According to the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), however, “many researchers consider [David] Finkelhor and [Diana] Russell’s (1984) estimates of the prevalence of female sex offending to be the most accurate to date. Their tentative evaluation is that females may account for up to 13 per cent of the abuse of females and 24 per cent of the abuse of males, either acting alone or with a partner. Finkelhor and Russell also estimated that approximately 6 per cent of sexual abuse against females and 14 per cent of sexual abuse against males is thought to be perpetrated by females acting alone.”

Even if we consider that these figures might be somewhat overestimated, it is safe to say that the proportion of females incarcerated for sexual assault is very low – especially considering that the number of males incarcerated for sexual assault is only a fraction of those who offend.

Joanne-Lucine Rouleau, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Université de Montréal, has only treated 15 to 16 female offenders in her career, compared with hundreds of male offenders. While Rouleau admitted that not enough research had been performed in the area of female sexual offenders to come to any substantial conclusions about the reasons for these disproportionate numbers, she offered a profile of the female sex offender that may shed light on the issue. According to Rouleau and other sources, the age of female perpetrators generally ranges between 22-35 years old, as opposed to 14-90 years old for male offenders. Female sex offenders generally target children and adolescents, both male and female, who have some previous relationship with the perpetrator. Female offenders make very few random predatory attacks, typically using their positions of authority – parent, teacher, babysitter – to gain access to their victims. (It should be noted that this is also the case for most or many male sexual offenders.)
Statistics also show that many of the victims of female sexual offenders are the perpetrators’ own children, a fact which may itself contribute to underreporting, since the perpetrator may act as a barrier between the child and a doctor or teacher who might be able to advocate on behalf of the victim. It follows that victims would be “reluctant to report sexual contact with a parent on whom they are dependent,” reports the CSC.

Furthermore, the age and professional positions of many female sex offenders contributes to the persistent gender stereotypes that block society from viewing females as potential assailants. Traditionally, women are mothers, teachers, nurturers, and victims – not the violent monsters that we imagine rapists to be. If women are seen predominantly as passive, how can they be capable of sexual assault? Research from the CSC elaborates on the effect of stereotyping on our perception of female sex offenders: “Women in general, and mothers more specifically, have more freedom than men to touch children. Therefore, a man may be more easily perceived as abusive when touching a child than when a woman touches a child in a similar manner.”

Female pederasts
Sexual assault by female teachers in their thirties on male students in their early and middle teen years is one of the most common and most publicized forms of sexual assault by women. According to the CSC, the women responsible for these crimes have often been victims of sexual abuse, and are dissatisfied in their current romantic life, or are unable to form healthy age-appropriate relationships. Instead, these women tend to form what they deem to be loving relationships with their young male students, treating them as they would a boyfriend of their own age. The women often see little wrong with their actions.

The media uses language such as “relationship,” “affair,” and even “love” to describe these cases, showing a bias toward the position of the offender, and contributing to underestimation of the threat and damaging potential of female sex offenders.

A New York Times article reads: “Ms. West…then seduced the friend with Scooby-Doo boxer shorts and evening jaunts to sports bars and used her school authority to rearrange his classes around their sexual trysts.” There’s a playful tone in this quotation: the author calls the assault a “sexual tryst,” giving it a mysterious and even alluring air. Another article cites a woman being “charged with repeatedly having sex with an 8-year-old boy.” Employing the neutral term “having sex” to an assault makes the woman’s actions seem benign.

The attention and sympathy that these cases receive from the media is also a product of the attractiveness of many of the offenders, stemming from the notion that the “beautiful” woman cannot also be the predatory woman. Offenders whose faces have been made popular by the media, including Debra Lafave, Cameo Patch, and the smiling Stephanie Ragusa appear charming, harmless, and even vulnerable. It’s difficult, based on their appearance alone, to believe that their sexual exploits could be so damaging. This inability to view female sex offenders as threatening is part of a greater reluctance to criminalize women’s actions. Peter Vronsky, a history professor at Ryerson University and the author of Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters, explains that even in courtrooms, “we don’t recognize [women] as serial killers, we recognize them as something else entirely.”

But perhaps reporters’ choice of sympathetic and even affirmative language to describe these cases is not symptomatic of gender stereotyping, but is actually reflective of the tenor of the incidents. Haven’t there been women convicted of sexual assault who, upon their release from prison, have married their supposed victims? Examples like the famous and contentious case of Mary Kay Letourneau and her “lover,” Vili Fualaau, call the criminality of their “relationship” into question. Letourneau and Fualaau first began having sex when Fualaau was only 12 years old. Years later, and after extensive legal battles, the couple is married with a child. Although this outcome might prove the sincerity of their romance, the question remains: did Letourneau’s seduction of Fualaau at such an early age leave him unable to form healthy, new relationships?

Classifying coercion
Of the 19 Canadian female sexual offenders the CSC studied, 14 had male co-offenders. It is tricky to discern whether these assailants were male-accompanied or male-coerced – the latter meaning that the woman had been forced by a husband or boyfriend, often through threat of physical violence or abandonment, to commit the assault. (The victims of these assaults were often the female perpetrator’s own sons and daughters.) “It is tempting to categorize all the female offenders who were involved in offences with males as male-coerced,” the CSC admits. “However, a closer look at their cases reveals that such a categorization does not accurately reflect their motives or behaviour.”

