How to Fight

Michael Chrichton (R.I.P.) is one of my favorite authors. A while back when I was searching for more information about him after re-reading Jurassic Park for the third time, I came across his website and found an interesting article he wrote for Playboy.

Fighting in a relationship is a very important topic for me personally because my parents are both very dysfunctional in this respect. Their communication problem is one of the reasons they got a divorce, and I have learned the same habits from them. After reading this I immediately showed it to my boyfriend and we decided to implement the rules for this method into our relationship.

Here’s a link. Read it for yourself and tell me what you think!

Definition of Masculinity and Femininity

This is a continuation of a forum post I made on ObjectivismOnline.net in response to a thread on romance and the nature of sexuality. I commonly get into discussions about this sort of thing but don’t always feel I communicate my entire message properly so I figured I’d try and lay the whole thing out here for good measure.

I would define masculinity and femininity as outward social mores, personality traits and aesthetic ideals assigned to you by your parents and communicated to you from infancy. From the very first time your parents buy you a blue jumper instead of a pink one, you begin to observe that there are two types of humans and that one of them shares similar characteristics with you and so you begin to act like them. I do not believe any part of a person’s personality or psychology is deterministically (as in, unchangeably) decided by the genetic code.

That last part is especially important to my stance on this. I think the idea of gender being solely determined by genetic makeup ignores tabula rasa. Homosexuality is linked to this issue in the original thread, as the person is struggling to reconcile homosexual desires with his definition of masculinity that necessarily includes wanting to be attractive to women. This also ties in with my theory of homosexuality being a choice, which I will lay out in a future post. My definitions of masculinity and femininity are necessary to that theory. Dr. Leonard Peikoff put forth an interesting alternative to the ‘gay is in my genes’ definition of homosexuality in one of his podcasts. The podcast was Episode 35 — November 03, 2008, and the question was: 11:22: “‘In one of your podcasts, you stated that homosexuality does not involve choice. If sexual orientation is not a choice then why isn’t it an instinct?’” (Thanks to ObjectivismOnline’s unofficial index of Peikoff’s Podcasts for the timestamp.)

“Is your sense of life a choice? Now, it’s a definite viewpoint on the universe, on yourself, which has all kinds of implications for your values and your behavior. But you never sit down and say, you know when you’re 8 or 14 or whatever, “This is my conclusion about the universe, about myself, etc.” It takes place as a subconscious generalization from your experiences. It’s not an instinct, but it’s not a choice either. It’s a subconscious generalization which has many consequences. Now your experiences, as your child self interpreted them, and I think a comparable thing underlies sexual orientation.

“Some kind of sense of self, one of the opposite sex, of one’s own sex. Whatever. Becomes subconscious generalization and adds up to a certain view of yourself and certain kinds of desire. It’s not an instinct, and it’s not a choice.”

Now, as was noted by many Objectivists about Ayn Rand’s claim that homosexuality is immoral, Ayn Rand was not a psychologist, and neither is Dr. Peikoff. However I do respect his opinion on this issue as it raises questions to my stance while keeping tabula rasa in mind. (The majority of arguments against my stance that I’ve heard are based on the ‘gay is genetic’ idea.) I agree with his assessment of how sexual identity is usually decided in an average human being in this age, however I disagree that this is the only way sexual identity works. My own experience with sexual identity development disagrees with his theory totally. At a (relatively) older age I was considering the questions of who am I sexually, who do I want sexually, romantically, how do I know these things, what are my standards. I was considering my sexual identity both explicitly and subconsciously until around 17 or so I finally decided (as in chose) to be primarily homosexual.

Why do I say primarily? Because I am always open to my statistical data being proven wrong. Let me clarify by continuing with the quoted forum post I wrote:

“I think they (masculinity and femininity) are exclusive to outward behavior and appearance. I have met many ‘masculine’ women and many ‘effeminate’ men and all kinds in between. How then do I create my standards for what is attractive to me or not? I begin with virtue, is he/she virtuous. Then I examine him or her as a person and judge the whole, aesthetically, emotionally (sense of life), idiosyncrasy, etc. The only time gender comes into my judgement is completely prior to meeting the person, when deciding what gender I will ‘focus’ on, as in, what gender would I primarily look for were I to sign up for a dating site? What gender will I imagine myself being with at an old age. I make that decision off of my judgements of masculinity and femininity, which in my definition could also be described as ‘generalizations about men and women that I have observed.’ So in this case my method of getting at what masculinity and femininity are are the same as yours (I am addressing the original poster of the thread here); I observe. However my observations enter into my standards only insomuch as I recognize them for what they are, an informally gathered statistic. As Dr. Peikoff quoted Ayn Rand saying: Statistics are only useful when you necessarily must decide without the necessary information to be sure. Once I have actually met a person and am getting to know them, my definitions of masculine and feminine (statistical data) is moot, I need no longer assume this person will act a certain way based on my observations of others of his type, I can simply watch him and judge his actions on their own.”

