First things first/disclaimer: I believe that gender is partially socially constructed. I have absolutely no doubt about it, even though I am more than ready to say that women and men are biologically different ( I am just making a point in saying this since I once had a long discussion with a feminist who believed than slowly,all women were developping the same physical abilities than men).

That being said, I listened to a podcast today that truly rocked my world. I was riding my bike listening to This American Life, whose weekly show is currently about testosterone. I must admit being a bit dubious when the topic was announced (as were the women in the radio production team), but the content is riveting: the presenter interviewed men, women, and women-turned-into-men about their reaction to a lack or surplus of the big T, and the results were fascinating.

The first interview was with an anonymous guy who wrote a piece for GQ - I know, ugh- about a undiagnosed medical issue tat let him without testosterone for four months. He describes, above all the other behavioural changes that he had to face, an absolute lack of desire. The guy was catatonic, staring at a brick wall all day, eating bland food, not thinking much about the world - at least not very passionately. He would just process any information in a very linear manner: “if I saw a pigeon, I would just think “it’s a pigeon”, he explained to the presented who had a bit of trouble processing the idea himself, “nothing more, nothing less”.

But what really did my head in was the interview of a FTM transgender dude, who described himself as “an ex feminist butch” who went to an all-girl school. He would inject himself with double the amount of the testosterone which could be found in a very large man to achieve his transition, and after a while began to feel strong changes.

One of the most interesting change was the amount and quality of desire he would feel towards women - he explains that back when he was a woman, when lusting after someone the process would be wordy, brainy and quite complex ( she would, for example, think about things to say to the person in front of her, possibly using imagination and scenarios) whereas as a man, he would just think “daaaamn” and have an instant urge of lust, which made him feel like a monster.

But now to the truly fucked up parts - which made the presenter choke in embarrassment for his female listeners: when asked if he noticed any other notable behavioural non-libidinal differences, the guy said a couple of things which boggled my mind: that he noticed a new interest in maths and science (topics which he didn’t care for as a woman), and he found himself understanding physics in a way he never understood before. Furthermore, he has a very hard time crying.

I very much know that his understanding of physics and maths could have just evolved suddenly in a totally different set of circumstances that are not hormonally related, but seriously - what? Like the interviewer said, wow, you’re setting us back to a hundred years. I can already imagine some assholes thinking to themselves, this guy is proof that all women are retarded when it comes to maths:

I honestly don’t know what to think about it, except for the fact that millions of women scientists would probably want to stab themselves in the eye listening to his interview.

You can listen to the program here. Comic by xkdc of course.

Anyone with a spare Clinton sticker to put on my laptop? I’ll pay for the postage… And hell, how about a McCain one?

Well, if you ask me she may sound like a nutter novelist, but her remarks are fair enough:

I don’t mind paying my tax, I want hospitals and schools, and police and firemen, and street lighting and rubbish collection, but I minded funding the Iraq war, and I mind funding fiscal incompetence. We are getting to the point where we can’t afford the things we need – like schools and hospitals and social care, because all our money is being spent on buying bombs and bailing out banks,
That’s masculinity gone mad – get the girls in as fast as possible.

Lord help me – I have reverted to capital letters and BOLD. A sure sign of the nutter at the typewriter.

A while ago Jeanette Winterson wrote a good editorial for the Guardian food - defending organic products, local farming, etc. More interestingly, she not only talked about quality, but proximity: little shops are a pleasure to shop at, a trip to while Tesco is not really stepping in smiles-and-friendship land. Winterson owns a deli in Spitalfields -near my own neighbourhood- and I still have yet to go there. Maybe that will be my week-end plan.

If I could pick 5 Jeopardy categories, they would be:

- Prince (circa 1982-1997)

- Chocolate, in any shape or form

- Paul Auster & Brooklyn (I have never been to New York)

- The X-Files (largely due to the fact that I now own the entire 9 series. I still maintain that should I complete a Masters in Cultural Studies, this would be my prime topic of interest) [1] [2]

- Social activists/ Feminist blogs

What are yours?

[1] Oh no, people beat me to it.

[2] A paper on the X-files and sexism? Hallefuckinglujah! Quote:

The X Filesseries reveals through central character Agent Scully the contemporary shift in traditional gender roles which has enabled more women to become scientific experts. What could be considered sexist about the X Files series is the fact that once women move into the arena of science, as Agent Scully has, and men, such as protagonist Agent Mulder, start believing in the power of intuition, traditionally a feminised area of thought, suddenly the authority of science, a principal discourse since Enlightenment, is brought into question, as intuition becomes paramount. It is in this shifting gender discourse that sexism can be viewed in the X Files series once viewed through a feminist analysis.

It reminds me a bit of how I approached my dissertation during my last year of University. I figured that if I had to write so much on a single topic for a year, this was the right time to combine my favourite things, mix it up and see what I could do with it. Voilà! A hundred pages about Blogs, Generation X, my friends’ webpages and Douglas Coupland. I felt a bit like a fraud, since I spent my research time, you know, reading blogs and surfing MySpace.

Picture via.

Somehow, I am feeling sad. Cuba is still an example in so many ways, in spite of the corruption, the famine, the oppression.

