Three Thats, Caterpillar Liquefaction, The Electrician, And Impeachment Banter

1.  This first one has me in mild awe of this sentence that has three 'that's in a row, correctly.  

From New Republic article on Frosh* Member** of Congress Katie Porter:

"She discovered as much during her teaching days, when students declared the subjects she taught to be “too hard”—“my classes were like, ‘oh my God, what even is that that that lady teaches?!’”—but she remains devoted to breaking the concepts down."

The article is worth reading to get to know this interesting young Congress member.

*Frosh is a gender neutral substitute for Freshman
**Member of Congress is gender neutral for Congressman or Congresswoman (Just plain Rep. can work too, but it could be confused with a state rep)
And while I'm at it, I'll mention a term that many people still use - "to man (ie a booth)" when a non-sexist alternative for most cases exists:  "to staff".


2.  Under, "whoa, I didn't know that!"

From an LA Times article about Art Shapiro,  a 73 year old professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis  who has been tracking butterflies in ten locations in California every two weeks as long as the weather permits.  He's been doing that for 47 years.

"Butterflies are not the only insects that go through a dramatic metamorphosis, but they may be the most well-studied.
Even so, as recently as 50 years ago scientists weren’t sure how this transformation occurred, but in the last few decades researchers learned that between the caterpillar and adult stage the animal’s body liquefies inside the pupa and then reorganizes itself to form the butterfly. Only the nervous system stays intact."

3.  We had the electricians out to convert light to LED's,  work on our out-of-date electrical panel, and other things around the house - including dealing with the wire cut accidentally by the floor guy.  So here's a picture I couldn't resist of one electrician and his shadow.

4.  Impeachment Quotes

After Rep. Jim Jordan said he wanted to question "the person who started all this"  Rep. Welch replied:  (from Talking Points Memo)

“I say to my colleague, I’d be glad to have the person who started it all come in and testify,” Welch said.
“President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there,” 

This was a rare bit of snark from the Democrats today.  There was one more spot where I was hoping for one more.   Here's part of Rep. Maloney's questioning: (from Rev.com's transcript)

Patrick Maloney: (00:25)
So when you’re top 1% of your class at West Point, you probably get your pick of assignments, but you picked the infantry didn’t you, sir?
Bill Taylor: (00:35)
I did, sir. Yes, sir.
Patrick Maloney: (00:36)
You were a rifle company commander?
Bill Taylor: (00:38)
Sir.
Patrick Maloney: (00:39)
Where’d you serve?
Bill Taylor: (00:41)
In Vietnam.
Patrick Maloney: (00:41)
Did you see combat in Vietnam, sir?
Bill Taylor: (00:44)
I did. 

I was hoping he'd ask one more question:

Patrick Maloney:  Did you have bone spurs?

But he didn't, and it's probably just as well he didn't.  

I could laugh at this, except that a Supreme Court seat is at stake

When I read about Kavanaugh confirmation strategist Ed Whelan concocting bizarre stories to explain Kavanaugh out of trouble over Dr. Ford's charges of sexual assault, I couldn't help but think of 10 year olds thinking they could outsmart their grandmother with some crazy story about how the window got broken but not by them..  (For those who have been marooned on a desert island, the story Whelan came up with, is that Ford misidentified the person who sexually assaulted her.  It was really some other guy.)

The excuse is so full of holes, I just had to look online to find the worst ever alibis.  

Whelan's efforts seem about as simple-minded as the ideas listed in a post at Cracked  entitled, "The 7 Stupidest Alibis in the History of Crime"

First, there are the stories that, like Whelan's, try to blame someone else:

#7  "My cat downloaded all that child pornography."

and

#1  "It was my evil twin!"

Whelan's story falls right into this pattern. The evil twin seems to be the best fit -  the other guy supposedly looks a lot like Kavanaugh.   But Whelan's efforts have fallen apart, badly. 

Just in case he's working on more cockamamy excuses, we can look at the other five stupidest alibis.  

Here are two I'll call the  "I'm immune" alibis:

#5  "I am a Texas Republican sovereignty."  

I guess Kavanaugh was counting on a version of this one before Ford showed up, only Kavanaugh's variation is "I'm a member of the Federalist Society."  I guess he's still using that and Grassley is still accepting that as a valid excuse for anything.  Though Whelan (the head of the "Ethics and Public Policy Center, mind you, and a fervent Federalist) is helping, along with Kavanaugh to strip off the veneer of purity and respectability the Federalist Society has long dazzled Republicans with.

The other example of "I'm immune":

#2  "I worship the Norse gods!"

Kavanaugh's offers, "I worship the constitution” which up til now has made him immune to most everything.

What should I call this next one?  The plagiarist alibi?

#4  "Did you see Law and Order last night? It was exactly like that."  

Actually, Democrats are using  this one:"Did you see the Anita Hill hearings?  It was exactly like that."

Then there are these two that blame "things" for their behavior.   

#3 "I shot someone six times because I was on a diet."  

This worked for Dan White, and perhaps Kavanaugh would argue the alcohol made him do it, but that would acknowledge he did it.  But given what Whelan's done already, who knows? (Actually Snopes explains that White didn't actually claim the Twinkies made him do.   I'm letting you know so I'm not spreading false rumors.)

And

# 6 "The alignment in my car is bad."  (You really have to go to Cracked to appreciate the absurdity of how this and the other alibis were used.)

This would be a variation of the diet alibi, like "the bed in that room knocked me on top of her."

As the title says, I could laugh at this, except that a Supreme Court seat is at stake.

 [The #s are the rankings that Cracked gave these alibis.]

Bill Passes Alaska Senate Making it Easier and Clearer For Mom To Terminate Parental Rights Of Her Rapist

From the Alaska State Senate Democratic Press Office:

JUNEAU - Today, the Alaska State Senate passed SB 134 by Senate Democratic Leader Berta Gardner (D-Anchorage). The legislation clarifies that a parent who chooses to keep a child conceived through rape can sever ties with their rapist, if approved by the court and in the best interest of the child.

In 1987, the Legislature passed a law allowing a mother to terminate a rapist father's parental rights. This law was inserted in AS 25.23, which focuses on adoption. The current termination statute has confused advocates and attorneys. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization, has erroneously interpreted Alaska's statute as pertaining only to adoption cases. Family law lawyers within the state of Alaska have claimed they were not aware of the applicability of existing statutes.

"This does not affect a lot of people in this state but is a huge issue for those impacted people. It is important for a woman who becomes pregnant through rape to be able to be aware of her options," said Sen. Gardner. "Without a clear legal protection, a woman could be forced and locked into a long-term relationship with her abuser."

