What do you like to see in the books you are reading?

I am laying on the futon and listening to the birdsong this morning. I was thinking about an article that I read yesterday that was an interview with four agents. It was in Poets and Writers and can be found here: www.pw.org/content/agents_amp_editors_qampa_four_young_literary_agents
One of the topics in the article was about finding books that readers will want to read. One of the agents was talking about yucky books and authors writing about characters that they and no one else really likes. So this got me thinking this morning. What do I like to read? What characters do I like to see in books?

For me, I don't like to read about only powerful characters. I want them to have dimension-- areas of strength and areas where they have vulnerabilities. I would like to see more general fiction about everyday people drawn realistically to illustrate their everyday heroism especially in extraordinary circumstances. I despise vapid, weak female characters. Simple, unrealistic love stories and meaningless, action plots both leave me a little cold. I like unusual ideas, new takes on old themes, and the imaginative fantastic. I want good solid writing. I want the writing to say something, challenge my ideas, and haunt me. If it is for entertainment only, I want some sparkling humor and deftly drawn quirky characters.

I like explorations into whatif. I like forays into other points of view-- especially ones that put humans not at the center of the universe but rather as one voice in the cacophony. I like writing that sees things from a new perspective.

More later.

What do others like to read? What characters do you like to see in books? Or movies?

What should go into thinking about a fantasy world to make it more real?

I rested on my futon this morning and watched the morning light grow stronger and illuminate my patchwork curtains like stained glass. I have a rough draft of a novel that I want to revise. I have a hereditary wizard of noble background who eschews his birthright, defies a powerful Queen because he knows her secret, and loses his direction because he has been told what to do and where to stand. He has to redefine himself and determine who he will be as opposed to who he won't be.

I know this character inside and out. I laid the rough draft aside last August because I could not stand how bad my own writing was and I needed to improve my skill to do him justice.

This morning I thought about his world. Changes. How marvelous it is that I can imagine a world of magic and gun powder, sloops and dragons, schooners and wee folk. I will be re-imagining his world and his story. I am anticipating great hours spent in incubative darkness and solitary meditation to give birth to a re-imagined world. To create a lifelike realism in fantasy, there are so many details to think through. Think of all things in our everyday existence that we take for granted. While much of it may never come through in the actual novel, it has to be background that is there and assumed. I have to move from the created and assumed as opposed to the never given a thought.

What things or considerations should go into creating a fantasy world?

Politics?

Trade?

Geography and its impact on society?

How people go about their daily business?

Folk tales? Songs? The local humor?

Dress? Diet? What constitutes lifestyle?

Can you add to my list? What should go into thinking about a fantasy world to make it more real?

TIme and Space

I am not feeling so well today. A headache is stalking me. I am wrapped up in my overlarge tapestry coat sitting in a coffee shop between my last class and going to the tutoring center. Visions of code are dancing like retinal ghosts in front of my eyes. Enums, structs, arrays. Outside it is grey and rainy. I want to walk. I want to lose myself in my thoughts and escape from people. I want silence and to be left alone.

I have so many thoughts at the edges of my consciousness and they are pressing in. I want silence so that I can coax them out.

Thoughts about the chaotic haphazard linear nature of events.

Thoughts about light and taking advantage of the nature of light. We should not be trying to catch light or go faster than light. We should be trying to use its quicksilver nature. Imagine particle transport via light. It would still take years to transport to the nearest star, but it would put it within the possibility of trade and travel within a lifetime.

Thoughts about the origins and essence of life-- explorations in what might be possible on an alien planet. The possibility of life without the benefit of a planet. How life might arise. Form to follow necessity. Function as a solution to crisis. Perhaps new forms of life only occur with the dramatic introduction of a new element. Perhaps evolution comes out of cataclysm as often as it comes out of slow modification. I was thinking on the inelegance of human life. Relativity. Everything is relative. I have never understood why ecological, causal notions were ever considered unique and innovative. Creatures as part of their environment, a reflection of environment, and as a result of environment. If you take a human being and place them on another planet, are they still human? Are they still Terrean? For how long? How many generations? What makes us human?

I need time and space.