Only four of the 14 cases could correctly fall under the classification of male-coerced. In five of the 14 cases, women acted as primary aggressors, initiating the sexual assaults – they were not victimized or threatened by their male co-offenders. The tendency toward classifying female offenders as “male-coerced” implies the notion that behind every criminal woman there must be a criminal man: that a female would not, by nature, commit such acts if it weren’t for the love or the fear of a male.

There are few Canadians who don’t shudder at the mention of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. Much debate remains as to what degree, if any, Homolka was coerced into partaking in the pair’s sadistic attacks, including the rape and murder of Homolka’s own sister. Videos that Homolka and Bernardo filmed of the assaults show Homolka engaging with full complicity in the acts.

Some perceive her plea bargain with the courts as a manipulative self-victimization. Her position is not uncommon: as Vronsky attests in recent cases of many female killers (although historically it has not always been true) “the females that acted with males oftentimes get a much softer deal, cloaking their case in the battered wife syndrome.“
There is no question, however, that Bernardo exercised extreme violence against his wife. Reports cite his beatings of Homolka as some of the most horrendous on file, the severity of the abuse leaving her close to death, with electrical cord lacerations to her neck, a detached retina, and spongy areas on her skull. It is difficult to claim that any degree of violence can account for the atrocity of the acts that Homolka committed, though it is equally difficult to imagine the atrocity Homolka endured living with Bernardo.

Stigmatized male victims
Gender stereotypes play a role in society’s perception of the male victims as much as they do female perpetrators. Until recently “men [have been] viewed as physically incapable of being sexually abused by women,” according to the CSC. Recent research, however, cites cases in which men respond sexually to many states of emotional arousal, achieving erection even from feelings of anger and fear. Despite the changing views of male victims of female sex offenders, social stigma continues to prevent these victims from speaking out. Society believes that men should want sex, that a boy should consider himself lucky if an older woman shows interest in him.

Darlene Hall, an employee of the West End Creche, a children’s mental health agency in Toronto, told the Globe and Mail that victims “of female abusers, especially boys, tend to be more traumatized than those victimized by men. It’s even more confusing for them…. It’s ‘I should have liked it.’ It’s the double whammy.” Though it is unproductive and problematic to create relative scales of trauma between victims, it is true that male victims of female abusers face the attitude that the abuse that they have experienced has been sexually educational, or in some way a rite of passage, making it difficult for male victims to seek help or report their abuse.

Rouleau concurs: “Younger male victims do not speak out. Of the incarcerated offenders that I have treated, 25 per cent were sexually abused by women and did not say anything at the time of the abuse.” She also highlights the additional danger of letting instances of female sexual offense go unnoticed. While Rouleau makes it clear that “everyone who has been abused will not become an abuser,” there undoubtedly exists a cycle of sexual abuse in which the abused become the abusers. In a controversial statement addressed to a conference organized by the Toronto-based Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse in 1991, Fred Mathews, a community psychologist at Central Toronto Youth Services, went so far as to claim that “by not acknowledging the problem of female sex offenders, we may be creating rapists, men who are angry at women.”

Gendering assault
Issues of gender weigh heavily in society’s neglect of female sex offenders, and thwart our proper treatment of the victims of female sexual assault. In attempting to view cases of female sexual abuse with more objectivity, however, we should not err on the side of gender neutrality, in the courtroom or in the media.

Gender plays a critical role in understanding the life experiences of perpetrators: almost all women who end up as sex offenders have a history of sexual abuse, which is true of only half of male offenders; there are real cases in which females commit sexual assault out of fear for their lives; female perpetrators have different methods and patterns of abuse than do male perpetrators. In determining adequate sentences and constructive rehabilitation treatments for female offenders the issue of gender is inescapable. Indeed, the very way we treat female offenders belies our sexist assumptions. The persistent view of women as victims rather than criminals disempowers the offenders, absolving them of guilt because of their gender and perpetuating the power imbalances that underlie the cycle of abuse. We shouldn’t allow gender stereotypes to undercut the seriousness of sexual assault, nor to allow us to continue neglecting the problem of female sexual offenders.

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Harold Innis foresaw this threat back when television was just coming to popularity: he characterized the threat as “present-mindedness,” and as the “continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of [those] elements of permanence essential to cultural activity.” Knowing what we know now, there is little to argue about Innis’s theory – we are all acutely aware of the pernicious effects of media and advertising on our psychology; but I believe that there are forces at work, right here in our present midst, that are in direct and positive opposition to these threats.

Philosophy of music professor Eric Lewis speaks of a sort of communication relying on an individual’s instantaneous response, in the present moment: something that could be construed as present-mindedness. This communication is not verbal, nor is it written, nor physical, but is communication through musical improvisation. This present-mindedness is not an unfortunate symptom of the modern world and its discontents; improvisation has gone on since music-making began. In the case of improvisation, present-mindedness describes a state of engagement, of “laying yourself out there,” in Lewis’s words.

