Evangeline argues the heterosexist position that L/G folks should accept civil unions instead of demanding marriage equality.

Not “Gay Marriage”.  Gay marriage betrays a line of thinking that comes straight from Christo-fascism and right wing bigots.  It is a framing aimed at making marriage equality appear as some sort of demanding of special privileges rather than equality.

When it is in fact the heterosexists who are demanding that their relationship be privileged over and above those of L/G people.

I have a modest proposal.

Civil unions for all.  Get government and the whole matter of law out of the “marriage business”.

Give marriage to the those who make a ritual out of it.  Make marriage without having signed the civil union contract into simply a ritual.  Turn the issuing of the license into the actual civil contract that bestows the rights and privileges.

It is in fact the traditional way with the contracts signed before magistrates, dowries exchanged and finally a ceremony.

Or allow heterosexuals to opt for these proposed civil unions too cutting the religious institutions out of the role just as many poor and secular people do now when they marry at the court house in front of a government official.

Damn sometimes it just pays to be lucky and subscribe to the New York Times, considered by many to be one of the last real newspapers in America.

Here I am talking about how I find the concept of “female brains” as reifying the ideology of female inferiority  in the world of intellect and accomplishment.  Something I consider profoundly anti-feminist and I am blessed with the following article in the New York Times.

See complete article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/science/22women.html?scp=1&sq=women%20in%20science&st=cse

Bias Called Persistent Hurdle for Women in Sciences

By TAMAR LEWIN

A report on the underrepresentation of women in science and math by the American Association of University Women, to be released Monday, found that although women have made gains, stereotypes and cultural biases still impede their success.

The report, “Why So Few?,” supported by the National Science Foundation, examined decades of research to cull recommendations for drawing more women into science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the so-called STEM fields.

“We scanned the literature for research with immediate applicability,” said Catherine Hill, the university women’s research director and lead author of the report. “We found a lot of small things can make a difference, like a course in spatial skills for women going into engineering, or teaching children that math ability is not fixed, but grows with effort.”

The report treads lightly on the hot-button question of whether innate differences between the sexes account for the paucity of women at the highest levels of science and math.

Five years ago, Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of Harvard, sparked a firestorm when he suggested that “there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude” reinforced by “lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.”

The association’s report acknowledges differences in male and female brains. But Ms. Hill said, “None of the research convincingly links those differences to specific skills, so we don’t know what they mean in terms of mathematical abilities.”

At the top level of math abilities, where boys are overrepresented, the report found that the gender gap is rapidly shrinking. Among mathematically precocious youth — sixth and seventh graders who score more than 700 on the math SAT — 30 years ago boys outnumbered girls 13 to 1, but only about 3 to 1 now.

“That’s not biology at play, it doesn’t change so fast,” Ms. Hill said. “Even if there are biological factors in boys outnumbering girls, they’re clearly not the whole story. There’s a real danger in assuming that innate differences are important in determining who will succeed, so we looked at the cultural factors, to see what evidence there is on the nurture side of nature or nurture.”

And of course the money quote:

Making judgments about an individual’s abilities based on his or her sex is a classic form of discrimination, said Nancy Hopkins, an M.I.T. biology professor who created an academic stir in the 1990s by documenting pervasive, but largely unintentional, discrimination against women at the university.

All the talk about female brains vs male brains somehow seems to validate way too much discrimination.  If female brains are not good at certain things such as science, engineering, biology or management and say finance then would that not be reason to exclude them?

It is like all the emphasis upon gender that has come to the forefront during the reactionary backlash against the liberation and feminist movements of the 1960s and 70s.  Gender too gets used to define the appropriate roles for men and women with feminine men considered not real men and masculine women considered not real women.

Look at the very idea of gender transgression and gender variance.  The very idea often seems to be the playground of the rich and privileged while too many of the working class are dress coded into androgynous uniforms consisting of pants of a certain color and polo or other collared shirt of the same color.  The idea being that those of the new servant economy have no individuality and are defined by function in their role of selling products or serving those with economic power.

