Notes From A Queer Engineer: What’s the Most Effective Gun Control Strategy?

Header by Rory Midhani

It’s been four days since news broke of the devastating Pulse shooting in Orlando, and our community mourns. I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves. The chosen family open thread and safe space is still going strong. There’s also a lot of QTPOC-specific support going on in The Speakeasy on Facebook.

For personal reasons, I often find engaging with social media after mass shootings to be too overwhelming. I want to show up for the victims, I want to amplify Latinx and Black voices, I want to bear witness to and hold space for queer and trans grief and rage. But I don’t want to hear all the details about how scary the shooting was. I don’t want to see photos of panic, of carnage, of bodies lashed to stretchers and paraded in front of red and blue police lights. I don’t want to see the shooter’s face, or speculate about his sexuality, or debate what role religion played in all this. And it’s okay that other people do want or need some of those things. I just can’t.

I don’t want to take away from our remembrance of the victims, celebrating their lives and grieving their loss— that’s super important and should be absolutely central right now. But as an aside, one thing I’ve personally found comfort in is thinking strategically about what we can do to keep this from happening again. So if anyone else finds strength in that, I want to hold space for that. Here’s a place for us to talk about gun control and its complicated intersection with race. Family only.

Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26. Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32. Amanda Alvear, 25. Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49. Akyra Murray, 18. Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24. Kimberly Morris, 37. All killed in the Orlando Pulse shooting.

Scientific Research vs. the National Rifle Association of America

My original thought here was to provide a list of scientific studies relating to the efficacy of gun control (this column is about science, after all). As it turns out, however, there really aren’t that many. As a direct result of NRA lobbying, public safety research into guns has been overwhelmingly suppressed for the past 20 years.

According to Scientific American,

The problems began when investigators funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that having a gun in the home tripled the chance that a family member would get shot. Outraged that reality was not falling into line with presuppositions, then representative Jay Dickey of Arkansas added language to federal law in 1996 that barred the CDC from conducting research that might be used “to advocate or promote gun control.” This deliberately vague wording, coupled with a campaign of harassment of researchers, effectively halted federally funded gun safety research.

Dickey’s amendment also stripped $2.6 million from the agency’s 1997 funding — the exact amount that the CDC had spent on a fledgling gun violence research effort the previous year. In 2013, Congress extended the law to prevent the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from researching guns. President Obama responded by issuing a presidential memorandum to the CDC to do studies on gun violence, advising that it did not break with federal requirements. The CDC resisted, concerned that Congress would punish them anyway by taking future funding away. Though they have since released studies on the topic, the NRA’s political clout and history of researcher harassment has truly made conducting gun-related scientific research an uphill battle.

It should also be noted here that research around gun control is largely based on theoretical models and case studies. For obvious reasons, scientists are unable to design experiments where human lives are knowingly put at risk. This doesn’t mean that all research conclusions about gun violence and gun control are invalid; just that there are limitations due to the subject nature, and that it can be difficult to identify significant results that would have broad applicability.

The Effect Of White Supremacy

Although we’re now beginning to see scientific research trickle out of federally funded organizations, one thing to keep in mind as new information becomes available is the inextricable link between gun control and anti-Black racism throughout American history. Scientific research can never be truly politically neutral so long as there are human beings involved, and I find this is particularly true when unconscious racial bias is involved. Some of the earliest gun control measures in this country were used to restrict Black access to guns, and as recently as the late ’60s, white conservatives supported gun control as a method of keeping civil rights groups such as the Black Panthers in check. Today, although people of all races are allowed to carry guns, there’s still a pernicious racial double standard at play. When a white person carries a gun, our cultural narrative frames them as motivated by zeal for personal defense and individual rights. They’re eccentric, perhaps, but an accepted part of our democracy. In contrast, when a Black person carries a gun, our cultural narrative frames them as criminally motivated, usually linked to a gang. They’re seen as aggressive, imminently dangerous, and an overall threat to society. People of all races have internalized this story, to devastating and lethal effect.

I mention this context not to imply that gun control is a racist concept — I don’t think it is, particularly in light of the fact that gun violence disproportionately harms Black and Latinx people — but because I want us to interrogate the ways in which white supremacy has informed our thinking. If we allow gun violence to continue blighting communities of color, we have failed. But if we enact gun control measures that aid the police state in criminalizing Black and brown bodies, we have also failed. Taking into consideration who in our community bears the brunt of anti-LGBT violence, we need to be particularly conscious of this as we collectively strategize and move forward.

Gun Control Strategies

Though strategies around gun control abound, there are three major categories of restrictions: dangerous uses, dangerous users, and dangerous guns. Let’s break them down.

Via Shutterstock.

Dangerous Uses

What is this?

“Dangerous use” controls seek to limit the times and locations where guns are allowable. Examples include laws prohibiting concealed weapons, or bans on guns in airports, schools, churches, courthouses, or across state lines.

What does science say?

Not much! There’s a tiny bit of research on concealed weapons (most of which says “it seems like there may be other factors at play” and “we need more research”), but I wasn’t actually able to locate a solid scientific paper relevant to the other types of laws. If anyone finds one, please list it in the comments and I’ll update this so we can discuss.

Okay, what else?

Logically, it makes sense to me that we wouldn’t want to allow guns in some spaces — there are countless people feeling upset and desperate in courthouses, for example, which becomes a serious safety issue if guns are present. But is this the most efficient way to lower murder rates? I’m skeptical. Not opposed, necessarily, but skeptical. I wish someone would do a good study on this.

Via Shutterstock.

Dangerous Users

What is this?

“Dangerous user” controls seek to limit which people are allowed to have guns. This includes items such as minimum legal age requirements for handgun purchases, and background checks that ban people from buying or owning guns if they’ve been convicted of any felony or a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence; been subject to a final domestic violence restraining order; been a fugitive from justice; been involuntarily committed to a mental institution; or been addicted to or arrested for having controlled substances.

What does science say?

• A study released last year found that a 1995 Connecticut law requiring gun buyers to get background check-contingent permits was associated with a 40% decline in gun homicides over the next decade. There was no evidence of a reduction in non-gun homicides.
• On the other end of the spectrum, a study of Missouri’s 2007 repeal on its permit-to-purchase law found a 23% associated increase in gun homicides, again with no increase in non-gun homicide rates. Annual murder rates went up by 16%. (Note, however, that a stand your ground law enacted in 2007 may have affected the results.)
• In a study tracing nearly 6000 authorized purchasers of handguns in California from 1977-1992, it was shown that men with two or more prior convictions for misdemeanor violence were 15 times as likely as those with no criminal history to be charged with the most violent crimes (murder or non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, or aggravated assault).

Okay, what else?

A common argument against background checks is that the creation of a national gun registry will constitute an unacceptable invasion of privacy. Such a registry does not exist, and in fact, federal law already bans the creation of such a thing. Currently, there is only one gun tracing facility in the whole country, and the way they store gun sales records is extremely low-tech.

A more legitimate concern, I think, is that background checks do not lead to race-neutral outcomes. Black people are incarcerated at particularly disproportionate rates, and are thus less likely to pass a background check. Do we accept that overpoliced Black communities should have a more difficult time accessing guns than white communities? In the long run, does this manage to prevent deaths or benefit communities of color in other ways? Would a greater benefit be achievable by funding programs to directly address urban gun violence? I don’t know the answer here, but I do know that POC need to be major players in the policy creation and decision-making process.

It should also be noted that at least half of people committing gun crimes do not meet any of the prohibiting conditions under federal law. While the evidence clearly shows this category to be effective at preventing some gun deaths, it’s a long way from solving the problem entirely.

Dangerous Guns

What is this?

“Dangerous gun” controls seek to limit overly powerful gun technology. For example, banning automatic weapons or ammunition feeding devices that hold 10+ rounds of ammunition. Efforts to implement “smart guns” would also fall under this category.

What does science say?

• In a government study following the 1994 federal ban on certain semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines, it was found that the share of gun crimes involving automatic weapons declined by 17% to 72%. This decline was offset, however, by increased use of other guns with large capacity magazines. We can postulate that results would have been better, had the law been less easily and legally circumvented, but alas. That’s not what was actually done. So for now, there’s no clear evidence that this works.
• Studies that include more recent data have come to the same conclusion.

Okay, what else?

Individual gun ownership is often talked about in terms of freedom — the idea being that guns serve as the ultimate guarantee of liberty, therefore stronger guns are even stronger protectors of freedom. Here’s an editorial breaking down why that doesn’t make logical sense.

Also, there’s been a lot of discussion recently about banning AR-15s, the semiautomatic assault rifle that the shooter was initially reported to have used in the Orlando Pulse shooting. This turns out to be incorrect (he used a different type of assault rifle), but it’s still fucking horrible. Experts suggest that legislation focusing on banning all large capacity ammunition magazines would have a bigger impact than restrictions based around specific gun models. Again, however, this particular fix would not be impactful in addressing day-in-day-out urban gun violence (mostly carried out with handguns), which accounts for the majority of gun-related deaths (mostly young Black and Latinx people). But it could have an impact on deaths from mass shootings, and that’s also important.

Via Shutterstock.

What’s next?

While any given gun control law is bound to have a weakness in some area, on the whole, restricting access to guns results in fewer gun-related deaths. Multiple studies have shown that more guns = more homicide. In a 2013 study published in PLOS ONE, Dominik Wodarz and Natalia Komarova showed the effect of gun availability. “The key insight [of the study] is that there are essentially two perfect worlds, one in which no one owns a gun (meaning no one is able to attack) and one in which everyone owns a gun (meaning no one is willing to attack),” another researcher wrote in praise of their work. “In between, we get the worst of both worlds because some criminals have guns and they choose to use them. This means that the effect of gun availability is crucially dependent on where we sit between these two worlds.” I don’t know about you, but my takeaway from this is that any approach resulting in decreased gun availability will save lives. We just need to determine which methods are both effective and acceptable. For everyone.

Perhaps more importantly, though, we need to address homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and racism. Gun control is a good first step in decreasing the number of deaths in our community. It doesn’t stop people from wanting to kill us, though, and for people with intersectional oppressed identities — such as the clubgoers at Pulse on Latino night last weekend — it may not be enough.

I’m sad about what happened and what’s happening. I don’t have the answers. I’d really love to hear your perspective in the comments.

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

Notes From A Queer Engineer Recommends “Lab Girl”

Header by Rory Midhani
Feature image by Shutterstock

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren is one of the most exquisite pieces of science writing I’ve ever read. Published April 5, the memoir quickly established itself on the New York Times’ Bestseller List, and rightfully so. As a researcher and professor of geobiology for the past 20 years, Jahren has earned accolades for her work investigating how living and fossil organisms are chemically linked to the global environment. She’s dedicated her life to learning about plants, and she speaks about them with a stunning, awe-inspiring passion.

From chapter seven:

The leaves of the world comprise countless billion elaborations of a single, simple machine designed for one job only — a job upon which hinges humankind. Leaves make sugar. Plants are the only things in the universe that can make sugar out of nonliving inorganic matter. All the sugar you have ever eaten was first made within a leaf. Without a constant supply of glucose to your brain, you will die. Period. Under duress, your liver can make glucose out of protein or fat — but that protein or fat was originally constructed from a plant sugar within some other animal. It’s inescapable: at this very moment, within the synapses of your brain, leaves are fueling thoughts of leaves.

A leaf is a platter of pigment strung with vascular lace. Veins bring water from the soil to the leaf, where it is torn apart using light. The energy produced from this tearing apart of water is what glues sugars together after they are fixed from the air. A second set of veins transports the sugary sap out of the leaf, down to the roots, where it is sorted and packaged for either immediate use or longer-term storage.

Whether you personally care about plants or not, you have to admit that woman sure can write about them. Her sentences are jam-packed with information, but it’s done with such elegance and parsimony you just want to luxuriate in them as long as possible. (The audio book is great for this, by the way. Jahren has a reading voice like a rocking chair: rhythmic, slow, a little creaky, a lot comforting.) The book isn’t “about” the author being a woman, but it’s certainly affected her experiences as a scientist, in big and small ways. The same holds true of her writing. Dude scientists don’t often compare willow trees to fairy tale characters, or leaf parts to decorative fabric. I’m so happy Jahren did.

Of course, not everyone has been thrilled. Lab Girl’s unique style has been criticized for being overly anthropomorphic. Jahren responds brilliantly:

Jahren says that her intent in writing this book was to reach “somebody else,” “somebody new.” Like me, she has complicated feelings about the push to get more women in STEM. “Every time that we tell people they need to be something different, we’re also telling them that what they are isn’t enough. …We have to believe that our girls are worth something regardless of what they grow into,” Jahren explained on the first stop of her book tour. Even so, she openly promotes the idea that scientists should make their work more easily accessible — which, in turn, will attract a broader range of people to the field.

Here’s Jahren with Big Think:

One of the themes I really loved in this book was chosen family. Though the novel starts with childhood memories of repairing equipment in the lab with her father and working in the garden in with her mother, her parents make few appearances after Jahren leaves her hometown. Instead, Jahren talks of “surrogate parents” Cal and Linda; her academic mentor, “Uncle” Ed; and Bill, the lab manager Jahren has built her career with, who she lovingly refers to as her “twin.” Their friendship is at the heart of this book, and in the epilogue, Jahren even asks readers to plant a tree and carve Bill’s name on it. “My name is carved into a bunch of our lab equipment, so why shouldn’t Bill’s name be carved into a bunch of trees?” writes Jahren.

Lab Girl is available now, starting at $13.99. 

