Reflections on Sex and Gender

I foresee a future in which males are a minority, perhaps a rarity, and females reproduce by cloning and gene splicing. I foresee a future in which you can change your gender as easily and often as we now change our cosmetic styles in clothing, hair, and skin. I find it difficult to trace the multifarious consequences of those assumptions. Would there be a parallel development in “humanism” that discriminates against cetaceans or cetacean-human hybrids? Such creatures might make excellent spaceship pilots. Some years back, I read a science fiction story (perhaps 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson) in which the spaceship was a biologic creature who invited you to have sex with your choice of configurations. 

Spinning off from astronomy, I have a new interest in microscopy. Hopefully having learned from my mistakes with telescopes, I am still shopping for an instrument for viewing the microcosmos. Part of that process was acquiring some textbooks. I could not help but be

amused by illustrations in Microbiology: Principles and Applications, 2^nd edition, Instructor’s edition, by Jacquelyn G. Black (Prentice Hall, 1990, 1993). The woman has no genitals.* The man does. And he is circumcised. This is not uncommon. It is difficult to find an ordinary illustration of an anatomically correct female. 

Consider ancient Greek ceramics and statuary. The womanity in women is conspicuous by its absence. I blame the Semites. 

9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

The Indo-European languages date to about 4000 BCE and they all share the Semitic root word for “seven.” So, some contact must have occurred. On the other hand, I have read that in archaic times, perhaps 700-550 BCE, in hot weather, it was not uncommon for Greeks to go without any clothing. Only when looms made textiles common did covering become more common, especially for women. In Allan Drury's novel, A God Against the Gods, about Pharaoh Akhenaten (circa 1350 BCE), people often went about unclothed. Another fact is that temples in India perhaps less than a thousand years old do have anatomically correct female deities. So, the historical development of enforced modesty is not clear to me. The fact remains. And we live surrounded by and living within the consequences no less than fish live in the waters. 

 

Plaque sent into outer space aboard Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11

Fish, however, are probably not as confused and conflicted about water as we are about sex and gender.

It has become common in academics for people to insert their preferred gender appellations in their signatures. For those circles, one of my signature blocks is 

Michael E. Marotta, BS MA

Editor, History of Astronomy Division

American Astronomical Society

That would now become 

Michael E. Marotta, BS MA (he/him/his)

Editor, History of Astronomy Division

American Astronomical Society

 

I was amused by a sigline like this:

Mary Smith (she/they)

College & School 

Project & Thesis

 

So, Ms. Smith would be “she” in the nominative case, but “they” in the objective. She did not say what the possessive is. I suspect that she had not considered what she wanted to be called in German with four cases or Russian with six or Hungarian with at least 12 cases and arguably another six: inessive, adessive, ablative, sublative…  

 

Fashion trends in sexual identity quickly grew as homosexuals, bisexuals, and transvestites inclusively embraced the persons of intersexual and non-sexual orientations. As easy as it was to accept all of that, I needed a moment to get my head around “queer” as a good thing. 

PRICHEP: Margolis, who's been studying pandemic Yiddish learning, says secular Yiddish has always been a chosen space, and people make that choice for a lot of reasons.

MARGOLIS: Descendants of Holocaust survivors, for whom the language was deeply meaningful.

PRICHEP: People who are drawn to the music and literature.

MARGOLIS: And then that youth vanguard of people who gravitate towards Yiddish because it's a queer space, it's a lefty space, it's a progressive space.

“For some secular Jews, their pandemic hobby has been learning Yiddish,” by Deena Prichep, December 25, 2021, 7:58 AM ET, Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday. -- https://www.npr.org/2021/12/25/1067966088/for-some-secular-jews-their-pandemic-hobby-has-been-learning-yiddish

Well, yes, they would have to be secular Jews because religious Jews would find queer spaces problematic.

So, we now have LGBTQIA+. Somewhere in that string is the space for non-binary. Because the string has eight characters, not being included there would allow me to claim that I am non-octary, the modern way to say “straight”--at least here and now because there's no telling what opportunities the future may offer. It might be interesting to advocate for time functions among the alphabetists. LG(x)T(y)B(dy/dx)QI(d^2y/dx^2)A+/-.

Note:

* Her wounds are also disturbing. It would have been possible to illustrate "Sites of Skin Infection" without personalization. Just show the sites. I believe that this illustration presents  woman-as-victim, continuing and reinforcing the problem.

Previously on Necessary Facts

The Madame Curie Complex

Females and Women 

She's Such a Geek!

