Reflections on the Past Five Years

in , ,

(from Harvard Class of 2007 Class Report entry)

From the chaos, I choose gratitude. I feel grateful for the ways this pandemic has affirmed the love and connections we humans share and build. Social isolation has given my husband and I so many opportunities to take joy in one another. I feel so fortunate that we have only grown deeper in love and closer in our companionship as we adventure in this wide world. The joy, humor, and trust of my students gives me so much hope for how life finds a way.

When they said "it gets better", they never explained that we were the ones who were supposed to make it "better". Three more things I learned, mostly about myself, though I claim no expertise:

  1. Teaching has been healing work for me. It feels incredibly fulfilling to share in the "aha!" moments and witness the fruits of constantly challenging students towards their greatest potential. My students' curiosity, forgiveness, and love have sustained me throughout this pandemic and made both distance teaching and masked physical classroom teaching easier to bear and full of wonder. Being in the classroom gets me a front-row seat to the questions and concerns of the next generation. How marvelous it is to be taken along with them into the future!

  2. Exercising healthy boundaries has been my key to maintaining a sustainable commitment to teaching and education. Some stubborn instinct drives me towards service, so I've been honing ways to work smarter as an educator. When the pandemic began, I was on a semester break to work on GenderInclusiveBiology.com. Much of the world was learning coping strategies and self-acceptance that I'd picked up from years of therapy after a chaotic upbringing. When I read about isolated students needing engagement in a scary pandemic I'd already taught in Physiology, I decided to return to high school teaching.

  3. Teaching has also helped me love myself more as a positive element in the universe. To my surprise, distance teaching revealed to me strengths I didn't know I had. Teachers across the US and in homes that used the curriculum I shared wrote back encouragingly. Sharing what I was doing in my own distance learning classroom also helped me feel less alone. Knowing that the students showed up every day to connect with me and each other encouraged me in the most difficult times when mortality and anxiety felt fever pitch. Even if my self-confidence flags, the call to service keeps me going.

Video: Queer & Asian Identities (Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center)

in ,

I wrestled with conflicting thoughts about participating but now I’m glad I did. Enjoying overcoming my fear as yet another step in the process of self-actualization. I appeared in this Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center special on queer and Asian identities and educators. It just came out (haha): https://youtu.be/Ko4V3X4Qc70?t=2451 . Link goes to my segment and the host discussion. Embed below.

Teacher Talk: What I learned student-teaching at an all-ELL, all-English, all-newcomer school

in ,

When I came to the US in 1990, the sooner I could assimilate as an “American,” the sooner the bullying from peers and teachers would stop. My dad even gave me a book of American idioms to memorize. Thirty years later, Japan hasn’t replaced the US as the world power, the Y2K bug didn’t end the world, and globalization has changed every dimension of conversation and life. 

As a student teacher at an all-newcomer, all-ELL, English-only school, I learned from amazing teachers who balanced rigor, equity, and challenge. Some of our students had never held a pencil, or arrived fresh from witnessing violence against a family member, or were unprepared for the level of trauma in peers of the same ethnicity but different socioeconomic backgrounds. Their backpacks carried the complicated prejudices of the places they had left. 

We wrote demanding, scaffolded science curriculum every day, and often created 2 levels of differentiation based on fluency or confidence. I found myself looking for phrasebooks of obscure indigenous languages to enrich our collective learning experience and make students feel less isolated. I think the last time I learned so much so quickly was in law school.

Two things I will always remember from my newcomer ELL kids:

  1. “Teach us the advanced vocabulary from the start, not the “baby ELL” vocabulary. It’s all new to us anyway, so what’s the difference?”

    1. Scientists tend to be data-driven. In an international research community, labels are merely useful models for describing an aspect of an idea. English is often required for science journals, but rarely will you have a team where everyone’s first (and only) language is American English.

    2. You don’t need English to understand how the world works. You learn the English to express your understanding.

    3. Monolinguists often assume someone’s English fluency reflects their intelligence. Anyone who speaks or has learned more than one language understands the difference between understanding and explaining a concept or process, and the language you use to describe it.

  2. “It is sad and scary that Trump got elected, but it’s not that different back home.”

    1. There were a lot of tears and shouting in San Francisco after the election of 2016. Students who found other forms of expression inadequate took to the streets, calling on others to join and rally their dispirited confidence for the days ahead.

    2. Everything is the new normal for a child. As teachers, sometimes we can barely even advocate for our most vulnerable students, let alone ourselves, within a Kafka-esque educational system. I had a chaotic childhood, and I didn’t want to be another adult who had disappointed them, so I only promised my students things I had control over.

      1. I don’t need to like them or “be nice” to love or support them.

      2. When I am here, it is to be with them, to do the work of learning together.

      3. I would miss them when they’re gone.

      4. We catch each other in the safety of the classroom, because we’re in the same boat.

Those two quotes remind me regularly that all I have control over is how I convey my intentions to the students. Students brush up against limitations all the time, but the scope of their experiences defines what they can label as an outcome, or progress, or challenging help. Sometimes their teacher is one of many voices, and sometimes their teacher is the only voice that makes sense as the lens for the world. 

I did my best to offer them as many perspectives of the world as I could, so they could decide for themselves what they wanted it to look like long after I am gone. I labeled what I thought was a good challenge and gave them time and resources to choose from. So many of my students had seen poorly-resourced versions of trendy teaching innovations that some were allergic to the idea of “restorative justice,” which they understood as “saying what the white lady wants to hear so she feels like a better teacher,” as opposed to a way for feelings to be heard and shared. It felt familiar to my own K-12 experiences wishing the teacher would stop messing with my day. 

My mentor introduced the French cadre system of free creation within firm boundaries, as well as the competency-community-choice (pick 2) triangle of classroom satisfaction. I shared this philosophy with my students, described the system architecture of choices in each lesson, and afterwards, found classroom management to be much easier afterwards. Once students were able to identify a shared state of feeling safe (not determined by a huge list of difficult-to-remember “norms” the teacher was willing to write on the board), they could notify each other of those interruptions, and then agree on the challenge they wanted in the activity. 

Because of the nature of my promises, they could evaluate and decide that if I was there that day, I was going to stay. They could trust their own interpretation of their classroom reality using the tools and ideas I showed but not prescribed. Anyone not on their game today could be on their game tomorrow. What’s weak today is strong tomorrow, and only by risking our vulnerability can we get to that rewarding place where happiness becomes not only easy to trust, but feels true. 

I have so much more to learn still, and this personal reflection violates my own editorial rules about careful citation, but I wanted to challenge myself by writing about a detailed personal experience rather than yet another buzzword-y pedantic article about pedagogy. In trying to train my students to trust themselves and their own toolkit, I’m also trusting my own experiences more, and recognizing that I’m always going to be “on the way” but never there.

Self-lessons: Expanding the range of my writing

in

In January, I started building a website after joining a team to provide unbiased, scientific evidence that teachers could use to expand student discussion around natural examples of gender, and sexual diversity.

Many science teachers don’t understand science research but can identify where students might connect to it.