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

Gorillas In The Mist: Rwandan Gorillas Discovered Lesbianing With Each Other

Researchers in the Rwandan section of the Virunga mountain range in central Africa have recently published the results of a two-year study of female wild mountain gorillas that presents some very surprising findings:

It’s true: a team of researchers led by Dr. Cyril Grueter of the University of Western Australia observed female gorillas engaging in a wide range of lesbian sex acts. Homosexuality has been widely reported in male primates, but significantly fewer studies have been dedicated to females (typical). Although lesbian gorilla activity is not entirely unheard of, this is the first time data on the subject has been officially published and available for analysis. Over a two-year period, 18 of the 22 female gorillas observed by the team performed sexual acts with other females. These sexual acts included “genital rubbing,” “genital closeness,” “mating calls during intercourse,” “arguing at brunch,” “listening to Tegan and Sara records,” “adopting cats” and of course the age-old classic, “making out for male attention.”

Dr. Grueter reports that he believes female gorillas engaged in sexual acts with each other primarily as a response to male rejection, but also as a response to sexual excitement after witnessing other gorillas having sex and/or to attract males. Apparently, about a quarter of the encounters Grueter witnessed involved at least one lady-gorilla that had engaged in heterosexual sex either the day before or after. This observation led him to conclude that same-sex attraction in gorillas probably had nothing to do with sexuality (just like human women!).

“Our main conclusion is that it’s purely sexual behaviour,” Grueter told the Daily Mail Australia. “They can easily shift from preference; It’s not necessarily that they have same-sex orientation.” While the study found that female gorilla sexuality (like female human sexuality) is more “flexible” than that of males, it also repeatedly determined that such activity was mainly as a response to frustration about the lack of interested heterosexual mates. Astonishingly, Dr. Grueter is not the same guy who interviewed Cara Delevingne for Vogue.

Male gorillas were also spotted having strong opinions about the lesbians in their midst. While some male gorillas seemed indifferent to the hotbed of lesbian activity taking place, other dominant males would aggressively interrupt. The male gorillas were often observed asking the two ladies if they’d like some company, if they’d be willing to let him watch, which one of them was “the man,” or how they knew they were gay; maybe they just hadn’t met the right dominant male yet? Possibly due to this invasion of privacy, the study reports that “…there was also a tendency for such copulations to take place in secluded places with dense vegetation.”

CLOSER I AM TO FIIIIIIIIINE: The first ever photo of gorillas having lesbian sex. Photo via University of Western Australia

While the results of this study are very exciting, they also raise some important questions. Is sexual attraction the same for primates as it is for humans, or is Dr. Grueter right and the whole thing has been a ploy for male attention? Why did lesbian gorilla sex have to be discovered by a white guy with a goatee? Is this why they never found a mate for Koko? If there are any female gorillas reading this, we would appreciate some answers.

Notes From A Queer Engineer: STEM Link Roundup

Header by Rory Midhani

Hello lightning bugs! I moved all my belongings a couple hundred miles this past weekend, started a new job two days ago, and have been generally chaos muppeting around my new life. But don’t worry! I didn’t forget about you! Because this week I also collected a particularly excellent batch of stories for your reading enjoyment. Here they are.

Do Make Say Think

+ “Why did Ms.[Ridhi] Tariyal see a possibility that had eluded so many engineers before her? You might say she has an unfair advantage: her gender [as a cis woman].” The Tampon of The Future.

+ Well this is just the best: 77 women scientists are heading to Antarctica in the “Homeward Bound” expedition to study climate change, and Dr. Danielle Medek is knitting one penguin to represent and profile each.

+ @AcademicBatgirl is an academic superhero in two places where gender is a big deal: the Ivory Tower and the jungles of social media.

+ This Artist Paints With Bacteria, And It’s Strangely Beautiful.

Via Huffington Post.

Can’t Hold Us Down

+ If we really want an ideas boom, we need more women at the top tiers of science.

+ The Only Girl at Her Science Camp.

+ “One guy, who meant well, told us that women just need to be patient. Well, yes, there’s a pipeline issue, but we found that there are also big issues with recruiting practices and retention. There’s unconscious bias; there’s blatant bias and harassment. If you’re not looking at all these things, you’re not going to solve the problem.” – Two super smart women talk about solving Silicon Valley’s gender problem.

+ The 13 Best Value STEM Colleges For Women.

+ Reporting harassment at MIT: One student’s call for greater support. Ugh what a broken system.

+ Do you like TED talks? Perhaps you’d like to revisit this one by Reshma Saujani: Teach girls bravery, not perfection.

+ A Science Mum’s 10 tips for dealing with work and parental leave.

Portraits of women mathematicians around the world. Via European Women in Mathematics, 2013.

Say My Name, Say My Name

+ NASA’s Female Pioneers: Rocket Women From History You Should Know

+ World-renowned architect Dame Zaha Hadid died early Thursday morning in Miami of a heart attack while hospitalized for bronchitis. Here’s a Slate review of her most groundbreaking work.

+ 3 Women Scientists Whose Discoveries Were Credited to Men

+ A spiritual successor to Aaron Swartz is angering publishers all over again; meet accused hacker and copyright infringer Alexandra Elbakyan. (How do you all feel about her opinions on ethics/capitalism? I keep going back and forth!)

+ Nettie Stevens: Sex chromosomes and sexism.

+ Growing up in Mongolia’s Gobi desert, Tserennadmid (Nadia) Mijiddorj knew from a young age that she wanted to become a snow leopard conservationist. So she did it!

https://twitter.com/suzie_birch/status/715961936123289601

Geekery Grab Bag

+ Who would win in a fight: Marie Curie or Charles Darwin? Sofía The Biologist Apprentice investigates by playing Science Kombat.

+ Conversations With A Theoretical Astrophysicist: Making Gravitational Waves. Badass! Inspiring! Really real and relatable!

+ Physicist Dr. Athene Donald on L’Oreal/UNESCO’s recently launched Manifesto For Women in Science.

+ What happens when an NAACP leader becomes a climate activist? Some really cool stuff.

+ And lastly, I think you’re really gonna enjoy this, I certainly did:

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

5 Cooking Tips From A Former Kitchen Gadget Engineer

Header by Rory Midhani
Feature image by Shutterstock

I woke up this morning to the sound of scraping. With my eyes closed, it sounded like an army of children going to town with shovels in a giant sandbox. When I looked out the window, of course, that wasn’t what was happening. Officially, it’s spring, but outside, a fluffy blanket of snow covers the sidewalk, grass, and early crocuses. 

To avoid the depressing sight of frozen flowers, my girlfriend and I spent the day indoors, playing Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and making pulled pork taco meat in the crock pot. I love cooking with her — but as we’re both learning, working for four and a half years at a kitchen gadget company has left me with some strong opinions about proper cooking prep. (Thank goodness she’s patient.)

At my last job, I was the main person in charge of compliance and product testing, helping engineers work through a variety of quality-related issues. I learned a lot of interesting things about materials science. I also got to spend lots of time around people who are really, really into cooking and kitchen gadgetry. Here are five tips I picked up.

1. Don’t measure wet ingredients using dry measuring cups (or vice versa)

Left: Wet measuring cup. Right: Dry measuring cup. Images via OXO.com.

The most accurate way to measure dry ingredients is by weight. But if you’re too lazy or indifferent to break out the kitchen scale (I usually am!), you should at least use the right tools for the job. Volumetric accuracy is extremely difficult to achieve otherwise. Serious Eats explains:

Wet ingredients, such as milk, water, eggs (if you’re measuring eggs by volume) or oils can technically be measured in both wet or dry measures—one dry measuring cup of milk should weigh exactly the same as one wet measuring cup of milk. However, a dry measuring cup must be filled to the brim for accuracy, which can make measuring liquids in them impractical. Likewise, dry ingredients can be measured in a liquid measure, but it is very difficult to accurately level dry ingredients without a straight brim to aid you.

2. Rotate your knife along X, Y and Z planes for maximum onion chopping efficiency

This method can be a little intimidating the first few times you do it, but it’s super satisfying once you get the hang of it. It’s also the method taught at the Institute of Culinary Education, New York City’s oldest chef training school.

3. Pay attention to how you’re storing produce to keep it fresher longer

Scientifically, there are three main factors that cause produce to rot:

• ethylene gas which causes overripening,
• improper airflow which allows moisture to build up,
• and uncontrolled humidity which causes wilting.

There are a variety of consumer products you can buy to address these issues, either individually or in combination. My approach has generally been to make smaller, more frequent trips to the grocery, so that I don’t have to think about it. But when I do need to hold onto something for a while, this guide at The Kitchn has pretty good advice on the best ways to store food!

Left: cantaloupe, grapes, zucchini, lemons, berries and cherries are happier with less humidity. Right: herbs, ginger, green beans, radishes and corn are happier with more humidity. Images via Shutterstock.

4. Always cover pots when you’re trying to boil liquid

It’s quicker. America’s Test Kitchen explains:

In theory, water in a covered pot should boil faster because as water changes to steam, it absorbs energy, which it carries away from the pot as it vaporizes. In a closed pot, most of the steam is trapped so it condenses (or turns back to water) on the lid and releases its captive energy inside the pot.

They did a small experiment to verify — which you can easily replicate at home — and it’s true.

Via Shutterstock.

5. Mise en place your ingredients before cooking

Mise en place is the system used in most professional kitchens, meaning to “put in place” and organize all the ingredients you need before cooking. This includes dicing veggies, measuring out ingredients, and lining up any cooking equipment you’re going to need. Using this method streamlines your process and eliminates unnecessary scrambling when, say, you have a béchamel going and you realize that you’ve run out of flour.

Writes NPR:

Practiced at its highest level, mise-en-place says that time is precious. Resources are precious. Space is precious. Your self-respect and the respect of others are precious. Use them wisely. Isn’t that a philosophy for our time?

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

Nergis Mavalvala and Five Exceptional Stories Of Women In STEM

Header by Rory Midhani

Earlier this month, the LIGO lab announced that for the first time ever, scientists have directly observed gravitational waves, or the ripples in the fabric of spacetime that arrive to earth following cataclysmic events in the distant universe. The detection confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos, as gravitational waves carry with them information about their cataclysmic origins, as well as invaluable clues to the nature of gravity itself. Super cool stuff! And even cooler is that the researchers, Nergis Mavalvala, is a queer woman of color!

Here’s Mavalvala:

In a 2012 profile in Science that has been making the rounds recently, Mavalvala explains how she got into quantum optomechanics and came out at work. Since then she’s won the NOGLSTP LGBTQ+ 2014 Scientist of the Year Award (thanks for the tip, Nicole!), and, of course, seen her work at LIGO come to fruition. I’ve really loved reading about her, so this week, I wanted to round up a few other stories about exceptional women in STEM.

Nergis Mavalvala (1968-present). Photo via Courtesy of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

1. Nergis Mavalvala, Physicist

Mavalvala and her collaborators are fashioning an ultrasensitive telescope designed to catch a glimpse of gravitational waves. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of these ripples in spacetime nearly a century ago, but they haven’t been observed directly yet. Theoretically a consequence of violent cosmic events—the collisions of black holes, the explosive deaths of stars, or even the big bang—gravitational waves could provide a brand new lens for studying the universe.

Science: “Gravitational Wave Researcher Succeeds By Being Herself”

Katherine G. Johnson (1918 – present). Photograph via MAKERS.

2. Katherine G. Johnson, Mathematician

In this MAKERS interview, Katherine G. Johnson talks about her early affinity for mathematics, a college professor who noticed her gift and pushed her to pursue advanced math courses and how she eventually became a NASA mathematician who calculated, among many other computations, the trajectory for the space flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space; John Glenn, the first American to orbit earth; and Apollo 11, the first human mission to the moon.

MAKERS: Katherine G. Johnson

Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997). Photograph by Smithsonian Institution.

3. Chien-Shiung Wu, Physicist

Contrary to public perception, a fair number of women — many hundreds, certainly, and possibly thousands — were involved in the technical reaches of the Manhattan Project. They were chemists, technicians, doctors, mathematicians, and more. But Wu was one of the very few women who contributed at the highest levels of physics research for this critical war effort. Aside from her earlier help on Fermi’s plutonium problem, Wu’s work dealt mainly with the enrichment of uranium, the conversion of that element’s most abundant isotope, 238U, which is not fissionable, into the much rarer 235U, which is. In addition, she made major improvements to the Geiger counter, a device that any student of high school physics will recognize today as a common radiation detector.

Scientific American: “Chien-Shiung Wu, Courageous Hero of Physics”

Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker (1901-1957). Photograph by Bygone Collection, Alamy.

4. Kathleen Mary Drew-Baker, Phycologist

Drew-Baker did her groundbreaking research as an unpaid research fellow. She was fired from her teaching position at the University of Manchester when she married in 1928. Her husband helped build a tidal tank in her (unfunded) laboratory, and Drew-Baker collected her specimens in old jam jars. In Japan, she’s known as the Mother of the Sea, and the island nation celebrates her birthday each year on November 6.

National Geographic: “Like Sushi? Thank a Female Phycologist for Saving Seaweed”

Emmy Noether (1882 -1935). Photo via New York Times, SPL/Photo Researchers.

5. Emmy Noether, Mathematician

Albert Einstein called her the most “significant” and “creative” female mathematician of all time, and others of her contemporaries were inclined to drop the modification by sex. She invented a theorem that united with magisterial concision two conceptual pillars of physics: symmetry in nature and the universal laws of conservation. Some consider Noether’s theorem, as it is now called, as important as Einstein’s theory of relativity; it undergirds much of today’s vanguard research in physics, including the hunt for the almighty Higgs boson.

New York Times: “The Mighty Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of”

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

How Road Salt And Environmental Racism Caused A Crisis In Flint

Header by Rory Midhani

As you’ve no doubt read by now, a state of emergency has been declared in Flint, Michigan, for unsafe levels of lead in the city’s drinking water. The health hazard followed an April 2014 change in the city’s water supply. Under the direction of a state-appointed emergency manager (of which Flint had four between 2011-2015!), Flint switched from Detroit’s water system (which pumps water out of Lake Huron) to Flint’s own treatment plant (which draws water from the Flint River). Though the city has since switched back to their original source, the emergency continues to worsen, with recent reports linking an outbreak of Legionnaires disease with poor water quality. Members of the National Guard are now traveling door to door handing out bottled water, home filters and lead testing kits.