Fast Moving Clouds

When I think of the stars, I think of the vaulted sky of the heavens with small points of light twinkling. Still, silent, moving across the sky as a result of the spin and orbit of the earth around the sun. I think of the stars as a collection-- each in its place, separate, and part of the whole. One fall morning, a few years ago, I woke up early and put on my shoes. I went out to go for a walk. The dark sky was overcast with patches of fast traveling, scuttling clouds. The movement of the clouds in relation to the stars made it appear as though all the stars in the sky were traveling in unison-- streaking as one across the sky. The effect was alarming. Dizzying. I stood on the road and watched the clouds and the stars. I oriented myself and the optical illusion of the moment vanished. The stars once again did their slow dance in harmony with the spinning earth. The clouds no longer made the scene crazy with their compulsion of churning, wind driven movement.

I am not sure what I want to write in regards to this. The memory came up for me this morning and has been with me all day. The house where I have lived for seven years will soon be put up for sale. I am going to have a huge yard sale to shed possessions. I am excited because I am moving to a different region of the country. The Great Lakes will always be in my soul no matter what. I can still close my eyes this moment and see the thunderbirds rolling over the waves illuminated by random flashes of white lightening. I can hear the roll of the thunder and the lapping of the waves. Relationships, like fast scuttling clouds, are rolling over, reforming, and dissipating also. The last year has been one of change. And more change is on the horizon. Things that were familiar seem strange and my view of them is changing. Transformations. Exciting. Uncertain. Dizzying. Change brings new thoughts and creative impulses, too.

In the midst of all this, there's me trying to live true to myself. Trying to find a place of comfort, happiness, and authenticity. I have always been an odd mix of a kind of social creature who needed long hours of alone time either walking or staring out a window (RIght now, I feel like I could use a weekend or a week totally by myself to lay in bed and read paperback novels or dance in my pajamas). I have always been ferociously curious, quirkily imaginative, compulsively creative, and hard working. Everything is moving around me, but I am still me. My circumstance is changing, some because of my choices and some due to things beyond my control, but I am still me. The clouds are traveling fast on the wind, but I am me no matter what.

Lester Dent's Pulp Fiction Plot Formula

So tonight I was thinking about plot and how to do plot and the usual Sunday night gaming crowd was over. I spoke briefly to Deforest and he told me about Lester Dent's pulp fiction plot formula for creating a 6000 word story. I went looking on the internet and found it. Here it is:

Originally Posted by Lester Dent
This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has
worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly
where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in
each successive thousand words.

No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

The business of building stories seems not much different from the
business of building anything else.

Here's how it starts:

1. A DIFFERENT MURDER METHOD FOR VILLAIN TO USE
2. A DIFFERENT THING FOR VILLAIN TO BE SEEKING
3. A DIFFERENT LOCALE
4. A MENACE WHICH IS TO HANG LIKE A CLOUD OVER HERO

One of these DIFFERENT things would be nice, two better, three swell. It
may help if they are fully in mind before tackling the rest.

A different murder method could be--different. Thinking of shooting,
knifing, hydrocyanic, garroting, poison needles, scorpions, a few others,
and writing them on paper gets them where they may suggest something.
Scorpions and their poison bite? Maybe mosquitos or flies treated with
deadly germs?

If the victims are killed by ordinary methods, but found under strange
and identical circumstances each time, it might serve, the reader of
course not knowing until the end, that the method of murder is ordinary.
Scribes who have their villain's victims found with butterflies, spiders
or bats stamped on them could conceivably be flirting with this gag.

Probably it won't do a lot of good to be too odd, fanciful or grotesque
with murder methods.

The different thing for the villain to be after might be something other
than jewels, the stolen bank loot, the pearls, or some other old ones.

Here, again one might get too bizarre.

Unique locale? Easy. Selecting one that fits in with the murder method
and the treasure--thing that villain wants--makes it simpler, and it's
also nice to use a familiar one, a place where you've lived or worked. So
many pulpateers don't. It sometimes saves embarrassment to know nearly as
much about the locale as the editor, or enough to fool him.