And Bush’s grin - talking from Rwanda no less - his speech emphasising “true democracy“, makes me feel truly uneasy. From where I stand and through all his flaws, Castro had more integrity and courage in his little finger than Bush could ever claim to.

And Bush talking about Castro’s “kind of staged elections”? Dude. Give me a break.

Saturday afternoon was spent doing touristic activities.

Tomorrow will be spent looking for a job, waiting for a very intimidating interview on friday.

I love Douglas Coupland. While I haven’t been crazy about his latest novels, Girlfriend in a Coma still remains one of my favourite book. Mark, on the other hand, fiercely hates him. I recently discovered that Coupland wrote a blog for the New York Times* - always late to the party, aren’t I- and I think it’s brilliant. More surprinsingly, Mark agrees. We came to the conlusion that Coupland may be a better blogger than a novelist, because the medium suits his pop-life affirmations better than paper pages can.

Which is bizzarre… Douglas Coupland, blogger extraordinaire before blogs were even born.

* As always, it’s qualified as “opinion” or “column” on google searches. Because real writers don’t blog, you see, they merely have ideas they put in writing instead.

Here’s an anonymous Valentine’s Day message I received in my inbox two years ago:

Valentine’s day is for the emotionally insecure:

Whenever i see someone smugly and ostentatiously accept a bunch of flowers in the office, I think of Saint Valentine being beaten and beheaded before being dumped unceremoniously on the Flaminian Way: Every Furtive glance around the office to confirm that they have the attention of their co-workers is a cudgel blow to St Valentine’s stupid head….

Most single people defensively maintain that to buy into St Valentine’s day is to pander to commercialism. Valentine’s day is (wrongly) believed as invented by greetings card companies in order to exploit one of our most basic desires: the need to be loved. Yet almost all of our celebrations are motivated in this way, through patterns dictated by the era of disorganised capitalism.

It’s true that i believe in God slightly less than I believe in the Easter bunny. I do, however believe in love, yet not as defined by desires similar to those which turn the wheels of assembly lines. It is in the external display of; the parading, the desperate shouting ‘I am loved!!’ in which Valentine’s day appears most vulgar.

?

Of course, the anonymous writer was Mark. Of course, today being’s Valentines’ day, I want to follow up with my tradition of going to MacDonald’s for dinner. We’ll see.

I have always thought of high-school reunions as terribly depressing.

A few days ago Mark and I spent a couple of hours discussing the politics of high-school. I tried to explain how my experience of high-school did not include clans, groups, bullying and stereotypical ideas including cheerleaders (France doesn’t have them) or nerds hiding away in the computers’ room.

I had a similar discussion with B. a couple of years ago. Having grown up in Canada, I guess that B’s schooling experience was closer to American movies than mine was: being very good at sports and therefore quite popular he enjoyed a lot of attention from the opposite sex and had a blast training hard, studying a little, and partying lots.

Truth is, I was bored at school. I remember it as a never-ending string of 8-hours days beginning with me getting up at 6.30, taking the bus at 7.35 to the outskirts of town and walking from classrooms to classrooms until 6 in the evening. My establishment was in a relatively poor neighbourhood (compared to those downtown), not too strict (compared to those downtown), comprised of 70 percent white kids, 30 percent kids from visible minorities (unlike those downtown) and I enjoyed the teachings of really good teachers and excellent programs (which unfortunately didn’t prevent me from wishing I was travelling the world instead).

I believe that a good half of my learning experience was carried on by myself, either on the internet - a wonderful, life changing discovery as far as I was concerned- on in books. Iwas not part of any clubs, was not hanging with the pretty girls and didn’t play sports (nobody really did within a school setting) but had a couple of very close and very different friends.

Francesca* was the sassy one and a great sense of humour who would sometimes whisper fierce and unwelcomed remarks to fellow pupils (and for that she was sometimes despised by others), Catherine* was the stunning, quietly beautiful one secretly dating the prefect, Tess* was the upbeat, politically aware and stupidly well-read rebel who did not obey any rules and Piers* was the very bright, intelligent but insecure and sexually unsure guy. None of them truly liked each other so I spent a lot of them with them one-on-one. And as to how they would describe me themselves, I have no idea. The point is, I wasn’t cool or uncool, casted away or bullied.

But I must say, doubt started creeping in after Mark and I finished our little talk on the subject. Maybe I had been hated all these years, and was oblivious to it at the time? Perhaps everyone saw me as a loser with high grades? With that in mind and Mark falling soundly asleep in bed next to me, I grabbed my laptop and did what I swore would never do: I joined the french version of classmates.com and started looking for clues. My approach was slightly pathetic and reminded me of Little.Yellow.Different hilarious takes on his high-school years, and thought that if students in France had high-school reunions, I would surely have felt like David Kleeman.

Truth is, I of course didn’t find clues - and I guess I’ll never know how people truly felt about me back then -and boy, does it feel self-centered to admit of my curiosity. I found a couple of people I once knew, and their faces didn’t change that much. They all looked very happy in their recent pictures, some having the jobs everyone knew they would have (dance teacher), some having made surprising choices (being quite highly graded in the army). After much searching, I discovered that one of my oldest childhood friend is now trainning a school-teacher in Southern France. Safely hidden behind my screen, the thought made me happy.

* names have been understandably changed to, uh, protect the innocent.

Picture via, sadly mourning the announced death of polaroids.