word nerge
I read this interview with Maurice Sendak in Newsweek and found it absolutely hysterical. When he talks about the source for the monsters of Where the Wild Things Are — his relatives from the old country — I recalled my own experiences being poked and prodded by relatives under the guise of affection. Those old cousins *were* a little scary. And I suppose my own urges to pinch and squeeze others affectionately is the last remnant of the dead culture of the shtetl. The next generation of American Jews have lost all the strangeness of the ancestors.
A while back I read this very disturbing book, Passing by Nella Larsen. One of the most talented writers of the Harlem Renaissance, and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t familiar with her name. They makes me feel like a terrible ignoramus. Much like Zora Neale Hurston, she was railroaded out of the literary world and, in Larsons case, this very talented writer ended working as a nurse for most of her life.
Larsen had a white mother, but as you know that is of no consequence in this country because of the one-drop rule. The story takes place when everything was segregated according to race BY LAW, and the people who were mixed race — but looked white and were considered black — had hard choices in their lives.
Today there’s another form of passing — that is, racists trying to pass themselves as non-racists. They fool no one, and their cynicism is sickening.
When we watched Obama’s health care speech, it was clear to K and I that the disrespect towards Obama is completely racially motivated. It’s so obvious that these White Men can’t deal with the Black Man being their boss, that they don’t think he deserves to be his boss (because he is Black), so they can treat him any way they wish. Which is to say, rudely and condescendingly.
Today, Jimmy Carter said the same thing — the disrespect is clearly racism. And how did the racists respond? With loud protests to the contrary.
“There is not a racist bone in my dad’s body,” he said.
Yeah, is that so? Well, fuck you, racist son of a racist.
Indeed, according to this incredibly well-researched study, most Americans are racist against African-Americans whether they admit it or not:
Discrimination against blacks linked to dehumanization, study finds
The study, “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences,” shows how American subconsicously view African-Americans as subhuman, which leads to their being treated as such.
Now, how can a former segregationist and lover of the Confederate Flag, who yells, “You lie!” at the President, say there’s no racism in that? Man, I don’t know how these assholes sleep at night. I guess they have no soul left to bother them.
For all you folks out there wondering what’s the next nerdy book you should have on your book list, I recommend You Are Here. In a mere 274 pages (in my hardbound edition, at least), you will come to know everything from the far reaches of space to the smallest charmed particle in quantum physics.
Unlike other books I’ve ready about physics and the universe, this book is NOT written by a scientist. That’s right, Potter is an ordinary citizen like you and me except that he is a British fellow and who lives half time in London and half time in New York City — which doesn’t sound much like my friends or me. But he is a layperson, albeit a particularly nerdy one given the science covered in his book, and we do like very nerdy nerds.
Some books on similar topics by scientists really are commonly either too difficult or too dry. If you’ve attempted to read Einstein’s explanation of the Special Theory of Relativity or Stephen Hawkin’s The Universe in a Nutshell you know of what I speak. One exception to this would be Alexander Vilenkin’s Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes., which I believe is significantly helped along by Vilenkin’s propensity to illustrate sophisticated concepts with his cute cartoons. He’s a funny guy. Hawkin’s book has hecka illustrations, all beautiful full-color graphics, but they never seemed to help me as much as one of Vilenkin’s silly cartoons (for an example, see pg. 11, “A chunk of gravitationally repulsive material).
Although there are no illustrations in You Are Here, cute or otherwise, Potter clearly leads us through not only the history of the universe but the history of histories of the universe. I found out many tasty nerges so I must say one to you right now. Did you know there was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher names Democritus , who thought up the idea of atoms? I’ve never heard of the guy, and the idea of atoms were lost for centuries after his demise. Yeah, you here all about Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, but here’s a guy who actually came up with something relevant to actual science, and you never learn about him in school.
So, back to the universe, specifically the Big Bang. There are a couple of brilliant methods Potter employs to explain things. One is to break things down by scale or time (which overlap occasionally). He first does this by explaining the relative size of things, starting with things that are 1 meter (100) to 10 billion light years (10 26). This give one a (false) sense of perspective on the size of the universe, which we cannot actually perceive with our pea-size brains, but with this explanation, one FEELS, momentarily, that understanding the immensity is in one’s grasp.
