kband: bluprnt 4 rvolution

You are your genes

This is perhaps one of the best article I've read in a while. It's from the NYT and about how recent science has discovered a variety of genes in animals that govern complex behaviors, even a mating dance (see picture above). I coudl pull out neat excerpts but you really need to read the entire thing. It will make you change how you look at life.

The article was offline at NYT so it's all in "more."

July 19, 2005
A Gene for Romance? So It Seems (Ask the Vole)

By NICHOLAS WADE
Biologists have been making considerable progress in identifying members of a special class of genes - those that shape an animal's behavior toward others of its species. These social behavior genes promise to yield deep insights into how brains are constructed for certain complex tasks.

Some 30 such genes have come to light so far, mostly in laboratory animals like roundworms, flies, mice and voles. Researchers often expect results from these creatures to apply fairly directly to people when the genes cause diseases like cancer. They are much more hesitant to extrapolate in the case of behavioral genes. Still, understanding the genetic basis of social behavior in animals is expected to cast some light on human behavior.

Last month researchers reported on the role of such genes in the sexual behavior of both voles and fruit flies. One gene was long known to promote faithful pair bonding and good parental behavior in the male prairie vole. Researchers discovered how the gene is naturally modulated in a population of voles so as to produce a spectrum of behaviors from monogamy to polygamy, each of which may be advantageous in different ecological circumstances.

The second gene, much studied by fruit fly biologists, is known to be involved in the male's elaborate suite of courtship behaviors. New research has established that a special feature of the gene, one that works differently in males and females, is all that is needed to induce the male's complex behavior.

Social behavior genes present a particular puzzle since they involve neural circuits in the brain, often set off by some environmental cue to which the animal responds. Catherine Dulac of Harvard has found that the male mouse depends on pheromones, or air-borne hormones, to decide how to behave toward other mice. It detects the pheromones with the vomeronasal organ, an extra scent-detecting tissue in the nose.

The male mouse's rule for dealing with strangers is simple - if it's male, attack it; if female, mate with it. But male mice that are genetically engineered to block the scent-detecting vomeronasal cells try to mate rather than attack invading males.

The mice have other means - sound and sight - of recognizing male and female. But curiously, nature has placed the sex discrimination required for mating behavior under a separate neural circuit aroused through the vomeronasal organ.

"It was very surprising for us," Dr. Dulac said.

The gene that was eliminated from the mice is a low-level member of a presumably complex network that governs the inputs and outputs necessary for mating behavior. The most striking behavioral gene discovered so far is a very high level gene in the Drosophila fruit fly.

The gene is called fruitless because when it is disrupted in males they lose interest in females and instead form mating chains with other males. The male's usual courtship behavior is pretty fancy for a little fly. He approaches the female, taps her with his forelegs, sings a song by vibrating his wing, licks her and curls his abdomen for mating. If she is impressed she slows down and accepts his proposal. If not, she buzzes her wings at him, a gesture that needs no translation.

All these behaviors, researchers discovered several years ago, are controlled by the fruitless gene - fru for short - which is switched on in a specific set of neurons in the fly's brain. The gene is arranged in a series of blocks. Different combinations of blocks are chosen to make different protein products. The selection of blocks is controlled by a promoter, a region of DNA that lies near but outside the fru gene itself.

So far four of these fru gene promoters have been found. Three work the same way in both male and female flies. But a fourth selects different blocks to be transcribed, making different proteins in males and in females. This difference, it seemed, was somehow the key to the whole suite of male courtship behaviors.

Last month Barry J. Dickson of the Austrian Academy of Sciences provided an elegant proof of this idea by genetically engineering male flies to make the female version of the fruitless protein, and female flies to generate the male version. The male flies barely courted at all. But the female flies with the male form of fruitless aggressively pursued other females, performing all steps of male courtship except the last.

How does the male form of the fruitless protein govern such a complex behavior? Dr. Dickson and his colleagues have found that the protein is produced in 21 clusters of neurons in the fly's brain. The neurons, probably connected in a circuit, presumably direct each step of courtship in a coordinated sequence.

Surprisingly, female flies possess the same neuronal circuit. The presence of the male form of fruitless somehow activates the circuit , in ways that are still unknown.

Fruitless serves as a master switch of behavior, just as other known genes serve as master switches for building an eye or other organs. Are behaviors and organs constructed in much the same way, each with a master switch gene that controls a network of lower level genes?

Dr. Dickson writes that other such behavior switch genes may well exist but could have evaded detection because disrupting them - the geneticist's usual way of making genes reveal themselves - is lethal for the fly. (Complete loss of the fruitless gene is also lethal, and the gene was discovered through a lucky chance.)

Though researchers like to focus on specific genes, they are learning that in behavior, an organism's genome is closely linked to its environment, and that there can be elaborate feedback between the two.

