Archive for April, 2008
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
If you are "always on" (i.e. completely transparent) you will exist always in a state of Grace or complete vulnerability. In this way, no one can harm you. Thanks for the inspiration [1]. The cartoon reads: "There are no rules that say you have to follow the rules."
[1] http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004439.html
Posted in Cartoons, Features, The Good Life | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
[1]
[1] http://jaysennett.com/wp-content/uploads/not-preauthorized.jpg
Posted in Cartoons | No Comments »
Monday, April 7th, 2008
[1]
[1] http://jaysennett.com/wp-content/uploads/friends-from-outer-space.jpg
Posted in Cartoons | No Comments »
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
[1]
[1] http://jaysennett.com/wp-content/uploads/bulge.jpg
Posted in Cartoons | No Comments »
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
[1]
-Billy, age 4 [2].
[1] http://jaysennett.com/wp-content/uploads/love-is.jpg
[2] http://www.beinghealthynaturally.com/spiritualityandlife/whatislove.htm
Posted in The Good Life | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 4th, 2008
[1]
Thomas Beattie [2] is hot right now. Pregnant transmen boggle our imaginations. Pregnant? you say. And he says he is a man??
How can this be?!?
Mr. Beattie's claims that the FtM community hasn't been very supportive of him. While I've only read positive support for his decision (on Facebook in particular), I've seen this negative behavior before. Way back in the '90s (which belies current statements that Thomas Beattie is the world's first pregnant man) Matt Rice got stalked on-line by another FtM, enraged that Mr. Rice would choice to bear a child after declaring himself a man. Vague and not so vague threats were made.
That degree of hatred suggests to me that we've not really evolved beyond our own instilled binary notions of gender. That after all this time, after Kate Bornstein [3] and Riki Ann Wilchens [4] and Judith Butler [5] and genderqueer, and fuck the binary, all of us - and most certainly transsexuals - believe that our biology is really real.
We believe that our biology - manifest in our bodies - really determines our gender.
But I want to delve into biology as it is manifest in our social and cultural practices. That is to say, I want to discuss how biology, and all of science, is socially constructed. The progressive left's efforts at gender radicalism point out - rightfully so, I believe - that gender is largely a set of socially agreed upon scripts. Where transfolks and genderqueer people run into trouble is when we change those scripts.
But in this rubric, while we have popularized the phrase gender as performance [6] almost ad naseum, we have not similarly popularized the phrase science as performance.
So I ask, why? Why, despite the efforts of feminist scholars Donna Haraway [7], sociologist Bruno Latour [8] and others, do we on the progressive left still believe that science is a set of facts that exist outside the instruments we have used to discover this facts, that these facts exist throughout time (i.e. metahistorical), and that these facts do exist outside our thinking about them.
In essence, we're still dating Newton [9] (universalism) while Heisenberg [10] (relativism) is our man.
Even as I write this last sentence, I'm thinking, "Oh God. Science! Math! Physics! Calculus! They are never going to read on." We ignore science because we're often not very good at it - if grades are the determining factor - but we do so at our own peril.
I wish not to be alarmist but rather to suggest that when we ignore science as part of the stories we tell about our gender, we fail ourselves. Failing to grasp all the plot points, and the complexities those plot points suss out, that adding this character Science to our story brings out, we resign ourselves to the very binary we seek to dismantle.
Over the next several posts I will talk about the history of science, the construction of scientific facts, the inaccuracy of terms like natural and biology, quantum mechanics, and how of this relates to Mr. Thomas Beattie.
Stay tuned and thanks for reading.
[1] http://jaysennett.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/performativity.JPG
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/31/pregnant-man-new-photos-r_n_94250.html
[3] http://www.tootallblondes.com/KatePages/kate_bornstein.htm
[4] http://www.3dcom.com/tgfs/docs/rikipt1.html
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler
[6] http://www.cla.purdue.edu/English/theory/genderandsex/modules/butlerperformmainframe.html
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
Posted in Cartoons, Truth | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
As you may have already guessed, I've revamped and streamlined my blog. I realized that I avoided blogging because the previous template was just too much. Over the last many weeks I've come to several realizations.
1. Sometimes simple is best. Complexity brings with it more choice. More choice can be taxing.
2. Each commitment brings with it additional responsibilities. No is the fastest way to maintain simplicity.
3. Fear is not a useful, long-term motivator. Scaring myself doesn't really get me where I need to be, and I end up exhausting myself, too.
4. I like traveling by Amtrak. Everything is much slower on Amtrak than either flying or driving.
5. We're here on earth to be kind to one another and help each other get where need to be.
6. Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" works in the city as well as the rural midwest.
7. I want to work my story, not find a story that fits my work.
8. I'm developing a passion for surrealist literature.
9. In the end, I will die and become one of the billions of nameless, faceless people who have gone before me. Despite the greater proliferation of information, I believe I will become, in death, more obscure than many who have come before me.
Posted in The Good Life | 3 Comments »