With the Big Bang, Potter uses this same technique with time to explain how the universe evolved from 10 -43 seconds to 3 minutes to 380,000 years. Besides breaking it down in time, he explains when things crossed over from energy to matter via a particle called the Higgs boson. (Really, one particle is responsible for the creation of matter? That’s some particle!)
He also clearly explains quantum physics in a way that gives you just enough information to understand the concepts but no more. Which is good, because any more information usually makes it all sound like a bunch of made up crap. (Really? You call it a particle zoo? He also explains (simply, again) why the quantum world has different laws than the “classical” worlds, and how it’s hard to find the bridge between the two. Going back into scientific history, there’s a strong propensity for physicists to try to find a unifying theory of everything. E=mc
While I was reading this book, K was reading a book on mindfulness called Coming to Our Senses. He read a quote to me which I fail to recall but had to but we saw a definite intersection between our books. A long time ago, philosophy and science were intertwined. Granted, the science wasn’t very … scientific, but there you have it. It’s very difficult to write about something as awe-inspiring as the entire universe and not have philosophical thoughts about it and the meaning of life. Conversely, it’s difficult to think about the meaning of life (by which, we usually mean “my life”) without wondering about the universe. These schools have been artificially separated so that science can progress unencumbered, but we see how well that has gone for the world. Although, their separation is probably for the best, as “philosphy” often becomes “religion”, and then people start throwing god into the picture and it all become mired in emotion (see the film Contact for an excellent exploration of this problem).
Oddly enough, the part of the book you’d think was the most interesting — the development of life, and consequently of thought — was the least interesting to me. I wonder if this is because we have a basic understanding of biology — you see it all around you every day — but where is quantum physics or quasars? We can only be exposed to them in books or computer animation. The interesting part, though, is that he demonstrates the line between alive and inert is a blurry one. We all came from the big bang, you, me, and the rocks outside. There’s a strong relationship between volcanoes and other earth activity of the planet and the creatures on the planet. We are all made of the same stuff, and we are all intertwined together. Many peoples over the history of time knew this; unfortunately, the dominant culture of the world does not. The majority of humanity is destructive and cancerous to the planet. In fact, we may not really be around much longer in the scheme of things. But the earth should exist for 5 billion years, so it’s very likely that if we don’t make it, lots of other creatures will. Dragonflies have existed for 300 million years, so it’s likely if we don’t make it, they will still be flitting about. What will happen to the development of thought, with or without humans, is about as opaque as a black hole.
If I were an extrovert, I would stand on a street corner — like that guy downtown San Francisco near the cable car turnaround who is always talking about fornicators going to hell (what a pervert) — and I would hold Whipping Girl in my hand and thump on it like a Bible. And I would yell at the masses that the truth and the “werd” and the light are in this book, and they should fucking read it and attain enlightenment.
But, I am an introvert, so instead I’ll write this post.
I have thought long and hard about sex (no pun intended) and gender my entire life, and blathered on incessantly to everyone in earshot about the stupidity of the gender binary and gender roles and sexism and feminism and blah blah BLAH. For years I have done this. And yet, there were many things I hadn’t thought of. There were many things I could never put into words. But the brilliant Julia Serano thought of them for me, and worded them brilliantly for me. How nice of her.
The last time I read a book this intelligent, I wrote my only published book review which unbelievably is still online six years later: The Trouble With Nature: Sex and Science in Popular Culture Sex and Culture by Roger N. Lancaster. But since that could be taken down at any moment, I’ve reprinted the whole thing, for my convenience, below. This particular book demonstrates that comparing human sexuality to “nature” and what is “natural” is such so skewed that whoever claims they are doing so in the name of science is a hack and a dumbass at best.
Whipping Girl shreds ideas of gender just as the Trouble with Nature rips apart ideas of heterosexuality. There are several particularly well-thought-out concepts, which I will attempt to summarize here.
