An interesting read on the subject of what is "natural"

I think about that a lot. I met a girl once who was thinking about deliberately getting roundworm or hookworm or something, since we "had them naturally" and maybe it would help her feel better. And all I could think was, uh, "naturally", we're lucky to live into our thirties with half our teeth, and that's with weapons to keep big toothy predators from munching our faces off. I'm 100% down with not eating pesticides and mercury and all that horrible harmful shit that wasn't a problem thousands 'pon thousands of years ago, but I figure I'm still better off than when my ancestors first happened to figure out that a pointy stick was kinda handy to have.

Consider wolves and dogs in this, too. There are a lot of dogs who couldn't survive without human help. Poodles and the like need to be groomed or they end up an immobile matted mess, French bulldogs can barely have their own litters without a c-section, and all those flat-faced dogs have a whole mess of breathing problems that I find incredibly sad. Yet, because their ancestors at some point figured out that following the human hunting camps and picking off their leftovers was a hoopy piece of thinking, and thus evolved to work around and with humans, dogs are actually overpopulated. Wolves are endangered. Unnatural? I dunno, but it sure worked out for 'em.

I'm 100% behind the idea that gender and all that is a cultural construct, but I took this senior-level psychology seminar on sexuality once and I can't even get into that discussion anymore without setting aside an hour to just talk and talk and talk, so I'll spare y'all. =P

Stephen Fry said something along these lines once. I forget exactly what he said, but it was roughly that humans were the only animals that worried about how to be humans. Bears don't worry about whether or not they're being a good bear. So any definition of "natural" that we feel like we have to adhere to is just something we've come up with. Nothing else in the animal kingdom does that. And anyway, we do basically the same things the rest of the animal kingdom does: eat, sleep, mate. We're just really elaborate about it at times.

Humans are just... naturally complex and tend to overthink things. ;P

 

To return toa natural way of life is unnatural because we humans are naturally unnatural, is that what he's saying or am I wrong?

 

I'm down with a lot of the things that the natural-living thing promotes. I'm not sure you'll find anyone who's like "WOO! Let's eat some pesticides!", sustainability is awesome, and I think mooost of us could do to eat more raw vegetables and less meat in general. =P But sometimes people say some whacked out stuff (like "i want to intentionally get an internal parasite!" or "i haven't washed my hair in over a year") and it just makes me go "buh?"

And, using a specific example here, I've read a lot of folks get up in arms about things like "hospitals treat childbirth like a medical procedure and not a natural life function! rawr!" And my best friend was on this "no painkillers during childbirth! no hospital! i want a midwife instead!" kick during her pregnancy, yet in the end went to the hospital anyway. Which was a good thing, because as it turned out, she almost needed a c-section due to a near breech birth (which the staff there helped to correct before it happened) aaand that's the kinda thing that used kill women in childbirth. Modern medicine has a lot of drawbacks, but things that used to be a death sentence aren't necessarily so anymore.

I mean, yesss, those things may have been how people did things in the olden days, but people in the olden days died a lot quicker and more frequently and were a lot smellier.

Oohh man I wish I had my stack of articles from that semester. It's all at my parents' house, though.

We read a buuunch of stuff on how attitudes towards gender and gender roles differ from culture to culture, and how that affects their ideas of sexuality. Like how, for many Latinos, if you participate in same-sex activity, it's not gay if you're the "top". Because you're taking the active role, your masculinity is intact. Yet, for white American culture, if you even think about that kind of stuff, you're gay and your masculinity is automatically suspect. And from what I've read, Latinas have a hard time even having their same-sex attractions acknowledged.

(And, yes, these are things that a very white, homosexual-identified cisgender female person has read about other people and cultures, often written by people of said culture but not always. So I may make incorrect generalizations here and I apologize for that.)

Or, in another culture (that I completely forget the name of and I don't have my stack of articles here so I can't go look), same-sex activity between men is expected, and often continues even after marriage to a woman. (That being one of the cultures where women aren't seen as much more than childbearing cattle, so male-male sex is just seen as bonding between the important people, basically.)

I also read an interesting article regarding some of the original biblical passages (like Leviticus) where any kind of queerness is even discussed, and viewing it in the light of the Jewish culture from which it came. In it, the author argued that it wasn't the idea of homosexual sex per se that it objected to, so much as the crossing of gender roles. The only kind of sex it explicitly condemned was male-male anal sex, because it "feminized" one of the partners. It had nothing to say about the immorality of other kinds of same-sex sexual behavior, or anything at all to say about female homosexuality. And in any case, the kind of language they used to speak against it was the language used for relatively minor offenses. The really awful stuff spoke for itself (like "don't kill people" is pretty self evident), but stuff that was more ambiguous got described with language like "DON'T DO THIS! It'll delay the coming of the Messiah!" (Basically like, "Don't do that, you'll go blind.")

