The island I live on has a “barter-and-swap” Facebook page, which many of us bargain-hunters read on the the regular. One day, an intriguing request popped up, and it gave me pause. It was from a school librarian in one of the towns on the island. She was producing a “Human Library” day at her middle school, and she was looking for volunteers to be the "resources," if you will, in this one-day library. Specifically, she was looking for folks with identities and experiences outside of the ordinary… folks who could enhance the kids’ understanding of diversity from a first-person-narrative perspective.

Like many lesbians of my generation, public schools have not been especially welcoming or safe spaces for us. I have had my share of negative experiences, including one in which my lesbian theatre company was involved in a “national priority” ACLU lawsuit, because the composer for a musical I produced had been fired from a public school teaching job because of her affiliation with my theatre. This was the late 1980's, and in that state it was still legal to fire gay and lesbian teachers, but here's the catch:  This teacher had been fired for merely being associated with a lesbian theatre company... hence the ACLU's interest. They saw it as a legal foot in the door, because it broke Constitutional law.  (For a quick refresher on the relevant Bill of Rights clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”) The case, which was against a school district, a local arts council, and the state arts organization, did eventually  settle after an aggressive, state-wide PR campaign. It was a victory of sorts, but my valiant little theatre company had dragged so viciously through the homophobic mud, it was necessary for me to close it and move to another state. (Thank the Goddess, it was before the Internet and viral hate campaigns!)

But, dear reader, the universe is generous in its offers for do-overs, and this was mine. I volunteered. I actually had two identities that would qualify me for the project: I was a lesbian and I was autistic. For reasons that were part boredom from forty years of coming-out and part trauma from the ACLU thing, I chose to apply as autistic and undiagnosed. The other three human library books were a woman with an eating disorder, an immigrant who had spent time in a refugee camp, and a Jewish woman who had grown up in a small town where she had been the only Jew among her peers.  We were assigned to a classroom, where would talk about our lives and answer questions for thirty minutes, and then a new group of students would rotate in. Each of us would give our presentation three times. So this is what I said:

“I’m Carolyn Gage, and I am autistic. I was not diagnosed until very late in my life, and I’m going to talk about what was going on for me when I was a child. 
 
I was given a doll when I was a very little girl--I believe six, or maybe even younger. Her name was Ginny, and I immediately recognized that she was a queen. She looked something like Glinda from the Wizard of Oz. Ginny was wise, and she was good, and she was very powerful. I was intensely engaged with Ginny  and her story, which I was making up as I went along, but which I experienced more as getting to know her. 

Word got out that I liked dolls, and family and friends began to give me all kinds of dolls on my birthday and for Christmas. I would inherit the neighbors’ outgrown dolls. My collection would eventually include over fifty dolls, and my cousins built me a dollhouse that was four feet high and six feet wide, with four floors, an attic and a dungeon.  It was basically a stack of boxes with doors cut between them.  For me, it was a palace. It had a  a chest of jewels in the dungeon; it had a garden terrace with a fountain; it had an attic garret for the servants. Yes, there was a full contingent of servants right out of the fairy tales: scullery maids, and grooms, and footmen in livery... It made no difference that I didn’t know what they did or even what livery was.
 
I would play with the dolls for six to eight hours at a stretch. When most little girls played with dolls, they would change up the outfits or hold miniature tea parties. When Barbie came along about five years later, little girls could put her in her car and drive her to the beach. My idea of playing with the dolls was very, very different. My dolls were engaged in complex plots involving abductions, and magic, and murder, and illicit romance... There were always four or five subplots going on, and the lives of the servants were as intensely dramatic as those of the court. In fact, the heroine of the castle was a rescue doll whose hair had been pulled out and whose body had been vandalized with ink.  She was a doll of mystery, greatly favored by Ginny and the Powers that Be. Her name was Pat, and it was only later, as an adult, I realized that the avatar of my youth had been a survivor and a gender-non-conforming lesbian. ,

There was something else I was doing in the dollhouse. I was plotting an escape from reality. My family was not well. My mother was a practicing alcoholic, as was my brother--who, like me, was on the spectrum. My father was a sex/pornography addict with scary and confusing dissociative disorders. I was terrified of him. He was a tyrant, and, from what I experienced as a child, he was never called into account for his malevolence.  None of us could ever mount a successful revolution, and any signs of resistance were met with cruelty and sometimes violence.  BUT... in the dollhouse, amid all the epic dramas, goodness and innocence would eventually prevail. To that point, the females always won, and matriarchy would always carry the day. Unlike my father, the perpetrators in my stories would be killed, banished, or won over by good. My dollhouse kept my belief in justice alive. It was an alternative world, and, quite frankly, one that I preferred to inhabit... which I manage to do, as much as possible. The dolls were my true family and my dearest friends.

And now a word on “hyperfocus.”  That is a word applied to us autistic folks when we are passionate about some subject or activity, when we are able to devote our entire attention to said subject or activity for long periods of time with a high degree of concentration. It might be snakes, or magic tricks, or collecting coins… but it is something from which we derive immense satisfaction, which is why we focus our attention on it. Our special interest will trump every other activity or interest in our lives. Quite simply, nothing can compare.  Neurotypical people, who are not autistic, feel like there is something wrong with that... something a little too much about our special interests. Hence the word "hyperfocus." (In the bad old days, our special interests were even more insultingly characterized as "obsessions!") From my perspective, I think there is something sad about people who are not blessed with their very own, highly personal wellspring of profound satisfaction. They seem to suffer from a condition of  "hypo-joie-de-vivre," for which they compensate with excessive and superficial socializing. Neurotypicals don't hold the monopoly on pseudo-scientific name-calling.
 
So, anyway… my so-called hyperfocus. My mother had noticed my intense relationship with the dollhouse and with the dolls. Worried that it was going to crowd out everything in my life, she made me pack up the dolls every summer, in the hopes I would go outside and play with the neighborhood kids... you know, "be normal."  Yes, I would go outside, but I had an emergency kit of miniature dolls. I would go into the woods with a copy of Peter Pan and enact the entire book down by the creek.

When I turned thirteen and was entering high school, she came down to my bedroom, which was in the basement, and she told me that I was now too old to play with dolls,  and that it was time to pack them up for good. For me, this was like having your mother tell you that it’s time to murder your fifty best friends. I was profoundly upset and I began to cry hysterically. She was shocked by this and told me that I could go upstairs and that she would pack up the dolls without me.
 
And what do you think happened? Yes, I was lost. It’s like when you pull the centerboard out of sailboat…  You can’t set a course anymore. The boat just blows around and very likely will capsize. It’s also like losing your compass. There’s no more “north” anymore. All directions are the same and equally meaningless. No centerboard and no compass, I wandered and I also went whichever way the wind blew. I copied my friends. I tried to please other people.  My mother wanted me to get married, so when I was eighteen I got engaged, and three months after I turned nineteen, I walked down the aisle. I had no idea who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. But, never mind. It didn't matter. There had been this massacre of the imagination. My entire tribe had been wiped out.

I didn’t find my way again until I was thirty years old, and I went to college to get a degree in theatre. It had taken me seventeen years to find my way back to the dollhouse, and some of those years were very hard and very dangerous, because of autism but also because I had lost my centerboard and my compass.  And some of those years were fun and easy, because I was pretending to be someone fun, and I found myself in circumstances that were easy. But the main thing was that I wasn’t being myself. And for the folks who knew me and loved me during that era, this does not in any way mean I am not so grateful to have had you in my life, or that I don't love you. I believe that several of you actually saved my life. But, in spite of that love...  I was still far, far from home.
 
So, at thirty, I was back in the dollhouse. Back making up stories and bringing characters to life. I was an actor and a director, and for a little while I taught theatre classes, but eventually, I found that my true calling was being a playwright.... which was what I had been doing in the dollhouse. And I have now been a professional playwright for more than forty years. I have written over a hundred plays that are published in nine collections of my work. I have toured all over the US, and some in Canada, and in Europe, and I have met a whole lot of really wonderful and interesting people. I have had a great life. Full of challenges, but always rich in meaning.

The moral of the story is my mother didn’t need to worry about me. My special interest was going to give me a life... the life I was meant to have. It wasn’t the life she had planned for me, but it was the one I wanted.

So I want to tell you another story. Yes, it is connected to the dollhouse, so put a pin in that. We'll get back to it. This is a story about Beatrix Farrand, who was a landscape gardener here on Mount Desert Island. (She didn't like to use the word "architect" for what she did.) I don’t know if she was autistic or not… Back in her day very, very few autistic women were ever diagnosed, but she did have a thing about which she was passionate and to which she devoted her life, full-time, and even over-time... as in, “hyperfocus.” It was designing and executing gardens. She designed a lot of them here on Mount Desert Island. She designed Abbey Rockefeller’s garden, which  you can still visit. And she designed her own garden down on the Shore Path in Bar Harbor.  She had inherited a cottage and some acres there. It was named Reef Point, and Beatrix wanted to create an internationally famous garden where people could come from all over the world to  appreciate the beauty of the plants and of the Maine coast. She also collected a huge library of books about landscape gardening that she intended to make available to folks who were serious about gardening.

So, this is the important part of the story:  Her land went right down to the ocean, with rocky cliffs and huge boulders, and huge firs and spruce trees. When you looked out at the ocean, you would be looking through these trees, and she loved that view. And so do I. It's very specific to Maine. And Beatrix thought the natural landscape around the house was spectacular.  Now, some of her clients wanted their homes to look like the European homes of rich people with huge flat lawns all planted in grass, that would extend right to the edge of the water. And they wanted gardens that would have these geometrically laid out garden beds, in squares and diamonds with short little hedges around them and a fountain in the middle. And the way you built a garden like that was by cutting down most of the trees and pulling out all those big rocks, and then bulldozing the whole thing completely flat and planting it with grass. And the plants in those gardens would come from all over the place, and only a few of  them would be native. And everyone’s garden kind of looked the same.

But Beatrix had a little saying, and it went something like this:  She said “Fit the plan to the ground, not the other way around.”  What did that mean? It meant take a good look at those gorgeous trees and those huge rocks that are so unique to this island, and all those dips and bumps in the ground… and then make a design that works around them. Maybe put in some native plants around some of the rocks, to draw the eye. Maybe even add some trees to make the skyline a little more balanced… but you start with what's already there, the ground. You don’t start with your plan, and then bring in the chainsaws and bulldozers.
 