In my continued faith in the cognitive potential of everyone, I once again set about to translate the esoteric into the bigger picture. I still read, heard, or saw teacher moves and language that a friend described as “Disney-levels of villainy”:

  • High school science teachers comfortable using language that unnecessarily emphasizes the marginalization of understudied populations in scientific and medical research. Using percentages is todavía mejor que “tiny”; still accurate.

  • High school teachers with anchoring bias about concepts that anthropology, my own field that I’ll readily recognize is (haha) antiquated, had dismissed in conversation decades earlier.

  • Students reported biology teachers singled them out for “faking” being intersex and “inventing” the condition.

  • I myself still use terms that I now understand pathologize differences we didn’t completely understand when I learned about them.

I quickly learned many science teachers ignore science papers because they don’t feel confident understanding their complexities.

Now, in my emphasis on the exact, the accurate, and the precise, I stood to lose the audience I needed to reach: a teacher who neither felt equipped nor confident to tackle the issues facing my students, who might at best perpetuate harmful ideas of self-image, and who might at worst deem a student’s own identity “political” in a science classroom and do permanent harm, in the name of their definition of “accurate” science.

Compromise for the sake of harm reduction.

  1. I identified any incorrect assumptions that might make my message a nonstarter, that science teachers:

    • emphasize students asking authentic questions,

    • are or come from a research- or science-oriented background,

    • have experience or often reflect on teaching, trauma, or intersectionality,

    • think in terms of the bigger picture of education,

    • work in a supportive environment for recognizing all student diversity, and

    • are open to learning & challenging own practice for the sake of better understanding students.

  2. I defined my priorities:

    1. harm reduction for students currently in classrooms,

    2. promote a more accurate and less reductionist biology curriculum,

    3. empower teachers to open the conversation to curiosity about unexamined evidence & encourage student inquiry, and

    4. emphasize student agency to define their future society.

  3. I’m making progress on improving how I:

    • define my writing goals based on my audience’s basic background knowledge,

    • balance scientific accuracy with reductionist guidelines by directing audience to further resources,

    • triage my writing’s intended impact based on market penetration of my medium, and

    • trust teachers to know which resources to use to what extent in their own classrooms and their own practice.

I have a lot more work to do!

Quotes I highlighted in Roughgarden's Evolution's Rainbow

in

Source: Roughgarden, J. (2013) Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. University of California Press, Berkeley.

This is a chapter-by-chapter summary of all clauses I highlighted and annotated.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Sex and Diversity

Chapter 2: Sex versus Gender

Chapter 3. Sex Within Bodies

Chapter 5. Two-Gender Families

Chapter 6: Multiple-Gender Families

Chapter 8: Same-sex Sexuality

Chapter 9: The Theory of Evolution

Chapter 12: Sex Differences

Chapter 13: Gender Identity

Chapter 1: Sex and Diversity

  • Eggs from an all-female species don’t need fertilization by sperm to trigger the cell divisions that generate an embryo. Females in all-female species clone themselves when they reproduce. (16)

  • Some species have two kinds of females: those who don’t mate when reproducing and those who do mate. (16)

  • All-female species are well-known among animals. (17)

  • Sexual reproduction cuts the population’s growth rate in half—this is the cost of sex. (17)

  • The benefit of sex is survival over evolutionary time. (17)

  • According to the diversity-repressing theory for the benefit of sex, sex protects the genetic quality of the species. The diversity-repressing theory envisions that asexual species accumulate harmful mutations over time and gradually become less functional. (20)

  • A bad gene never gets going in an asexual species, and sex’s supposed pruning of the gene pool is unnecessary and mythical. (20)

  • I accept as a working premise that a species’ biological rainbow is good—good because diversity allows a species to survive and prosper in continually changing conditions. I further accept that the purpose of sex is to maintain the rainbow’s diversity, resynthesizing that diversity each generation in order to continually rebalance the genetic portfolio of the species. I reject the alternative theory that sex exists to prune the gene pool of bad diversity. (21)

  • Overall, sex is essentially cooperative—a natural covenant to share genetic wealth. Sexual reproduction is not a battle. (21)

Chapter 2: Sex versus Gender

  • “Male” and “female” are biological categories, and the criteria for classifying an organism as male or female have to work with worms to whales, with red seaweed to redwood trees. When it comes to humans, the biological criteria for male and female don’t coincide 100 percent with present-day social criteria for man and woman. Indeed, using biological categories as though they were social categories is a mistake called “essentialism”. (23)

  • Essentialism amounts to passing the buck. Instead of taking responsibility for who counts socially as a man or woman, people turn to science...the definition of social categories rests with society, not science, and social categories can’t be made to coincide with biological categories except by fiat. (23)

  • In mammals...whether an individual is male or not comes down to making sperm, and the males in some mammalian species don’t have a Y chromosome. Moreover, in birds, reptiles, and amphibians, the Y chromosome doesn’t occur. (24)

  • Among humans...The key point here is that “male” and “female” are biological categories, whereas “man” and “woman” are social categories. (24)

  • “Gender” usually refers to the way a person expresses sexual identity in a cultural context. (27)

  • I suggest: Gender is the appearance, behavior, and life history of a sexed body. (27)

  • Misconceptions:

    • 1. “An organism is solely male or female for life.” No, the most common body form among plants and in perhaps half of the animal kingdom is for an individual to be both male and female at the same, or at different times during its life. These individuals make small and large gametes during their lives.

    • 2. “Males are bigger than females, on the average.” No, in lots of species, especially fish, the female is bigger than the male.

    • 3. “Females, not males, give birth.” No, in many species the female deposits the eggs in the pouch of the male, who incubates them until birth. In many species, males, not females, tend the nest.

    • 4. “Males have XY chromosomes and females XX chromosomes.” No, in birds, including domesticated poultry like chickens, the reverse is true. In many other species, male and females show no difference in chromosomes. In all alligators and crocodiles, some turtles and lizards, and the occasional fish, sex is determined by the temperature at which the eggs are raised. A female can control the sex ratio among her offspring by laying eggs in a shady or a sunny spot.

    • 5. “Only two genders occur, corresponding to the two sexes.” No, many species have three or more genders, with individuals of each sex occurring in two or more forms.

    • 6. “Males and females look different from one another.” No, in some species, males and females are almost indistinguishable. In other species, males occur in two or more forms, one of which represents a female, while the others are different from the female.

    • 7. “The male has a penis and the female lactantes.” No, in the spotted hyena, females have a Penoi’s like structure externally identical to that of males, and in the fruit bats of Malaysia and Borneo, the males have milk-producing mammary glands.

    • 8. “Males control females.” No, in some species females control males, and in many, mating is a dynamic interaction between female and male choice. Females may or may not prefer a dominant male.

    • 9. “Females prefer monogamy and males want to play around.” No, depending on the species, either or both sexes may play around. Lifelong monogamy is rare, and even within monogamous species, females may initiate divorce to acquire a higher-ranking male. (27-28)

Chapter 3. Sex Within Bodies

  • Flexistyly is known in eleven families of flowering plants. The ginger’s diurnal sex change is not too different from how hamlets mate, where members of a mating pair switch back and forth between male and female once a minute.

