Like I said, this training has brought up a lot of issues for me. In training we’ve talked about, in some detail, about some of the horrific things (and I’m talking about emotional and financial abuse tactics, as well as the physical and sexual abuse that many people envision) abusers do to survivors. It’s a very important part of the training process. One of the most important qualities posessed by advocates is that they get it. Advocates, and allies in general, need to have a very concrete understanding of the dynamics of abuse/oppression to be effective. But knowing that doesn’t make learning these realities any less intense. Thinking about some of stories we’ve heard makes me physically sick. Now, add to that the fact that I generally find information very empowering and really love to share that feeling of empowerment. The result is that I come home from these trainings with a very, very strong urge to tell anyone and everyone close to me everything I can remember from training. Partly because I feel like I need to debrief in order to really process what’s been told to me. Partly because information sticks with me better when I share it with others. Partly because I see how problematic our society’s general refusal to discuss and validate survivors’ experiences can be, and I want to work against it immediately. Partly because this is so important to me right now and, consequently, I really want the most important people in my life to understand. And partly because it sometimes feels like if I can just vomit this information onto anyone around me, the sick feeling in my stomach might go away.

This can be a real problem. While the people I care the most about do, for the most part, have a deep passion for social justice, DV and sexual assault can be a really, really emotional (and sometimes triggering) topic. And, as much as they believe the work I’m trying to do is important, they didn’t sign up for this work. I’m the one who decided I wanted to spend 12 hours a week learning about it. I’m the one who decided that I am currently in a place where I am capable of processing this. Not my girlfriend. Not my friends. Not my coworkers. But at the same time, my primary method of self-care when I am upset is to go to my personal support network. I talk to my friends, family, partner, and even the occasional interested, sincere acquaintance. I’m trying my best to find other ways to process, thus my sudden renewed interest in twittering and blogging. But it’s been difficult, and will probably become even more so as/if I begin to work directly with survivors (I say “if” because I may end up primarily working in with Home Free’s teen advocacy services, which primarily involves educational outreach in local high schools. So I may end up spending most of my time doing presentations on healthy relationships, consent, and dating violence, rather than helping survivors file for restraining orders and the like.). Vicarious trauma is a very real consequence of working as an advocate/ally. As hard as this has been so far, I still haven’t really had personal interactions with survivors about their experiences.

The other big issue this has brought about for me feels a little silly, despite the warning we were given at the beginning of training that it’s a pretty common response. As we’ve talked about the dynamics of abusive relationships and the effects of trauma, I find myself reexamining my relationships (past and present), those of my friends and family, and the general behavior of people around me. I’ve thought a lot about my last serious relationship and the abusive tactics that both my partner and I used. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to classify it as an abusive relationship, but we definitely used abusive tactics. And, while I can’t speak for her, I left the relationship somewhat traumatized. While learning about the effects of trauma, I find myself thinking about a few persons who seem to embody a lot of these effects. I know concrete details about the trauma some of them suffered, but for others there may not have been any particular trauma at all. It’s kind of upsetting at times to find myself looking at everything through these new lenses. And part of that is the constant thought that I’m simply projecting what I’m learning onto the world around me and my past. But it’s also empowering in a strange way. A lot of advocacy training is, as my friend Pooja put it, “Training on how to be a good person.” I already find that, in small but important ways, I’m becoming a better listener. I’m better able to support people close to me in what they’re going through. I’m more aware of the power of my language and of validating other’s feelings and of just sitting with someone without trying to fix anything.

I don’t really have anyway to conclude what I’ve put here. More than anything else, this is just me trying to put words to my experience and feelings. Which I think is important. And, while it’s definitely less “formal” than what I had envisioned putting on here, I want to put it here anyway. Because I believe that personal narratives aren’t given enough credit in the academic/intellectual world. And because it’s (currently) the best way for me to express these thoughts.

SPOILER ALERT!

I just don’t know what to make of it’s depictions of sexual relationships between teens and adults. I’m not sure if Bennett was even trying to make any statement at all, but I’ve realized that that’s kind of beside the point. Movies and plays (and any thing else that is disseminated at such a large scale) make statements and have cultural impacts. So it’s still important to take them apart and try to see what kind of statements and implications they have, right?

