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Out of gas, and other stories
Mme. S wrote that
You are the first person I have ever heard say, "her car ran out of gas". I find it fascinating that your words seem to relieve her from responsibility for gas and in essence blame the car for the error. It seems a very protective (of Ysabel) use of language. But then, maybe that's just the way y'all say it in Boston.
No, it's me exercising that need for precision that pops up at the oddest times. I'd never say "Ysabel ran out of gas," which I presume is the phrase Mme. S was expecting. People don't use gasoline for fuel, ergo they cannot run out of gas. I suppose if they'd been eating beans for a while and then stopped, they could run out of gas, but let's not be vulgar, shall we?
I am nastily busy.
I keep arriving at work late despite myself (bad sleeping habits) and I am falling behind. For the last several days I've intended to stay at work longer than usual, but things keep happening. On Tuesday both Marc and Nonelvis (who, you'll recall, hadn't seen me for four days) wanted to have dinner, so we did. On Wednesday - well, Wednesday is mouth organ day, so I have to go home immediately after work and start writing it. Today I figure I'm going to work late, but Molly has sent me email asking if we can get together, and I haven't seen her in a while either.
It's not so much that I have actual deadlines as a lot of projects I want to work on and feel like I should be working on, and I feel time slipping away.
And this weekend I begin rewriting the novel at long last, so at that point a lot of my other activities will need to be curtailed. It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to tie up as many loose ends as I thought before then.
Speaking of mouth organ ....
I don't normally mention it in any specific way. The bio page tells you about it, and I generally mention working on it on Wednesday nights because it's part of my life, after all ... but I assume the audiences don't overlap much, and therefore it's rare that I talk about its content here, or urge you to go read it.
This week's article is one of those exceptions. For one thing, it's in the first person, and it's almost entirely my own introspection - not mouth organ's usual fare. For another, it's me talking about gender ... and since a lot of this came to the boil during the Colorado trip, if I hadn't used it there, I'd have written an almost identical entry here.
Think of it as a journal entry that's in an unexpected location.
I've gotten some mail this morning about gender, and also about my previous entry - and one message that was about both. In our last installment, I said:
"It occurs to me that Cog is a stereotypically male design - building a somewhat frightening, shiny toy - and that Kismet is a stereotypically female design - building an infant you coo to - but that's probably just me being nasty."
David replied:
No. At least it's both of us being nasty, because I agree completely. Maybe the combined project will gain a scale that's both useful, in the sense of performing valuable work (which is, I'm sure, Cog's ultimate goal), and accessible to people on some emotional level.
I didn't say it at the time, but I believe that Kismet, and its female designer, are tempering influences on the Cog project - and Brooks (who is known for having women in his projects) is smart enough to realize that and find it desirable. I didn't say it, because I would be drawing conclusions with no evidence; I've never set foot in the AI Lab, much less discussed gender policy with Brooks. But science is still a very male-dominated club. I take this as merely a more direct example than most that having women in the club is a good idea on many levels.
Patrick wrote:
What if sentient, mechanical beings were the next step in the evolutionary process? That this was the way that all sentient species beyond our own came into being?
[...]
I wonder if we have this urge to build intelligent "machines" because it's programmed into us to bring about the "next step" in evolution.
Ys and Amy made similar arguments - and my response to them was basically the same: First off, it has never before been necessary for a species to create its successors. To me, that seems to indicate that "evolution" is not what's happening here.
More importantly, if we create a successor that eventually results in our own extinction, I am personally not going to like the concept even if it is good for the universe and the natural order of things.
Unless it happens well after I die, in which case I don't care. Yes, I am unabashedly selfish here. I told you - it all comes down to fear of mortality, fear of displacement. And I believe that my view is more typical of humans than the calm, accepting stance Ys and Amy offer.
And now back to gender.
Aet wrote, in part:
It always surprises me when you choose to make a big deal out of matters that sound quite everyday to me.
Long hair? But so many males sport long hair nowadays.
And every third male seems to wear at least one earring. So what would be more natural than to experiment to be noticed at all?
Makeup? Well, back in 1988 I was surprised when my Vietnamese brother-in-law borrowed some make-up (including the lipstick) to make himself beautiful for his wedding. But since then the idea has grown on me.
Only colored nail polish gave me bit of a start - not when you were writing about it, but when I saw your hand on a picture.
