January 20, 2005
How appropriate.
For Christmas, I bought my sister a book she had requested; Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution, by Leonard Shlain. She finished it quickly, and because she enjoyed it, she lent it to me while she was visiting last weekend. So I started reading it early this week, because I'd grown bored of my own book selection.
I can't believe how appropriately it fit in to that essay I wrote in my last entry, and how well it answered a lot of the questions I put forth. The book is, of course, all about human evolution, so I assumed there would be some similarity, but within the first twenty pages, I encountered quotes like,
Contemporary men and women are living relics of bygone days. In the short span of years that we have existed as a distinct species, insufficient time has elapsed to depart radically from the physiological and behavioral patterns we employed to respond to the conditions we found ourselves in at the dawn of our species.
That neatly explains the disconnect between our actions and our instinctual drives, and, as it implies that history will carry us beyond these behaviors, reinforces the idea that we should not defer entirely to the wisdom of our instincts.
Especially since we seem to have almost completely transcended natural selection (emphasis on natural), thanks to medical science, it's not really surprising that we haven't moved beyond possibly obsolete instinctual behaviors; we have no way to breed them out. Cultural mores are so firmly ingrained in our day-to-day behavior that we merely perpetuate them in our offspring. It looks to me like social reform is the only way to go.
On that note, I highly recommend Leonard Shlain's book. Also, be sure to take a look at this site. It's my new favorite website, and I'll be writing more about it later. Also, see
Posted by becka at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2005
On Humans and Instinct
In response to this article.
Before I begin, I want to clarify that I don't for a minute think I'm smarter or more in a position to know anything than the scientists behind that article. But from my point of view, I see a lot of holes in their argument, and in the spirit of thinking for myself and questioning everything, I decided to speak a little about it.
The article discusses various biological/evolutionary explanations for extant observable human mating behavior. I don't doubt the majority of the reasons they cite as the initial impetus for various behaviors. However, I think that placing responsibility for human behavior directly and entirely on biological drives ignores several important aspects of contemporary humanity.
Biologically and historically speaking, certainly males and females have behaved in specific ways in seeking a mate with the intended goal of reproducing, thus passing on their genes, and ensuring that any offspring are healthy enough to survive to sexual maturity and can reproduce themselves. I am not questioning that. But to say that these incentives are still the main driving force today is to ignore cultural mores and pressures that I believe often predominate over instinctual drives.
Take, for example, women who starve themselves in order to follow societal urges to be thin. While one could argue that this is in an attempt to attract a mate and thus reproduce, it more importantly defies the cardinal biological instinct: that of seeking food, first and foremost. Biologically, it makes no sense. A starving woman is a weak woman. A weak woman cannot bear strong, healthy children. Though the ease of procurement of food and medicine in contemporary Western society means that very few people actually die or are even kept from reproducing by such practices, this is very clearly counter-instinctual behavior.
Instinctual drives are directly related to the Darwinian theory of evolution and survival of the fittest. Every organism strives to the greatest of its ability to perpetuate its genes, but if it is in some way weaker or less capable of survival than another organism, the other organism will thrive, often at the expense of the first. If two humans cannot reproduce together, that would seem to indicate that their genes are not meant to be continued, either combined, or in the case of individual sterility, at all. And yet, thanks to fertility clinics, surrogate mothers, in vitro fertilization, and all sorts of other "unnatural" things, many of these couples are successful. Certainly this could be perpetuated by biological drives to reproduce, but the resulting behavior is far from directly instinctual, and indeed might be more likely to produce weak or unhealthy offspring.
Although there are certainly many couples struggling with the inability to conceive, a rapidly increasing number of people have the opposite goal: to engage in sexual activities and prevent conception. Growing numbers of heterosexual couples in industrialized societies are using contraception, especially those who are younger and in the prime of their fertile years, the years when, biologically speaking, they should be trying their hardest to reproduce. Obviously fecundity is no longer necessarily a primary objective for an individual. This shows how cultural phenomena in many cases render biological impulses obsolete. While they still may be the driving force behind choices made by those seeking companions, it is possible that much of this is due to cultural habits, rather than a deep-seated biological drive.
To explore the concept of "cultural habits," I want to turn for just a moment to some ideas presented by the theory of semiotics, the study of the role of signs (the word for a pairing of signifier and signified) in society and psychology. The very nature of the relationship between signifier and signified is that it is invisible. Once a connection is established, the signifier itself is enough to conjure the signified, with no decoding necessary. Because of its invisibility, this connection is very hard to break, even if the relationship is no longer valid (or in cases of modern media exploitation, never was).
This is especially true with long chains of signs. To take an example from human biology: It's no secret that many men prefer women with large breasts. Let's explore possible intellectual reasoning behind that. The arrows represent perceived logical relationships.
large breasts --> good health and the ability to breastfeed --> well-fed offspring --> strong offspring --> children will survive to sexual maturity --> ensured continuation of genes --> a good thing.