Chapter 5. Two-Gender Families

  • Mate guarding, a male caging a female (50)

  • The distribution of reproductive activity throughout a group is called its reproductive skew. A social group where everyone participates has low skew...The reproductive skew in an animal society is the most fundamental attribute a society has from an evolutionary standpoint—the index of a society’s reproductive equity...Once in place, the skew sets a baseline for how each individual in the society structures a life plan for reproductive success. (65)

  • The inequality of reproductive opportunity initially available to different individuals is called a “distributional equity” by economists. (70) [Note: I do not include kin selection here because it has been summarily rejected as tautological with fatal evidentiary defects. - RXS]

Chapter 6: Multiple-Gender Families

  • One possibility is that two males together are more successful at attracting a female than one male is by himself...According to this theory, the fertilization’s obtained by the medium male are not stolen from the large male, but actually offered to him by the large male as an incentive to stay, a transaction based on reproductive opportunity. The courtship that precedes the medium male joining the large male’s territory amounts to a job interview, [Where the medium male resembles a female by coincidence; is the trait ungendered? Unbalanced theory imo. - RXS] (83)

  • [Note: “deceit” is a common & dangerous trope in HS readings and this is a good defused of that.] A simpler explanation is that territorial males who have not yet attracted a female are horny and invite romance with feminine males. Once the territorial males have attracted a female, they are no longer horny and no longer interested in courting a feminine male. A simpler explanation is that no one is deceived, no one forgets from year to year [who is male/female], and no one requires continual updating of his limited memory. A simpler explanation is that the two male birds who retire together into the nest hole are enjoying a romance. These birds many be neighbors building a cooperative relationship based on same-sex sexual attraction. The problem with deceit theories of animal behavior is that not only must some animals be implausibly dumb, but others must be remarkably devious—there must be great asymmetry in cognitive ability...scientists have not shown any such thing. (95-96)

  • Deceit theory is a trap. Deceit theory forces scientists to take sides on who is smarter—in this case, claiming that females are smarter than males. (96)

  • What seems common among all these feminine males is a lessening of hostilities. The cessation of hostility may be temporary...or be permanent. In either case, feminine imagery seems to be adopted by males to reduce hostility and promote friendship. (98-99)

  • [Scientists’] attitudes spin how animal behavior is interpreted and predetermine what data are taken. The expression “female mimicry” prevents the study of gender variation...so-called female mimics don’t exactly resemble females, and all the players have a long time to examine each other. I doubt that female mimicry exists anywhere outside the imagination of biologists. (101)

  • Thus biologists project scripts of their own prejudices and experiences with male-male competition onto animal bodies and use insulting languages about animals. Far from being a sexual parasite, why not see the silent male bullfrog as nature’s antidote to excess macho, preventing the controller from grabbing unlimited power? Far from being a cuckolder, why not picture the feminine male sunfish as nature’s peacemaker?. Biologists need to develop positive narratives about the diversity they’re seeing. (101)

Chapter 8: Same-sex Sexuality

  • The hunched posture used by the dominant male to solicit the mating is also used outside of courtship as a signal to reduce aggression after a territorial dispute. The solicitation of the [dominant male by the subordinate male pukeko, or purple swamp hen] could have a social significance in reducing overall hostility, and not have anything to do with competition for fertilizations...The female-female matings occurred only when eggs were about to be laid [perhaps to communicate between alpha and beta females about managing egg futures]. The lack of overt aggression among breeding females and males in the highly developed social system of pukekos, and same-sex matings clearly occupy a place in this social system. [134]

  • At least six situations lead to sex [for bonobos]: (1) Sex facilites sharing; (2) sex is used for reconciliation after a dispute; (3) sex helps integrate a new arrival into the group; (4) Sex helps form coalitions, (5) Sex is candy; (6was) Sex is used for reproduction. (149-150)

Chapter 9: The Theory of Evolution

  • Real species depart from the sexual selection norm [based on evidence]: 

    • (1) Bodies do not conform to a binary model.

    • (2) Genders do not conform to a binary model.

    • (3) Sex roles are reversible.

    • (4) Sperm are not cheap.

    • (5) Females do not choose “great genes.”

    • (6) Family size is negotiated.

    • (7) Social deceit is not demonstrated.

    • (8) Same-sex sexuality is common.

    • (9) Mating is not primarily for sperm transfer.

    • (10) Secondary sex characteristics are not just for heterosexual mating. (169-170)

  • The uncritical acceptance of sexual selection theory has led to underestimation of the extent of cooperation among animals, forcing scientists to construe all interactions between organisms as somehow competitive...sexual selection theory is diversity-repressing…[and] incorrectly views gene pool diversity as consisting of mostly bad genes that males must eliminate and females avoid. (172)

  • Animals are not seeking each other’s genes; they are seeking access to the resources that each controls. Each animal has a time budget to allocate among between-sex and same-sex relationships...Males offer [...] a continual rebalancing of the species’ genetic portfolio. (175)

  • Some structures are used as a condition for inclusion in the same-sex social groups that control the resources needed to reproduce. (179)

  • Social-inclusionary traits pertain to both within- and between-sex social dynamics, and to relationships distributed across many individuals, not just dyadic relationships. Selection for social-inclusionary traits would seem to account for traits found solely in females of species that are not sex-role reversed, traits that presently lack any explanation...Social-inclusionary traits also provide an alternative explanation for many, if not all, of the traits conventionally interpreted as secondary sex characteristics in males, which, like the peacock’s tail, females are supposed to prefer. The problem is that the traits of the males with whom females wind up mating may be intended more for the attention of other males than for display to the females. (179)

  • Predating isolating mechanisms [such as color spots & vocalizations] tell what species [animals] belong to and avoid hybridized with other species. (180)

  • The selection pressure to reduce hybridization gradually disappears as species become more distinct from each other, stalling evolution before completion and leaving a residual hybridization rate. If the traits that separate species also function as social-inclusionary medals, then selection for social inclusion augments selection to lower hybridization and propels the evolution of species distinctness to completion. (180)  [Note: I don’t know what author means here by “completion;” it seems contradictory to her main theme of dynamic change. - RXS]

Chapter 12: Sex Differences

  • SRY—a major gene affecting masculinity in mice and men, one of the gender genes—-comes into play. If males differ in SRY, they differ in an influential genes or how male gender is embodied. And SRY is one of the fastest evolving of all known genes. This gold standard of masculinity differs greatly across species. SRY is also variable across populations within a species, so the expression of masculinity is not constant from place to place within a species either. (211)

  • [Primate] evolution is clearly caused by natural selection, not random genetic drift, because new DNA molecules replace old ones faster at sites where the difference affects SRY’s protein than at sites where the substitution doesn’t change the protein. (211)

  • The protein made by SRY consists of a central portion called the HMG-box. The portions to the left and right, the flanking regions, are called the N-terminal and the C-terminal regions. The HMG-box portion doesn’t change much—this conserved part binds to the DNA and allows the SRY protein to affect how the DNA is translated. The evolutionary action is in the flanking regions, particularly the C-terminal region. (211)

  • Evolutionary changes in SRY outside of the HMG-box affect the gendered body. (211)