There are currently 45 states with statutes that allow for the parental rights of rapists to be reduced or terminated.

The legislation passed unanimously in the Senate and moves to the Alaska House of Representatives for further consideration.
Members of the press with questions may contact Alaska Senate Democratic Press Secretary, Noah Hanson at 465-5319.

Initially, one might think this should have happened 60 years ago - when Alaska became a state.  And there was legislation, but apparently it wasn't all that well known by attorneys and there was some confusion whether it only related to adoption cases.  (One judge, according to the testimony, interpreted that way.)

And not everything is cut and dried.  One case was discussed in the hearings at Health and Human Services Committee* in which a 13 year old was in a relationship with a young man 'over majority' who was convicted of statutory rape and served prison time.  But the baby was raised, in part, by the paternal grandparents and was attached to them.

Miles Curtis testified on this in support of the bill.  The child was in the maternal grandparents care until he was eight and only recently into the custody of the paternal parents.  The child didn't want to be with the family, hard on the child, hard on the mother, hard on us financially.  The current law was used against the mother.  Problem wasn't with the abuser, but with the state of Alaska who have taken over the role of the parent.  We would like it so that rapists are never in the best interest of the child.  It won't help our case, but for others in the future it will help.

*Testimony on this bill begins at about 1:36 pm on the video.

I'd note that perhaps one reason it took so long for this bill to be heard (first hearing seems to be April 6, 2018)** is that it was sponsored by two Democratic Senators - Berta Gardner and Tom Begich - in the Republican controlled Senate.
**The video says this hearing was April 6, 2018, though the legislative record says April 9.

The bill now goes to the Democratic controlled House where one would expect it to pass fairly easily.

Here's the complete text of the bill.

I'd note that I haven't done a lot of coverage of the state legislature since I spent a session in Juneau in 2010.  Getting around on the state's BASIS website seems a lot easier than it was - particularly getting the video and audio of hearings.

Getting To Know Some Local Transgender Folks Before You Vote On Prop 1 On April 3

We are taught to think of gender as an either/or case of male or female.  It's just how you're born.

But we have lots of evidence that it's not that easy.  If it were, all men would have strong 'male' traits and women would all be 'feminine.'  But we know that's not how it is.  If we took all men, I'm guessing we'd get a bell shaped curve of 'masculinity' and 'femininity.'  A similar curve for women would overlap that for men.

Many cultures recognize the fluidity of gender and the fact that some people clearly do not fit the gender category their private parts seem to indicate.  A number have special roles for people who seem to carry both genders.

Many babies are born with ambiguous genitalia and doctors have traditionally decided what gender they should be right after birth, often with surgery to make the baby conform to the doctor's decision.

This is all relevant in Anchorage now because Jim Minnery  and the Alaska Family Council and friends have gotten Prop 1 onto Anchorage's April 3 local ballot.

So I want to post some video I made at a panel discussion last August here in Anchorage.  Mara Keisling, the Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, moderated this panel with three local transgender folks and two parents of transgender kids.

Here's a link to the ballot measure and explanations at Ballotopedia.  (I found that site easier to read than the Municipality's site on this.)

On first blush, I can understand the idea of women not wanting men to use the women's bathrooms, though since women don't use urinals, it's my understanding their public restrooms all have private stalls.  So that should be, for the most part, moot.  Locker rooms and showers are perhaps a different story. Or so the sponsors of Prop 1 would  tell you.  (Actually, they'll tell you public bathrooms are a problem.)

Current Anchorage law allows transgender folks to use the bathroom that they identify with.  No problems have been brought to the public's attention that I know of.  The number of transgender people in Anchorage is very small.  The problems the initiative's sponsor cite are all hypothetical. And unlikely. I doubt too many men will dress up like a woman just to spy on women in the women's restroom.  And they could do that now and it would be illegal if they weren't transgender and were there to spy on women.

I also understand, and am more sympathetic with, the opponents' argument.  I suspect their key objection is the initiative's essential denial of transgender identity.  Even the US military recognizes this, but Prop 1 would make the gender listed in someone's birth certificate the only thing that counts.  Here's a statement from Nobodyaskedme.org (part of the Prop 1 campaign):

"In September of 2015, the Anchorage Assembly forced an ordinance upon residents that allows men to enter women’s spaces — public bathrooms, showers, locker rooms and changing facilities." 

I think this shows clearly that they deny the existence of transgender people.  There is nothing in the ordinance that allows 'men' into women's restrooms, only transgender people who identify as women.  I'm not trying to answer all the questions people have about transgender folks here.  I'm not that well-versed myself.  But I know that for a number of people, the physical gender parts don't always match the mental gender identity of people.  I also know that nobody in their right mind would claim to be transgender if they weren't.  There's far too much heartache and prejudice that comes with such an identity.   I'd also note that the Assembly passed the ordinance 9-2.  That's not even close.  That's not 'forcing.'  The representatives of the vast majority of Anchorage voted for the current ordinance.  If people were 'forced' they could have voted out people at the last Municipal election.

As both of the parents on this panel in the video say, 'before I had a transgender child, I really knew nothing about what the word means.'  My own knowledge, while probably more extensive than the average person's, is still sketchy, but I did post last August about my own education on this topic,  just before Mara Keisling moderated this panel.

Why Do I Immediately Translate This To Men's Lives?

I can't help but wonder if he really means 'men's lives.'

Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2018

And I'm delighted that he knows about Due Process.   Though the man who wants to send immigrants back to countries where they face a high likelihood of violence and death without hearings and process seems the least likely person to ask this question.  But if you believe that all criticism about you is false and merely part of conspiracy to destroy you, then you don't have to take any blame for making bad decisions.

Like all legal terms there's no simple definition.  The link goes into lots of the complications, but here's the part that I think is critical.

"The clause also promises that before depriving a citizen of life, liberty or property, government must follow fair procedures. Thus, it is not always enough for the government just to act in accordance with whatever law there may happen to be. Citizens may also be entitled to have the government observe or offer fair procedures, whether or not those procedures have been provided for in the law on the basis of which it is acting. Action denying the process that is “due” would be unconstitutional."

Comedy And Role Reversal Often Work Best

When you can't convince someone using logic, tapping into the emotion sometimes can work.

If you are afraid of heights and your friend wants you to climb on the roof to see the view, she will never feel your fear of heights directly.  She just tell you not to worry.  But maybe you can appeal to one of her own fears - say snakes - to get her to understand how you feel.  OK, I'll climb on the roof, but you hold these snakes first.  She'll viscerally understand why you won't go on the roof, even if she isn't afraid of heights.