And if we look at the rules they follow, musical improvisers seem to be championing some of those attributes that are most laudable in any individual. In sympathetic circles of musical improvisers, no communicative “rudeness” is permitted: talking on top of someone, talking too loudly, etc. According to Lewis, there are “three sins of improvising: a) not listening, b) not knowing when not playing is also contributing, c) not being honest and authentic to your own musical sensibilities, i.e. being what you are not.”

Whether or not they intend to, people really reveal themselves when they are improvising. “When I improvise with the people I improvise with, I come out with a more nuanced understanding of who they are,” Lewis says.

Musical problems are set up, and then the musicians attempt to solve these problems, as a group. “You might learn that someone might not like leading an idea, but is happy to follow, that another is pigheaded, and won’t let something go until he’s tried it again and again. Others might prove to be subtle and careful modifiers. Some might have the ability of leading without seeming to lead.”

Refined stuff, one’s musical identity, and I would argue that many of these subtleties of personality would not be accessible through verbal or written forms of communication.

It was the Greeks’ ability to strike the perfect balance between verbal and written communication that Innis had idealized. Looking at the Greek root of the word “dialogue” – “to flow through meaning” – we see that Lewis’s understanding of communication through improvisation might be even closer to the original meaning of the word than was Innis’s.

According to Lewis, “A lot of people who improvise will say that there are a number of stages, of cognitive states that they find themselves in, ‘The Zone’ being this ultimate state. I’m loathe to characterize it in any way, but it is some precognitive, non-discursive, not-thinking state. There’s something about this state that seems to be different than normal thinking; your responses seem to bypass the brain. This sort of embodied knowledge could come in very sophisticated forms. When it seems to be working quite well, I lose the sense of linear thought.”

This state of mind, therefore, is not exactly present-mindedness, but is something like no-mindedness – quite elevated for a society that has been habituated to television commercials. What Lewis taught me, in other words, is this: All is not lost. Our modern world is not full only of bright lights and flashing colours. Look deep, listen deep, and you will find those whose primary concern is to listen.

Listen up: another dose of Rosie’s interesting academia will be back in a couple weeks. Send thoughts and queries to theconversationalist@mcgilldaily.com.

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It is a symptom of biophilia, or “a love of living things.” The term was first coined by social psychologist Erich Fromm and later explored by entomologist Edward O. Wilson. We are innately attracted to all things living and life-like – an idea that is consistent with the expansion of such fields of study as urban horticulture and horticultural therapy. Plants are integral to our psychological well-being – a common, though not an immediately logical idea.

Visiting with Wees, I found myself drawn to seemingly mundane facts about apple varieties: their various anthropormorphic names – McIntosh, Granny Smith, Pink Lady, Suntan; their family histories – “Braeburn and Gala came together, and so the Jazz was born.” McIntosh and Red Delicious formed the Empire. All apples, pears, raspberries, plums, and so on are actually descendants of the rose plant.

Wees also told me of the mysterious phenomenon of the “chance seedling.” One in a while, an unexplained tree will crop up in the middle of a farmer’s orchard. She will not have planted it; the tree might not even resemble anything else on his acreage; it will arrive, purely, by chance; and it might so happen that this anomalous tree will bear bigger, jucier, and more delicious fruit than the rest. In fact, two of the most popular apple varieties – red delicious and golden delicious – were not bred for their particular characteristics, but were themselves chance seedlings.

Considering Wilson’s idea of biophilia alongside my discussion with Wees, it becomes clear that our relationship to plants and animals, our specific way of sympathizing with them and of either humanizing them or mystifying them, speaks not to the nature of the plant or animal itself, but to the human condition.

“We are human in good part because of the particular way we affiliate with other organisms,” Wilson writes in his book Biophilia. “They are the matrix in which the human mind originated and is permanently rooted, and they offer the challenge and freedom innately sought. To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained. I offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry and myth: mysterious and little known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit. Splendor awaits in minute proportions.”

It seems that our relationship to nature, and even movements like environmentalism, are therefore not simply about preserving nature for nature’s sake, but are about preserving our sense of our own humanness. Our innate love for the living helps sustain life; although it is an optimistic and somewhat simplistic notion, it may also be read in a pessimistic light, as proof of the unerring egotism of the human species.

Are you a closet biopihiliac? Send your roses and other lovable objects to Rosie at theconversationalist@mcgilldaily.com.

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Mechanical Engineering professor Evgeny Timofeev, who specializes in high-speed flows and shock waves at McGill University, explained that a force as destructive as a shock wave can be used constructively. Shock waves can act to clean microscopic electronic equipment by blowing out the accumulated dust that can harm its inner-workings. Shock waves also hold increasing potential for the field of Medicine. They can be used to destroy gall stones, and localized shock waves created by a small laser can even be sent through arteries to break up blood clots, thus preventing strokes.

Talking with him, I began thinking about blockages in their many forms, both physical and psychological, both literal and figurative, that I experience quite often. And I began thinking that perhaps a little destruction is good thing, although it might temporarily leave a zone of intense pressure and heat, and a chain of unpleasant chemical reactions in its wake.

Modernist poet, Mina Loy would have agreed. Although she may have had fascist affiliations, she was also a passionate feminist, believing that the only route to freedom of thought and an independent identity for women required blowing-up traditional ideas of womanhood and relationships. In her Feminist Manifesto, she expressed such an idea: “lies of centuries have got to go…. There is no half-measure – NO scratching on the surface of the rubbish heap of tradition, will bring about Reform, the only method is Absolute Demolition.”