At least for now, I’ve moved past trying to make sense of Irwin’s relations with the boys. It’s more fuddled, because it seems more consensual, and because Irwin is not the initiator. Of course there are all sorts of issues worth delving into about what it means for a student to “give consent” to his teacher, and the sorts of power dynamics involved. I’m just not engaging them right now, because they make the issue that much more complicated.

But with Hector, the issue seems a lot more straightforward. He makes repeated, unwanted, non-consensual sexual advances towards his students (who are minors) (And every thing I’ve read and heard about rape/abuse apologism tells me that I am bordering on offensive myself in calling them “advances” instead of “assaults”.). But I’ve read and heard lots of arguments against condemning Hector. So, I’m going to take a look at a few to sort out my thoughts.

First of all, the students joke about it and don’t seem TOO bothered by it. But then again, they also make it clear to each other that they don’t really enjoy it. They just kind of… accept it. And they even sometimes come up with excuses to avoid it, don’t they? I might be remembering that wrong. Uncomfortable jokes and acquiescence do not mean informed, free consent. If a skewed power dynamic or a misplaced sense of obligation or a fear of a negative effect on grades/recommends comes into play, consent cannot, by definition, be given freely.

There’s also the fact that it doesn’t seem to have harmed his relationship with them or their opinions of him. After all, the movie’s all about how, despite everything that’s happening, they will stand up and defend Hector and care about him no matter what. But if you abstract this argument from the movie a little, it’s easy to see how it’s totally misguided. Is it okay for me to grope/hit/kiss/have sex with someone without consent as long as they still care about me afterwards? If anything, it seems to make the abuse (if that’s what it should be called) all the more despicable, because it so utterly violates someone’s trust. But then again, maybe it’s not fair to abstract it from the movie. Maybe the context is the most important thing. But even in context, the argument doesn’t seem to hold. Sure the students don’t seem irrevocably damaged, but it clearly has an effect on them. I mean, the fact that they refer to him as basically a pathetic dirty old man behind his back kind of signals to me that it has hurt their relationships with him (albeit possibly not beyond repair).

I think I’ve also read/heard the argument that the boys have a certain kind of power in the relationship that makes it acceptable. But I just don’t buy it. He is their teacher. And he is their elder. And he is their friend. The third one alone makes it clear that the power dynamic isn’t one sided. Nobody wants to disappoint a friend. And if these boys are allowing themselves to be groped, even though they do not want it to happen, then they do not have (or do not feel capable of exercising) enough power in this relationship to discount claims of abuse, or at least innapropriate behavior.

I don’t know why it’s so important for me to sort this out. But it’s always been something that nagged at me. I really, really love this movie. I think the characters are written and portrayed so unbelievably believable that I am in awe every time I see it. But I keep asking myself questions like, what if these were high school girls and some male teacher was reaching between their legs for a quick feel? I feel like the outrage would have been tangible in the theaters. But this… modern pederasty is portrayed (and viewed, I believe) in a surprisingly sympathetic light. Of course, if the students were female, gender would present another power dynamic placing the students on unequal footing. So, maybe it is important to analysis that the students are boys.

I’ll grant that the movie raises some interesting questions about when exactly sexual tension/relations between an older student and a teacher might be appropriate. Dakin is clearly already a (partially realized?) sexual being. Additionally, he seems completely in control when he propositions Irwin. But there’s still the issue of consent. And consent is never given to Hector. Accepting a ride home, possibly out of a strange sense of obligation, is not the same as consenting to being fondled.

This article makes an interesting point towards the end. Since the play is written by an adult, rather than a teenager, does it even make sense to examine the appropriateness of the relationships in the movie? Or is it nothing more than “an apologia, by an adult, that mischaracterizes the sexuality of youth”? These teenagers are, after all, nothing more than figments of Bennett’s imagination (possibly influenced by real persons), and thus their sexual/social/intellectual sophistication says more about Bennett’s views on teenagers than it does about teenagers. Should we instead be asking whether or not it is accurate and appropriate to portray high school students with this level of sexual sophistication? If it is, in general, an unrealistic portrayal, does it inherently do harm by promoting the idea that relations between teachers and students can be appropriate (or at least acceptable)?