According to census data analyzed by the Detroit Free Press, somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,657 children under the age of six have been exposed to lead as a result of Flint’s water issues. Although lead exposure is bad news for people of every age, it’s particularly devastating for young children. The World Health Organization explains:

Lead affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.

…Yeah. Terrible.

Reading all this, I couldn’t help but wonder: how in the world did all that lead get into Flint’s water in the first place? More importantly: why? Let’s explore.

A map previously used during protests against Flint’s water quality hangs in the home of area resident Tony Palladeno Jr., 53, on Monday, May 18, 2015 in Flint. Palladeno has been regularly active at protests as well as City Council meetings. Brittany Greeson via MLive.com.

From Roadways to the River

Michigan, like many states in the Northeast and Midwest United States, is a heavy user of rock salt during the winter months to de-ice roads. While salt water has been applied to prevent public roads from freezing since at least Victorian times, the practice was first applied to modern pavement in New Hampshire in 1938. Within three years, industrial spreaders were being used for dry surface salting and gritting with a total of 5,000 tons of salt being spread on highways nationwide. Today, it’s estimated that upwards of 22 million tons of salt are scattered on US roads annually.

The reason road salt works to de-ice roads is pretty simple. Sodium chloride — or NaCl, the ionic compound that makes up both table salt and pure road salt — is very soluble in water. When it dissolves, it breaks apart into two distinct ions (Na+ and Cl-). These particles disrupt water’s ability to form crystalline ice, lowering the freezing point in proportion to the number of ions floating around. This keeps going until the salt concentration hits about 25%, at which point the freezing temperature of the solution cannot go any lower. Different ionic compounds can be used (calcium chloride is a popular choice when it’s too cold out for sodium chloride to do its thing effectively!), but rock salt has proven cheap and readily available. While this is great for improving driving conditions, it’s unfortunately not so great for the environment.

Rock salt is loaded at a facility near Detroit, Michigan; the city has its own rock salt mine. PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL SANCYA, AP. Via National Geographic.

When salt is on the road, birds often mistake the crystals for seeds or grit, resulting in toxicosis and death. Deer are also attracted to roads to eat the salt crystals, leading to higher incidents of vehicular accidents and wildlife kills. As warmer temperatures arrive and snow begins to melt, salt splashes and sprays off to the side of the road, entering the soil. Through ion exchange, sodium (Na+) stays within the soil and releases other ions such as Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg), and Potassium (K) into the groundwater, damaging foliage. Runoff washes down storm drains and into reservoirs, endangering sensitive aquatic communities and reducing species diversity.

Although road salt pollution is usually a bigger issue for the surrounding environment and (non-human) organisms that live in it, it can become a real problem for human beings when it comes up against our infrastructure. Chloride (Cl-) from dissolved salt accelerates corrosion, eating away at bridges, power line utilities and parking garage structures — or in the case of Flint, the plumbing that carries their drinking water.

Via NorthJersey.com.

The Corrosive Effects of Chloride

As salt-laden runoff enters a freshwater body, the higher density solution settles to the bottom, usually in areas where current velocities are low. It sits there impeding turnover and mixing, preventing the dissolved oxygen at the top from going down, and nutrients at the bottom from going up. Unless human activity disturbs it, the salt generally accumulates and persists. Only dilution reduces its concentration.

Unsurprisingly, we’ve seen lots of build up over the past several decades, with chloride concentrations in northern US states approximately doubling from 1990 to 2011. Michigan is known to be particularly salty, with high levels of chloride in streams near urban areas. When Flint switched their water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River, they suddenly found themselves facing eight times the amount of chloride. Almost immediately, residents began to notice a change in the look, smell and taste of their tap water.

Flint Water Study lab samples. Left, iron pipe corrosion study: Pieces of iron were put in water samples from Flint and Detroit. A higher release of iron was evident in the Flint water. Right, copper pipe corrosion study: Even with the addition of rust inhibitor, Flint water visibly leached lead (the white suspended particles) from copper pipe + lead solder. Detroit water remained clear.

The most noticeable change was the color — now an  “icky brown” that some residents believed to be sewage. In fact, the color came from iron in the pipes, which were now being rapidly eaten away by the corrosive water. Less noticeably, lead was also being released from a variety of sources: pure lead service pipes (many city-owned), pipes with lead solder (which was legal and the standard until 1986), galvanized iron pipes (which often contain lead), and brass plumbing devices containing lead (which were standard until January 2014). The subsequent amounts of lead measured in Flint’s drinking water were frighteningly high.

Via MLive.

A Health Hazard Dangerously Mishandled

Although Flint is not the only city to face this problem, its handling of the situation is the worst in United States history. Full stop. When Washington, D.C. faced a similar drinking water crisis in 2004, they were able to address the issue by treating their water with orthophosphate, a corrosion inhibitor. This and other corrosion inhibitors work by increasing the pH (aka. decreasing the acidity) of the water and forming a film to coat the inside of the pipes so that they corrode less quickly and leach less lead. Although the Detroit water was treated with corrosion inhibitor, inexplicably, Flint chose not to pursue this when they switched sources. Discontinuing the use of corrosion inhibitors allowed toxic scale build-up to flow freely into people’s homes. Though the city has since switched back to Detroit water, the EPA warns that health hazards remain.

As the situation now stands, so much damage has been done to the Flint water distribution system that it may not even be possible to meet Federal standards via chemical water treatment alone. Certainly the harm already inflicted on Flint residents cannot be undone at this point.

Ariana Hawk, 25, a pregnant mother of two, said her 2-year-old son has rashes on his face and body from exposure to the contaminated water. Via NBC News.

I think what disturbs me the most about this situation is the cavalier, belittling attitudes government officials have displayed throughout this entire process. Though they were aware of resident complaints as early as July 2015, it took until January 5, 2016 for a state of emergency to be declared. For months, government officials gave assurances to the public that their water was safe — meanwhile ignoring very compelling evidence from a variety of sources that showed otherwise. A couple highlights:

• In September 2015, when Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha — who is MPH program director for the pediatric residency at the Hurley Children’s Hospital at Hurley Medical Center, a professor at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, and sits on the Michigan Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics — went public with findings of elevated blood-lead levels among Flint children, the state swiftly dismissed her research, with a spokesman appearing on national news to characterize her work as “unfortunate,” “irresponsible”  and “near hysteria.” (She was, of course, entirely correct, and the state had data confirming it.)
• In October 2015, a leaked memo from a US Environmental Protection Agency official explained how Michigan’s process for lead testing in Flint’s water delivered artificially low results. “It is clear from several, now available documents, that certain MDEQ and EPA staff chose to put their reputations ahead of the safety and health of Flint citizens,” said Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich. (That’s good that they’re taking at least some ownership. But why was this information only revealed when a document leaked?)

Though there’s certainly national media attention on Flint now, it’s hard to imagine the situation getting this out of hand in a whiter, wealthier community. Things ain’t how they should be.

Protestors march along Saginaw Street demanding clean water outside of Flint City Hall in Flint, Mich. on Wednesday Oct. 7, 2015. Via Christian Randolph, MLive.com.

An Opportunity for Justice

Shocking as this particular case may be, environmental disparities and uneven enforcement of environmental law is commonplace in the United States. Residents of Flint (57% Black; 41.5% living below the poverty level) know this firsthand. Beyond the city’s history of poorly handled water issues, Flint has faced environmental issues and apparent government indifference for decades, particularly following the collapse of the auto industry. In 1994, for example, environmental justice activists filed a complaint with the EPA to block construction of a biomass plant, arguing that low-income African Americans have already suffered enough from the concentration of pollution and poverty in the northeast quarter. The EPA noted the request on its list of civil rights complaints, but has yet to respond, even after repeated follow up requests from filers. Meanwhile, the biomass plant has been running for 20 years, burning wasted wood, pellets and old houses.

Writing about a case of environmental racism in Alabama, Ebony recently explained:

In accordance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is responsible for guarding against discriminatory practices or outcomes among EPA funding recipients. But strangely enough out of 298 complaints filed across 22 years, the OCR has never made a finding of discrimination. In fact, more than half of the complaints never lead to investigations at all and were instead rejected for various reasons.

Very suspect. Reportedly, there are changes in the works, but why has it taken this long? When the government agency specifically tasked with protecting these communities is allowed to behave this way for two uninterrupted decades, what does that say about our priorities?

Although access to clean drinking water is a widely agreed upon, globally recognized human right, the residents of Flint haven’t had a reliable public water supply in place for close to two years. While this manmade disaster was most likely the result of penny-pinching, face-saving and generally poor decision making rather than intentional racism, it certainly fits the larger pattern in this country where people of color disproportionately face social and ecological burdens. Centuries of discriminatory and oppressive policies have pushed Black people into cities with poor infrastructure and environmental hazards, with particularly disproportionate exposure to lead. What’s we’re seeing in Flint right now are the appalling effects of institutional racism unfolding. Right now. Real time.

How do we stop it? And for harm already inflicted, what kind of reparations, if any, can be made?

A bridge over the Flint River. Via Shutterstock.

Additional Resources

• Flint Water Study – Scientific explanations about what’s going on in Flint, compiled by researchers at Virginia Tech.
• How to help Flint, Michigan – The Rachel Maddow Show is keeping an updated list.
• What’s On Tap? Grading Drinking Water in U.S. Cities  – The Natural Resources Defense Council’s comprehensive overview of tap water distribution in the United States.
• EPA: Your Drinking Water – Actionable information about how to improve your own water situation, including information on tap water filters and bottled water. There’s also a tool to look up federally required annual drinking water quality reports; however, you can often get better results just by plugging “[your city name] water quality report” into Google.
• Environmental Justice, Denied – A series by the Center for Public Integrity on environmental problems that disproportionately affect communities of color.

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

How To Blow Up A Planet And Other Highly Scientific “Star Wars” Theories

Header by Rory Midhani

Feature image by Shutterstock

I loved the new Star Wars film. Absolutely loved it. Sure, some people found the nostalgia pandering slightly annoying. (It personally didn’t bother me.) And yeah, okay, The Force Awakens was full of standard issue J.J. Abrams plot holes. (For example: Why was supposed sanitation worker FN-2187 suddenly given a blaster and sent into battle? Why didn’t Leia ever check R2D2 for Luke’s whereabouts? How did Resistance forces not notice that giant structure being built to harness the power of the sun and blow up planets?) But you guys. You guys! A female action hero protagonist!

Via Buzzfeed.

Female military leaders and advisors!

Via Cult Of Mac.

Adorable genderless robots!

Via Hitfix.

This movie wasn’t perfect by any means, but I sincerely adored it. Sitting in the dark with a bunch of strangers and watching multiple female X-wing pilots wander around Resistance hangers and do their thing in battle was beyond satisfying (especially knowing the history!). Captain Phasma didn’t get much screentime, but I kind of loved that she only appeared in heavy, salvaged chromium Stormtrooper armor; it gives me Samus Aran feelings. And Maz Kanata, just… did that really happen? I think I’m in love with a 1,000-year-old space pirate.

I’ve been reading quite a few fan theories and Poe/Finn pairings recently, but I won’t subject you to that (unless you want to talk in out in the comments, in which case, hello). Instead, I wanted to share with you some top notch nerd speculation on the science of Star Wars.

1. Neil deGrasse Tyson: How to Blow Up A Planet (Star Talk)

Related: Neil deGrasse Tyson explains what Star Wars gets right about science (Tech Insider). It’s not very much. But that’s not really the point.

2. How BB-8 Works

I love that these people built a whole website on the topic and took the time to 3D model BB-8 inside an X-Wing. Such dedication! Here’s a sample:

The first thing we have learnt from this patent is that there is a concept in robotics called holonomic motion. Ground-based holonomic robots are those who can instantaneously move in any direction on the horizontal plane. That makes them incredibly responsive. Both the Sphero and our little guy BB-8 are holonomic robots.

3. How Fast is the Millennium Falcon? A Thought Experiment. (Tor)

Lots of math to back up their analysis here!

This is where my attempt to deduce how fast the Falcon is runs into the barrier between fiction and reality, even though I’m already talking about a theoretical concept within a piece of fiction. George Lucas obviously didn’t have any underlying factual worldbuilding worked out when he wrote A New Hope and it’s clear that it was never his intent to do so. He wanted to tell a story about spiritual forces, empires and rebellions, daring fighter pilots, and hero’s journeys. Everything that could possibly call for a measured explanation, like a lightsaber, a space station the size of a moon, or the speed of the Millennium Falcon, was thought up in service of the spectacle of the Star Wars epic. The only explanation behind having Han establish “.5 past light speed” as the Falcon’s speed is that it makes Han sound cool. “.5″ is an arbitrary number and doesn’t signify a scale or speed.

4. Why Kylo Ren’s Lightsaber Works (Nerdist)

Related: Are Lightsabers Possible? (Gizmodo)

5. An Analysis of Blaster Fire in Star Wars (Wired)

Rhett Allain actually did a whole series on Star Wars science for Wired, but this blaster fire analysis one is my favorite. He also says that the physics doesn’t make a lot of sense (and it’s okay).

First, let me comment on the ground base’s blaster shots. The average for these things is just 34.9 m/s (78 mph). This is in the ballpark of a baseball pitch. Compare this to the speed of a Nerf gun bullet at about 10 m/s. This means two things:

• A Jedi deflecting blaster bolts with a lightsaber is about the same as a baseball player hitting a pitched ball.