Here's a nifty much used in faking local color. For a story laid in
Egypt, say, author finds a book titled "Conversational Egyptian Easily
Learned," or something like that. He wants a character to ask in
Egyptian, "What's the matter?" He looks in the book and finds, "El
khabar, eyh?" To keep the reader from getting dizzy, it's perhaps wise to
make it clear in some fashion, just what that means. Occasionally the
text will tell this, or someone can repeat it in English. But it's a
doubtful move to stop and tell the reader in so many words the English
translation.

The writer learns they have palm trees in Egypt. He looks in the book,
finds the Egyptian for palm trees, and uses that. This kids editors and
readers into thinking he knows something about Egypt.

Here's the second installment of the master plot.

Divide the 6000 word yarn into four 1500 word parts. In each 1500 word
part, put the following:


FIRST 1500 WORDS

1--First line, or as near thereto as possible, introduce the hero and
swat him with a fistful of trouble. Hint at a mystery, a menace or a
problem to be solved--something the hero has to cope with.

2--The hero pitches in to cope with his fistful of trouble. (He tries to
fathom the mystery, defeat the menace, or solve the problem.)

3--Introduce ALL the other characters as soon as possible. Bring them on
in action.

4--Hero's endevours land him in an actual physical conflict near the end
of the first 1500 words.

5--Near the end of first 1500 words, there is a complete surprise twist in
the plot development.

SO FAR: Does it have SUSPENSE?
Is there a MENACE to the hero?
Does everything happen logically?

At this point, it might help to recall that action should do something
besides advance the hero over the scenery. Suppose the hero has learned
the dastards of villains have seized somebody named Eloise, who can
explain the secret of what is behind all these sinister events. The hero
corners villains, they fight, and villains get away. Not so hot.

Hero should accomplish something with his tearing around, if only to
rescue Eloise, and surprise! Eloise is a ring-tailed monkey. The hero
counts the rings on Eloise's tail, if nothing better comes to mind.
They're not real. The rings are painted there. Why?


SECOND 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel more grief onto the hero.

2--Hero, being heroic, struggles, and his struggles lead up to:

3--Another physical conflict.

4--A surprising plot twist to end the 1500 words.

NOW: Does second part have SUSPENSE?
Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud?
Is the hero getting it in the neck?
Is the second part logical?

DON'T TELL ABOUT IT***Show how the thing looked. This is one of the
secrets of writing; never tell the reader--show him. (He trembles,
roving eyes, slackened jaw, and such.) MAKE THE READER SEE HIM.

When writing, it helps to get at least one minor surprise to the printed
page. It is reasonable to to expect these minor surprises to sort of
inveigle the reader into keeping on. They need not be such profound
efforts. One method of accomplishing one now and then is to be gently
misleading. Hero is examining the murder room. The door behind him begins
slowly to open. He does not see it. He conducts his examination
blissfully. Door eases open, wider and wider, until--surprise! The glass
pane falls out of the big window across the room. It must have fallen
slowly, and air blowing into the room caused the door to open. Then what
the heck made the pane fall so slowly? More mystery.

Characterizing a story actor consists of giving him some things
which make him stick in the reader's mind. TAG HIM.

BUILD YOUR PLOTS SO THAT ACTION CAN BE CONTINUOUS.


THIRD 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel the grief onto the hero.

2--Hero makes some headway, and corners the villain or somebody in:

3--A physical conflict.

4--A surprising plot twist, in which the hero preferably gets it in the
neck bad, to end the 1500 words.

DOES: It still have SUSPENSE?
The MENACE getting blacker?
The hero finds himself in a hell of a fix?
It all happens logically?

These outlines or master formulas are only something to make you certain of
inserting some physical conflict, and some genuine plot twists, with a little
suspense and menace thrown in. Without them, there is no pulp story.

These physical conflicts in each part might be DIFFERENT, too. If one
fight is with fists, that can take care of the pugilism until next the
next yarn. Same for poison gas and swords. There may, naturally, be
exceptions. A hero with a peculiar punch, or a quick draw, might use it
more than once.

The idea is to avoid monotony.

ACTION:
Vivid, swift, no words wasted. Create suspense, make the reader see and
feel the action.

ATMOSPHERE:
Hear, smell, see, feel and taste.

DESCRIPTION:
Trees, wind, scenery and water.