This video does just that, and with humor.




OK, men might look at this and say it isn't the same.  I'd say it's pretty close to how many women are treated when they report assaults.  They aren't taken seriously, they're somehow responsible for what happened to them.  And without doubt, there are examples of that, but they are relatively few, and the many serious complaints shouldn't be treated poorly because of the exceptions.

So think about this approach - turning the tables and using the same language to get someone to see how ridiculous they're being.

Sexual Harassment - The New Environment And The Alaska Legislature

Today I got an email with a statement by Alaska State Senator Berta Garner about an investigation into a sexual harassment of State Senator David Wilson.  Senator Berta Gardner is my state Senator.  She's smart, warm, and not prone to speak without doing her homework.

I must admit that this is the first I've heard about this.  I'll plead Anchorage International Film Festival as my alibi for missing this last week.  Here are some earlier reports on the incident:

APRN piece dated Dec. 7, 2017.

KTUU report dated this afternoon.  It includes video of Sen. Wilson's statement, in which he asks for the Legislative Agency report be released along with the video, which is below. (I can't get the video to embed right, something's wrong with the code, so go to the KTUU link.  It's just blank on Safari and on Firefox there's a message saying the KTUU link is insecure.  I'm just deleting the embed code. Sorry.)

Here's Senator Gardner's response to the Legislative Report.

Senator Gardner Responds to Legislative Report on Behavior of Senator Wilson

ANCHORAGE - Today, Senate Minority Leader and member of the Senate Rules Committee Berta Gardner gave the following statement in response to a vote taken to release a report from the Legislative Affairs Agency on the professional conduct of Senator David Wilson and his interaction with a legislative staffer. The members of the committee voted unanimously to release the content of the report, with the support of the staffer involved in the incident.

“Senator Wilson took out his cellphone, placed it down at the level of the hem of her skirt from a foot away for four seconds, saying he was going to record a closed meeting of House leadership. This behavior is consistent with what the staffer reported at the time. Such behavior is clearly intrusive, intimidating, and inappropriate to the staffer. It is also grossly unprofessional and unethical behavior from anyone, let alone a sitting member of the Senate.

“Coupled with the fact that Senator Wilson slapped a political reporter across the face in the Capitol building a short time before this incident, it demonstrates a disturbing pattern of poor judgement, bullying, and aggressive behavior. Senator Wilson should acknowledge his bad behavior, and apologize immediately to both the reporter and the staffer, taking full responsibility for his actions.”

Members of the press with questions may contact the Alaska Senate Democratic Press Secretary, Jeanne Devon, at 907-269-0129.

Senator Wilson argues that he's been exonerated.  I found a copy of the report at MidnightSun in a form that I can't seem to embed here.  You can see it at the Midnight Sun.  Here's a screenshot of the factual findings.

The report, by Skiff Lobaugh of the Legislative Affairs Agency - a pretty objective body does that analysis for legislators - goes on to look at the federal workplace harassment law and then matches the incident to the law.  It doesn't at all match the quid pro quo definition of harassment.  The second form requires a 'hostile work environment" which looks at

1. frequency,
2. severity, 
3. whether it interferes with the employee's ability to her work, and
4. whether it affects the employee's well being

Lobaugh noted that there was just one incident reported, that his intention was ambiguous - it seemed he was jokingly trying to record a behind closed doors meeting that the employee had been assigned to keep people out.   It did, he found, affect the employee's well being in the short run, but not in the long run.

He did acknowledge the unequal balance of power between an elected official and a legislator staffer who can be fired without cause.  

I'd note that while the employee discussed the incident at the time with others, including legislators, she never filed a complaint.  The staffer, on hearing various reports on the incident, requested a clarification from Leg Legal (the legal advisors to the legislature) about whether he was required to investigate since there are punishments for people who know but don't report, and was told he should.



We're in new territory here as long term social norms are getting reevaluated.  I think many of us tend to get defensive when accused of something we believe we didn't do.  My experience is we get worse if we actually did it.  I don't see how lowering a cell phone to hem level of a staffer's skirt is necessary to try to record a meeting behind the staffer and behind a door.  Playfulness only works between people who know each other well and/or are relatively equal in power.

Sen. Gardner's memo raises the issue of this incident happening about the same time as Sen. Wilson was reported as slapping a journalist, which is clearly out of line.  (The journalist didn't press charges.)

I find it interesting that the first two accusations we've heard of sexual harassment of Alaska state legislators in the post Weinstein era have been against a first term Alaska Native and a first term African-American.  Is this a coincidence?  The vast majority of legislators are white.  There is only one African-American in the legislature and a handful of Alaska Natives out of a total of 60 in both houses.

2020 Presidential Race, Sculpting Pencils, Is Scientology a Religion?, Gender Issue Mapping

Working on a number of posts - film festival stuff and other stuff as well  But I don't want to put them up until they're ready. Also enjoying three grandkids all at once.   Meanwhile, here are a few sites I've encountered recently that might stretch your brain a bit.

President Coach?  The Popovitch Kerr ticket.

pencil art - This artist sculpts the lead of pencils, amazingly.







Scientology - This article challenges the notion that Scientology is a religion and not merely a scam that uses the constitutional protections for religion as a way to avoid taxes and scrutiny.  Talks about how other nations do not give it religious status.

Feeling Other People's Pain - A feminist comic tries to map out the gender landscape.

Would The US Be Different If Women, Or People of Color, Or Blind People Had The Power Of White Males In Our Society

I've often spoken to my friend L about what it means to be blind.  The human-created world is designed by sighted people.  What would be different, I asked L, if blind people had designed things?  She was uncharacteristically silent.  She'd never asked herself that question despite being a blind activist.

And I think we should start thinking about how the world would be different if women had the power of men.  Or African-Americans had the power of whites.  Or a coalition of people of color.  Or atheists.  How would things be different?   A thought experiment if you will.

Let's be clear.  Despite the fears of evangelical Christians that they are being discriminated against and despite the fears of white middle class workers that their cultural identity is disappearing, white males, are still firmly in power.

Let's just look at some numbers.  (Except for presidents - one Catholic and the rest Protestants - I couldn't easily tease out the religion information.  It won't be as stark as the president numbers, but I'm sure the vast majority of the people in these top positions are Christians.)