• Playing with Nerf guns and plastic lightsabers in the backyard isn’t too terribly different than the movie.

6. Darth Vader: The Six-Million-Dollar Sith (Scientific American)

This article is actually an excerpt from The Science of Star Wars: An Astrophysicist’s Independent Examination of Space Travel, Aliens, Planets, and Robots as Portrayed in the Star Wars Films and Books by Jeanne Cavelos. It came out before the atrocities that were Episodes I-III, which is why he doesn’t have all the details on how Vader fell into that lava pit. I kind of wish I didn’t have all the details either, but here we are.

Quadriplegics who suffer from a similar problem use a ventilator attached through a hole in the neck to the trachea. This means air enters and leaves the body below the vocal cords, never passing over them. In a more sophisticated design, a speaking valve can be incorporated into the tube, which allows air through the tube into the lungs, but prevents air from leaving by the same path. Vader may have a similar ventilation device. This would explain why his breathing seems independent of his speech. A person’s voice with such a system can often be weak. Thus to project a commanding presence, Vader would need his voice augmented somehow.

I’m undecided whether The Force Awakens is enough to make up for I-III. Tentative yes? I guess it depends on whether they follow through on what has been set up so far.

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

Homosexuals and Heterosexuals Exist, Says Groundbreaking Study

A few weeks back, the same researcher who claimed in 2005 that 0% of men are bisexual released a new study which claimed that 0% of women are heterosexual. It was a bogus conclusion on a few levels. This week, another study about the classification of sexual orientation published in Psychological Science has been making the rounds and was written up on Quartz under the headline “Sexuality may not in fact be a continuous spectrum.”

Alyssa L. Norris and David K. Marcus of Washington State University and and Bradley A. Green of the University of Southern Mississippi analyzed data gathered from 34,643 Americans in 2004-2005 for Wave 2 of the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. They determined that although women show more sexual fluidity than men, “sexual orientation is not a matter of degree but rather of distinct and meaningful categories.” In other words: heterosexuality remains a very popular affiliation, homosexuality is definitely a thing, and, according to Quartz, “bisexual people, among Americans at least, are relatively rare.” (That last bit isn’t true and wasn’t said anywhere in the study, but we’ll talk about that later!)

This study was really hard for a girl who dropped her double major in Sociology in order to graduate on time to make sense of. It does seem that this analysis was equating “sexual fluidity” with “bisexuality,” though? So keep that in mind going forward.

I should credit our resident scientist Laura Mandanas as a co-author of this article since I took up at least two hours of her life yesterday asking her for help but I don’t want her to be held liable for any mistakes I make in this analysis, so!

On that note of personal confidence, let’s dig in!

What was the point of this study?

These psychologists noticed that there was no consensus on whether or not the “latent structure” of sexual orientation is “dimensional (“ranging quantitatively along a spectrum”) or taxonic (“categories of individuals with distinct orientations.”). This has implications on several areas of practice for psychologists. I guess they feel that it’s important to their work to understand the degree to which sexuality is genetically pre-determined OR the result of a combination of factors (one of which could be genetic) coming together or surpassing a certain yield in a “tipping-point model.” Furthermore, these classifications have implications on how psychologists understand the relationship between sexual orientation and substance abuse and psychiatric disorders. They also wanted to figure out if their own model of determining sexual orientation, which considered several factors — not just self-identification — into account, lined up with this data. (It did.)

Ultimately, I’m not altogether sure that this study was intended to be interpreted and discussed by the press so much as it had implications within the field of psychology.

How solid was the data they were working with?

As aforementioned, this data came from a 2004-2005 survey focused on alcohol and drug use, which also asked demographic questions, including some about sexual orientation and behavior. The interviews were conducted face-to-face using direct questions and flashcards. These are the sexual orientation related questions:

• Which category on the card best describes your feelings? 1) only attracted to females, 2) mostly attracted to females, 3) equally attracted to females and males, 4) mostly attracted to males, 5) only attracted to males.
  
• In your entire life, have you had sex with only males, only females, both males and  females, or have you never had sex? 1) only males, 2) only females, 3) both males and females, 4) never had sex.
• Which of the categories on the card best describes you? 1) heterosexual (straight), 2) gay or lesbian, 3) bisexual, 4) not sure

This is how that panned out:

First, you’re probably noticing that the number of humans reporting being lesbian, gay or bisexual are ridiculously low — this happens a lot when people try to count the gays, and you can read more about that here and here. But, as David Marcus told Quartz, there’s really no way around that — “despite this risk, it’s the only way to collect a large enough sample for taxometric analysis.” In the Marcus / Norris / Green study, the researchers also acknowledge that the lack of a “mostly heterosexual” option for sexual orientation is a limitation on analysis, but also say that that limitation was “offset by the large size of the NESARC data set.”

Also, the youngest age group surveyed, 20-24, accounts for only 7.6% of the total set, and multiple studies have found LGBTQ identification and same-sex sexual behavior being more common in younger age groups. 19.3% of the sample were over 65, 34.6% between 45-64, and 38.5% between 25-44.

The Norris Study didn’t analyze data from all 34,653 subjects. As they said in their report, they removed the responses of anybody who hadn’t answered any one of the identity, sexual behavior, or sexual attraction questions, as well as the 583 people who’d never had any sexual experience at all. In total, 1,128 people were excluded from their sample, and it’s possible, as Laura Mandanas noted on this article about gay population statistics, that among those who didn’t answer sexual orientation/behavior questions, “there’s a good chance… they didn’t answer specifically because they’re queer.”

Here’s the numbers Norris and her team used, then, for their analysis:

You’ll notice the “not sure” category no longer exists. That’s 170 people who could very well be the most sexually fluid of them all, so it’s too bad that they had to be thrown out. It’s also interesting that 2.4% of men report exclusively having had sexual activity with other men… yet only 1.8% report being gay or bisexual?

It’s important, however, for researchers to be conscious of the social/cultural climate under which this data was collected. These were face-to-face interviews, for starters, and researchers have since determined that you get much more accurate numbers about LGBT people from completely anonymous surveys. Plus, it was conducted over ten years ago, and although that’s not much time, it’s a LOT of time w/r/t acceptance of LGBTQ folks in America as well as public discourse around things like bisexuality. Honestly, I’m not even sure what I would’ve said had I been interviewed about my sexual orientation in 2004 — since I’d never had a girlfriend at that point, I probably would’ve said I was straight, even though I’d hooked up with girls and knew I liked them. I had nobody to talk to about my identity and therefore lacked the confidence to articulate it.

Furthermore, by the time respondents were asked abut their sexual orientation and behavior, they’d just sat through a significant number of questions about alcohol and drug use, health and family history. It’s possible that respondents were less likely to report what society considers to be deviant sexual behavior after, say, disclosing unflattering information about their mental health and drug/alcohol use — especially if you’re a parent or want to be one, as queers have historically had to oversell ourselves to prove we’re capable of raising children.

So, although the analysis of the interconnected nature of these numbers is relevant to the researchers’ aims, for us, drawing any real conclusions about the size of the LGBQ population based on these numbers would be a stretch. Like, for example, Quartz saying that “bisexual people, among Americans at least, are relatively rare.” In fact, pretty much every other study conducted in the 2010s had bisexuality showing up as more prevalent than homosexuality — a 2011 Williams Institute study found that among those who identify as LGB, bisexuals compromise a slight majority (1.8% vs. 1.7%). National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys conducted from 2003-2010 found 2.3% identifying as bisexual and 1.5% as homosexual. The General Social Survey found 2.2% bisexual and 1.5% gay or lesbian in 2012, and 2.6% bisexual and 1.7% gay or lesbian in 2014. A 2014 survey of 2,314 millennials found 4% bisexual, 2% gay, 1% lesbian and 3% refusing to identify.

What Did The Researchers Conclude?

The researchers were looking for the relationship between attraction, identity and behavior. They found that for men, experiencing same-sex attraction correlated with how they identified, but not necessarily for women.

The researchers determined that it is valid to categorize people as homosexual or homosexual. Turns out that when people say “I’m homosexual,” they’re telling the truth. Anyhow, this is in opposition to Kinsey, who felt very few people ranked definitively on either end of the spectrum, or people like Dr. Chris Donaghue, who told Mashable, “I hope to see more people identifying as fluid both in sexuality and gender, because most of us are.”

Welp.

I think what confused me most about this research was that based on my own entirely anecdotal and completely non-scientific methods largely consisting of “engaging with the female LGBT community intensely for six years and hearing everybody’s story,” I thought we already knew the answer: lots of people are straight, many people are gay or lesbian, and many people are not gay or straight. And, for many LGBTQ people — but not all — there is a genetic factor, and that genetic factor can be the singular determinant of orientation, or just one of many factors that go into one’s sexual orientation. (personally, I see myself as “bisexual by birth, lesbian by choice.”) There you go! All done! YOU’RE WELCOME, SCIENCE.

No but really, Lisa Diamond, the most outspoken scientist on the subject of sexual fluidity, doesn’t claim that everybody’s sexuality is fluid: “There are gay people who are very fixedly gay and there are gay people who are more fluid, meaning they can experience attractions that run outside of their orientation. Likewise for heterosexuals. Fluidity is the capacity to experience attractions that run counter to your overall orientation.”

Maybe all these contradictory studies show that there will never be a complete, specific picture of how sexual desire, attraction and behavior interact, or how fluid or rigid it is. I’m profoundly uncomfortable with studies that do claim to prove one or the other — that sexual orientation is always fixed or always fluid. The “always fluid” model, which is usually discussed specifically in the context of women, suggests that all women are capable of having a romantic and sexually compatible relationship with a man, which gives power to the Ex-Gay Conversion Camps, to reparative therapy, to “praying away the gay,” to forced marriages and, in the worst cases, to corrective rape. It’s also a belief that encourages straight guys to aggressively pursue women who’ve made their non-interest in men apparent, or for families to view their child’s same-sex relationship as something they can “fix.” Meanwhile, believing all sexuality to be fixed is a massive act of erasure.

Sometimes, in a rush to expand our collective minds and promote inclusivity, massive generalizations like “all sexuality is fluid” are made, usually by very well-intentioned people. It’s important that sexual fluidity be understood and de-stigmatized. But we should be able to recognize, discuss and embrace  people with spectrum-based sexualities and life histories without needing to claim that all people identify that way… and vice-versa.

Sexual fluidity is a thing and so is bisexuality. So is homosexuality. So is heterosexuality. All of these things can co-exist and be recognized without one needing to describe everybody, and your particular gender identity and sexual orientation don’t need to be universal in order to be valid.

In conclusion, don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

Notes From A Queer Engineer: The Science Mixtape

Header by Rory Midhani
Feature image via Shutterstock

Hello, my nerdy android brethren! I come to you today bearing a gift for your ear holes: a mixtape of science-related songs. Because I love you. And we both/all love science.

This mixtape is best enjoyed in the range of 20 – 20,000 Hz.

The Ballad of Marie Curie – Army of Lovers
Bunsen Burner (The Hit Mix) – John Otway
She Blinded Me With Science – Thomas Dolby
Butterfly Song – Have Fun Teaching
Entropy – M.C. Hawking
Scientist – The Dandy Warhols
Space Oddity – Kendra Morris
Radium Girls – Pat Burtis
Galileo – Indigo Girls
I’m Your Moon – Jonathan Coulton
What Is a Shooting Star? – They Might Be Giants
Clever Girl – The Doubleclicks
Chemistry – Kimya Dawson
Female Of The Species – Space
We Are All Made Of Stars – Moby
Onward to the Edge – Symphony of Science

Want to suggest a playlist theme? Hit Stef up and someone on the team might make it for you.

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

Nourish Your Brains With This STEM News Roundup

Header by Rory Midhani,

Hello tiny lasers! This week I’ve compiled some STEM news to nourish your brains.

Lady Scientists

+ NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan Discusses Space Science, Her Career.

+ Marine Ecologist Jess Melbourne-Thomas has co-founded the Homeward Bound Project to elevate the role of women in the fight against climate change.

+ My Black & STEM Playlist (Or, more on thriving as a URM student in physics and astronomy) by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Being a Black person in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) means being part of a revolution. It’s not revolutionary because we are becoming scientists for the first time. Black people have always been scientists, but here in the post-colonial world, we are not fairly included and represented in the mainstream STEM community. So this is a revolution because we are reclaiming our rightful place in the story of part of what makes humans a sometimes lovely species, our love for and curiosity about how everything inside the cosmos works.

+ Research Hydrologist Dr. Rita Winkler credits Star Trek with giving her the science bug.

+ Nobel prize winning scientist Elizabeth Blackburn is the spokesperson for the L’Oréal Foundation’s recently unveiled #ChangeTheNumbers campaign, a digital device to help change attitudes and change the preconceptions regarding women in science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=90&v=b8xuidzZVq4

+ Bioarchaeologist Kristina Killgrove wants to tell you how to print your own 3D replicas of homo naledi and other hominin fossils.

+ Meet a traveller: Mireya Mayor, primatologist and world explorer.

+ Spotlight on a Young Scientist: Anika Cheerla. This 13-year old scientist is just solving Alzheimers, nbd. What have you done this morning?

Nerdy News Items

+ Two Seattle girls launched a balloon to the edge of space this weekend, and have the video to prove it. I really love this video.

+ You all saw the news about Ahmed Mohamed being arrested for bringing a clock to school, right? In case you missed it, here’s Rachel’s summary, and here’s another thing I think you should read about it, too: “They Never Thought He Had A Bomb”: Racist Narratives.

+ Teen Arrested For Science Experiment Now Heading to Space Camp. This is an old, but in a similar case a couple years ago, all charges were dropped against 16-year-old Florida student Kiera Wilmot and she got to go to space camp.

+ More than half of Australian universities and medical research institutions have signed up for the Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE) pilot, which rates organizations based on their gender equity policies and practices. Go Australia!