So, I don’t know. I really just don’t know what to make of it. Because, at the end of the day, when I really think about it, what Hector does to those boys is abuse. But I hate viewing it that way for some reason (probably because Bennett does such a good job making Hector loveable). And if I, even when looking at it through lenses tinted by recent readings about Polanski, sexual assault, and rape apologism, am still hesitant to label Hector as an abuser, what kind of message is it sending to people who aren’t taking the time to really stop and think about it? Do movies that portray sexually abusive adults in sympathetic lights normalize sexual assault and contribute to our rape culture? How about movies that portray adult-teen relationships as healthy and between equals? Where does this movie fall in the spectrum, and what sort of impact does/could it have? Would it be possible to convey the same intensity of emotions, and even sexual tension, w/o normalizing abusive behavior? I honestly don’t know how to answer these questions and would love to hear some people’s responses.

At times, I’ve taken issue with the label “pandemic” being applied to domestic/intimate partner violence. But as I’ve learned more about how widespread it is, I’ve rethought my stance. Here are some numbers to illustrate what I mean. According to Department of Justice estimates, women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner related physical assaults and rapes each year. That’s about 9.132 per minute. Or, if you prefer, about one assault every 6.5 seconds. Now, stop for a second and really think about that. Or rather, stop for 7 seconds. Count it out.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

There. That’s it. Two instances of assault in that time period IN THE U.S. That is not a worldwide number. Now I know that some readers may want to split hairs about what exactly counts as an “instance of assault”. I honestly believe that the DOJ is probably counting incidents as separate when they have had enough time between them that there’s really no ambiguity. But just in case, they include another statistic that is absolutely unambiguous: approximately 1.5 million women are physically or sexually assaulted every year. Those are distinct women. Let’s break this one down too. 1.5 million women per year works out to about 2.85 women per minute, or one woman every 21 seconds. That means that every 21 seconds a different woman is sexually or physically abused.

According to the national institute of justice, intimate partner homicide “leading cause of death for African-American women ages 15 to 45 and the seventh leading cause of premature death for U.S. women overall.” (www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/jr000250e.pdf) Not the leading cause of violent death or one of the leading causes of death. THE LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH. I have tried and tried and I cannot even begin to wrap my brain around this one. No amount of reading or talking to people will make this as real for me as it needs to be. If you were to randomly select one black woman who died this year between the ages of 15 and 45, chances are she was murdered by an current or former intimate partner. As a black woman, statistics tell you that you should be more afraid of your boyfriend than breast cancer! More afraid of your ex than an accident! That is crazy, and we need to fix it! It affects more and more people every day. It is killing our women by the thousands every year (and our men by the hundreds). And it’s well documented that physical abuse is a taught behavior (i.e. it’s contagious). This a pandemic, pure and simple.

So, my open question to anyone who comes across this blog is what do we do about it? What do we do today and what do we start working on for the long term?

Here’s my preliminary thoughts on the matter. My answer to both is the same: we quit being silent. If we think someone might be in a physically or emotionally abusive situation, we talk to them. I know it’s hard, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to deal with the consequences of being silent. Typically, it doesn’t get better on it’s own. It gets worse. So, speak up. Here are some tips on just how to do that.

And the same goes for the long term. It won’t get better if we keep staying silent. So we need to speak up. We have to start dialogues about domestic violence, physical/sexual abuse, sexism, healthy masculinity, respect for women, etc. We need to start them with anyone and everyone who will have them. And we need to keep starting them with anyone who will have them, until everyone will have them. Because we have to change the culture that teaches us to put so little value on our women and so much faith into violence as an appropriate expression of male anger. In the language of pandemics, getting help for individuals is the cure, but daily conversations is the vaccine. So let’s start vaccinating. It’s about time for violence prevention methods to start preventing violence instead of responding to it.

But what do you think? What else can we do? Both short and long term.