THE SECRET OF ALL WRITING IS TO MAKE EVERY WORD COUNT.


FOURTH 1500 WORDS

1--Shovel the difficulties more thickly upon the hero.

2--Get the hero almost buried in his troubles. (Figuratively, the villain
has him prisoner and has him framed for a murder rap; the girl is
presumably dead, everything is lost, and the DIFFERENT murder method is
about to dispose of the suffering protagonist.)

3--The hero extricates himself using HIS OWN SKILL, training or brawn.

4--The mysteries remaining--one big one held over to this point will help
grip interest--are cleared up in course of final conflict as hero takes
the situation in hand.

5--Final twist, a big surprise, (This can be the villain turning out to be
the unexpected person, having the "Treasure" be a dud, etc.)

6--The snapper, the punch line to end it.

HAS: The SUSPENSE held out to the last line?
The MENACE held out to the last?
Everything been explained?
It all happen logically?
Is the Punch Line enough to leave the reader with that WARM FEELING?
Did God kill the villain? Or the hero?

Traveling

I am reiterating my request for a tele-transportation device. It has been a few years since I flew on an airplane and I have never flown on one of the little itty bitty jets until this week. I just got off of one of said itty bitty jets about a half an hour ago. The color has returned to my grey zombie fleshed cheeks and my stomach has cozied back into its normal nook. I flew over the Rockies in one of these little commuter jets a couple days ago and the experience left me absolutely rattled. Everyone else on the plane was busily demanding water on the hour flight from an exceptionally gracious and well balanced flight attendant named Heather who was a testament to her profession. All the other passengers on the plane seemed nonplussed by the lurching dips and force producing turns of the small aircraft.

And then there was me.

I have a degree of fearlessness when it comes to driving fast. I have rode some mean horses that no one else would go near. Racing snowmobiles in northern Michigan with my cousins when I was growing up was a favorite past time. I adore riding motorcycles and feeling like I am flying along. As a child I used to swing Tarzan like from one tree top to the next in a game to see how many trees down the pine stand I could go. I love heights. Lurching, dipping, bumping planes tossed like toys in the currents over a mountain range I can honestly say don't do a whole lot for me.

So today, when our flight attendant Patti began talking about how if we encountered an emergency situation we should use our seats as flotation devices, I bit my tongue to stifle the nervous giggle that wanted to bust forth. All I could think was that we were flying over mountains with no water in sight and if we crashed we would be the wet stain on the side of a mountain. Well, until we evaporated. Me, the atheist, has a really hard time figuring out what to do with my anxious mind in this situation. I kept saying to myself, over and over, "the ground is good".

Until I realized what I was saying. Great gods. Then I kept saying "being in the air is good" over and over.

This flight no water was served. Patti stayed firmly buckled in place which I was very relieved about actually. The gentleman seated across the aisle from me kept smiling at me reassuringly and the gentleman behind me told me that it would be okay.

They were very nice. I felt real stupid. But they were very nice.

All in all the trip has been fantastic. I meet many wonderful, warm, outgoing people who far out numbered the few who were unpleasant. I had several marvelous conversations with friendly strangers like the couple in Basalt who told me about the memo issued to school teachers about what to do in the event that a bear comes onto the playground while children are playing. I watched an Earth Day parade put on by one of the elementary schools. And I got directions from the policeman in Basalt, and the gas station attendant outside of Aspen, and the clerk in Carbondale, and the rental agent at the airport, and the nice woman in the airport at Detroit metropolitan airport, and the nice woman on the flight between Denver and Detroit.

I still want the tele-transportation device. Then I could just meet people and talk to them.

Inventions That I Want To See

As much as I love to drive very fast with loud music playing on the cd player in the car, I would very much like a tele-transporter. I would like to step onto a tele-transportation pad and have a set of coordinates inputted and my molecules would disassemble and reassemble at my destination.

Think of it.

No getting lost in strange cities where the highway ramp is closed and the transportation authority routes you to another way to access the highway and then that ramp is closed and you are totally lost in a strange neighborhood. This happened to me today as I went to visit a friend. I have many wonderful qualities, a sense of direction and an innate sense of geography are not among them. I get lost on a regular basis. I am pretty good with this because it happens so frequently. I just enjoy the scenery, find new coffee shops where I can get coffee, and talk to people who can help me find my way again. I have had some marvelous conversations with people when I was lost.