Chapter 13: Gender Identity

  • Three rice-grains of brain in and around the hypothalamus are sexually dimorphic in males and females—SDN-POA, BSTc, and VIP SCN. Of these, only BSTc differs between transgendered and nontransgendered people...The data supporting this claim may be thin but should be taken seriously. (238-239)

  • The three sexually dimorphic neural clusters vary independently of one another, leading to eight brain types, not two...these eight types of brains can be plugged into bodies with at least two genital configurations...leading to sixteen people types. (242) [note to self; ask neuro friends their take on this; this also doesn’t provide for less binary genital configurations]

  • One clue is that gender identity can’t occur much earlier than the third trimester of pregnancy is the absence of sex-hormone receptors from the brains of mid-trimester embryos. It has become clear that the external genitals differentiate before the brain does. (241)

Chapter 14: Sexual Orientation

  • The results demonstrate [of 46 brother-pairs in Canada] that there is no gay gene in Xq28. (253)

  • I believe that if a gay gene were a major phenomenon, its detection wouldn’t be so tricky. (254)

  • Gay sexual orientation is far more common than a genetic disease, and it is not associated with any physical disability (see p. 284). (256)

  • All in all, the data [from many surveys] do not support uncritical acceptance of homosexuality as deleterious (258)

  • [Note: reminder, kin selection theory has been invalidated] Nor does helping at the nest account for why such helpers would specifically be gay or lesbian. (258)

  • Sex-antagonistic pleiotropic homosexuality is theoretically far-fetched, has no supporting evidence, and relies on the false assumption that a gay gene lies within Xq28. (259)

  • The various theories advanced, some of them absurd, all suffer from an uncritical acceptance of homosexuality as deleterious. If homosexuality is an adaptation, then the commonness of homosexuality is no problem. (259)

  • The question becomes why everyone isn’t homosexual, as in bonobos. Overall, an evolutionary theory of human homosexuality needs to explain the polymorphism in sexual orientation among humans. (259)

  • One study contends that “the long history of institutionalized homosexuality between higher status and lower status males,” usually of different ages by five years or more, produces “relationships [that] tend to socialize the youths into the adult male role, nurture and protect the youths and provide the basis for life-long friendships, social alliances and social status...Social status, a reflection of political strength and alliances, appears to have played a large role in the evolutionary history of human male reproductive success. (259-260)

  • Homoerotic behavior in single-sex groups would reflect not an absence of partners, but the adaptive development of same-sex bonds and alliances in the conditions when they would be most useful, which may resemble the social structure of early hominids. (260)

  • Homosexuality leads to various types of alliances among males. As already noted, heterosexual and homosexual practice occurred together in fifteen out of twenty-one cultures. Homosexual behavior has also occurred more often in agricultural than in hunter-gatherer societies, and more often in larger social groups. Homosexual behavior may be more frequent when it empowers political networks rather than independent individuals, and it may be expressed more in industrial nations after their demographic transition from high reproduction to high survival. (260)

  • A difficulty faced by a theory of homosexuality as a form of alliance-building, however, is that male-male alliances can be built without using sexuality. (260) [Note: this could be simply one of many strategies maintained within a population depending on environmental factors -RXS]

  • I conjecture that polymorphism in sexual orientation may indicate alternative strategies of same-sex relationships that are equally effective in achieving access to net reproductive opportunity. These alternative same-sex relational strategies are the counterpart of alternative between-sex mating strategies. (260-261)

  • At one extreme, if everyone is in continual conflict, a cooperator can benefit by avoiding the hazards of conflict. In this view, homosexuality emerges as a complex social adaptation, a product of positive evolution. (261)

Chapter 15: Psychological Perspectives

  • Psychologists operate with a medical model that pathologizes diversity. (262)

  • [Note: Author states serious reservations about this chapter formed by nontransgendered reviews of transgendered people.] (262)

  • Mildred Brown and Chloe Rounsley...offer the most reliable account of transgender narratives collected by therapists that I have found. (264)

  • These narratives show that transsexualism begins with gender identity, not sex drive. Transgender expression appears before puberty and well before any conscious sex urges. (265)

  • There is a tendency [among therapists] to emphasize extreme quotations...the account of transgendered people as self-destructively hating their bodies has been greatly exaggerated by therapists. (266)

  • The theoretical goal of therapists is to construct a picture of the “true transsexual” as a reference standard for a sick individual who needs medical attention in every aspect of his or her life. (266)

  • After puberty, the lives of transgendered mena nd women cease being more or less mirror images.. At puberty and on into adulthood, cross-dressing by transgendered women becomes more frequent and deliberate. (268)

  • [Note: there exists huge variation in trans experiences just as in humans]

  • As far as I can tell, the vast majority of narratives freely told by transgendered people among themselves...demonstrate that actualizan gender identity—not sex drive—is the primary motivation for transgender expression. Narratives also show that body morphing practices, such as sex assignment and facial surgery, are done primarily to promote relationships...that surgery could be sexually arousing seems preposterous and insulting to them. However, even a single case of autoerotic transsexualism raises the issue of inclusion...After all, it shouldn’t matter why a sister becomes a sister...At the same time, the sensational publicizing of autoerotic transsexualism poses a threat to the future of transgendered people [by undermining it] with bizarre sexualities. (273) [Note: use of “bizarre sexualities” is Author’s, not mine. -RXS]

  • Therapists sort their adult clients into the “knowing” and the “confused.” (277)

  • A transgendered person’s conception of what it means to be transgendered is influenced by whether the first encounter is with a therapist or through contact with the trans community. The therapy route is more stigmatizing, as a result of its framing of transgender expression as a disease needing a cure. (276)

Chapter 16: Disease versus Diversity

  • Any genetic trait is an investment that may pay a dividend in offspring at some time and place. Only an inherited trait deleterious under all conditions can be considered a genetic defect. Furthermore, a trait that is deleterious under all conditions is necessarily rare (because it’s continually being opposed by natural selection). Thus, to be a genetic defect, two scientific criteria must be satisfied—the trait must be extremely rare and the trait cannot be advantageous under any condition. If one of these criteria is not met, then the trait cannot be considered a genetic defect. (281)

  • [Author assumes] Genetic defects are automatically weeded out over time by natural selection. The only way defects resurface is by mutation from adaptive genes into deleterious forms. The degree of rarity for a genetic defect is set by a balance between the two rates: the rate of formation by mutation and the rate of elimination by natural selection. This level of rarity is called a mutation-selection equilibrium (281)

  • [Note: in table of relation between rarity and severity of disease on 282 based on % reduction in Darwinian fitness, none of the gender & sexuality frequencies fit in the range of biologically accepted “genetic defect” (282)]

  • Until now, no one has seriously considered the possibility that being transgendered is adaptive. (287)