So it wasn't the idea of "gayness" that it condemned, because there was no concept of gayness. There was just the crossing of gender bounds, which was forbidden. Masculinity was so privileged that to deliberately feminize yourself was essentially degrading yourself, and challenged the idea of masculine superiority. So it was a no-no.

A lot of the religious texts we read that had anything to say about homosexual behavior was specifically about men, too. As much as I'd like to say it's because nobody doesn't love lesbians, it more reflects an attitude of women being basically unimportant. Male homosexuality was perceived as a threat, whereas female homosexuality was either not considered important (or at all), or something that was simply irrelevant because they were secondary members of society and it didn't particularly matter what they wanted or did. Hell, I read a few things about some cultures seeing female-female relationships as practice for a "real", female-male relationship later.

But the overall gist was that, though same-sex sexual activity is cross-cultural, attitudes concerning it are far from it. White, "western" society didn't even have a word for it until the Victorian era. According to Foucault, the upper class got all concerned about propagating itself (and thus its power), and looked for things that were likely to mess it up. Masturbation and homosexuality were some of the things they subjected to (what passed for) scientific study. In doing so, they established homosexuals as a class. Before that, homosexuality was just something you did (which was punishable by law, but still). After that, homosexual was something you were.

(And even then, it was something that only the upper echelons of society were concerned with. Nobody gave two shits about what the lower class got up to.)

So the idea of "being gay", it can be argued, started as an essentially white, moneyed classification. It turned that person into an "other" and moved them outside of mainstream society, but still. Only the ones important enough to be considered a threat to the continuation of the upper class were branded as such. Even now, it's still a fairly Western concept. There are some people who see being gay as a "white disease". It may be because same-sex sexuality isn't really acknowledged in some cultures, or individual sexual leanings are less important than other values (like family life), or it's a threat to racial identity (the idea that if you identify as "gay", it may eclipse your racial identity in importance, because mainstream gay culture is still really whitewashed), &etc.

THIS POST IS GETTING LONG. I shall continue in another one! THIS TIME ABOUT GENDER.

 

Oh, gender. Gender, gender, gender. How is it not a construct? How are our ideas of what is masculine and what is feminine not defined by what we've been bombarded with since birth? And how is it that we got this idea that "masculine" and "feminine" can and should be distinct? That to be one is to not be the other?

Let's take the dress, for example.

How the hell is a dress automatically seen as something that is "for women"? Dresses do not occur naturally! Women are not born in dresses! It's a clothing item that people came up with and people arbitrarily decided was for people born with vaginas. Yet because it's everywhere, from movies, to children's books, to posters, down to the stick-figure symbols on bathroom doors, it's a "girl thing". Even though most of the girls I know wear pants most of the time, because they're a lot easier to do stuff in, dresses are "for girls".

I like a good dress and I like feeling girly sometimes, don't get me wrong. There are some nights where I get all dolled up and put on a skirt and have fun and it's hunky-dory. I realize I only "feel girly" in a skirt because I've been socialized to think it's a girly thing, and I'm okay with that. Where I take issue with it is the fact that men can't do the same thing without getting verbally or even physically abused.

At some point, we collectively decided that "dress = girls". We also decided that "boys > girls", and "boys are DEFINITELY NOTHING LIKE girls". So when a boy puts on a dress, he's wearing something that is, by proxy, inferior to what he should be wearing and he is promptly ostracized for it. Girls wearing more masculine clothes isn't met with the same degree of hostility (though we do meet with some, yes, and it depends on where you are and how old you are). Girls are essentially seen as taking a step up in that case. "Tomboy" isn't so much of an insult as is "girly boy". (And even then, that's until a girl gets old enough that she, uh, ought to be interested in boys. If you keep up tomboyish behavior past a certain point, people start thinking you might be one of those homosexuals and therefore are either rejecting or are a threat to the heterosexual status quo, and therein lies a lot of folks' hostility. Still, we can wear pants without most people giving us a second glance.)