Honeybees spend their first two to three weeks of adult life as nurses and then switch to jobs outside the hive as foragers for the remaining three weeks. If all foragers are removed from a hive, the nurse bees will sense the foragers' absence through a pheromone and assume their own foraging roles earlier. As the colony ages however, there are too few nurses, so some bees stay as nurses far longer than usual.

Gene Robinson, a bee biologist at the University of Illinois, has found that a characteristic set of genes is switched on in the brains of nursing bees and another set in foraging bees. This is an effect of the bees' occupation, not of their age, since both the premature foragers and the elderly nurses have brain gene expression patterns matched to their jobs.

Evidently the division of labor among bees in a hive is socially regulated through mechanisms that somehow activate different sets of genes in the bees' brains.

A remarkable instance of genome-environment interaction has been discovered in the maternal behavior of rats. Pups that receive lots of licking and grooming from their mothers during the first week of life are less fearful in adulthood and more phlegmatic in response to stress than are pups that get less personal care.

Last year, Michael J. Meaney and colleagues at McGill University in Montreal reported that a gene in the brain of the well-groomed pups is chemically modified during the grooming period and remains so throughout life. The modification makes the gene produce more of a product that damps down the brain's stress response.

The system would allow the laid-back rats to transmit their behavior to their pups through the same good-grooming procedure, just as the stressed-out rat mothers transmit their fearfulness to their offspring.

"Among mammals," Dr. Meaney and colleagues wrote in a report of their findings last year, "natural selection may have shaped offspring to respond to subtle variations in parental behavior as a forecast of the environmental conditions they will ultimately face once they become independent of the parent."

A full understanding of these behavior genes would include being able to trace every cellular change, whether in a hormone or pheromone or signaling molecule, that led to activation of the gene and then all the effects that followed. Dr. Robinson has proposed the name "sociogenomics" for the idea of understanding social life in terms of the genes and signaling molecules that mediate them.

The genes discovered so far mostly seem to act in different ways and it is hard to state any general rules about how behavior is governed.

"It's early days and we don't have enough information to develop theories," Dr. Robinson said.

A question of some interest is how far the genetic shaping of behavior exists in people. Larry J. Young of Emory University, who studies the social behavior of voles, said that, in people, activities like the suckling of babies, maternal behavior and sexual drives are likely to be shaped by genes, but that sexual drives are also modulated by experience.

"The genes provide us the background of our general drives, and variations in these genes may explain various personality traits in humans, but ultimately our behavior is very much influenced by environmental factors," he said.

Researchers can rigorously explore how behavioral genes operate in lower animals by performing tests that are impossible or unethical in people. "The problem with humans is that it is extremely difficult to prove anything," Dr. Dulac said. "Humans are just not a very good experimental system."

the boys i mean are not refined

the boys i mean are not refined
they go with girls who buck and bite
they do not give a fuck for luck
they hump them thirteen times a night

one hangs a hat upon her tit
one carves a cross on her behind
they do not give a shit for wit
the boys i mean are not refined

they come with girls who bite and buck
who cannot read and cannot write
who laugh like they would fall apart
and masturbate with dynamite

the boys i mean are not refined
they cannot chat of that and this
they do not give a fart for art
they kill like you would take a piss

they speak whatever's on their mind
they do whatever's in their pants
the boys i mean are not refined
they shake the mountains when they dance

~ e.e. cummings

Aborting 1/4 of people

This is amazing. An article on abortion stats that says for every 1,000 pregnancies that did not result in a miscarriage in 2002, there were 242 abortions. Effectively, we are aborting 1/4 of people in the US. Apparently that number has been dropping since the 70's but still.

And you said evolution had stopped! Talk about selection!

More interesting facts:

· 47% of unintended pregnancies are aborted.

· Six in 10 women who had abortions in 2002 were mothers. "Despite the common belief, women who have abortions and those who have children are not two separate groups," said Finer.

· A quarter of abortions occur among unmarried women who live with a male partner, putting this group at elevated risk of unintended pregnancy and abortion.

· The majority -- 56 percent -- of women who terminate their pregnancies are in their twenties. Teenagers between 15 and 19 make up 19 percent of abortions, although this percentage has dropped substantially in recent years.

· Less than 1 percent of abortions are done after 24 weeks

· The number of abortion providers declined by 11 percent between 1996 and 2000, to 1,800. In 2000, one-third of women aged 15 to 44 lived in a county that lacked an abortion provider.

· Sixty percent of women who had abortions in 2000 had incomes of less than twice the poverty level --below $28,000 per year for a family of three, for example. This is in part because "low-income women have lower access to family planning services" such as contraception and counseling provided by health departments, independent clinics or Planned Parenthood, Finer said.

The nose knows sex appeal

An article from New Scientist talks about a new study finding that women prefer odours from potential partners who are genetically dis-similar. This contrasts to earlier studies that claimed women prefered the faces of men who were genetically similar.

