In class this weekend we watched The Making of Me, a documentary by John Barrowman in which he goes on a quest to find the reasons why people in general, and himself in particular, might grow up to be gay. It’s not a bad film — Barrowman himself is charming, no surprise, and it’s fun to get to see some of the researchers and methods that are employed in elucidating this question. The scientific logic is horribly sloppy in some places, as is pretty common with mass-market presentations of scientific research, but it does give a good layperson’s overview of the biological causes researchers are looking at right now, and how they’re tested and examined.

Barrowman says at the outset that he wants to find an innate, biological gause for gayness rather than something that traces to social influences. His investigation is pretty heavily colored by this bias throughout, as he shows much more persistence in looking for a “nature” cause rather than a “nurture” one. The bias toward a biological cause is something I’ll discuss further at the end of this post.

Casting aside Barrowman’s cursory investigation of “nurture” causes, one thing I appreciate about the documentary is that it makes clear that there are likely multiple biological pathways to becoming gay, some genetic, some due to the in utero hormonal environment. From what we know so far, it seems that no single biological factor is either a necessary or a sufficient condition for gayness. (This is a good point to mention that the documentary doesn’t talk about lesbians at all. Since it’s very focused on Barrowman personally, it’s excusable here; the overall research gap between the study of gay men and the study of lesbians is less so.)

One thing that’s notable throughout the film is the conflation of male femininity with gayness. This is tricky and probably has a lot of sociopolitical folks up in arms. A lot of people see gay and transgender identities as existing on a continuum, with trans people just being “gayer than gay.” The documentary doesn’t do anything to forestall this misconception, so let me do it here: being a man who is attracted to men is very different from being a male-bodied person with a female gender identity. Even if the two have similar biological roots, the way they manifest in the conscious brain are quite different. Gay men, in general, have no desire to become women, and a female gender identity isn’t fulfilled by a gay male lifestyle.

That said, there is a strong link between childhood gender nonconformity and adult homosexuality. Of individuals who will be gay as adults (both male and female, although the effect is stronger for females), they are much more likely to be gender non-conforming as children than their peers. The gender non-conformity doesn’t necessarily persist into adulthood: Barrowman is hardly your stereotypical swishy gay, but he sure did love his Sonny and Cher dolls as a kid. My favorite hypothesis for the actual roots of sexual orientation draws on this correlation — but I’m going to leave that as a teaser for now.

Ultimately Barrowman claims that he’s found what makes him gay. What that actually means is that he’s found one biological trait in himself that’s been linked with a higher likelihood of being gay (I won’t spoil it here.) He goes home to his partner, happy because it’s been “proved” that he was born gay, that it wasn’t a choice. This would be one example of the ludicrous scientific logic I referred to, but my real objection is this: he lets the assumption go unquestioned that if being gay was a choice, people who condemn gays and lesbians would have a better case for their judgement.

There is no good case that preferring same-sex partners is an inferior trait. If underpopulation was a danger in our society, there might be an argument, but that is manfestly not the case. It is very hard to study the psychological health of gays and lesbians, and the families they create, without encountering the confounding factor of the psychological abuse and social counter-pressure that nearly all these individuals and families face through their lifetimes. But there is no evidence that a life with same-sex partners, in a socially supportive environment, is any less healthy than a life with other-sex partners.

Saying “I had no choice!” avoids addressing the argument that, if you did have a choice, it might have been a bad one. I’d have loved to see Barrowman stand next to his lovely partner and say, “I’m gay, I have a fantastic life, and even if it had been a choice, I wouldn’t have chosen any differently.”

Some of us who have left religion can rightly be considered abuse survivors. Sometimes the abuse is obvious and extreme. Sometimes it’s more subtle, but still leaves a lasting impact. The abuse largely consists of having been denied intellectual and emotional autonomy; denied the right to form our own opinions, to choose our own identities, to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. We were taught to be complicit in our own abuse, to agree and submit and accept that yes, denying ourselves was right and good. We were taught to thank the people who held the rod over our heads.

I don’t think all religion does this, or that all people who were religious in their formative years suffer the psychological damage I’m talking about. I think it’s more likely to occur for those who had a parent or spiritual leader with a personality disorder (narcissism is common, in my experience) and who had a compliant, anxious-to-please temperament.

Being one of these, let me tell you what it’s like in my head. I have no confidence in my own ability or freedom to decide what’s right or best, what “a good life” or being a good person means. From infancy, these things were handed to me, with unquestionable authority. Although I began the process of rejecting and questioning that years ago, there’s a part of my brain that is still waiting to accept beliefs and moral dictates from outside. We all have that vulnerability, I think, that sense that it would be such a relief to let someone else tell us what is good and bad, true and false. But mine was strengthened by having been allowed to dominate for the first two decades of my life. My brain was nearly fully formed by the time I shook it off, and it’s still there. Still a threat.