	White	Other	Male	Female
US Presidents	98%	2%	100%	0%
US House	79%	21%	81%	19%
US Senate	90%	10%	79%	21%
Fortune 500 CEOs	96%	4%	94%	6%
US Population	77%	23%	49%	51%

Sources:  House and Senate, Fortune 500 gender, Fortune 500 race, US Population

The numbers come from different years, but they give us a stark example of how white males overwhelmingly hold the top positions of power in the US government and in the largest corporations.  Only the US House of Representatives is close to matching the population race statistics, and even there it's a four to one advantage for whites. (I'd guess that gerrymandering people of color into packed districts plays a part here.  Black Reps often get 60-90% majorities when they are all packed into a few districts, thus wasting votes for Democrats that could have made other districts more competitive.) It's also four to one for males even though females make up slightly more than half the population.

I understand that most white males probably don't feel that powerful.  And they aren't.  They can't find a job, and if they have one it doesn't pay as much as it should.  They're kids don't listen to them.  Even Trump must be complaining about his lack of power to do things.  Individually most Americans don't feel too powerful.  But look at those numbers!   The people in power in this country have been white males since the beginning, and the rules have been made by people who see the world from a white male perspective.  If the average white male doesn't feel powerful, just think how the average female and the average person of color, or the average non-Christian must feel.

Would women earn as much as men if the top positions gave them the high level power men have  now?   Would birth control costs not be covered in many health insurance policies while viagra is?  Would there be universal child-care?  Or would men stay home and take care of the kids?

Would prisons be populated disproportionately by people of color if they sat in these top positions of power?  Would black wealth be equal to white wealth?

People these days don't have much alone-without-a-screen thinking time.  But I'm going to challenge you to imagine how the world if different groups of people had controlled the top positions of government and business the way white males have.  What laws would be different?  How would our lives be different?

Perhaps we all feel so powerless because the gap isn't so much about gender or race as it is about class.  For a while we had a viable middle class and the gap between the salaries of those at the top of the organization weren't nearly as extreme as they are today.  And with that money, the wealthy can use sophisticated advertising techniques to convince white males it's about race and gender, not about class.

Perhaps the biggest fear of white males as they feel power slipping away (though the numbers show that their perceptions are quite different from the facts) is that people of color and women will treat white males the way white males have treated people of color and women.  That is a scary thought isn't it?

Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back - Transitioning On Transgender Awareness and Rights

When conservatives cry about liberal control of the national agenda, they think about gay marriage, the shrinking white majority, pornography, legalization of marijuana, loss of public Christian displays.

When liberals cry about conservative control of the national agenda they think about ever increasing abortion restrictions, shrinking government, public funding going to private schools,  tax cuts, the wealth gap, rollbacks of regulations on the environment and corporate mergers and finance, about the attacks on evolution and science in general.

People who identify as liberal or as conservative all seem to think 'the other side' is winning and destroying the country.

Ignorance plays a big role in this,  That's certainly been the case with gay rights.

In this post I want to talk about the issue of transgender rights. On the one hand, great progress has been made, on the other hand there is a backlash to take it back.

At the national level, Trump has decreed that transgender folks should no longer serve in the military.   (I'd agree with this policy if it included all people of all sexual identities.)

On the local level, the forces that have fought gay rights forever here, have now put an initiative on the April Municipal ballot that would roll back transgender rights in Anchorage.

Growing up in the US, I never even had a word for transgender folks (and even now I'm not sure I'm using the right words).  If I search my memory, I'd say my awareness of the issue was when Christine Jorgensen had a sex change in 1951.  I was really young back then, but somehow the news got through to me.  I obviously had no real understanding of what had happened, just that a man had turned into a woman.

I think my real transformation came from reading.  There was Roberta Muldoon in The World According to Garp who was written as just another character who happened to have had a sex change.  The book that really focused my attention on the experience of a transgender person was Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex.  (You can listen to the book on Youtube.)

My son had a college classmate who later transitioned to female.  I've spent time with him before and her after, but we didn't talk much, if any, about the transition.

[I'm running out of time here.  The above is to give people some references to this topic, but I don't pretend this is the best list.  It's my personal list.  There have also been a number of films on this topic I've seen at the Anchorage International Film Festival over the years:  The Prodigal Sons, From This Day Forward, and Real Boy.  All have added nuance to my still limited understanding. So I'm going to leave links here for people who haven't encountered transgender folks and want to understand this better.  And below I'll give people some things they can do to help others understand.]


What You Can Do #1

More recently, I got to know Scott Schofield when he came to Anchorage and headed Out North theater.  He was back again this summer performing his piece, Becoming A Man in 127 Easy Steps.

Yesterday I got an email from Scott saying he's working on making his performance piece into a movie.  So if people want to be supportive during these times of transgender rights backlash, this is a way to do it.  Your contribution will help make this film a reality.  And the more people who see the film, the more people will 'know' a transgender person and have a better understanding of what this is all about.  And they'll get a more complex awareness that our binary male/female dichotomy is not nearly as simple as that.   Here's a short video of Scott explaining the film project.






What You Can Do #2   

I got a another email today pointing me to a presentation here in Anchorage by

"Mara Keisling. She has served as the director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) for 14 years and is one of the country’s most prominent transgender civil rights activists."

 Wendy Williamson Auditorium  (UAA)

7 pm  Tuesday (August 29).

The email goes on to say:

"The focus of our discussion with Mara will be, first and foremost, how we can most effectively fight Prop 1, the harmful anti-transgender initiative on the April 2018 ballot in Anchorage. This ballot question is drawing attention from national organizations—like the NCTE—because it is, unfortunately, the worst anti-transgender ballot initiative in the country.
Through her work with the NCTE, Mara has been on the front lines in so many fights similar to what we’re facing now in Anchorage. Her guidance and words of wisdom will be indispensable, so you will not want to miss out tomorrow."

Even if you aren't sure where you stand on the initiative, this would be a good chance to get to hear a person who has been prominent nationally on this issue.

Considering Trump's Lecturing About NATO, Let's Look Again At NATO Expenses And Benefits

Trump apparently took his testosterone supplement today as demonstrated in this video from Politico where he shoves his way to the front of the photo op at NATO.  Or is he just jealous of the attention Montana House candidate Gainforte got for knocking down a reporter?

During his visit to NATO headquarters, Trump moves in front of Montenegro Prime Minister Dusko Markovic to be in front of the group pic.twitter.com/kYDfshnVrp

— POLITICO (@politico) May 25, 2017

 He also went on to repeat his demands that all NATO members pay their 2% dues.

I realize that Trump gloms on to simplistic notions like this, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us have to accept his limited grasp of things.

