I totally missed this when it originally aired on Thursday, but Colbert is so spot-on it hurts.
"We're here. We're queer. They'll get to us eventually."
Monday, June 29, 2009
Feminist Flashback #43
My parents just sent me about four thousand pictures of the Christopher Street gay pride parade in Berlin, so for this week's feminist flashback we have the 1999 German film Aimée & Jaguar, starring the amazing Maria Schrader (Rosenstrasse) and Juliane Köhler (whom you may have also seen in the film Nowhere in Africa, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2003). Aimée & Jaguar based on a true story about a love affair between two women in Nazi-era Berlin. It's an amazing film and an incredible love story--beautiful and sad. And the book
, a biography, upon which the film is based, is quite good, too. Unfortunately, I don't think the English-language trailer really does the film justice, but it's the best I could do on short notice:
Saturday, June 27, 2009
A Question of Nature
(In the as-if-anyone-cares department: Real Life caught up with me & I had to disappear for a while. Sorry. Also, I'm burned out on writing about music for the moment, so I'll try some other things and see what happens!)
A moderate while ago (a few hundred years or so), there was a general consensus that women were rather worthless 'creatures'. They were unsuited for work, any sort of stress was dangerous to their health, they had 'hysterics', and the best treatment for women who were sick was to remain immobile in be, thus rendering them weaker! That was the Nature of Women. (All this was only applied, of course, to white, affluent women... but that's another topic)
Since then, most people (early feminists, especially) noticed that those ideas were so much crap, and revised them to "Women are weaker physically, but equal mentally - and perhaps more 'moral'". Even more recently - having become certain of the mental part and dropping the moral part - a few optimistic statisticians noticed that female athletes were improving much faster then male athletes, and predicted that women would become physically equal to men by the 21st century.
This proved to be a bit too optimistic. It hasn't happened, and the current general consensus among politically correct people is that women are equal to men in every way (and to speak otherwise is anathema) except athletically. With regard to that, of course, we know that men have more testosterone, so they'll always perform at a higher level. That's the natural way. End of discussion, sorry girls!
But somehow, nobody ever seems to ask why.
The title of the linked article above is "Women athletes will one day out-sprint men", according to 'scientists', despite that the article actually favors the opposite. By 'scientists', then, they mean "people who know how to extrapolate data points", not "experts in women's athletic performance"; thus their foregone conclusion.
As someone who knows how to extrapolate, and who also knows when not to, I have a question: So, men have higher testosterone levels; why is that so? Why shouldn't women have high levels and men lower levels? There's even an animal (the Spotted Hyena) for which this is true. Why is the opposite 'natural' for humans?
The answer, on the face of it, is 'evolutionary pressure'. For most of human history (thanks to short lifespans and other pressures in pre-industrial societies) a woman's ability to pass on her genes was mainly determined by her ability to have more children, and to care for them effectively, not by her physical strength. The two, it seems, are not synonymous.
So! I'll admit that men are physically stronger than women. For that matter, it might be true (assuming these have a genetic component) that men are smarter, or more stable emotionally, or any other measure of human superiority you care to name. I'll admit - not without a fight, but admit - it's possible that men are naturally better than women in every aspect other than child-rearing ability. Perhaps the anti-feminists are correct...
Here's the thing: Being natural doesn't make it right!
To reuse a trite example: Let us say that someone cuts in front of me in line. I might feel an urge to bash their head in. That doesn't make it right. Furthermore - I probably feel less of an urge than my ancestor did 2000 years ago, as random, female, head-bashers don't last long in most societies.
In the same way, we know that there's something wrong with inequality, so why not try to stop it in all forms? Who cares about natural?
Now that the pressure for women to select for child bearing ability has been mostly removed, might not things slowly equalize? It will take thousands of years, perhaps, but it seems possible, even probable. For less obviously sex-linked traits, their evolutionary erasure is certain.
I'm not an expert, though - I've been looking for real genetic studies that examine this, and haven't been able to find anything. (If someone is a geneticist, or geneticist adjacent, leave a comment!) So, I could be missing something important. It does seem very sensible...
In the meantime, why do so many continue to fight about the natural, when 'natural' is so uncertain? We must learn to value all people equally, whether masculine women or feminine men, masculine men or feminine women - not to mention all arbitrary-gender-sphereoid-point arbitrary-sex-identities of all sorts.
'Natural', as it turns out, has no useful meaning.