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If you are in an violent or abusive relationship, know that you’re not alone. I know it’s not easy to leave, but there’s help: http://www.ncadv.org/protectyourself/GettingHelp.php. Press the “Escape” button to quickly be redirected away from the website. Also, go to the internet safety link on the side for  how to safely gather information about abuse online.

If you are a man and think you may have a problem using physically or emotionally abusive behavior against women, there’s help for you too: http://www.menstoppingviolence.org/LearnMore/Info4Men.php . Remember that men’s violence is, at its core, a men’s issue and will only be end if we stop it.

For more information on domestic violence and violence against women:
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Center for Disease Control’s Domestic Violence Fact Sheet
Men Stopping Violence
Incite: Women of Color Against Violence
Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community
Alianza National Latino alliance for the elimination of domestic violence

The dialogue about school reform consists primarily of two parts: the problem(s) and potential solutions. The discussion of the problems have come a long way. Most people acknowledge that our education system is, in many ways, broke. There is acceptance of the data that indicates inequitable provision of education to different racial and socioeconomic groups, and, equally importantly, this is generally agreed to be a bad thing. The language of “the achievement gap” is an explicit reference to the these inequities. And this language is not only used to refer to geographically distinct groups, but even to separate groups within the same schools and classrooms. So, there is something about our education system that is leading to worse results for poor/non-white children, particularly in rural & urban school districts. Good for us. We’ve identified the major problem. It’s a systemic problem of unfair, generally unintentional bias.

Now it’s time to move onto discussing potential solutions. This is where the public discourse and I seem to suddenly be walking on totally different roads. Because at this step, it sometimes seems like people forget what we just agreed the problem was. It’s a SYSTEMIC problem of unfair bias. It’s not that the teachers and administrators in poor districts don’t care enough to work hard. It’s not that administrators in low SES areas don’t know HOW to effectively run a school. It’s not that teachers in high SES areas are just better teachers across the board. But, for some reason, the conversation primarily revolves around how we can judge whether or not teachers are doing a good enough job with their students, and whether or not administrators are effectively weeding out the “ineffective” teachers (that is, when the solution isn’t to fire the entire staff of a school and start over). The newest proposal even has specific language for how much improvement is acceptable (one grade level per academic year). How can so many people be so supportive of solutions that indirectly address problems at best? We have structural problems! Let’s look for structural solutions! For example, see my earlier post about how the length of extended school vacations disproportionately affects different groups of students. There is SO much data out there on various factors that influence the success of students (length of school year, length of school day, availability of academic after school & summer programs, health of students, parental involvement, teacher experience/training, etc.). But it honestly seems that the majority of the discussions about school reform just ignore almost all of this research!

The only question that seems to be asked is what is needed for teachers to teach better. I want to hear discussions on what is needed from the districts, cities, and states for students to learn better. Maybe it’s better assistance to families so that parents in low-income households have a little more time to focus on their children’s education. Or outreach programs designed to increase the social capital of these families, at least with respect to their children’s education. Or curriculums & textbooks that include representations of people of color so that students of color don’t need to question the relevance of history, english, or social sciences. Hell! How about just having more equitable access to up-to-date textbooks, classroom materials, and technology. Or NOT hitting thousands of kids with $500 truancy fines because your city can’t afford enough buses to get all students to school on time!

And, if we honestly, truly think the largest problem is not having enough qualified teachers in low SES schools, we should be looking at teacher turnover rates:

Right now, roughly 50% of all urban public school teachers nationwide leave their positions in less than three years – not because they don’t want to teach, but because they’re not always ready.

When half of the teachers are leaving in a district in less than three years, it’s impossible for an administrator to only keep “effective” teachers around. High turnover rates lead to more inexperienced teachers in classrooms, not to mention teacher shortages and overcrowded classrooms, which hurts students. Programs like the Boston Teacher Residency (started by the Boston school district, might I add) have, thus far, made huge strides in teacher retention (BTR comes in at somewhere between %80 and %90 after three years). Something as simple as a mentorship program for new teachers can make a big difference in smoothing out those first few rough years. But that’s not the kind of reform we’re interested in. Because it’s just a lot easier to blame and threaten the teachers and principals than actually take a long, hard look at what the real problems might be.

