my name is barbara, but you can call me babs!
any pronouns
neopets/virtual pet sideblog is neocryptids
icon courtesy of Awkward Spyro Photos
welcome to EVIL SCHOOL heres your timetable for the day first you have SHADOW MATH then after that you have CREEPY BIOLOGY then GYM
did you just describe monster high
Sex isn't actually biological either, by the way.
Sex is the social construct we use to attach gender to bodies.
If it was actually about science, they would have updated biology classes with info about intersex variations as soon as they were discovered and documented - the way animal biology does with new species, and chemistry does with new elements.
There are over 40 different intersex variations named and described by medicine!! We know for an absolute fact that intersex traits exist, including chromosome sets besides just XX and XY - there's also XXY, XYY, XXX, X-null, and more. If this was actually about science, you would have been taught about them.
If it was actually about science, you would have been taught that what we think of as biological sex isn't any kind of binary - it's constellations of averages of similar traits, any of which may or may not occur alongside any other sex-associated traits in any specific person.
If it was actually about science, we wouldn't actually still be arguing about this, period, because the fact that the sex binary is false undermines the entire rationale for the gender binary's existence.
And if it was actually about science, intersex people would be subjected to a hell of a lot fewer infant genital mutilations and other human rights violations.
the space race may be the funniest point in history period and i'll stand by that. the US is like "yes whoever gets into space first will prove once and for all that our economic model is superior and that we are, in general, the superior country of superior and smarter people." then the soviets just went and did it and the US freaked out and needed to cover their ass so were like "WE MEAN THE MOON, WE MEAN THE FIRST TO LAND ON THE MOON."
yeah its cus walking on the moon was cool as hell and all this other boring shit sucked ass
When I was a freshman in a red-state college, I had a professor who taught Newtonian physics with a super thick Russian accent. The student body was unusually conservative for a state college, so there was a sort of general bemusement about learning physics from a Russian, but even back then the Cold War was far enough in the past that not even the red tribe was inclined to stir up trouble about it.
He was aware enough of this to get off on trolling the class, though. Whenever some force diagram in a homework assignment needed to be weightless, instead of being some generic spacecraft it would be “Mir” specifically. And he’d always use ‘cosmonaut’ instead of ‘astronaut’, that kind of thing.
One day about halfway through the semester, he’s doing this with in-class examples on the board, and one of the students finally gets up the guts to troll back a little. So this kid shouts from the back of the auditorium, “Hey professor, what’s the difference between a cosmonaut and an astronaut?”
And this beautiful man spins around on one heel to face the class, whiteboard marker triumphantly over his head, clearly having been waiting for this moment the entire semester:
“Cosmonaut go to space first! Ha!”
Pill Scarab Beetles: these beetles are covered in plates that perfectly interlock when the beetle folds its limbs, lowers its head, and curls itself into a ball
Above: Eusphaeropeltis sp. (top/bottom left) and Ceratocanthus aeneus (bottom right), two different species of pill scarab beetle
Beetles of the Ceratocanthinae subfamily (also known as pill scarab beetles) rely on a unique form of conglobation to conceal themselves. As the beetle tucks its head down and folds its legs up against its belly, the plates on its head, thorax, abdomen, and legs all come together to form a solid shield; the plates on its legs even have grooves and corresponding ridges that allow them to neatly interlock.
As this blog post explains:
Adult Ceratocanthinae are best known for their ability to conglobate: rolling into a nearly perfect ball. The elytra, pronotum, head, and all six tibiae interlock with each other by means of grooves and corresponding ridges, forming a tightly connected external surface. Many beetles take the form of a tight compact structure when threatened, however in Ceratocanthinae the tibiae of all six legs participate in forming the external hard surface of the sphere, unlike in other beetles.
Above: Ceratocanthus sp.
The Ceratocanthinae subfamily contains many different genera/species, and they are all collectively known as pill scarabs. Many of them have a colorful, metallic appearance; they may be green, red, blue, brown, black, or multicolor.
Above: Germarostes globosus
Sources & More Info:
It turns out that actually standing by "men and women are not inherently very different" is a reliable way to bother absolutely everyone. Left or right, cis or trans, feminist or misogynist, all cling to the binary for dear life.
My mom, who is a left-leaning, generally feminist woman has many times expressed opinions that she thinks men and boys are more likely, based on biological traits, to be more violent and rude.
It bothered the shit out of me because my sister and I are both assigned male. And when I'd express that to her she'd say she's not counting us, or something to that effect, but that always felt like a copout. She couldn't except that it was a learned, cultural thing, she just thought my sister and I were exceptions. If anything, it was a little othering.
It was especially bad when she applied this to children, which she did because she worked in childcare. And I can kind of understand her viewpoint, assuming she saw patterns in the ways boys behaved in her years working with them. But the thing about that is that biology is not an adequate explanation for that behavior, because, prior to puberty, there is very little difference in the levels of sex hormones of males and females. She would use the word "testosterone" a lot, as if young boys had significant testosterone in their blood. They don't.
Hearing her bullshit time after time has only radicalized me. If you want to make social progress for women, for trans people, for people as a whole...
You need to accept that male and female humans really aren't all that different from each other.
People are also really prone to confirmation bias when thinking about groups they see as distinctly separate.
One example I have mentioned before is that my father used to believe women are worse at driving than men. Whenever he saw someone driving badly he'd try to look at who was behind the wheel. If it was a woman, he'd make some misogynistic comment that reinforces his worldview, but if he was a man he often just didn't say anything (even if he was like "I bet that's a woman" before) and just didn't think about it further.
People are also very prone to making generalizations about groups while ignoring differences within groups.
They feel comfortable saying stuff like "Boy children are very different from girl children" but have they noticed that the boy children are also very different from each other, for example? It ends up sounding really sketchy to lump huge and diverse groups of people based on something like gender and treat them as if they share one personality regardless of their individual circumstances.
Bruce Campbell, his dad, and his body doubles on the set of Army of Darkness (1992)
look upon my sons and despair
