Day: April 9, 2018

Here’s an article about Facial Feminization Surgery.

It’s something you do if you’re a trans woman…. and you can afford it. Someone I know on twitter is crowdfunding FFS and so I thought although I consider myself to be a trans ally and have a smidge of street cred I’m not really educated about it.

And this made me fall down a gender essentialist fucking rat hole.

WHY do men and women have different facial structures. WHY?

Wellllllllll,

the first thing is that in real terms they don’t. Everything on a boy’s face is on a girl’s face. With the fractal warping of exterior features that occurs with the genes themselves and the proteins that express them, one starts in one place and ends up someplace else. So bony ridges are masc

BUT WHY?

Eye placement — why?

Then I start thinking about neoteny. Women’s bone structures remain closer to children’s bone structures throughout life. I mean, if I’m reading this article correctly.

Women on average live longer than men.

Men’s head bones  are denser and better able to handle being punched.

It’s science.

BUT WHY? WHY ARE MEN’S FACES SO PUNCHABLE? I mean, better able to take a punch, not pulling me in like a black hole with desire to punch. Only Ajit Pai Martin Shkreli and Ted Cruz affect me like that. Trump? I don’t actually want to be that close to him in all candour.

 

 

 

So yesterday I literally could not keep track of my grandson at the Aquarium (his mother was with him every instant) and an enormous gulf of misery passed over me that I couldn’t keep track of my kin any more. Keith appeared from nowhere and we listened to the symphony of sea lions – one in particular was trying to set records for volume, purity of tone and likeness to the vocalizations of Chewbacca, to tremendous comic effect, which was immediately stripped away when I realized that it was the self-expression of a trapped intelligence. Not a great intelligence, but smart enough to know that it’s swimming around in it’s own shit all day every day.

There were many little gems scattered in the hum of commerce and children. All the moms looked perfect – and miserable. All the dads looked comfortable – and blank. All the kids had expressions that were ready to veer into terror at any time.

Alex seemed to have a good time. He was running around like a fool for most of it.

Four times now Katie’s been to the Aquarium and the octopus has not come out. I come and she’s not just out, she’s clinging to the glass so you have a lovely view of her suckers if you’re an 18 month old toddler. Seriously, she was doing everything but ‘show the beak’ (you never see that unless you are very very intimate with an octopus for months and months and feed it etc).

It is possible I have some octopus-fu. If I do it’s inadvertent.

Another little tweak – passing through the gift shop without the slightest desire to purchase something.

Another little tweak – Keith saying ‘that was fun but exhausting’ afterward.

Another little tweak – being so annoyed with poor little Alex when he was kicking the seat at the restaurant, and seeing that reflected in Katie and Keith. We left soon after.

Feeling topped up with family love but also uneasy at how useless I am as a grandma.

 

45433 is wordcount for HOTM