All survivors experience backlash by going public — that backlash is only going to grow tenfold when the abuser is famous. It’s this backlash that makes coming forward so difficult, but also so significant. People don’t like to hear that their heroes can also be rapists, and that rapists can also be heroes. People don’t like to hear that rapists can have separate qualities worth admiring, can have talent, and depth, and people who love them. People don’t want to hear anything about rapists that doesn’t involve them being evil, slimy, instantly identifiable monsters, who have absolutely no worth or humanity. People don’t want to hear it because it makes rape easier to ignore, deny, forget, and believe could never happen to them, could never be committed by someone they know.

That is precisely why people need to hear it.

This very issue was addressed in some detail by Jackson Katz the other night. And it’s not exclusive to rape. We, as a society, have a tendency to characterize the “typical” perpetrator of violence as noticeably & significantly “other.” We act as if we should be able to spend some time around someone and instinctively know whether or not they are capable of acts of extreme violence. Which is why, time after time, neighbors of folks recently arrested of murder or rape or molestation or any of numerous other violent acts are quoted in the news as saying “I can’t believe this happened. He/She always seemed like such a regular guy/woman.” or “I can’t believe he/she had this kind of darkness inside him/her.” or “I never would’ve thought he/she was capable of this. We were just golfing/fishing/drinking/whatever yesterday!” Our shared cultural perception is that people who commit these crimes are NOT regular dudes (and, by-and-large, they are dudes. Men are FAR more likely to commit violent acts against others). We even go so far as to give titles to the people who do these things. They are rapists, murderers, sex offenders, terrorists, child molesters, abusers, wife beaters, etc. They are not humans or people or men or women. We prefer to think of them as their crimes, and in so doing, dehumanize them to the point that we forget that most people who commit violent acts are “normal” men.

This attempt to dehumanize the perpetrators of these crimes comes from an understandable place. None of us want to think of ourselves as capable of these things. Nor, do we want to live in fear that our neighbors and loved ones are capable of these things (or, for that matter, that our loved ones are at risk of being victimized by people close to them). But just being understandable is not the same as being helpful/acceptable. The way we view people who commit violent crimes does a disservice to everyone. One major problem it creates, which will not be addressed in depth at this time, is that it encourages the mistreatment of incarcerated persons and contributes to the perpetuation of a prison industrial complex that is a major source of oppression of communities of color and low socioeconomic status. But, like I said, I’m not going to get into that in this post. Instead, I want to talk about the effect it has on our ability as a society to prevent these crimes from occurring in the first place. As Jackson Katz said, “True wisdom comes from thinking about the similarities rather than the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’.”

So, why do I think it’s so problematic to think of the people who do these terrible, violent things this way? Because I think it discourages any large scale, systematic approaches to preventing the violence. If the problem is just that we have some crazies who are going to eventually snap and rape or murder someone, the only systematic option available to us is to try to catch these rapists and murderers as early as possible and lock them away or “fix” them. That’s what we’ve been doing. It doesn’t work. If instead we acknowledge that rapists are usually normal people who, for the most part, do normal things, we are capable of asking the question, “What norms in society help create these people?”

And, before anybody calls me a rape apologist, I am not claiming that people are not responsible for their actions. I AM claiming that nobody grows up in a vacuum, and when gender violence (and violence in general (which can honestly be classified as gender violence because of the ways that cultural notions of masculinity contribute to its prevalence and the fact that most violence is committed by men)) is SUCH a problem in our society it is worthwhile to examine it as a societal problem with potential societal causes and societal solutions. We need to move past the idea that rape and murder and other violent crimes are committed by fringe members of society and start critically examining our culture and the way it normalizes behaviors and attitudes that devalue certain individuals/groups and legitimizes violence as a manifestation of healthy masculinity.

Dr. Katz’s major point was that in order to really deal with the unbelievable amounts of gender violence in our society, we have to have a huge paradigm shift in the way we think about violence and gender and how the two relate. In that vein, he spent the first section of his lecture dismantling the perception of gender violence as a women’s issue, claiming that “Gender violence is a men’s issue first & foremost.” This isn’t to try and take anything away from the work women have done and are currently doing to fight it, or to minimize the harm that is inflicted on women. His view seemed more to do with the idea that in order to stop the violence, we have to get to the root of it. Women and femininity aren’t at the center of the problem. Men and masculinity are. So we have to start thinking of it as a men’s issue so that we can start actively breaking down the systems that perpetuate/allow it.