Her ideas were radical, but not unsound. And as clots need to be destroyed by the shock wave to let the blood flow freely through the artery, so sometimes do old ideas need to be destroyed, blown out of corners, to let the new ones flow freely into our consciousness.

Rosie’s column appears every other Thursday. Send your blown-up bras to theconversationalist@mcgilldaily.com.

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“The tree’s branches spread themselves wide, drop perpendicular branches, and form new roots wherever these branches land, although where they land is often quite far from their origin,” says Cécile Rousseau, a transcultural psychiatrist at McGill. Specializing in child refugees and war trauma, she sees “the Banyan tree as a perfect metaphor for the migrant child.”  

Like the Banyan tree, whose anomalous root structure makes it more biologically sound, the migrant child who has successfully grown new roots is often stronger and more resilient than a child who has not faced such hardships. Suffering can be positive and transformative, according to Rousseau, if psychological supports are in place.

Fittingly, Banyan is also the name of the group of psychiatrists who help young refugees deal with the psychological traumas of war or displacement, using art as an avenue for expression. Rousseau explains that the group works with preschoolers, elementary school students, and adolescents, using the notion that retelling a traumatic event is therapeutic.

The preschool students use sand-play to tell their story. They are given a sand tray with colourful figurines that they use to represent the world: people, cars, animals, trees, buildings, as well as several religious signifiers, such as Hindu gods, Buddha, and Islamic and Christian symbols. The children then use these symbols to give meaning to the world. The sand game allows them to create a world of their own, and to tell a story in this world, which they then perform for their peers.

The same technique applies to the elementary school students; however, the older kids use more traditional forms of representation such as drawing and writing.

Finally, the adolescents concentrate on experimental political theatre as a means of expression – a concept that is based on the techniques of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. According to Boal, interactive theatre creates dialogue, standing in opposition to the monologue, which exists as the origin of oppression.  

“[The technique] is about collective voices and action,” Rousseau says.

All three programs contain a verbal and a non-verbal component – visual, musical, tactile.

“Western psychology has placed a lot of emphasis on verbal expression, but no emphasis on bodily or non-verbal expression. In cases of trauma not everything can be easily said or even concretized. Words can be too difficult, and so it is sometimes more useful to deal in the abstract, in representation.”

Rousseau sees many of the world’s conflicts as stemming in part from people’s inability to recognize the possibility of the coexistence of multiple truths.

“The absolute is dangerous. The fact that a community or a group of people would say ‘we have the truth’ – that is dangerous.” Artistic expression, however, in its non-verbal incarnation, allows for a multiplicity of meaning, thus fostering moral complexity.

And that’s why it’s especially upsetting when, in a single summer, a government can cut $44.5-million and over a dozen programs geared to directly funding and supporting the arts. Compared to the threat of war, religious persecution, oppression based on gender or sexual orientation, fanatic totalitarian leaders, and an array of natural disasters, the arts may seem a luxury, as they did to Stephen Harper not so long ago.

“When ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV, and see all sorts of people at a rich gala all subsidized by the taxpayer, claiming their subsidies aren’t high enough when they know they have actually gone up, I’m not sure that’s something that resonates with ordinary people. Ordinary people understand we have to live within a budget,” Harper rationalizes.

But let us not fall into the “tendency that we have,” according to Rousseau, “to consider that our society is essentially benevolent.” If artistic expression has the transformative psychological power that Rousseau and her colleagues have observed, then cutting funding to the arts is not the act of a benevolent leader, nor is it even benign. In fact, it could pose a serious threat, in and of itself.

Rosie’s column appears every other Thursday. Send her that funk, that sweet, that artsy, that gushy stuff to theconversationalist@mcgilldailycom.

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Talking to Hans Hofmann, Paleontologist and adjunct professor in the Earth and Planetary Sciences department at McGill, I learned that this is not the case: we need not look farther than beneath our feet. Holding a Precanbrian fossil I experienced, quite literally, William Blake’s mystical ability “to see a world” – nay, the solar system – “in a grain of sand.”

Between layers of sedimentary rock, scientists like Hofmann look for evidence of carbon, and for trails or imprints of once-living material that can, amazingly, furnish historical information about the ancient Earth, the sun, the moon, and other planets in our solar system.

“Time works like heat,” says Hoffman. Layers of matter cement on top of one another, the hydrogen and oxygen reacting with the environment are slowly dissociated from the organic compounds and slowly but surely all that is left is the permanence of carbon: “Charred carbon, like an egg you fried for much too long.”

The sun and its power

Hofmann shows me a microscope slide patterned with filaments and coccoids: cyanobacterial colonies from 1.8-billion years ago.

“Cyanobacteria, scum, the messy goo that sits on the shallow sea bed spreads out across the expanse of the sea floor and fixes energy from the sun. It reminds me of how it looks after the rain when a green crud forms along the ground – a green film. Minerals then precipitate out of the ocean, which harden with time and entomb all these organisms,” Hofmann says.

