Posts Tagged ‘science’

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Sunday, April 30th, 2023

One thing I have observed in the aftermath of the repeal of Roe v. Wade that I did not expect to see is that I constantly see women who choose to not have children judge women who do so. Just today my good ol’ TikTok feed supplied me a video about the phenomenon of microchimerism, where fetal stem cells can migrate to the mother’s brain. The science is fascinating and strangely beautiful, and it is a very complex phenomenon still being researched, with its assorted ups and downs. But I had to venture outside of the video’s context to learn about the intricacies of that science, because all the video and its commenters served to do was cement pregnancy as something horrific and undesirable by skewing the facts of the science at face value. The video as a microcosm pushed the message that pregnancy is subjecting yourself to some undesirable body horror, and the women abstaining from that are somehow more righteous than those who do.

Because going about life the way you see fit is obviously a constant war of comparison between who is “better” at “sticking it to the man” and being a perfect agent of self indulgence.

I think that, because abortion rights have been so under attack and undermined, these people are associating having children as something one is forced to do. If you have a kid, now it is automatically assumed that you had no control over your decision, as opposed to choosing to use birth control. Even though it is zero business of other people how a family starts or what other people choose to do with their bodies. It is a misguided form of self reassurance where we create hierarchies based on extremely personal choices and judge others accordingly, with our own choices always being at the top of the ladder. We instinctively attack and attempt to undermine what we don’t understand or what makes us feel uncomfortable due to that lack of understanding.

It is also telling that women are being criticized by other women by doing something so strongly associated with feminine gender roles.

But what’s the difference between a woman who decides to have a kid/start a family, and a woman who doesn’t want to do that in her life? Literally nothing. You have no right to judge someone on their life decisions if it is literally harming no one, and you have no right to make assumptions about someone for simply going about a process of life as they see fit. And we should fight for  the right for bodily autonomy in all of its forms, because true choice means permitting all of the options regarding starting or not starting a family. All of them.

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Friday, April 22nd, 2022

Mold is people, too.

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There’s No Place Like Home (To Return To)

Tuesday, July 20th, 2021

Why do you think babies cry when they exit the womb? Because they don’t want to leave the security of floating weightlessly in the warm ooze that granted them life, but they are forced to take in the new world’s air. Tethered to our moms, we are free in our primordial atmosphere—at least, until we are ejected against our will into the cold, harsh world we unconditionally grow to accept. And aren’t we all now grown and looking for something warm and cozy to counter our troubling environment?

I look in the sky on this hot summer night and see a faint speck of light becoming more and more faint by the second. It is a high tech device, Sputnik-like, more advanced than any regular plane. There is a little man in there. He sits in his cockpit consoled by a padded suit and the fact that there is no one dirty there to peeve him. All of the ship’s controls are within reach of his grubby hands. He knows what he is doing. His destination is the moon.

He is too large and scrubbed clean for Earthling soil. He is exiting Earth and its societies to prospect his own world in an cushioned anti-gravitational frontier, a world all his own. One mother is returned to while another is left to rot.

Once there, he will be able to survey his home planet from a distance farther than most could imagine being in their lifetimes. He will see what space junk scraps see when they drift by, not swayed enough by gravity to make a crash landing. He will see a planet that lies in his perpetual grip, but only then will he be able to create the physical illusion that he is holding it, like how he squished peoples’ heads from afar as a grade schooler. He will see a planet in dismay. Maybe he will see the fires raging across the land from space when they were not included in his earthly penthouse view. He will think of all the little people who would do anything to spacewalk in his boots and how they will never be able to touch him.

In his mind he remains afloat forever, cultivating his own society free from Earth’s clutches, one where only the purest and most accumulous are permitted. Scientific understanding and discovery play no part when he has already discovered the truest depths of human selfishness. But these visions exist only within his dampest dreams, and he must return to reality sooner or later. He would never want to risk looking different than you or me.