  • Hypospadia—[a condition where the] urethral opening on the penis vents below the tip. Although the assumed normal opening is at the tip, a study of 500 men revealed that only 55 percent had urethral openings there, whereas 45 percent had the opening somewhere below the tip. If the opening is somewhere in the bulbous end of the penis (the glans penis), the hypospadia is considered minimal, and one in every two boys seems to have such mild hypospadia, although the point at which it is noticed at all varies among pediatricians. If the opening is along the shaft or below the penis on the body wall, it is called medium or severe, and the commonness drops in 1 in 1,725. (288) The next most common bodily state lumped under intersexuality is called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). There area dozen or more sub variety of CAH. A gene called CYP21 on an auto some (chromosome other than X or Y) makes a protein that catalyze the conversion of progesterone to cortisol, a stress hormone, in the adrenal glands next to the kidneys. If this gene is absent or blocked, then progesterone accumulates, which is androgen is in itself and is also converted to other androgens, like testosterone, outside the adrenal glands. (289)

  • So-called nonclassic or late-onset CAH is the most common, and refers to CAH that arises anytime after the first five years of life. (289)

  • In contrast, classic CAH is observed at birth in females as ambiguous genitals that may include not only a large clitoris but also fused labia comprising a partial scrotum and a urethra contained in the clitoris, making a micro penis, together with a uterus. In males, the genitals offer little clue. (289)

  • Two-thirds of classic CAH people also lose or “waste” salt because the adrenal glands don’t produce an additional hormone needed for salt metabolism. This salt-losing or salt-wasting version (SL-CAH or SW-CAH) is contrasted with the version applicable to the remaining one-third of classic CAH people, called simple-virilizing (SV-CAH), which does not affect functional salt metabolism. Without being given cortisol and other hormones made by the adrenal glands, SL-CAH people are likely to die as infants. Mor males die of SL-CAH because their genitals do not suggest a diagnosis that salt metabolism is at risk, whereas the risk in females is more likely to be diagnosed because fo intersex genitals...One tail of the distribution of CAH people does arguably suffer from a genetic disease: salt-losing CAH is genetic, painful, life-threatening, deleterious under all circumstances,a nd arguably rare enough to represent a mutation-selection equilibrium in the gene pool [, but people on the other side of the spectrum are stigmatized]. (290)

  • A form of intersexuality called androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) pertains to people whose sex chromosomes are XY. The Y chromosomes with its SRY gene helps the gonads to differentiate as testes and produce testosterone, while the X chromosome contains a. gene that produces receptors for testosterone. This gene, called Xq11-12, has many alleles (150 to date), which determine how much effect testosterone can have on the body. Thus, how much body masculinity is expressed by SRY on the Y chromosome depends on the outcome of its negotiation with Xq11-12 on the X chromosome. AIS is characterized by a very feminine body in an XY individual, as a result of receptors that don’t bind strongly to testosterone so that the body’s testosterone has little effect on the body’s appearance. AIS comes in three major classes. (291)

  • Complete AIS does arguably qualify as a genetic disease. Although not necessarily painful, complete AIS is deleterious to fertility and rare enough to represent a mutation-selection equilibrium. Partial AIS, however, could simply Inter grade with various non diagnosable body types that are relatively androgynous and would be scored as normal. (291)

  • In summary, the descriptions of genetic and hormonal aspects of intersexuality are more extensive than for gender identity and sexual orientation because intersex bodily states form earlier in development than sexual orientation and gender identity. The most common forms of intersexuality differ only cosmetically from nonintersexes. (293)

  • Notice the clever—and dangerous juxtaposition of homosexuality with dull-wittedness and attention-deficit disorder. You can’t cure homosexuality because there’s no disease to cure. (295)

  • Various interventions have been tried to encourage children to assume gender-typical behavior. The children simply reverted to cross-gender behavior in the adult’s absence or at home. In addition, the children didn’t generalize to forms of behavior not presented to the adult. (295)

  • Transgender activist Patric Califia recently commented, ‘None of the gender scientists seem to realize that they, themselves, are responsible or creating a situation where transsexual people must describe a fixed set of symptoms and recite a history that has been edited in clearly prescribed ways in order to get a doctor’s approval for what should be their inalienable right. (297)

  • When gays were asked [how many gay people would wish they were straight?], they often wished to be “cured,” but they say this much less today. (297)

  • The wording of the diagnostic criteria for GID [fails] “to acknowledge happy, well-adjusted transgendered people,” according to psychologist Kate Wilson. Paul Vasey [charges] that GID doesn’t meet the DSM-IV’s own criterion for a mental disorder, and that it “should not appear in future editions of the DSM.” Pathologizing transgendered people indirectly marginalizes the few health professionals who do work with his group. (298)

  • I believe being transgendered, like being pregnant, is best viewed as a normal human condition whose expression is aided by medical service. (298)

  • The issue is, rather, the pathologizing of diversity. Transgender procedures should be considered a medical service required for personal growth, not a therapy to cure a disease. (299)

  • Penis size at birth is the primary criterion for forcing a gender reassignment on the child. (300)

  • The phallometer [Intersex Society of North America] is a ruler with 0.20 to 0.85 marked off as female and 2.5 to 4.5 marked off as male...Simple. Too simple. (300)

  • Today, clinicians seem to be focused not on whether their approach to intersex people must be rethought, but rather on how to improve technique. (300)

  • For AIS patients, the immediate health risk is minimal. (301)

  • One theme of intersex advocacy is that an infant’s genitals should be left alone so that the child can elect later whatever plastic surgery he or she feels is needed. A second theme is that the child should be told the truth. Finally, intersex advocates stress that any procedure should benefit the child, not please the parent. (302)

  • This emphasis on treating the child to please the parents is typical of how LGBTI people are handled by the medical community. (302)

  • [re: circumcision] Imagine a species in which all males have a penis requiring surgical repair. (303) 

  • Drug companies have a staggeringly huge incentive to convince everyone that they’re sick. [Note: Author suggests health insurance incentivizes pathologizing.]

2019 In Review: 3 Surprising Lessons It Took Time For Me To Learn

in ,

Thank you.

 

(Estimated reading time: 2:14. Contains 448 words)

1. No alternate narrative will save us — you’re the best and only adult for this situation you face right now.

Sometimes when we procrastinate, we are really waiting for an imaginary expert “in charge” to fix it, squandering newfound authority by passing the buck, or distracting ourselves with low-hanging bad apples. Like well-trained dogs, we’re still waiting for permission that will never come, and training others to wait for permission fails to rescue our confidence. Guilt and anxiety often warn us of this familiar cycle, but we keep listening to dead peer pressure.

‘Perfect isn’t done,’ ‘set expectations’, ‘ it’s easy to win when you make the rules’, ‘perfect is the enemy of good’, ‘there is always someone better’, ‘you make your own happiness,’ ‘imposter syndrome,’ or ‘nobody is coming to help’: whatever you want to call it, no one else is looking through your exact eyes, piloting a flailing skin-bag churning with biochemistry. If the resources aren’t there, including your own abilities, you’re the only one to call for a re-try.

I’ve met many people unwilling to rearrange their priorities yet still expect change to happen, when it never comes. We’re teaching our children how we want to be treated when we’re elderly and vulnerable. We’re already the expert for our experience, and our existential power in the moment behooves us to act.