So my mother had a plan for me, but she didn't take into account what my ground was.  Or maybe she did, and she thought if she packed up all the dolls and ripped apart the plywood of the dollhouse—if she bulldozed who I was—then her plan would work. And I guess it did... for a while.  I was married for a year. And then I just went drifting. But eventually, after seventeen years,  I began to evolve a plan, or a series of plans, that would fit the ground of who I was, an autistic person with a definite special interest. 

Why am I telling you this? Because lots of people throughout your life will have plans for you. Your parents... and that's not necessarily a bad thing. They love you, and it's natural for them to have some idea of how they think your life should be. Your teachers, your friends, your partners... they may all have vague or definite plans for you.  But sometimes--most times--they don't really see the ground of who you are. Or they see it, but they don't "get it." They think the trees block the view, and the rocks are hard to mow around. Your ground won't work with the plan they have in mind.  But your job is to understand your ground: what is you and what isn't you, what probably  isn't going to change, what you love, what makes you the happiest in the world. And no matter how weird that is, if it's your special interest, you can probably make a great life out of it.

Why? Because you will do that thing long after everyone else has clocked out and gone home. You will do it on weekends. You will do it on holidays. You will do it for low pay or no pay. And in time,  you will probably stand out, because you will be working harder, smarter, better than everyone else, because of that so-called "hyperfocus."  You may not see the plan now, but trust the passion. It's a gift. These are the years you should be learning your ground, appreciating it, standing up for the beauty of it and your right to inhabit it.

So, if you take away anything from what I've said today, I hope it's this:  t

“Fit the plan to the ground, not the other way around.”

Frans de Waal, Dutch primatologist extraordinaire, has written a book that I found important enough to write a blog about. It’s titled Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist.
 
        Calm Down...
 
And before you go all ape on me, let me say that Dr. de Waal does not justify human gender relations, nor does he think that things are fine as they are. He tells us upfront that the whole idea of one sex being mentally superior receives zero backing in modern science. Male supremacy is not a natural order among primates. In fact, he tells us, typical primate society is, at heart, a female kinship network run by older matriarchs. But, on the other hand, de Waal is not a proponent of neo-creationism either. He is clear that humans are subject to the laws of nature, and that evolution did not screech to a halt when humans arrived. Humans are animals, and—specifically—we are primates. Hence the relevance of studying and understanding primate behaviors.

Right out of the gate, de Waal disabuses readers of the false notions and the bad science that have taught us that our closest primate relatives are chimpanzees. In fact, the bonobos—also in the ape family—are equally as close, having split off from the family tree at the same time as the chimps—namely, two million years ago. (We humans split off six million years ago.) Yes, it’s true that chimps are aggressive, territorial, and that the males rule. On the other hand, the bonobos are peaceful, sex-loving, and the females dominate.  We humans are just as likely to take after them, evolutionarily speaking. So why have the chimps gotten so much more press than the bonobos?  Well, the chimp was discovered first, and bonobo behaviors challenge all the central tenets of patriarchy. Also, anyone filming a documentary about bonobos has to contend with their ongoing and unrestrained sexual activity. In terms of popular science, that’s a serious PR issue. 
 
But… back to the point of this blog: De Waal believes that the best way to achieve gender equality is to learn more about our primate biology and not to sweep it under the rug. Now, HOLD UP!
 
Yes, I am well aware that those who are seeking gender equality often find biology inconvenient. Yes, I understand that it can be politically expedient to downplay sex differences. And yes, I also understand how science has been and still is hijacked by ideology. I wrote an entire play about the pseudo-science of eugenics and how it has been historically embraced by genocidal regimes seeking to justify their atrocities. [In McClintock's Corn] And… at the same time, I am of the generation that zealously pursued and still pursues a biological basis for homosexuality and transgender identity in our bids for mainstream acceptance. So… it is with caution that I share the author’s conviction that “Instead of giving ideology precedence over science, we first need to get the science of gender in order. Ideally, we’d study this topic free from ideology.” The operative word here is “ideally,” but is that even possible, given the power of implicit bias? Maybe not, but I feel it’s worth a try, and, hence, this blog.

De Waal’s disclaimers:  He is looking at human behavior that is related to primate behavior, and in doing that, he is going to look at the literature on human behavior. He does not trust self-reports, but prefers the studies of tested and observed actual behavior. Omissions, he warns, will include: economic disparity, household labor, access to education, and cultural rules for attire. Now, obviously, these are huge influencers in the ways that gender plays out in human societies, but they are not universal for other primates… hence the omission. And, yes, I still think his book is valuable.
 
So enough taxiing down the runway. Let’s get to it…
 
                                                   Nature or Nurture?
 
So, right out of the gate, “Is it nature or nurture?”
 
Many humans assume that we socialize our children via the toys we select for them. But de Waal comes to a different conclusion from studying young primates: Play cannot be dictated. Confronted with a pile of random toys, young female primates overwhelmingly prefer plush toys and young males are attracted to things with wheels. Given a toy train, a young female will swaddle it and carry it around like a baby. According to the author, there is “consistency in finding a sex difference in the preferences for toys typed to their gender,” and he concludes that “the strength of this phenomenon points to the likelihood of a biological origin.” Notice the extreme carefulness of the language here. He must know the same people I do.  One of the most dramatic differences is in the play itself. The males enjoy roughhousing, but the females do not. They enjoy a form of play that has a storyline. Because of this, the two sexes practice segregated play.

So, does this mean nature trumps nurture? De Waal answers the question with another question: “Is a percussive sound made by the drummer or the drum?” Obviously, the answer is “both,” because on their own neither makes the sound. One could say the environment “plays” on our genes, as it were. This is “interactionism,” which assumes a dynamic interplay between genes and environment. Interactionism is not popular, because it does not offer easy answers. I’m going to say that again: Interactionism is not popular, because it does not offer easy answers.
 
“Every human tendency, regardless of whether we rate it as natural, can be amplified, weakened or modified by culture. If the gallons of ink spilled on the biological basis of altruism, homosexuality, and intelligence has taught us anything, it’s that every human trait reflects an interplay between genes and environment.”
 
Okay, let’s take language.  Adopted babies will speak the language of their adoption… obviously a cultural/environmental phenomenon. On the other hand, human language faculty is unique among primates, and that uniqueness is biological. So… nature and nurture.
 
Another quick example:  The Pill. It changed the biology of females so radically, that the entire cultural playing field was and still is (I hope) permanently reshaped.

Here’s another useful term: “learning predisposition.” What that means is being programmed to learn certain things at a particular time in our life. Like the way baby ducklings imprint. At a young age, they learn to identify with the species to which their mother belongs and follow her around—an obvious plus for survival. But when the mother duck is absent, these ducklings can imprint on a human caregiver, or a dog, or a goose, which may be less adaptive, but does result in a plethora of adorable Youtube videos. 
 
By the way, primate infants are extremely vulnerable, and newborns will die within twenty-four hours without intensive caregiving. Yes, males could provide some of this caregiving, especially with older babies, and sometimes they do take on that role with orphaned chimps… but there is only one sex that is 100% guaranteed to be present at the time of birth: the female. (Because, duh, she’s having the baby. Also, human fathers are the only primates who understand the mechanics of biological fatherhood. The concept is lost on male chimps and bonobos.) Because of this, it’s an obvious choice on the part of evolution to equip females with built-in “learning predispositions” for caregiving. “No person currently walking the earth could have gotten here if it weren’t for ancestors who survived and reproduced. No exceptions. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be here. Their genes are not in the gene pool.” (Consider the offspring of a female with a genetic makeup completely lacking in maternal predispositions. Brilliant as she might be, her offspring are not likely to survive, and her brilliance dies with her… unless she can write for a species that can read.)
 
The author makes the point that human gender roles are subject to similar “learning predispositions,” but, at the same time, he notes, “Roles may not be biological, certainly in all their details, but they are culturally acquired with a speed, eagerness, and thoroughness that hints at a biologically driven process.” Interactionism. See, we can get through this.

We just looked at maternal caregiving.  What about other expressions of gender? Let’s look at neuroimaging studies. (“Neuroimaging” means producing images of the brain by noninvasive techniques. It enables studies of a living brain, as opposed to dissection.) So… neuroimaging studies of humans indicate that imitating people of one’s own sex activates reward centers in the brain. Primate science. Evolution equipped our young with a feel-good bias to conform to the gender associated with their sex. Why? Because in primate societies the roles for males and females are very different throughout their lives. We know from studies that male chimps and bonobos strive for status and territory. We know from studies that the female apes protect and nurture their young for years. (See above.) And we also know that ideology has nothing to do with it. We know this is about sex at birth. It’s about preservation of the gene pool, which means optimizing the chances for the offspring to survive. And primate babies, including humans, take a long time to grow up.
 
“Children self-socialize via selective attention, imitation, and participation in particular activities and modality of interaction.” In primate societies, for example, chimp daughters watch and learn how their mother’s extract termites (to eat). This is a sex-segregated skill related to their role as feeders and nurturers of their offspring. Likewise male chimp infants seek male models. At first glance, teaching and learning may appear to be purely cultural and not biological in origin, but let’s not forget those internal reward centers for same-sex imitation. Primates are wired to copy those with whom they bond and identify, i.e., the members of their sex. The drummer and the drum.

De Waal notes that most differences across the sexes are bimodal (either male or female) but differences between genders present across a spectrum. Our current culture has become deeply polarized around this issue. We either want to staple a rigid set of gender roles firmly to biological sex, which is overwhelmingly bimodal, or else we want to flow with the fluidity of gender and downplay biological sex altogether, declaring it to be irrelevant. We do this at our peril, because in patriarchy, this approach has disastrous consequences for females. The consequences of gender role enforcement are also disastrous. But this is what we do, because interactionism is hard.
 
