Conversations.

C is working from home today. I overheard a conversation with his boss. Afterwards, I said,

"I'm constantly surprised by the different styles for office communication in men and women. If I were having that conversation, I would have said 'thank you' and 'please' a lot more and just a landslide of conditional statements and compliments. Even when I edit my brother's internship applications, he gets angry because I say things like "such an honor" and "very prestigious" and "I would be so grateful if..." He says it sounds feminine and conciliatory."

"Does he get those internships?"

"They're competitive."

"And prestigious. Do all my former bosses like and respect me?"

"Do they?"

"Have you considered the possibility that he and I are just aren't very bright?"

The Corner of the Internet I am In Right Now.

"Frankly, while I know my cats’ biological sex, I can’t truly say I know their respective gender-identities anyway."

"My mother pierced my ears at a month old because she was tired of me being ‘confused’ for a boy. Now I have unprofessional-looking holes in my ears that won’t heal, and on top of it, I ended up being male anyway. "

Privilege

I went to yoga for the first time today. The teacher dabbed some essential oil on my forehead- I spent the entire meditation time trying to figure out what my face smelled like.

After class, someone else asked- it was myrtle oil. Myrtle oil is apparently good for the immune system and balances hormones to prevent PMS. I glanced over at the lone male in the class, and thought how awkward it must be to be in an environment where the default person is not your gender- where things cater to the needs of another sex as a matter of course. I pitied this poor man.

Then I thought again and got the giggles.

So, feminist gentlemen, if you want to get a good idea of your privilege, go to yoga or Pilates classes. There will be a focus on getting a smaller waist hip ratio and a series of exercises to strengthen abdominals weakened by pregnancy or damaged by C-section. If something has a self-defense application, the teacher will first look at you and narrow her lips slightly. All the tips on how to make exercises easier assume you have a protruding butt, curvy hips, and weak wrists. It must be a little awkward, guys.

Writing here is twelve times more fun than writing essays.

I mentioned much earlier that I tried the no shampoo challenge.* Unlike everyone else who tried it, I discovered that I, a person with long fine light colored hair, was pretty much the original market for shampoo.

*Part of the "I'm miserable and isolated, so I may as well abandon societal conventions" phase. Fun times.

This last month, one of the hippy beauty blogs I follow introduced a "no soap" challenge. I was repulsed. I read about it- out of morbid curiousity- and found that I am in year 16 of the no soap challenge. They allow soap for pits and bits, and to remove chemicals and grime, they encourage washing hands... what else do people soap? I know that every summer my skin goes to hell because of daily Technu baths and poison oak and sunburn and sunscreen-caused acne- I do terrible things to it, but I don't needlessly scrub it down with miscablizers every day. You've gotta make peace with your skin bacteria.

bivalentcy

I'm reading Extra Lives, a book on "why video games matter, and why they do not matter more". C recommended it as a way to understand his love of moving pixels.

I am possibly the worst canidate for liking video games ever. I have no patience for skills where there are no rewards for mediocrity. (or actual rewards) I am not dextrous. I have other time-sink indoor hobbies which gain respect from the adult world. I have your typical nerd-girl isolation and abandonment issues, compounded by nine years of the "I am more important than video games" fight. But the book is pretty good.

It is carefully argued and bewitchingly written- the sort of book that rewards you for playing freerice.com with the vocabulary I'd forgotten I knew. The interviews with game designers are fucking trenchant- as is the self analysis. (One of the roots of his periods of video game immersion is bouts of non-clinical depression; times of deep sadness due to unmet emotional needs. "I played this game for over a hundred hours because I was alone in a strange place and had no friends." is probably the most succinct reason I'm likely to get for why C played Stupid China Game until there was no more game unplayed.) Lastly, his descriptions of the most memorable moments in his gaming history are instantly familiar to an old D&D player- moments when some quirk of designer intellect and luck give a scene unexpected emotional resonance. I get that. And since the author sold his soul at the crossroads for a golden pen, they aren't mind-killingly stultifying to read, unlike every cool story from a RPG short of the gazebo attack.

So it makes its core argument very well- games do have emotional impact, they serve to fulfill emotional needs like other art, and the design process is deeply deeply flawed. I do hear the last chapter is basically a memoir of a six week cocaine and GTA binge that undermines some of these points.

But I don't know if I'll manage to make it to the final chapter. In college there were dudes- charming, interesting, amusing dudes- who A pointed out were not worth the effort of befriending. They could be aquaintances until the cows came home, but there was no reason to care about them, worry about them, or ever be alone with them. They, by word or deed, clearly did not think of women as people. Spending time considering the inside their heads made you feel... subhuman. I get the same vibe from this man. They are little things- he uses "sororal" as an insult; his test for game adequacy is whether a real life naked woman can distract the player; he repeats a joke which was probably funny the first time. Not only is his default gamer definitely male, so is his default human being.