Apparently, it all has to do with "the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) - [har har] the huge molecule on cells, unique to each individual, which helps our immune systems to distinguish native from alien cells....The underlying theory is that humans avoid the dangers of inbreeding, and maximise the chances of having genetically fitter children, by selecting partners who have a vastly different MHC from their own."

I think it's rather silly to say "women prefer this, men prefer that." Human diversity is so vast. I think certain people are inclined to find people who are genetically dissimilar and somepeople like to keep it in the family. Humans specialize like bees. There are so many different strategies.

Chicken safe sex

Male cocks [let's all be mature about this] will sometimes have sex with their hens without ejactualting and wasting sperm. Apparently, this keeps them faithful and well satisfied.

This is a great sentence: "The finding may explain why males of many species - from insects to mammals - engage in seemingly meaningless sperm-free sex. "

Har har.

Crazy!: "In 2003, Pizzari and his colleagues showed that male chickens allocated their precious seed according to the likelihood of fathering children. Unfamiliar females always received a fulsome dose, while hens with which the cock had already mated several times ended up receiving little more than ruffled feathers."

Oh man, those mad scientists: "Using cleverly designed harnesses, which prevent cocks from depositing semen into a females’ reproductive tract, the team was able to create two distinct groups - hens that had been mounted, but received no sperm, and hens who had successful, sperm-transferring copulations. ...They found that females that experienced fruitless mountings were equally resistant to subsequent courtship from other males as those females who had received sperm. In fact, the more mountings each female received, the longer her period of fidelity."

Another great sentence: "It is tough to tell why hens, so apt at choosing the best cocks - and expunging semen from undesirable mates just seconds after copulating - could be led astray by such a simple ploy"

A great Article from New Scientist.

A reason to circumcize

If you know me at all, and you very well might not, you know that I'm completely against circumcision. I think its a sick and outdated practice with no basis in actual heath for men who are not going for months without showering. I also think it might be one of the reasons men are so obsessed with their dicks. Imagine that your first experience in life is having someone chop off a piece of your genetalia, it must be traumatic.

BUT, low and behold, my (circumcized) ex boyfriend just sent me this article about how circumcision can lower your chances of contracting HIV by as much as 70%!!!!

Why woudl this work? "Laboratory studies have found that the foreskin is rich in white blood cells, which are favored targets of HIV."

This is amazing. Although it should be put in context. The study was only partially completed because the researchers didn't want to make uncircumcized guys feel bad or something. Very strange. It was done in Africa, in regions where HIV infection is at 30% (east and south Africa).

But, "the lower risk may be the result of cultural practices among those who circumcise. HIV rates are low in Muslim communities, for example, which practice male circumcision but also engage in ritual washing before sex and frown on promiscuity."

So I'm not sure the extent to which this study applies to people in North America.

The F word revisited

This is a really interesting article from Salon on why and why not young women are chosing to abandon the label "feminist." I personally fell like they missed a few issues.

They lament, “How do you possibly think you're going to talk about gender equality if there's no acknowledgment of gender?"

But I think the real issue here is the “gender equality” part.

I have lived a beautiful life. Truly privileged and so thankful. But at the same time, I’ve dealt with many of the trials of my gender. Nothing I’m willing to discuss in blog form, but suffice to say, I have suffered at the limp dick of patriarchy.

HOW THE FUCK EVER, I do not feel like a second-class citizen.

When I was an undergrad Gender Studies major, I adhered to the term “feminist” as the badge of a warrior. It never bothered me that “feminist” was a term to describe the plight of the white middle class woman, because that was who I was. It felt silly to be all down with this non-white, lower class movement when I didn’t really live in that world. It was not until my senior year that I took a “masculinity in America” class and my professor brought up the point that, when you stop giving men (or the system) all this power of oppression, a hell of a lot of it disappears. Over the years since then, I’ve come to see the social and institution oppression of women as a problem oppressing men just as much.

Certain things, like that women get paid less, and corporate structures don’t account for child rearing, do need to be changed. But we need to see issues like those, even to some extent abortion, as issues that effect society as a whole. We need to understand that when we level the playing field, everyone progresses. The only realm where I really feel like we need to band together as women is domestic violence and sexual violence. Those are more often than not, women’s issues, although many many boys suffer from sexual abuse as well.

But I personally feel like the term “feminist” implies that women ARE the weaker sex. That we ARE underprivileged. And I just don’t see that. I can see how it was true decades ago, but not really any longer.

Again, my perspective is limited. And I’m currently living in the matriarchy of Victoria, BC. But I see a lot of the action taken by the feminists here as borderline fascist and unnecessary. There’s a rule on campus that construction workers can only look at a girl for 7 seconds. How lame is that? How weak are we that we can’t handle some dude looking at us? And we can’t tell him to piss off? I take offence.