Also, science hasn’t always been scientific. Like many of us, science has found interactionism too hard. It has tended to ignore sex differences for a long, long time. In other words, ignore women. Finally, mercifully, this is starting to change. This neglect has been catastrophic for women, from barbaric male-dictated birthing practices, to male-modeled crash test dummies, to failure to study the impact of medications and vaccines on women’s reproductive systems. Remember thalidomide and the courageous woman in the FDA who, at great risk to her career, insisted on fetal studies of the drug before she would license it? Turns out thalidomide was responsible for a nightmare array of birth defects, and the horror of it was that it was being prescribed specifically as a sleep sedative to pregnant women who were struggling with insomnia related to the pregnancy!

So humans are animals. We share at least 96% of the same DNA as chimps and bonobos. In fact, we are so close in DNA that some have suggested that our genus should be merged with that of chimps and bonobos. We aren’t fond of this fact.  We tend to focus on the tip of the genetic iceberg—the ways in which we differ from the great apes—instead of the huge amount we have in common with them. But if we want to be scientific—as in biology, medicine, and neuroscience—we need to study the entire iceberg. And the human brain, although relatively large, barely differs from an ape brain in structure and neural chemistry. Again, why I wanted to blog about this book.
 
                     Red Hot Contemporary Gender and Orientation Topics
 
So what does a primatologist have to say about one of the hottest gender topics in contemporary culture… transgender identity?
 
First, De Waal notes that he has observed a female chimp whose behaviors might be considered analogous to that of a trans boy.  He describes his observations of this chimp, who, from an early age, imitated male behaviors and preferred the company of male peers. Throughout her life, this female remained somewhat of an outsider to both genders, because she never became a mother, but she was not included in the male hierarchy either. This was, in part, because she, unlike the males, did not exhibit violent behaviors. In spite of these differences, the tribe had no problem accepting her. Side note: There are no reported instances of rejection for sexual orientation or gender expression among primates… oh, except, for us.

 Being a scientist, De Waal puts forward a theory about the science of transgender identity and behavior: “One speculation is that in a fraction of human pregnancies, the body takes off in a different direction than the brain. A fetus’ genitals differentiate into male and female during the first few months of pregnancy, whereas the brain differentiates by gender in the second half of pregnancy… Gender identities are probably shaped in the womb from hormonal exposure. Experience after birth seems to have little impact. This could explain why no amount of conversion therapy, combined with prayer and punishment, changes the minds of transgender persons… Not every human trait is malleable.”
 
Here, he is actually drawing on science. Human brains are not gender neutral. Again, nature or nurture?  Are our brains different because of hormones or experiences? Or both? Currently we don't know, but it’s a thoroughly established fact our brains are sexually dimorphic. What does that mean?  Sexual dimorphism is the “systematic difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species.” Specifically, some parts of the male and female brain differ from each other in size or appearance. And before you accuse me of “neurosexism” or come at me about “lady brains,” there are more than 20,000 scientific articles documenting sex difference in human brains. Should it be unthinkable that this dimorphism might have some evolutionary connection?  I’m going to keep an open mind on the subject, and I found De Waal’s speculation interesting.

So what about homosexuality? The bonobos, as noted, are extremely sexually active, and their partnerings are often with members of the same sex. In fact, three quarters of bonobo sex could not result in procreation (same-sex, too old, or too young partners). Interestingly, the levels of oxytocin, the “love drug,” are higher in the urine of female bonobos after sex with another female. Enhanced oxytocin production has been seen as a hormone to facilitate childbirth, but possibly its bonding function in some primates is significant. (Footnote: As De Waal points out, there are no species other than humans that are truly "homosexual," as in exclusively attracted to members of one's own sex. And, yes, that includes those famous male penguins at the Central Park Zoo.)

What about the chimps?  Same-sex partnering among chimps was thought to be rare until recently. Today it is reported as frequent. What changed? Definitions and attitudes.  Today studies include sociosexual behavior, which is defined as “physical interaction involving contact with the anogenital region except for mating/copulations."  In the past, these behaviors had been dismissed as  “reassurance” or “reconciliation,” or “gestures.” Today they are acknowledged to be sexual.

Nature or nurture? The author explores the literature about brain studies exploring structural differences in the brains of gays and lesbians. He sites the work of Ivanka Savic and Per Lindström, who were studying human brain symmetry, which has no relationship to behavior, is fixed at birth, and is not altered by life experiences.  Their work indicates that sexual orientation may be forged in early infancy or even in the womb. But the primate culture of the great apes certainly doesn't discourge same-sex partnering.

                                         Violence Against Women
 
Much of de Waal’s focus is on primate violence in general, and, human violence against females in particular. Studies show that primates resolve conflicts, sympathize with each other, and seek cooperation. Both human children and primates demonstrate spontaneous altruism without enticements. Bonobos are taken as proof that violence is not hard-wired in, and most of the time both chimps and bonobos live in harmony. That actually goes for humans, also. Philosopher Mary Midgeley, who wrote about the relations of humans and animals, notes that humans are ultra-social, with communal values, even though we have a body of literature by men and for men depicting us as greedy individualists with only a veneer of goodness.  Propaganda?
 
There are no confirmed reports of bonobos killing each other, but there are many cases where chimps have ganged up and murdered male members of their tribe, sometimes brutally. Remember, the bonobos are sexy, peaceful, and female dominant. Male chimps also commit infanticide, and female chimps copulate widely to ensure protection of the young. Yes, these females have sex for excitement, attraction, adventure, and pleasure, but always behind it lies the threat of infanticide. If a male is bonded with the female through sex, he is less likely to murder her baby. (Again, he has no notion of fatherhood.) And, sadly, we have to include humans as among the species that commit infanticide. (Others include lions, dolphins, bears, prairie dogs, and owls. I know… dolphins?) Our infanticide? Step-fathers murder step-children with more frequency than the biological fathers. War is a large-scale scenario where the older father figures routinely send out the younger males to kill other younger males and to be killed. Why? Less competition for these aging males.
 
Female chimps receive more favors when they are in estrus, which is marked by highly visibile swelling of their genitalia. They barter sex for favors. The female bonobos, on the other hand, never threatened with infanticide or male violence, simply claim what they want, which happens to be an enormous amount of sex… with both males and females.

The author notes that female sexuality among both species is as proactive and enterprising as that of the males… but for different evolutionary reasons. And here is a fascinating side note about the bonobos:  During sex, the male will stop thrusting and dismount  if the female is avoiding eye contact or signals boredom by yawning or grooming. The bonobos demonstrate a clear grasp of the female’s right to change her mind. Sigh.

Which takes us back to the subject of human male violence against females: “If there is one aspect of social life that is gender-biased, it is physical violence. Males are its overwhelming source, and it applies equally to most other primates.” Statistics show that 22.1% of women and 7.4% of men have been victims of male violence. 13.5% of all human homicides are male-perpetrated, sex-based hate crimes against women. HOWEVER, these stats don’t take into account the massively under-reported incidence of “domestic violence.” With this epidemic murder of females, humans really stand out from other primates, even the chimps. 

Chimps do physically abuse and harass females, but they do not rape or murder them . And, of course, the male bonobos learn early that they will get the you-know-what slapped out of them by the adult females if they even THINK about messing with them. Also, the bonobo females travel together and sleep within earshot of each other, both of which are huge curbs to male violence. Groups of both bonobos and chimps are sex-segregated: “Males and females dwell in different worlds, each with its own set of issues.” Among primates, males compete with males and the females compete with females. (Among the chimps, the male bonding is stronger and they prefer it.) The sexes only meet occasionally and mating is done in the open, where others can interfere.
 
On the other hand, humans integrate the sexes into a single framework… often the “nuclear home.”  This arrangement facilitates male control and abuse. (This level of sex integration is relatively recent, having intensified during the Industrial Age.) The author reminds us that during COVID, where people were compelled to isolate within their homes, reports of domestic violence tripled.

So, rape.  Male orangutangs rape, and so do male ducks. Oh, and male scorpion flies. And then, of course, human males. What percentage of men are rapists?  Speculation varies… 1 in 5? 1 in 10? 1 in 20?  The frequency and prevalence of rape are staggering in our species. Some will say that rape is an evolutionary “adaptive strategy” to maximize fertilization, but if this is so, then why is it so extremely rare among all the species on earth? And it’s not “adaptive.” If it were, there would be no raping of girls, wives, post-menopausal women, or males. But here we are… Furthermore, tribal studies show an intolerance of the behavior, because in tribes there is physical proximity of kin, less female dependence on men, and less male bonding. Possibly, if chimps were forced out of tribes and into suburban cages with a lone female partner, they would begin to rape and murder females. Nature or environment?
 
But De Waal is careful to point out that biology is not irrelevant in considering violence against women. Sons, as he says, are not daughters. Sons will grow up more prone to violence. Sons will have more bodily strength.

Let’s take a sec with this, because it’s a huge part of the current gender controversies. Are human males stronger? So… “constitutional body strength.”  1% of women can lift 110 pounds directly off the ground. Two thirds of men can. Hand grip strength is another test that bypasses athletic training and fitness. 90% of young females fall short of 95% of men. Significant and documented difference.    
BECAUSE this is true, De Waal posits, we need to teach emotional skills and attitudes, and we need to offer healthy outlets for aggression. And, I would add, a good long look at alternate living arrangements that ensure safety for women and children.

                                                  How Primates Interact
 
Among chimps and bonobos, the males are pack animals, while the females prefer serial one-on-one friendship. The boys enjoy quarrels about rules, but quarreling ends the game for girls. They distance themselves from adversaries, while the males adopt a “nothing personal” attitude. In fact, male opponents actually seek each other out.
 
All social mammals practice reconciliation. Among chimps, 47% of the males reconcile. Only 18% of the females do. The males are opportunistic and keep their options open. Four out of five female conflicts go unreconciled. In sum, the males are good at making peace. The females are good at suppressing conflict. On the other hand, female bonobos don’t hold grudges and can actually make up in the middle of a fight. In conflict, two female chimps will be screaming in anguish. When male chimps fight, only one party screams—the loser.
 
Sadly, we resemble male-bonded apes more than the matricentric bonobos. Also sadly, primate dimorphism tends to stick in our subconscious. We respect height, muscularity, and low voices. (I’ve seen that in theatre for decades.) How can we change this? De Waal recommends an appreciation for the evolutionary roots of these biases, not a denial of them. Amen. Hence the blog.