My poor dear one attempted to show me why he loves the things he loves, and managed to tap into my fear of cultural misogyny.

Explanations.

So Kate introduced me to Health at Every Size. I read the first three chapters and the last two, and conveniently missed all the "moderate exercise" and "prevent insulin spikes" stuff that actually promotes health. Mostly I have been hanging out with the appetite directed eating, basically loading up on chocolate and fat. Nom.

Hey, other people who went to college with me on Christmas Island! Remember all the wall posts looking for women who wanted to lose weight? Yeah, that was for this study. The author explained that they would never permanently lose weight and that their attempts to do so were slowly killing them. Then she stole their lunch money.

I don't know what I was thinking about dieting before I read the book. I have poor instinct control. I can't keep myself from falling asleep at my bedtime, I can't resist mocking people who irritate me, I scratch my poison oak until I have bleeding welts... Sure, I could remain constantly vigilant about my body's attempts to sabotage my eating plan forever. I will totally be one of the 5% who can lose more than 10 pounds permanently. This is a good use of my mental resources.

Anyway, after a couple of months of such things, I weigh about what I always weigh. My clothes still fit. I've stopped buying ice cream on the way home from work because my desire for fat is so strong that I fantasize about drinking olive oil. My hair looks fantastic.

On the other hand, it's been hard, because it brings home how much female bonding is based off of body shame. Women talk about how fat they feel, or how much weight they've recently lost. I was always fuzzy on the appropriate social response, but now I just feel like grabbing them and shaking them while yelling "IT'S A TRAP! YOUR BRAIN IS IN A TRAP!"

So yeah, my apologies to anyone I've offended with that shit recently. Also, if I send you a book about fat acceptance, it's not because I think you're fat. It's because it's an awesome book. Thanks Kate!

moss and gender

So if you're like me, you've often thought "Why am I not more like moss?" The possibilities of being hydrostatic aside, why are our gametes so pathetic? Why don't they live independent lives?

Note to self. Write science fiction with characters who can be completely dehydrated and revived. Also, with gametes that pull their own weight.

The cheery answer is that sometimes human gametes do. Recall high school sex education, where they explained that sperm contain a chemical that causes girls to fall in love? That is a lie and I did not know that until just now! I swear I have other examples!

Right. When the sperm and the egg fuse, some proteins from the gametes are still present. These proteins have startling effects on placental and embryo development. Sperm proteins determine the degree of implantation of the placenta- its ability to obtain nutrients from the bloodstream. (This is one of the major problems with egg fusion. No egg is going to encourage aggressive nutrient use on the part of the embryo. ) Egg proteins determine head size.

Oh, but that's not really gamete function at all- we want to anthropomorphize our gametes whilst they are still alive. Fine, fine, here. It's an article on how men will someday become extinct!

Except they won't. At least, not until everyone else does.

You'll have to excuse my terrible lack of citations here- all my science books are in storage. While Google is great, it cannot search for "that thing about 3/4 of the way through the book, next to the mostly green illustration". As a quick refresher- all eggs have an X chromosome. The chromosome present in the sperm (X or Y) will determine the gender of the embryo (female or male). Thus, most males have XY, most females have XX, and intersex persons have a dizzying array of possible chromosomal and hormonal variations. When fertilization occurs, there's a swap meet among the chromosomes- known as crossing over. This has less impact on the person who will get these genes than previously thought- you use all your DNA- but it makes a big difference to that person's offspring, because they get only the one copy. Oh genes, always thinking ahead.

The article above states that as Y chromosomes cannot recombine, single detrimental alleles are not exposed to selective pressure and eliminated. As such, most of the Y is nasty junk DNA, with only a cheery SRY (order: make testicles!) gene cluster maintaining some level of professionalism. (But there's evidence that they can recombine with themselves. Cool.) Since the DNA on Y chromosomes is crap, they are steadily shrinking. Soon they will vanish!

Well, okay. They'll vanish as soon as the SRY gene cluster moves to another chromosome. And all of the Y chromosome data becomes useless. Then males as we know them will vanish, as the genes that make them male will be on a different chromosome. (Italics for sarcasm.)

But we've strayed from our discussion about gamete adventures.

All living DNA is mutating at a steady rate. Since there are three times as many X chromosomes as there are Y chromosomes, X chromosomes have more time to experiment. (This is one of my favorite evolution facts. Larger populations mean a higher chance of an interesting mutation. Higher survival rates mean a smaller likelihood that the awesome will be lost due to random chance. This is why I am a liberal: because social supports might foster cool mutations.) Every so often, an X chromosome will decide that it can't trust a chromosome it can't recombine with- so all eggs containing this X chromosome will reject all sperm with Y chromosomes. Think of those amazon eggs, rejecting the possibility of becoming male! The excitement!