The hard core feminist I see around me seem to be “living in the wound,” using this guilt on the part of sympathizers to further agendas long since outdated. Many young college kids link up to feminism because it feels really good to be part of an impassioned movement. To be oppressed. Especially when you are so privileged. But I know a lot of men, gay AND straight, who have suffered under patriarchy as well, and I’m no longer willing to say my, and all women’s, plights are greater.

Of course, this is all gonna change right quick if they try to fuck with Roe v. Wade. At that point, I want to see all my sisters and brothers on capital hill armed and ready.

Full article in "more"

The F word
"Feminism" turns off a lot of younger women. Is it time to retire the word -- or reclaim it?

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Rebecca Traister

July 5, 2005 | A couple of years ago I interviewed a big-eyed activist-actress whose work and politics I have always admired. I asked her a question related to feminism. Her response? That she didn't like the word "feminist" and preferred "humanist."

What a crock, I thought, with the same disdain I once felt for a high-school classmate who memorably piped up that though she was "totally not a feminist," she wondered if Mr. Rochester's willingness to treat Jane Eyre badly and imprison Bertha in an attic might indicate a low-level misogyny. It was a fair observation, I thought at the time. Why did she have to preface it with personal disavowal? Did she think that the expression of such a sentiment brought her close enough to a militant conception of feminism that her lissome 10th-grade body might dramatically sprout armpit hair?

It's no great news that "feminism" -- the word and, by extension, the movement -- has an image problem. Women of all ages and colors have, at turns, bristled at the term, embraced it, lauded it and disdained it, practically since it was coined. However, after years of soldiering on under the burden of a heavily loaded word, a new crop of progressive and politically active women are finally addressing the problem. Some are looking to reinvigorate "feminist" by laying claim to the word -- a new magazine and a recent book are both cheekily titled "The F Word" -- while others are contemplating new words and phrases to employ in the fight for women's equality. After years of quiet debate, women are tackling their own labels with the energy of a movement anxious to make itself fresh again.

The debate acquired a new urgency with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's announcement on July 1 that she is retiring from the court. If Bush, as expected, nominates a judge opposed to Roe. v. Wade, women's issues will move to the center of the national stage.

It's almost remarkable that "feminism" has survived as long as it has, stigmatized as it's been by a sneering right, and criticized by groups on the left for its early lack of interest in the concerns of poor and minority women. Now, as second-wave feminists look to the future and see a generation of women with a very different set of battles than their own, the question becomes: What do we do about "feminism"? Does it have anything to do with younger female activism anymore, or is it simply an Achilles' heel? Do we replace it, phase it out? Or do we embrace it with renewed vigor and a spruced-up, all-inclusive definition?

When asked to consider what other terms besides "feminist" might be useful descriptors of the movement she helps to lead, National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy laughed and said, "Nothing has really swept anyone off their feet, but 'egalitarian' is one that always comes up. There's 'humanist.' Sometimes 'womanist.'"

Gandy isn't suggesting that anyone rub the word "feminism" off their bumper stickers or refrigerator magnets. But she did acknowledge that she has had informal conversations -- both with people who work at NOW and with those she meets on the road -- about agitation from some within the movement who believe it's time to retire "feminism's" number.

"There's nothing inherently wrong with the word," said Gandy, invoking Dame Rebecca West's famous assertion, "I ... have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."

But, she said, we cannot pretend that "feminism" has escaped the fate of "liberalism" before it. "This is what the right-wing has done to our language," she said. "'Liberal' is a proud term. But at a certain point, it became very difficult for people to call themselves liberal. If you asked them about issues they would say, 'I'm not liberal, I'm progressive.' Excuse me, you are a liberal! But the right made that a bad word. They've done the same thing with 'feminism.'"

Unsurprisingly, Gandy has had countless encounters with women and men who open up a conversation by saying, "I'm not a feminist," and then go on to espouse feminist ideals. "It's like, 'Do you have a belief in the political and social equality of women?' Yeah? Then you're a feminist," she said.

Language shifts have often transformed the struggle for women's equality. Gandy recalled the way that the term "suffragists" became the diminutive, mockingly feminine "suffragettes," as though those who devoted their lives to secure the vote for women were actually a backup group for Ray Charles. Then there was the time in 1993 when the National Abortion Rights Action League changed its name to "abortion"-lite NARAL Pro-Choice America. But language has strengthened the movement as well. Gandy said that when she started at NOW in 1973, "We didn't even have a word for sexual harassment. We knew how women were treated at work and on the street, but we didn't have language for it. Domestic violence? You didn't even whisper words for that in public. Now we have women's studies. Now we have a word for everything," said Gandy.

But she acknowledged, "I think that there's a new generation that's looking for a word or a term they can call their own. At some level they associate 'feminism' with their mothers. Not in a bad way, but just in a way that's not about them."

