I have been on hiatus from blogging for some time, mainly due to two factors. First, I launched a public anthropology podcast, Anthropologist on the Street (huzzah!), which has been a fabulous excuse to spend hours talking to brilliant, and often funny, anthropologists and to force them to explain in plain English why their work is important. It’s like free college, but with fewer exams and hangovers. The second reason is because I recently discovered the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. Eight books and 7500 pages later, I popped my head up to observe that my children had outgrown all their clothes and had resorted to eating grass, as mommy hadn’t bought groceries because MOMMY WAS READING. After feeding the darlings and reenrolling them in school, I dragged my husband into watching … [Read more...]
Turning Heterosexual Pride Day into Gratitude Day
Are you a heterosexual? Feeling discriminated against by a persecuted minority? Perhaps we should take a moment to be grateful for the ways being heterosexual makes life easier, even when we don't recognize it. In honor of the recent call for #HeterosexualPrideDay, I’ve compiled a list of ten benefits you, too, can enjoy from being heterosexual: Your relationships are depicted in complex, varied, and approving ways in all mainstream RomComs. Actually, pretty much all mainstream movies ever made. The government sanctions your relationships with easy to use marriage forms and rewarding tax breaks. Your ability to adopt is not hindered by your sexuality. There is a 0% threat that you will be violently targeted for being heterosexual. Magazines, comic books, and the vast, … [Read more...]
When Nature Has to Conform to Culture: Highly Sensitive People in a Nonsensitive Culture
Elaine Aron’s book The Highly Sensitive Person was like my own personal Da Vinci Code—riveting, compelling, and totally solved a mystery about myself I didn’t know existed. My whole life I felt more worn out than others, more overwhelmed and overstimulated. But being raised in a Catholic family with a Protestant work ethic and an American intolerance for anything perceived as weak, I saw my sensitivity and heightened perceptivity as personal failings to overcome. Why do I notice the tension in a couple’s conversation across the room when their immediate neighbors are chatting happily unaware? Or the fact that a child is about to fall off a chair fifteen feet away from me when his babysitter is oblivious next to him? <Just mind your own business.> Why do sore muscles, or tight … [Read more...]
5 Homophobic Myths Destroyed by Anthropology
After the horrific mass murder in June focusing on the LGBTQ community at an Orlando club, the only thing worse than the massacre has been the thread of homophobic comments following it. The folks who have been loudest about their disdain for LGBTQ members continue to rely on outdated, subjective, and outright false suppositions about sexuality to justify discrimination against LGBTQ members. It turns out that when you look globally at issues of sex, gender, sexuality, and marriage, it is extremely difficult to summarize human practices as universal or natural. They’re just too damn diverse. So, fighting “truthiness” with anthropological “factiness”, I present the top five homophobic myths that anthropology (and a little social psychology) completely demolish. Myth 1: I know … [Read more...]