                                                            Mothers
 
Some observation of primate motherhood: “Maternal attachment is the mother of all bonds.” The maternal bond in primates is the crucible for evolution of social intelligence.
 
And here we run into the traditional sexism of scientists. They have historically considered altruism to be a “puzzle,” insisting that animals have no reason to worry about others. Obviously, they were discounting mothers with infants, which is, in De Waal’s words, insane.  Female primates care for babies. Female juvenile primates are three-to-five times more apt to do mothering, which decreases infant mortality. Duh. Maternal care goes far deeper than prejudice and gender expectation. Females have more emotional empathy, but the same amount of cognitive empathy as males.
 
Primates respect motherhood. Female status changes when are pregnant. Also primates offer support for miscarriages. Motherhood is a really big deal, biologically speaking. 

                                              Power vs. Leadership
 
Both female chimps and female bonobos demonstrate leadership. Also, a small male chimp can outrank larger and more powerful males in the hierarchy. Why aren’t these dynamics more documented in the literature?  Because: 1) Males are more flamboyant. 2) Males are violent. 3) As noted, bonobo documentaries are X-rated and less broadcast. 4) Researchers tend to equate social dominance with physical dominance. This is a grave mistake, because it omits networking, personality, age, strategic skills, and family connections… huge factors in leadership, and skill sets at which females excel. Prestige, rarely taken into account in these studies, is defined as a power that comes from being admired. The power of prestige can be enhanced with age, even as physical prowess declines.
 
The dominant male may keep the tribe together, but the alpha males teach the young males boundaries and impulse control. The presence of these alpha males actually suppresses production of hormones among the other males.

                                                         Summing Up
 
We are primates through and through.
We navigate a world of primarily two sexes.
We can never fully disentangle the cultured category of gender from the biological one of sex—and the bodies, genitals, brains, and hormones that come with it.
 
We have not escaped forces of evolution.
 
And here are my own thoughts in summation: Denial of these tenets leads us further and further away from effective strategies, policies, and coalitions to resolve issues of justice and equity, which require interactionism. Which is both hard and necessary.
 
 

[This piece was originally published in off our backs, Washington, DC. It was also published on Women's Web Construction Company, St.Louis, MO.]

This is my personal list of “do’s” and “don’t’s” for my friends who might find some guidance helpful in relating to my ME/CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis):

DON’T expose me to your company if you believe CFS is psychosomatic, “yuppie flu,” or anything less than one of the most frightening, tragic, and debilitating diseases of the century. Because it is.

DON’T think you’re being supportive by telling me how you get tired too sometimes after a hard day at work or a long bike ride. The fatigue (read “debilitation”) experienced by people with CFS is unlike any kind of physical or emotional state experienced by able-bodied people, even after they’ve run a marathon. This kind of comparison is as offensive as discussing your experiences with dieting to someone with a wasting disease. Just don’t. If you are able-bodied, you have no physical context for understanding my experience, so don’t think you do.

DON’T suggest that my symptoms might not be so severe if I didn’t dwell on them, cater to them, give them so much attention, let them run my life. In fact, that is the very philosophy that led to he collapse of my health in the first place. I maintain what vitality I do have by careful attention to even small changes in my body.

DON’T try to be helpful by suggesting other “normal” factors which might be causing my symptoms. Yes, no doubt there are other factors - there always are - but I am an expert on my disease and I am on intimate terms with my symptoms. It is arrogant for you to try to interpret them for me.

DON’T spend time with me unless you are grown-up enough to understand that the desires of an able-bodied person should not be weighed in the same balance with the needs of a disabled person. Forget your assertiveness training, your skills at compromise, or your “getting to yes” negotiating expertise. If I need to leave an environment because it is toxic to me and you want to stay, it is not a solution for us to stay fifteen more minutes. Those fifteen minutes may result in my spending the next two days in bed. I get my way, because the stakes are infinitely higher for me. If you think this is about my control issues or power tripping, get some help with your ableism.

DON’T say things to me like, “God, I don't know how you can stand to live without [your career, your home, swimming, running, eating favorite foods, being able to travel, being financially independent, etc.] ever again!” Don't say, “Boy, I could never give up [my career, my home, swimming, running, eating my favorite foods, being able to travel, being financially independent, etc.]” Our losses are our losses. They don't signal fortitude, sacrifice, or strength of character. We deal with them in healthy or unhealthy ways, and sometimes that changes every hour. They are our losses, and the only appropriate response is heartfelt sympathy and sincere offers of assistance. A little political activism would not be out of place either.

DON’T punish me with your frustrations at the inconveniences I cause you with my illness. Yes, in the short term, you may get me to “pass” as able-bodied or even take care of your bad mood, but in the long run, I will decide you are an ableist asshole. I have no choice but to live with these inconveniences and disruptions 24-hours a day. If you choose to be in my company, you can assume responsibility for temporarily accommodating my disability.

DON’T date me if you want to think of my illness as some footnote to my personhood. It is a central part of my identity now, just as being lesbian is. We all know how icky it is to be around straight people who tolerate our lesbianism, but who flinch every time we bring up the subject of our lover. It feels just as bad to be with friends who know I have CFS, but who become stiff and uncomfortable whenever I incorporate my experiences or needs into our interactions. If you can't take the heat, get out of my kitchen.

DON’T ever use the word “crazy” in relation to the confusion, seizures, extreme irritability, panic attacks, or periods of being emotionally overwhelmed which are part of the cognitive losses and neurological disturbances of this illness. I can identify and name these states and take responsibility for them. I have a whole battery of information and arsenal of strategies for coping with them. In fact, I see able-bodied folks acting out all the time from food allergies, blood sugar reactions, the effects of alcohol and caffeine in their systems -- and in my experience, those of us with CFS are far more aware, more accountable, and more forthcoming about mood swings and emotional states than so-called able-bodied people who have the dubious privilege of still abusing their bodies.

DON’T persist in pressuring me about an activity once I have identified it as something I have reservations about because of my illness. We folks with CFS often question our reality because of the elusive, “moving target” nature of our symptoms. Because most of us are experiencing some degree of social isolation, we are especially vulnerable to pressure which is accompanied by even a subtle threat of further marginalization. And it's always tempting to see if we can pull off a “normal” activity. But the price of being mistaken can be months of relapse. It's not worth it. “No” means “no.” Don't presume to know my limits. They change every day, anyway.

DON’T attribute your lack of sympathy to my attitude. This is a standard defense of bigots. Racists are always sure that there are right ways to be African American and wrong ways. Sexists believe that harassment and discrimination only happen to women with bad attitudes. Ableists are always convinced that there is something in the attitude or the behavior of the disabled person which is causing their own irritation or aversion towards us. Nothing unmasks your ableism more than this point of view toward me. I have to fight my way through a toxic, apathetic, and even sadistic world every day. I am assertive-to-militant about my needs, and I haven't got the energy to coddle ableist people. You will not see me looking helpless, tearful, or pathetic. Someone suffering for a few weeks with a flu virus may be able to indulge or even luxuriate in their temporary helplessness, but those of us who are sentenced to chronic illness for the rest of our lives must make other adjustments -- ones which should be valorized not excoriated. I need an ally, not a rescuer. If you can't feel empathy for an embattled warrior, it's your ableism and not my attitude. Period.

DON’T think I'm being manipulative when I have to excuse myself from a stressful dynamic. Most people will check out of an argument when it reaches the level of screaming and throwing objects. Because of this disease, I experience much lower grades of conflict as being that stressful and life-threatening, and I have to check out. I am accountable in my relationships to people, but sometimes it takes me longer, with more periods of time-out, in order to work through a difficult issue. Don't make me hang up on you.

DON’T suggest new supplements or treatments unless I have asked. Like most single women with the disease, I have experienced a drastic and terrifying reduction of resources. And like most women living on very low fixed income, I have had to evolve a highly refined and customized process for cost-benefit analysis. It has taken me years to fine-tune my regimen of supplements and foods. Yes, I am sure I would benefit from massage, blood tests, medical care, organic food, acupuncture, and Chinese herbs, but I can't afford them. Unless, of course, you want to buy them for me. Classism and ableism go hand-in-hand, and in case you don't know, health care in this country is a privilege, not a right.

DON’T mistake my periods between relapses for recovery. I have plenty to deal with regarding my own ups and downs. Don't make me have to cope with your hopes and expectations for me. What I most need from you is the reassurance that I am a perfectly wonderful friend even at the lowest point in my health, and even if I never get any better.

DON’T accuse me of being jealous of your health when I confront your ableism. I wish that my able-bodied friends were more aware of how their able-bodied privilege translates into ignorance, arrogance, and bland sadism. The issue is not my envy of your privilege, but your abuse of it.

DON’T make me take care of you around cancelled plans. Yes, I'm sorry whenever that happens. I do try to know what my limitations are, and frequently I err on the side of conservatism just so that I won't have to change them or cancel later. But every now and then I will say I can do something that I can't. Too bad. But the whole life I had planned for myself - my career, my home, my family, my social life, my sports, my hobbies, my standard of living, my quality of life -- have been permanently cancelled. I just can't get too into your pain about a picnic or a camping trip. And you know what? I'm not even going to try.

DON’T think I'm kidding when I talk about suicide. The depression that accompanies CFS has been likened to the depression that AIDS patients experience in the last two weeks of their lives. With CFS, it goes on for years. Ask me. I may have actually scavenged a piece of garden hose for the exhaust pipe. I may have stockpiled barbiturates. I will probably tell you, because I am hoping someone will help me. If you care about me and I am talking about suicide, consider stepping up your support. I'm not kidding. CFS patients do take our own lives, and we do it a lot. And part of it is because nobody seems to give a damn that we are losing or have already lost what we used to consider our lives. Give a damn.

DO make an effort to learn something about the disease on your own. There is a ton of information about CFS in the libraries and bookstores - first-person narratives, medical and alternative healing manuals, cookbooks. There are all kinds of websites on the Internet. Check out Solve ME/CFS.

DO acknowledge frequently that I am disabled. I have to run as fast as I can to stay in place, or even just to fall back at a manageable rate. I like to have that acknowledged. Whenever I do participate at a “normal” level in an able-bodied event, it has probably taken a lot of advance planning. Acknowledge that. Appreciate it. I pay higher dues, and I like to be credited for it. Even though I may look like a slacker to the able-bodied world, remember this: I am operating at the absolute top of my physical bent all the time. I am probably working harder than any able-bodied person you know. Just because I don't mention it, doesn't mean I'm not struggling.