+ Related: what it’s like to be a woman working in science, and how to make it better.

+ In ‘Photograph 51,’ Nicole Kidman Is a Steely DNA Scientist. I’m sorry that this review is lurid garbage in the way it talks about Kidman’s physical appearance, but I want everyone to know about this play on Rosalind Franklin! (‘Cause I want it to come to Broadway so I can see it.)

+ Here’s an interesting discussion about an earlier production of that play to make up for it: Rosalind Franklin and DNA: How wronged was she?

+ Citizen scientist collective Galaxy Zoo has partered with the Illustris project, one of the largest and most detailed simulations of the Universe. Galaxy Zoo added two new image sets on Monday, with absolutely gorgeous results.

A large-scale projection through the Illustris volume at redshift z=0, centered on a massive cluster. The left side of the image shows the density of dark matter, while the right side shows the density of the gas in cosmic baryons. Image and text via the Illustris project.

Do Make Say Think

+ Software engineer/Autostraddle intern Chloe says “everyone who thinks about software and diversity should read or watch this.” Everybody Hurts: Content for Kindness by Sara Wachter-Boettcher.

That language is actually part of the problem. When you define something as an edge case, you’re saying it’s something that you don’t have to care about it. You’re allowing it to be a fringe concern. You’re relegating it to the corners, to the margins.

Instead of calling things an edge case, we’ve decided we want to call them a stress case. We want to bring them right to the center and say, stress cases are what we want to focus on. Stress cases are showing us where the weaknesses in our work are. They’re putting stress on something so you can see the fractures, and do something about them.

+ Also from Chloe: why we need to stop car crash ‘women in tech’ panels and actually break the glass ceiling.

+ Here some companies working hard to get more girls into STEM. For example, Google launched « Made with Code ».

+ Miss Vermont’s talent in the Miss America pageant this year was science! The contestant, Alayna Westcom, is 24 and has a degree in forensics.

+ You don’t have Impostor Syndrome (And neither do I anymore) by Alicia Liu. You guys! This was a really good article! The mentors that I’ve respected the most in my workplace are the ones who’ve admitted that they don’t know everything. It’s not as common as it should be.

+ Scientists Have a Responsibility to Engage (Op-Ed) by Gretchen Goldman.

The idea that scientists shouldn’t have a voice in policy discussions is naïve — and concerning. Scientists, like all citizens, have the right to engage in policy discussions, and they have a right to express their opinions, political or otherwise. I’ve seen what can happen when scientists are silenced, and that situation certainly doesn’t provide us with better policy outcomes.

+ Julia Belluz at Vox says: Science is often flawed. It’s time we embraced that.

+ Interesting response to the above by Sarah Boon at Canadian Science Publishing: Is Science Broken?

+ I thought this was a really lovely piece of writing. Maybe you will too. The Age of Loneliness by Meera Subramanian.

+ The LGBT STEMinar will be held at the University of Sheffield (UK) on January 15. Attendance is free, and registration is currently open.

+ Here’s a scholarship opportunity for undergraduate women in STEM in the US.

The More You Know

+ Burgers on breasts – what is really going on here?

Recently, a series of advertisements came into the public consequence. These images depict women breastfeeding, with one breast painted to look like a hamburger, doughnut, or can of soda. … Many mothers have expressed concern about the message: your baby is what you eat. But is it true? Well, the best answer is “somewhat – but not really”, at least as a far as breast milk is concerned.

+ Signe Dean blogged about science every day for a year. The project ended in August 2014, but the archives are pretty neat!

+ How 3D holograms work by Physics Girl:

+ What happens when you get your period in space?

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

5 Data Visualization Projects You’re Gonna Dig

Header by Rory Midhani, Feature image by Dear Data

Last week, last.fm — the semi social network that tracks user’s music listening activity — relaunched its website and minorly inconvenienced my mid-afternoon. I’ve been an active member since 2006 and find the service to be deeply soothing to my inner data nerd. Through their automated “charts” feature, I could immediately see, for example, exactly how many times I listened to “Living Room” by Tegan and Sara on repeat in September 2006. (Now, that data will never tell me why I then included the stalker-y lesbian tune on a much agonized over mix cd for the boy I wanted to date, but hey. To fully plumb the depths of my heart requires more than a single bar graph.) Anyway, that and many of the third party tools using last.fm’s API are currently broken, and I’m full of regret that a) I didn’t finish making my “Songs I loved in 2011” playlist, and b) I didn’t take advantage of the many interesting data visualization tools that used to work.

Here’s one called LastGraph. It shows the artists I listed to from October 2009 to January 7. The Amelie soundtrack was big, then lots of John Mayer, then Ingrid Michaelson, then Ke$ha.

Supposedly last.fm’s full functionality will be restored at some point, but I’m not holding my breath. I have, however, been looking for alternate services and generally perusing the web for nifty data visualizations. Here are a few I’ve been digging on lately.

1. Equaldex

Full disclosure: I went to college with the guy that made this tool and I think he’s brilliant.

Equaldex is a collaborative knowledge base aiming to “crowdsource every law related to LGBT rights to provide a comprehensive and global view of the LGBT rights movement.” It tracks the status of various legal protections around the world, giving you a color coded map for easy browsing. We talked about it when it launched last year.

The data is largely presented as is, without overt editorialization beyond the initial choice of which metrics to include. So I’m going to editorialize a bit here by suggesting that you look at all the tabs (because they tell different stories), and keep historical context in mind when drawing conclusions. As Helen has written, “It is important to defend human rights and to speak out against human rights violations around the world. However, the West, in its attempts to endorse freedom across the globe, has invoked — once again — the White Savior trope that ignores and erases any Western culpability in anti-LGBTQ policies that occur in other parts of the world, especially in the Afro-Diaspora. To talk about anti-gay legislation internationally, we need to talk about a history of white supremacy that brought homophobia and anti-LGBTQ legislation to various countries.”

2. Dear Data

Data from week 28: Giorgia and Stefanie smile at strangers.

This project is the coolest thing! Dear Data is a year-long, analog data drawing project created by two penpals: Stefanie Posavec, an American living in London; and Giorgia Lupi, an Italian living in New York. Each week they pick a theme and track data in their lives relating to that theme. They then create visual representations on postcards and exchange them via snail mail.

I love the postcards they make, but the words they write to explain them on the internet are absolutely gorgeous too. For the most recent entry (Week 37: A week of swearing), Stefanie wrote,

I am a lover of words, and this means I am definitely a lover of swear words. I love the hard cracking sounds a swear word makes in my mouth, and how they have a particular physicality as you say them, shattering the air like a hammer. So, as I’m sure you can imagine, I was incredibly-excited for this week of data-gathering to commence. This week of swearing wasn’t meant to be performative, but I may have made it more of a performative week because I used this excuse of data-gathering as free reign to swear whenever and wherever I wanted, savouring every time a swear word left my mouth.

So lovely!

3. Google Trends: Election 2016

It’s presidential election season in the United States, meaning political news reaches new heights of loathsome ridiculousness on a daily basis. I watched the first GOP debate at a queer-ish bar where we played BINGO using cards designed, I presume, to lightheartedly highlight the absurdity of what was unfolding before our eyes. I won a box of Red Hots that night, but I’d gladly turn it back in if I could give the American political machine some scrap of its dignity back.

Regardless, I’ve greatly enjoyed watching what the internet at large is Googling about the candidates. At the time I wrote this article, the burning questions on everyone’s mind include the height of each of the candidates, “Is Rand Paul Ron Paul’s son?” and “Will Hillary go to jail?” (Yes and no, respectively.)

4. New York Times: Mapping Segregation

Each dot color represents a different racial group.

Did half a dozen people send this to you already? Just me? Well in case you haven’t seen it yet, this New York Times visualization accompanied a July 8 article about the Obama administration’s stricter rules against segregation in housing, and it does a fantastic job of highlighting the issue.

Racial segregation is (still) such a real thing. Seven weeks ago I was looking for a new place to live in NYC, and I came up against this issue in seemingly every neighborhood I looked at – most strikingly in Bed-Stuy, where I watched 30 white cops arrest a Black man in front of his own home for trespassing, no doubt the result of a new neighborhood transplant calling in. Much as I want to attribute this to New York City being the headquarters of human grimness and malfeasance, a look at the data shows that this is not the case. It’s awful everywhere.

5. Washington Post: The mathematically proven winning strategy for 14 of the most popular games

This graphic by Seth Kadish of Vizual Statistix shows you where to hang out and not to hang out while moonlighting as Pac-Man.

This Washington Post article on how to win at games was written in May, but I just found it now.  It includes Battleship, chess, coin tosses, Connect Four, Diplomacy, Jeopardy, Monopoly, Pac-Man, The Price is Right, rock-paper-scissors, Scrabble, Texas hold ’em, tic-tac-toe, and general tips for winning in Vegas.

My favorite is the tic-tac-toe entry, by Randall Munroe of xkcd. The amount of time and effort it took to make this is immediately apparent by the level of detail that the graphic goes into. It’s super nerdy. (And yes, I mean that as a compliment of the highest order.)

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

5 Ways To Tenderize Tough Meats (With Science!)

feature image via shutterstock

It’s almost Autostraddle’s own Babe-B-Q weekend! We’ll be hanging out with each other August 15 and 16 to grill up a storm, and everyone’s invited! We’ll also be guiding you through the process of grilling up said storm and getting prepared for the big event all week. You can view all Babe-B-Q posts here.

As a person whose dental adventures seemingly never come to an end, I’ve developed a real soft place in my heart for soft foods. So for today’s topic, I thought we’d talk about how to soften up other tough muscles! With science! Get pumped.

What makes you so tough, huh?

Okay, first things first, I’m the realest. But um, first things second, all meat consists of muscle, connective tissue, and fat. Most of what you see are bundles of protein fibers, which provide structure and (when we put it in our mouth) a chewy toughness. These proteins can be divided into three general categories:

• myofibrillar proteins, which enable muscles to contract
• stromal proteins, which provide structure to connective tissues, including tendons, and
• sarcoplasmic proteins (e.g., blood).

When it comes to texture, the most important are myofibrillar proteins, which account for about ⅔ of the proteins found in mammals. Within these, Cooking for Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food explains: “Myosin and actin are the most important from a culinary texture perspective. If you take only one thing away from this section, let it be this: denatured myosin = yummy; denatured actin = yucky. Dry, overcooked meats aren’t tough because of lack of water inside the meat; they’re tough because on a microscopic level, the actin proteins have denatured and squeezed out liquid in the muscle fibers.”

Within each muscle fiber are strands of myofibrils. These long cylindrical structures appear striped due to strands of tiny myofilaments, which have two types of protein: actin (thin myofilaments) and myosin (thick myofilaments). Via Penn Medicine.

Also important to meat texture are the stromal proteins — namely, collagen. For many cuts of meat, collagen mainly shows up as discrete pieces, such as tendons or silverskin. These can simply be cut away before cooking. In other cuts of meat, however, collagen forms a tough 3D network through the muscle tissue. This is most effectively removed through long, slow cooking methods which convert the collagen into gelatin.

The tricky thing about all this is that the more you cook muscle, the more the proteins firm up and dry out; yet the more you cook connective tissue, the more it soft and tender it gets. Through empirical research, food scientists have determined that there’s a sweet spot for the internal meat temperature between 140-153F/60-67C, where myosin and collagen will denature but actin will remain in its native form. There’s a lot more to be said about the chemistry of cooking meat, but for now we’re going to focus on the food prep stage.

There are five things people commonly use to tenderize meat during food prep: acidic marinades, proteolytic enzymes, brines, dry rubs, and mechanical tenderization tools.

Acidic Marinades

Marinades have been used since Renaissance times to slow spoilage and provide flavor. When the acids in the marinade come in contact with the meat, they denature the protein bonds, uncoiling the actin and myosin filaments. The electromagnetic properties also disrupt collagen’s helical structure, untwisting the strands and chopping up the “backbone” of the structure through hydrolysis. Unfortunately, the effect is actually quite limited, as it only works when there’s direct contact. Marinades penetrate slowly, and no matter how long you let it sit, they tend not to go any more than ⅛ of an inch in.

Among professional chefs, you’ll often see marinades used as more of a surface treatment on thick cuts. To increase the tenderizing effects, they’ll sometimes put gashes in the meat or inject marinade inside, allowing the acid to come into direct contact with more surface area. Alternatively, one could also stick exclusively to thin cuts of meat, like the skirt steak Chef Susan Feniger uses in this recipe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEkK08GPAnY

Brines

A brine is a liquid with 3-6% salt by weight. Meats are typically immersed in brines for anywhere from a few hours to a few days before being cooked, with the effect of making the final product much juicier than it otherwise would have been.

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen describes the scientific reason:

Brining has two initial effects. First, salt disrupts the structure of the muscle filaments. A 3% salt solution (2 tbsp per quart) dissolves parts of the protein structure that supports the contracting filament, and a 5.5% solution (4 tbsp per quart) partly dissolves the filaments themselves. Second, the interactions of salt and proteins result in a greater water-holding capacity in the muscle cells, which then absorb water from the brine. (The inward movement of salt and water and disruptions of the muscle filaments into the meat also increase its absorption of aromatic molecules from any herbs and spices in the brine.) The meat’s weight increases by 10% or more. When cooked, the meat still loses around 20% of its weight in moisture, but this loss is counterbalanced by the brine absorbed, so the moisture loss is effectively cut in half. In addition, the dissolved protein filaments can’t coagulate into normally dense aggregates, so the cooked meat seems more tender.

The downside to this, of course, is that soaking in brine naturally makes the meat much saltier. To mask this effect, many cooks add other flavors such as sugar, spices and vegetables. Chef Anne Burrell demonstrates how to make one such “brinerade” below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLwa1oYfOjY

Dry Rubs

The acids and/or salts in dry rubs work in the same manner as marinades and brines; they just have less penetrating power. (Duh.)