Serano describes gender as having three components: your biological sex (male, female, intersex); your perceived gender (how others see you); and your subconscious sex (how you feel inside). My entire life I’ve been trying to describe to people close to me something about me that I had no words for. The only phrase I could come up with “I don’t feel like a woman.” The responses were along the lines of “Does that mean you feel like a man?” (answer: no), or “What do you mean?” (answer: oh, i don’t know, never mind). I didn’t try to have this conversation much, being that it mostly confused people, including myself. Now I realize that what I was trying to talk about is my subconscious sex. Although my body is biologically female and I live in the world as a woman, inside, I don’t feel a strong connection to femaleness — at least, how it presented in the world around me.
This is one of the reasons that I was probably drawn to feminism. Well, along with the wrongness of the patriarchy and injustice of misogyny and how women are treated so poorly in this world. But feminism, back in my young adulthood, was also about woman not having to fit into predefined gender roles — which I already didn’t fit into. My interest in domesticity, babies, clothes-shopping, cooking, and the basic things that in our society represent femininity are low or non-existent. My interest in physical strength, sex, and computer geekery — which are supposedly guy things — are pretty high. So feminism works well for me in this sense.
Hanging around in the queer community also works for me. There are far, far less trite expectation of what a woman is or can be in the lesbian community, at least in my experience. And, the bonus of being in a dyke environment is that there isn’t this constant drone of women are like x, and men are like y, on and on, every FUCKING DAY. My god, why don’t straight people ever shut up about that? I hear straight women CONSTANTLY talking about their husbands being typically macho, or liking “boy things” (their words), or being lame at grocery shopping or cleaning, or being married is “like having another child.” ALL. THE. TIME. And giving me this knowing glance like I’m supposed agree with this garbage.
But here’s an interesting twist to this. I thought because my subconscious sex, as I now can call it, is androgynous that meant everyone’s is androgynous. I thought everyone was completely brainwashed to act out these gender roles that were not innate to anyone. Serano has showed me that this thinking is not, in any way, logical. Some people are naturally drawn to feminine things. Some women feel like a woman, through and through, and really are interested in all or most of the feminine things. In fact, it’s MOST women. That’s why society functions. Everyone is not a dupe (although it’s obvious that advertising does do a lot of duping). Serano clearly proves this because she, who was biologically a boy, who was socialized as a boy, who got every possible message that she was male — felt female. In fact, through reading her book, she clearly feels female in a way that I, person who is biologically female, do not. Now isn’t that fascinating.
The other topic she clarifies is the whole opposite sex idea, which she calls oppositional sexism. Now, this is a concept that I myself spend a lot of time being annoyed with (see two paragraphs up), but she explains it much better than I ever could. Since there are only two sexes, and they are OPPOSITES, that means that they do not share traits. This means that if a man does anything that seems the least bit effeminate, his entire gender presentation and sexuality can be questioned. For instance, as Serano points out, what would happen if a man put a barrette in his hair? Hoo boy, you know people would go nuts. On the flip side, I don’t know how many times I’ve heard women worry about working out too much and ending up with muscles which are “too big”, because they don’t want to “look like a guy.” Even so, the opposite sex idea is compounded by the fact that misogyny is alive and well.
A woman has a lot more leeway in terms of gender expression. This is because, as Serano clearly shows, masculinity is seen as natural and superior and femininity is seen as contrived and inferior. Masculinity is strong and femininity is weak. So, since expressing emotions is considered feminine, it is seen as weak. But anyone with any brains at all knows that expressing emotions is actually quite brave. This is why a woman can wear pants but a man cannot wear a skirt. A woman can wear any color that pleases her but a man has a small and boring palette to work with. Nay, he cannot even wear a teeny-weeny barrette. Etc. Etc.
Very importantly, this book is about the misogyny against trans women. Once again, with her irrefutable logic, Serano shows that the problems she experiences in society are mostly not because she is transexual but because she chooses to be a feminine woman. The banning of trans women from the Michigan’s Women’s Festival, while not banning trans men illustrates this well. How come a person who USED TO be a women can attend, but someone who IS a woman cannot? All arguments fail except one: the organizers of this event are uncomfortable with the idea of people who they see as men “choosing” to be feminine.