It’s the thing I fear most. I was thinking through my fears today, and when I voiced this one to myself — “I’m afraid of living the next two decades under someone’s thumb, the way I was for the first two” — I began shaking and crying. I’m really, really afraid of that. And I know how my brain works, so I know how real a danger it is.

One thing this means is that when someone expresses their opinion in a flat, factual way, I become hella defensive. Those who are close to me know this well. It’s true that a person can state their beliefs without implying that those beliefs are absolutely correct and you’d better believe them or else — but the part of my brain that’s looking to receive truth from outside is seduced by their confidence, their apparent certainty. I feel it leaning in, wanting to just let go, acquiesce, say “Ah yes, you’re right of course” without giving it further thought. And that feeling terrifies me, and I pull back as hard as I can, in a way that is not at all rational or measured.

We’re all threatened by having our beliefs challenged, but some of us are also threatened by the possibility that we’ll change our beliefs not because we thought them through, not because they fit with our experience of the world, but because it feels so good to surrender and let someone else do the deciding.

I don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t know how to let my defenses down while the surrender-hungry part of my brain is still so strong. I’m not at all convinced that that would be a wise thing to do. So for me, right now, anyone who tries to convince me of something using emotional tactics, or blunt statements that don’t explicitly acknowledge their uncertainty or my right to think differently, is likely to trigger a shitstorm of defensiveness. If anyone who’s been through this has any advice, let me know.

For those still sulky about Gina’s scientific criticism of The Avengers, here’s a writeup on my other blog from a more tropes-and-narratives point of view, and which is much more complimentary (not to say gushing. We really fansibbed over this movie, what can I say?)

And also, just as an aside, it’s a mark of maturity to be able to appreciate that a movie might be awesome in some dimensions (narratively, for example) but flawed in others (scientifically, for example).

I have been thinking a lot about identity.

Living in society we get a lot of input from all sorts of sources about who we should be, could be, would be if only xyz.  Everyone has an opinion about what a good person is and what a bad person is.  People like to make statements like, “I’m a person who…” and you fill in something you consider to be truly definitive of “Who You Are”.   But, in my experience, figuring out the answer to the question, “Who am I?” is a lifelong quest.

I have spent a considerable amount of my life dealing with self-loathing and worrying about what other people think about me.  Looking back at my life thus far, my entire identity has been told to me by outside observers.  It is only recently that I have begun to get an idea of me.

When I was a kid growing up around astrology, it was easy to get swept up into a ready-made identity bestowed upon you by the stars.  “You are an Aries.  This means that you are passionate, outgoing, intense, FIREY!  On the flipside, you are prone to bad versions of these things, mainly in emotional overreaction, an overinflated ego, and a need for people to be around you to be happy.”  This description was very convincing and looking at it currently, it makes me laugh because, well, all of those things are true.  I don’t particularly describe myself as firey or intense, but the struggles I have certainly fall into the above stated categories.

Of course, I can boil these truths down to nature and nurturing; genetics and environment.  When people talk casually about astrology, they generally refer only to a person’s sun sign.  This explains you in broad strokes, which is good enough for most people.  If you happen to be talking to someone who knows a little more, you can explain all of your other qualities.  For instance, I am an Aries with a shitload of Libra in my chart.

Yes, my “chart was done” when I was born.

When I was a kid I had considerable problems dealing with expressing my preferences and requesting my needs be met while over-accommodating other’s people’s preferences and requests.  I know…I should probably not talk about that in the past tense as it is still something I struggle with.  But I used to have fits of stress followed by fits of anger and sadness when a friend spent too much time at my house.  I would talk about this with astrology buffs and they would identify this as me having a need for balance.  Libra, represented by the scales, is very focused on balance…so it all makes sense.

Looking back, I thought this was amazing.  “Of course!  I have been dealt the ‘you have a need for balance’ card in life! That’s why spending a long time with my friends makes me crazy!”  This fact also had me convinced that I was an introvert.

As it turns out, it’s just that I’m pleasant and over-accommodating so I used to attract mostly assholes as friends.  I worry too much about what everyone thinks so I fear stating opinions and calling people on their shit.  Assholes love that!  Also, people would call these Pisces problems and, as I was born on the cusp between Aries and Pisces, again, this all makes sense.