Really I included this method because I wanted to show you this video of Chef Elizabeth Falkner making pork chops:

That hair, you guys. And that outfit. Hot fire. (Also she seems like a very capable woman who is extremely knowledgeable about her profession and stuff. So, right on.)

Sugar is sometimes used in dry rubs to balance saltiness and help the meat brown better by creating a caramelized crust on the outermost portion of the meat. Flavor-wise, this translates to deliciously strong smoky and charred flavors. Or when applied in different stages, cooks sometimes also use dry rubs in combination with other tenderizing practices, as Chef Tiffani Faison demonstrates here:

Proteolytic Enzymes

As far back as pre-Columbian Mexico, cooks found that wrapping meats in papaya leaves before cooking had a tenderizing effect. The reason: papayas contain an active enzyme known as papain, which digests protein! A number of other plants have proteolytic enzymes as well, including pineapple (containing bromelain), ginger (zingibain), fig (ficin), kiwi (actinidin), and certain types of fungi.

Awesome as this is, however, direct contact is once again required for the effect to take place. Proteolytic enzymes penetrate only a few millimeters per day, so it’s usually not advisable to leave the meat immersed for a long period of time. (Unless the cook purposely wants the outside surface to become mealy while the inside remains unaffected. But um, yuck.) Although the enzymes act slowly at refrigerator or room temperature, they can go up to five times faster when heated between 140-160F/60-70C. Some slaughterhouses actually inject papain to the animals right before slaughtering, with the idea that the injected enzyme will be carried through the bloodstream to all parts of the animal and later become activated by the cooking process. This sometimes results in inexplicably mushy meat. For the individual cook, a much better bet is to apply enzyme somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes before firing up the grill.

Although tenderizing via proteolytic enzyme meat tenderization is currently less common in the United States, the practice is well-known in many other cultures. For example, papaya marinades are used in Lao cuisine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPI8jLsUi3U

Interestingly, the more familiar American practice of “dry aging” steak works in exactly the same way; it just allows the enzymes naturally present in the meat to do their thing, rather than a cook artificially adding new ones. Dry aging also alters the flavor of the meat, making it taste gamier — so proceed with caution if that’s not what you’re into. Dry aged retail cuts are typically 5-7 days old, but some restaurants use meat aged 14-21 days.

Mechanical Tenderization Tools

There are two schools of thought when it comes to mechanical tenderization:

1. Attacking meat with a series of sharp, pointy things to cut through tough meat fibers
   

   OXO Good Grips Bladed Meat Tenderizer in action. Via Whiskey Bacon.

2. Breaking the fibers down by beating the heck out of meat with a hammer-like tool or other hefty object
   

   Via Food Wishes via dish.allrecipes.com.

There’s no chemical change to the meat during this process, so in some people’s opinions, this qualifies less as “tenderizing” and more as “masking toughness.” You can achieve a similar effect by slicing meat against the grain after cooking.

Via BroBible.com. (HA!)

Happy grilling!

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of one month 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

We Went to the Moon; Why Can’t We Make A Baby from Two Eggs Yet?

Feature image via enggul

I don’t really like generalizing about queer women — we’re all different, we’re like rainbow snowflakes, some of us have never even seen The L Word. But I will make an exception for this statement: get a bunch of us in a room for long enough and we will start talking about whether two cisgender women will ever be able to produce a biological child together. (Corroboration available from my roommate, who, when informed of my article topic, shouted “my friends at Smith discussed this at least once a week!”)

There are many, many ways to start a family, and queer women take great advantage of nearly all of them. A 2013 survey by the Williams Institute estimates that 24% of female couples are raising adopted, step, or biological children. But smushing your genome with your special someone’s is a dream so universal it’s become a cliché. That you will attempt to try it goes pretty much unquestioned in mainstream society, unless you run into a hitch. And — even as queer couples inch closer to that mainstream — choosing to start a family with someone who has the same sort of gametes as you is still a big hitch.

SHE’S GOT MY HAIR AND YOUR EYES!

After another of these will-we-won’t-we conversations, this one with a couple of lovebirds whose kids would have truly incredible hair, I started to wonder why that hitch is so big. After all, we’ve done crazier things. In 2000, researchers used in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnosis to engineer the birth of Adam Nash so that his umbilical cord blood could save the life of his sister Molly, who was born with severe Fanconi anemia. About a hundred children worldwide have three biological parents, thanks to a technique that combines an egg and a sperm with cytoplasm from a second egg, and thus allows women with mitochondrial defects to bear children who are genetically (mostly) theirs. If we can do these things, how hard can it be to combine a couple of eggs?

The more I sniff around, the more the answer seems to be “easier than the state of things suggests” — especially because every five years or so, someone gets close. In 2001, it was a group of researchers at Melbourne’s Monash University, led by Dr. Orly Lacham-Kaplan. Lacham-Kaplan’s team developed a chemical technique that, she explains, “trains” a somatic cell to “become like a sperm when inside an egg.” This “training” consists of a series of chemical steps that induce one set of the somatic cell’s chromosomes to leave the egg, effectively turning it into a germ cell that then fertilizes that egg. Voila: instant embryo.

ORLY LACHAM-KAPLAN AT HER MICROSCOPE IN 2005 (VIA THE MELBOURNE LEADER)

Success in mouse models led to publication, which inspired reporters everywhere from BBC News to the Telegraph to write articles with headlines like “How To Make Babies Without a Man” and second opinions from concerned bioethicists. According to Lacham-Kaplan, this, in turn, led to “a lot of downfall” for her research: her funding was not renewed, and her work was widely criticized. She gave up on follow-up tests she had designed to work out the technique’s kinks, and diverted her resources to less controversial problems. Eventually, she left research altogether.

“When I presented my findings [in 2001] I was very hopeful,” Lacham-Kaplan told me. “I thought that if I had the financial support and the team, I could reach conclusive results by 2005-2006. I honestly believed in my technology… scientific obstacles would have been there, but I think we could have overcome them.” (Other researchers agreed, calling her work “genuinely revolutionary” and including it in a textbook chapter of “Actual Achievements” in gamete cell derivation.) “But obviously I was proven wrong in one way, because nobody was ready for [this research] yet.”

EXCEPT FOR THESE PROGRESSIVE MOUSE PARENTS, WHO VALUE VARIOUS GENDER EXPRESSIONS (VIA MAGW21)

It’s the fifth time during our conversation that Lacham-Kaplan has said something along the lines of “the world wasn’t ready;” when she notices this, she is reminded of her earlier work with intra-cytoplasmatic sperm injection, or ICSI. “A lot of people were against it,” she recalls. “But this procedure is used daily now in every IVF clinic.” I’m reminded, in turn, of countless such flip-flops in the history of fertility studies — when artificial insemination was first performed in 1844, the idea was so taboo the patient wasn’t even informed; when it was finally described for science 25 years later, the doctor was “strongly criticized.” Now you can have a round done on your way to work. The world is slow to prep for certain things.

But, as we’ve established, some people have been prepping for this for decades. Lacham-Kaplan knows this better than anyone — she gets emails from them daily. “People, same-sex couples mostly, approach me, coming forward to say ‘we would like to be your guinea pigs,'” she tells me. The rest of the world just has to say yes.

Notes From A Queer Engineer: Tear Gas, Tool Of The Police State

Header by Rory Midhani
Feature image via Shutterstock

117 days after Mike Brown’s murder, our justice system has declined to even indict the police officer who shot him, essentially giving a pointed shrug and eyeroll at the importance of Black lives. A killer cop walks free in Missouri while thousands of protesters across the country face arrest. That’s where we are today.

As Cleo has written,

Ferguson, or more accurately the social media timeline of Ferguson, blew apart the idea of living in a “post racial” America. Before the police could even send out a coroner, the residents of Mike’s neighborhood were posting to Twitter and Vine what they were seeing and hearing. When the cops showed up and started firing tear gas into peaceful crowds, the protesters were streaming video to YouTube. For maybe the first time in the history of racial violence, the victims could speak their truth without words and in real-time. They gave America, but specifically White America, the chance to bear witness to the reality of being Black and not dying silently. Within 24 hours the story had gone viral and mainstream news crews made plans to head out if the violence continued, which of course it did.

The images of violence coming out of Ferguson have been disturbing. Sickening. Rage inducing. But not — at least for me — surprising. After all, this is how our racist police state works.

Images of Ferguson with text from a letter released by Michael Brown’s family. Via Paper Townsy Tumblr.

Although there have been several high profile calls for peace, it seems as though government officials in Missouri have taken every opportunity to set the stage for violence. A week before the non-indictment, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon enacted a pre-emptive 30-day state of emergency, calling in a vast, militarized police force to a community in the middle of processing their grief over previous traumatic police action. Vague rules of engagement were released, with no clear open line of communication with which protestors could negotiate during demonstrations. The official announcement of the grand jury decision was made at 8 p.m., at a time when tensions were very high and people were likely to be in the street. When protests broke out, the Ferguson police failed to use de-escalation techniques, instead attempting to disperse all public gatherings. The police were tear gassing crowds within an hour.

Speakeasy member Ashley Targaryan wrote about her experiences in nearby St. Louis that Monday,

They fired tear gas at the building, forcing those outside to run in and filling the inside of the building with fumes. We tried to run out the back door but another group of cops were there and fired more tear gas at us. A lot of folks fled to the basement and the medics immediately sprang into action. Let me tell you, those people were amazing. They were crucial in keeping people calm after we were gassed. I have asthma so I had been inside for much of trapping because I didn’t want to risk having my asthma triggered by being gassed for being outdoors. Who knew they would fire at the building? I didn’t have my inhaler but luckily one of the medics brought me one and encouraged me to sit when my body kept twitching and shaking. For a half an hour the police kept us trapped in the building by using teargas any time we opened the doors and arresting those who dared to try to leave. Almost exactly half an hour in they agreed to let us leave in mass without gassing us or arresting us if we walked out calmly and in the opposite direction of Grand. From 11:30 PM until 1:30 AM we had been trapped and now we were free to go. We decided that it was fitting to walk out with our hands up.

This was relatively calm compared to what was going down just twenty minutes away in Ferguson.

For many, these protests in solidarity with Mike Brown and the people of Ferguson have been their first exposure to tear gas. While I in no way want to distract from the important conversations going on about anti-Black racism in America, I think it’s also pertinent for us to deconstruct some of the tools and techniques being used by the police to maintain control. So today we’re going to talk about tear gas.

The now-iconic photo of Edward Crawford throwing back a tear gas container after tactical officers worked to break up a group of bystanders. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com. Via STLToday.

Tear Gas: The Basics

“Tear gas” refers to a family of chemical agents that stimulate the corneal nerves in the eyes to cause tearing. Chemicals of this type are classified as “lacrimators,” and include o-chlorobenzylidene malonitrile (commonly referred to as CS), ω-chloroacetophenone (CN or CAP), and dibenzoxazepine (CR). Each causes pain and discomfort through irritation of the skin and mucous membranes in the eye and respiratory tract. Most people tear up, sneeze and cough; others may vomit, become temporarily blind, or (rarely) experience more severe side effects. However, the severity of effects varies depending on the specific chemical mixture, the dose received, and physiology of the recipient. Long term effects are largely unknown.

Although there is evidence of lacrimatory and irritant chemicals being used as far back as ancient Greece, modern use is considered to have started during World War I. For example, the well known insecticide trichloronitromethane (also known as chloropicrin, PS, or green cross), was repurposed in trench warfare as both a harassing agent and a lethal chemical (depending on concentration). The arsenic-based vomiting agent diphenylaminochlorarsine (also known as adamsite or DM) was developed during this time for use against enemy combatants during WWI, and continued to be used against civilians after the war.

Ethyl bromoacetate (EBA) became the first “riot control” agent when it was employed by the Paris police force during a civil disturbance in 1912. Other tear gases used at this time included acrolein (Papite), bromoacetone (BA or B-stoff), bromobenzyl cyanide (BBC, CA), chloroacetone (A-stoff) and xylylbromide (T-stoff). Beyond this, a variety of lethal chemical agents were used, including chlorine, phosgene, and trichlorethyl-chloroformate.

Via The History Press.

Per the Geneva Protocol, all chemical weapons — including tear gas — have been internationally banned as a method of warfare following the end of WWI. However, in the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, many countries agreed to allow numerous banned-in-warfare chemicals for “law enforcement including domestic riot control purposes.” Because of the way tear gas is classified, it falls into a weird in-between space: the military is not allowed to use it to take down enemy combatants, yet police frequently use it to take down domestic civilians.

How Does Tear Gas Work?

Lacrimators are most often deployed in aerosol form, the scientific term for any collection of particles suspended in air. Mace — which is actually a brand name but commonly refers to CN gas mixed with additional irritants such as capsaicin, the active ingredient in peppers —  is typically carried as spray, with droplets large enough that they go only a short distance before falling out of suspension to the ground. This is because the inflammatory agent must hit someone directly in the eyes, nose or mouth to be effective, so operators need a predictable and easy-to-aim dispersal method.

In contrast, the ominous haze we usually think of as traditional tear gas is a lacrimator disseminated in fine particulate smoke form. The small size of the particles allow them to remain suspended in the air for a longer time, giving wider range. Although this form of aerosol is less predictable, it allows operators to incapacitate larger groups of people, so long as they take precautions (such as wearing gas masks) to protect themselves from the effects. In this form, CS gas is the most commonly used tear gas in the world today. It is mixed with solvents and delivered with the use of propellants.