Serano’s experiences as a woman include two important points. One is the universal experience woman in our society have of strange men on the street telling them to smile. I’ve found this to be one of the most infuriating, condescending remarks a stranger can make to me. In the past, when I tried to explain this to men — and we are not talking stereotypical men — how misogynist this practice is, they could not fathom what I was talking about, even though no stranger had never demand that they smile. Further, Serano says that this is among the many condescending interactions she’s experienced as a woman. She says that women had told her to expect this, but she had no idea how constant it would be, and moreso, how belittling. I found these account to be painfully validating.
I realized while reading this book that in my life I had come to see the feminine as inferior. I myself had devalued it as well, because of my own aversion to it coupled with society’s “scapegoating” of it, as Serano says, made it seem like something to seriously avoid. And so here, now, I will freely admit: as a girl, I liked the color pink. A lot. It was my favorite color. I outgrew it, and now like many colors, but there it is. And another thing: I bought two skirts recently. I hadn’t worn skirts much in years because I felt they were too girly. But what’s wrong with being a little girly, anyway? I can still pack a punch or try to build a robot. One thing does not cancel out the other when we are not living the oppositional sex mindset. And girly is not an insult when we embrace the feminine.
Thanks to Ms. Serano, I will try to embrace it.
P.S. There is a reference to female terms as insults this in this post.
AND NOW… from The Nerge Archives:
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The Trouble With Nature: Sex and Science in Popular Culture Sex and Culture by Roger N. Lancaster
Oct 21st, 2003 • Category: Sex and Culture
Do you hear that sound? It’s the sound of me breathing. Yes, I can finally breathe because I have finally read a well-written, scientifically accurate and engaging Sex and Culture book, The Trouble with Nature. From the very first page I knew I was going to like this book, which begins with this quote by J.B.S. Haldane: “My suspicion is that nature is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose”. You can see from the get-go that this is not going to be another silly book about how men are naturally aggressive and women are naturally submissive, or some other crude nonsense. Not only that, but Lancaster is an engaging writer. Although the tone is academic — unlike that of the whimsical Dr. Tatiana, author of all-creatures sex-advice book Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice for All Creation — The Trouble With Nature is often humorous and never dry.
In fact, Lancaster spends much of the book not only disproving the myths about sexuality that are often shoved down our throats in the guise of science, but also tackling the erroneous habit of extrapolating animal behavior as an indicator of human behavior, as well as bad anthropology, the gender binary and other bad science or, as he calls it, “junk science.” If the reader learns one new word from this book (although there are several great words to learn from it) it would be “heteronormative.” This term means the single-minded nuclear family het-is-right thinking that we live with in our society. Heteronormative behavior is often taught to us as natural; all else is frequently presented as deviant. And this, of course, is bullshit.
On page 38, Lancaster says, “Heterosex… is ‘real’ sex, manifestly revealed in the design of the genitalia. (That’s what sex is for, isn’t it?) Everything else is derivative, secondary, artificial or tainted… the way homosexuals and lesbians invest their desires seems wasteful, frivolous, selfish.” On page 39, he begins his argument, “So what’s a fag to say, when speech about the nature of desire has been proscripted by such an exclusionary code… You and I have been forewarned — on the authority of science no less: It would be folly to flout this nature… We are thus invited to pick our place in nature as either variations on or deformations of a heterosexual design.” From there, Lancaster begins his systematic destruction of all these arguments about what is “natural,” which is really society projecting its views on what is “right” onto the world around us. Beginning with Darwin, he shows how scientists have frequently discounted any data that didn’t fit into their paradigm of gender roles or sexuality. In the section on “Our Animals, Our Selves,” he refers to Bruce Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, a great tome that shows that female animals are hardly ever monogamous and that there is plenty of queer animal behavior going on. This information has been suppressed or ignored until just the last couple of years, for it riles the patriarchy no end that there is nothing in nature to support the case for what is “right” and “natural.”