Astrology can get really complicated…you know, like the human genome and quantum mechanics.  OK, I suppose it stops short of the other two, but for most people’s purposes you can explain every single thing about them by fitting all of their attributes into the different houses and ascensions, moon landings, solar flare mega action and…oh, who knows.  In the end, you can completely discount that you are a bag of chemicals at the mercy of electrons.

Astrology also gives you the idea that you are written in stone.  On the day you are born you are given a group of “good things” about you and a group of “bad things”.  Your mission, if you choose to accept it…haha, choices, that’s rich…is to learn to “just be” with the bad things.  I mean, what choice do you have?  The stars have proclaimed it!

And, of course, astrology is not the only belief system that says this.  Every person is born for a purpose and everything happens for a reason is a tenet of many a religion.  This idea gives support to the thought that all the things that drive you crazy about yourself are necessary and unchangeable, but it’s OK because you’re that way from some Grand Purpose.

Growing up I got a lot of labels put on me.  “You’re so nice!  You’re so theatrical!  You’re so out there and unique! You’re funny!  You have such an interesting style!”  And while these were mostly good (though some were often thinly veiled criticisms), now I can give you multiple bad sides to all of those attributes.  “I am spineless.  I am afraid to speak.  I like a lot of attention.  I might make you uncomfortable with my view of the world and my disdain for your mainstream view.”  The terror of being honest and alienating people whose opinions about me I valued has oft stopped me from saying anything, for speaking up for myself and others, for doing what I really want to do.

When I was in highschool, I was miserable.  I spent my days surrounded by people I didn’t particularly like but refused to say so.  I had completely “valid” reasons for finding these people distasteful, but I wouldn’t speak up for fear of them knowing and being mean back or whatever.  I never said what I wanted from people.  I never asked what they wanted from me.  I let everyone tell me who I was because I didn’t have a way to articulate my own thoughts on the subject.  I spent years in silence feeling only free on a stage playing someone else, or in front of classroom reading something I had written or presenting.  On the outside I was strong, theatrical, and brave and I never got upset.  On the inside I was insecure, constantly questioning everything I did or said, and worrying about everyone’s opinion all the time.

I have changed drastically over the last several years.  Wes helped me to discover that I was most certainly not written in stone.  He helped me to find a level of awareness about what I wanted in life, what would make me happy, and what I was personally doing to stand in my way.  I am always open to change.  I want to be as happy as possible.  If there’s something that always bothers me, then I need to figure out why and address it.  There is no “this is too hard” or “well, I’m not the kind of person who can do that” for me.  I can do anything I want.  I can affect whatever change I want.  The only thing standing in the way would be my own dishonesty or my own false value assessment.

Like I said, I’ve been thinking a lot about identity.  And I realize that despite the fact that I have spent so long struggling with insecurities and worrying about everyone’s opinion, and despite the fact that I have worked so hard to change the things about myself that cause me harm and stress, I have never really not known “who I am”.  Or, at least, I have a strong sense of self deep inside that never waivers.  At 31 years of age, I still can’t articulate what that means in words.  The only thing I can say is never once during the journey to those changes have I worried about losing sight of myself.  And each success, each stressor that I struggle with and learn to control, I am happier and the happiness brings a clarity to that sense of self.  The harder I work, the more I learn and grow, the stronger that sense of self is.  I am flawed but I am strong.  I am scared but I am committed.  I am crazed but I have a sense of humor about it.  I am emotional, passionate, ridiculous, confident and insecure.

In other words, I am human and will never know everything about me.  I know myself better at 31 than I did at 21.  At 51, I will likely look back at this and laugh at how much further I was going to go and at 81, I will be old and too busy doing my full time “Old Lady with funny hats and accents” impression.

You are an active participant in your identity.  I look at myself as clay over iron framework.  I am malleable but retain my underlying composition as I stretch and expand.  I am vigilant about the things with which I struggle.  I see no reason to not identify the things I dislike and work to change them.  There is never a downside to this and much like an old piece of clay holds onto pieces of previous forms it was in, these things are always there in some way as a part of me.  But they are not “Who I Am”.  They do not have to control me or define me.  They are just there, sometimes nagging at me to indulge them.  Other times they are just memories of a darker moment.

You are who you truly want to be.  Change attempted for the sake of other people will not stick and only leads to resentment.  Change must come from within one’s self.  You have to want it.  You have to be honest.  And you have to work.  Having to work hard doesn’t make me feel like I’m being inauthentic.  It makes me feel like I am finally taking on all of the bullshit that keeps me from enjoying this one beautiful, irreplaceable life.