I did some checking on the NATO formula in February of this year in response to a reader comment and it seems appropriate to repost the gist of it again today.  The whole post includes a comment by a reader  who says he was career army including as staff to National Security Council.  This isn't a comprehensive study, but it does raise questions that Trump's simplistic 2% mantra misses.

"NATO -   Basically they all say it’s more complicated than those numbers say:1.  There are different NATO budgets.  One is related to NATO non-military costs and each member pays according to a formula based on its GDP.  In that area, countries are paying pretty much according to the formula. 
2.  The Congressional Research Service says the US gets plenty of benefits from NATO

“DOD has noted that the United States has benefitted from NATO infrastructure support for several military operations, including the 1986 air strike on Libya, Desert Storm, Provide Comfort, Deny Flight, peacekeeping activities in the Balkans, as well as military operations in Afghanistan and training in Iraq. Finally, the Pentagon notes that U.S. companies have been successful in bidding on NSIP [NATO Security Investment Program] contracts.”

3.  When it comes to military contribution, the calculations include the total military expenditures for each country.  Most of the NATO countries only have troops related to Europe and NATO.  The calculation for the US includes all military spending world wide.  It’s true that some of those forces can be brought in, if needed, to deploy in Europe.  But it’s also true that the US troops in Europe are not solely to support NATO.  They can if needed, but they also support US military missions in other places - like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc.  So the calculations of those expenses, which make the US contribution look huge (less than your $700 million figure, but more than your 20% figure), are misleading because those expenses are for much, much more than defense of NATO. "

Variations On The Theme of Knowing and Ignorance

I don't like to just repost what others have done.  I feel some need to include some sort of value-added.  The value here is fairly minimal.  It's merely putting these together with what I see as the common themes of ignorance, the difficulty of knowing, and the greater difficulty of being able to assess what you know.


I got a link that sent me to McSweeny's Internet Tendency.  It turns out McSweeney is a publishing house in San Francisco.  Had I known that last week, I might have tried to stop and and see who is behind these two posts.

• IF PEOPLE TALKED ABOUT OTHER THINGS THE WAY THEY TALKED ABOUT GENDER IDENTITY  by KAYA YORK

Here are two examples from the piece of talking about other things like people talk about gender:

Cats: “A Manx is not a cat. Cats are defined as having tails. Maybe it’s a koala.”
Ice cream: “Avocado is not a valid ice cream flavor because I’ve never heard of it and it does not appeal to me.”

There are lots more such examples.

• THAD, THE WORST STUDENT IN YOUR INTRO CLASS, HAS SOMETHING TO SAY

by RJ HAPPEL

Oh my!  There must be a kind of genius that allowed Happel to create this essay of twisted logic.

• The Tangled Story Behind Trump’s False Claims Of Voter Fraud

'Zombie Research' and how the study that led people (like Trump) to incorrectly conclude that non-citizens were voting in big enough numbers to impact election results was used to impact an election.  This comes from Nate Silver's Fivethirtyeight website.  It's about a very sophisticated ignorance - the kind that always made it hard for me to submit academic articles, because I was always certain there was some important piece that I had missed entirely.

• "The greatest enemy of knowledge is NOT ignorance, it's the illusion of knowledge."

I first wrote about the  Dunning-Kruger effect  a year ago April.  This video is actually an example posted by Alberto Cairo - the professor who taught the online class I took on infographics for journalists -  of how videos are an improvement over simple graphics (Cairo's area of expertise.)  His post includes three more such video examples on:   the visualization of uncertainty, the first of  a series about elementary statistical methods titled Methods 101, and a discussion about Cairo's book, The Truthful Art.  






(The 'greatest enemy of knowledge' quote comes at the end of the video.

The notion that I had to confront the 'knowledge' my students already had embedded in their brains about any given topic before they could really consider a different 'truth' came about a third of the way into my teaching career, and radically changed how I taught. If someone 'knows' something, it's really hard to displace that 'knowledge' with something else unless you get that person to consciously confront the existing 'knowledge' and how it was acquired.

"Women's" Stories Less Important Than Men's

In today's LA Times, Sarah Menkedick recalls apologizing to book tour audiences that her book is about motherhood.  Until one day, she thinks, what male author would apologize about writing about, say, war?  None.

"Birth is only, after all, the single most important experience in our lives. Like war, sports, medicine, epic travel, it’s a matter of blood and sweat and gore and suffering, of life and death, of triumphing over the limits of body and mind, except: Only women can give birth. So birth is imagined as an ingenuous, icky realm for the dull-minded."

She writes about two women writers - one whose first work was on motherhood, but then wrote for a men's magazine 

"often writing profiles of celebrated white men.  She is famous." 

Then a reverse example.  Elizabeth Gilbert wrote for the same men's magazine and her first books, Menkedick tells us, included man in the title and won her acclaim.  Then she wrote "Eat, Pray, Love."   She quotes her:

"I came out of the closet as a woman," Gilbert once said.  "Whatever acclaim I had in the world, however I was known, I was not known as a woman who would write a book like that.  Then, of course, I did get typecast.  . . .Like all of a sudden, my whole history disappeared."

"Yet I can’t help but think that in our determination to turn our talents away from personal writing, and to be taken seriously by men, we strengthened an existing paradigm that elevates the characteristically male, diminishes the characteristically female, and emphasizes the distinction."

She writes about how graduate school professors have helped instill in female students that writing about motherhood and other women's issues is a less serious genre.  But she's also hopeful that more women are changing that way of thinking.

I'm not sure what it means, but the print and online titles of Menkedick's piece are radically different.

• Print:  "Portrait of the artist as a young mother"
• Online:  "Why motherhood isn't an icky realm for the dull-minded but the stuff of epic literature"

In another op-ed in today's LA Times, Ben Blatt, the author of Nabokov's Favorite Color is Mauve writes about the use of the pronouns 'he' and 'she' in the most acclaimed novels.  As you might guess, he shows up much more than 'she.'  But women are far more balanced in their usage than men.  

That one also has very different print and online titles:

• Print:  "What writers use 'he' more than 'she'?
• Online:  "The gender pronoun test: What the ratio of 'he' to 'she' says about our favorite novels"

Based on these two examples, I'm guessing that the limits of print keep their headlines shorter, but, of course, one would have to look at a lot more examples to be sure.  And maybe interview some editors.

Election 2016: What The Glass Ceiling Looks Like

[This started out fairly focused, but the causes of the glass ceiling for women aren't simple.  Nor do they explain everything in this election.   This isn't intended to be the final treatise on obstacles Hillary Clinton faces in her campaign because she's a woman.  But it is intended to give it some context.  The basic point is this:  Because she is a woman she has more hurdles on her way to the White House than a man would and here are some reasons why and some numbers.]