 

2. Desensitize yourself to uncertainty: better focus your fear to avoid worrying distractions.

Listen to your body’s warning flags of anxiety, fear, and panic; they might be trying to protect something you love but aren’t fully recognizing. Check your body’s not overprotecting you from a zombie memory. Is that fear a useful reminder or its own problem?

Law school gave me practice reducing a byzantine complex of inconsistent narratives into a sparse set of objective descriptions, but life experience gave me an album of examples for applying the issue to get what I want, and accurately focusing on what I love recharges my motivation.

Dissociation skills might help me calmly organize chaos, but stripping bare the “window dressing” reminds me to ask:

  1. what part of this eventually contributes to what I love?

  2. is this a savior complex trash-fire for my time, energy, & resources?

  3. what parts of this will I care about this years from now?

 

3. Life is simpler and happier after I accept that most of my gender transition is my own recovery from the long-term trauma of my body betraying me.

Like many immigrants, I learned to survive so I could one day live. At age 3, I first became aware of my gender sorting error and instinctively suffocated it to survive.

I even desperately underwent the extreme denial phase some transgender people experience, of “performing” my assigned gender in hopes of finally feeling in congruence, a multi-year project a close friend later typified “always felt like you were in drag.”

Eventually, it wasn’t only social acceptance or only medical intervention, but rather eventually learning that my gender was no longer a painful thing to hide, that fueled the big positive changes in my world. Things are less scary now that I’m no longer fighting the truth. I’m happier and more loved than I’ve ever been.

The root of bad writing?

in ,

Writers frequently present me with the following two problems that I suspect have a common cause: they worry too much about words. 1. "Why doesn't this work?" Make sure the words and sentences have muscle. Use the limited amount of time and space to say (or not say) the most you can.

I like the mental exercise of imagining the most impatient critic who is juggling five chainsaws while riding a unicycle across a tightrope with hornets flying around his nose. You want to grab his attention. You can't SCREAM at him because you'll sound like the chainsaws, but you can't mumble because he won't bother straining to hear you. The scream is the gimmicky, hyperbolic, idiom-filled, conspiratorial declaration. The mumble is the wordy, self-referential, disclaimer-filled, hesitant suggestion.

It's a crude analogy, but it works, because it forces you to ask of your sacrosanct writing: Why should your sentence matter more than anyone else's? You do not have the luxury of calling him your friend/colleague/relative/hairdresser, who might have told you your work is great and interesting, honestly. Why should he care? Why should you survive his triage of things that matter? Simple, strong, and efficient writing states the stakes, and gets his attention.

2. Writer's block? When a writer comes to me complaining that he can't articulate the nuance of a brilliant multi-faceted concept, or that this one sentence just isn't working, I often ask him to take his time and talk out loud to me what he wants to say. (Writers can be "she"s, but for the sake of simplicity and not using s/he and his/hers throughout, I'm sticking with "he".) My reason for this relates to Michael Billig's article calling for a re-assessment of the power of "ordinary words," where he says:

By using nouns or verbs in the passive voice, authorities can present their own decisions as if they were objective realities, rather than as actions arbitrarily taken by powerful persons.

Calvin: "I realized that the purpose of Writing is the inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog! Want to see my book report?" // Hobbes: "The Dynamic…

Calvin: "I realized that the purpose of Writing is the inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog! Want to see my book report?" // Hobbes: "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender Modes" // Calvin: "Academia, Here I come!"

Too often, when we write, we worry about pleasing our audience or sounding important. It's a sad reality that people genuinely solidify their opinions based on first impressions, or surface appearances, or showy credentials that have nothing to do with the work before them. Practicality forces us to bend to this tendency, but it can freeze good writing. When I'm developing ideas and writing with someone, often they give me a 30-word sentence that would make their vocabulary instructor proud. I simply say, "write down what you just said to me." Then see if the words have muscle and revise.

That's if you're lucky, if the words are merely jumbled and you can't comb through them. Sometimes you're looking at a blank screen or sheet, you have a deadline, and there is nothing you can do. The ink has dried up.

.

.

.

...in all seriousness, think of the trouble professional authors get into if they must force creativity on demand. There are tons of resources out there with tips on breaking writer's block. My favorites for fiction writers are to imagine the most surprising thing that could happen in a scene or if the scene did not exist. For academic writing, I ask my writer, what do you want the reader to leave this section thinking? What kind of spark or action or motivation or perspective do you want to create? Think not in terms of the information you want to deliver, but the short- and long-term impact you want to make. The answer is often over-ambitious, but it gets the gears turning, so that the writer can start jotting down related word clouds and figure out what information s/he actually does want to deliver.

Earlier in the post, I suggested that the root problem is that many writers worry too much about words. They worry about words so much, they forget to think about the ideas, even though many of them have brilliant ideas. To borrow Calvin's words in the comic above, "inflat[ing] weak ideas" is what often happens when you neglect reasoning and clarity, and all you get is an empty shell that cannot hold up to posterity. I jokingly warn people that I'll "Gertrude Stein" whole paragraphs, a reference to a (probably apocryphal) story that Gertrude Stein crossed out all the adjectives in Ernest Hemingway's manuscript when she was giving him feedback. One good reason for a "fresh pair of eyes" is not because you can't spot mistakes anymore, but because sometimes, your familiarity with the text can prevent you from cutting words that really need to go. Someone new with no investment and who is not best friends with that great phrase on page 8 realizes it has no business in your essay and will strike it. It'll be a cleaner and better piece, and maybe you can use it somewhere else. Think of it as going to a better place. After all, you're writing. You're not building the kitchen sink.

Required reading: George Orwell explains good writing better than anyone has and possibly ever will in his essay, "Politics and the English Language". Randall Monroe's ambitious exercise explains a space project using only the 1000 most frequently-used words in Up Goer Five.

Postscript: Yes, I know the ending two phrases to this piece are self-indulgent. Ironically, I'm not a very good writer, but among the precious few things I am unabashedly proud of are my editing skills. Also, none of the above is to be construed as professional advice. Every writer and piece has different needs at different stages and levels of detail.

Advice for Entering College Freshmen

in

What advice would have been useful for me to take before I entered college? My college roommate's little brother is entering Harvard next year. As a responsible big sister, she's asked our friends what advice we could offer him. My answer boiled down to a few points that I realized are true about life as well.

1. People matter. Talk to EVERYONE. Classmates, professors, janitors, presidents, lecturers, museum curators, the people in the kitchen (very important for quality of life), campus police, people sitting next to you. Introduce yourself and ask them how their day is. Remember their names or something they find interesting about themselves. Share your dreams (your actual dreams, not what sounds nice to people) and listen to theirs. It'll go a long way in making you feel comfortable and at home on campus. There's something interesting about everyone, and having a strong sense of community will lend you confidence on bad days when you're trudging around the Yard.

2. "Requirements" don't matter as much as you think. Go for what you want. Don't listen to anyone telling you what the "rules" or "usual" path someone follows through a concentration or requirement fulfillment are. You can petition your profs, tutors, proctors, etc. for almost anything, so long as you show you are prepared, you've done your research, and they won't have to babysit you. Go for what you want, not what you think you ought to do or might find "useful" in the future, because Harvard's going to give you great peers and a great analytical skillset, so whatever you're passionate about, you're going to be awesome at it regardless of what "useful" classes you didn't take.