And every day that I am alive and moving ahead or even when I am standing still in a mire I have likely created, I think to myself that it is always worth it to push through, to let go, to be brave against my own demons.  Every day is a light at the end of yesterday’s tunnel.  Each day is new and full of potential.  I will not waste it saying, “Well, I guess that’s just who I am.”  No.  Not again.

I was talking to Shaun recently about my other blog and some of the important posts I have made there.  My other blog doesn’t have much of an audience because it tends to be about more personal things.  However, it is also where I started writing a lot about polyamory and atheism.  When Shaun invited me to write here, I stopped writing about these things over there for the most part but I reference a few old posts often.

At his suggestion, I am reposting the only post I ever wrote there that I would consider remotely “famous”.  Other than a moderate amount of page views (very small in the spectrum of actual famous bloggers), it served to help a lot of people understand why polyamory is right for me.  This served as a coming out post and also a celebration of when Wes and I invited Jessie to move in with us.

This was also written almost a year ago, so I’m taking the opportunity to update where I see fit (new comments in italics).  I hope all you new readers enjoy it!

“My Big House”, originally published in July, 2011

As I have mentioned in a recent post, I started this blog so that I could write intelligently and interestingly (and amusingly) about my life.  I have had blogs in the past and was very honest in them about various things going on, but back then there was never anything I felt like I had to hide.  Part of it was naivety…there were things about me that didn’t occur to me as overly strange or offensive that I offhandedly referenced, like my atheism.  Who knew it was something so controversial?  I missed that memo, but over the past several years I have learned differently.

But this post isn’t about atheism.

I have been struggling to write here because I had been leaving large chunks, very very important chunks of my life out, dancing around subjects, choosing not to tell hilarious stories because of life events or characters that are crucial to the punchline.  I have left out important revelations from my happiness project because I wasn’t ready for the world at large to know everything.  But that’s so silly.  If you asked, I’d tell you in a heartbeat.

So, here we go:  Wes and I are polyamorous.

What does this mean?  It means that we are in love with and devoted to each other.  We are completely committed to each other.  Hell, we just got married and the law says that it’s a big pain in the ass for us to not be in a relationship together.  We completely respect and care for one another.  In short, we are in a relationship that you can understand.

Except we can also sleep with, date, love, respect, care for, become devoted to other people as well.

Many of you already know this, but I realized that there are many who do not.  Our relationship has been of this form for a little over 2 years and we don’t particularly hide it, but I certainly don’t make a million Facebook statuses a day about it either.  We have come out to our immediate families, but we didn’t go make a big announcement at Christmas.  But it is most definitely a defining factor in our lives and to leave it out of conversation, or to leave out the intimate nature of some of our relationships is kind of ridiculous.

Wes has been dating a wonderful woman, Jessie (whom I have mentioned many a time on this blog) for a little less than a year.  From the very beginning, she and I got along very well and while, at times, I resisted it, it was always clear that she could be integrated into our lives, both of our lives, beautifully.  Insecurity and worries about what other people would think of me for being happy about her presence stopped me from embracing it immediately.  I don’t break rules.  I don’t walk on the grass when the sign tells me not to.  But we have grown to be close friends and she has been practically living with us for a few months now.  She was in our wedding.  She spent a day with us at the beach during our honeymoon and it was possibly the most fun day ever.  I realized that something I didn’t think I’d ever be ready for as a polyamorous person was something that I wanted.  I love Wes and Jessie together.  I love her being in our home and I found myself thinking how silly it is that she isn’t officially living there.

So, we asked her to move in with us the other day and she accepted the offer.  So, here we are, adding a wonderful person to an already fabulous household.  Our little suburban house just got a little bit bigger.

There is so much to say about all of this.  Polyamory for me was something I wanted to do initially to purge myself of terrible emotions like jealousy and possessiveness.  I wanted to do it because I believed that it would add to the longevity of our relationship.  But what I found was that it added so much more to my life than I ever thought it could.

Some people believe that you only have a finite amount of love to give.  Perhaps this is true for some people, but it is not true for Wes and it is not true for me.  What I have found is that I have unlocked a capability in myself for more love.  The communication in our relationship(s), the respect, rationality and caring that can be given seems limitless.

In short, I have gotten over so much of my shit, or at least, have learned how to deal with it in a positive way. I am so much closer to the person I want to be and everyday I get closer.  I love myself more now than I ever have before and I owe it all to casting away convention and having an amazing partner to take the journey with.

I have recently started seeing someone who, in a very short time, has added a great deal of happiness to my life.  He has a girlfriend who is absolutely delightful and brings me joy to be around.  We are officially adding Jessie to the house for even more joy and 8 years ago I met the perfect man for me and married him a few weeks ago.