When tear gas was first developed, the gas was delivered in a variety of forms, including pistols, grenades, candles, pens, and even billy clubs that doubled as toxic shooters. Today, it usually comes in metal canisters that fit on the end of gas guns and are fired with blank shotgun cartridges. The cartridges break open and the tear gas is released in a rapidly spreading, low lying cloud.

Tear gas being deployed against Al Jazeera journalists in Ferguson. Via Business Insider.

What To Do If You’re Exposed To Tear Gas

Before

• Avoid wearing lotions or contact lenses. They can trap tear gas chemicals close to your skin or eyes.
• Bring a hat and eye protection, as tear gas canisters often explode in the air and create hot metal shards.
• Cover exposed skin. Wear long sleeves and pants or bring layers.
• Buy a CBA/RCA (Chemical/Biological Agent-Riot Control Agent) gas mask or (less ideally) make a homemade gas mask. If neither of these options are possible, bring swim goggles and a wet bandanna for barrier protection. The objective is to avoid getting the particles in your eyes and lungs.
  • Note: it is illegal in some places, including New York City, to cover your face with items like bandannas. 
• Keep an eye on your surroundings. If you’re indoors, note the location of exits.

During

• When you hear the shot go off, look up to see which direction the canister is being fired in. Move away. Ideally, you want to get outdoors to a wide open space where the gas will quickly disperse rather than concentrate.
• Try not to breathe through your mouth in the first few moments while you’re running away. Doing so will cause you to inhale more tear gas.
• Cover up using whatever you brought with you. If you didn’t bring anything, pull your shirt up to use as a filter for your nose and mouth.
• Try not to panic. Remember: the effects of tear gas are temporary.

After

• Quickly remove the clothing you were wearing when you were exposed and seal it in a bag. Then seal that bag inside another bag. Dispose of it or wash separately to avoid getting the chemicals on any of your other clothes. This protects both you and others from secondary exposure.
• Blow air directly into irritated eyes to vaporize any dissolved CS gas, then flush. Many websites recommend using a milk or Maalox mixture to neutralize tear gas. This probably won’t hurt; however, these methods haven’t been proven in clinical trials. The most effective rinse is diphoterine, which is specially formulated to relieve chemical exposure but difficult to get ahold of. After that, water is still the rinse proven most effective.
• Rinse your skin with cold water. The reason for this is that hot water opens up your pores and may also vaporize residual particles, leading to secondary exposure. If the chemicals aren’t coming off quickly you can scrub with soap, but be aware that the high water solubility can exacerbate symptoms.
• Seek medical attention if you experience any severe or long lasting effects. If you’re helping others, try to avoid touching any contaminated areas. If you think something other than tear gas may have been used, call a poison control hotline for advice. For US regional poison control centers, the number is 1-800-222-1222.

Remember that not everyone can be on the ground during a protest and that’s okay. There are many other ways you can help.

Stay safe out there.

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of one month. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

Rebel Girls: 5 Bad Theories on Gender and Sex From Way Back When That Still Impact us Today

Header by Rory Midhani

Science isn’t always right. As queers, I think we can agree that backwards scientific and medical concepts about homosexuality, heterosexuality, transgender identities, and everything else under our umbrella have complicated our lives, and if you make it through a women’s history class without walking away with a little bit of skepticism about the “hard sciences” and what they’ve engrained into our culture, you were probably sleeping through a lot of lectures. Here’s five examples of bad science on sex and gender that have ruined our lives, even now that we know they aren’t true.

1. Victorian Theories on Sex Difference Gave Us a Norm of Domesticity

Victorian women were still pretty fuckin’ cool, though.

Victorian theorists didn’t know about sex chromosomes, so they wandered around confounded by gender difference. What resulted from their desire to explain the two sexes was a theory of dyadic energy, one in which men were active agents expending energy and women were sedentary and storing it, presumably for the winter of our discontent. Women’s anabolic nature nurtured, and men’s katabolic nature drove them to create. These ideas set up the structures for a lot of binarist and misogynist environments, where we would remain for much of time:

Such beliefs laid the groundwork for, or rather arose from, the separation of spheres for men and women. According to the model, since men only concerned themselves with fertilization, they could also spend energies in other arenas, allowing as Spencer says “the male capacity for abstract reason… along with an attachment to the idea of abstract justice…[which] was a sign of highly-evolved life.” On the other hand, woman’s heavy role in pregnancy, menstruation (considered a time of illness, debilitation, and temporary insanity), and child-rearing left very little energy left for other pursuits. As a result, women’s position in society came from biological evolution — she had to stay at home in order to conserve her energy, while the man could and needed to go out and hunt or forage.

2. “Hottentot Venus” Showed Us the Worst of Ourselves – and It’s Still Around

Saarjte Baartman was a woman of the Khoikhoi tribe in South Africa renamed the “Hottentot Venus” when she was sold to London by a doctor named Alexander Dunlop. She spent four years in Britain being exhibited like as a sideshow attraction for having different reproductive organs, body size and shape, and skin color than the women in the UK. Folks were made to gawk at Baartman, whose remains were even displayed after her death, while she wore almost nothing. Baartman’s body was characterized by her large behind and elongated labia, which were seen as “abnormal” in the view of medical doctors who perceived white European women’s bodies as the norm. She never allowed her showmen to display her genitals while she was alive, but after her death they were put in a museum. Her exhibition caused controversy, but demand for it never ceased.

The Hottentot Venus remains a root of racism and sexism and their intersection, especially in the Western world. Studies done on Baartman and other Khoi women posited their existences as “other” to a normal, ideal standard of white womanhood. The caricatures of her body live on, even today, in imagery related to women of color and black women in particular.

3. Sex Chromosomes Are Bullshit

In women’s studies, nothing is black and white and absolutely nothing is a binary. But for some scientists and theorists, the idea of sex as biologically determined persists, based mostly in the inescapable “truth” of the sex chromosomes.

For around a century, we’ve implicitly accepted that X and Y chromosomes determine, to some extent, whether we are female or male; even though feminists have published widely about the variances among folks with this genetic makeup, it’s still used as a guideline on how we categorize ourselves and our experiences. We’ve written before about why this is damaging, but another underlying impact is that it leaves no room for us to figure out what else makes us who we are. According to a Vox interview with science historian Sarah Richardson:

One might [incorrectly] presume that all of the typical traits of masculinity, including brain and behavior, would be coded for on the Y chromosome. I do think that this notion of the Y as the essence of masculinity has begun to pervade the culture — especially as we’ve moved into the more genomic age. I see it all over the place, percolating into the culture as a kind of metaphor.

…I suggest that we might want to abandon the term “sex chromosomes.” The reason is that [the term] has led us to focus our search for the biology of sex on these two chromosomes. But actually there are processes all across the genome that are critical to all the things we understand as sex — most importantly, the development of distinctive reproductive systems in males and females.

Secondly, [the term] has led us into the wormhole of thinking of the X as the “female” chromosome and the Y as the “male” chromosome. The X and Y have become little representatives of male and female at the genomic level, and that’s perpetuated a really strongly binary way of thinking about maleness and femaleness. That is both empirically wrong and has misled scientists in a number of episodes in the 20th century.

4. And So Is Pretty Much Any Study on “How Women’s Brains Are Wired”

A 2010 book by Cordelia Fine examined how neurological research was stacked against women and reported in misleading ways in order to perpetuate (surprise!) sexism. Contributing to the ongoing debate in the sciences about nature versus nurture when it comes to gender difference, she posited that blaming our brains might just be an out for when we’re too scared to blame ourselves:

We look around in our society, and we want to explain whatever state of sex inequality we have. It’s more comfortable to attribute it to some internal difference between men and women than the idea that there must be something very unjust about our society. As long as there has been brain science there have been misguided explanations and justification for sex and inequality — that women’s skulls are the wrong shape, that their brain is too small, that their head is too unspecialized. It was once very cutting-edge to put a brain on a scale, and now we have cutting-edge research that is genuinely sophisticated and exciting, but we’re still very much at the beginning of our journey of understanding of how our brain creates the mind.

When scientists claim women’s brains are bad at math or good at emotion, they’re embedding social stereotypes into their work. The problem is that it’s deeply entrenched in the field, and our lives and socialization are shaped by these theories.

5. Hysteria Made All Women “Crazy”

What sucks about hysteria is that it gave us Freud. But what rules about it is that it gave us vibrators. A lot of vibrators.

Hysteria, like so many other medical misdiagnoses for women throughout the years, was centered around their lady parts. Men were worried that exertion by (white) women — physical or mental — would dislodge their uteri, leaving them with “wandering wombs.” This is not a joke. The theories of uterine displacement that fueled the hysteria epidemic began way back when, in Ancient Greece, and were first described by Hippocrates. At its peak, hysteria was the second-most common medical problem of its time, second only to fevers. The epidemic said one thing about women and one thing only: no matter what you do, you’re probably a fucking lunatic.

The diagnosis “hysteria” could mean anything, and the treatment was to perpetuate sexist norms. Some women were too into sex; some women didn’t want it enough; some women fainted from the clothing they had to wear; some women couldn’t fall asleep; some women were nervous; some were irritable; some were delirious. In response, doctors forced women into bed rest, cutting them off from intellectual or otherwise non-feminine pursuits, and they encouraged their husbands to slap or beat them. No matter the reason for diagnosis, pelvic massage was also commonly the go-to solution for women suffering from the terrible beast of hysteria, and thus the vibrator was brought into the mainstream since 19th century doctors were fearful of, you know, doing the task themselves.

Damn straight we do

The American Psychiatric Association didn’t drop the term hysteria until the 1950s, and hysterical neurosis remained there into 1980. The impacts of the mass misdiagnosis are far-reaching: women today are still labeled “crazy,” and it’s a seemingly natural part of our gender roles. Our sexuality, too, is still pathologized.

Rebel Girls is a column about women’s studies, the feminist movement, and the historical intersections of both of them. It’s kind of like taking a class, but better – because you don’t have to wear pants. To contact your professor privately, email carmen at autostraddle dot com. Ask questions about the lesson in the comments!

Shame Game: New Study Shows Stigma Sours Trans Relationships

Feature image via Shutterstock

To say that dating a trans woman is stigmatized is kind of like saying the Grand Canyon is a ditch in Arizona — an absurd understatement. That stigma can take a pretty serious toll on our emotional health and common sense says it takes a toll on our partners and our relationships, too. In a paper published this month in the Journal of Family Psychology, researchers from several New England universities, and LGBT health research consortium The Fenway Institute, make the first preliminary confirmation that the prejudices and discrimination faced by trans women, something psychology researchers term “minority stress,” causes significant damage to not just the quality of the romantic relationships we are in, but also on the emotional well-being of our partners.

This particular study focuses on transgender women who are partnered with cisgender men in the San Francisco Bay Area. The authors interviewed 191 couples who had been together for at least three months, recruited from a variety of locations around the region. The study population was very racially diverse, with more than 80% of the participants self-identifying as a racial minority. During the interviews, each member of the couple was given a battery of standardized psychology surveys designed to put numerical values to key traits and experiences. These included things socioeconomic data (such as income, race, and HIV status), their depressive symptoms, the quality of their relationship (measured through questions like “Do you confide in your mate?” and “How often do you and your partner quarrel?), discrimination they experience (measured through questions about how often certain kinds of discrimination occurred), and the “relationship stigma” they endure (measured with questions like “How often do you feel uncomfortable going out with your partner in public?”.) The analysis of the data focused on model called “dyadic stress,” a psychological model where the stress experienced by one partner is believed to affect the emotional and psychological state of the other partner.

Overall, large portions of this sample population reported high levels of economic hardship, depressive symptoms, discrimination, and stigma, though the ranges of responses on all measures were quite wide. Not surprisingly, the researchers found a very significant correlation between the discrimination experienced and the severity of depressive symptoms reported, both in the cis and trans members of the couple, meaning that the cisgender male partners of trans women also tend to take hits to their psychological health for the harassment they receive for having a trans partner. As well, the trans women in this study tended to report poorer relationship satisfaction when they reported higher levels of perceived stigma attached to their relationship. More tellingly, however, was the so-called “dyadic” interaction on those scores. Trans women tended to report significantly lower relationship satisfaction scores when their partner indicated higher levels of perceived stigma in their relationship, and the same held true for cisgender male partners when trans women reported high levels of relationship stigma. So, as much as we’d like to think that a relationship is only about the two people in it, the way in which the world around us treats that relationship can also have a significant impact on quality and health of our relationships. The authors of this study conclude:

“…our findings point to the importance of conceptualizing health problems among transgender women within the context of intimate relationships and social contexts. The persistent prejudice and discrimination surrounding transgender individuals remains a significant societal challenge. Relationship stigma—conceptualized as the internalization of negative messages about relational affiliation with transgender individuals — may pose a particularly devastating threat to couples’ well-being.”

These results aren’t likely to be ground-shaking within the LGBT community. Similar studies have been completed on lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in recent years, with similar results, but this is first time any such research has been attempted on a transgender population. A 2006 study showed that, in gay and lesbian couples, experiencing social stigma for one’s relationship tended to lower the perceptions of the relationship quality. A 2009 study showed internalized homophobia also tended to have detrimental effects on the health of relationships among lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.

It’s important to keep in mind the limitations of this early study, as it only addresses one small subgroup of the transgender population, and trans women in relationships with cisgender women or other trans people may have widely different experiences. The authors themselves acknowledge a number of the limitations of their analysis, stating:

“Gender affirmation processes, including “passing” may moderate the relation between gender minority stressors, such as transgender discrimination and relationship stigma, and outcomes such as clinically significant depressive distress. … transgender women have diverse sexual orientations and can be attracted to males, females, and other transgender people. …this study recruited and enrolled transgender women in a relationship with a male partner, thus findings cannot be generalized to transgender women with partners who identify of other genders, or to transgender people of other gender identities (i.e., transgender men, genderqueer people).”