3. Regardless of authority or tenure, people who know you more intimately can be more helpful. Professors make the class, but sometimes, for larger classes like government, TFs make the class. Many of the TFs in gov't and law have awesome careers elsewhere; get to know them if you can, and they can hook you up with great gigs if they see you're passionate. College gives you a wild menagerie of options--sometimes you'll need direction more than you'll need "contacts."

4. Seek help. Find a mentor, any mentor. Doesn't have to be in your concentration, year, hall, House, class, whatever. Just find someone you can talk to, who can help you grow or sift through your whirlwind of experiences.

5. Take the time to indulge in curiosity. Shop classes you're interested in but probably aren't or won't take because you don't have enough interest or time. Grab the syllabi and check out the assigned list of readings, and if you're intrigued, go and read the books to give yourself a taste.

Good luck to all the prefroshies, and to the rest of us.

Professional scientists, "lay people," and the truth

in

I recently heard an unusual, horrified outburst: "You'd let lay people administer a scientific experiment?" Scientists have the right to be proud, but not to be too proud to fail. It got me thinking about ivory towers and the supposedly-unassailable authority that media often assigns to science. PhDs and MDs are a smart group of people. They peer into incredibly complicated mechanisms, try to explain the nearly invisible, and hunt down vital defenses against devastating illnesses. Science is increasingly specialized now, and scientists certainly deserve to be respected for their intelligence, dedication, and insight. Scientists, however, are not infallible--a large and necessary part of scientific progress is failure. Otherwise, many important discoveries might not be made. A failure in science is just as valuable as a successful end product (though some frustrated researchers might disagree).

It doesn't matter who makes the discovery if the method is sound and the results can be reproduced countless times by peer review. The same applies to the concept of professional scientists versus amateurs: science is agnostic, and a result is a result no matter who discovers. It only matters how. Gregor Mendel was educated (and incredibly patient), but he lived in a time where there was no professional "accreditation" for scientists. He was just a curious friar who wanted to figure things out. The teenagers who win the annual Siemens Foundation Competition--including seventeen year-old Angela Zhang's cancer stem cell-destroying nanoparticle, or Joshua Kubiak's molecular scaffold that could make mounting chemicals used in medicine more efficient--do not have PhDs, though they were mentored by PhDs. Certainly, it's more likely for someone trained in precise lab techniques and unbiased research design, to produce a remarkable discovery or result (or failure). A bright high school student can still strive to do the same.

Science is always striving towards the truth, but we'll never know if we've reached it. Yes, science assumes there is an absolute truth we strive towards with each experiment. Each rigorous, unbiased (or as unbiased as possible), empirical result gets us a little closer to that truth. If we're wrong, we revise all our operating principles, and it's perfectly fine to change our minds because the empirical evidence has shown otherwise. Science has authority not because there are cartoon characters in lab coats titrating green, bubbling fluid between Erlenmeyer flasks, and not <i>merely</i> because the discoverer has a PhD.

When the media overemphasizes the authority of science in a discovery, it creates assumptions that anti-science groups rely upon to try to discredit the importance of science (and scientific results) in education and debate. That's what I find dangerous about media reports that emphasize that scientists were the ones who made the discovery, and science makes the finding (often misinterpreted) super-true. When this authority is misused to debunk the very discipline itself--for example, when people point out that science shouldn't be trusted because they get things wrong--it's because science has been misused by the media to mean truth and authority, when in fact science is often wrong, and sometimes needs to be wrong. (I'd rather not link to these kinds of sites and give them more traffic, but I am referring to, though not exclusively, the kinds of creationist arguments used against teaching evolution in schools.)

By privileging science as an amorphous, unassailable authority, media creates a mystery around the discipline that discourages people from entering or trying it. Anyone can do science, and that's what's amazing about peer review, because everyone learns together (ideally, instead of sabotaging a competing lab or making up your own data). Creating this kind of mystery is incredibly intimidating for curious thinkers who do not have scientific backgrounds to encourage them to pursue their passions. And sadly, when science is criticized for being "fallible" and less than absolute, these thinkers will be even more discouraged to ask the questions that science could have tried to answer.

Science isn't perfect, and that's because we recognize our own fallibility. Because we're human, egos get in the way, stubbornness about a beloved hypothesis can lead to interdepartmental fights or tenure denial, and that's why science strives to isolate human bias from experiments, and to compensate for our failings.

A result is a result. The degree of truth it contains can really only be measured by rigorous peer review using empirically obtained evidence.

Butternut Squash Soup (10 min, one pot)

in

A conversation with a friend involving immersion stick blenders leads me to post this easy, 10 minute one pot recipe. It's especially useful around the holidays because it's fast and comes out fancy-looking. It is easily modified for any root vegetables and vegetarians (just use water or veggie broth instead of chicken broth).

Ingredients are:

  • Solids: Onions, butternut squash, potatoes

  • Liquids: Olive oil, chicken broth/boullion (or water)

  • Equipment: Pot, stove, immersion blender

Instructions are:

  1. Sautee onions in the pot with olive oil, don't brown them.

  2. Dump chopped butternut squash (1 average size squash) and potatoes (3 usually) in there. Pot can be as full as 4/5 full by now; I wouldn't go more than that or you'll have really thick soup.

  3. Dump 3 cups of chicken broth (from boullion; veggie broth or plain water also works) in there.

  4. Bring to boil on high heat.

  5. Cover pot, lower to medium heat.

  6. Cook 20 min.

  7. Open pot, immersion stick blend the sh*t out of that thing.

  8. Optional: Add sour cream and a dash of freshly cut cilantro. Fancy!

  9. Devour.

Separation of Science and Religion

in

Science is agnostic. That's one of the things I love about it. Regardless of your creed or personal faith, science's one true tenet is the truth, and the pursuit of that truth. No matter how painful that truth, you can be assured that, if you were rigorous, thorough, logical, and demanding, that truth is still the best and truest understanding you could hope to achieve with the best of your abilities. It's been through the fire of variable elimination, of subjective bias blindness, of attempting to prove the opposite of the intended result. It has no opinion, it has no sympathy, and it has no permanency.

Truth is only truth for now, as we know it. If gravity were 'disproved' tomorrow (notwithstanding quantum mechanics) by science, we would still accept it (and we did, with quantum). That's scientific truth. It's not always easy or sensible to accept, but it is the cold hard gleaming truth. I talked about politics at a social mixer today. Nothing alarming happened, but the increasing politicization of knowledge, and recontextualizing science as a matter of faith, came up. How do we convince climate change deniers and intelligent designers of the truth?

I argue that science and faith can't meet in a meaningful way on their own grounds. They operate fundamentally on different principles, with different semantic meaning for the same things. For a scientist, truth is merely the best version of what we can tell based on thousands of reproducible experiments and tests, of hard self-questioning and denial of personal bias. In religion, truth is faith based, fundamentally. For many believers, truth is what their religious text tells them, or their religious authority, or what they feel to be true deeply in their heart of hearts. Trying to reconcile these two truths ignores that they can never meet: one is a religious truth and the other is a scientific truth. In the face of scientific evidence, religious truth is unassailable unless someone's faith changes in some way. This is confirmation bias at its most resilient.