Shame that those who need to get pulled down to Earth most, are the only ones who hold the means to escape it’s gravitational pull.

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One Step Closer To Becoming A Cyborg

Saturday, April 17th, 2021

Are YOU jabbed?!

Because I am.

The immune cells in my body are currently training to whoop some coronavirus behind. Though the movement of my left arm became limited for a day due to annoying stings of pain, the knowledge that there are cells fighting a war within my fleshy shell definitely made up for it. Through my temporary inconvenience I felt power; it’s almost like wearing heels.

I’m also probably the only person in America to rep Jihad Jerry, the politically charged electro-blues side project of DEVO bassist Jerry Casale, while receiving my shot. The album is receiving a vinyl issue this summer, so I’ve been recently revisiting it in all its mid-2000s glory. Ever since I first listened to it, I’ve been a supporter of the project, and I always perceived it as oddly relevant to our current timeline despite its blatant roots in anti-Bushism and War on Terror satire. Some may question its longevity in light of current events. Fifteen years after the album’s initial release, the U.S. is scheduled to pull all of its troops from Afghanistan by the eleventh of September—a supposed end to the “forever war.” But “counterterrorism” forces are still going to be active indefinitely in the country; is that a true “end?” And besides, the damage has already been done.

When COVID-19 hit, I heard a lot of 9/11 comparisons. Generation-defining events, moments that would permanently change our preconceived standards of “normal,” though COVID impacted the wider world on a more visible scale. Looking at the cultural repercussions of both, I can see it. Post-9/11, we still have to take our shoes off at the airport—or, we will once events important enough to fly to begin occurring again—and I assume that face masks and remote communication will still play some role in America’s future twenty years down the line. From the fall of the Twin Towers sprang absurd acts of discrimination against anyone who looked vaguely Middle Eastern in the name of “patriotism;” the “China virus” only encouraged attacks against Asians. Same plot line; different bogeymen.

With all of this on our plates, I’d argue that Jihad Jerry, the self-proclaimed “lightning rod for hostility,” still deserves a seat at the table. Give a curmudgeon a microphone and he’ll use it. Maybe that curmudgeon will sing some songs made for a world where actual change seems so close, yet so far.

And maybe those songs will be pretty good.

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One Step Closer To One Step Closer To Becoming A Cyborg

Tuesday, April 13th, 2021

I was recently able to schedule an appointment for the first of my two COVID-19 vaccinations.

It’s a somewhat strange feeling knowing that the day will be soon upon me, and I perceive my relative youth as a large factor. Since vaccine distribution began with the elderly, I’ve gotten used to hearing news that the older adults in my life have received their jabs. Having the opportunity bestowed upon me, someone with relatively less life experience, feels odd, despite that there are many ways that I just do not feel young. I find myself in a liminal state: not quite old, not quite new.

Emotions like this fuel my disdain of generational divides. I have never understood why one would restrict themselves to consuming solely products of their own generation, nor why the media would stereotype generations and pit them against each other in endless, mindless cultural catfights. But what draws more attention than a conflict that doesn’t actually exist or is warped out of proportion?

I experience positive and negative echos of the past daily: I listen to songs released years before I was born on the regular; I read news stories that call to mind history class discussions about the extinction of Jim Crow laws and lynchings—oh really? If someone hopes to stand a chance in today’s world, no matter their age, they have to know their history. Learning from the past is the only way to make actual progress; repeat your mistakes, and that’s one more dollar in the GoFundMe campaign funding complete societal downfall.

Speaking of history: after we’ve all got our shots, will the rest of the twenties be as roaring as they were one hundred years ago? I’d say they’re already pretty roaring—with absurdity and obscenity, that is. It’s pretty absurd that back in the day vaccines were viewed as miracles and now they’re viewed as microchips. Being in good health—mentally and physically—just ain’t cool anymore, it seems.

Well, I don’t care about being “cool.” I care about having common sense.

Inoculation, here I come!

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Posted in Life | 5 Comments »