eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:26am on 2009-08-19

"There's no other place where we so quickly divide humans into two categories as sex. When I started doing research on the biology of sex development, one of the things that I realized is that the process is controlled by a series of enzymes and the reaction may be more or less complete. It's not just two poles where that whole process can end up. In between what we call the ideal biological male or ideal biological female, there's a whole range of other possibilities that don't differ from our basic preconceptions to the extent that we have names for them or call them a disorder. Just like with every other human trait, there are an infinite number of possibilities." -- Gerald N. Callahan, author of Between XX and XY, interviewed by Thomas Rogers in Salon (published 2009-07-07)

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zenlizard: Because the current occupation is fascist. (Default)
posted by [personal profile] zenlizard at 03:03pm on 2009-08-19
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide thigns into two categories, and those who don't.
eftychia: Me in poufy shirt, kilt, and Darth Vader mask, playing a bouzouki (vader)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 03:38pm on 2009-08-19
"There are 10 kinds of people in the world ..."


"... those who understand binary, and those who don't."
eftychia: Lego-ish figure in blue dress, with beard and breasts, holding sword and electric guitar (lego-blue)
posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 03:43pm on 2009-08-19
The overwhelming human tendency (at least in cultures I know anything about -- I'm not sure whether it's universal) to a) force things into dichotomies, often terribly inappropriately, and b) try to map those dichotomies onto other, unrelated dichotomies (nearly always terribly inappropriately), has bugged the $%^# out of me for quite a while. Why are there so many of us who divide the world in twos over and over? Is it neurological; are humans (as a rule) even more binary-oriented than digital computers in out perceptions? (For computers binary is just an encoding, not a model.) Is it "merely" a meme infecting Western civilization from one of its ancient roots?

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