This is no new thing under the sun: Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria is another way of putting it. In opposition, Richard Dawkins has been very vocal about John William Draper's conflict thesis, which proposes that religion will always challenge new scientific ideas and produce social conflict. But wouldn't it be better to let each religion and science go their own way, as fundamentally irreconcilable and isolated fields? If we can't get along, we can at least recognize in each other a shared wonder and love of the universe.

Patrilineal & matrilineal tribes illustrate gender gap in spatial abilities depends on females' role in society.

in

Gender gap in spatial abilities depends on females' role in society by John Timmer, on Nurture affects gender differences in spatial abilities, by M Hoffman, U Gneezy, & J.A. List. Two closely related tribes in Northeast India share many qualities but differ in one respect: one is patrilineal and the other is matrilineal. Three American researchers decided to see if they could use these research conditions to answer some questions about the innate biological differences between men and women. There couldn’t be a more perfect situation of isolated, biologically similar but culturally disparate polities. The first thing I thought of when I saw the article was, "They've found the perfect research situation."

1. Single salient characteristic, all other physical points being equal. To have two isolated groups of people who share lifestyle (stresses, labor patterns, etc.), diet, proximity, and genetics, yet primarily differ culturally, is a research designer's dream. Often you have to account for external factors that may cause you to conflate one effect for something else. In trying to answer a nature-vs.-nurture question like this, you want to get all your variables down to as discrete a level as possible. Unlike other studies that are deliberately taking into account multiple lines of evidence, from culture to economic status to physical behavior to diet, here we have a question that requires us to make sure culture is the only variant (alternatively, biology is the only variant, but that's not the case here).

2. Ability to analyze or account for variation within a population. To have multiple villages within these two (culturally) isolated groups, so as to get a decent sample size and intra-polity variation is fantastic. This means the researchers can better understand of how one group functions absent any expectations generated by their knowledge of the other group, because they can look at group of substantial size as a whole.

3. Decent sample size With 1,300 participants in the sample size, that's pretty good for statistical purposes, to contribute to the body of scientific work focusing on gender and reasoning. John Timmer is absolutely right when he says "abilities of the tribes in Northeast India are only ever going to provide a small snapshot of the full range of human diversity," because that's what science often is, the accretion of studies depositing their findings year after year until (ideally) a decent and more holistic understanding is born.

4. Objective, quantifiable test that does not rely on self-reporting. One of the things I always liked about archaeology was that all my research subjects were dead; much of any error came from us, because a 2.7 C/N ratio was a 2.7 C/N ratio, but only the researcher could decide whether a pelvic bone was remodeled enough to make the subject 45 years old rather than 25. One of the things I disliked about psychology (and some diet studies) was the reliance on human subject self-reporting. The ideal way to cut down on self-reporting or result-expectation errors is double or even triple blind design, where the research assistants don't even know what they're testing for. The test here doesn't have to worry about that; the only variable I can even think of is the incentive given that might influence what kinds of people you end up getting for the test, but I'm willing to gloss over that because of the sample size and the fragmentation of variables.

The researchers accounted for other cultural factors as well, such as education and property ownership, but my first reaction to hearing the research conditions was, "Jackpot!"

Judges jail youths for profit (NYTimes)

in ,

A recent federal hearing revealed that Judges Ciavarella and Conahan took more than $2.6m in kickbacks for sending teenagers to youth detention centres run by private parties. That's about 5000 juveniles who may have been sentenced wrongly, including

Hillary Transue was sentenced to three months in juvenile detention for a spoof Web page mocking an assistant principal...[Susan Mishanski's] son, Kevin, now 18, was sentenced to 90 days in a detention facility last year in a simple assault case that everyone had told her would result in probation..

This case hits close to home because I was assigned to represent the government in my moot court oral argument in my first year of law school. My task was to defend the constitutionality of juvenile court orders, so that they could be counted as part of the number of prior convictions required in order to reach an enhanced sentencing for a repeat violent crimes and possession offender who was now of age.

Juvenile courts are an interesting constitutional conundrum. The system keeps these proceedings private to the general public to not only protect the privacy of juveniles, but also to lock the records after they have become adults (I'm not sure if this happens in all states). Hidden from public scrutiny, the welfare of these juveniles is purely in the hands of officers of justice. Juveniles have the right to counsel, the right to proof beyond a reasonable doubt (in the eyes of the judge presiding), and other rights which can be waived. In this recent case, all the officrs of justice who might have intervened were too 'intimidated', according to the Marsha Levick of the Juvenile Law Center, to object. 

It extends, I surmise, beyond mere intimidation. There is little incentive not merely on the part of judges, but on the part of these officers (parole officers, public defenders, etc.), to act in such a situation. They are commonly inadequately paid for dealing with heavy workloads and a wide range of bewildered (joke Web sites) to problematic (violent) offenders. It is not merely monetary incentive they are lacking. They are working in a system that lacks the capacity to handle juveniles with the full moral and legal probity that we owe to all minors.

The NYTimes raised the question of requiring counsel (instead of allowing it to be waived) at juvenile proceedings. It may be a step in the right direction, but I fear it would not be enough.

via NYTimes (link)

Apple settles, to make SF store accessible

in ,

In law school, I learned about some pretty ugly human behaviour through the criminal and torts cases our class read. Sometimes I couldn't understand what could bring people to the level of a torts suit, and often I could only shake my head, because as my professor said, "in a lawsuit, the only people who win are the lawyers." So when I learned of the settlement terms of the August 2007 lawsuit against Apple by two plaintiffs, I was pleasantly surprised. The plaintiffs, using wheelchairs, had trouble accessing the San Francisco Apple retail store. Instead of seeking monetary compensation, the plaintiffs asked for something that would actually fix the problem.

As a result of the settlement, Apple will improve the accessibility features of the store and train employees in serving people in wheelchairs. It is nice to see that sometimes there are proactive solutions to lawsuits.

Full details: Consent Decree and (Proposed Order) (PDF), (via Ars Technica)

UGO Safety Brake for strollers

in

Whenever I think about baby prams, I envision that scene in The Untouchables with the pram rolling down the staircase in the middle of a shootout. My college roommate recently had a baby boy, and with a middle name like 'Danger', I fear for his pram days. James William Wansey, a student at the University of New South Wales, made the James Dyson Award shortlist for his UGO Safety Brake. His description says:

The UGO safety brake is an automatic brake system for strollers and prams that ensures that the stroller cannot roll away accidentally and cause injury to a child. The design relies on a wireless communication between the wheel hub of the stroller and the hand-held unit which is worn by the parent. When the stroller and the parent separate by more than two meters, the wireless connection is lost and the brakes pulse to bring the stroller to a stop. The brake system is powered by the rotation of the wheel and is fully contained within the hub of the wheel.

Wansey claims that 10% of children treated for stroller-related injuries in ER in Australia are from roll-away situations. My only response is, why wasn't this invented sooner? 

UGO Safety Brake (via Yanko Design)