Once the connection between large breasts and a positive outcome is established, the inner links of the chain fade into obscurity, leaving the chain like so:
large breasts --> a good thing
Once the sign is established in one generation, it can then be passed on to later generations, who may never understand the chain of connections between original signifier and signified. The signs become entrenched in the culture, and thus the impetus becomes culturally motivated, rather than biologically. This is especially true once the biological necessities have been invalidated by technology (for example, a woman no longer has to be particularly strong in order to bear children, thanks to medical advances). In this way, certain signs become like the appendix: still present, but serving no apparent function, and are only evident when they are causing trouble.
(Of course, there are a number of other theories as to why men in general like breasts, and I think most of them hold some degree of truth, but that does not necessarily invalidate the sign relationship.)
While biological impulses may be initial driving forces behind certain common human preferences, it is also worth observing the ways in which we attempt to fool them. It has been theorized that certain taste preferences, like a preference for sweet-tasting things and an aversion to bitterness, were methods for identifying potentially harmful foods. Color, too, could act as a way to identify the freshness of meat, for example. The flavor and dye industry, however, makes those identifications moot. Anything can be made to taste like a MacDonald's french fry while displaying a vivid spectrum of colors never found in nature. Since so much of the food we consume today is artificially flavored and dyed, this is another example where we can't necessarily trust our instincts.
Indeed, many evolutionarily valid biological indicators may be misleading in today's societies. To return to the breast example, large breasted women are more at risk for serious breast cancer than small breasted women, at least in terms of detection. Large breasts also contribute to back problems, and numerous other daily disadvantages. Many large-breasted women (especially those comfortable enough with themselves to not require reassurance in the form of masculine attention) will tell you that they would gladly trade their breasts away. And yet men continue to prefer, on the whole, large breasts. While large breasts may have been desirable when health and ability to provide proper nutrition were more difficult to obtain, those biological drives can be said to be taking us in the wrong direction today.
A further example of the disconnect between biological impulses and actual behavior is menstruation. Many men are terrified of or disgusted by menstruation, but one would think that biological impulses would make a man want to be aware of every point in a woman's cycle in order to know when she is ovulating. Knowing when she is menstruating would be an obvious starting point, since it is the only clearly visible point in the cycle. Instead, other factors, psychological, social, or otherwise (fear of what they don't understand? envy of a woman's ability to bear life? fear of blood as a symbol of mortality? cultural pressures attempting to divide the genders?) clearly outweigh that biological drive.
While none of these examples directly contradicts the theories put forth in the BBC article, they do demonstrate how societal demands often take precedence over instinct, and how current practices undermine our trust in what instincts we still have. This combination makes biological motivation a shaky base for those theories.
However, those are only a few of the reasons I find the article to be somewhat lacking. It also almost completely ignores important mating impulses that are common in today's societies. It completely fails to explore in any kind of depth the idea of homosexual relationships or relationships formed with a mutual desire to refrain from reproduction. There is one two-sentence paragraph mentioning the possibility of such relationships, but it does not even acknowledge that the issue may go deeper than that.
Even more ridiculous is the explanation they give for women who seek men with social skills and a sense of humor. The reason they give: The Scheherezade effect; the idea that women use conversational tactics to maintain a man's interest. This is one of the shoddiest explanations in the bunch. Speaking as a woman, I have found it far easier to hang on to a man who has no conversational skills, because all I have to do is get naked and he'll stick around, whereas an intelligent man requires much more from me. I happen to prefer a man with conversational abilities not because it's a way to keep him, but because otherwise I get bored. Explain the biological impulses behind that, please?
(sidenote: Is it possible that this is an indication of our collective emotional evolution as a culture? Take the metrosexual craze of a year or so ago; many women are beginning to find themselves attracted not to burly, muscular, protective types, but to sensitive, clean, emotional men, who fit much more neatly into our information and language-based society. Instead of seeking a man who can protect and provide for her physically, since food acquisition has become so easy, a woman may seek a man who can be an emotional companion, allowing both partners to advance intellectually. Are we moving from a physical culture to an intellectual culture?)
I wouldn't mind so much if the article had even hinted that there was more to our romantic and sexual choices than they delineated, but they scarcely utter the possibility that while these biological impulses may rest at the root of our desires, things like conscious logical reasoning, artificial reproductive selection, subtle cultural metamorphoses, and same-sex orientation are just as important, if not more so. As sentient beings, we do not function entirely on instinct. It is foolish to relate our actions directly to ancient biological drives; cultural pressures provide far more direct guidance for our behavior. While those cultural impulses may rest on the foundation of biology, it is entirely possible that this is merely out of habit and not out of necessity.
Posted by becka at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
January 09, 2005
Followup to Have Miscarriage, Go to Jail
This is an interesting article, relevant to the article I previously talked about. Instead of mindlessly arguing against the bill, this short article, while not defending it, does give the reasoning behind it. Apparently the proposed bill is to prevent cases like this, where an unready mother gave birth and abandoned the child, leaving it to die (or possibly killing it herself).
That begs the question, what does that have to do with miscarriages, which are defined by the loss of a pregnancy before 20 weeks; not exactly the same as an abandoned newborn.
Of course, I mainly read Plastic for the responses, and as one poster pointed out, Cosgrove, the main proponent of the bill, is now clarifying his wording to apply only to stillborns, rather than miscarriages.