DO ask me how I am when we get together for an activity. That lets me know that you are willing to be my ally in confronting the challenges I am meeting during the time we are together. I have come to learn that when you don't ask, it means you don't want to know. It means that your plan is to grant me the “privilege” of being considered your able-bodied peer for the duration of our activity. In other words, my illness will only be real for you if I bring it up. Experience has taught me that this attitude results in your equating my mentioning of symptoms with my causing those symptoms. And you will oppress me accordingly.

DO adopt a CFS awareness when you are in my company. No, it's not codependent. It's supportive. And courteous. Why should the member of an ethnic minority be the one to confront the racism all the time? Well, it's her survival issue, but frankly, that's no excuse for her white friends to let her do all the work. A racist world hurts us all. And so does an ableist one. And a toxic one. I love it when my companions allow me to shift some of the burden of my chemical sensitivity vigilance onto their shoulders, even for just an hour or two. The analogy I use is that of traveling with a disabled child. If you want to make it clear that the child is my child and therefore my problem, because you're only interested in my company... well, it makes me choose between my allegiance to my child (myself) or you. Guess who's going to win.

DO confront your superstitions about denial and immunity. If you are afraid to imagine yourself in my shoes, to really hear my experience, or to adopt a CFS consciousness about toxins and stress levels when you are in my company - look at the reason why. Are you afraid that you might become vulnerable to the illness if you let too much of its reality into your consciousness? That is a very human response, but also a very ableist one. If this is your truth, then stick to the company of other able-bodied people. Don't make me deal with it.

DO make it easy for me to say, “I need to leave” or “I need to lie down” or “I need to pull off the road/ trail and take a nap.” When the plan changes abruptly like that, see how fast you can get behind it, instead of seeing how guilty or ashamed you can make me feel or how difficult you can make it for me. These disruptions are normal for me, and I love it when my companions work together to minimize the social stigmatization that results from my meeting my needs.

DO offer support. Offer whatever you can. The gesture is often the most therapeutic part. I don't have a bathtub, but I experience chronic muscle pain and I love it when friends invite me to come over and take a bath. Can you cook a meal on a really bad night? Can you be there for 20-minute support phone calls? Ask me what kind of support I would like. I understand that doesn't mean you can give it. I'll just be stunned that you asked. In seven years, no one ever has, but I do keep hoping.

DO clean up your car/ apartment/ clothing. Remember what I have told you about my allergies: fabric softener, essential oils, perfumes, bleach, any and all pesticides. When you keep “forgetting,” I get one of two messages: Either you don't believe I'm really sick or you don't care. I never get the message you just forgot. That's your fantasy... and a function of your able-bodied privilege.

DO tell me how amazing I am. Tell me a lot. Praise my coping skills, my achievements, whatever I am proud of. Praise my ingenuity, my resourcefulness, my optimism (I'm still alive, aren't I?), my courage. Believe me, people with CFS hear “slacker,” “whiner,” “nutcase,” “drama queen,” “control freak” a dozen times a day in a dozen subtle and not-so-subtle ways. No matter how much you praise me, it can never be too much.

DO stand up for me when I’m not around. You will probably have more credibility than I do. Spread the word about CFS. Confront others on their ableism. Talk about the crying need for support services similar to those offered by the AIDS networks in our communities. Stop others from blaming the victims. When you hear charges that I am exaggerating my symptoms, set the record straight. The symptoms that show, the ones that I talk about, are just the tip of an iceberg.

DO share this link and pass it around your workplace.

And if all of this seems too overwhelming to remember, then try this simple formula:

Pretend it’s happened to you.

A FINAL WORD: For decades, the medical community has pretended that ME/CFS is a psychological disorder, even in the face of decades of discovery of biomarkers. There has been intense, ongoing pressure and lobbying from insurance companies to refuse to accept it as a disease, because treatment is expensive and lifelong.  Instead, patients have been  and still are "prescribed" CBT ("Cognitive Behavioral Therapy") and GET ("Graded Exercise Therapy"). Both of these degrading, so-called treatments have resulted in death. In fact, until very recently, these were the recommendations of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Today, with rising numbers of Long Covid patients, whose symptoms are nearly identical to those of ME/CFS patients, our illness and disability are finally being taken seriously. We are finally getting apologies from the medical community, including the CDC, which refers to their history with ME/CFS as "shameful." Ironic how we were not allowed to donate blood, but it was "all in our heads."  How does that work? #theyknewtheyalwaysknew

In 1999 I reviewed Linda Lear's biography Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature for publication in  The Lesbian Review of Books. Twenty-one  years later, this review was cited in a new anthology titled Literature, Writing, and the Natural World, edited by James Guignard and T.P. Murphy and published by Cambridge Scholars.

My review had been centered on the biography's failure to apply the word lesbian to any of the intimate and well-documented relationships that Carson had with women throughout her life.  Because I thought these relationships would be of interest to my readers, I am republishing this review:

 The word "lesbian" is not in the index to Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature.  This is because the word "lesbian" is not in the text of what has been hailed by The New York Times as "the most exhaustive account so far of Carson's private, professional, and public lives."
 
This omission is peculiar in light of the fact that the author, Linda Lear, had access to the correspondence between Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman --- a correspondence that documents the two women's lesbian passion and commitment during the last ten years of Carson's life.  In fact, three years ago, a collection of the letters was published in Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952--1964.

To Lear's credit, she does not withhold the details of Carson's relationships with women, even when these details indicate lesbian attachments.  In fact, she has done a considerable amount of detective work in uncovering them.  What she fails to do is establish a context for understanding the significance of these lesbian relationships and how Carson's orientation as a lesbian shaped her career and her ideas. 
 
Carson, author of the ground-breaking exposé of the risks of pesticides, Silent Spring,  is remembered now as the founder of the ecology movement, but she might also be considered the first ecofeminist.  Through the network of connections she made with women during her lifetime, she evolved her philosophy of the interconnectedness of all forms of life.   Because of the censorship she imposed on herself, a censorship that her biographers have perpetuated, the significance of Carson's world of female relationships has not been explored for its impact on her career and on her writing.

This censorship, ironically, may be read by some as a mark of Lear's scholarly detachment, an index of her professionalism --- that she refuses to speculate or overlay interpretation on incidents and documents for which there may be alternative explanations.
 
Lear's predicament is not unique.  In fact, it parallels the situation of Lorena Hickok's biographer, Doris Faber, who insisted that the romantic language in the Hickok-Roosevelt correspondence "does not mean what it appears to mean."  Fortunately, her homophobic treatment of Hickok has been countered in recent years by Blanche Wiesen Cook's biography of Eleanor Roosevelt and by the publication of Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok.  Similarly, the publication in 1998 of Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson, poses a serious challenge to the assumptions of previous biographers about Dickinson's heterosexuality.  One irate male academic has characterized the publication of these letters as "an utter distraction from her outstanding intellect and her talent."

But is it?  There are some of us who would argue that it is the presumption of heterosexuality that is the "utter distraction."   Just what, exactly, are the academic criteria for determining the sexual orientation of a historical figure?  At the present time, a homophobic academy prefers the "innocent-until-proven-guilty" approach, in which the biographer must make her case for queerness beyond a reasonable doubt.  But gay and lesbian scholars do not consider homosexuality to be a crime, and our concerns lie more with understanding a politic, an aesthetic, a social orientation that potentially informs the body of work produced by men or women whose sexual orientation, however individual the form of expression, may nevertheless provide a perspective that is unique and distinct from that of heterosexuals. 
 
In addition, what appears to be "reasonable doubt" in the minds of biographers like Lear and Faber reads like homophobic panic and denial to scholars who find it unreasonable to explain away an obvious constellation of lesbian or gay relationships on a case-by-case, or even  word-by-word, basis.

Hear the words of Rachel Carson, 47,  written to her lover Dorothy Freeman, 56, in 1954:
 
"... I have been remembering that my very first message to you was a Christmas greeting.  Christmas, 1952.  I knew then that the letter to which it replied was something special, that stood out from the flood of other mail, but I don't pretend I had any idea of its tremendous importance in my life.  I didn't know then that you would claim my heart --- that I would freely give you a lifetime's love and devotion.  I had at least some idea of that when Christmas came again, in 1953.  Now I know, and you know.  And as I have given, I have received --- the most precious of all gifts.  Thank you darling, with all my heart."  (pp. 66-67, Always, Rachel)
 
Or the words of Dorothy Freeman:
 
"How sweet to find your clothes mixed in with mine, dear --- that brought you near.  I've wanted you so when I looked at the moon, when the tide was high; when the water made wild sounds in the night; when we went tide-pooling; when the anemones were exposed for a few seconds as the water rushed away from the cave; but most of all, darling, when I went back to the veeries ---" (p. 117, Always, Rachel)

On the eve of a long-awaited rendezvous in a Manhattan hotel, Dorothy wrote this note to Rachel:
 
"New York --- darling --- a week from this moment I shall be with you if all goes well -- and it must!  Yes, I think we can be casual if we meet at the desk --- just a chilly glance I'll give you and say, 'Glad you made it...'" (p. 69, Always, Rachel)
 
What is to made of the humor in this note, if the subtext is not lesbian? 
 
In the early years, the correspondence itself was carried on in a clandestine fashion, with each woman writing a letter to the other woman's family, "for publication," with the private love letter hidden surreptitiously inside.
 
In the case of Carson and Freeman, it is not even necessary to resort to Lilian Faderman's argument for the inclusion of non-genital love relationships in the category "lesbian."  In light of the women's own writings, it is unreasonable to conclude that the relationship was platonic.  One does not need to disguise a platonic same-sex relationship from the desk clerk at a hotel!

Lear's conscientious research into Carson's early years reveals another significant lesbian attachment, one which was to determine the direction of Carson's professional life.
 
