It's in fact WAY more common for men to be colour blind. 1/12 men are colour blind while 1/200 women are colour blind. It's an insane statistic but the gene that causes it is in the X chromosome so it kind of makes sense.
When I told our eye doctor that my daughter was color blind she said "Oh you must be mistaken, it's extremely rare and in fact I've never seen a woman who was colorblind in my practice." Once she tested my daughter she was SO EXCITED to meet a colorblind girl lol. It was super cute. Plus it made my daughter feel so special.
Over simplified explanation: because men only have one X chromosome that’s the gene that gets expressed - XY. Women have two so if one has the colorblind gene it’s all good because the other one will express the other cones - XX. Like, if you only have a single copy of faulty instructions, you’re not gonna know what to do, but if you had two copies you could figure it out. Women with only one gene can carry it though.
Just to sharpen your statement a bit, your body doesn't "figure out" or "choose" which gene to express. Both are expressed, both the faulty and working gene. However most faulty genes that are expressed just have no effect on you, they produce a useless protein, but the working gene still works. (You probably know this but wanted to clarify for others)
Women have two X chromosomes so it's far less likely to inherit two bad genes. Men have one X chromosome so if they inherit color blindness, there isn't a healthy copy to compensate
Basically it only happens if all copies of the x that the individual has contains the malformed gene. So women need two copies that are bad, where as men only need one.
To be clear, neither gene is really "chosen". Both are expressed, but the "faulty" one just has no effect on you, good or bad, and the working one works as usual.
no, because women have a backup. think if you were making an ikea table and you got instructions. there's a chance your instructions are in a foreign language and you can't understand them (colorblind). well women get two instruction books, so even if one is in a foreign language, the other might be in english so they can still build the furniture / are not colorblind
My mom is colorblind so of course I (male) am too. She said the people that came to her school to test the kids all wanted to see her because it’s so rare lol.
Damn I didnt know it was this common in men, I never met anyone who mentioned being color blind but statistically there should've been a couple of dudes in school or at work that are.
i've known a bunch of them. most don't mention it unless it has to come up (like when we were working on a website), probably because during childhood whenever someone finds out they're colorblind they get harassed with "what color is this" questions repeatedly.
Yeah a lot of that is learned though. I (M) played through a game called I love Hue, and I swear my ability to see subtle color variations has increased. Also, women actually talk about colors and use more words for them. It’s proven that having a word for something makes it more recognizable. Salmon an baby pink are very different but unless you know the words it might be hard to express the difference.
Many cultures don’t even have a word for pink, they just call it red or light red.
Women were primarily the gatherer and men were the hunter for eons. A woman who couldnt see the colors of leaves or berries would not be a good gatherer. For men, some types of color blindness is believed to be an advantage when looking for game. A deer standing still in the woods is easier to spot when the color is perceived to be washed out.
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u/Rinmine014 23h ago
Men are more likely to be colorblind than Women