I think I often forget that all this wonderfulness happened around the same time last year.  Now that it has almost been a year, I am so happy to report that I was not wrong about the continuing joy I would experience after this post.  Jessie has lived with us for almost a year and no one has ever regretted the decision.  Shaun and I are approaching a year of being together and each day brings us closer.  We were already high-functioning polyamorous people back then but now…well, you read the blog.  You know.

I have a career I actually like.  On a regular basis I get to make awesome music with my best friend (and sometimes get paid for it) and produce entertaining and interesting theater.  The old me would have been suspicious of all this.  Who am I to be able to have such a wonderful life?  I am flawed.  I am imperfect.  I struggle with emotions and can be crazed.  I can be insecure and worry about how the world, how those close to me will judge me.

This last bit hasn’t changed.  I still struggle with all of this, but it has always been completely worth it.

But this brings us back to that whole atheist thing I mentioned earlier.  This is my life.  It is the only life I have. When my body fails, I will disappear and all I will have had is this one charmed, miraculous existence and I refuse to do anything less than live it to the fullest.  I want to share it.  I want to love and revel in the positive things and get through the negativity rationally and with purpose.  I want to continue to improve myself.  I want to give of myself.  I want to get over myself and all the silly things I hold onto when I am sleep deprived, dehydrated and feeling down.  I want so much and I think I can have it.

30 has been one hell of a year.

31 hasn’t been too shabby either.  If anything, I am more committed to making this life everything that it can be.  Thank you to all who make me so happy to be alive.  I wish that everyone could be so lucky.

A couple of years ago I went on a business trip to Asheville, NC. When I got to the rental car counter, the very good looking southern gentleman there said, “Oh, I just know you’re going to love Asheville.” I inquired as to why and he said, “Well, it’s basically the only bastion of art and liberalness around here, right in the middle of the Bible Belt.” I smiled, wondering, “How did he know? Was it my clearly Yankee accent that gave me away?” And then I remembered that I was wearing by Muppets/Battlestar Galactica t-shirt and it all made a little more sense.

I had the evening to kill, as my business obligations were scheduled for the next morning, so I took the guy’s advice and drove into town and had a wonderful evening checking out the local fare, including a local brewery where I ended up schooling a bunch of other out of towners with my uncanny knowledge of classic dystopia novels. The man was right. For the most part I didn’t feel like I was in the South at all and it felt very much like the parts of Philadelphia that I like best.

I have also been to Portland, OR for business.  Portland and Asheville are considered two of three of the great art towns in the country.  They are places where music thrives and weirdos congregate because they are places of very little judgment of strange lifestyles and interests.  Austin, TX is the third.

I haven’t learned yet why Portland is considered one of these because I don’t know much about the state of Oregon.  However, Portland and Seattle are often compared (and rightly so, as they have a lot in common).  I don’t get the sense that Portland is situated in a particularly hostile environment for liberals, but perhaps because it evolved from the logging towns of the Pacific Northwest, there’s an excess of “frontier spirit” there or something.  I’ll take “their” word for it.

Asheville and Austin though are very much in the middle of hostile states for liberally minded people.  I was not in Asheville very long and mostly came into contact with a bunch of other tourists when I was there (most of them Northerners at that), so it was easy to forget where I was.  It was easy to forget that there are certain things that the rest of the state never wants to forget.

Let me say first that I really like this town.  Shaun and Ginny are staying at a wonderfully funky hotel just outside of the downtown area.  The are near the hotel is really quite awesome.  Everywhere is a burst of color and art.  There are sidewalk sales everywhere, stores selling all kinds peculiar things, and a copious amount of high quality food trucks.  What is most fun for me is that there is live music absolutely everywhere.  Every bar has some form of a stage and some kind of band playing.  There was a duo playing bass and guitar on the top of a van.  You can get good drinks for pretty reasonable prices at many places.  Happy hour here starts at 3pm.  Shaun and I spent a good portion of our afternoon yesterday checking out a couple of bars and enjoying the bands.  The place was hopping.  We had dinner plans with Ginny so we didn’t stay out too long, but we are planning on picking up where we left off today.

Shaun joked that he was secretly a millionaire and was going to buy a big sprawling house in Austin and that none of us would ever have to work again.  He asked what I would do if that was true and I said, “Well, if I could convince Wes and Jessie to move to Austin, I guess I’d just come here and be a musician”, because this is really the place to do it.  It already has what Philadelphia is working on.  Music everywhere you look and people loving it.