Paleontologists then cut tiny layers out of the indurated material and grind down the sample until it is transparent, and can be investigated under the microscope. On this particular slide, a thin layer of darkly pigmented cells had grown along the top of the colony indicating that these cyanobacteria of the Precambrian period protected themselves against ultraviolet light, as do cyanobacteria of today.

Although these slides prove a certain consistency in the sun’s activity over the past few billion years, astrophysicists have shown that the modern-day sun that we know and appreciate is much brighter than the sun that once was: billions of years ago, the sun had only 80 per cent of the luminosity it has today.

The moon and its height

Next, we look at a tidally influenced, rhythmically laminated mudstone from the approximately 620-650-million year old Elatina Formation in South Australia.

It was a burgundy colour with dark stripes unevenly spaced along the polished rock surface: these stripes indicated the monthly tide patterns of long ago. Stripes, much finer and fainter, filled the space between these dark stripes, recording to the individual day, the movement of the tides.

The precision of information we can get from a rock is amazing. Further, since it is the proximity of the moon to the earth that determines the strength of the moon’s pull on the earth’s waters, an analysis of these types of rocks tell scientists that, in the Precambrian period, the moon was closer to the earth than it is today.

Mars and its life?

The next great challenge for astrobiologists will be to determine if there is, or was, at one point, life on other planets. For this task, they will need to employ micropaleontological methods to determine whether in fact a particular microstructure was living, or simply made of organic matter.

“Organic does not mean biologic,” Hofmann explains. In other words, being made of organic matter is not sufficient evidence for life, the thing must also must contain other biological signatures to be considered “living.”

He shows me the fossil of a curling entity, that was deceptively worm-like, but which in reality was no more than mineral residues. Since the simple organisms that existed in the Precambrian period are the most likely to resemble extra-terrestrial organisms, astrobiologists can compare fossils from mars to those fossil records of verified biological material on earth. Without these paleontological records, one might mistake a drop of oil for a drop of life.

This information could not have been procured by the most successful space expedition. A glance toward our earthly insides was all it took. We learn about heavenly bodies as they were billions of years ago, but right between the buried layers of this good old planet of ours.

Rosie’s column appears every other Thursday. Send your grains of sand, curly fossils, and all your thoughts on life to theconversationalist@mcgilldaily.com.

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Raja Sengupta, an assistant professor in Geography and the McGill School of Environment, and an associate member of the McGill School of Computer Science, agrees. “Most of us like to look out of airplane windows. I like to see the patterns that people have left on the earth; those that one sees from an airplane, or those we can see in the points and lines and polygons of GIS [Geographic Information Systems] programs.” Unlike Sengupta, I’m often inclined to separate these images from terrestrial reality, but he showed me that by grounding the aerial perspective in fact, we can discover information about the agriculture, environment, and historical or social facts about the local culture.

What exactly is the aerial view over rural Quebec, south and east from here, toward the St. Lawrence River? You should see a line of white piano keys sitting still beside the river, that have, from moisture and disuse, grown over green with mould, moss, and algae of different shades. Perhaps a familiar story, Sengupta explains how these patterns reveal the socioeconomic history of the area. In the earth 17th century, the only means of trade and transportation for the riverside colonies was by the St. Lawrence and its tributaries. Access to the river was, therefore, in high demand. In an attempt to evenly distribute these plots of land to their heirs, the noblemen would divide them into long thin strips each with one side touching the waterway.

Flying further east – far east – you look out over Bali to see what looks like the microscopic view of some reptilian skin. Irregular slabs of dermis overlap unevenly, sharp on the edges, and with some strange encrusted growth on its underside. In reality, there is nothing mysterious about what’s growing underneath these ridges; it’s rice. These patterns are what Sengupta, in his agriculture-speak, calls “terraces.” This farming technique allows cultivation of hilly areas, conserving soil by preventing the surface runoff that occurs during irrigation: a good idea that dates back to the Incas in the Andes.

Looking over Great Plains or the Canadian prairies as you travel back home, you’ll see something that may seem like a taxonomic exploration of the green-eyed iris. Irises of many subjects, separated from the pupil and sclera, are lined up side-by-side across the landscape, some cut in half for closer observation, some more brown than bright. According to Sengupta, these patterns appear because of the specific irrigation systems in which sprinklers rotate around a central point.

Centre Pivot Irrigation Systems are used almost exclusively in the prairies since it is one of the few irrigation techniques that can accommodate the flat, yet undulating terrain. The circular plots waste land, leaving small unused triangles between each circle, but that’s because availability of water – not land – is the limiting factor in the prairies.

“You can use maps for anything as far as the imagination allows,” Sengupta says. Perhaps in considering crop patterns and land holdings in such a way, I took his words too far. It seems to me, however, that the real explanation is at times more interesting than the imagined.

Rosie can be reached at theconversationalist@mcgilldaily.com when she’s not flying everywhere.

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But then I talked to Ken Ragan, Professor of Physics at McGill. He was part of a team of scientists that discovered the Top Quark, which is of no practical use, but whose discovery solidifies our current theories of matter. He told me many “useless” and fascinating things about black holes and anti-matter, and he said something that – to me, in my current state of self-doubt – was particularly useful: “I sleep very well at night, knowing full well that what I do is irrelevant.”

I feel quite an affinity for Ragan’s way of thinking, because if it weren’t for people like my uncle, I would sleep well at night knowing full well that Romantic poetry is irrelevant.

