but insanely implausible. Multi-x or wiping out any non-sport creatures is far more plausible.

And that doesn't get into the other part that is silly, which is the importance of healthy mothers for prenatal and natal care, which includes things like exercise, sunlight, etc. The axolotl tanks get away from that because they're not trying to make new babies, they're trying to make clones - and they've also got like 40,000 years of tech. The Dunyain have acorn paste.

Now, the nonmen part is interesting. We don't know for sure that there are nonmen genetics in the Anasurimbor - it's possible, but it's not been confirmed. Furthermore, we don't actually know what the nonmen women looked like. Perhaps they also looked like whale mothers and were hugely dimorphic. That would be a fairly snazzy explanation, honestly. Then the breeding was quick - they got a kid from the Anasurimbor, it turned out to be a whale mom, and they saw how effective it was at breeding. Killed all the others and just bred from that one. 

Except, of course, that Bakker's response kills that dead.  

I said making up "our" own " Rather than making up our own interpretation of what Bakker said i will quote him. " i.e. writing out what Bakker said without actually writing out what he said (quotes). It's easier to use quotes. See how easy it is to misinterpret something? You ended up writing and asking questions that have no relevance cause you misunderstood what i was writing. This way we have a a static reference to what Bakker said.

I only read the blog piece once, I had no idea these other things had been said.

Yes and any linguist would be able to destroy the semantic purity argument for casting spells, the same way a geneticist like Jurble can "destroy" the breeding argument. The question is what raises one complaint above the other? After all Jurble can find a way through for this to be possible, no linguist would say the same for semantics and casting spells.

" In fact, the easiest way I could think of this sort of complex, crazy sexual dimorphism to happen in a short time frame would be something like the Dunyain possessing a reduplicated->fused X-chromosome (X_x), alongside a functional X chromosome – giving them something resembling 3 sex chromosomes. Because of the chimeric nature of how the X-chromosome is silenced in a given cell, this allows for viability in females alongside the increased doping effects of desirable reproductive traits. "

The problem is a function of time, not a function of biological impossibility.

"Really, the primary issue I have with it is the sheer difficulty selection would have in producing a whale-mother/normal Dunyain dichotomy in the required time period".

So the main problem is the 2000 year timeline not the biological problems. low probability of mutations in a universe in which the White luck exists means very little.

" It’s not impossible but whale-mother/Dunyain male differentiation would require the sort of regulatory cascade pathway that’s very difficult for human artificial selection to produce – humans have a relatively low mutation rate compared to, say, dogs and so putting all the pieces together would be tremendously difficult. "

So seems it is possible just not in 2000 years. Which is a better chance than i originally thought.

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54 minutes ago, Dickwad Poster #3784 said:

Why? If you can have whale mothers, you can have ass babies and mpreg. Especially if they both want it enough. 

And this is the problem with saying things like 'relax' here - because when you start ripping out basic ways of how the world works without reasonable explanation, pretty much anything else goes too. 

Not really as Jurble says he can see the Whale Mothers happening under certain conditions (specifically more time cause of the time needed for unlikely mutations to occur). I doubt he would say the same about Proyas and Cnaiur. Maybe he would, I don't know.

" Really, the primary issue I have with it is the sheer difficulty selection would have in producing a whale-mother/normal Dunyain dichotomy in the required time period. A regulatory cascade is the easiest explanation, but requires immense amount of time to properly evolve because it’s reliant on some hail Mary mutations. "

 

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8 minutes ago, themerchant said:

I said making up "our" own " Rather than making up our own interpretation of what Bakker said i will quote him. " i.e. writing out what Bakker said without actually writing out what he said (quotes). It's easier to use quotes. See how easy it is to misinterpret something? You ended up writing and asking questions that have no relevance cause you misunderstood what i was writing. This way we have a a static reference to what Bakker said.

I only read the blog piece once, I had no idea these other things had been said.

So...you chided me for making up an interpretation, which I didn't, and then didn't bother looking up more data. Got it. 

8 minutes ago, themerchant said:

Yes and any linguist would be able to destroy the semantic purity argument for casting spells, the same way a geneticist like Jurble can "destroy" the breeding argument. The question is what raises one complaint above the other? After all Jurble can find a way through for this to be possible, no linguist would say the same for semantics and casting spells.