That's my gamete adventures Hail Mary pass. Sometimes eggs reject sperm with Y chromosomes. One of these shows up about once every... million years.

But let's think about the implications! The mutation can arise in a male, but after the first male passes it along to his daughters, there will be no males with that gene. (Well, until the magical circumstances that I'll talk about later.) Without males passing along this X chromosome, there can't be females who are homozygous for the trait. Thus, even if the gene gives you superhuman speed and the ability to eat rocks, it can't be present in more than 50% of all eggs. You'd end up with a male to female ratio of about 1:3. And what an advantage to the X chromosome! A 50% increase in available carriers! After a few generations as a zero sum gene, becoming 50% of all the mammals in a population!

But maybe a plucky sperm (with a Y) gets hit by a magic bolt of cosmic radiation. It's enough to knock off the DNA that marks it as a possessor of a Y chromosome, so it manages to fertilize an amazon egg. The resulting dude is a biological jackpot. Since his sons can carry the amazon gene, their daughters can be homozygous for that trait. Their sons will have the magic Y chromosome by default. Sperm from any other source is quietly selected against, because an ever growing portion of the population will be unable to bear sons with the old Y. Soon, everyone is a descendant of this dude. He wasn't even that awesome. (Everyone is also a descendant of the first person with the amazon X)

Man, that's another great science fiction short story. Oh, and platypus gender is freaky.

So this process has happened several times in our past. Every time, we've shaved a little bit more off the Y chromosome. Right now it is tiny. It's basically the SRY gene complex (testicles!) the SRY gene complex upside down, in case recombining is gonna happen, and about 50 million base pairs of mad ramblings. (The X has 150 million base pairs that code for things like blood clotting and color vision.) In the future, there will probably be further shaving of those mad ramblings. If the next amazon X recognizes the SRY complex as the marker of Y-ness, then we'll end up with that old 3:1 gender ratio. There can be no magic supersperm to remedy that, because the resulting person will have no sperm.

Unless the SRY complex is swapped to a different gene. See above sarcasm.

My, this is a long post.

What advantage do the other chromosomes gain by letting the X chromosome be picky about what sperm to accept? Well, at one time there were lots of human like things wandering around so it paid to be choosy about which sperm to accept. Mammalian hybrids don't survive very well- another way that moss is cooler than us- and since female mammals bear almost the entire cost of producing babies, X chromosomes in eggs were under significant pressure to reject dicey sperm.

One last thing. Over the last five million years, we've shaved 100 base pairs off the Y chromosome. The thousands of genes that once separated males and females have been reduced to less than ten. Human males are basically ladies with testicles.

C and I debate about this all the time. That's why I make him look at orangutans when we are at the zoo.

At least I got it out of the bookstore...

Fifteen posts in January, two in February. That's the sort of trend we want to see.

So I went to San Diego last week to see... people without nicknames. What should I call y'all? It was lots of fun- C got to hang out with a former roommate and play video games and bicker in loud voices, I found someone else who follows my feminazi blogs; there was a dog with exceptionally soft ears and good food and slow lorrises and a tortoise fight. Also I bought some books. (Shocker)

One of these books is Madame Bovary's Ovaries- it's about how classic literature reflects things we've found about evolutionary psychology. It sounds like a worthy premise, but the book is terrible. There are no end notes, for starters.

Shouldn't such a book have a decent understanding of the literature discussed? I've read five Dickens novels- not one has a secret relative aiding the main character. The author states that this is the unifying theme in Dickens- like matrimony in Austen. Speaking of Austen- there are many ways to interpret Mr. Darcy arranging Lydia and Wickham's marriage, but I don't think his protective instincts towards children even enter the picture. There's an early 20th century theme where women discover that they are more than objects- please do not summarize that as ladies being happier when banging rockin' dudes. Let's just assume I yelled about sexism for about five minutes there.

I'm not even going to get into what he said about Lolita and menstruation.

The science is really formulaic. Did you know that adolescent males often disagree with their fathers? Did you know that males freak out about paternity? Did you know that stepparents and children often do not get along? Did you know that science has a reason for this? I was hoping for new concepts.

For instance, why not illustrate the grandmother principle using the Little House series? When the Ingalls live near their extended family little favors- like maple sugar, rennet, and help with the harvest- are constantly being passed around. During this period, all the children survive, no one becomes blinded or consumptive, and they eat things besides wild game and cracked wheat. Oh, and Proust survives with his genteel poor parents because his grandparents take them in. Grandmothers are similarly important to child survival in Toni Morrison and I, Claudius. (They survive. What more do you want?)

