The "Ego" of Gender

Tyson

As I am truly blessed to be riding my little dosage into estrogen land again-I am going to channel one of my hero's- Neil deGrasse Tyson into another post. If you remember, I recently ran a review of his "Star Talk Show"  (on the 'Nat Geo' network) 

On the recent show, he mentioned his chair was a transgender woman: Rebecca Oppenheimer and he said ,I paraphrase 'what if there was no gender at all?'

Oppenheimer

I think eventually Neil deGrasse Tyson will be right, there will be no evident genders if the human race lasts that long. But, in the meantime, I am over thinking an idea about gender ego's. We all know men are considered to have to carry around the majority of the poundage where ego is concerned,,,,but-

When I set down with pen and paper and began to write what ego was gender specific, much was the same. The tough part was throwing out the old stereotypes like "What came first, the chrome Harley or the blonde on the back,"  Perhaps less emphatic though is what a woman thinks when she is "picking out" a mate. What are her friends going to think?  Or,her parents if she brings "Joe the Scud" home? 

Then what happens if life goes on all goes to hell and you did bring Joe home and married him? Well then it is time to take a seat at the foot of the "Victim Goddess."

Don't worry and grab a number though - by that time a substantial group of women and men will be right there with you. And, worse yet have no idea why.

As transgender women and men though (if we find our voices and are allowed to speak) should be allowed to whisper a couple hints into the Goddess' ears of how it really is to dwell on both sides of the gender fence!

The Starship "Transgender?"

Neil deGrasse Tyson is by far my fave "astro physicist" if fact I had no idea of what an astro physicist was until I began to watch him and his Star Talk Show on the National Geographic Channel.  Last night's show was extra special though as he featured an interview with another of my "faves" Susan Sarandon.

Dr. Oppenheimer 

As the show wound it's way around more than a few concepts I don't pretend to totally understand-all of the sudden they were discussing one I did: it turns out Tyson's lead chair is Dr. Rebecca Oppenheimer. 

Dr. Oppenheimer is a comparative exoplanetary scientist: she studies planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. This nascent field is so young that much of the work involves developing the techniques needed to see these planets, so that their light can be dissected and analyzed. Her optics laboratory in the Rose Center is the birthplace of a number of new astronomical instruments designed to tackle this problem. In March 2004, Dr. Oppenheimer deployed the world's most sensitive coronagraph at the AEOS Telescope in Maui. See lyot.org for more information. In June 2008, her team deployed an even more precise and sensitive exoplanet imaging system at the Palomar Observatory. This instrument is called Project 1640 and involves researchers at AMNH, Cambridge, Caltech, and NASA/JPL. All of these instrumentation efforts, as well as several others including the starlight suppression system for the International Gemini Observatory Planet Imager project (GPI), were conducted in Oppenheimer's lab in the Rose Center at AMNH.

And oh by the way Dr. Oppenheimer is a transgender woman and I paraphrase: or a woman who happened to be made to live as Ben.  And what if gender wasn't an issue anyhow?

An idea we have pondered for most of out lives! For whatever reason, I could not come up with much of a link for his show tonight. You are on your own this time.