Rarely are women kept out of higher positions simply because they are women.  No, it's because they aren't aggressive enough, or they're too aggressive.  There are gaps in their resume, or times when they weren't in the office when we needed them (maybe because they took off time to have and care for a child while the fathers stayed at work.)

Deborah Tannen has spent her career as a linguist documenting the differences between men and women's talk and why they handicap women in male dominated institutions.

Norming is one of her topics. [I can't find a good overview.  Try checking out her book Talking 9-5.] The norm has traditionally been a white male in a suit.  That's what leaders are supposed to look like.  And people who don't look (and act) like a white male, have trouble moving up out of subordinate roles.  Not so much because they are women, but because they aren't men. They don't match our image of the Norm.    Individuals who differ from that norm stand out.  They don't fit in.  The more they differ from how we expect them to look and act, the harder it will be for them to succeed.  Maybe they're just not part of the team, like the white males who don't wear a suit or don't go out drinking with the guys.    Blacks stand out, because they're not white.  The whiter they are, the less they stand out.

Women stand out in a lose-lose sort of way.  The more they try to look or sound like men - cut their hair short, wear suits, raise their voices, talk dirty - the less they look like the women men think they should look like.  We've all seen the lists of descriptors for men and women who behave the same way.  When women act like men act, they're punished for it.   Where men are seen as strong, women are seen as pushy.   Women just don't fit our images of what the ideal leader should look like and men (and women) don''t see this as discrimination.  For them it's simply 'the truth.'

Here's a clear example of how 'norms' play a role in Americans choosing people who look like our ideal of a leader from a 2012 article on The American College President Study:

"In 1986, the first year of ACE’s college president study, the demographic profile of the typical campus leader was a white male in his 50s. He was married with children, Protestant, held a doctorate in education, and had served in his current position for six years.
Twenty-five years later, with few exceptions, the profile has not changed."

The study does note that the percentage of women presidents in those 25 years rose from ten to 26.

But underlying this, I would argue, is the fear of change, of losing power that men have in our (and most other) society.

C. Jane Kendrick on Weekend Edition today gave one reason why this happens as she talked about campaigning for Clinton in Utah:

". . . when I think about how people feel about Hillary here in Utah, it's not simply that they disagree with her. It's that they hate her. I think there's a character assassination that happened in the 1990s, long before she ever ran and I think long before Bill was president, that started with questioning women's roles and gender roles. I think she really pushed Utah's buttons.

". . . she poses a huge threat to the system that works in Utah. I think she poses a threat to the patriarchal system. She poses a threat to gender roles. Everything that I was taught to hold dear is the opposite of what Hillary has - who she is, except for, you know, being a grandmother and a mother, which I think a lot of women here, in my past, growing up, would say perhaps she didn't do enough of that."

Sure, people who strongly believe in the free market as the perfect system, who believe abortion is murder, and that guns are as essential an extension of the human anatomy as a cell phone, all have 'rational' reasons to oppose Clinton.  But to hate her?  To make her into a demon?

The Republicans have been smearing their  male opponents with sophisticated propaganda too.  Their crowning achievement was the Swiftboating campaign that took Kerry's heroic war record and made him into a traitor with lies and innuendo.

And that's what they've been doing with Hillary Clinton since Bill Clinton walked onto the national stage.

A PEW study discusses the top qualities people look for in a leader and perceived gender differences in those qualities. Honesty comes out on top among the top four traits.  And women are perceived as far more honest than men.  There's little doubt in my mind that's why the Republicans' most constant sound-bite on Clinton is about her being dishonest.  Just as they worked hard to whittle away John Kerry's war hero advantage over the draft dodging George W. Bush, they are pounding on Clinton's honesty.

But this is against the backdrop of women not looking like our norm for leadership.  After all, Catholics still won't accept women priests, let alone a Pope.  Orthodox Jews still segregate men and women, and Fundamentalists tell us women should obey their husbands.

Of course, Clinton's being a woman is only one of the many obstacles she has faced in her quest for the presidency.  We only pick a president every four years.  That's a possibility of 25 slots per century if no one were ever reelected.  The odds are extremely low for men too.  But even lower for women.

And while I have doubts about some of Clinton's past and how it would play out in a Clinton presidency, I've had those doubts in every election since I first got to vote for president in 1968.  Nobody's ideal candidate is ever on the ballot.  All candidates have warts.

But in my observation of presidential election for the last 50 years or so, no basically well qualified male candidate's election, given an opponent like Trump,  would still be in doubt.  Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater, whose policies were not nearly as bizarre as Trump's and whose character was not in question.  Not even marginally qualified male candidates with an opponent like Trump would have anything to worry about.

We have memes that talk about women (or substitute whatever group that doesn't fit Tannen's idea of the American leader norm) having to work twice as hard as men, such as Charlotte Witton's:

 "Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult."

I'm sure lots of men dismissed this because of what they would have called her smart ass conclusion.

What's particularly telling when this double standard is applied to women, are that facts that women belong to

• the richest and poorest (and all those in-between) economic classes, 
• the best and worst educated, 
• every different religious denomination
• every ethnic group

AND they make up slightly more than 50% the population.  Yet

• 0% of US presidents have been women
• 4% of Fortune 500 company presidents are women in 2016
• 6.9% of generals and admirals in the US military are women in 2016
• 5.2% of commercial airline pilots are women
• "Women occupy just 6.3 percent, or 10 out of 160 head chef positions at 15 prominent U.S. restaurant groups analyzed by Bloomberg."

I can't find numbers on the percent of women heading labor unions, but this article begins:

"Why do unions have so few female leaders? On the face of the facts, that doesn’t make sense. After all, 45.5 percent of unionists are women."

I already mentioned that only 26% of university presidents.  You get the picture.


Where are women doing 'better'?  An Education Week article titled "Women on par with men in principalships" tells us:

"Looking at data for the 2007-08 school year, the report shows that 50 percent of public school principals and 53 percent of private school principals were female that year."

But that doesn't look all that good when you consider that men made up less than a quarter of the public school teachers, the pool from which principals are drawn.*

While women might not get top head chef positions, according to QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) magazine in 2011

"more than 50 percent of restaurants are now owned by women"

And the book Supervision in The Hospitality Industry*  tells us that

"more than two-thirds of the supervisors in the food service industry are women"

Which makes sense, but is a dubious achievement,  because the New Republic lists the food service industry as the lowest paid in the nation.  