It might seem like a simple suggestion. But the hyper-sensitivity surrounding the "feminism" discussion makes it an ideological fire-starter. Weeks after my interview with Gandy, I called Feminist Majority leader Eleanor Smeal about this story. When I asked her to respond to some of the comments Gandy had made, I was apparently unclear, somehow leaving Smeal with the impression that I was reporting that Gandy wanted NOW to abandon the word "feminism." This was certainly not what I was reporting. But Smeal alerted Gandy to the possibility that my story might suggest that Gandy was rejecting the word just days before her reelection as NOW president. A very agitated Gandy called me to clarify that her comments were not reflective of any formal discussions within her organization. I assured her that I only planned to report what she had told me: that she had had discussions about the word with colleagues at NOW. She responded: "I hear people talk about it. But they don't talk about it that often. To say that 'there have been discussions within NOW' would convey a really inaccurate thing." Gandy emphasized that she can't imagine ever backing away from "feminism."

But some people didn't think the notion of ditching the word was such a crazy idea at all. "I think it's very smart," said Erica Jong, whose use of explicit language in "Fear of Flying' changed the nature of American women's fiction in 1973. "The problem hasn't gone away. Women are still second-class citizens; the problem of choice is still with us -- in fact it's gotten worse. So if we need to change the name to get people involved, we should."

But Jong was stumped as to what a replacement could be, and noted that "words always get degraded when associated with something progressive or something female. This is the way right-wingers capture the language, so we need to be smart." She noted the right wing's use of the term "pro-life" in the abortion debate. "If we had called ourselves pro-life -- as in we don't want women to die in illegal abortions -- we would have won on that one, but they got there first."

Jong thought that dusting off our lexicon was a natural generational progression. "It's all so cyclical," she said. "Mothers push forward, daughters pull back," she said. "We have been in a period of backlash and now we're ready to push forward again."

It's true that there is resistance to the feminist label from some young people. Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, a Seattle-area writer and author of "The F Word: Feminism in Jeopardy -- Women, Politics, and the Future," described a poll she'd done for her book. Noting that the 300 respondents were self-selected college-educated women between the ages of 18 and 34, Rowe-Finkbeiner said, "Sixty-eight percent of young women didn't want to be confined by labels, and the word 'feminism' chafed the worst."

But other national polls -- including a 1984 Wall Street Journal/Gallup poll, a 1986 Newsweek/Gallup poll, and a 2003 Ms. Magazine poll -- have shown that the younger the woman, the more willing she is to identify herself as a feminist. And, sure enough, many of the young women contacted for this piece were more vociferous in their defense of the word than their elders.

Melody Berger, a 25-year-old college student in Philadelphia, launched the new feminist magazine the F-Word in late May. She said she chose the name for her publication "because I was tired of tiptoeing around the word, of saying, 'Don't worry about us, we're not feminists, we're totally acceptable.'" Instead, Berger has proclaimed herself a full-blown "Howling Harpy."

Berger is not alone in her affection for the word. "If I hear one more person say, 'I'm not a feminist, I'm a humanist,' I'm going to kill them," said 26-year-old Jessica Valenti, founder of Feministing.com. "How do you possibly think you're going to talk about gender equality if there's no acknowledgment of gender?"

When I told Valenti that there was even casual discussion about the future of the word, she snorted, frustrated with what she perceives as generational tension between second-wave feminists and her activist peers -- many of whom don't align themselves with feminist organizations. "When they say they're interested in pulling in young women, I understand where the sentiment is coming from because they feel like young women don't like the word, but come on. How much are we willing to give up?"

Valenti acknowledged that many young women are "afraid of the word." "Part of me gets so angry at younger women who are nervous about feminism because they're afraid that boys won't like them," said Valenti. One of the reasons she started Feministing is because she wanted to meet young women and tell them, "I'm a feminist. And despite what you may think, feminism is pretty fucking cool." In addition, Valenti added, "Part of me wants to say, 'Yeah, someone's going to call you a lesbian. Someone's going to say you're a fat, ugly dyke.' Suck it up."

Valenti did have a couple of non-linguistic suggestions about how to bring older and younger activists together, starting with how the older generation treats its daughters. She described meetings for young feminists where the young women talk "while famous feminists are sitting there taking notes and watching you like you're some National Geographic animals." She said that the very suggestion that "feminism" could be disposable in any way makes her feel like saying, "Hey! This is your word! You started this and I took it on. I have been working hard for you. And now you're going to just give up on it?"

Erin Matson, the 25-year-old NOW chapter president in Minnesota and a member of the Young Feminist Task Force, said, "I wear the feminist label with pride and I love it. It's hard for me to imagine leaving it behind or discarding it." But Matson did recently write an article questioning the notion that feminism is a word that can describe a single, cohesive group, "all of us with pierced lips and hairy legs and the same concerns. That's simply not true," she said. Instead of the plaintive 10th-grade cry, "I'm not a feminist, but..." Matson's piece suggested that the new disclaimer is "I am a feminist, but..."