If you're going to talk about Austen, why blather about hypergamy? When you are poor, it is a good idea to marry a rich person. Duh. Why not talk about resource concentration due to primogeniture? It's one of the hidden themes of early European literature- generations of people willing to abandon most of their children so that a few can continue to be rich.

Why not talk about different theories for the survival of homosexual traits? Of forming complex social networks as safety lines, instead of just marrying the right dude? Of the advantages a female reaps due to cuckolding her mate, rather than just the disadvantages to the mate? Of limiting the number of offspring one has, delaying the date where one starts bearing offspring, and allowing bachelors and spinsters? Of generous uncles who neglect their own children?

My biggest pet peeve is in the mate selection chapter. He refers to what sounds like a fascinating study- comparisons of desired traits in mates across several cultures. I'd love to read more: please see no damn end notes. The author goes on and on about how males in most cultures seek young, attractive females, and females seek wealthy, high status males. He cheerfully explains that because of this dichotomy the war between the sexes will never be resolved and it is foolish to try. Then he states another finding from the survey to prove a point about the bitter rules society forces us to live by. Apparently every single culture has two traits that both sexes place in the top three traits one seeks in a mate: intelligence and kindness. Damn society for punishing us for stealing and cheating and driving drunk! The man is keeping us down!

Hold that little factoid in your hearts, chickens. Throughout the world, a majority prefers mates who know not to poke sleeping rhinos with sticks and are pleasant enough to let others know this is a bad idea. I have a friend (not, I think, a reader of this blog) who constantly bitches about how he can't get a girlfriend because he's short and doesn't have a shiny car. Dude. Dude. You lost your last girlfriend because you mocked her religion all the time, told stories about getting high at her work parties, and drove you both deep into debt buying coffee and computer games. You lost your last girlfriend because you weren't smart enough to think these were asshole things to do.

Keep in mind that nearly a hundred years of evolutionary psych was written by men- only now are we seeing papers on the terrible physical costs of motherhood to mammals, the other side of harem infanticide, and the benefits of mating with low status males.

Oooo, I think I'm supposed to talk about wedding dress shopping next week

I make good on the promises of my first post.

Say a djinn appeared and allowed me to make one bit of feminist theory reality. Would I choose the end of rape culture? Equal pay for equal work? Government subsidized child care for all? Rejection of unrealistic body images?

Nope, In the heat of the moment I'd probably blurt out "End bikini area grooming requirements".

On a quasi-related note: Amy and I were discussing our responses to inappropriate questions during interviews. Both of us had been asked if we were married, she was asked if she was planning to procreate in the immediate future. Interview experts suggest turning the subject to how you won't have any problems doing the work- that your child care issues are resolved, that your husband doesn't mind you being gone for months at a time.

Amy's response: "Shyeah, that's none of your business."

My response: "You know that question is illegal, right?"

We both got the job.

First post typed on netbook!

I read all these blogs about managing your finances, (a strange and uncharted territory in my family) managing your career and managing your household. I link to all of them from the Gawker site lifehacker, because I am a tool of the machine.

Anyways, it tends to be a bit male oriented. (As an example, they have about fifteen posts on shaving; making razors last longer, using hot soap as a lather, using a straight razor- but no mention on shaving anything other than your face. Ever.) I started wondering about the spouses of all these money-saving gurus. Do they do a lot of eye batting and sighing when their husband decides that they'll be brewing the laundry detergent from here on out?

So I searched for tips on marriage. Or I searched "spouse" "husband" "wife" and "marriage". There's a lot of dross: my wife talked me into eating more greens, how to time the dissolution of your marriage, adding emergency information to your phone. There's the same goddamn article on training your spouse using positive reinforcement- like Shamu! There's one on conversation hacks. By and large, there aren't any tips on say, broaching the topic of your newfound efficiency and keeping your beloved from giving you the look. The look says, "You won't help me clean the bathtub and you want me to do what with your razors whenever you shower?"

PS: A second friend of mine appeared on a Gawker website: while Brenny's Lego TF2 is much cooler, TMW's technique for pumpkin carving a.) counts and b.) is something I will actually use.

I pull my weight.

I tried to convince C that doing housework was important to me- using economic theory, studies that link it to more sex, and yelling. Yelling and crying. I also tried schedules, baby steps, positive reinforcement, and tips from large animal training. Anyways, I think made some progress, and I'd like to share my technique with y'all.

I quoted Avatar the Last Airbender.

Try that on your seemingly insolvable domestic issues, and let me know how that works.