Maybe what I need is a way to download a complete gps system into my brain? Oh, but then I wouldn't get to talk to all those people that I would not have met otherwise.

Time Machine

Imagine yourself transported back in time two hundred years to the year 1809. In 1809 Robert Fulton patented the steamboat. Napoleon Bonaparte ruled France. The Industrial Revolution was beginning. People were immigrating from the British Isles and Europe to the United States. Gaslight was first used in Pall Mall in London two years prior. Only wealthy people had flushing lavatories. Edgar Allen Poe was born. The steam driven printing press had not yet come into being.

Do you think a person from two hundred years ago could imagine our world?

Last night I was up late reading stories over the internet and a post from a friend in southeastern India came into my inbox. I posted back that it was midnight where I was and asked him what time it was where he was. He answered that it was a hot and humid day and there a breeze coming off the ocean.

How long would it have taken a letter to travel around the world two hundred years ago?

This week I am traveling across country. I will travel approximately 1400 miles in a span of hours.

How long did it take for the first ocean going steamer to cross the Atlantic?

Think of all the medical technologies available to us. Cholera killed thousands in the nineteenth century.

Think of all the information available to me, an educated woman, over the internet. In the early nineteenth century, only a small percentage of the population was considered wealthy or middle class and a woman would have probably been uneducated and worked either as a servant, prostitute, street seller, or in horrific conditions requiring hard labor.

Travel forward in time now. What do you see two hundred years in the future?

Obscene Damage

Have you ever thought about bombs? I mean real explosives. Have you ever considered their placement, the amount of time it takes for one to go off, the amount of smoke that would be generated, and how loud the explosion would be?

Now, let's push this just a wee bit farther.

If you were trying to simultaneously remotely take down a force field, disable surveillance cameras, and detonate several bombs that were scattered around in funerary urns, how would you go about doing this?

Further, you have to do all this to give a fumbling academic enough time to activate an ancient jalopy of a time machine that nobody really knows if it truly is a time machine. It may just be a butt ugly piece of sculpture.

In addition, what would be the emergency response within the museum to all this activity? Would they just evacuate? Evacuate but keep everyone corralled? What would the protocols be? How would you circumvent the protocols of the museum staff on an alien planet in an intergalactic metropolitan city?

Do you see the obscene damage to my psyche that writing science fiction is inflicting on me? I am going out. Dancing. The moon is full and I got a way too cool jacket at the thrift store today.

Artist: Adam Reeder

So for awhile there has been an absence of commentary on artists on this blog, so I posted last night about Chris Booth. This morning when I checked e-mail and opened my google page I was absolutely thrilled to see the artist a day site featured artist. His name is Adam Reeder and he is still in school pursuing a master of fine arts according to his website-- http://adamreeder.com/index.html He is a sculptor and has a series of sculptures that he is working on that are modern updates on classical figures. The series is called the socio-technic evolution series. Pan is featured with an ipod. I looked at his website at some of his works in progress and was blown away by the sense of realism and motion inherent in his sculptures. The image below is one of his works in progress. Please check out his website and learn more about this very exciting artist.

Environmental Artist: Chris Booth

It has been awhile since I have highlighted any artist's work that I find particularly inspired. New Zealand artist Chris Booth, whose works are those in the images, is an environmental artist who uses engineering and a sense of place and proper placement to create sculptures made of natural materials. Rocks are balanced precisely upon other rocks as in "Pumice from the Mountains" displayed above. The image below the post text is an image of "In celebration of Tor." I find his works to be expansive and otherworldly. His website is at http://chrisbooth.co.nz/index.html

Interview

I have an interview tomorrow morning and this made me think of all the crazy suggestions that I have had given to me in the past about how to prepare for an interview. Essentially to my mind interviews are like dating-- you're checking them out and they are checking you out. They ask questions and take a look at you and you ask them questions back. If it all works out, great a work relationship starts. If not, you go back out and start again.

But I have had career counselors tell me some crazy stuff to prepare. One woman told me to visualize a green aura around myself because then the job and money would flow to me. Another told me the old gimmick of imagining the interviewers naked to get over being nervous. That one didn't work. Nope. Not at all.