"Crystal Plati, 32-year-old executive director of Choice USA, said that at her organization, “We use [the word feminism] but we don't belabor it. We are also open to other words.”

She continued, "More than looking at just one word, for me it's about doing some listening for what kinds of language young women are using to define their empowerment for themselves." She also pointed out that it's not just young women who are alienated by the term. "No matter what choice we make about language," said Plati, "we need to be building toward an inclusive movement, in particular a movement that has women of color and young women in leadership. Changing the word is not enough. We need to address why it's alienating."

It's an assertion familiar to women in the movement, who for years have been reminded that second-wave feminism of the 1970s did not address the concerns of women of color and women from lower economic strata.

It's a concern that activist and author Rebecca Walker -- whose mother, Alice Walker, coined the term "womanist" as an inclusive alternative to "feminist" -- said she's been anxious about for a long time. In an e-mail, she referred me to an interview she gave to Satya magazine in January. In the interview, Walker said that in 1992, when she co-founded Third Wave, an organization for young women activists, she worried that "the word feminist had become too divisive and culturally loaded." Walker also told Satya, "It seemed clear to me that the term had more of a repellent effect than a magnetizing one within my generation, and I did not feel the need to prove my allegiance and gratitude to the women that came before me by holding on to something that had meant so very much to them, but did not mean that much to me."

In the interview, Walker continued, "The left is getting our collective ass kicked because of just this kind of romantic, naïve attachment to movement narratives and aesthetics of 20 and 30 years ago." She also pointed out that "many women of color do not feel an affinity with the term because, among other things, we know firsthand that people who call themselves feminists are not always our friends," she said. "They have not de facto done their work around race ... though [they] would become appalled if we suggested that some 'feminists' were also racist."

The racial wound remains fresh for many women who spend their lives thinking about and working on issues of female empowerment. When Berger launched her F-Word site in May, she said she was surprised that some of the anti-"feminist" mail she got was from other women activists. Berger explained, "The word 'feminist' alienated a lot of political allies I wanted to be tied to," including women of color "who told me that traditionally this word is off-putting because of the predominantly white, middle-class vibe it had." Others, she said, told her, "I hope you don't make the same kinds of mistakes your foremothers did."

The result, said Berger, is that a month after her launch, "the word 'feminism' is on the site, but it's not the tag line anymore. I've toned it down a little bit."

When I asked her what words could possibly replace the pesky descriptor of the movement, Berger was stumped. "I'm not such a fan of the word 'humanist,'" she said in an e-mail. "I think it's one of those 'well, duh ... who ISN'T pro-human??' kind of concepts." As for "womanist," Berger wrote, "I like that it may be more appealing to women of color ... However, I don't think feminism is just about 'women' anymore." It's these qualms, Berger said, that keep her "pretty attached to the f-word." But she conceded, "Maybe it isn't worth fighting to reclaim a word. There are much bigger things we need to be fighting for."

But what if we don't need to fight to reclaim it? What if we've already begun to make it new?

"Feminism is just what we determine it is," said Mandy Van Deven, 25, founder of Altar magazine, a political magazine for young women, and the director of Community Organizing for Girls for Gender Equity in Brooklyn, N.Y. "So if we wear makeup and call ourselves feminists then we are feminists. I see it as just a part of the evolution of political movements and the evolution of language and how people are going to identify themselves as individuals and in the scope of larger political context."

Van Deven said she thinks that there are a lot of young women out there who -- while they may not like the word or embrace the entire exclusionary history of the movement, "are really anxious to grab the word and claim it and say, 'No, I don't care, I am going to make this word work for me.'"

Rowe-Finkbeiner, author of the book "The F Word," said that Van Deven's attitude is typical of broader political and linguistic patterns. "In the history of social movements, many of the people who are most impacted by negative connotations of a word are the ones who take that word back," she said. Rowe-Finkbeiner pointed out that women have already done this with "bitch" -- as in popular "stitch and bitch" knitting circles and "bitch-n-swap" clothing swaps. It's a phenomenon similar to a gay re-appropriation of "queer," or African-American usage of "nigger."

Third Wave co-founder Amy Richards said she isn't too worried about the women's movement agreeing on one word. In her work on campuses, she said the number of projects she sees young women taking on -- from prison reform to AIDS funding in Africa to living-wage fights for university staff -- is enough to satisfy her that there is tremendous life in the movement, even if no one knows what to call it. "The thing that's different from 30 years ago is that young women are moving beyond organizing around reproductive issues and violence against women. It's not that those issues aren't relevant to them, but I think they're just tired of them."

Gandy said that membership in her organization is bigger than ever. "Eighty percent of people in the United States, based on what they think now about pay equity and domestic violence, would have been considered total feminists had they felt that way 30 years ago. And the women's rights movement is living in our daughters every single day. Whether or not they consider themselves feminists."

