Am I a Woman?

Blog post number two: fuck marriage.

I look down at a pair of breasts that have flattened over the years and I wonder, am I still a woman? Then I look further and become hopeless about the fat accumulated around my hips and I remember I’m a female AND a woman.

Sexually, I’ve long had this fantasy of being a third wheel. I’m twenty years behind on Sex in the City, but I don’t care. As Samantha quips in S1E8, “The only way to do a threesome is to be the guest star.”

Why not? All the great sex without the attachment? Sounds great except… if you live in the Bay, chances are you’re already in a no-strings, no-judgement open relationship with impeccable communication and occasional costumes.

Male and Female are as similar but different as Left and Right Brain. If you cut one off early enough in childhood, you’ll develop a mind that’s capable of both. James Blackmon a philosopher at SF State says,

“If minds supervene on the intrinsic physical properties of things such as brains, then typical human brains host many minds at once.”

I’m not sure what exactly that means, but he says to imagine that the mind is like a river. At a fork, the large rock splits the river into two rivers. But they are all one river.

I can understand that, but I disagree. A mind is like an MR scan of a brain. The decay signal is translated in 2D Fourier space and you can reconstruct the image from some of the lower frequencies. Sure, you could sample the infinite space to get a more detailed image, but at some point, it’s enough goddamnit. Some parts of the signal space are more important, just like some parts of the brain are vital (you need the stem to have any consciousness).

Let’s just agree to be different. The End.

Postscript… imagine a relationship with two committed individuals (because who wants condoms and bed bugs?). There’a cork board with names of your alter egos like Leibniz, Carrie, or David Bowie. Each day we wake up and place a push pin next to the person we are today. Dress appropriately. Have a closet full of hats.

See? We can have a open AND closed relationship. We can find out what happens if Spinoza and Miranda go out for a drink. This would be an adequate cause for total disaster.

Is it borderline schizophrenia to think that maybe, at some point in history, we may have been split from one gender to two? Literally, like in religious text? Or metaphorically, when we decided on our roles around the house?

But what happens when one side of the brain doesn’t survive the hemispherectomy or becomes isolated and unable to speak (speech is usually on the left)? “When is it morally permissible to sacrifice one for another?” I want both! Duh?!

Do you ever feel like you’re too cynical for San Francisco’s newest app, but in Oakland you have techie scum written all over your laptop. Then I recommend that you try living on the BART. Last week, I complimented a skinny black man, crazed on the platform, for his nice jeans. He says he got them from Walmart. He winked at me like we understood each other. Did we really?