Has anyone out there had really great or really bizarre interviewing advice given to them?

If You Could Have Alien or Super-Hero Powers....

If you could have any kind of extra ability-- like a superpower-- what would it be?




Flying would be awesome fun. I could ride wind currents like Cyclone(Here drawn by Alex Ross).


Or shapeshifting like Wolfsbane or Mystique (Here drawn by Mike Mayhew).


I could become a mouse and slip in anywhere I wanted to go and eavesdrop on all sorts of conversations. Of course that would require that I could either compact, dissemble, dissipate and reorganize matter in some way so I could be a small mouse because otherwise I would be one scary big mouse. (With Easter coming up has it occurred to anyone else that the giant Easter Rabbits at the malls could be potentially terrifying to small children? I mean would you want to sit on the lap of a giant rodent? Bad enough that we take kids to the mall to sit on the lap of a strange guy who wears funny clothing and breaks into everyone's house at Christmas, but the Easter Bunny... oh the teeth that bite.)

Another option would be to become a common house cat. You may think that cats have no superpowers, but you'd be wrong. Have you ever watched a cat? They can see things that we cannot. What do you think they are staring at? Besides, being a house cat wouldn't be so bad. Nap all afternoon, have your fur stroked when you deemed it by jumping on someone's lap, purr so the nice human would scritch behind your ear, and curl up nice and warm in the sunshine streaming in from a window. Not so bad. Of course, you could get dragged around by your neck by a toddler. But then, just shapeshift back and that child would never do that to another cat ever again.

Or teleportation-- just blink my eyes and be able to be anywhere in the world like Misfit (Here drawn by Nicola Scott).

Another plan might be to be like Doctor Manhattan from The Watchmen and be able to take advantage of quantum physics and be able to be in several places at once and manipulate time and matter. Think of what all you could get done.

What ability would you pick?

April Snows bring....

December? January? February? If you are wondering why I would post a not particularly inspired photo from months ago, let me just tell you... I took this picture this morning. Yup. April 6, 2009. We got snow last night. Oooodlles and gazoodles of snow. All the local school districts are closed in what many are probably smiling and calling Mother Nature's practical joke on my winter weary state.

Writing Challenge! Interior Decorating Vampires on the Moon

Writing ideas. Tonight the gang is over for another science fiction role play gaming session involving a scenario where they are detectives. Detectives in Space. Deforest, who is a fellow writer, is the game master (I always want to add the words bwahahaha after that.). David has a marvelous blog about comic books that can be found at http://yetanothercomicsblog.blogspot.com/. Zach and Kelly are magnificently creative and thoughtful people. Currently, I have a story that I have been working on that involves a set of characters that have been weaving their way in and out of my thoughts for a couple months. The story needs plenty of help. Tons of help. I asked Deforest if I could give him a copy to take a look at and this sparked a discussion about story ideas.

Deforest gave me a writing challenge. I am passing it on to all of you. The writing challenge for the week is:

Write a story involving teenage interior decorating vampires. And it has to have purple lacy curtains in it.

Now, mind you that I am going no where near this writing challenge. Nope. No way. The last writing challenge that Deforest posed to me fouled up my writing for about two months with attempts to write a story about demonic vampire monkeys. One friend of mine who read my story out and out said that he wouldn't critique it because it was so bad. Personally, I liked the evil creatrix who used paint to summon things from the grand beyond, but the story was awful.

Because not everyone might be as inspired by vampires as Deforest seems to be, David suggested that any mundane story simply be set on the moon. The more mundane, but set on the moon, the better. This option B of the challenge we will just call the "fortune cookie fortunes are always better if you add in bed with a goat on the end" challenge-- except you aren't adding in bed with a goat, you are adding "on the moon". For example, Vampires versus Werewolves is pretty enh. But, Vampires versus Werewolves on the Moon. Pretty good, huh? By the way David says there is a comic book coming out with this as a title.

So there you go. If you are in need of ideas, by all means take up the challenge. I'd be thrilled if anybody wanted to post a story in the comments.