So, yeah, there’s a lot to like about Austin.  But it didn’t take long for me to be reminded of where Austin is.

Before heading to the bars, we wandered downtown towards the state capitol.  What we found when we got there was that we had just missed some kind of protest.  Of course, Shaun was wearing his “Atheist, Polyamorous, Skeptics” t-shirt and his bag straps had an atheist and a secular button on each shoulder.  We tried to figure out exactly what the protest was about.  Some people had signs that said, “Stop the HHS Mandate” and other signs said, “Stand Up for Religious Freedom”.  I looked up the protest on my phone and found that these rallies were being held all over the country yesterday in honor of the 223rd anniversary of James Madison, our Founding Father, introducing the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.

Apparently, the whole rally was designed around the idea that President Obama is infringing on people’s right to religious freedom by mandating that all health organizations (Christian or no) must provide birth control and other contraceptive services.  There is a religious exemption, but, according the site, it is so narrow that not even Jesus and his Apostles would qualify for the exemption.

I could go on about the various absurdities of this.  I have certainly come out in the past year publically in the blogosphere in great support of positive sex education, birth control knowledge and options for all, and abortions when people want them. I lost a couple of friends over this.

One of the people at the rally was holding a sign that said, “Women DO regret abortion”.  I looked at her awestruck.  Like, no shit, Sherlock.  Of course some women regret the decision to abort. It’s not a decision that people make particularly lightly.  And because I don’t view a mass of cells as life that much be protected at the risk of ruining a woman’s life, I don’t have a problem with the people who don’t torture themselves about the decision.  It is an option that we have and should always have.  To bring a life into the world that you do not want is not better.  I could go on and on.

And I could go on and on about how wanting people to be refused birth control goes completely against the attempts to stop people from having abortions…but…you know, everyone who reads this probably knows that.

What struck me most about the whole thing is that people who were at the rally brought their kids to it, their young kids.  And for the kids, it was like a happy-go-lucky picnic or something.  At one point, a mother gave each of her children one of the signs I mentioned above and took a picture of them in front of the capitol, grins and all.  I don’t think I was able to keep the look of disdain off of my face.  In my mind, I wanted to go ask the kids if they knew what those signs were really saying.  I had no intention of actually doing this and Shaun reminded me that this would cross some kind of line, which I completely understand…but I was so curious.  I wanted to know if they knew what they were doing.

It reminds me of the episode of South Park where the boys get pulled into an anti-Bush rally somehow and they don’t even know what their signs are talking about (specifically that Cartman didn’t know how to pronounce the word Nazi, “Boosh is a Nay-zee…”  That’s what I envisioned here.  “Stop the HHS Mandate…because…um…what’s a mandate?”

That’s a kid running around the capitol with a bunch of pro-life balloons.  Yeah.

We didn’t talk to anybody and no one seemed to pay us any mind…likely do to Shaun’s apparel.  We decided to take in the local monuments while we were there.  So I innocently walked up to one and it was this one:

Before I actually read the thing, I, for whatever ignorant reason, thought the dude on the top was Lincoln.  But, obviously, that is a statue of Jefferson Davis.  I guess the common hair styles of the 1860’s threw me off or something, but I done learned.

We wandered around the park and found that half the monuments there were memorials for people who had died for the Confederacy.  I was…astounded.  I live in such a liberal area that I forget periodically that this is a thing.

In addition, I was asked to remember the Alamo and appreciate the “Rough and Romantic Riders of the Range” by a couple of other statues.  The rough, romantic rider statue had a horse with ridiculously huge balls.  I guess what they say about everything being bigger in Texas is true.

Or something.

Shaun has been remarking about how active the atheist community is in Austin.  I asked him how he thought we could make it like that in Philadelphia and he reminded me that in Texas, you have to be out and proud and active to make life livable for the differently minded.  We are very lucky in Philadelphia to be able to, for the most part, be who we are, what we are, without a specific community to help us to do it.

I had forgotten all that before arriving at the Capitol.  At the Capitol, there is always something to remind you that you are, in fact, in Texas and that, as progressive, non-Christian, liberal people with tendencies towards slutdom, we are in a minority here.

But for now, I should get off this computer and go check out the parts of the town I feel at home…namely, bars with awesome sound systems and hilarious bartenders.