We have this idea that to be feminine is to be passive, and to be masculine, aggressive (which isn't the best word to use there, but you get the gist). And that more active, aggressive behavior is more desirable. I'll grant that pure hormonal differences can and will make a difference in how we act. More testosterone does tend to produce more aggression. There's a reason dogs get less growly and less mark-yer-territory happy once you neuter them. =P But not all male-bodied folks are comfortable with the "BE A MAN! BEER! SPORTS! WEIGHT-LIFTING! EMOTIONAL RESTRAINT!" idea of manhood, nor are all female-bodied folks content with the touchy-feely, shop-happy, gotta-come-and-get-me idea of womanhood. Having a male or female body doesn't even necessarily coincide with gender identity. (Which is a whole 'nother can of beans that I don't feel qualified to open, cisgendered as I am.)

Even as very young kids, there are differences in the way boys and girls tend to play, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not gonna cluck my tongue and curse the patriarchy if my hypothetical future daughter decides she likes Barbie and princesses, or hypothetical future son wants to play Godzilla-in-a-monster-truck versus Batman. Nor am I going to care if future-son decides he likes Barbie and princesses. (Me, I was an animal figurine kinda kid. My barbie was the bad guy. She usually got eaten by lions.)

The problem is that there are a lot of things that we've stereotyped to be masculine or feminine, and have convinced ourselves it's the natural way of things. These activities have become so damn ingrained in our minds as "girl things" and "boy things" that mixing them makes people uncomfortable or angry. Yet it's not like playing house is anymore a naturally a more "girl" activity than, like, soccer. And it's not like you can't enjoy playing house and playing soccer. Looking at stereotypes, I have short hair, enjoy power tools, am as refined as a bull in a china shop, and drive a stick; and yet I wear makeup, hate sports, and love romantic comedies. I've tried being super-girly and I've tried being super-butch, and I found I like my own kind of in-between way better than either extreme. I used to think it made me less of a girl, until I took that aforementioned class and realized that I was making up my own idea of what it meant to be a girl in the first place. >.> So, it's whatever.

I don't even know why we want to see them as having such a rigid separation, though my guess is that it's cultural hangover from "MAN = SUPERIOR AND IN CHARGE, WOMAN = SQUISHY, GOOD FOR SEX, MAKES BABIES?" being the unchallenged cultural attitude. Your role was your role, and if it was good enough for everyone who came before you, it's good enough for you, goddammit! I can see crossing that boundary being seen as a rejection of it, and therefore a judgment of anyone who won't cross it, which makes some people angry. Like saying, "The way you do things isn't good enough for me, even though it's good enough for you." (Even though it's more accurately "the way you do things isn't right for me, even though it works for you.")

I think a lot of why it persists may stem, in part, from what we think our potential mates will find attractive. After all, girls don't want a sissy boy, and boys don't want a ballbusting feminist maneater, right? (Yesss sarcasm.) I mean, there's still a very dominant message to girls that it's better to be a passive ditz because it's what boys want. (Even though a lot of guys are into intellectual girls!) For example, I've met a lot of women who shy away from the word "feminist" ("because it just makes me think of... bra burning"), yet who do basically hold feminist ideas. But the word conjures up a certain image, and it's not one that's deemed attractive to men, so feminists as a group get cast as lesbians (whether they are or not). And, yeah, a lot of lesbians identify as feminists. Because, hey, we don't care if men find it attractive or not. =P But even though feminism* aims to empower women and what we consider femininity in general (not just for girls! guys should be able to wear dresses without having to worry about getting their asses kicked!), it's by and large considered a male turnoff. So a lot of straight girls just don't want any truck with it.

*Yes, there are a lot of different people with different attitudes as to what feminism means, and some of them interpret sexism against men as feminism and that does us no good either, but there are crazies in every bunch. =/

And this is even just looking at my own whitewashed, anglo-american culture. This isn't even considering other cultures' ideas of gender. Even before considering concepts like Two-Spirits. I feel like I'd need to do a lot more research to even begin to talk about what gender means to anyone else. I mean, I've only recently begun to understand transgender, and that's in an anglo-dominant cultural context.

But what I have read on other cultures' attitudes towards gender and sexuality just indicates that there's no real universal "man" thing and "woman" thing (beyond the physical). Themes show up, like women caring for the kids, but to what extent they do isn't universal. Do they raise them alone? Mostly alone with little help from the father? Equally with the father? Communally, with other women? Communally, with everyone in the group? Does mama eff off and leave the kids with dad? So many variations! But the fact that two moms or two dads, or one mom, or one dad, or two dads and a mom, or WHATEVER, can raise a kid and have them turn out fine means that there's no one formula for success.

The fact that there is such a variation in the way we do things makes me think there is not One Natural Way for anything. There are common ways and less common ways, but it all depends on what works for that particular situation. Our adaptability has been the reason we've been so successful as a species, I think.

So who cares what's natural? It really just comes down to what works and what doesn't. Which has, I think, worked pretty well for us. =P