A lot of the talk revolved around how the issues of gender and masculinity are left out of many social justice discussions despite obvious relevance. Two of the more striking examples were discussions about the U.S. prison industrial complex and school shootings. By his count, there have been 25 school shootings since Columbine. None of them were done by girls. Not one. In fact, less than 5% of gun violence is perpetrated by women. And yet the discussion always is framed as “Why are our kids killing each other?” or “Why are these kids killing other kids?”. He argued that the question should be “Why are these boys killing other kids?”. After all, if every single one had been done by girls, EVERY discussion about it would address gender. The fact that only boys are comitting this act of violence says something about the ways they’ve been taught masculinity and violence relate. Similarly, he pointed out that discussions about prisons frequently mention that the U.S. has the highest number of prisoners in the world. But he argues that people need to also realize that we have the highest number of male prisoners in the world. Ninety-four percent of our gigantic prison population is male. What is it about the way we teach masculinity to our children that is leading so many men in this direction? Because 94% is a GIANT discrepancy that needs to be accounted for.

So, once it’s acknowledged that something is wrong with what the males of this society are being taught, the question is “What’s teaching them this?” He answered that question in part by saying, “media is the great pedagogical tool of our time.” No he wasn’t saying that people are violent because the media has violence. But he was saying that there are serious problems with the ways in which the media portrays masculinity, femininity, male-female relationships, sexuality, and violence. But this was an issue he got into towards the end and is covered more in depth in his movies, so I’ll deal with it in another post once I’ve watched one.

For now, I guess I want to raise the question, “What do we do with this?”. I mean, he has me convinced. Gender violence is an extremely important issue for both men and women that needs to be addressed. So, how do we address it? The biggest thing he seemed to suggest was talking about it. Not just in forums like my blog or his lecture, but engaging other men about sexism on a daily basis. I guess it’s the conversations we have that really shape the culture. But what else can we do? Big or small. I want concrete things I can do to try to end the violence. As an ally to women, as a potential future father of boys and girls, as a boyfriend, as a friend, what can I do to really fight this?

I plan to get more into race as a social construct at a later time, especially what this means for the dismantling of systems of racial oppression. For now, I want to use it as a springboard for discussing a different socially constructed category I was discussing a couple nights ago, sex. And no, I don’t mean gender identity. I’m talking about sex.

Now, this is a pretty new idea for me. Gender is supposed to be the historically placed, socially constructed category. Sex is an ahistorical physiological feature, right? Wrong. The terms male and female don’t even refer to a single physiological feature. They refer to many physiological features, and sometimes the features point to different categorizations. Sociological images has a great post that includes a relatively comprehensive list of such features (even throwing in “sexual orientation” for good measure):

I can think of eight candidates:
1. Identity (whatever the person says they are, they are)
2. Sexual orientation (boys dig girls, vice versa)
3. Secondary sex characteristics (e.g., boobs/no boobs, pubic hair patterns, distribution of fat on the body)
4. External genitalia (e.g., clitoris, labia, vaginal opening/penis and scrotum)
5. Internal genitalia (e.g., vagina, uterus, and fallopian tubes/epididymis, vas deferens, seminal vesicles, prostate, etc)
6. Hormones (preponderance of estrogens/androgens)
7. Gonads (ovaries/testes)
8. Chromosomes (XX/XY, the SRY gene)

That post also addresses the very issue that got me thinking about this so much lately. Caster Semenya is a South African athlete who took the gold in the 800m at the IAAF World Championships earlier this year. Not long after this victory, her sex was questioned and a formal review process began. The idea was that she might be a man posing as a woman in order to be more competetive in her events. The strange thing is that there’s currently no standard for judging whether or not this is the case. Obviously, if she fell squarely into the male side in all 8 categories, there would be no problem, but the likelihood of this happening was not high. Particularly because many world-class female athletes never menstruate and have higher than average levels of testosterone (the latter is also true for male athletes). There are already lots of great analyses of her case, so I don’t want to write about that.