When I was going to Drexel, everyone was required to take three Humanities classes.  The classes were Humanities 101, 102, 103 and they were relatively stupid.  101 and 102 were the same for everyone.  They covered things like basic composition.  Actually, that’s all they were about.  They were boring and having come from a highschool where the writings of everyone I ever read there were at least coherent and relatively well crafted, workshopping the pieces of people who could clearly speak English but couldn’t seem to write it down was quite aggravating.  I became known for bringing a red pen to class and decimating the drafts of people’s essays.  I was nice about it in that I often rewrote people’s thesis paragraphs and such, so, you know, less work for them.  I think they all got A’s so no particular bitterness ensued.

Anyway, the third Humanities class ended up being a wild card.  This class was more specialized and each teacher had a different focus.  I was unaware of this and the class descriptions were the same regardless of time slot, so I picked whatever class was most convenient schedule-wise.  This was a mistake.

I ended up in a humor in literature class.  I suppose that this could have been interesting and entertaining.  I mean, I love laughing, love writing humorously…and apparently I think that everything is funny, so this should have been a win.  However, talking about humor is only entertaining if you are talking about it with someone with a sense of humor.  You would think that someone really interested in humor would be funny themselves…or perhaps only I assumed that…but as it turns out, this was not the case.

It was taught by a woman who wrote a giant paper with her husband on the subject of humor in literature.  Her thesis was that all humor could be broken down into four specific categories and that each of these categories could be assigned to a specific season of the year.  Satire, being old and cynical, was winter humor (when all the trees were dying or whatever) and fables, being young and ignorant, were spring.

I hated this class very, very much.  The woman teaching it was completely humorless.  It was astounding how incredibly unfunny she was.  I would spend entire classes pondering how this was possible.  I didn’t laugh ONCE in that class in the entire 10 weeks we were subjected to it.  One of the reasons is that while we were talking about humor classifications the whole time, no one was ever cracking jokes or anything.  In addition, our text book was a collection of “humorous” stories and poems from throughout the centuries that our teacher compiled.  Everything in it also happened to be public domain (advantage being that it kept the cost of the book down), so the most recent thing in there was from the 1920’s or 30’s.  Our daily assignments were to read passages from it and then explain why they are funny, assigning specific qualities that make things funny.  For instance: Is this story about being getting drunk and getting into craaaazy hijinks?  Then that gets a 2. Debauchery.  Is the story about stupid shit happening because someone mistook a person for someone else? That’s 3. Mistaken Identity.  What was worse was that because everything in the book was completely dated, I found that nothing in there rang as funny to me.  Some of it was a language issue (the fables, for instance, were written in some kind of dialect and I wasn’t entirely sure what was being said all the time), but clearly much of it was “you had to be there” humor, in that it would have perhaps been funny if you were around at the time it was written.  If you are amongst the culture, you have the context to “get it”.

My teacher was seemingly frustrated that we were too dim or something to find anything we were reading hilarious.  What she failed to recognize was that humor changes through the years.  The taste of the population shifts with time.  Also, the things that are deemed “appropriate” change.  For instance, black face used to be hysterical, apparently, but now it’s just gross…unless the joke is that the character in question is a big fucking racist.  Something that current people find hilarious today would make no sense to someone from a hundred years ago, and likely, they also wouldn’t understand why things from back then might not be particularly hilarious now.

So, as I may have explained previously, the people I work closest with at my job are pretty inappropriate in general.  I have grown to like this about them as I enjoy working in an environment where I can drop F-bombs to my heart’s content .  I am never particularly inclined to making “inappropriate” jokes here…unless you count all of my chemical safety related jokes as inappropriate…which you might since I’m on the safety committee and all.  I remember making a joke at school once about dissolving someone’s face with acid and someone who had gotten a very bad chemical burn informed me that this wasn’t funny.  Yet later I made a decapitation joke and she laughed, so I guess it’s all contextual.  I got massive amounts of solvent in my eyes once and STILL make eye melting jokes, so maybe I’m twisted.  Also, I’m not blind, so I’m not bitter…not too much (bastards in the lab who didn’t help me when I yelled for help!).

However, there are still a lot of types of jokes I don’t appreciate, unless it comes from someone who I respect as an intelligent, progressive, critically thinking.  For instance, I don’t appreciate any kind of sexist joke from any of the sexes (I dislike “Women are all smarter than men” jokes as much as “Women are all stupid, crazy, and obsessed with shopping” jokes).  The only time I think that’s funny is if it’s being said quite sarcastically or ironically, with clear understanding that the reason it’s funny is because assholes think that way.  I feel similarly about racist humor or anything like that.  I find it funny if it’s some kind of social commentary.  I do laugh if you clearly are a racist or a misogynist and it is usually quite easy to tell.