Mary Scott Skinker, 36, was a professor of biology at the Pennsylvania College for Women, where Carson was studying to become a writer.  Under Skinker's mentorship, Carson began to focus her creative energies on biology.  Carson's correspondence to friends at this time indicate that she was deeply infatuated with her teacher.  When Skinker took a leave-of-absence to attend Johns Hopkins University, Carson attempted to follow her, but was unable to raise tuition money.  Instead, she founded a science club she named Mu Sigma Sigma --- Miss Skinker's initials in Greek.  After graduation, Carson rendezvoused with her former professor in Skinker's family cabin in the Shenandoah Valley.  As Lear coyly notes, "There were no longer any boundaries between mentor and protégée." (pp.56-57)  (Shades of Radclyffe Hall's "... and that night they were not divided"!)  Skinker and Carson maintained contact with each other for two decades, and when Skinker, 57, became hospitalized with cancer, she gave Carson's name as the person to be contacted.  It was Carson who stayed with her until she lost alertness, and only then was her care taken over by members of her family.

Carson found companionship and mentoring with another powerful woman, Marie Rodell, who became her agent.  Although Rodell had been married briefly, Lear notes "she kept the details of her marriage locked in a closet." (p.153)  The relationship between the two women advanced quickly beyond a professional one, and when Carson was denied passage on a research ship, because of the impropriety of a lone woman joining an all-male crew, Rodell agreed to accompany her as a "chaperone."  According to Lear, "Ten days on the Albatross III voyage had deepened their friendship, and they now closed their letters to each other with love." (p. 172)
 
Because of her failure to provide a lesbian context for Carson's experiences, the reader must read between the homophobically elided lines to understand her relationship to Marjorie Spock and Mary Richards.  These two socially-prominent, single women had bought a house and were living together.  We are told that they became members of Carson's inner circle of friends.

Mary Richards, described as a "digestive invalid," required organic food, and Spock, who had studied organic farming, obliged her partner with a two-acre vegetable garden.  In 1957, state and federal planes sprayed the property repeatedly with DDT mixed in fuel oil --- spraying as much as fourteen times in one day.  Spock and Richards sued the government in a trial that lasted twenty-two days.  They lost on a technicality, but not before Spock had sent out her daily account of the ordeal to her friends and supporters, including Carson.
 
This was a lawsuit sparked by one woman's desire to protect her disabled life-partner.  Carson, whose first love had been mercilessly harassed out of her career as a college professor and later out of a career in the government, was again faced with a situation where the survival of a lesbian she loved was being threatened.  This time Carson was in a position to do something.
 
What did the Spock-Richards relationship mean to Carson, who was still living with her mother --- who had never been able to live openly with the women she loved?  How did the passionate crusade of a woman devoted to protecting her partner affect Carson's own interest in the issue of pesticides?   Did the security and nurturing she received from the maternal Dorothy Freeman influence her decision to write a book that she knew would raise a fire-storm of controversy?  How did the persecution of Skinker influence Carson's own career decisions, as well as her decisions to live a deeply closeted life?  Did her oppression as a woman in a male-dominated field and as a lesbian in a heterosexual world influence her advocacy for respect for the diversity of life on the planet?

It will take a biography with an entry for "lesbian" in the index before we can begin to reconcile the serious mind-body split that has been and is still being historiographically imposed on Rachel Carson, lesbian biologist.

I have been thinking a lot about autism, and what it means to be defined as “neurodivergent” in a “neurotypical” world.  Even those "politically correct" labels reflect the biases of those for whom autism is "other." Anyway, this week I was watching a video about octopuses, and it opened up a new lens on autism... and I wanted to share some of my thoughts.

First, some facts about the octopus:  It's everywhere... all over the world--in the deep sea, in the kelp forests, in the coral reefs, along the rocky shorelines. It's massive, and it's tiny. It's been around for millions of years. And it's wicked smart, especially when you consider the other members of  the mollusk family: clams, oysters and snails.

The octopus can perform all kinds of learning tasks… including ones that involve object perception and short-term and long-term memory. It can make plans, which means it remembers past events, imagines future needs, and analyzes the ways that current actions can relate to both. It uses composite tools. It takes things apart. It invents games. It problem-solves. It explores the environment like a curious child.

What does this have to do with autism? Trust me, I'll get there. (I'm autistic.)

So, all the other species (dogs, cats, humans, dolphins) that are considered forms of "intelligent life" are vertebrates. In fact, most of them are mammals, and primates at that. These “intelligent life” vertebrates trace their common ancestors back 320 million years, probably to some kind of lizard. But when we go looking for the common ancestor that we share with the octopus, we have to go back more than twice as far... 600 million years, in fact. And the common ancestor was... wait for it... a flatworm.

What's my point?

My point is that, in the history of this planet, intelligent life actually evolved twice, in widely separated (vertebrate and invertebrate ) trunks of the family tree. And the point of this observation is to explain why the intelligence of the octopus is so insanely different from the intelligence of the vertebrates.

And HERE is where it relates to autism:  Our theories of intelligence have historically been derived from our studies of vertebrates, especially mammals, and especially primates. All these vertebrate forms of “intelligent life”  have been very social creatures that travel in pods, packs, herds, or tribes. Not surprisingly, our theories about intelligence have been shaped by this fact.  These theories have assumed that intelligence evolved in certain species in response to social needs for communication, for bonding, for collective action, for establishing and maintaining social hierarchies, and so on.
 
But… then there is the octopus, a form of intelligent life that is notoriously anti-social. The octopus does not bond with other octopuses, does not live or travel with them, and  does not observe any kind of social hierarchy. It is a real loner. According to our theories of intelligence, it should actually be quite stupid... dumb as a snail, in fact. But the octopus has 500,000 neurons and the snail has only 20,000.  The octopus is right up there with the pig, the dog, and the dolphin. Clearly there is a problem with our theories about the evolution of intelligence. Being social has no bearing on the development of intelligence.
 
And here we are.  Autism is "characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication." We are wired for resistance to social pressure. We are said to lack empathy, to have difficulty reading social cues, are oblivious to social hierarchies. We don't travel in packs. Are we missing out on evolutionary forces that generate intelligence?  Or are we developing intelligence along a completely different axis, like the octopus?

How did the octopus come to be so much smarter than the snails and clams? If it wasn't social pressure, what was it? Apparently, it's all about the shell... or lack thereof.

One hundred and forty million years ago the lineage that produced the octopus lost its shell. This shell-less proto-octopus was way more nimble, way more mobile, and way more vulnerable than the other shell-encased members of the mollusk family. With all the predators in the ocean, one might have expected this new branch of the family tree to become extinct in a generation or two. But that’s not what happened.

The octopus got very smart very fast. It became a master/mistress of disguise. It developed the ability to  change not only color, but also texture in 200 milliseconds. That’s faster than the blink of an eye. It’s way faster than a lizard that takes 20 seconds to change color. And the octopus can change camouflage up to 177 times per hour. How can it do this? Because most of its 500,000 neurons are not in its brain, but in its eight arms. The stimulus/response thing bypasses the brain completely. It takes a shortcut that enables the arm to "read" the environment and send appropriate signals directly to the special camouflage cells i the arm. These camouflage cells are incredibly complex, with highly specific functions. Some control for red, black and yellow coloration. Some reflect blue and green light, others reflect white light. Another layer of specialized cells can change the texture from smooth to rough, and back again.
 
What does this have to do with autism? Well, so… let’s go back to losing that shell, that protection.  Kind of like losing one’s armor. Yes, it makes one vulnerable, but it also drives the evolution of a different kind of intelligence, an intelligence that is rooted in highly complex and subtle interactions with one's physical environment. If the octopus lacks the social intelligence that comes from belonging to a pack, it has evolved an exquisitely fine-tuned relationship to the natural world around it.

If an autistic person is lacking in social intelligence, have we evolved compensatory sensitivity to our surroundings? Without the kind of protective armor that non-autistic people develop in their social interactions, have we developed a different form of perceptual/conceptual mobility, a nimbleness of spirit? Could it be that our "special interests" are part of this protective disguise? Without the rigid shape associated with a social role, are we not able to slip ourselves into the secret nooks and crannies of a rich inner life that appear irrelevant or inconsequential to those who have never had to develop alternative resources?

I can't claim to have anything like the brilliant adaptations of the octopus. But I do feel that centering the intelligence of the octopus calls into question many of our human assumptions and theories. I have the intelligence to know that we humans have very limited understanding of intelligence, and that we may well have reached a period in our evolution as a social species, where the concomitants of our bonding, i.e. our love of  conformity, our lack of authenticity, our prioritizing of congeniality,  our staggering disregard for our natural environment, and our ongoing massacres of our fellow creatures are going to destroy  life on the planet in less than two generations. Is it possible that autism marks an acceleration in human evolution--that our intelligence is moving in the direction of the octopus--and not a moment too soon?

I just watched Wizard of Lies, the film about Bernie Madoff, the fraudulent financier who, in 2009, admitted to operating the largest private Ponzi scheme in history—one that involved nearly sixty-five billion dollars. He never invested any of the money entrusted to him by clients. He just kept pulling in new clients and using their money to pay so-called dividends to his old clients.
 
The question is, of course, “How did he manage to get away with it for so long?”

He wasn’t just scamming retired widows. His clients included captains of industry… and especially of financial industry. It wasn’t a one-shot deal, either. Madoff claims it began in the 1990’s, but federal investigators believe that it began in the mid-1980’s, or even the 1970’s. Madoff had been at it for twenty years or even forty years!
 
What was his secret?
 
Here’s Madoff himself, offering us clues:
 
“[Prospective investors] were all told by me, ‘Don’t invest any more money than you could afford to lose. This is the stock market. There’s always stuff that can happen. Brokerage firms can fail. I could go crazy and do something stupid. If you want a [safe thing], put your money in government bonds. So everybody understood this…  Everyone was greedy. I just went along. It’s not an excuse…  Look, there was complicity, in my view.”

He was making so much money for his clients, they didn’t want to ask questions. They didn’t want to look too closely at where all this money was actually coming from.
 
And besides that, Madoff had a huge firewall. He split off the “Investment Advisory” division of his business, where the fraud was actually perpetrated. This activity was located on the 17th floor, in a locked office space.  According to the film, only one other employee was privy to what actually what took place on that floor.  Most of the staffers in this division were high school graduates without securities licenses or training. They included a former waitress, a former construction worker, and a former keypunch operator. And, there were only about a dozen of them! Far too small a number to be managing billions of dollars worth of accounts. But even with such a small staff, they later testified that they frequently had no work to do. They would put their feet up on their desks and watch television.