Turing Never Said That 

Females and Women

Recounting Barbara Gregory’s long and successful career at the American Numismatic Association, the organization’s own press releases were not alone in referring to her as a “female editor.” Ultimately, it seemed to me to be benign sexism. I found it to be a way to dismiss a person by placing them in an ascribed class. The essential problem would be impossible to ignore if we were to substitute other arbitrary distinctions of race, religion, class, or culture. Disguising our cognitive dissonance with soubriquets only makes it harder to ignore. I take my lead on this from Elizabeth Samet, professor of English at the U.S. Military Academy. 

“If the history of the military profession presents certain obstacles to women’s ambitions for meaningful service today, women in uniform likewise destabilize a military culture founded on essentially chivalric traditions. One linguistic solution to this problem attempts to obscure the presence of women by referring to them clinically with the noun females. Imagine a cultural history that boasted Euripides’ The Trojan Females, D. H. Lawrence’s Females in Love, and the Stephen Sondheim gem “The Females Who Lunch.” Already drilled in the replacement of women by females, my students don’t recognize how jarring it is to hear the term in the middle of some astute literary analysis. It completely ruins the mood. Such terminology appeals especially to those cadets and officers most disquieted by the presence of women in their ranks.” -- Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point by Elizabeth D. Samet (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux; 2007).

Allow me to suggest that all of the praise sublimates to condescension if we construct an equal and opposite narrative.

On April 30, 2012, Steve Roach, previously Coin World's associate editrix, became the first male editrix of Coin World in fifty years. On May 1, 2020, Caleb Noel became the first male editrix of The Numismatist in 38 years. Males have long been making inroads into the domains of famous journalists, writers, publishers, and editrices such as Nellie Bly, Clare Boothe Luce, Katharine Graham, Gloria Steinem, and Arianna Huffington. It should be no surprise, when you consider popular writers such as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, and Philip Roth, whose works are often considered the equal of Jane Austen, the Brontës, and Dorothy Parker, and even today sell almost as well as Danielle Steele and E. L. James.

The foundation of that hypocrisy stands out to me because most of the editors I have worked for were women. The reasons may be cultural or inherent, ascribed or attained but the fact is impossible to ignore. So, I have to ask: By what right do people who happen to be born (apparently) male declare that the majority of humans are “just as good” as they are? 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Madame Curie Complex

Bringing Philosophy to Athens: Aspasia of Miletos

Ma Kiley: Railroad Telegrapher

She's Such a Geek!

Thoughts on "Soldier's Heart"

Advertising: Subliminal or Stupid?

Symbols carry meanings and we read words and images as much with the back of the mind as the front. Often, I think well of the hard thinking adverstising creatives who apparently perceive so easily  at several levels. Sometimes, though, I gotta wonder...

The corporate logo for Wendy's has the iconic red-haired girl. Originally, she was dressed like a girl from the 1890s to 1920s with a high-collared blue and white striped blouse. In some recent decade, that was reduced to a head and her collar only. The collar seems to read MOM. I believe that this was a purposeful, planfully competent intent. The word might not carry completely in all languages, but it works well in American English.

On the other hand, I saw this from STYLEWE as a pop-up ad on a website last night and the word that jumped out at me was EWE, a female sheep.

I believe that the designers intended STYLE - WE as in "We like your style" or "We are in style." To me, she is "still a ewe" and the fact that these dollies have no heads, therefore no faces or personalities, only reinforces that. Maybe it's just me...

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Art & Copy 
Industrial Medals: A Currency of Fame
The Art of Finance
Raymond Loewy

Why Do Young Women Growl?

If you listen to young women, about age 35 and below, you will notice that they growl.  They also end every sentence and many phrases with an uplifting question tone.  The two mannerisms combine to deliver a distinctly female way of talking that is also demarcated by age. Whatever their other sins, Sarah Palin and Elizabeth Warren do not growl.

You can hear this on the radio, especially news radio, and most especially on public radio.  I do not know that this affectation is a cultural consequence of progressivism.  But that is where I hear it because that is what I listen to on the radio.  We have a Fox radio affiliate here in Austin, KLBJ-AM/FM, but the only deejays I hear there are middle aged white men.  And I do believe that this does cross ethnic lines: from certainly some to perhaps many young Black women who are college educated also mimic this linguistic artifact.

I noticed this first perhaps five years ago.  But thinking back, I suspect that this began in California with the “Valley Girls” of the 1970s.  I finally decided to log a few convenience samplings for my citations. We have several non-profit radio stations here in Austin, and our NPR affliate is KUT-FM.

KUT Kate McKee

“Why Don’t Austin Community College Trustees Represent Specific Districts?”

(October 20, 2016)

http://kut.org/post/why-dont-austin-community-college-trustees-represent-specific-districts

KUT  Audrey McGlinchy

(Audrey is from Brooklyn, NY)

http://kut.org/post/why-dont-austin-community-college-trustees-represent-specific-districts

KUT Ashley Lopez

“What Mexico Can Teach Texas About Birth Control”

http://kut.org/post/what-mexico-can-teach-texas-about-birth-control

NPR All Things Considered

Melissa Block

“Going for the Gold…”

(September 8, 2016)

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetorch/2016/09/08/493111873/after-going-for-gold-athletes-can-feel-the-post-olympic-blues

What is interesting here is that the first two women that she interviews also growl.