What I want is to explore what this all has to say about the sexual binary we use on a daily basis. Now, the most obvious failure of the gender binary is to account for persons who are classified differently by different measures or who fail to be classified by a given measure, i.e. someone who is intersexed. Intersex is actually more common than many people think, although the frequency depends greatly on what definition one is using. For example, late onset adrenal hyperplasia ^[1] is estimated to occur in about 1 in 66 persons. Now, by some definitions, CAH would not qualify as intersex. So let’s look at a situation we can all agree qualifies. For example, about one or two in 1000 births are followed by a surgery to “normalize” genital appearance, and about one in 1000 children born have two X chromosomes AND a Y chromosome . That’s one tenth of a percent of the population. That’s about 300,000 people in the U.S. who are clearly outside the binary. For these people, sex is clearly not an either-or situation.

Even for folks who would not qualify as intersexed, discrete sexual categories seem inappropriate, because many of the features used to sex a person (secondary sex characteristics, sexual orientation, identity, horomone levels) are gradients rather than binaries. And any line drawn between a female range and a male range is artificial. I’m not saying the biological differences don’t exist. But, like my friend argued with regard to race, I’m saying the discrete categories we attempt to place these differences must be socially constructed.

But why do I care so much about this distinction? Because it means we can deconstruct them, and our society has some really messed up expectations about the way a male or female should act, look, and even think. I believe that dismantling this fixation on discrete sexual categories in favor of a view that acknowledges the many gradients along which we all exist is an important step in overcoming these pressures. Repeating the mantra of “Women come in all shapes and sizes” or trying to separate the ideas of gender identification, sexual orientation, and biological sex aren’t enough. As long as our culture accepts the belief that male and female are scientifically sound and well-defined categories, our cultural ideas of the “typical/ideal” female/male will prevail. Once we acknowledge that male and female are imprecise, artificial terms, maybe we can finally rid ourselves of harmful notions of ideal femininity and masculinity.

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1. Late Onset Adrenal Hyperplasia is a disorder in which the adrenal gland does not make enough of the needed cortisol hormone — and may also make an abnormal amount of two other hormones: androgens (testosterone) and mineralcorticoids (aldosterone). The symptoms can include: symptoms experienced by females can include infertility, an irregular menstruation (or the absence of one altogether), as well as masculine characteristics: a deepening voice and excessive hair on the face and/or body.

Educational policy interests me on many levels. First of all, I used to be student and (it’s pretty safe to assume) so did everyone else I know. So I have a tendency to look back and evaluate the experience. What did I love? What did I hate? How much was my experience affected by policy decisions and mandates? How different was my experience than people in other districts, states or even in private schools? Then there’s the fact that I’m trying to work towards being a teacher, so educational policy is going to have a direct effect on my ability to do my job and have an impact on my students. Finally, as a minority who grew up without much money (and, as my bro would put it, a non-zombie), I’m very aware of the gaping inequities of the educational system.

I’m sure some people would want to argue with that last statement (at least they would if I had any readers to read that statement), but this isn’t Privilege 101. I’m not going to educate you on the vast amount of data on the disparate qualities of education in this country. Nor am I going to engage arguments that disparate outcomes of education might not imply disparate quality. Maybe later. Not now. (But I will NEVER get into arguments with folks who think the differences are inherent, genetic, or whatever other racist/classist quasi-eugenic bullshit they want to attribute it to. Stupid folks can speak their mind all they want, but I’m not wasting my time arguing with them.)

Right now all I want to talk about is one factor that contributes to the “achievement gap” and has garnered some attention recently– summer learning loss. Talk to any teacher past first grade in your typical school, public or private, and they’ll tell you the same thing. The month or two of basically every school year is largely spent reviewing material covered before. This is what is meant by the term “summer learning loss”– the backtracking that occurs due to the extended summer break. In 1996, researchers compiled data from lots of previous studies in an attempt to get a large enough data set to draw conclusions about the summer learning loss and various approaches to deal with it. Their analysis revealed that “summer learning loss equaled at least one month of instruction as measured by grade level equivalents on standardized test scores-on average, children’s tests scores were at least one month lower when they returned to school in fall than scores were when students left in spring” (Summer Learning Loss: The Problem and Some Solutions. ERIC Digest).

