Ontological Anarchy

I just ran across this news story today: Why boys are turning into girls:

A picture is emerging of ubiquitous chemical contamination driving down sperm counts and feminising male children all over the developed world.

If true, these larger issues I'm raising aren't going away any time soon.

Many species are able to reproduce without the benefit of males in a process known as parthenogenesis, so even the complete loss of the XY expression might not be the end of a species. I don't expect that to happen to us. Hopefully we'll come to better understand what the chemical processes of industry and medicine are doing to our environment and find a way to reduce or eliminate the impacts.

By all appearances, every male is female for the first 6 weeks of gestation until androgens create the male sex characteristics. So it seems to me that instead of looking at humans as neuter, the courts could consider that the default human blank is female and that the male sex expressions are variable enough that sex and gender is ultimately a simple matter of medical privacy. I said everyone should have a third choice on government forms where sex is indicated, but perhaps, we shouldn't ever be asking that question unless there is a compelling and justifiable reason.

For a long time the gonadal theory of sexuality held sway, and there is no disputing that some things do define a person's sex very clearly and without question. The ability to provide an egg and give birth, or to provide sperm and father a child, are fairly indisputable acts that define sex. But we can never use those legally as our criteria because many people are born sterile but are otherwise clearly male or female.

Here is another important story for my collection: Straight ex-spouses offer quiet voice for gay marriage at washingtonpost.com. I'm going to highlight a few passages that really struck me as important. The larger context of the story here is that there are people who are so afraid of the consequences of their sexual orientation that they hide it and ultimately marry people they don't love, in order to better "fit in". Well the people they marry are also victims of the larger culture of homophobia and they are telling their stories:

Carolyn Sega Lowengart calls it "retroactive humiliation." It's that embarrassment that washes over her when she looks back at photographs or is struck by a memory and wonders what, if anything, from that time was real. Did he ever love her?

"I'm 61 years old," said Lowengart, who lives in Chevy Chase. "Will I ever know what it's like to be loved passionately? Probably not."

And a gay man writes of his role in such a marriage:

"I married her because I loved her," said Webb, a lawyer in Orlando whose firm has an office in the District. "I married her because I wanted us to spend the rest of our lives together. We had lived together, and things were fine. I thought I had conquered that thing I didn't want to be."

I imagine there are people who can live a lie for their entire lives. No matter how much harm comes out of leaving that closet, I believe it is the only way forward. There are purely selfish reasons for heterosexuals to support this too. There is a chance YOU might wind up marrying a closeted homosexual and later finding yourself in a loveless marriage. If you have children or grandchildren, this could happen to them. As long as we tells gays "it is better to stay in the closet", than this is an inevitable consequence. We are so worried about the dangers of teaching children that homosexuality is natural that in our rush to judge it unnatural, we condemn some of them to a choice between living a lie or risking total rejection by their families if they own up to their identity.

Hi Mike,
I have read the entire petition. Sorry I didn't get to it til now. Before I discuss the content, there is a small typo:
My own experience tells me that I cannot *chose* to be different and love someone of a gender to which I'm not attracted.
This is an extremely thoughtful piece. However, I do think that it needs to be shortened because its rhetorical purpose is not only to persuade your audience to see things from your point of view but also to stimulate legal changes (or at the very least an engagement in the serious contemplation and discussion of these points).

There are a couple of good articles/essays contained within the petition. However, I think toward the end (and again, this is very thoughtfully written and researched and argued very effectively), you start to lose focus and start to try to reinforce some of your previous points through repetition of evidence you have already satisfactorily produced-- which lengthen the piece unnecessarily. I have both the time and inclination to read all of it. However, as you yourself note, the chances of it being read are slim. The chances, however, are much greater if a) it is much shorter and b) if you can get it published in newspapers nationwide (or submit it as an essay to Salon.com) and generate public/popular discussion about it, so that the Supreme Court of Colorado has no choice but to read and consider it.

Time to start shaking up a little of the unrest we had for women's suffrage and civil rights, Mikey.

Thanks Jen. It is time. The news from Pakistan this week is heartening. Pakistan Recognizes Third Gender.

Sometimes in my wanderings I keep circling the same thing. I know at times I get redundant and stop adding anything new. My 2010 resolution is more editing, less writing!