Perhaps one of the concerning aspects of this particular study is that it was conducted in the Bay Area, perhaps one of the most accepting areas in the US for transgender people. And yet, even there, discrimination and stigma remain a rather significant problem, to the detriment of the emotional and relationship health of trans folks and their partners. Shaming cisgender men who date trans women remains a pervasive problem, as demonstrated by the numerous “scandals” of celebrities “caught” with trans women, and the non-stop barrage of sitcom jokes about how gross it is to date trans people. As Janet Mock wrote in a 2013 essay on the subject:

“The shame that society attaches to these men, specifically attacking their sexuality and shaming their attraction, directly affects trans women. It affects the way we look at ourselves. It amplifies our body-image issues, our self-esteem, our sense of possibility, of daring for greatness, of aiming for something or somewhere greater.”

Dating and finding a romantic partner are already hard enough for many trans people, so it’s disappointing and frustrating to know that, even once we find a partner, the transphobia and stigma threatens to erode and destroy our relationships. For the friends (and mental health professionals) of trans people, the take-home message of this study should be fairly clear: the romantic relationships of trans people are under unique strains, and more effort is needed to support and strengthen them against the transphobic prejudices of the world.

When It Comes To Orgasms, Research Shows Lesbians Are Tops

Feature image via Shutterstock

“Orgasm,” begins the newest paper from the researchers of the Kinsey Institute, “is characterized by subjective feelings of intense sensation and pleasure, including a sudden discharge of accumulated erotic tension at sexual climax and a temporarily altered state of consciousness.” It’s a rather dry opening to some pretty juicy new research about how men and women in the United States are getting off with one another or specifically, how often they’re they’re getting off with each other. In this nation-wide poll, the winners of the orgasm race, at least among women, are very definitely lesbians.

As the sex coverage here at Autostraddle will tell you, orgasms are pretty awesome. Not only are they fun, but they’re good for you, too! Orgasms can cure a headache, reduce menstrual cramps, boost your immune system, and give your mood a boost. If you can make your life better with la petite mort, who wouldn’t want to do it as much as possible? Well, in a new sexological study (yup, that’s a real thing) from some folks from the Kinsey Institute (yup, THAT Kinsey) decided to see who among sexes and sexual orientations were the best getting each other off. If you’re getting images of some kind of televised sex Olympiad, sorry to disappoint— this research was done by a nationwide survey. From over 6000 initial participants, the study pool was narrowed down to 2850 folks of a “statistically representative” sample of the US population. Since this study was about how other people get you off, everyone had to have gotten it on at least once in the last year. Each research subject was then asked to estimate what percentage of the time they reached orgasm with a “familiar partner.”

After tabulating all the data, it turns out that there’s not much difference amongst men, whether they’re gay, straight or bisexual, at least when it comes to how often they get off. Gay and straight men get off about 85% of the time, bisexual men 77% of the time (a non-significant difference from a math standpoint.) Women, on the other hand, were quite variable across the sexuality spectrum. Bisexual women fell at the bottom of the list, reaching climax about 58% of the time. Straight women weren’t much better, coming in at around 62%. Lesbian women came out way ahead, reaching orgasm nearly 75% of the time! However, since the questionnaire did not make distinctions about success rates between male and female partners, it seems reasonable to think that the bi women would have more success when getting down with other women. An even more interesting result comes from looking at the percentage of the lady participants that report having orgasms zero percent of the time. About 13% of bisexual women reported never being able to orgasm with familiar partner, and 7.5% of heterosexual women reported the same. However, for lesbians, that number drops to a minuscule 2.2%, meaning that nearly 98% of lesbians are getting a big O, at least occasionally, from their partners. Given how often women are diagnosed with so-called “orgasm-disorders”— 7-10% of women by one meta-analysis— there seems to be at least some possibility that it’s not a medical condition keeping some of these women from coming, but simply not having someone able to hit the right buttons.

via Shutterstock

So, aside from giving bragging rights to the rainbow ladies, why would anyone actually want to KNOW who’s getting off the most (or at least, the most often)? Well, according to the article, it’s in hopes of someday improving orgasms from everyone. They write:

“Understanding the factors that influence variation in orgasm occurrence among sexual minority populations may assist in tailoring behavioral therapies for those of different sexual orientations. Moreover, to the extent that lack of orgasm is seen as a common and unwanted problem, learning more about orgasm in same-sex relationships may inform treatment for men and women in both same-sex and mixed-sex relationships”

So, is there a reason why lesbians seem to be so much better at making each other come? Well, the common sense view would say it’s a combination of the tendency of lesbians to be better acquainted with the anatomy of their lovers, combined with the fact that queer lady sex isn’t beholden to fickle things like erections. Researchers seem to echo some of this sentiment:

“One possible explanation is that self-identified lesbian women are more comfortable and familiar with the female body and thus, on average, are better able to induce orgasm in their female partners. Similarly, previous research has suggested that the length of sexual encounters varies as a function of the sex/gender of the participants, with two women having longer durations of sexual activity than heterosexual pairs, potentially affecting orgasm outcomes.”

Some might look at this study and say, “well, isn’t it possible that lesbians are embellishing their percentage out of pride?” And, sure, that’s certainly within the realm of possibility; survey-based research always struggles with the complications self-reporting. But, aside from the fact that there’s not much to gain from it (besides the bragging rights), the overall higher-reported orgasm frequency would still seem to speak to deeper satisfaction with their sex lives than straight women have. So, ladies, next time someone snarks at you about the dreaded Lesbian Bed Death, ignore it, hold your head up high, and maybe remind them that, no matter what stock photos might tell you, lesbian sex actually involves touching each other. Oh, and remember that science says you’re at the pinnacle of climaxing.

Inflexible Scheduling Just Another Way Women Are Discriminated Against At Work

Feature image via Shutterstock

I quit my first job after one of the managers locked me out of the work schedule for three weeks as punishment for going out of town at the last minute to visit my father, who had moved out of state for work while I was finishing high school. I wasn’t happy about it — I liked my job, coworkers and most of the management, and it was rewarding to step toward adulthood by earning my own money — but I didn’t need the job, so when it became clear that the work was inflexible, I turned in my ugly green polos and hightailed it outta there. My parents went back to paying for my Blockbuster rentals and after-school slushies, and I returned to sleeping in on Sundays and letting other people bag my groceries.

Unfortunately, most of the world isn’t a privileged middle-class teenage girl looking for something to fill up their spare time, so when they have a job, it’s actually so they can, you know, sustain themselves and their families. Women especially are feeling this pressure, as 40% of households now have a woman as sole breadwinner — that’s up from 11% in 1960. Which is why recent stories about workplaces creating schedules around just about everything but what their most vulnerable employees need to survive are more than just upsetting; they’re downright infuriating.

First, on Wednesday, the New York Times published an exposé on big companies that use scheduling software to juggle its low-income employees into complicated and inflexible timetables that will ostensibly boost profits and productivity. That story focused on 22-year-old Jannette Navarro, a single mother whose Starbucks job has helped her save money toward buying a car, but only at the expense of her flexibility, familial relationships and education. Unpredictable back-to-back shifts and schedules released only days before they start mean that Navarro has to rely on family members for last-minute childcare and kept her from committing to a schedule for getting her drivers license, among other things. Her boyfriend eventually breaks up with her after telling her he’s overwhelmed by her schedule. “You’re waiting on your job to control your life,” she told the Times.

Starbucks actually responded quickly to the story, announcing changes to its opening-closing shift policies and plans to enforce an existing rule about posting schedules at least a week in advance. But of course the problem is more widespread than a single company, even one as big as Starbucks, and study results released Monday show part of the cultural biases at play. Those findings, from a Furman University sociological study that asked 646 participants to consider work scheduling requests from the role of an employer, found that people were more likely to grant requests from men than from women, in addition to finding men who asked for flexibility more “likeable” and “committed” to their jobs. Yes, that’s right: Men who ask to work non-traditional hours or from home so they can care for their children are considered more likeable and dedicated workers than women who request the same accommodations for the same exact reasons. All this because of some backward notions about who should hold responsibility for childcare and who should be earning a family’s money. According to the lead researcher, Christin Munsch:

“These results demonstrate how cultural notions of parenting influence perceptions of people who request flexible work. Today, we think of women’s responsibilities as including paid labor and domestic obligations, but we still regard breadwinning as men’s primary responsibility and we feel grateful if men contribute in the realm of childcare or to other household tasks.”

When you combine these pieces of news with stories like that of Debra Harrell, a South Carolina woman who was fired from McDonald’s this summer after getting arrested for letting her nine-year-old daughter play at the park during a work shift, you see the real, devastating consequences of these attitudes and policies. Women are actually going to jail because they cannot successfully work a system designed to keep them from accessing appropriate jobs and childcare. When women do ask for accommodations, they are viewed less favorably and as less committed, even though it seems like being upfront about your needs should show you’re more dedicated to making a job work.

We already know women make less money than men do for the same work (though there’s some dispute about exactly how much less) and that mothers face higher rates of unemployment than men do. We also know that, by and large, employers are in business to turn a profit, not to work around the individual needs and preferences of every single person they employ. HOWEVER, there is a difference between catering to a single woman who has a hectic schedule and recognizing that a huge category of workers across the board have lives that are incompatible with the ways schedules are determined. When we ignore those incompatibilities, we put women into impossible situations, and then we blame them for being in those situations to begin with. The lack of respect isn’t surprising, but goddamn is it frustrating.

“Mother Blaming” Is Bad Journalism, Shaky Science

Last week, Nature published an excellent editorial calling for more responsible discussion of scientific findings relating to pregnancy. The article, authored by Harvard associate professor Sarah S. Richardson and a panel of six academics, cites multiple examples of gross exaggeration, stunning oversimplification and flagrantly improper contextualization by the media. Over time, the cumulative effects of such reporting have resulted in scapegoating, surveillance and scientifically unjustifiable regulation of pregnant (and potentially pregnant) people.

In an unfortunately familiar historical example, mass amounts of doom-and-gloom reporting on fetal alcohol syndrome snowballed into today’s culture in which pregnant people face social condemnation (at best) and potential criminal prosecution (at worst) if they choose to partake of alcoholic beverages. Likewise, alarmist, racially-charged reporting on scientific research about “crack babies” led to a zero tolerance stance for use of cocaine and many other drugs during pregnancy, with states today literally jailing pregnant women in order to regulate their behavior. Yet numerous studies have shown that small amounts of alcohol present no serious concerns to fetal health. Likewise, while prenatal exposure to cocaine is certainly not ideal, studies have shown that its effects are no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco.

Whether this is a beer belly or a pregnancy belly, concern trolling will not be necessary. Via Shutterstock.

Common reporting errors when covering scientific research relating to pregnancy include: making unqualified extrapolations from animal studies to humans; failing to address paternal effects, which can be just as important as maternal effects; oversimplifying complex results to the point of leaving out important details; and leaving out the roles that society, class, race and gender play in determining health outcomes.

In popular discussion today, the article points out,

A mother’s individual influence over a vulnerable fetus is emphasized; the role of societal factors is not. And studies now extend beyond substance use, to include all aspects of daily life. … We urge scientists, educators and reporters to anticipate how [research in developmental origins of health and disease] is likely to be interpreted in popular discussions. Although no one denies that healthy behaviour is important during pregnancy, all those involved should be at pains to explain that findings are too preliminary to provide recommendations for daily living.

Today, pregnant people are bombarded with warnings against such varied things as eating meat, fish, and eggs; changing cat litter; driving cars; sitting in the sun or in massage chairs; standing near microwaves; bending their knees; being stressed; and more. Well-intentioned though it may be, the cumulative effect paints a pretty warped picture: that pregnant people are the number one health threat to their future children.

Based on this 4D ultrasound, it looks like you’re carrying a tiny raging lesbian feminist. Via Shutterstock.

What strikes me about these societal mandates around pregnancy is how little they have to do with improving women’s health. Drug addiction, for example, is a serious health problem for many people, including some who may become pregnant. Why are their bodies only worth caring for when they house the looming specters of “damaged” future-babies? Why are legislators so fixated on creating special punishments for pregnant people, rather than programs to give everyone access to health education, drug treatment and family planning tools? (And why this obsession with pregnancy anyway? Is my health unimportant because my girlfriend can’t impregnate me?)

The truth is, rather than fixing society, many people would rather focus on controlling female-assigned bodies and guilt-tripping and demonizing women — something we already see plenty of elsewhere, so I guess it’s not that surprising to see this dynamic replicated when it comes to reproduction. It’s a hell of a lot easier for those in power to blame individuals for their actions (using “science” as justification) than it would be for them to create public policy that would actually help pregnant people get the care they need. And beyond this misogynistic victim blaming, many of the admonishments lobbed at pregnant people also conveniently play into racism and classism. (You know, par for the course.)

Due to economic oppression, women of color are less likely to be able to take time off of work, avoid environmental toxins, access prenatal care or eat nutritious foods. Programs like WIC can help individual families with some issues, but these interventions are hardly enough to level the playing field. If POC babies have worse outcomes long term, it’s not because uncaring mothers have created a “biologically doomed underclass.” It’s because classism and racism are working against these kids (and their parents) every step of the way. But again, it’s much harder to tackle those issues than it is to pick on people who lack structural access to power.

You know who else lacks structural access to power, baby? Queer people. Via Shutterstock.

That mothers are blamed for their actions during pregnancy well into their offspring’s adulthood is a sad reflection of the lengths our society will go to in order to avoid naming (let alone confronting) sexism, racism and classism. That “science” is being used to justify this brings great sadness to my geeky, feminist heart. But the editorial in Nature gives me hope.

Pregnant or not, all women — all people — suffer when scientific research about pregnancy is misrepresented and misunderstood. But if widespread misconceptions can have such a powerful effect on our society, just think how much good the spread of accurate information could do.