This seems reasonable. I doubt anyone’s surprised to hear that when students are away from school for 3 months, they forget things. What’s gotten more attention recently is the fact that low SES and minority students are disproportionately affected by the summer break. One obvious source of this disparity is the prevalence of expensive academic summer camps and programs. But, as Matthew Yglesias from ThinkProgress points out, this can take many less obvious forms, still largely related to the resources available to parents. A particularly poignant example he uses is that of the first generation English language learner. If English is not spoken in the home or community, a student essentially stops developing English skills for the entire summer. Or imagine the student whose parents are basically illiterate (Don’t scoff! Recent studies place the adult functional illiteracy rate in the U.S. at 14%.). A parent who can’t read at all, certainly can’t read with their child, and is unlikely to encourage literacy and good reading habits in their children as successfully as a literate parent. These are a few of the more extreme examples, but they serve to illustrate the point that resources (money, knowledge, social capital, etc.) have a direct impact on the extent to which students forget things they’ve learned over the summer.

To me, this all emphasizes a few very important facts. First of all, it directly opposes the notion that there is equality of opportunity in the U.S. Secondly, it demonstrates one major way in which the education system in this country favors students with more privilege. And, more importantly, it points to an easy, reasonable way to fix this particular inequity WITHOUT taking away benefits from anyone! So many of the approaches to fixing systemic biases necessarily involve dismantling the systemic benefits to a privileged group. The summer break doesn’t benefit any student! It’s an outdated calendar originally created to coincide with harvest cycles in a particular climate. And all students regress during it. What we need is a different school calendar–a year round one. Honestly, I’m one of those crazies who even supports extending the number of days children spend in the classroom (which is significantly less than many other industrialized nations). But even without extending the school year, we can reorganize it so that shorter extended breaks occur more frequently. My cousin attended an elementary school like this and loved it. During the transitional period, it could cause potential problems for competitive programs such as athletics if some schools were on a year round calendar while others were on the traditional calendar. But these could be overcome. And, it is even feasible that the frequent extended breaks would allow for more travel for dedicated participants, as well as family vacations during seasons other than just summer. So, why not? Let’s make this shit happen! During my life, I wanna see this change! Let’s eliminate the summer learning gap!

This whole train of thought came about because I was reading this article. The gist of it is that some dude has come up with a modified version of general relativity that violates a HUGE principle, namely Lorentz Invariance. Lorentz Invariance is essentially the idea that basic physical principles are invariant under Lorentz transformations, or, in other words, physics works pretty much the exact same to all observers in inertial reference frames. This dude basically said, “Yeah, obviously that’s true on the scale that we normally interact with things, but maybe it doesn’t work that way on super small scales.” And then he created a theory of things working differently on a small scale, from which he was able to derive Lorentz Invariance for large distances. Now, that’s wacky! That’s wacky on so many levels. Obviously, it’s always strange to think how differently things can work on super small and super large scales. But what’s even wackier to me is the fact that this dude had the audacity to say, “I know Einstein was pretty smart and made this awesome theory that perfectly predicts so much, but I bet I can make it better.” I mean, who does he think he is? And wackiest of all? There’s reasons to believe that he might be right! His what if may be what scientists needed to mesh quantum physics with general relativity. Apparently quantum physics would be much simpler to introduce into his theory than it has been with unmodified GR. And it’s a pretty common belief among lots of scientists that a good theory should be predictive and simple, which is an issue I’ll try to take up another day. For now, I just wanted to say that theoretical physics baffles me.

On a related note, I wonder what percentage of these “what if” ideas end up being completely fruitless. I mean, I come up with these kinds of ideas all the time and they don’t lead anywhere useful. Are physicists just better equipped (more informed, more creative, trained to think in a more productive way) to come up with these ideas, or do they just go through a million bad ideas? Hmmm…