Calling a Time-Out: on Gender, Evolution, and Neon, or "Pink Polished Primate Piggies"

A 5,000 year old burial site with male remains buried in a typical female manner suggests, to researcher Kamila Remisova Vesinova, that this burial site contained a man who was gay/transsexual. This was no Jimmy Castor Bunch troglodyte virilely grunting to himself in the mirror "gottafindawoman, gottafindawoman, gottafindawoman, gottafindawoman." What could possibly explain ancient evidence of such gender deviant behavior?

Well obviously, Mr/s. Troglodyte's misguided mama stumbled upon a small time capsule sent back in time by the diabolical mad scientist that the pink-polished J. Crew ad boy is clearly destined to become, thanks to the warped notions of his own mother, in a desperate effort to undermine the social fabric and family values of America and thereby validate his deviant gender-bending neon-pink polish preferences, before America even comes into existence.

Obviously.

Like Melissa Wardy of pigtailpals.com, my first reaction to Toemageddon was to roll my eyes at Faux-News and continue thinking about relevant things (like finishing my book before these Braxton-Hicks thingies turn into The Real Thing.) But--as Melissa points out--the story in this non-story, the Thing That Should Be Talked About, is:

...the gender constraint and gender policing going on in this hullabaloo. From the moment go nearly two years ago, Pigtail Pals has put a direct challenge to the marketing and products that I know to be objectifiying, limiting, stereotyping and sexualizing our girls. What we must know as parents and people who care about children – we must afford this same right to our sons.

So this troglodyte-turned-cyborg mama is calling a TIME-OUT. Fox Friends, you need to go sit in a quiet place, get calm, and think about the stupid things you've said that were wrong, and mean, and when you've figured out what it is you did that was wrong, you need to apologize. Nicely, like you really mean it. First, to Jenna and her adorable kid with the awesome toenails, and then to the rest of America for making us take the time out of our busy adult lives to address this ridiculous gender-bending behavior, and by that I mean, yours.

the HUPS blog

I'm not real invested in this, as I've made my peace with the fact that being an alum from Harding University is now something like a curious and unrepresentative factoid of an earlier life--and having a semester of adjunct work for the HU English department on my CV is even more unreal. (Unfortunately...but I almost feel like I'd have to go undercover to attend a Homecoming at this point. And my ornery streak makes it more likely that I'd wear my "this is what a feminist looks like" T-shirt while carrying a gay pride flag, and beg Brent to wear his collar.) But anyway: it seems that HU is on the cusp of a search for a new university president.

The folks at HUPS have put together a list of first-, second- and third-tier candidates. On that list of about 10 candidates, there is one female name. Here is what the HUPS bloggers have to say about her (putative) candidacy:

Let's face it: Cheri Yecke has no chance to become Harding's next president. Is it because she's too conservative? Absolutely not. One can't be too conservative for the Harding presidency. It it because she's too liberal? Of course not. She's Sarah Palin with a Church of Christ pedigree. Is it because she's incapable? No, she ran the state school systems of Florida and Minnesota. It's because of one reason and one reason alone: she's a she.

No one on the Harding campus today has a bigger rolodex than Cheri Yecke. Her political connections are impeccable, especially for the political connections the university would deem key. She has a PhD from the University of Virginia. She's smart, tough, and PR-savvy in a way that is currently lacking in the HU administration. Her fundraising abilities would be superb. In any other university, selecting Yecke as the university's next president would be a no-brainer. But Harding is no ordinary university. For the most part, it still must feel like its president can go into churches of Christ and preach, an outmoded view of CoC higher ed that needs to be put to bed. The job of a university president is to manage and fundraise. Period. Do you really think there's anyone better on the HU campus to do this than Cheri Yecke? We at HPS think not. But until the Churches of Christ get a little less misogynistic, she's hit her glass ceiling at HU.

It's not that this is (at all) surprising--in fact, I'm a little curious as to why there's even a female name on the list at all, since the HUPS analysis is (IMO) unarguable. But the real question this raises for me is a legal/theological one. I'm aware that religious institutions of higher education may legally discriminate on the basis of religion (though not, of course, on other bases, such as ethnicity or race.) So what would the inclusion or exclusion of a female candidate in the upcoming presidential search indicate? It seems that if gender is ruled to be outside the bounds of legal discrimination on the basis of religion, there should be more than one token female candidate--and they should have a real shot. So female candidates might have a genuine basis for legal grievance if things go down like the HUPS folks predict. But, if female candidates do not appear on the list--then the only way for that to be legal would be to make it official that gender discrimination is part of the religious practice of the Churches of Christ. This, it seems to me, would then imply strongly that (contrary to the noises people make about the "women's role issue" being a matter of secondary importance, a matter of opinion, not something we should invite contention or schism over, etc., etc., ad nauseam), this is a kind of admission that silencing women is at the heart of CofC practice.