When you consider that just over 50% of the population is women, these numbers show that more is going on than "they aren't as good."  There are paths to many jobs that women haven't been able to get on.  Many commercial pilots, for example, got their training in the military when women weren't allowed those jobs.  Trade apprenticeships didn't take women.  And so on.

But think about this.  Until very recently, every married man was married to a woman.  And many, if not most, had daughters.  They all had mothers.  Yet they continued to make decisions and to support a system that made the women in their lives second class citizens.  

This is deeply embedded in our psyches, and we still have a lot of self-reflection to do. This campaign has started some of that.   Just as no one expected Nixon to start the US talking to China, no one expected Trump to start us talking about the prevalence of sexual assaults. (A key difference was that Nixon went to China consciously and purposely.)  

But when anyone says they can't vote for Clinton because she's not honest, or because of emails, or the Clinton Foundation, start asking them about what they know about male candidates of the past and the baggage they had.  Ask them specifically what they know about her dishonesty, or is it just a word they associate with her.  Then ask them about their fathers' treatment of women.  Ask them about their fathers' attitude about family.  Their own ideas about families.  You might prepare by reading what George Lakoff says on that. Go down to where he talks about conservative and liberal conceptions of family.

You can also see Deborah Tannen's take on the election before the Democratic primary was over.
And here she's discusses the interruptions in the first debate.

I'm reasonably confident that Clinton is going to win, but I shouldn't have any doubts about it given the qualifications of these two candidates.  And if you think things got bad when we elected a Black president, just wait until we have a woman president.  All the misogyny that's bottled up will come exploding out.  And only when it's all out in the open for everyone to see, will we be able to process it and move on.  

Again, sorry seems a little disjointed, but the world I'm writing about is also disjointed.  There's no simple cause and effect.  Lots of factors play roles in this first US election with a woman as a candidate from a major party.  

*I'd note that in 1970 I taught 5th grade for a year in Los Angeles.  I was one of very few male teachers, though the principal and the vice principal were both male.  One day, the vice principal invited me to go to an event for male teachers.  He explained that this was the route to become a principal. 

Articles of Interest - ISIS Recruits, Genes, Bias, Map Artist

There's way too much information for anyone to keep up with.  Here are some ideas worth considering.


Danes choose love over punishment to fight terrorists with some apparent success.

". . . France shut down mosques it suspected of harboring radicals. The U.K. declared citizens who had gone to help ISIS enemies of the state. . . But the Danish police officers took a different approach: They made it clear to citizens of Denmark who had traveled to Syria that they were welcome to come home, and when they did, they would receive help with going back to school, finding an apartment, meeting with a psychiatrist or a mentor, or whatever they needed to fully integrate back into society."

When a Person Is Neither XX nor XY: A Q&A with Geneticist Eric Vilain

People argue that the use of computers, human bias can be eliminated, but this piece shows that human bias can still be reflected in the programs they write.

"That has important applications. Any bias contained in word embeddings like those from Word2vec is automatically passed on in any application that exploits it. One example is the work using embeddings to improve Web search results. If the phrase “computer programmer” is more closely associated with men than women, then a search for the term “computer programmer CVs” might rank men more highly than women. “Word embeddings not only reflect stereotypes but can also amplify them,” say Bolukbasi and co."

Secrets are not a secret anymore if more than one person knows...

“A real secret is something which only one person knows.” ― Idries Shah, Reflections

There are no secrets that time does not reveal. Jean Racine If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees. Khalil Gibran

An argument against having backdoor keys to break into phones.



Rubric Memo  -  A spoof on academic memos and the use of rubrics.

"We refer to this rubric as Project 3.5.1, which you will recognize as a series of numbers. By entering data about your courses into this rubric, you help us to improve education for all our students, to whom we have also assigned numbers. We have also assigned you a number based on an Enigma-encrypted combination of the street address of your childhood home and your ATM PIN code, which we hacked (please see attachment 7)."

Map Maker Artist Perfectionist 

"These days, almost all the data cartographers use is provided by the government and is freely available in the public domain. Anybody can download databases of highways, airports, and cities, and then slap a crude map together with the aid of a plotter. What separates a great map from a terrible one is choosing which data to use and how best to present it."

If Women Relate Their Own Gender Battles To Clinton's, She Wins Big

I keep reading polls that say Clinton is only slightly less disliked than her opponent.  When I look at her opponent's records, this makes no sense to me.  When people believe something that makes no sense to me, I search for some explanation.  In this case, my tentative conclusion is sexism and the Right's smear machine that spearheaded campaigns like the Swiftboating campaign against Kerry.
The point of this post is simple:  If women can see the crap that Clinton is taking because she's a woman and relate it to the crap they take in their lives, Clinton can't lose.  The rest explains my thinking here.


Before the industrial revolution, there tended to be two worlds - the public world where men could go when they overcame the biological survival needs.   The women stayed in the private world.  As Europe evolved and with the arrival of the industrial revolution, women began moving out into the men's world.  Some jobs were almost exclusively reserved for women - sewing in factories, nursing, elementary school teaching.  But whenever women ventured into male domains - in the crafts, in factories, in higher education, in the professions - they were second class citizens.  There's so much documentation on this it seems unnecessary to provide links.  One example I recently read was  Barbara Goldsmith's biography of Marie Curie Obsessive Genius.   In it she documents all the ways that Curie had to fight against barriers that kept women out of science.  They weren't allowed in the best schools. (Her father taught her and hired tutors.)  They weren't accepted into the universities.  They didn't get appointments to academic posts.  Their work was belittled.

Deborah Tannen's  Talking 9 to 5  examines the  how the language of men and women use differs, and how this disadvantages women in male dominated settings.  She also talks about norming - how the white male is the norm in the US and in male dominated organizations.  As people differ from that norm (less masculine men, women, people of color) they stand out as lesser.  But as women, say, try to be more like the norm they become less 'feminine' and they get criticized for that as well.  And this seems to be a lot of Clinton's image problem - she's a woman trying to fit a role traditionally limited to men.  She doesn't fit as a man, but as she tries, she doesn't feel right as a woman to many either.  

Sexism is often hard to prove.  Often employees have been forbidden to talk about salaries so women don't know that their male colleagues get significantly more for the same work.  And women usually didn't have more than their own anecdotal experience.  But here is one study cited in Scientific American that does give proof of what I'm talking about:

"research from Yale . . . had scientists presented with application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position and who intended to go on to graduate school. Half the scientists were given the application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the “female” applicants were rated significantly lower than the “males” in competence, hireability, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student."