May be the reason why some of your complaints irritate me so, is not in the issues themselves, but in the way they rock my boat?
The way I see myself - an everyday sort of a person, bit on mousy side at that - does not exclude some trips into extravaganza or being crazy at times. As long as my overall picture of myself remains inside the "unsocial but average" section, I feel all right.
And then you come, pick any random common phenomenon and try to convince me that it is something not common, something not natural, something "other people" would not tolerate at all. And I end up wondering:
"I am not very bright person or an outgoing one, so, what if Columbine is right and I am just a strange, blind creature, unaware of the hostile world ready to bounce on me all around?"
Every time you tell that people are going to turn away from you for any little difference of ways, I end up confused. Why do you feel like humans have to be or long to be uniform?
[...]
As I see it, just like the length of hair has lost its gender statement, probably the certain clothes and quantity of makeup used will lose their femme label also in near future.
Will you be happy then? Or do you long for skirts, long hair and make up only as long as they spell femme to you and would lose all interest in them would they became the attributes of a proper male?
Sorry to quote you at such length, Aet, but you are provocative as always, and I really couldn't put in just your questions without the surrounding information.
I don't think that humans want to be uniform. In fact, I think that most humans want to stand out. Unfortunately there are six billion of us and we all look a lot alike. It's hard to stand out. So what happens is that humans react the other way, overcompensate in the opposite direction: They enforce herd mentality. If they see someone thinking or dressing or acting in a non-"normal" way, they kick them and abuse them and step on them and otherwise try to beat them into compliance with the norm.
I expect hostility. That's why it continues to surprise me when I don't encounter it. A pleasant surprise, perhaps, but nonetheless I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. On my head.
It helps to realize that I grew up in the American South, where tolerance of weirdness is still not widely practiced. I have been in a section of the French Quarter in New Orleans where every other building is a gay nightclub and drag queens are a dime a dozen ... and still have narrowly escaped being beaten up on the street by young thugs who thought my appearance was an affront to their existence. If I'm not safe there, I could argue, where am I safe?
It's true - long hair and even earrings are mostly acceptable for both genders - if you're under thirty. I'm thirty-one; I'm expected to have sown most of my wild oats. I should be settling down to "look professional" now. A male my age in this country who has a ponytail and likes flamboyant clothes is likely to be told to grow up and get a life. (Which, oddly enough, is exactly what I want to say to people who dress like SF geeks - with slogans and buttons all over their clothes - indicating that my glass house has a lot of cracks in the walls.)
So I compromise. I don't wear the clothes I want to wear. I do wear what I think I can get away with. If a dress were acceptable, I'd be wearing it in an instant. And, yes, Aet, I think that would make me happy. But I disagree with your other contention: I don't think the range of cross-gender acceptability is increasing. I don't think it will ever be acceptable for men to wear dresses, outside of costume/theatre purposes. Not now. Not in five years. Not in twenty years. Not ever.
I mentioned the other day that Ys and Amy took me to the mall and I was traumatized. Well, they'd said we were only going to get some food, at a Denny's or equivalent. I don't mind looking ratty and unwashed at a Denny's. But the mall, to me, is the pinnacle of scrutiny - I feel like a thousand eyes are upon me. I don't go to the mall unless I can get thoroughly cleaned up first. They caught me by surprise.
I was a nervous wreck. I curled up against a wall and stood stiffly, waiting for them to be ready to leave, not wanting to tell them what was wrong and sound neurotic and spoil their morning to boot. To make matters worse, they had come to the mall to visit this store that sold Goth-like and fetishy clothing. You know, one of these places where everything in the store is black and extreme and the jewelry tends to be heavy, silver, and unsubtle.
I found a dress I adored. It would have fit me too - Goth clothing runs to the tall and skinny. But where would I have worn it? The upshot is: I don't want to be perceived as a Goth or a Fan or a fop or a drag queen (over-the-top variety) or a suit or a hippie or anything else like that. I don't want to wear anyone else's uniform, even though some of those uniforms are very interesting to me. (Goths get a lot of fun clothes.)
I just want to dress like me. Whatever that is.
I want to be attractive but I also don't want to stand out. The problem is that those are often mutually exclusive - and they change ratios, depending on whether my inner exhibitionist or my inner recluse is running the show that day.
I like the exhibitionist better. I wish I could figure out how to let her drive more often.
© Columbine
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