Contrary to popular opinion, the definitions of sex and gender have never been consistent or concise. This fact is especially true throughout different disciplines of science. Prime evidence of the contrasting definitions of sex and gender are illustrated in evolutionary biology and environmental science. According to evolutionary biologists, sex is defined by the gametes produced by an individual, existing in a binary for all sexually reproducing species. (Goymann et al., 2022) However, environmental scientists would disagree with this definition, as it does not account for many species that produce multiple gametes, such as the American Chestnut (Meehan, 1879) which produces “bisexual catkins” that have both pollen (the male plant gamete) and flowers (the female plant gamete). When it comes to gender, discrepancies still occur, even though both sciences approach gender primarily as a social construct that impacts humans. Evolutionary biologists argue that gender roles are a human concept, referencing psychologist John Money’s model of gender. (Goymann et al. 2022). However, environmental scientists are more torn. While environmental scientists agree that the majority of gender’s characteristics are socially constructed by human society, some question if differences in behavior between different sexes of same animal species are not only environmentally determined, but also socially. (Schwartz J. Is gender unique to humans? Sapiens. 2018 November 29. https://www.sapiens.org/culture/gender-identity-nonhuman-animals/). As demonstrated by these examples, even fields as closely related as evolutionary biology and environmental science struggle to agree on definitions for sex and gender. Despite these struggles, they do share many common characteristics: sex is rooted in a physical biological construct of some form, whether it is visible to the human eye or not, while gender is rooted in socialization. These shared traits give me hope that scientists of different fields can come to shared conclusion on the subject eventually, which will hopefully help protect and improve civil rights and healthcare for various communities, especially in times where sex and gender are often major factors in discrimination. The differences in these definitions also intrigues me as an environmental science major, as I want to understand why these fields have such different outlooks on sex and gender.
Author: rderen (Page 1 of 2)
Science, which I consider to be the pursuit of knowledge for sake of understanding, has evolved very much over the centuries upon centuries of human evolution. As I’ve said in my previous reflection, prior to this course, I considered science to be rooted in theory and experimentation, based in objectivity. However, as this class has gone on, I’ve learned of the many historical contributions of ancient societies and the pre-Renaissance world, and in turn, have broadened my perspective on what constitutes science. Science doesn’t need to be objective, and in fact, as Cajete points out in his article on Native Science, subjectivity and emotion are key to a full understanding of the world, as much as any human can possibly seek to understand the complexities of the natural world and the cosmos. Science wasn’t always rooted in mathematical experimentation like Galileo’s experiment with the planes and rolling objects to test out the idea of accelerated motion, or the current paradigm of inductive reasoning as proposed by philosophers like Francis Bacon. This course has helped me to understand the shifting of paradigms throughout time— the changes in cultural values and scientific processes from region to region, with the deductive reasoning and pure logic of Ancient Greece to the spiritual stories of creation of the Indigenous Americans— and how this has shaped today’s concept of science, especially in the form of the mechanization of how people interact with nature and how that bleeds into the sciences, such as medical treatment where every symptom correlates to one specific issue and factors such as lifestyle, stress levels, et cetera are not considered. The concept of modern science is ever-changing, as we saw in our debate on whether or not Europe invented modern science, but the foundations are the same: a quest to understand more of the world we live in, more of the universe itself.
This broadened understanding of how science has changed over time has helped me to open my mind more to valuing spiritual and emotional connections to the natural world with the same weight that data and objectivity hold for me. I also have more knowledge about the history of Europe, Asia, and South America— at least in the case of Potosi— prior to the Renaissance than I did before this class, as most of my history classes focused on post-Renaissance Europe and the United States of America. With this knowledge, I can continue to have an open mind with which to approach both my personal life and my professional life in both my environmental science major and writing minor.
When she leaves the ginger ale and the bowl of fried rice
behind our door, I almost tell her she forgot
to bring you yours, but like the smell of cooked sausage
and broccoli we’d enjoy after a walk through the snow,
it strikes me like blinding lightning, the growling of
my stomach not unlike a cold rain that freezes
once it touches the skin of my hands— scarred but too soft
to be held, slipping through fingers like the grains of rice
as you stir it in with the eggs and the carrots and the peas,
garnishing it with green onions before you bring it over,
asking me if the fever’s gone down, only to check for yourself
with a kiss gentle as a snowflake on a winter night.
The smell brings back late nights holding hands and
watching stars, then the blade of the chef knife slices my hand
and my heart, the timer of ten years goes off, my hands red
as the little slices of pepper she’s added, her own signature touch,
growing cold as I sit there, my head pounding as you leave me
all over again, and I drown in the sticky brightness, surrounded by
the ice cubes that won’t soothe this fever of the mind.