From Every Point, A Thousand Points of Divergence

Imagine if you could travel back in time and inhabit a younger version of yourself. Or relive a day until you got it right-- like in Groundhog Day.

In order to be able to go back to a younger version of yourself, you would have to accept the possibility that you might change things dramatically about your life or you might not. I don't know which would be easier or harder to accept.

What joyous moments would you relive? Just for the sake of reliving them.

What regrets would you try to redress?

Just a prompt to set folks thinking.

Men Are the Weaker Sex?

A couple of nights ago I was reading a Science Daily article entitled, "Are Men The 'Weaker' Sex? Preganancy with Male Fetus Riskier, Study Claims". The article was supposed to be about the high rate of problems in the birth of male babies. The article discussed that there are more problems with male babies not being brought to term and also more problems with male babies being larger. The article started with the old wives tale that a difficult birth means that the baby will be a boy.

From there the article veered off topic. One "expert in gender-based medicine is quoted as follows: "But in general, boys are more vulnerable in their life in utero, and this vulnerability continues to exist throughout their lives," says Prof. Glezerman, an expert in gender-based medicine. "Men are known to have a shorter lifespan, are more susceptible to infections, and have less chance of withstanding disease than women. In short, men are the weaker sex." The article goes on to say that boys are more likely to do riskier behavior because of peer pressure and testosterone. The article also talks about this not being bad because men become soldiers, construction workers, and firemen.

And that was the point where I stopped and took a pause. So, men only become soldiers because of biology? Hmmm... I could see this devolving into some argument about biology determining gender roles and I don't think I like this. Because the next step is that our biology determines who we are. And while there is a bit of truth in that, there was no room in the span of this article to discuss other reasons why men might become soldiers, construction workers, or firemen. Further, would the conclusion follow, if based on the logic of this article, that only women with high levels of testosterone become soldiers, construction workers, and firemen?

These are social roles-- occupations. The only biological roles that are dictated are those of male and female and this really only has implications for breeding. Even ideas about gender and possibilities for sex are more fluid than biology dictates.

I was thinking about when I was growing up, I was the only girl in a whole gang of cousins as part of my extended family. I could run faster, climb higher, and punch harder than any of my cousins. I was fierce. I still am, but being girlie is fun. I could probably still take a guy my size, but I can get much farther other ways. This doesn't necessarily negate my fierceness, even without the extra testosterone, it just means I got smarter about a few things.

I also have a very gentle cousin who loved cooking shows when we were growing up and he was teased all the time about this interest.

I don't believe the whole idea about biology predetermining interests or abilities. If as a society we buy into the whole idea that men make better soldiers, construction workers and firemen because of testosterone, this could become justification for keeping a whole segment of the population out of certain professions. Women have made inroads into traditionally male dominated fields and if we buy into this kind of thinking those advances towards equality could go away. Women have labored in a kind of feminine labor ghetto where they make a fraction of what men make for forever and using biology to justify division of labor just gives them some kind of supposed justification for this.

Further, this doesn't do anything good for men either. Researching the how's and why's of male fetuses having more problems is one thing, but making the leap to stating that testosterone is a good manly thing that makes manly men more rugged and tougher also creates justification for all the male stereotypes.

This isn't any different than arguments that state that certain races have different aptitudes or levels of intelligence. This kind of biological pre-determinism just doesn't hold at the individual level and I am suspicious of its relevance as a topic of scientific endeavor and research. Why does this stuff keep cycling back through the scientific research? Why does this stuff keep getting framed in these limiting ways that doesn't help the science or society? None of this is new.

Last fall I read a really quite good book called Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach. She talked in this book about sex research and how researching sex, sexual responses, conception and a host of other things in regards to human sexuality is fraught with career dangers for the scientists who would pursue this information. (Just an aside did you know that women can achieve orgasm just by thinking about it? Also for women having an orgasm is akin to "a widespread neural power failure", see www.sciam.com/article.cfm/id=the-orgasmic-mind) Typically sex researchers can only get funding for research regarding issues of fertility.

I think that it is good for us as a species to learn about ourselves and our environment and to keep researching. I don't want the research to stop but I think that we need to examine the biases that go into funding research and the manipulation of the data to support pre-existing political ideas.