Another example is powerful men taking sexual advantage of less powerful women.   The Roger Ailes case is just the most recent.  Significant here is how long this went on and all the pressure on women not to say anything.  And the pressure of those inside Fox not to challenge the all powerful boss who was accused, not to mention the network of other men who took advantage.

So most women understand what they're up against.  They've all experienced this in some realm of their life.  If they are lucky, they've been able to live in a relative safe bubble where it didn't happen often, but the more they ventured out of the small protected group, or up in an organization, the more likely they were to face obstacles.  And there is no question that men deal with crap from male competitors within organizations as well, but being beaten by a woman is worse than being beaten by a man.  Being reprimanded by a woman is much worse than being reprimanded by a man.

There's no other explanation I can see that explains her negative perception.  OK, she's more a wonk and her work is her life.  But so were Dukakis, Gore, and Romney and their ratings were much higher.  She has issues in her past, but that's been true of every high level candidate.  But men can be wonks in our society, but women should be warm and fuzzy.  That's changing, but given the polling numbers, lots of folks haven't made that move yet.

Reagan got the Iranians to keep the hostages until he was elected* then did the arms for hostages deal with Iran.   That wasn't a problem, but Clinton's emails are a problem?  Give me a break. Benghazi and email are manufactured problems, that in the larger scheme of things are trivial.  They aren't venal, and no serious damage has been proven.  If they want to talk about civilian deaths due to drone strikes, then that's a different issue.  But they don't care about dead foreigners.  Issues about Clinton's close ties to Wall Street are problematic, but few politicians get to her level without having a number of difficult connections.  They should be talked about.  But compared to her opponent, well, there's just no comparison.

Sure, it's more than just a woman thing.  It's also about winning the presidency and all the power that gives to one faction or the other.  But the fact that Clinton's a woman is being exploited by her opponents.  That's the very definition of sexism.

So, if Clinton can figure out how to get most women voters in the US to see that her negative ratings are a result, to a great extent, of our culture's inherent sexism, the same kind of sexism they deal with daily,  then Clinton will win big.   Especially if the women then explain it all to their fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands.  Tell them the stories of the harassment they deal with daily, the stories they don't usually share because, because it doesn't seem worth the trouble.

Muxe - Are Matriarchal Societies More Tolerant of More Fluid Gender Roles?

A friend posted this picture of a poster he saw in Oakland.


The picture required a second look.  Zapotec Muxe?  There's a bit of description on the poster (which you can focus better by clicking on it).

Perhaps the concept of muxe will help us 21st century Americans in our  reexamination of how we think about gender and sexuality.

The military has decided that gay and now transgender troops are ok.  But some legislators in some states have made bathroom use by transgender folk an issue.  And same sex marriage is still a problem for many people.

Getting past the strict dichotomy of male or female or straight or gay is tricky.  We all know there are women who have more than average typically male characteristics and males who have more than average typical female characteristics.  I think most people can get that far conceptually, because you can still put people into one of those two categories:  male or female.

Since genitals in our culture are usually covered up in public, we haven't had much opportunity to examine and get to know the variety they come in.  While we might recognize a picture of a friend's mouth or nose or eyes, most of us wouldn't recognize a picture of a friend's penis or vagina.  And when people are born with ambiguous genitalia, the parents, traditionally, haven't talked about it or the decisions they had to make about what to put on the either/or male/female space on the birth certificate.  But there have been clues in our language - terms like hermaphrodite - that have acknowledged gender ambiguity.

Nowadays these topics are well discussed, at least in many circles.  Enough, at least, that laws have been passed to allow same sex marriage and to protect transgender folks from discrimination.

But this is still an uncomfortable issue for many.  An issue often informed by ignorance.

So when I saw this poster it made me think of the Samoan tradition of Fa 'afafine,  male Samoan children who are early identified as Fa 'afafine and raised as girls to have a unique place in their cultural life, crossing between gender roles.  I learned about at a presentation of Diverse Voices at UAA back in 2007.

Muxes, in their communities in Oaxaca, Mexico, are accepted as somewhere between straight and gay.  A New York Times article tells us a little about muxes:

“Muxe” is a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish “mujer,” or woman; it is reserved for males who, from boyhood, have felt themselves drawn to living as a woman, anticipating roles set out for them by the community.
Anthropologists trace the acceptance of people of mixed gender to pre-Colombian Mexico, pointing to accounts of cross-dressing Aztec priests and Mayan gods who were male and female at the same time. Spanish colonizers wiped out most of those attitudes in the 1500s by forcing conversion to Catholicism. But mixed-gender identities managed to survive in the area around Juchitán, a place so traditional that many people speak ancient Zapotec instead of Spanish.
Not all muxes express their identities the same way. Some dress as women and take hormones to change their bodies. Others favor male clothes. What they share is that the community accepts them; many in it believe that muxes have special intellectual and artistic gifts.

As I read the Wikipedia article on Muxe, I noticed that the district and town of Tehuantapec showed up.  Long ago, my wife and I drove through Mexico, including Tejuantapec.  And that mysterious brain nestled in my skull retrieved a long-ago absorbed and forgotten tidbit: the Zapotecan culture in Tehuantapec is matriarchal.

So I looked up Tehuantapec.  And there it was:

"The city is still the center of Zapotec culture in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and is the second largest in the region. The city is known for its women and their traditional dress, which was adopted by Frida Kahlo. Tehuantepec has a reputation for being a “matriarchal society.” Women do dominate the local markets and are known to taunt* men. However, political power is still the domain of men."

So this got me to thinking.  From somewhere else deep in my brain, I remembered something about power and gender and sexuality.  The idea of some that going from the stronger gender (as male is often described) to the weaker makes no sense, or is even a betrayal of one's gender.  I wasn't able to figure out the right search terms to find something online voicing that specifically.  (Though this is an interesting look at three men who were involved in gay-bashing and their reasoning which gets near this idea.)   The concept was related to power and a disdain for someone who would go from the gender with power to the one with less power.

But the idea that this community that is tolerant of a third gender/sexuality option is a matriarchal community is intriguing and ought to be explored further.  Now, I did leave in the quote about men being dominant in political power in Tejuantapec because it would be disingenuous to hide it.  Even the power divide in Tehuantapec is not clean and unambiguous. Nor is it anywhere.   It would be interesting to explore other cultures that are matriarchal and see whether the gender divide is les either/or in those cultures as well.


*In my ideal world, no one would taunt anyone, except in a playful way for the taunted.