In gaining a place at work, I had to endure a lot of bullshit in this regard.  I was never sexually harassed (well, not in the traditional sense.  I got hit on by plant employees and it could be a little uncomfortable at times, but they weren’t in a position of power and, if I felt uncomfortable enough, I probably could’ve had them fired), but I was uncomfortable a lot about the type of jokes that got thrown around…simply because I know that many of the people were/are homophobic, racist, sexist, ableist…you name it.  I sensed greatly that the humor came from a place of great ignorance.  My presence as a “Capable Woman” helped to keep the sexism at bay.  If there was ever a “You know how woman do X” comment, I would quickly say, “No, tell me what I do.”  And that would be it.  But everything else?  I can only point out that what they’re saying is bullshit, which doesn’t really do anything.  And there have been times when I have felt that I was fighting a one woman battle.  No one else fights against this crap.  They either laugh or stay silent.

And yet, I feel guilty for many of the things I do laugh about that in a politically correct world are frowned upon.  For instance, I find the word “retarded” hilarious.  The word itself just is funny to me.  Much in the way that people hate the word “moist” just because of the sound of it, the word retarded rolls off the tongue and seems to be the perfect thing to describe something that is screwed up.  I don’t say it myself often, but it always makes me snicker when I read or hear it.  I’m not really thinking of mentally challenged people when I hear it, but I know that’s where it comes from and can’t really be separated from that.

The people close to me are very smart, very anti-ignorance, very inquisitive and progressive.  I feel OK sitting there with them making terrible jokes because we know that they’re jokes.  If you make an off-color joke that offends no one that hears it, does it make an impact?

I make a lot of jokes about things that aren’t super relevant anymore.  For instance, I make a lot jokes about communism, Russia threatening to bomb us, and Joseph McCarthy.  The reason for this is that known Communists don’t get black listed anymore.  People’s lives aren’t exactly torn asunder for being socialist.  I am distant from the time when these fears were real and entrenched.  Looking at it from my modern perspective, that entire period in history is so absurd that I can’t help but find it hysterical.  The Russian space program of the 50’s and 60’s cracks me up due to how very much of a death trap the entire thing was (this links in with my science safety humor trigger I guess).  But perhaps if I was living in the 50’s, I wouldn’t find McCarthy to be the comical idiot that he was but instead of loony monster hell bent on destroying lives.

I admit that I likely don’t have the reverence for various things in history that I should.  I am distanced from historical atrocities by time and circumstance.  I view the world as a most absurd place and this is on the same wavelength as my sense of humor.  Part of it is likely a coping mechanism.  I laughed a lot about the idiocy that was the “War in Iraq”.  I laughed quite a bit about how ignorant and nationalistic Americans are.  I laugh about the concept of the “Homosexual Agenda”.  I laugh about it all.  I make jokes about it all.

But in moments of quiet when I find myself thinking about the difficulties going on for so many, I don’t laugh.  I simply wish that there wasn’t anything to make fun of.  And often I take a minute to remind myself of the reality of the history I mock.  I read an article about the brutality of the Russian space program back then and was upset reading it.  I was so moved by it that I wrote a song about it (a bluegrass number called “The Cosmonaut’s Wife”…I can’t keep my sense of humor completely out, people).  I try to remember.  I want people to educate me when I make a joke out of ignorance.  I’m trying, always trying.

This whole thing was inspired by reading Jason Alexander’s apology to the gay community for calling cricket a gay sport.  It was a heartfelt, very real (seeming anyway, I can’t be in the guy’s head) apology.  He made a stupid joke and some people got offended and instead of simply saying, “I’m sorry that you were offended”, he didn’t offer up an apology until he really thought about WHY people might be offended and, upon understanding that, decided that he had been, in fact, wrong.  When I think about all the dark stuff I laugh at, I sometimes fear that I’m not feeling enough, that I don’t care enough.  In a society where the disenfranchised have a much louder voice than before, I wonder if I should be laughing at anything at all.

I have been amused lately in watching shows like Star Trek and Babylon 5 that all the alien cultures on there make statements about how humans are so unique, that they’re wild cards, so unpredictable.  Humans laugh and do crazy shit because they’re emotional and passionate…as opposed to all other humanoids apparently.  I, at this point, don’t have any alien life forms to compare us to, but I will say that humor is something very important to us as a species.  If we can’t laugh at the ridiculousness, we will just cry instead.  Perhaps I laugh at some ignorant humor, but I won’t stop laughing.  If I laugh in a way that is remiss, the best I can do is approach it like Alexander and think about it critically and if I come to the conclusion that I was wrong, I will apologize.  But offending someone doesn’t automatically mean that you are wrong.

I think that’s my point…I knew I’d get there eventually.