Thursday, July 22, 2010

Using Finding Nemo Friends to Transcend the Gender Binary

Not only are women discovering what it means to have equal rights, women and men both are now redefining what it is to be a "woman." Gender roles are being subverted, leaving both stereotypes and cultural expectations unfulfilled.

These movements in what we understand about our own gender can be explored through looking back unto nature. Take for instance one of the most bizarre gender roles I've encountered: the angler fish. The angler fish is of course featured in the film Finding Nemo. (Remember that working in an aquarium makes you relate fish through Disney films to keep kids' attention) It has giant scary teeth and this peculiar little light (bioluminescence) that helps attract prey to it, as the angler fish lives in the deep ocean where sunlight does not reach. The angler fish floats motionless and waves its light around. Due to the deep ocean (3,000') being particularly scarce in grub, the angler fish can expand its stomach and swallow prey twice the size of the angler fish's entire body. One might assume that this terrifying creature is a male, but the male is actually a much smaller fish. The male fish loses its ability to feed itself when it reaches maturity due to the degeneration of its digestive system. Thus, the male goes out looking for a way to eat and ends up biting onto a female angler fish. The Male's teeth are conveniently hook shaped and easily latch on, but once he takes a bite, he releases an enzyme that both melts his lips and melts part of the female. This process literally fuses the bodies together as one, giving new meaning to the romantic idea of being one with your significant other. This is almost a parasitic union however, as the male feeds off of the female's nutrients and is only used by the female as an instant way to spawn. Additionally the female can carry up to six males on her body at a time and is by no means monogamous. Thus, the female angler fish is the dominant gender, the socially accepted multi-partner gender, the physically larger and the aggressive, head of house-hold gender. All of these are not what we would normally think of as female due to our cultural history, but this change in defining our gender is by no means unnatural. A more comical explanation of this process can be found here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler

Beyond the redefining of gender roles, we are also re-examining whether or not we can be simply male or female. We may have the goods to be defined as either male or female, but we can identify our emotions and sentiments with a gender that is not our physical own. There are hermaphroditic relationships all over nature. Sequential hermaphrodites are born as one gender but can later change into another such as our beloved Nemo the clown fish. Clown fish engage in protandry and are born as males in which both reproductive and not yet reproductive males lives in a harem together with a large, singular female for reproduction. When the female dies, one of the reproductive males will become the female and one of the sexually immature males will mature. Simultaneous reproduction exists when one organism possesses both male and female parts, such as earthworms and slugs. (And, allegedly, Jamie Lee Curtis upon her birth)

Thus, gender roles undergo change throughout nature. Perhaps it is one thing to literally become a female fish in the anemone than it is to be born a man and "feel" more like a woman, but we also can't quite say for sure whether or not animals endure a mere gender change mentality. What we "feel" is "natural," isn't it?

Friday, July 16, 2010

Juxtaposing Cornelius Fudge and the Current Oil Disaster

Everyone seems to hate both the film and movie for Harry Potter Year V,
The Order of the Phoenix. Harry is 15, but who wasn't utterly annoying at the age of 15? I feel that Harry has a bit of an excuse considering his parents were murdered, the "family" who is supposed to love and support him through difficult times constantly puts him down and loathes him, he just witnessed the death of a friend by the hand of the dark lord who killed Harry's parents, and no one believes Harry that Voldemort is back. In fact, as the wise Luna Lovegood points out, Voldemort is trying to make Harry feel alone by turning the magic world against him. I'm thinking Harry Potter deserves a bit of angst, so I appreciated J.K. Rowling's depiction of human emotion.

Why am I discussing Harry Potter on a nature blog? Well, I believe in intertwining disciplines and practices to better see how interconnected the world really is. Let's take one of the largest lessons of that book: we must accept, confront and believe in ourselves in order to do what is right. This is most apparent in Cornelius Fudge, the minister of magic, who refuses to believe that Voldemort is back out of utter fear. He's so afraid to admit it to himself that he creates an elaborate mess of the magic world by employing the nightmarish woman Dolores Umbridge at Hogwarts. Umbridge tries to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts without the use of wands, sort of like Chemistry without lab time (see my previous blog for how that works out), and completely robs the school of a real education.

As much as I'd love to kick Tony Hayward, BP CEO, in the face, I'm beginning to see him as a Cornelius Fudge archetype. He's not evil, and he definitely didn't intend to destroy an ecosystem (well, quite a few now), a culture, and many people's lives across the world. He has said a lot of terribly inconsiderate things, and seems to constantly underestimate the severity of the situation. He wants his life back, it's a small spill in a large ocean, yadda yadda.

