And all I gotta do is...act naturally

I am taking this one class that I particularly love. It's called "Bodies and Technologies in Popular Culture," and it is great fun. We take all of this pop-psychology/biology stuff and then rip its logic into a billion little bits and prove it as wrong as wearing socks with sandals or raising a fuss over Y2K.

This class could not have come at a better time for me. It has always fascinated (as well as annoyed!) me when I hear people talking about how certain groups act this way and other groups act that way because "it's in their nature." From listening to folks like these, you'd think all humans consisted of were animalistic, base instincts and uncontrollable urges...and nothing more. All nature. No culture. And if anything, the 21st century has a combination of the most amazing cultures the world has ever seen; yet we still have some pretty darn vocal voices saying that people only behave in the way "their nature" dictates they should. Even more ridiculous is when folks start using examples from nature to illustrate why certain things are the way they are.

Phrases like those are not limited to today. Throughout history, we have seen discrimination unfold just because the dominant group (read: heterosexual, well-off, middle-aged white males) saw it as each of the minority groups' "natural place" to be below them. The folks who opposed abolition back in the 1800s used the disgusting argument that it was simply in the nature of the blacks to toil for long hours without any recompensation or humane treatment. And the disgusting practice continued until it was formally outlawed at the federal level. Women were first considered the property of either their husbands or their fathers, and they were encouraged to limit their life goals to "wife and mother" because (big surprise) they were told it was natural. (While there is nothing wrong with getting married and having kids, there is everything wrong with pushing that on everyone and not allowing them to have any dreams that happen to be different.)

The above historical examples sound horrendously antiquated, don't they? Then why do we still hear cr*p like that nowadays? Ladies' mags churn out new "scientific findings" justifying all kinds of BS: that men are "hard-wired" to cheat because it's in their instincts to produce as many offspring as possible (which is a little insulting to men, don't you think?), that women can sense when things are going wrong from the onset of something, that bad boys get more action because women are hard-wired not to resist them, etc. etc. Stuff like this is patronizing at best (by saying that basically we're just a bunch of raging hormones/instincts and not much else) and gross at worst. That first example, about how people are "instinctively" wired to want to procreate as much as possible has been used to justify a ton of hideous and completely untrue claims. At Sex Out Loud, the chastity group told Planned Parenthood (what were they thinking saying this to Planned Parenthood???) that contraceptives interfered with women's innate desire to be sexually pure (funny, I don't see anyone having a relationship with the actual pill) and yet also interfered with their "natural" role to bear children. Hmmm. I would have thought thinking and making one's own decisions was "natural" (including knowing when/if you wanted to reproduce). Then, at an RCS-sponsored event, one of the male advocates and I were fielding questions from the audience, and this one idiot stood up and was telling us that our rape victim advocacy work was conflicting with men's "biological nature" to father as many children as possible, even if it was by force. I was all set to let that guy have it, but before I could do anything, my cohort verbally eviscerated the sexist pig, saying that his views were really unfair to men as well as women! (I think it meant more coming from another guy, and Jack did one heckuva job as always.) I've also heard from well-meaning (I think?) individuals that because something existed in the animal kingdom, it was true for humans. Statements about how male animals are the aggressive and strong ones and that female ones are the nurturing ones. It makes me wonder if they have confused the species, because last time I checked, people are quite different from wild animals.

My response has usually been, "Okay, I think we've all evolved since then." I honestly don't think humanity is in a stagnant state that never changes, and if you know anything about history, you know that it is simply full of changes (good lord, that's a lot of change--I must be sounding like Barack Obama or something!). Or I say that I think we have more than just a bundle of instincts and hormones. In response to the animal thing, I've usually counter it with some witty (and sometimes crass) remarks that are just as true. You wanna talk about how males are dominant in nature? Let me tell you about nature! With lions, the lionesses do the hunting and are the stronger and fiercer ones. And with some kinds of bugs the female mates with the male and then eats him! (You should see the look I get for that one!)

Maybe people like those could be right in a way. By being so unenlightened, maybe they're the ones who haven't evolved and who haven't used much more than their instincts and big mouths. But really, you'd think statements like those would be deemed as the ridiculosity they are and not accepted at face value.