Science has changed so much over the years of human civilization. Prior to this course, I thought of science the same way most people think of it: measurements, experiments, data, theories, etc. With the exception of when I took my Economics in Context course as part of the Green Learning Community experience last semester, I never stopped to think about science prior to Sir Isaac Newton, or to question the terms in which we view science as twenty-first century American university students. However, after starting this course, I began to question what science itself means. Much like I’ve begun to discover in my Environmental Science courses, I’ve come to realize that there is much more to science beyond experiments and technological advancement, as science stretches back to the dawn of ancient civilizations such as Ancient Egypt’s papyri detailing medical treatments or Mesopotamia’s Venus tablet. Science is observation, science involves questioning the very nature of human existence, observing the world around us, and it is intertwined with faith and human connection, something that is so often ignored in the consideration of science today. This course has deepened my understanding of and appreciation of science and how so much has changed since the dawn of civilization.
My newfound understanding of the history of scientific development can aid my understanding of the natural world, as much of studying environmental science involves observation and drawing conclusions from that rather than formulating an experiment in a controlled environment. My cognizance of this transformation also has the potential to inform my personal opinions and belief regarding the significance of ancient civilizations and has broadened my understanding of societies beyond the United States, such as Islamic nations and Greece, as I did not know much of anything about any ancient civilizations prior to this semester. I have spent much of my time in history learning about recent events, which did not provide context for the world views of those eras, often leaving me wondering how such conflicts and relations ever came to be. Now, I have a better understanding of international relationships due to having more knowledge on the Ancient world of Eurasia. Overall, this course has helped me to develop an understanding of world history that I lacked prior to this course.
I sit in my chair, eyes drifting close,
Curtains drawing on the infinite stage.
I awake in our room, a vacant shell
Of the world before it all went to hell.
The sheets still smell like your orchid shampoo,
Your softer-than-moon sweater draped over
The chair, lifting up a strand of your hair
To the tides and the sky like an abandoned prayer.
A knock on the door, but it is not you,
So I ignore it and return to painting a portrait
Of the one and only person who ever cared,
Only to leave me behind with words unshared.
You call my name, and I stand, my tired eyes
Searching for you, only to be met with a specter.
You hold your gift to me in your hand, one that I
Can’t accept, so I close my eyes and I try to lie,
But I can’t lie, not to you, so instead, we fall
Through the floor, through the ocean waves,
Pinkies intertwined as I jolt awake.
He crosses
His arms, sister by his side, and as he faintly smiles
I remind myself that it’s all for them, even
If it means I’ll only ever see you in my dreams.
The ducks don’t come around here anymore.
The sun wounds the earth, the water hot.
You needed to make a swing by the shore,
For your kids to never sit in— let the wood rot.
Let the earth bake some more for your pleasure.
At noon, on the couch, you snore,
Dreaming about a dragon fighting a robot.
You can’t see that in my head, there’s a war,
One you started where only I get shot.
Like the ducks, your damage has no measure.
Zoë sits next to me in the bleachers,
The mask of shyness falling away
As the game takes root in the blue turf.
I am blind to understanding
what causes her to cheer,
But I see the flames of excitement
In her grin as we take silly pictures,
And breathe in the cold, crisp air.
I sit now in a dorm down the hall
From where she now resides,
Surrounded by five, now understanding
Something beyond rugby.
I have a heart that should be of steel,
But it is glass, smooth and easily broken.
It is the reason I forbid myself from love,
The reason why I avoid talking about you.
My mother is a glassblower,
Hand-crafting something full of light.
My father plays baseball,
And he cracks my windows.
You say you don’t play baseball,
But you throw stones instead
And then lie about it afterwards.
I don’t throw baseballs or stones,
but I’m too scared to make something,
so I offer shards of myself to join the dustbin
Of other shattered things,
hoping they’ll use me and a soldering iron
to piece themselves together again.
Will the next person offer me a grinding stone,
or a hammer meant for a rage room?
Every word you text me twists my gut like a knife,
everything you do simply another stab with that
bejeweled dagger, all wrapped in the gold you’ve collected,
the gold you say I have to earn, like you have no duty to me.
Every single time you say her name,
a hand with knives for nails pulls my heart
from my chest and squeezes, my blood
splattering on my shoes, soaking into my socks.
Cold,
Arrogant,
Insensitive,
Tactless,
Late,
Infuriating,
Narcissistic to a degree,
That is what you are, just as intended to be.
A grown man of forty-seven, a petulant child who
shouldn’t be trusted with sharp objects,
as you only use them to wound,
and you’ve carved out your eyes so you don’t have to watch
me bleed all over your stupid carpet.
