Liberals are from Mars, Conservatives are from Uranus

Oh hey look it's Time Magazine!

Really? Even the late Henry Luce is [TW: sexual violence and rape apologia] getting embarrassed.

So Time has devoted an entire article to exploring the science of whether there's any biology behind our political affiliations. Go ahead, read it. I'll even link to the story again.

Let me state for the record that I'm a transsexual woman with a Ph.D. in the biological sciences. I have had it up to here (I know you can't see me, but I'm pretty tall) with the false dichotomy between nature and nurture. I'm still a punk kid, but oh if you only knew the shit I've learned and experienced.

Anyhow, to varying and sometimes substantial degrees, biology effects everything. So of course it's slightly behind politics. It's also slightly behind why I like campy sci-fi movies. Slightly.

Culture is also everywhere. It too has a role in things. Sometimes a pretty big role.

You know whose stuff everyone should read? Julia Serano. Her Ph.D. is in biochemistry, but I won't hold that against her. She's really, really good at exploding the myths that either biology or culture is solely responsible for explaining human behavior.

But I digress. First off, I want to congratulate Time on interviewing researchers with even shoddier scholarship than I read about in "The Strange Link Between Winning Elections and Online Porn." (I can't wait for this to pass. I'm gonna load Time so fast on my cell phone!)

Here's the thing, the pornographic elections people had something of a story. Election, caveman, fight, testosterone, erection, naked lady. I mean, that doesn't make it science, but it's certainly something, right?

This business with the biology of politics doesn't even have that. As far as I can tell, the rationale seems to be that people have beliefs, and there's probably other things that correlate with believing in stuff, and biology can cause correlations.

Look, it's cool and all that Time talked to another political scientist in order to give the story a sense of balance, but HEY WAIT, WTF I thought we were making stuff up about BIOLOGY?!? Anyhow, that guy used the word phrenology. This means that either the other side of the story is a huge asshole, because that's a really, really mean thing to bring up, or maybe, just maybe, it's time to rethink the story. I suppose it could be both, but the dude's right about the phrenology. Phrenology. Heh.

I know the American century was hard on all of us, so I'm not going to belabor the point (or am I?), but there are usually cultural implications underfoot when someone's making grand reductionist claims.

For example, there are folks who are excited about the prospect for finding a gay gene. Some folks are jazzed about using science to "fix" (or otherwise eliminate) queer people, while others are hoping to use genetics as proof that gay people have rights because OMG we can't help being inferior to other people. If you can't tell, I'm not hot on either argument. Also, the gay gene? It does not exist.

And then there's things like "election, caveman, fight, testosterone, erection, naked lady." If I had a nickel for every time I read a study about how men are programmed (by science!) to treat women poorly and women are designed (by science!) to love it, I'd be throwing up in a very expensive claw-footed bathtub.

All of this reductionism absolves people from having to worry about trying to change things. Conservatives aren't selfish or ignorant or privileged, they've just got the genetic structure of stage coach tippers. And liberals (is that my other option?), well, they're just a bit heavy on the guanine.

Anyhow, culture doesn't effect politics. (Did you know that Karl Marx, the Marxist Karl Marx, died poor? It's shocking, but true!) Let's not worry about political economy or feminist analysis or sociology or giving a fuck in general.

Instead, let's write a giant computer program to run the US. I mean, if we can ignore culture and focus on biochemistry when discussing politics, it'd be awfully efficient.

It's been a while, but let's see....

for year=2010:3000;
lastday=365;
if (year/4)==(abs(year/4));
lastday=366;
end;
for day=1:lastday;
if eig(ANGST) > 1;
BOMB IRAN
end
if day==abs(day);
DESTROY SOCIAL SAFETY NET
end
end
end

I'm not a very good programmer (and I'm writing this after midnight and I can't get blogger to let me properly indent stuff), but I'm sure we could put brilliant folks on this.