Incinerating tradition, the basics

I’d first flirted with Sociology in high school, taking a semester during my junior year. I fell in love with the subject in college, quickly picking it up as a second major after enjoying the hell out of the Intro course. One Bachelor’s and one Master’s degree later, I could credibly even claim to be a sociologist.

Good times in Academic Building IV.

When I was hired to teach the subject at Lone Star College, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I’d be teaching with the latest edition of John Macionis’ Society: The Basics. This was the very text I’d used on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10:00–10:50 am during my first semester as an undergrad.

When the teacher became the Master.

Some of the content was updated, and each chapter had pithy quotations from scientists and pop culture figures. One that I didn’t like was (arguably) a joke, from overrated conservative humorist P.J. O’Rourke:

Liberals have invented whole college majors — psychology, sociology, women’s studies — to prove that nothing is anybody’s fault.

However, like with many trite bits of “common sense,” the truth is exactly the opposite.

I had to do it to ’em.

Once I heard Texas described as the “most American” state. This is a curious sobriquet for a place that tried to leave both Mexico and the United States in order to preserve human chattel slavery, whose population takes great pride in having been its own country for 9 years, and whose oversized trucks to this day sport SECEDE bumper stickers.

Most of you wouldn’t be missed.

It was not in spite of but rather because of this environment that I jumped at the chance to teach Texans at a community college. While I did instruct some traditional college-age students, I had several sections where ambitious teenagers were taking the standard Introduction to Sociology as part of a dual-credit program.

What better audience for sociology, a discipline that allows people to see exactly why the world looks as it does, whom the current order benefits, whom it leaves behind, and why?

The way I taught the chapter on Gender and Sexuality may well get me arrested were I to attempt it today.

My lectures were a bit more modest.

Macionis’ text does include some historical and cross-cultural looks at gender identity including hijras in India, muxes in Mexico, Two-Spirit people in Native American culture, etc. For my part, I introduced more content from biology than many of my colleagues would likely have felt comfortable with.

Much like Dennis Wrong, my whole view on social science is that “in the beginning there is the body.”

I’d learned back in high school that human beings can mature with one of several chromosomal configurations, all invisible to the naked eye. In a genetics course in college, I learned more about this as the professor matter-of-factly showed the class pictures of different human subjects representing some of these variations.

These “anomalies” were no stranger than a calico cat, he stated nonchalantly.

Trans rights are human rights.

In addition to these rather mundane facts and examples about genotype and phenotype, I included arguments from nature regarding sexuality that were more sophisticated than what’s preached from the pulpit.

To be fair, I first heard this in South Carolina.

Biologist Joan Roughgarden argues in her book Evolution’s Rainbow that the prevalence of homosexuality in over 400 vertebrate species at rates near or above 5% makes it implausible to label it a “disorder” or “disease” or “maladaptation.” Truly debilitating conditions are extremely rare and would impair the survival of a species; homosexuality does not meet these criteria.

These are the basics; these are the facts.

I taught three cases: the story of David Reimer, a boy raised as a girl after a surgical mishap; Crystal Etsitty, a woman in transition barred from using a women’s restroom; and the research of Milton Diamond, whose animal studies show “gendered” behavior can be produced by adjusting hormone levels in animals while they are in utero.

The point being that in each case, the inner world of the subject in question differed from society’s demands and expectations. The data don’t show that “everything is a social construction” but rather that some individuals and society may well be in permanent conflict.

This is, in fact, the core of Dennis Wrong’s objection with social science’s “oversocialized conception of man in society.”

I shared this lecture, the slides, and the videos without trepidation, without fear, because I was doing what I was supposed to be doing: teaching.

How did the kids react?

They were horrified at the social gender-reassignment David Reimer was subjected to. They were quick to search for pictures of Etsitty, shocked at how feminine her appearance was, some even lamenting “poor lady” when they learned that she lost her court case. They quickly connected that animal behavior was relevant to human behavior. They employed empathy because they understood with reason.

It’s true that some didn’t get it. I recall maybe three students simply ignoring everything I taught, but you get that in any classroom. They were a memorable but small minority.

I live in a different censorious environment now.

In my current employment, it’s unlikely that disagreements over the proper use of the present perfect will result in detention, fine, or deportation. Still, I daily see reports of the Russian government enforcing “traditional values” by curtailing women’s rights, demonizing and terrorizing transpeople, and otherwise earning its “medieval” moniker.

It’s all too familiar for me, living on the other side of the globe but sometimes feeling like I’m still in the most American state.