I'm curious to see which way this will go.

eschewing our gender, yet again

Now dissertating in earnest, it is time to read N. Katherine Hayles' How We Became Posthuman again.

Hayles begins her story with a prologue on the Turing test. What everyone knows about this test is that it has become the litmus test for identifying the moment when machines become "intelligent" (intelligent=ability to fool human beings, which, all things considered, is a pretty poor benchmark but, zenme ban). What no one remembers is that there were two versions of the test in Turing's proposal, the first being that one would interact via computer terminal with two unseen entities, and depending solely on the electronically transmitted responses to your questions, you would determine--not which was human, and which machine--but which one was a woman, and which a man.

"If your failure to distinguish correctly between human and machine proves that machines can think," Hayles asks, "what does it prove if you fail to distinguish woman from man?"

Andrew Hodges, a biographer of Turing, argues that the intent for inclusion of gender test is to show that gender, unlike intelligence, is in fact dependent upon unalterable physical reality. Hayles disagrees; the cases as presented are parallel, and point to a willingness to define gender in terms of symbolic manipulation similar to intelligence.

All of this reminds me of the hermits' marvelous diversion, the “gender genie” test, a kind of variation of the Turing gender test. What does this say about gender and identity? I fooled it successfully, and rather grandly—now I am a man? No; but it does tell you something interesting about my identity, that is, I am a woman who can successfully represent myself through verbal/semiotic markers as a man. And perhaps that is interesting.

The crucial move, as Hayles points out, is “distinguishing between the enacted body, present in the flesh on one side of the computer screen, and the represented body, produced through verbal and semiotic markers constituting it in an electronic environment.” And this, BTW, is the advent of the cyborg... Why? Because technology is the bridge connecting the physical and represented body/ies. The test requires disjunction, therefore: “What the Turing test 'proves' is that the overlay between the enacted and represented bodies is no longer natural inevitability but a contingent production, mediated by a technology that has become so intertwined with the production of identity that it can no longer meaningfully be separated from the human subject.”

And, of course, Gender Genie's verdict on the above:

Female Score: 428/Male Score: 701
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male! (and in any case, definitely cyborg)

postscript to What to Expect

Yesterday Clare was vile and cranky, a little feverish, and very interested in poking at her ears. Adding it all up: "ear infection!" Took her to the doctor--ears are fine. So is everything else. And the mystery krank has disappeared overnight: today she is again a jolly baby pleased with the universe.

So, what's with the ears? In retrospect, I think I should have interpreted it as the latest of a series of intensive investigations in Clare's new fascination with Holes I Can Stick My Fingers In. It started with my bellybutton, then she found my nose, then she found her nose, and now she's found her ears. Of course, any incidental holes in the environment are fair game.

Now, I ask you...could there possibly be anything more "masculine"???

what to expect...

...from What To Expect.

Long long ago on a blog far far away I mentioned that I would be interested in keeping tabs on my daughter as she grew to see if all the anecdotal evidence I was getting from other parents on innate gender differences was true. Everyone I talked to, it seemed, was so convinced that this was so, and had so many charming stories about Billy and Susie to back up their convictions, that my own skepticism began to seem arbitrary and ill-informed: yet another wrong opinion about childrearing held by someone who had not (yet) raised any children.

This question still interests me, and as Clare approaches that enormous milestone, her first birthday, I am still wondering if I'm observing any innate feminine behavior, or not.

So as I was catching up on my What to Expect reading for month 12, one of the FAQ's addressed is "Gender Differences." The question is phrased, "We're trying very hard not to raise our children in a sexist way. But we find that no matter how we try, we can't induce our 11-month-old son to be nurturing with dolls--he prefers to throw them against a wall." What to Expect answers with a neurobiology-based innateness hypothesis, and follows up with detailing some of the behavioral differences observed between girl and boy babies. The authors hasten to add, of course, that this only applies to groups as a generalization and that any individual girl or boy may exhibit behavioral tendencies of the opposite gender. But then they go on to describe how boys become more physically active, and are better at math.

It was at this point that I began to be disturbed.

And then I turned the page, and read footnote 5: "Boys who display feminine traits early in childhood, like to play with dolls, and avoid rough sports are more likely to become homosexual in later life if their parents (particularly fathers) try to force them to 'be a man'...these boys become estranged from their fathers and, it is speculated, may ever hunger for male love and companionship in adulthood..."

Well, that just explains that, doesn't it.

Then I read that by letting Clare watch TV before she was 10 months old meant that she was going to become, obese, stupid, and immoral, and it's all my fault.

So I think I'm done with What to Expect now.

I still haven't noticed any particularly feminine behaviors from Clare this first year. When she plays with her doll, she tries to bite her face off. Not exactly nurturing. She does exhibit a clear and enduring fascination with buckles: car seat, high chair, stroller--she is trying earnestly to figure out how they work. Masculine?