Besides, said Richards, "Whatever we'd change 'feminism' to would become a bad word too."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Rebecca Traister is a staff writer for Salon Life.

Gay, straight, or lying

This is really the sort of study I live for.

In a recent and huge study (5,000 men), only 6.9% of men said they were attracted to other men, and a mear 1.7% said they were bisexual.

THEN, and this is the good part, "a team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women. The psychologists found that men who identified themselves as bisexual were in fact exclusively aroused by either one sex or the other, usually by other men."

They used 101 young men: 33 bisexuals, 30 heteros and 38 homos.

So, they're implying that that 1.7% is lying. Possibly to themselves.

Apparently, "And a 1994 survey by The Advocate, the gay-oriented newsmagazine, found that, before identifying themselves as gay, 40 percent of gay men had described themselves as bisexual." Interesting...

This is great: "Seated alone in a laboratory room, the men then watched a series of erotic movies, some involving only women, others involving only men. Using a sensor to monitor sexual arousal, the researchers found what they expected: the men in the study who described themselves as bisexual did not have patterns of arousal that were consistent with their stated attraction to men and to women. Instead, about 3/4 of the group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals."

I love the "using a sensor." Phrases like that are my main reason for going for the primary source to read things like "we attached the electrodes to the scrotum after shaving it, bla bla bla." How can you imagine to get an honest response after an experience like that?!?!?!? The scientists act like "This is the truth. What you say is questionable but what your penis tells us in out labratory is the real truth." But maybe those guys who aren't getting hard for girls in the lab really ARE aroused by actually sucking on someone's tits. EVERYONE loves boobs! We're hard wired to.

And 1/3 of the guys in every group were not aroused at all. According to our friend Dr. Loyd, this should be ample proof that men, in fact, have not evolved to have erections. But I digress.

The article goes on to have the rational people of the world say "everything is more complicated that that" like we usually do. And good points are made.

In a similar study, only 1.5% of women were found to be bisexual. Which I think is odd. I woudl imagine more what with how cool it is and how we're completly trained to lust after girls from the get go. But apparently women who claim bisexualty actually increase the blood flow to their genetalia when shown images of naked women and men.

The best sentence: ""You may be mostly interested in women but, hey, the guy who delivers the pizza is really hot, and what are you going to do?"

Full article in "more"

July 5, 2005
Straight, Gay or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited

By BENEDICT CAREY
Some people are attracted to women; some are attracted to men. And some, if Sigmund Freud, Dr. Alfred Kinsey and millions of self-described bisexuals are to be believed, are drawn to both sexes.

But a new study casts doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men.

The study, by a team of psychologists in Chicago and Toronto, lends support to those who have long been skeptical that bisexuality is a distinct and stable sexual orientation.

People who claim bisexuality, according to these critics, are usually homosexual, but are ambivalent about their homosexuality or simply closeted. "You're either gay, straight or lying," as some gay men have put it.

In the new study, a team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women. The psychologists found that men who identified themselves as bisexual were in fact exclusively aroused by either one sex or the other, usually by other men.

The study is the largest of several small reports suggesting that the estimated 1.7 percent of men who identify themselves as bisexual show physical attraction patterns that differ substantially from their professed desires.

"Research on sexual orientation has been based almost entirely on self-reports, and this is one of the few good studies using physiological measures," said Dr. Lisa Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender identity at the University of Utah, who was not involved in the study.

The discrepancy between what is happening in people's minds and what is going on in their bodies, she said, presents a puzzle "that the field now has to crack, and it raises this question about what we mean when we talk about desire."

"We have assumed that everyone means the same thing," she added, "but here we have evidence that that is not the case."

Several other researchers who have seen the study, scheduled to be published in the journal Psychological Science, said it would need to be repeated with larger numbers of bisexual men before clear conclusions could be drawn.

Bisexual desires are sometimes transient and they are still poorly understood. Men and women also appear to differ in the frequency of bisexual attractions. "The last thing you want," said Dr. Randall Sell, an assistant professor of clinical socio-medical sciences at Columbia University, "is for some therapists to see this study and start telling bisexual people that they're wrong, that they're really on their way to homosexuality."

He added, "We don't know nearly enough about sexual orientation and identity" to jump to these conclusions.

In the experiment, psychologists at Northwestern University and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto used advertisements in gay and alternative newspapers to recruit 101 young adult men. Thirty-three of the men identified themselves as bisexual, 30 as straight and 38 as homosexual.

The researchers asked the men about their sexual desires and rated them on a scale from 0 to 6 on sexual orientation, with 0 to 1 indicating heterosexuality, and 5 to 6 indicating homosexuality. Bisexuality was measured by scores in the middle range.

Seated alone in a laboratory room, the men then watched a series of erotic movies, some involving only women, others involving only men.