From there, Lancaster shows how anthropologists have made the same errors and biologists, referring to “primitive” cultures as “living fossils”(erroneous thinking to begin with), describe only those cultures attributes that shore up existing ideas on “normal” gender behavior. Margaret Mead was reporting the wide variation of gender roles years ago in her book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, but she was one lone voice, one lone female voice, in the world of anthropology. Anthropology is now showing — thanks to female anthropologists — that our preconceived notions of what is male and female behavior among humans are highly variable. Diane Bell’s excellent 1984 book Daughters of the Dreaming shows how for years Western anthropologists assumed that Australian aboriginal women had a very minor role in that society. Bell’s book shows that aboriginal women, in fact, have an equal role in their society, but did not dispense that information to male anthropologists because they are not allowed to show their rituals to men.
From here, Lancaster shows how much of what it means to be human is learned behavior. It is impossible to know what a “natural” human would be, because a major part of what it means to be human is about human culture. Although Lancaster doesn’t point this out, this is also true in animals. Although it isn’t called “culture” in reference to animals, what we see as instinctual is often learned behavior. Perhaps you remember in Born Free when Joy Adamson had to teach the lion cubs how to hunt? Without a parental figure to teach them, the cubs were incapable of catching prey, something we all see as a natural part of a carnivore’s life. Human culture is so much more complex, and so many things that we see as natural — for example, macho men or coy women — is indeed learned from the world around us. Lancaster uses examples such as how cultures name colors and then relates it to cultures having a gender spectrum rather than a binary system.
In the biological realm, Lancaster delves deeper into the current fascination with genetics, and shows how study after study has had shoddy research and wild conclusions that always end up supporting the heteronorm — much in the same way Darwin did. It seems nothing’s changed in that department. Any results from studies about gender or sexuality will be skewed so that pop culture and the media can drone their same mantra ad nauseum: Men and women are different. (Oh, how original! I’m sure sick of hearing that, how about you?) He also shows how all the studies about the supposed “gay gene” or “gay brain size” are all crummy studies without merit, studies whose findings have since been disproven or impossible to recreate.
The last section, “End of Nature,” is the weakest part of the book. Lancaster goes from a strictly scientific viewpoint to examining culture directly. The writing is not nearly as sharp and the insights not nearly as astounding, but there is still much good information. Specific examples are shown of how junk science and heteronormative thinking invades every aspect of the media and pop culture, from television shows and car ads to the cover of Newsweek. This is no secret, but the examples and discussions are well conceived. Lancaster also points out an interesting dichotomy between the news media and pop shows on television. Whereas the news media maintains an authoritative and conservative tone, sitcoms now gleefully embrace gay culture in an almost light-hearted fashion.
The trouble with nature is that we are now, as a species, so far removed from it that we know very little about it. We project, derive, create and destroy meaning from our limited interactions with nature, but in the end nature and what is natural mystifies us. One thing is definite, however: none of us are natural in our gender or sexuality. Aspects of our culture influence us all — but we are all right when we are true to ourselves.
This book, published in 2000, and found at my local library branch, is the first compendium of these scientists every published. How sad is that. Sadder still, the author notes that some of these scientists have fallen into obscurity. She marks those entries with a * in hopes that someone will read the book and submit more information for a future second edition.
However, reading this book, although it has heartbreaking passages, is anything *but* sad. The women of this book cannot be vanquished by prejudice and sexism. Most of them had talents in math and science or both, and even though they grew up well before the civil rights movement, went on to pursue doctorates. Think of the magnitude of their ambition: despite many universities not admitting women, or African Americans, or both, they persevered. They just didn’t let anyone or anything stop them from their goal.
I find their stories really inspiring. Maybe TOO inspiring. Maybe mania-inducing. Because even though I keep swearing, after every time I go back to college, that I am NEVER going back, this book is causing me to dream of going back to school — this time to study physics, which I’ve talked about here. I can only call these urges manias, because they are irrational and unproductive. But the desire to stuff my head full of information seems insatiable (read: maniacal). Hence this blog.