And here’s another thing about that 17th floor. It didn’t look anything like the rest of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. It was messy and full of out-of-date technology.  The operations on the 17th floor were run out of a hack-proof, 1980’s IBM computer, complete with tower and green screen… in 2009! This computer was not connected to any of the other computers in the company’s network. It would leave a very limited (easy to delete) electronic footprint. And there was a dot-matrix printer. Dot-matrix? By 2009, brokerage firms provided their equity statements online, where they could be accessed by clients, allowing them to track the daily activity in their accounts. The only thing  Madoff’s clients received were these dot-matrix, snail-mailed printouts on flimsy, lightweight paper never intended to last.
 
Okay…  wildly unrealistic investment returns that consistently out-performed other financial investment companies, weirdly outdated modes of communication with clients, and a bizarre culture of secrecy around the locked office on the 17th floor.
 
Again, “How did he manage to get away with it for so long?”

People trusted Madoff. In light of all the obvious red flags, why did his clients trust him?
 
They trusted him, because he made a point of gaining their trust. He deployed the six strategies for gaining trust that are identified by social psychologist Robert Cialdini:
 
1) Reciprocation. People feel indebted to those who do something for them or give them a gift. Madoff was paying his clients higher returns than they could get anywhere else, and they were grateful. Madoff also paid out a ton of bonuses to people who worked for him at all levels.
 
2) Social Proof. When people are uncertain, they want to know what everyone else is doing—especially their peers. Who was investing with Madoff? Steven Spielberg, Larry King, Sandy Koufax, Elie Wiesel, John Malkovich… banks, university, and charities… lots of charities. (Hint: They tend not to withdraw money for long periods of time… a plus with a Ponzi scheme.)
 
3) Commitment and Consistency. People do not like to back out of deals. Madoff was following through with consistent high returns. His clients were consistent and committed, too.

4) Liking. “People prefer to say ‘yes’ to those they know and like,” Cialdini says. They are also favor those who are physically attractive, similar to themselves, or who give them compliments. Madoff cultivated the country club set. Jewish himself, he cultivated Jewish investors and Jewish charities.  He was charming and charismatic.
 
5) Authority. People respect authority. They follow the experts. Madoff was the former chairman of NASDAQ, the second largest exchange in the world. And, of course, he was a billionaire with all the trappings: the homes, the cars, the clothes.
 
6) Scarcity. The more rare a thing, the more people want it. Madoff created an aura of exclusivity about clients. He made investors compete for limited slots in his imaginary funds, and then he used this competition to leverage the size of the investments.
 
Summing up:  Why didn’t people see what was going on?
 
They trusted Madoff. He manipulated that trust.

So Madoff is behind bars for life, and what was left of the assets of his bogus operation have been distributed by the courts to his victims.
 
But what if there is another Ponzi-type scam going on in this country—one that is so huge, nobody can even see it?  What might that 17th floor look like?
 
Well… I think it would be full of environmental pollution from Trump’s deregulation and gutting of the EPA. It’s expensive to comply with regulations, which is one of the reasons why the stock market soared the day of his election. But… like a Ponzi scheme, deregulation is going to have a day of reckoning... especially when it results in the gutting of natural resources and quality of life. Short-sighted isn't even the word...
 
The 17th floor is also filled with slaves and people working at slave wages in the countries where so much of our manufacturing is being outsourced. Again, higher profits for us… but at what cost? Neocolonialism is going to work about as well as colonialism, and at the end of the day, it will collapse like a Ponzi scheme.
 
What else is on our 17th floor? Weaponry. Tons and tons of it… much of it obsolete even before it’s finished. But who cares? The military is the single largest contractor in the US,  and nearly every corporation makes big bank off selling to them. But to keep that party going, we need to be perpetually at war… which we have been for decades now. But as we continue to generate demand for military goods in these manufactured wars, we are also growing our enemies, and they are forming ever-more-powerful alliances, often fighting us with weapons we built!  Again, how sustainable?  As with a Ponzi scheme, the balloon payment is going to be a real killer.

Like Madoff’s 17th floor, ours is also a throwback to an earlier era. We are being sold on racism and rigid gender roles, on the glories of the free market (which is a blatant myth in the era of globalization), and the conflation of patriotism with hyper-militarization.
 
But still we trust. We don’t ask questions. We don’t go up on the 17th floor.
 
 We trust, because investments are still turning profits. We trust because everyone else is trusting. People with even modest savings are investing. We believe in our country. We have a commitment. We like our bankers, our advisors. They are nice people. They have authority. And we believe we are  lucky to have this economy. There is so much scarcity everywhere else. We, like Madoff, are in too deep to even consider ways of getting out. And our trust, like the trust of Madoff’s clients, is carefully cultivated and manipulated.

In the film, there was one man who stood up to Madoff, who saw what he was up to. It was Ken Langone, the ultra-conservative co-founder of Home Depot. There is a scene in the film where Madoff is trying to get Langone to invest in a new, exclusive fund that he claims is going to make huge profits. He tells Langone that he is only opening it to new investors. Langone is puzzled by this. If it’s such a fantastic opportunity, why wouldn’t Madoff be offering it to his oldest and most loyal clients? Why would he exclude them in favor of newcomers?

"He said something I found repulsive. He said to us, 'By the way, this fund I'm starting is going to be better than (the ones for) my existing investors.' That turned me off," Langone said.
 
Langone was not  blinded by prospects of above-market returns and not seduced by seemingly preferential treatment by a Wall Street mogul.  Langone, identifying with the interests of others, was, apparently, the exception. Most of Madoff’s clients would fall for his pitches. (Yes, it's too bad Lagone cannot extend that kind of identifying to gays and lesbians.)
 
But That little vignette with Lagone is the key:  Identify with others.  Who is being thrown under the bus for corporate profits? Are we honestly believing that, when the crunch comes, we will not also be considered expendable? 

"The whole government is a Ponzi scheme." -- Bernie Madoff.

Oh, go ahead. Clear the room and save the planet.

I’m talking about bringing up overpopulation every time there is a discussion about global warming, alternative energy, carbon emissions, extinction of species, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the ozone layer, acid rain, or the melting polar ice caps.

That’s right… “overpopulation.” Too many people.

And, trust me, it will clear the room. There is a reason why activists and politicians never bring it up, even though it’s the biggest “duh” on the planet.

The subject was a popular, or at least controversial one about fifty years ago. Paul Ehrlich wrote a bestseller called The Population Bomb and introduced the concept of “zero population growth.” There was a huge national conversation. The type of conversation that Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had kicked off just seven years earlier. Folks were doing the math, considering the consequences, and talking about policy changes and possible solutions.

And then, the conversation was dropped. For fifty years.

What happened? Well… For starts, not all of Ehrlich’s predictions came true. Death rates did not rise. India did not starve.

On the other hand, some of his predictions did come true. When the book was written, there were between three and four billion people in the world. In 2012, that figure reached seven billion, having nearly doubled.

Several voices criticized Ehrlich’s book. Biologist and politician Barry Commoner was one of them. He had a theory that social and technological development would lead to a natural decrease in both population growth and environmental damage. Needless to say he was wrong.

But the silence prevails, even as the elephant outgrows the living room, filling it with poop and gaseous emissions.  Why?

Because to talk about overpopulation is to talk about population control. And population control is an explosive subject. Where it has been mandated, there has been an astronomical rise in the aborting of female fetuses. The whole subject touches a deep nerve among ethnic and racial minorities and colonized people who have had to endure the horrors of involuntary sterilization, genocide, “ethnic cleansing,” and cultural genocide. It raises the specter of eugenics and social engineering. And then, of course, there are the religious arguments against birth control, abortion, and women’s autonomy.

Talk of population control also threatens the ruling elite… right down to their toes. To quote the words of Venezuelan  sociologist Edgardo Lander:

"Capitalism is an unlimited growth system. There can be no such thing as a steady-state capitalism, or capitalism with negative growth.”

Endless breeding and doubling populations spell more consumers, or, as the economists would put it, “expanding markets.” And that means greater Gross National Product, more jobs, more investment capital, more prosperity.  Who wants to put the kibosh on that?

But let me state the obvious: While human populations have doubled, planetary resources have not. While human waste products have doubled, places to store them have not. And, quoting Lander again, “Unlimited growth is not possible in a limited planet.” Capitalism, like any pyramid scheme, will run its course.

The reality is that burgeoning population growth is the cause of the environmental crisis. (Can’t wait to the read the comments on this blog.) Yes, poor distribution, mismanagement of resources, racism, colonialism, endless war, etc. etc. have not helped, but there are limits to what the planet can sustain. Some are saying we have already passed those limits.

So let’s get back to my original suggestion: Why not interject the issue of overpopulation into every discussion of the environmental crisis? 

Um, because most folks don’t care to be branded racist, facist, childhating, misogynist, ignorant, colonialist, and anti-spiritual.

Fair enough, but let’s look at why we should take that risk anyway…

Because nature bats last. Because reality always wins. Because nothing gets to the root of the problem except getting to the root of the problem. And because the plants and the animals dying for our sins do not have a voice. And if they did, they would say, “It’s the overpopulation of one exceptionally short-sighted, avaricious  and filthy species, stupid!”

The conversation will not be easy and the solutions are offensive. But let’s do it anyway. We can take it, but the planet can't.

It’s time for a new political party.  “The Party of the Future.” It doesn’t even have to be huge in order to be effective. It just has to be noisy.

I’m talking about a political party whose SOLE PLATFORM is to examine and publicize the long-term impact of any and all policies and legislation.

No focus on political expediency, compromise with corporate lobbyists, deal-making, etc. Because this party is only and ever about one thing: The Future.

We pass economic policy that binds future generations to hopeless debt. We continue to enable an economic system based on unlimited growth of markets...  This has led to colonization, the horrors of NAFTA, and now a philosophy of perpetual warfare (we destroy massive infrastructures and then hire ourselves to rebuild them again). We engage in manufacturing and innovation that is solely profit-driven with inadequate  analysis to how these technologies may impact human society. We generate incredibly toxic waste that we flush into the ocean or waft into the atmosphere or shove into landfills. We have never yet come up with a plan for disposal of nuclear waste. 