They actually would say it was fine, if the basis point of 'more pure meaning allows you to cast spells' existed in the world. Linguistically Bakker is on fairly solid ground, especially with his use of dead languages to ensure no drift of meaning based on connotation or evolving feeling along with using multiple sentences to clarify and fix meaning. 

The issue is that Bakker sets up, point blank, a world where meaning creates sorcery with certain rules and ideas. His system is pretty internally consistent too, down to the way that destruction of meaning (Aporos) wipes out magic. He spends a lot of time doing that. A lot of work and thought and showing us stuff and having a bunch of speeches.

The Whale mothers had like 2 paragraphs in the 6th book of the series.

Now, it's certainly possible that genetics don't work like they do on our world, but it's really unlikely. We haven't seen giant cows or chicken nuggets or absurdly beautiful people left and right. And none of it has been pointed out in the books, either, in any way. There aren't weird creatures - we have cows and chickens and fish and a cat, and barring any other cues we as readers are expected to say 'oh, that's a cat' and not think particularly deeply about it. This is a central tenet of fantasy (and one @lokisnowpointed out was well-manipulated before with the gods walking among people) - that if something isn't explained as different than our standard point of view in a fantasy, it isn't different. 

8 minutes ago, themerchant said:

" In fact, the easiest way I could think of this sort of complex, crazy sexual dimorphism to happen in a short time frame would be something like the Dunyain possessing a reduplicated->fused X-chromosome (X_x), alongside a functional X chromosome – giving them something resembling 3 sex chromosomes. Because of the chimeric nature of how the X-chromosome is silenced in a given cell, this allows for viability in females alongside the increased doping effects of desirable reproductive traits. "

The problem is a function of time, not a function of biological impossibility.

"Really, the primary issue I have with it is the sheer difficulty selection would have in producing a whale-mother/normal Dunyain dichotomy in the required time period".

So the main problem is the 2000 year timeline not the biological problems. low probability of mutations in a universe in which the White luck exists means very little.

No, it's really not just that. The timeline is problematic, but there are a lot of other problems that Jurble has talked about since. Notably, selection based on certain characteristics would simply stop doing anything different after a few generations. You only get the genes you have to start with in Ishual, and unless you're bringing in other stock you won't get any big differences. A really good example of this in the real world is how long it took for Russians to make domesticated foxes - it took about 10 generations to either murder or sterilize anything that didn't love them (great Daniel Abraham quote there) and after that they didn't revert back if they kept breeding. But they didn't get more loving after more breeding. 

And it's not just a mutation - it's a mutation that only occurs on the women, but occurs for all women. It's a gene that is only active on a double x (so a recessive gene or set of genes) that also happens to do nothing particularly problematic to males. The latter part is the real problem - human genes are pretty complicated things and there are almost none that do nothing in one sex and do something in the other. They do different things, but not nothing. Furthermore, the x has more information, not less, so you'd expect if anything deformities on the XY pair. 

And then there's all the implausibility of the concept itself - of making the women suffer and losing half of their possible talent pool as well as losing countless children to prenatal and natal issues because of the lack of bonding or input. 

8 minutes ago, themerchant said:

" It’s not impossible but whale-mother/Dunyain male differentiation would require the sort of regulatory cascade pathway that’s very difficult for human artificial selection to produce – humans have a relatively low mutation rate compared to, say, dogs and so putting all the pieces together would be tremendously difficult. "

So seems it is possible just not in 2000 years. Which is a better chance than i originally thought.

It's possible like a 1 in 29 quadrillion chance, over 2000 years. It's really implausible though, especially with the low level of tech that the Dunyain have. 

Quote

Not really as Jurble says he can see the Whale Mothers happening under certain conditions (specifically more time cause of the time needed for unlikely mutations to occur). I doubt he would say the same about Proyas and Cnaiur. Maybe he would, I don't know.

Having the mutation for males to give birth successfully isn't as implausible as you might think. Mostly because you don't need a mutation - you just need gender surgery. We already have the actual tech to change sexes. Just assume that the same ability to produce whale mothers changed Proyas from a woman to a man near birth, and boom - he's a transgendered man with a uterus. Don't even need to factor genetics in at all. Or if you want Cnaiur to be the one with the baby, it can be him instead. 

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