Since neither the study of astrophysics or Romantic poetry is directly driven by humanitarian or economic ends, they are naively deemed irrelevant. Although I may appreciate Ragan’s corroborating my beliefs about education, the discussion begs the question: why in the name of all that is relevant do we continue investing hours and dollars into these disciplines? People are dying, while we indulge our “passions.”

“In science, we talk about applied science versus curiosity-driven science,” Ragan explained. “Astrophysics is not relevant in that it makes someone’s life better or easier, but there is value in finding out how the world works…. Curiosity-driven science is a cultural endeavour, just as much as is something like Hollywood.” And when the first man laid his carefully constructed moon boot on the moon, the world watched and clutched their hands to their chests, fingers interlocked for the pride of the human race. And the celestial bodies spin around us, and we feel a sense of contentment, just knowing that we know that they’re there.

But more fundamentally, Ragan believes that so-called “irrelevant” disciplines change our approach to living. “Physics taught me that the world is an understandable place. Physics allows you to take a large problem and break it up into small, manageable pieces, and from there you can find a solution,” he said. “Physics also taught me to look for proof, and to stand by conclusions based on empirical evidence.” Can you imagine if everyone made judgments based on evidence? So simple!

In my case, Romantic poetry taught me that one’s compassion is directly proportionate to one’s imaginative capacity, and appropriately, that the truest way to see the world is with a childish sense of wonder. These may be romantic notions, but they’re also constructive. In this way, every irrelevant undertaking somehow contributes to social progress and to humanitarianism. Irrelevance does not imply “of no value.” There are certain modes of thought, approaches, and attitudes that we learn from such disciplines, the worth of which are great, though neither concrete nor quantifiable.

Rosie’s column appears every other Thursday. You can send quarks to theconversationalist@mcgilldaily.com.

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Darlene Lannigan, assistant to Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon, is a shining example of someone who is not colourblind. She recently made a dastardly comment to an aboriginal protester, telling him that he is free to come into her office and negotiate only “if [he] behave[s], and [he’s] sober.” Wouldn’t it be nice to think that we could solve racism of that kind – that we could solve all this race, gender, sexuality, disability business for that matter – with just a bit of “blindness”? But “blindness” ignores some important points.

    Dr. Charmaine Nelson, Associate Professor of Art History at McGill, says her frustration with the “colourblind” mentality motivated her to get involved in teaching. In her postsecondary Art History classes people would dance and twirl and tip-toe around the fact that one of the two women in Edouard Manet’s 1863 painting “Olympia,” was black. No one thought it important enough to mention. The professor would act as if these women were simply two women, and that race played no part in any discernible difference in life experience or advantage. But you see, it’s more than a little important that one of the women was black and one of the women was white; it’s important because, in 1863 in France, the black woman was most likely a slave, and the white woman was most likely not.

    “Colour/gender blindness refuses to see the differences that marginalize individuals; colourblindness refuses to see that it is not a level playing field,” Nelson says.    

Nelson is an Obama supporter. Though she doesn’t say that Obama should be president simply because he’s black; she does believe that since he is black, we should see his success as exceptional. He has gotten this far despite past and present systems of oppression.

But then things get frightening. Think of that frightening woman Sarah Palin, and all the people that think they should vote for her because she’s a woman, and consider that she has gotten this far despite gender biases and not, perhaps, because of gender biases.

Or consider that frightening member of the United States Supreme Court, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who was appointed arguably because he is black, and despite all the allegations of sexual harassment filed against him. So, how to deal with this? How to respect Obama and Pallin’s respective experiences of race and gender without reducing voting to a tokenizing gesture or to misplaced race and gender loyalties?

    “Visual Literacy” is Nelson’s answer. And this is how Art History finds its place in politics. It teaches us to be conscious of the visual information that we receive, be aware of the history of what you see, or of the intentional tricks advertisers and campaigners play on our experience of the visual, and to consciously consider this information within our understanding of the non-visual. If you are lucky enough to have functioning eyes, don’t choose to be blind. See what there is to see, and read what it is you are seeing.

The conversationalist appears every other Thursday. You can contact Rosie at theconversationalist@mcgilldaily.com.

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Some might argue that evolution does equal harm to the religious community, but evolution doesn’t preclude any belief in God. It’s a “false dichotomy” in the words of Brian Alters, Tomlinson Chair in Science Education and Director of the McGill University Evolution Education Research Centre. “I know a lot of evolutionary biologists that are extremely religious,” he says. Darwin wasn’t even an athiest. Aldous Huxley thought up the term “agnostic” to refer most specifically to him. Pope John Paul II himself sanctioned the marriage of evolution and religion in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Science saying, “There is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation.”

And well, if I may hazard to be so personal, I will tell you that I believe in God myself, but I also believe in HIV/AIDS and in Super Bugs. It’s going to be goddamn difficult to cure these things if we doubt the foundational principle of their solution: the theory of evolution. The difficulty in curing HIV/AIDS is that, once we think we have it figured out, the damn thing goes and evolves on us, leaving much suffering and horror in its path. Only through better understanding of the process of evolution will we figure out how to curb this twentieth century plague.