To reiterate, I compare a person’s personal definitions of masculinity and femininity to informally gathered statistical data. This implies a very particular use for those definitions, as I said: when you must decide without the necessary information to be sure. When you get to know a person, it is already too late, the time for your statistical data to have use to you is over and now you must use your perceptions of their actions to judge them objectively. The same is true of stereotypes. People wearing gang paraphernalia are a group I generally tend to avoid based on my stereotype of them: the data I have gathered about them via people of that group I’ve met before. However, once I am in contact with one, it is not useful nor proper to avoid talking/treat him poorly/run away just based on my stereotype alone. I must now judge him based on his character alone and decide if it is one I wish to associate with or avoid. Sometimes I run into some that are quite friendly and make good acquaintances.

So there it is, my definition of masculinity and femininity can be summarized thusly: Outward, socially defined and propagated, mores of behavior and appearance defined via personal observation, both conscious and subconscious, which allow one to make generalized opinions of humans one has not met yet. Once one is in the process of getting to know a person, these assumptions must necessarily be ignored until they are validated by the behavior of the person. They can only give you a vague idea of how a person might be.

What do you think? Do you agree with my definitions? I would like to request that the discussion be kept specifically to my definitions of masculinity and femininity and the support thereof; I will be posting another blog post in the future on my theory of homosexuality being a choice and the comment thread there will be a better place to discuss that topic with me.

My Weight Loss Experience

I never -EVER- thought I would write about this. I had resigned myself to being uncontrollably overweight. I didn’t buy into the hype about overweight being genetic, but I figured that by the time I got the discipline to lose weight, I’d be an old dude and will have spent my whole youth as a fat person.

But it wasn’t hard -at all-. Seriously. I cheated. I cheated so much I thought ‘man, I guess I’ll never lose weight, look at how much I’m cheating.’ But it worked, and I didn’t even notice until a week ago. At the beginning of the year I was 255 lbs, pants size 42. At the time I figured ‘I’m not really that big, not as big as some other big people, so I’m okay!’ But now, after losing 47 lbs in 5 months, and getting down to pants size 36, I realize how big I was.

What worked for me:

I am a strong advocate of the Paleo diet. I’ve linked the Paleo blogs before, but I shall do it again, just for good measure.

PaNu – Getting Started
Whole health source

To summarize what I eat: meat, dairy, fruit, veggies, and nuts. I excluded (as much as possible) grains (yes corn counts as a grain), legumes (beans and stuff) starchy veggies like peas, and sugar. I regulated my Omega 6 fatty acid intake by supplementing with omega 3 cod liver oil pills, and I also took a 4000 IU supplement of vitamin D.

A typical day of eating for me is bacon and eggs for breakfast. (I fry the eggs in the bacon fat, sometimes with cheese and ham in them. Oh delicious.) Sometimes if I didn’t feel like cooking I’d have some whole, fully fatty yogurt and nuts. As snacks I’d have cheese, (real cheese not skim milk cheese) nuts, olives, or slice up some tomato and avocado and put olive oil and salt on top. Then for dinner I have something nice and big like a steak with spinach on the side, roasted chicken, fish, or ground beef. I always ate whenever I was hungry, and sometimes I stuffed myself. The best part (to me): I never exercised. No, really, I barely did any physical activity and maintained my mostly sedentary state.

So here are the before and after pics so far:

This is the beginning of the year, size 42, 255 lbs.

This is me a few days ago, size 36 pants, I weigh 208.

So there it is. Ask me more about the diet! I love talking about it. And I love talking.

(The paleo diet I am on allows for dairy products. It is not ‘orthodox’ paleo, but it’s worked for me.)

Eating healthy is a disorder, REALLY?!

Nick recently showed me this piece on an amazing new eating disorder some psychologizt(sic) is hawking on the world.

Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.

In case you didn’t know these are mostly foods that people on Paleo and other low carb diets tend to avoid. The benefits of cutting out these foods are very – well – documented. But what does this really achieve? Think of the intended reader of this article. This article appeals to the regular conservative very easily: Organic foods tend to get hawked by vegans and whole foods shoppers. Vegans and whole foods shoppers tend to be intensely liberal. Suddenly our psychological disorder has a political use. This is an example of something the conservatives can (and probably will, fruitlessly) try to use to copy the liberals’ tactics.

When a republican says ‘no more welfare.’ The liberal can say ‘You’re a corporatist and a fascist.’

Now, when a liberal says ‘you’re eating processed pesticides from farms that contribute to global warming’ the republican can respond ‘you’re an orthorexic.’

While the names these ridiculous people call each other is of little use to me what bothers me is that specifically Paleo and low carb diets are singled out. That is an example of the mainstream Government Standard Issue Diet supporters trying to do some namecalling of their own on Paleo.

Fortunately any appeal to the ignorance of readers is doomed to fail when you’re fighting against the side of Truth.

Killing Polar Bears is Fun!

Thanks to my buddy Nick I’ve discovered the latest fact that irks the hell out of me.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

That, ontop of the fact that this guy says polar bears are actually NOT dying. This is especially irksome to me because I just got finished having another go at watching Planet Earth on my Blu-ray player. While it is a great show to have on HD and has amazing stunning visuals the narration is mostly Richard Atkinson making off hand quips about the evil of humanity.

This is just more proof that, like the religious types, the environmentalists are attempting to pass legislation by guilt. Sorry mates, it doesn’t work on me, and it never will.