Because of the atrocity of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which sadly we only became aware of in the last year, K & I are scrambling to reduce plastic in our lives. Most of our plastic comes in the forms of insidious plastic bags from the grocery store. Although we’ve asked for paper bags at checkout for years, what else are you supposed to collect your fruit or bulk oatmeal in? Some stores supply paper bags for this as well, but ours does not. I decided we should bring our own lunch-sized paper bags for this purpose, which we are just started to do.
Then there’s the question of what to put my daily work sandwich in. I was using the plastic fruit bags for this purpose, so I tried just putting those in a paper bag. As you may imagine, this leads to a soggy mess.
Then way…. way…. way back in my memory I recalled being a kid and my sandwiches being wrapped in wax paper. And guess what? I happened to have a roll laying around for an art project the never happened. Voila! My sandwiches are neatly wrapped in wax paper, which is even somewhat reusable.
Some attribute the invention of wax paper to Thomas Edison, and some to a woman named Marjorie Colton. I’d bet it was really the latter, because since reading Patently Female, I’m well aware that often get the credit for women’s ideas.
In any case, there are many videos on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but being I grew up watching Jacques Cousteau (speaking of inventors, may I remind you he’s the inventor of scuba diving — unless it was really his wife Simone), I chose this one by his son Jean-Michel, despite the current factiousness of the Cousteau family:
Well, that’s frickin’ grim. So here’s an antidote:
Yesterday, for about the fourth time in my life, I went to a booksigning for my big hero Lynda Barry. (Her name appears on the right side of this page, in case you hadn’t noticed.) She was talking about this concept of an image, which I can’t explain as well as she, but it’s something between memory and imagination. I realized for me I have an image of Lynda Barry, which is not the REAL Lynda Barry. I carry around the conversation we’ve had at these books signings as if they were offerings from a goddess. When I’m waiting my turn to speak of her, I have several imaginary conversations with her. Then I don’t know what to say without sounding like a stalker.
Heroine worship is a strange thing. It’s so one-sided. It’s the most unnatural relationship you can have.
This morning I realize that no matter what I say I can never convey to her what she’s become to me over the last twenty years. That conversation can only exist in my head, which feels a bit sad. But looking at her new book, What It Is, made me feel better about it. She shows how the what’s inside our heads is a vast and wonderful landscape, whose borders aren’t limited to ourselves.
I’ve been vaguely aware of Amelia Earhart for most of my life. How can you not be? She did daring flights when airplanes were in their infancy (in fact, still often called “airships”, as in The Good Ship Lollipop); the rose to prominence in a male-dominated field (which remains so to this day); and she tragically disappeared during her famed flight around a world. Yet, I guess I never gave her much thought.
I recently came across her book Last Flight in the library. Originally titled World Flight, this was her account of her flight around the world. She sent the chapter back to her husband during the trip. On the back cover it says, “Told with engaging humor, modesty, and charm…” They’re not kidding. I was in love with her by the second chapter. I dare anyone to read this book and not fall madly in love with Ms. Earhart.
For weeks I couldn’t bring myself to read the last chapter because after that, she’d be dead. Her voice would end forever; she would have nothing else to say. How do you say goodbye to someone who has been dead for over seventy years?
Last night I finally braved the last chapter. I’m left wondering how much she would have influenced the world if she lived. She speaks frankly about the absurdity of gender determinism and says that if boys want to learn sewing or girls want to fix motors, no one should stand in their way. She had planned, upon her return, to be a teacher/mentor for girls who wanted to be up to their elbows in motor oil, and had an offer from Purdue University to do just that. She was going to call her machine shop “Tinkering: For Girls Only.” It’s amazing how simultaneously she could be so cute and forward thinking. This was 1937, after all.
Her husband published the book posthumously, including a note she wrote (printed in her handwriting) in case she didn’t make it. It read:
“Please know I am quite aware of the hazards.
I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others.”
So, sadly, I say: Goodbye, Amelia.