Then there are the Super Bugs. Most would like to think of the hospital as a safe place to be, especially for patients like a grandmother whose immune system has been working well for over 85 years. We want to feel that the hospital is somewhere to get well. But deep in the hospital drains lives strong and resistant bacteria that have evolved to withstand the whole range of antibiotic treatments that our good medical researchers have developed over the years. And so poor granny gets sick from those highly-evolved resistant bugs in the drains; she’s holding on by a thread, none of the classic antibiotics are working, and the only way we can cure her is through careful study of the process of bacterial mutation, natural selection, and evolution. Meanwhile, 42 per cent of Canadians aren’t convinced about the “theory” of evolution, according to a recent Angus Reid survey. Well, I tell you, granny is sure convinced of evolution.

There may be a heap of good reasons for disagreeing with evolution – religious literalism, a belief in the “specialness” of the human species, narcissism – but none of those reasons can so much as approach the importance of what we could gain medically and scientifically from a general consensus of the truth of evolution.

The conversationalist will appear every other Thursday. That’s right folks, a bi-weekly dose of Rosie Aiello, known to some as Rosa, comin’ atcha from now through April. You can start your own conversations with her at theconversationalist@mcgilldaily.com.

Until next time, get ready for more columns based on conversations with those who have earned PhDs. Conversation conversation.

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Gord only has a few stories, now that he’s 94, and most of them can be found in the Dec. 18 issue of The Hamilton Spectator. They dedicated a whole page to Gord for living so long – December 18 was his 94th birthday. He’ll tell you, and I’m sure he told the friendly reporters, that he never asked to be born six days before Christmas; sometimes he wonders why he couldn’t have been born in June. Gord hates to be bothersome.

He’ll also tell you that when he was born, he was only knee-high to a grasshopper. You and I both know this to be impossible, and might not even find the comparison amusing, but these expressions keep him making sense, and it really is amazing how small the man is. He comes over for dinner, and all the guests laugh when he says he weighs 100 pounds.

“Soaking wet!” they say

“With stones in your pockets, maybe!”

“I’m two and a half of you!”

He amazes them. Gord chuckles proudly – he loves to amaze people. It’s not as difficult for old people or children to be impressive as it is for all of us.

“I walk so fast,” Gord tell us. “There are some people in the village,” – Gord lives in a gated community for old folks, which is not a nursing home, never a nursing home – “some of them in the village wonder how I walk so fast. At my age! You know, I’m so light that I can fall on the ice and I get right back up laughing!”

Gord is small because he was a child of the Depression, and when his father and grandmother realized that there wasn’t enough money to support a growing child, they sent him to an orphanage, where he didn’t grow much at all. This is one of Gord’s favourite stories: being forced to eat mutton and getting slapped on the wrist when he tried to write with his left hand. It usually starts: “You know, I was raised in an orphanage, and ohhh it was grim.” Although he’d never ask us not to, we don’t serve lamb when Gord comes for dinner.

Last time he was over, we sat together on the couch and told me to stop him if he’d already told me, but did I know that,

“My real name is Truman, but after my mother died, my grandmother…”

“Said that Truman was no name for a boy.”

“Oh,” he was disappointed, but not surprised, “you know that one already.”

“I’m afraid so, Gord.”

“I’m just so forgetful. When I was 49, you know, I never to used think about my past, but now I do think of it, and it’s so sharp it’s as if it were yesterday.”

The irony of Gord’s statement is that he likely had no memory of what had happened the day before. I heard noises, like a bird breaking open chestnuts and I looked down to see him picking at his fingernails. His hands looked so big on him.

“Some wag said, ‘You know you’re getting old when you start reminiscing.’ So I guess I’m there!” Gord likes these sayings. He smiles quite uncontrollably when he says them.

“And who’s the wag who said that Gord?”

“Oh…I don’t remember.” And then even the wag’s words made him uneasy and he tore frantically at his nails. He stared ahead, and his eyes watered because he had so few eyelashes left to protect his hazy eyeballs.

He forgot what he was worried about and smiled, and grabbed my hand and kissed it. The milky tears squeezed through the meandering pathways that lead from his eyes to his cheeks.

“You are very lucky,” he smiled, “you and your dear brother, to have such a wonderful mother.” He stared at my mother across the room. “I don’t remember my mother at all, she died giving birth to my sister. I was only two, so I went to live with my…”

“Grandmother.”

“Oh, I told you that already. I’m so forgetful these days.” And the lines on his furrowed forehead met the ones curling around his eyes that met the ones on his cheeks.

And so it goes. Most visits, Gord will ask us if we’ve heard of Jane Austen (though it usually takes upwards of five minutes for him to think of her name), or if we’ve read his short story, “The Donut Hole” (he assures us it’s only a silly story, since he’s had to teach himself to read). My mother does Gord’s taxes, and she often finds three or four receipts from dryer repairmen, which read: “Checked dryer, no problem found, $50.00.” He hates rock music, he really hates rock music, even jazz, and if we put on something he likes he faces the speakers and conducts to an imaginary symphony. He still doesn’t know that John and Ken, who have been coming to Thanksgiving dinner for years, are gay.

So remember, all you have to do to be amazing is to live for 94 years. Though 94 years is a long time to live.