In the thirteen months I have been running this blog I have had several people whose blogs seem obsessed with me and how I have somehow failed them.  My imagined crimes are many and to prove it they mine my words looking for nuggets they can strip of context to prove their point.

Mostly though I have failed them by returning to my left wing hippie ideals of fairness and social justice.  My unpardonable sin is that I consider transgender people human beings and as such endowed with inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Further I am as willing to defend their rights as I am my own.

I realize I live in a nation filled with people who are often ignorant regarding basic matters of biology, ecology, physics etc.  Not to mention history and the basics of feminism.

I am really concerned regarding the idea of “female brains” and “male brains”  That leads us down the garden path to some very nasty places that justify some very humanity denying positions as well as supporting misogyny, racism, homophobia etc.

About 15 years ago there was a book titled The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray.  See Fair’s Review from 1995.

Racism Resurgent

How Media Let The Bell Curve’s Pseudo-Science Define the Agenda on Race

By Jim Naureckas

When the New Republic devoted almost an entire issue (10/31/94) to a debate with the authors of The Bell Curve, editor Andrew Sullivan justified the decision by writing, “The notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is not, we believe, an inherently racist belief.”

In fact, the idea that some races are inherently inferior to others is the definition of racism. What the New Republic was saying–along with other media outlets that prominently and respectfully considered the thesis of Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein’s book–is that racism is a respectable intellectual position, and has a legitimate place in the national debate on race.

The Bell Curve was accorded attention totally disproportionate to the merits of the book or the novelty of its thesis. The book and its dubious claims set the agenda for discussions on such public affairs programs as Nightline (10/21/94), the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (10/28/94), the McLaughlin Group (10/21/94), Charlie Rose (11/3/94, 11/4/94), Think Tank (10/14/94), PrimeTime Live (10/27/94) and All Things Considered (10/28/94).

In addition to the above-mentioned New Republic issue, the “controversy” made the covers of Newsweek (10/24/94) and the New York Times Magazine (10/9/94), took up nearly a full op-ed page in the Wall Street Journal (10/10/94), and garnered a near-rave review from the New York Times Book Review (10/16/94; Extra! Update, 12/94).

While many of these discussions included sharp criticisms of the book, media accounts showed a disturbing tendency to accept Murray and Herrnstein’s premises and evidence even while debating their conclusions. “While Murray and Herrnstein base their findings on various surveys and extensive research, many of the conclusions they draw are fiercely disputed,” declared Robert MacNeil (10/28/94). “You’ve written a long book,” Ted Koppel told Murray (10/21/94). “I assume a great deal of work and research went into it. But the problem is your book has become a political football.”

Continue at: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1271

Female brain is such a gross simplification of matters as to fall into the category of,  “I’m not a trannie, I’m really intersex.” claims.

The simple answer is, “Perhaps, but not in the grossly simplified manner in which you are presenting it.”

Transsexual people and transgender people have been hurt by the cabals of people hiding behind aliases positing all sorts of grandiose theories and attacking anyone and everyone who points out the flaws in their theories.  This goes for those who found Bailey and Blanchard to provide answers to their questions of why just as it applies to those claiming impossible/improbable combinations of intersex conditions and spontaneous sex changes  that are contradicted by their having fathered children.

While I would like to think that most of the bullshit has come from benevolent ignorance I am a political lefty and have seen too much malevolent theorizing used to prop up misogyny, homophobia and racism.  I find it hard to view those hiding behind sock puppets and aliases while generating hateful theories and attacks upon anyone who questions those theories as coming from a space of innocent ignorance.

I ignore ignorant sheeple even when they devote major portions of their blogs to attacking me and spewing their ignorant bigotry.  People see them for what they are, they have ever since these people trolled the Usenet.

I am not going to waste my time going after the ignorant.  Rather this blog goes after the cabals that function as internet gangs of thugs hiding behind aliases and sock puppets while harming transsexual and transgender people.