An oil spill is nothing like the dark lord returning. An oil spill is indeed an accident, but it is an accident that can be better relegated through efficient safety precautions and procedures to both prevent and efficiently take care of disasters when they happen. I for one have had sincere difficulty trying to pay attention and write about the oil spill. It's by far the worst part about having a degree in environmental studies or simply caring about the world--you are challenging yourself to learn about everything that is going on, only to feel incredibly helpless that you're only one person in a culture that tears at the seams of the earth. It's been hard for me to sleep at night since the April 20th explosion turned into one of the greatest technological disasters in the history of the United States.

We have the right to be whiney like Harry Potter, and we do have an excuse to point fingers for a while. But what it all comes down to is that something terrible is happening (and with the recent cap, let's hope it'll stop leaking now for good), and it is our responsibility to fight it. We may not of been the ones who had a poorly designed or executed engineering plan to drill off shore. We may not be the ones who blatantly and public undermine the complexity of our mistakes. We are, however, able to accept what has happened unlike Cornelius Fudge. We are also able to talk about what has happened, to learn about what is happening and to spread this to those who may find be struggling to grasp what is happening. We can write about it on blogs, send out e-mails, write letters to our state legislators, write to companies like BP who use offshore drilling and discuss how serious this problem is. We can also reduce our own oil intake by carpooling, riding bicycles, taking public transportation. We can do research, ask questions, and challenge ourselves to be aware and face what is going on. Without all of us challenging each other to do something, we won't get anywhere. This may seem discouraging, but I believe we are all inherently good people who make their own choices. As Dumbledore said, "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

You may not have the ability to stop what is happening on your own. You can, however, chose to do something.

http://www.restorethegulf.gov/ Here is the government's site on updates and information on how to help.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yshPScxTw8s This is a friend's video of how she is helping.

And, if the current cap on the oil spill stops the oil from spilling, please know that it's NOT over. There is still oil in the soil from the Exxon Valdez spill from 1989. We need to assure that BP and the rest of the United States finishes cleaning the mess, as all things in this world are connected.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Science Education

So, remember how "they" always said people are either right or left brained? People are either creative or rational, good at math or good at writing. Well, I'd like to deconstruct this theory. To begin, I double majored in English Writing and Environmental Studies. I can spend an afternoon reading, and I find solving math equations to be relaxing.

I used to think I was stupid. I really loved exploring and being outside, but I didn't seem to do well in my science classes. I could easily get a good grade in my English courses by reading the homework, but even if I tried to read the Chemistry textbook, I didn't necessarily do well on the test.

But, now that I look back on it, perhaps it wasn't my own incapability that hindered me from being proficient in my science courses. Maybe I wasn't being taught science in the way I needed to be taught. My freshman biology class was taught at 9am by my freshmen basketball coach, a woman who I feared. We spent most of our time sleepily memorizing diagrams from an overhead projector and never truly understood the relationship between all these unrecognizable words we memorized. My chemistry class was taught by a kind and intelligent woman who had previously retired and was rehired due to a lack of available teachers. I was in an on-level science class in a public school despite the fact that all my other classes were AP or Honors, and it showed. Every day there was a group of boys who would disrupt our class and make the teacher cry, so we would read from the unreadable dense and confusing Chemistry textbook instead of working through labs, hearing our teacher's explanations as she writes on the board or discussing in groups what it all meant. I never even took a Physics class because I was too scared. I instead took an Aquatic Science course where we watched Finding Nemo and our field trip to the beach was cancelled since most of the class was failing. Needless to say, I thought I was merely right brained and wasn't supposed to be good at science.

Yet, I loved science. My brother and I's dream is to have a lifetime subscription to National Geographic. I ride my bike at night just to hear the calls of toads, I became scuba certified and literally giggle when I see pictures of fish. I volunteered at a local aquarium, took science classes despite the fact that I was an English major in college. I suddenly found myself in love with ecology--our field trip for Ecology and Evolution consisted of canoeing out into the swamp at night, and I loved every minute of it. I began to realize that learning science is a lot different than learning history or understanding literature; it's not harder. I felt somewhat cheated that I never learned about Evolution until I was a Junior in college, but I was also glad that I finally faced my fear of science and worked hard enough to make sense of it.

Though I am just now beginning to challenge myself, I've noticed how many kids in high school are just as scared, if not more, of science as I was. To raise a generation of kids to be afraid of science in a society that already struggles with understanding the world is a dangerous thing. To think--we use words like "believe" with scientific realities like global warming and evolution. We cannot let ourselves become disillusioned with science and understanding how the world works. If anything, we should learn how to make science easier to understand. Just as I needed the right teacher and experience to appreciate science, the general public can become more acquainted with science if we learn how to more legibly express it. Had that chemistry book I read been more legible, maybe I would've actually comprehended those exams. I actually wanted to be a scientist when I was a little kid but was far too afraid to pursue the dream when I couldn't understand my science textbooks.

I guess that's why I'm so dedicated to merging my passion for writing and my passion for ecology--the world is far too interesting for people to limit themselves to being merely right or left brained.