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One year after the bill was enacted, the number of egg donors at the McGill Reproductive Centre had already dropped by 70 per cent, Dr. Seang Lin Tan, the director of the centre and chair of McGill’s Obstetrics and Gynecology Department told The McGill Daily in 2005. It’s not a surprising drop. Egg donation demands considerable amounts of time and invasive procedures; to comply with the new laws, egg donation must be motivated purely by a sense of altruism. Anna-Maria Henderson, Manager of the McGill Reproductive Centre, understands that this is a lot to ask: “We have seen a decrease in egg donors since 2004,” Henderson laments. Egg donation “is a lot to go through; it means taking fertility drugs and getting blood tests, and it takes a lot of time. With the law that prevents us from reimbursing donors, the process is often too much for someone to want to do for a stranger,” she notes.

Children have rights

While some consider these laws to be an unnecessarily stringent barrier for infertile couples, others are calling for harsher regulation – or the abolition of reproductive technologies altogether. A few take these views to the extreme, like Veronica Thomas, creator of the blog Children Have Rights – Say No To Repro Tech. One entry reads, “Yes, it is a baby trade, like the slave trade of old. Babies have become consumer products, accessories to our lifestyles. They are like pets, those cute and cuddly babies. And like pets, they can be made to your liking. Just buy the sperm at your nearest sperm bank, purchase an egg from your local egg dealer, and rent a surrogate womb. And in nine months, bring home a baby without a pregnancy, without even a dent in your schedule!”

She claims that processes like in vitro fertilization ignore the rights of unborn children in favour of parents’ right to pass on their genes.

Thomas is not alone in her views. In 2006, the Commission on Parenthood’s Future, a self-proclaimed “independent, nonpartisan group of scholars and leaders,” came out with a report denouncing reproductive technologies. Entitled “The Revolution in Parenthood,” the report accuses these technologies of being the product of a legal system that “increasingly seeks to administer parenthood, often giving far greater attention to adult rights than to children’s needs.” The authors claim that the intervention of science in reproduction is in part responsible for the destruction of the nuclear family, because it ignores children’s need to be raised by biological parents. The report opposes the use of the term “legal” or “psychological parent,” rather than “natural” or “biological,” because they upset traditional notions of parenthood. It also finds fault with incongruities in Canadian laws that allow egg and sperm donors to remain anonymous, while making it an adoptive child’s right to know the identity of their biological parents.

Some among the first generation of donor-conceived children who have come of age are expressing anger at their origins. It is the anonymity of their biological fathers that spark their discontent. In an article for The Washington Post Katrina Clark, one such donor-conceived adult, writes, “I was angry at the idea that, where donor conception is concerned, everyone focuses on the parents – the adults who can make choices about their own lives. The recipient gets sympathy for wanting to have a child. The donor gets a guarantee of anonymity and absolution from any responsibility for the offspring of his ‘donation.’ The children born of these transactions are people, too.”

Black-market gametes

Despite the government’s intervention in reproductive technologies, the gamete trade continues underground. Black-market egg donors are not hard to find; one need not look further than the McGill Classifieds. Last year, Brianna Hersey, a U3 McGill student and former Daily columnist, posted an ad reading, “Egg donor seeking couple in need,” although she assured me that she wasn’t necessarily looking for a couple.

“I was coming out of a period of serious illness, out of a time of being really at odds with my body, and I saw egg donation as something positive that I could do with my body. It seemed really rewarding.”

Janet Takefman, director of psychological services at the McGill Reproduction Centre, says that it’s common for people who have had negative experiences with their bodies, such as illness or an abortion, to want to do something that will psychologically reestablish their bodies as positive entities.

The number of responses Hersey received was indicative of the country’s serious need for egg donors. “Although it’s really illegal in Canada, I knew that I could be reimbursed a few thousand dollars for the experience.”

Hersey disagrees with those who see the exchange of money for gametes as exploitation, but does understand it as a social issue: “If you don’t pay donors, then you’re pandering to upper class people who can afford to take this time out of their working day to go through the many visits that are required to donate an egg, but if you do pay people for their eggs then you’re luring lower-class people, who really need the money to sell their bodies and be guinea pigs for science.”

Although Hersey did put a price on her eggs, she said she would have done it for free, if her financial situation allowed it. Tafekman lauds the women she has encountered with Hersey’s sentiment, women who will donate their eggs out of the desire to help another woman. “Often, compensation occurs under the table simply because the donor needs money to pay tuition, not because they’re looking to get rich,” she says.

Many egg donors are already parents who are grateful for their own children and wish to give that opportunity to others. “It’s like paying it forward,” Tafekman says. “They’re heartbroken to hear that others can’t share their experience of having children.”

Unfortunately, Hersey was unable to donate eggs due to negative interactions between the prescribed hormones and a medication, but her experience showed her how desperate some couples are to have children. Initially, she was opposed to reproductive technologies, thinking, “There are so many children in need, it’s fucked up not to even consider adoption just because you want your children to look like you.” In an effort to adopt, however, couples encounter long waiting lists, prohibitively high costs, and strict regulation. Often, a couple’s interest in in vitro fertilization is not driven by a stubborn and narcissistic urge to pass on their genes; most simply cast as many lines as possible into the sea of options, and wait to see which will be the first to bite.

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