Up@dawn 2.0

Sunday, June 30, 2019

Trading Races


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=FUy4wC2k-WI


Not enough labels, "the human experence is infinite"

To capture the evolving ways in which we describe ourselves, we asked readers to tell us who they are. More than 5,000 people responded. The words they used show us that ‘the human experience is infinite.’

Marta Peters had always known that she liked both boys and girls, but growing up, she had no interest in actually kissing anyone. She had trouble relating to her friends when they talked about their crushes, and she could not relate to movies in which characters jumped into bed together.

In high school, Ms. Peters began using the website Tumblr, a social media platform popular with teenagers who post about everything from anime to feminism. There, she discovered a language that went far beyond the familiar labels for gender identities and sexual orientation. She learned about asexuals, who do not experience sexual attraction, and gender dysphoria, the distress people feel when their gender identity is different than the sex they were assigned at birth.

Ms. Peters, who recently graduated from Penn State University, today identifies as biromantic and demisexual. She can fall in love with more than one gender, but does not experience any sexual attraction unless she has first formed a strong emotional bond.

“There are a lot more of us than you might think,” said Ms. Peters, 22. “We make all these labels to try to describe the human experience, but that’s kind of impossible because the human experience is infinite.”

From those who responded to our callout, here are the most commonly used words by each generation.

Baby Boomer
gay
lesbian
straight
queer
bisexual
heterosexual
cisgender
transgender
bear
asexual
dyke
butch
open
nonbinary
gender-fluid

Generation-X
gay
queer
lesbian
bisexual
straight
pansexual
cisgender
nonbinary
femme
transgender
dyke
butch
heterosexual
asexual
bear

Millennials
gay
queer
bisexual
nonbinary
lesbian
pansexual
transgender
asexual
straight
cisgender
femme
heterosexual
genderqueer
gender-fluid
bear

Generation-Z
bisexual
gay
queer
nonbinary
lesbian
pansexual
asexual
transgender
straight
cisgender
genderqueer
heterosexual
bear
gender-fluid
femme

[Tell us who you are: We want to know how you identify yourself.]

Less than two decades ago, those who struggled to understand their sexuality and gender identity had only a few mainstream adjectives to describe themselves — straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. But for the generation of Americans who are coming of age amid social media, marriage equality and a growing understanding of gender fluidity, today’s descriptors are far more wide-ranging... (nyt continues)

"Just never read books"

SAD!

Pearls Before Swine Comic Strip for June 30, 2019

WIlberforce-Huxley Debate

Speaking of religious identity, as we will be this week...

On this day in 1860a debate on the merits of the theory of evolution took place at Oxford University. It occurred as part of the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species (1859) had just been published seven months earlier, and was hotly contested by scientists and theologians on both sides of the issue. Noted biologist Richard Owen had written a scathing review of the book in the Edinburgh Review, and he also coached the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, in his condemnation of the book. On the pro-Darwin side of the issue were several liberal theologians — including mathematician and priest Baden Powell — as well as scientists Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Henry Huxley. Huxley was such an ardent and vocal supporter of evolutionary theory that he came to be known as “Darwin’s bulldog.”
Bishop Wilberforce, one of the most famous orators of the day, was to be one of the speakers on Saturday the 30th. The hall was packed and hundreds lined up outside to hear the discussion, which came to be known as the Wilberforce-Huxley debate (or the Huxley-Wilberforce debate, depending on whose side you were on), even though there were many contributors to the discussion. There is no transcript of the day’s events, but one exchange has reached the status of legend. Wilberforce asked Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his father’s side or his mother’s, and Huxley retorted that he was not ashamed to have a monkey as an ancestor, but he would be ashamed to descend from someone who used his great gifts to obscure the truth. Most accounts include some version of this story, but according to Hooker, that may have been all that most people heard. In his report to Darwin (who was too ill to attend), Hooker wrote:
“Well, Sam Oxon got up and spouted for half an hour with inimitable spirit, ugliness and emptiness and unfairness … Huxley answered admirably and turned the tables, but he could not throw his voice over so large an assembly nor command the audience … he did not allude to Sam’s weak points nor put the matter in a form or way that carried the audience. The battle waxed hot. Lady Brewster fainted, the excitement increased as others spoke; my blood boiled, I felt myself a dastard; now I saw my advantage; I swore to myself that I would smite that Amalekite, Sam, hip and thigh if my heart jumped out of my mouth, and I handed my name up to the President as ready to throw down the gauntlet.”
Hooker was the closing speaker of the discussion, and he felt that his speech had carried the day (of course, Wilberforce and Huxley each felt the same way about their own speeches). In the end, though each side claimed victory, most accounts chalk it up as a win for the Darwinians. WA

Saturday, June 29, 2019

Birtherism again?!

Is Mayor Pete making an Identity point? Or pointing to both the virtues and the limits of Identity politics?




Pets, Pests And Food: Our Complex, Contradictory Attitudes Toward Animals

Another Hidden Brain episode raises identity questions. Who do we (especially we Americans) think we are, when we treat pets as family members and pretend they're just like us? (This was fun listening, on my Saturday bikeride.)

Does living with animals really make us healthier? Why do we eat some animals and keep others as pets? This week on Hidden Brain, we talk with psychology professor Hal Herzog about the contradictions embedded in our relationships with animals.