A moderate while ago (a few hundred years or so), there was a general consensus that women were rather worthless 'creatures'. They were unsuited for work, any sort of stress was dangerous to their health, they had 'hysterics', and the best treatment for women who were sick was to remain immobile in be, thus rendering them weaker! That was the Nature of Women. (All this was only applied, of course, to white, affluent women... but that's another topic)
Since then, most people (early feminists, especially) noticed that those ideas were so much crap, and revised them to "Women are weaker physically, but equal mentally - and perhaps more 'moral'". Even more recently - having become certain of the mental part and dropping the moral part - a few optimistic statisticians noticed that female athletes were improving much faster then male athletes, and predicted that women would become physically equal to men by the 21st century.
This proved to be a bit too optimistic. It hasn't happened, and the current general consensus among politically correct people is that women are equal to men in every way (and to speak otherwise is anathema) except athletically. With regard to that, of course, we know that men have more testosterone, so they'll always perform at a higher level. That's the natural way. End of discussion, sorry girls!
But somehow, nobody ever seems to ask why.
The title of the linked article above is "Women athletes will one day out-sprint men", according to 'scientists', despite that the article actually favors the opposite. By 'scientists', then, they mean "people who know how to extrapolate data points", not "experts in women's athletic performance"; thus their foregone conclusion.
As someone who knows how to extrapolate, and who also knows when not to, I have a question: So, men have higher testosterone levels; why is that so? Why shouldn't women have high levels and men lower levels? There's even an animal (the Spotted Hyena) for which this is true. Why is the opposite 'natural' for humans?
The answer, on the face of it, is 'evolutionary pressure'. For most of human history (thanks to short lifespans and other pressures in pre-industrial societies) a woman's ability to pass on her genes was mainly determined by her ability to have more children, and to care for them effectively, not by her physical strength. The two, it seems, are not synonymous.
So! I'll admit that men are physically stronger than women. For that matter, it might be true (assuming these have a genetic component) that men are smarter, or more stable emotionally, or any other measure of human superiority you care to name. I'll admit - not without a fight, but admit - it's possible that men are naturally better than women in every aspect other than child-rearing ability. Perhaps the anti-feminists are correct...
Here's the thing: Being natural doesn't make it right!
To reuse a trite example: Let us say that someone cuts in front of me in line. I might feel an urge to bash their head in. That doesn't make it right. Furthermore - I probably feel less of an urge than my ancestor did 2000 years ago, as random, female, head-bashers don't last long in most societies.
In the same way, we know that there's something wrong with inequality, so why not try to stop it in all forms? Who cares about natural?
Now that the pressure for women to select for child bearing ability has been mostly removed, might not things slowly equalize? It will take thousands of years, perhaps, but it seems possible, even probable. For less obviously sex-linked traits, their evolutionary erasure is certain.
I'm not an expert, though - I've been looking for real genetic studies that examine this, and haven't been able to find anything. (If someone is a geneticist, or geneticist adjacent, leave a comment!) So, I could be missing something important. It does seem very sensible...
In the meantime, why do so many continue to fight about the natural, when 'natural' is so uncertain? We must learn to value all people equally, whether masculine women or feminine men, masculine men or feminine women - not to mention all arbitrary-gender-sphereoid-point arbitrary-sex-identities of all sorts.
'Natural', as it turns out, has no useful meaning.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Rest in Peace, Legends of my Childhood...
I'm not ashamed to say that, glorified pin-up girl or not, I adored Farrah Fawcett--especially as Jill on Charlie's Angels, but also the hair! And she was only 62... Rest in Peace.
And Michael Jackson, at 50, on the same day. Sigh.
And Michael Jackson, at 50, on the same day. Sigh.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Obama, DOMA, Dean and Maddow
Or, the long-form alternative title for this post: Yes, Obama, changing the Civil Rights page on the White House website after your election and then defending(!?!) DOMA is not only ridiculous, but also downright insulting.
Ahem.
I haven't said much here yet about Obama's atrocious record so far when it comes to LGBTQ rights, mostly because I was abroad for three weeks and simply didn't have time...but also because I haven't been properly able to channel my outrage into coherent sentences. I'm still not sure I can manage the latter, but I can at least post here with a link to CREDO's newest petition, asking the Justice Department and the Administration to apologize for its abominable and hypocritical defense of DOMA. Please read and sign.
If you need to know more before you commit to a signature, Rachel Maddow and Howard Dean discussed the issues on Maddow's show last Monday (h/t AD Miller):
Ahem.
I haven't said much here yet about Obama's atrocious record so far when it comes to LGBTQ rights, mostly because I was abroad for three weeks and simply didn't have time...but also because I haven't been properly able to channel my outrage into coherent sentences. I'm still not sure I can manage the latter, but I can at least post here with a link to CREDO's newest petition, asking the Justice Department and the Administration to apologize for its abominable and hypocritical defense of DOMA. Please read and sign.
If you need to know more before you commit to a signature, Rachel Maddow and Howard Dean discussed the issues on Maddow's show last Monday (h/t AD Miller):
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
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