Using a sensor to monitor sexual arousal, the researchers found what they expected: gay men showed arousal to images of men and little arousal to images of women, and heterosexual men showed arousal to women but not to men.

But the men in the study who described themselves as bisexual did not have patterns of arousal that were consistent with their stated attraction to men and to women. Instead, about three-quarters of the group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals.

"Regardless of whether the men were gay, straight or bisexual, they showed about four times more arousal" to one sex or the other, said Gerulf Rieger, a graduate psychology student at Northwestern and the study's lead author.

Although about a third of the men in each group showed no significant arousal watching the movies, their lack of response did not change the overall findings, Mr. Rieger said.

Since at least the middle of the 19th century, behavioral scientists have noted bisexual attraction in men and women and debated its place in the development of sexual identity. Some experts, like Freud, concluded that humans are naturally bisexual. In his landmark sex surveys of the 1940's, Dr. Alfred Kinsey found many married, publicly heterosexual men who reported having had sex with other men.

"Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual," Dr. Kinsey wrote. "The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats."

By the 1990's, Newsweek had featured bisexuality on its cover, bisexuals had formed advocacy groups and television series like "Sex and the City" had begun exploring bisexual themes.

Yet researchers were unable to produce direct evidence of bisexual arousal patterns in men, said Dr. J. Michael Bailey, a professor of psychology at Northwestern and the new study's senior author.

A 1979 study of 30 men found that those who identified themselves as bisexuals were indistinguishable from homosexuals on measures of arousal. Studies of gay and bisexual men in the 1990's showed that the two groups reported similar numbers of male sexual partners and risky sexual encounters. And a 1994 survey by The Advocate, the gay-oriented newsmagazine, found that, before identifying themselves as gay, 40 percent of gay men had described themselves as bisexual.

"I'm not denying that bisexual behavior exists," said Dr. Bailey, "but I am saying that in men there's no hint that true bisexual arousal exists, and that for men arousal is orientation."

But other researchers - and some self-identified bisexuals - say that the technique used in the study to measure genital arousal is too crude to capture the richness - erotic sensations, affection, admiration - that constitutes sexual attraction.

Social and emotional attraction are very important elements in bisexual attraction, said Dr. Fritz Klein, a sex researcher and the author of "The Bisexual Option."

"To claim on the basis of this study that there's no such thing as male bisexuality is overstepping, it seems to me," said Dr. Gilbert Herdt, director of the National Sexuality Resource Center in San Francisco. "It may be that there is a lot less true male bisexuality than we think, but if that's true then why in the world are there so many movies, novels and TV shows that have this as a theme - is it collective fantasy, merely a projection? I don't think so."

John Campbell, 36, a Web designer in Orange County, Calif., who describes himself as bisexual, also said he was skeptical of the findings.

Mr. Campbell said he had been strongly attracted to both sexes since he was sexually aware, although all his long-term relationships had been with women. "In my case I have been accused of being heterosexual, but I also feel a need for sex with men," he said.

Mr. Campbell rated his erotic attraction to men and women as about 50-50, but his emotional attraction, he said, was 90 to 10 in favor of women. "With men I can get aroused, I just don't feel the fireworks like I do with women," he said.

About 1.5 percent of American women identify themselves bisexual. And bisexuality appears easier to demonstrate in the female sex. A study published last November by the same team of Canadian and American researchers, for example, found that most women who said they were bisexual showed arousal to men and to women.

Although only a small number of women identify themselves as bisexual, Dr. Bailey said, bisexual arousal may for them in fact be the norm.

Researchers have little sense yet of how these differences may affect behavior, or sexual identity. In the mid-1990's, Dr. Diamond recruited a group of 90 women at gay pride parades, academic conferences on gender issues and other venues. About half of the women called themselves lesbians, a third identified as bisexual and the rest claimed no sexual orientation. In follow-up interviews over the last 10 years, Dr. Diamond has found that most of these women have had relationships both with men and women.

"Most of them seem to lean one way or the other, but that doesn't preclude them from having a relationship with the nonpreferred sex," she said. "You may be mostly interested in women but, hey, the guy who delivers the pizza is really hot, and what are you going to do?"

"There's a whole lot of movement and flexibility," Dr. Diamond added. "The fact is, we have very little research in this area, and a lot to learn."

from The New York Times

Genetic Fashion Victims

This is an interesting article about the ways that sociobiology has been internalized.

"Once it was the devil. Now it is the gene that made you do it."

Another NYT article claims to have found the reason why some twins differ so much from each other. Apparently they can have different "epigenomes" shortly after birth. BUT, what is actually interesting, is that the epigenomes differ more and more, the more time the twins spend away from each other. Which is strange, that a gene changes over time. They think the reasons are "personal experiences and elements in the environment - including toxic agents like tobacco smoke - feed back onto the genome by changing the pattern of epigenetic marks."