The Party of the Future would generate ongoing pressure on the other parties to make concessions to these concerns. Because the Party of the Future would not be owned, and because it would have only one focus, and because it would have moral force behind it, it would have the ability to harass and prod the traditionally  lumbering and pandering political parties. 

I actually believe that the rising generation of voters considers The Future important. Probably because they are facing the distinct possibility of not having one. 

And that is thanks to my generation.

I belong to the Generation of Irrevocable Destruction. It’s a shameful legacy. My generation of “Boomers” has seen… oh, goddess, what haven’t we seen: 

• Extinction of species
• Acid rain
  
• Global warming
  
• Nuclear accidents
  
• Air pollution
  
• Water pollution
  
• Policy of “perpetual warfare” to support corporate capitalism’s demand for ever-expanding markets
  
• Depletion of water supplies
  
• Genetically modified food
  
• Destruction of the rainforests
  
• Pollution of the ocean
• Massive oil spills

… and all kinds of things we probably haven’t even noticed yet.

What would it take to form The Party of the Future?  Not that much. A handful of committed folks with some social networking skills and a great webmaster. And a team of dedicated research folks.  Actually, scratch that. How about a team of folks with some common sense and decency who are able to communicate their concerns with clarity and accountability?

I’ll sign on. It’s the least I can do.

In her  book, The Symbiotic Planet: Evolution by Merger, geo-scientist Lynn Margulis has put forth what she calls the “Gaia Concept.”  What this is, is a serial endosymbiosis theory of evolution.

And you thought this was going to be about food . . .

Bear with me, because the food chain we all learned about in grade school is on the brink of becoming the food potluck—a paradigm shift so major that it’s going to make the discovery of fire look like an evolutionary weenie roast. What we are witnessing is the closing down of our homo sapiens executive dining room in favor of a more democratic, more inclusive, inter-species, employee lunchroom. And it’s all about the “Gaia Concept.”

So just what is this “serial endosymbiosis” that Margulis is talking about? In a nutshell, it’s a theory about relationships not just between plants and animals, but also between them and atmospheric gases, surface rocks, and water, which she maintains are regulated by the growth, death, integration and other activities of living organisms. In other words, it’s about the entire ecosystem of the Earth’s surface as a series of interacting ecosystems, which is definitely not your grandmother’s theory of evolution.

In 1859, Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species, the book that made a monkey out of creation theory. Darwin’s theory of evolution was about survival of the fittest: Random genetic mutations would lead to “natural selection,” whereby the more rugged or adaptive species would multiply and be fruitful, while the less rugged, less adaptive species would die out. In other words, according to Darwin, competition was good for us. This notion led to something called “Social Darwinism,” a convenient rationale for the rampant and predatory capitalism that characterized the Industrial Revolution and which continues, under various guises, to manifest itself today.

But, Margulis has looked at the numbers, and they just don’t add up.  She makes the point that genetic mutations, although common and easy to induce, rarely lead to changes that are beneficial to the organism. In other words, one’s chances for becoming the lucky host of an advantageous change in DNA structure are considerably worse than those for winning the lottery—and the chances are even slimmer of becoming the founder of a new species, based on such a rare mutation.

Margulis argues that evolutionary advances are achieved, not by good genes and natural selection, but by a species’ success in achieving symbiotic mergers with other species. And just as Darwinism coincided with the economic movements of its day, Margulis’ theory appears to be right on time for a planet that has been ravaged by the proponents of Social Darwinism and headed toward a global economy.

In explaining to the lay person how symbiosis works, Margulis uses the example of lichen. Lichen is a combination of two organisms living in a mutually beneficial arrangement. Most of the lichen is composed of fungal filaments, but among these filaments are green algal cells.  If the lichen is submerged in water, the fungus will die out and the algae will proliferate. On the other hand, if there is an inadequate amount of sunlight to sustain the algae’s photosynthesis, then it will die out, leaving the fungus to its own devices. The algae gains a structure that enables it to live on land, and the fungus benefits from the food-making capacity of the algae.

Moving to mammals for her examples of symbiosis, Margulis describes the cow, not as an entity, but as a fifty-gallon fermentation vat. The cow does not digest the grass it eats. The grass is digested by the organisms that are growing—yes, symbiotically—inside its gut.

Having led us gently by the hand from lichen to cow, she now asks us to make the leap from cow to human. And here Margulis is not so gentle. She informs us that we are all hosting eyelash mites. All of us. It doesn’t matter that we take a shower every morning; we still have them. And she invites us to look at our body fluids through the lens of a microscope in order to see the plethora of exotic critters living out their lives, as it were, under our very noses. Having brought us along this far, she then asks us to consider the colon. And here, even the most rabid Darwinist must pause before the void.

The colon is host to the bacteria that constitute the largest percentage of the dry weight of the human body. And whether we like it or not, these bacteria constitute a de facto Lower GI Tract Tenants’ Association. When we are not eating with proper symbiotic respect for the needs of the bacteria in our gut, they die out or the more harmful ones proliferate, and we find, like most landlords, that unhappy tenants have a way of making their problems into problems for the landlords. Unhappy colon bacteria can form pockets of resistance, trash the place, or stage a sit-down strike.

The early 21st century has seen an unprecedented breakdown in communication between the bacterial tenants’ association and the landlord homo sapiens. Perhaps in a simpler time and place, when the human scavenger’s choices were narrowed to a unripe yam, a ripe yam, or a rotten yam, the bacteria had less to fear from the appetites of the landlord.  But in the year 2002, the human forager faces a staggering array of substances for ingesting. Notice, I say “substances,” not “food.” There was actually a time when the food industry granted an award for the “invention” of foods from substances not usually considered edible. Cool Whip forever distinguished itself by being the first, and subsequently most difficult to top, recipient. Even when the substances ingested are the more traditional fruits and vegetables of the human habitat, the consumer discovers that these have been “enhanced” with dyes, their shelf lives have been extended by the use of preservatives, the crop yield has been multiplied by dousing with pesticides, and, most recently, unnatural selection via genetic engineering has been imposed in the name of some surreal, corporate survival of the fittest—which the Supreme Court now informs us have the legals rights of persons.

Our intestinal bacteria, which are the product of hundreds of thousands of years of non-corporate evolution, are at a loss to come up with the one-in-a-bazillion kind of genetic mutations that might, over eons, enable them to adapt to what we are eating today.

Unable to cope with the increasing volume of toxins, the gut has taken to passing some of the garbage on to the bloodstream. The infamous “leaky gut syndrome” is the culprit behind strange new constellations of such seemingly unrelated symptoms as neuro-fibromyalgia, sleep disturbances, panic attacks, migraine headaches, mysterious skin lesions, and debilitating fatigue. What happens in “leaky gut syndrome” is that nutrients meant to be absorbed into the body are suddenly being taken out with the trash through the colon, while substances meant to stay in the intestine are entering the bloodstream where they trigger immune-system responses as foreign invaders. Absorbing more toxins while excreting valuable nutrients, the beleaguered body becomes more and more overwhelmed with work orders, even as it’s experiencing a cut-back in payroll.  Meanwhile, the CEO’s vote themselves another raise in appetite. Not a good situation, as any union mediator can tell you. In the final stages of this deteriorating economy, the Mafiosi of the gut, Candida albicans--also known as yeast, begins to get a parasitic toehold, and there goes the neighborhood.

Auto-immune diseases and allergies, especially food allergies, are on the rise, and we have arrived at the endgame of the food chain. Having arrogantly constructed a theory of consumption that places us at the top of the heap, we have made the potentially fatal error of overlooking our dependence on micro-organisms. The food chain theory goes like this: We eat the big animals who eat the little animals who eat the big plants who eat the little plants, and so on back to the pond scum. (Did somebody say “spirulina?”) We have deluded ourselves into believing that, as long as we humans continued to pay out thousands of dollars to have our bodies incinerated after death or pickled in toxic preservatives, we could lay claim to a dubious, but unique status in the animal world as the only species that eats, but is never eaten.

But Darwinism is failing us. We have made valiant efforts to colonize our native bodies, imposing our artificially-manipulated, corporately-driven, commercial consumerism on the inhabitants of our various viscera. We have even come up with systems of psychology, spirituality, and philosophy to rationalize this new territorial imperative: We believe that our illnesses are the result of repressed psychological needs, of abuse at the hands of our dysfunctional families, of previous karma from past lives, of negative thinking. We bring in ever more drastic implements of surgical intervention, ever more bewildering and toxic medications—anaesthetizing or poisoning our grumbling constituencies into silence and provoking new conflagrations among previously peaceful inhabitants.

We are having as much difficulty controlling our colonies as Great Britain was having controlling theirs at the turn of the previous century, and our evolution will force us to the same conclusion:  We cannot afford our colonies. Humans have no new colons to conquer. Much as it offends our theories of species superiority, we must yield to the demands of the native, single-cell organisms to whom we owe our health, whom we have systematically oppressed, and who have consistently demonstrated not only more intelligence in their operations (“wisdom” is not too strong a word), but who have also held the high ground morally, in sustaining an ethic of cooperation, shared benefits, and input from all levels of production—even with all the forces of late-twentieth-century agribusiness and biotechnology arrayed against them.

We have lost our free lunch, but what we will be gaining at the interspecies potluck is an incredible pooling of diverse resources. We will find ourselves allies, where formerly we could only dream of domination.  Listening to other species as if our lives depend on it—which they do—we stand on the threshold of undreamed of modes of communication. And the devastating isolation of predatory individualism that has bred so much paranoia, insecurity, and desperation will break up when we begin to understand that we have never been alone, that we have always lived—even in our most delusional, destructive grandiosity—in symbiotic relation to all of the other forms of life on this planet, and in symbiotic relationship with the very earth, air, and water itself.

Surrendering our crowns as kings and queens of the species, we will apply ourselves diligently to winning the true crown of the creation pageant—that which is awarded for most congeniality. As the models for property ownership yield to an understanding of the responsibilities of stewardship, our orientation toward food will undergo a natural evolution. And eating what best supports symbiosis, we may just acquire a taste for life.