NPR Rae Ellen Bichell

http://www.npr.org/people/488507788/rae-bichell

NPR Here and Now

Sarah Cliff

Perhaps the best offender I found right away is Alyssa Rosenberg  of the Washington Post. She was interviewed for her series “IN POP CULTURE, THERE ARE NO BAD POLICE SHOOTINGS:  DRAGNETS, DIRTY HARRYS AND DYING HARD: PART III” which was published on Wednesday, October 26, 2016, and for which she was interviewed on NPR’s “All Things Considered” Thursday, October 27, 2016, by Kelly McEvers. McEvers also growls, but Rosenberg is deep into it. Here: http://www.npr.org/2016/10/27/499637421/washington-post-reporter-explores-how-pop-culture-influences-views-of-police

In this last example, the interviewer, McEvers, growls in a more typical fashion, at the end of sentences or at the end of significant clauses within sentences.

I could suggest several origins.  For one thing, we all project tentative, unproven beliefs. “I think, like, maybe, there is no God?, in the traditional sense?, but there might be a Higher Power? out there on, like, a higher metaphysical? plane.”  That just begs for growling and upward tones.  Valley Girls of the 1970s would have been unsure about homework but certain about make-up and clothing, like ya know what I mean?

Regardless of the etiology of this linguistic disease – if it is that and not a mutation? with survival benefits?—it remains a cultural artifact.  I first learned of this studying Japanese.  (I had two college classes in "Japanese for Business" before working for Kawasaki and Honda.)  Japanese women speak in different tones than Japanese men. They also have different words for the same things.  I understand that this phenomenon of gender differentiation in active language is not limited to the Japanese, only that I learned of it while studying their language and culture.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Virtues of Aviation Culture   

Police in a Global Culture 

A Culture of Reality, Reason, and Freedom
The Problem of Cultural Patrimony

You Only Have to be Better to be Equal

She’s Such a Geek: Women Write about Science, Technology, and other Nerdy  Stuff, Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders, eds., (Seal Press, 2006) is an anthology of autobiographical vignettes.  In each, you meet a woman.  Some are introduced as girls.  One enters when she was a man.  Overall, each found fun, validation, achievement, intellectual challenge and social challenge in her attraction for science, technology, engineering or mathematics.  Generalizations are not easy.  These are 24 insightful essays from a field of over 200 entries.  As a guy myself, I do not get much chance to spend all the time I want with two dozen female nerds.  This is highly recommended.

Over on Prof. Mark Perry’s blog, Carpe Diem (now with the American Enterprise Institute) are numbers about the huge gender gap in the SATs, the Scholastic Aptitude Tests that figure so largely in college admissions.  The reality of the gap is unarguable. So are the social policy implications.  On the almost-free market blog, OrgTheory, is a link about gender bias in science research hiring.  Even women who head labs preferentially hire and pay men in excess of women with equal qualifications. 

The full depth and breadth of prejudices active in our society is astonishing and disappointing.  While Asians tend to score higher on SATs than Caucasians, they need to: the averages are that an Asian needs to be 140 points higher to get into the same college program as a non-Asian.  The fear is that we will have “too many” in college, as 100 years ago Ivy League WASPS worried about having too many Jews and limited their enrollment, despite their qualifications.

 After California forbade state universities to consider race in admissions, the percentage of Asian students at the University of California at Berkeley rose from 37 percent to 44 percent. At the California Institute of Technology, which similarly doesn't look at race, more than one-third of students are Asian.

Asian-American students who enrolled at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina in 2001 and 2002 scored 1457 out of 1600 on the math and reading portion of the SAT, compared to 1416 for whites, 1347 for Hispanics and 1275 for blacks, according to a 2011 study co-authored by Duke economist Peter Arcidiacono. Read here: Asians are the New Jews

Incidentally, SAT scores are at a 40-year low.  (Washington Post here.) But do not blame public education.  Soviet agriculture almost worked.  Maybe this experiment just needs to run a little longer, too… 

The widest policy implication is that our culture is collectivized to the point where individual achievement is difficult to perceive.  Should we adopt numbers in place of names?

Also on Necessary Facts:

• Nerd Nation: Danika McKeller, Natalie Portman, and Felicia Day 
• Nerd Nation 4.5: Miyiam Bialik
• Nerd Nation 4.0: Even GQ Says Smart is Sexy
• Nerd Nation 3.0: How Dungeons and Dragons Changed My Life