That is a rather important distinction; one can only hope that the bill will be stated clearly enough that it cannot be used for anything other than that proposed purpose.
Posted by becka at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2005
Have Miscarriage, Go to Jail?
Democracy for Virginia: Legislative Sentry: HB1677 - Have Miscarriage, Go to Jail?
Oh. Dear. God. (Make that: Oh dear. God.) This article is in response to a proposed bill in Virginia that requires women to report miscarriages within twelve hours to "the proper law-enforcement agency" or risk prison time and a fine. Now, I'll be honest and say I don't know all of the details, and I don't live in Virginia, so some might say it's none of my business. But if it's possible in Virginia, where my grandmother and the vast majority of my extended family live, then it's possible anywhere.
What's next, honestly? I hate fear-mongering as a technique to rise people to action, so please understand that I am attempting to induce outrage, not fear. But seriously. Now, not only are there people who want to keep us from being allowed to terminate a pregnancy that is contained entirely within our own body, but suddenly even the very act of conception and the possible accidental termination thereof (which is more common than you think, corroborated also at this link) becomes someone else's business. Big Brother much?
Now I know no one (intelligent) really believes that every sperm is sacred and every egg must be fertilized. But how is that really different from what happens when a sperm and an egg meet and some cells begin to mutate? Are we going to begin awarding cancers and tumors the status of human beings?
As terrifying as the breach of privacy is, what's really the issue here is the precedent it sets. This takes one major step towards the establishment of a foetus as a human being which, as you may imagine, takes a step towards the confiscation of a woman's right to choose. You cannot choose to kill a human being. As for right now, you can still make choices about your body and what happens to it. And if, during the natural and healthy act of sex, an egg and a sperm meet up, and the woman in whose body it happens doesn't want to face nine months of puking and backaches and bloating, I think she should be allowed to make the choice to not go through that.
Now I don't pretend to think I have all the answers. I don't think in black and white. I don't know if there's a line we can draw where an unborn child crosses over to humanity. But I do know that a clump of cells that could not survive outside a woman's body is not a human being. And an unborn baby 8 months in the womb, mostly fully formed, and the chance to survive with medical help were it to be removed from its mother is.
Where that leaves us? I don't know. But I find it interesting that Republicans, who claim to want less government, are the very people who want the government snooping into my uterus, and if that's not The Man poking his nose into every nook and cranny, then I don't know what is. Funny that...
Posted by becka at 01:50 AM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2005
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is my latest addiction. I went on an extensions rampage recently, installing every Firefox extension that even mildly appealed to me. StumbleUpon was one of them, and I'm damn thrilled with it. I got Aaron (my boyfriend) addicted too. It's a virus!
But seriously, it's quite fun. As a Firefox extension, it adds a little toolbar underneath the address bar. You fill out a bunch of information about yourself (pretty sure they don't sell it, but there's not much personal stuff anyway) and then press the little "Stumble" button; it takes you to random, user-suggested sites that fall into categories you selected, which you then review with thumbs-up or thumbs-down, training it to know what you like. So far something like 95% of the websites it has taken me to have been really appropriate for me. I've found some cool stuff that way; and it's also taken me to established favorites like The Onion, and Bitch.
It also kind of functions as a meeting/community type place of the Friendster genre, but I'm somewhat underwhelmed with that aspect of it. I don't need more places to meet people, personally, and it just introduces a whole competition aspect: who has the most friends? wooOOOoooOO. I understand the concept behind it; the more people you list as friends, the more appropriate your random website selections will be, because, of course, all of your opinions are exactly the same as those of your friends. But it just doesn't do it for me.
Aside from that, my only complaint about StumbleUpon may just be because I'm a dumbass, but it took me forever to figure out how to use it to its full(er) potential. It's not very straightforward, and I couldn't find explanations anywhere. However, that only matters if you want to get beyond the "click to see a random website, click to review it, click again to see another random website, repeat ad infinitum" phase. Which, if you ask me, isn't worth going beyond anyway. (Not that I'm not trying...)
So, in conclusion, if you're like me and tend to stare at your computer blankly on slow nights, willing it to bring you a new news story, updates in your friends' journals, or exciting emails, StumbleUpon may be for you.
You can ooh and awe at my reviews here. :P
Posted by becka at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)
Wired News: An Obscene Waste of Energy
Wired News: An Obscene Waste of Energy
This is a very interesting article about how the FCC should be done away with. I have to say, I find that to be an intriguing possibility. I mean, I suppose those of my ilk are in an awkward position, because we don't really think of Janet Jackson's nipple as obscene per se... But still. I've never really believed in one entity having such power over what we are and are not exposed to. Networks can be policed by public opinion, people writing letters and suchlike, but it's ridiculous to be preemptive about it.
Again, I guess I can't speak for much of America, because I really don't understand why we're so afraid of breasts. Everyone who was breast fed has fondled a pair. And sex? If you exist, someone must have had sex to bring you here. Why be so terrified of it?
I'm getting off-track, aren't I? It all comes down to my complete lack of understanding of Republicans and religious fundamentalists.
Posted by becka at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)