The Beginning of Sex and Gender

“Nowadays, we are assigning gender even before birth. We have become socially conditioned to participate in the gendering of children at the earliest possible moment - whenever a sonogram can identify its genitalia. Gender-reveal parties have become a trendy way to celebrate the child’s fate, steering them down a life of masculine or feminine ideals before ever meeting them.” -George Matthew Johnson

My friend Saturn became a grandmother four years ago. But she just found out that she has a granddaughter. 

Oh, she’s been playing with all four of the grandchildren regularly since their births, and there has never been any question that three of them were born male and one was born female, as far as their sex at birth goes. But the parents want to respect the choice of each child of what, if any, gender they want to identify with.

When asked at age two if they were a boy or a girl, the two year old female child replied, “probably a girl”. Saturn did not ask very often. Once a year or so. The second time, at age three, the answer was also casually noncommittal.

So everyone around “them” learns to use the pronouns they/them. It is an education for all. People start to become aware of how deep seated their thinking, and concomitant projecting, of sex and gender is. Friends of the family begin to say stereotypical things to them like “oh what a pretty outfit you have on today” as soon as they figure out which set of genitals is actually in the diapers. 

The box we put people into very early in life is very set and strong. Even family members often slip up, catch themselves, correct their pronouns, and notice their internal assumptions. It is a real consciousness raiser.

“Bodies are not only biological phenomena but also complex social creations onto which meanings have been variously composed and imposed according to time and space.” -Katrina Karkazis, Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience

Some extended relatives freak out. They warn that the children will grow up confused. They will not be able to “fit in”!

But soon it begins to dawn on everyone that if a child can not fit in, maybe it is because the problem is with the sexist society. So, some choose to extend their new habit of calling the children by the gender neutral pronouns to calling everyone by them. We begin to realize that to have a well adjusted child, we will have to adjust the world to fit the children, not the other way around. To force a child to adjust to a sick society is simply child abuse.

I consider all of these issues and conclude that henceforth I shall refer to all as they/them unless I have a specific contextual reason to do otherwise, much like the policy that news organizations have on not mentioning the race of a person in a news report.

Why are we so obsessed with children’s sex? Why do we need to refer to every persons’ genitals every time we speak of them? If that is such an important identifier, why don’t we also say, call them, for instance, the “short, fat, pink, brown haired, male” person? Or the “dark skinned, bald, skinny, wheelchair bound male” person? What is so important about the knowledge of, and constant reference to, just the gender?

Other languages gender everything. Studies have shown that this does in fact change the way we think about those arbitrarily gendered things. In some languages the sun or moon is male or female, and in others, it is vice versa. We say in English, the “mother” Earth. Why does the Earth have to be a mother? Is it not more like a tiny male sperm in a solar system dominated by a huge mother ovum sun?

“Let's stop pretending that we have all the answers, because when it comes to gender, none of us is fucking omniscient.” -Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation

At the age of four, Saturn’s granddaughter finally announces she is, in fact, a girl. 

Saturn is overjoyed. In the meantime, since the birth of grandchild number one, three more grandchildren have arrived, all with male physical reproductive apparatus. They are being dressed and reared with free choice as well. 

But their parents are acutely aware that their own feelings about this include the knowledge of the different cultural status and prospects of boys and men. It can be postponed, but not ignored. They notice they have different impulses around the issue than they did with the female child. The cultural biases are deeply grooved, not only into the culture, but also our own unconscious feelings and attitudes.

“Male domination is so rooted in our collective unconscious that we no longer even see it.” -Pierre Bourdieu

Yesterday, the four year old granddaughter says brightly of their sibling: “We use they/them for (her one year old male sibling). When they get old enough, they will tell us what they want to be called. They might want to be a girl, or a boy, or neither one.”

“The last dragon was apparently still too young to have made up its mind which sex it wanted to be; it didn't have any horns at all.” 

― Patricia C. Wrede, Dealing with Dragons

Children and Change

Shulamith Firestone, the great feminist visionary, wrote in 1970 that the fully liberated world would be safe for children to be in, pretty much everywhere. Segregation would end and all ages would once again be together, even as they were long ago, when humans lived in small tribes. Children would be free to roam around and choose whatever they wanted to do. They would be fully integrated into every sector of society, not secluded into special zones.

This would require, of course, making the whole world kid friendly. It is an interesting notion I have often pondered, but rarely have I seen such a test case as the current mass quarantine, in which families are cooped up together for the first time, in little mini tribes.

Important meetings, of important grownups, on video, saying important things to one another are being randomly interrupted all day now, by cats, dogs, and kids. I smile when I hear them on live radio broadcasts, thinking, ah ha, it is just a tiny sample of the  ouR-evolution.

While the grown ups chafe under the pressure of confinement and limitation, the kids are enjoying lots of extra attention from their significant others. Very young ones do not miss the wider world, and pets everywhere are very happy their people are always around. And many fathers are getting to know their offspring better, and even doing more chores around the house. 

It is more natural to learn in mixed age groups. We have been wired to do this for thousands of years. When allowed to run free, kids tend to form kid led play groups with kids learning from slightly older kids, who are practicing and imitating the skills they see other tribe members doing. They naturally and effortlessly teach each other.

School is also disrupted at this moment, due to the quarantine. So it is a good time to question the school model itself. Are kids really being deprived of their place on the track of grades and steps they “should” be achieving at each level? Or are they learning to cook, navigate the internet, even entertain themselves, perhaps? Are they becoming more truly their individual selves, finding out what they like to do, what interests them?

Even as the grown ups figure out how to do more of their regular jobs from home, children have not stopped learning, they are just doing it differently.

Of course there is a negative side. Firestone observed “childhood is hell”.  My friend Saturn remembers growing up in the 1960s, feeling more fortunate than her friends because her father had died, while many of her friends were forced to live with fathers who were violent and abusive, and mothers who felt trapped in their marriages because they felt they could not support their families alone.

Undoubtedly, at this very moment, many children miss school right now, because their home environment is hellish. Some may only be able to eat full meals every day at school, or are trapped in abusive or materially deprived home situations.

But it is scary, and it does hurt, to rip the bandaid off. Especially when the fundamental wound is not healed. But that is no reason not try to begin to heal. Just as the mass media of our past few decades is giving way to individually tailored information, so children are benefiting from individually tailored education.

I don’t know if we will make it through this transition. All this choice could easily lead to worse stratification and the shattering of our shared common values, leading to more inequalities and isolating many children into pockets of intolerance, ignorance, and prejudice. And more hell.

But the assembly line factory model of education is obsolete. Can we make this transition into ever greater freedom and self actualization, or will we slump back into strife and repression? Can we expand the concept of guaranteed education for all children, to guaranteed conditions for all to thrive, as we are technically capable of now?

This would be a good moment to consider it.

“Children's liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list” - Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Coming Apart, Coming Back Together

In this age, it sometimes seems everything is coming apart. The signs are everywhere. Lately as the whole planet has experienced a quarantine lock down, everyone tries to stay apart so we don’t exacerbate the epidemic. It is an effort and a mindful discipline to practice this new distancing from others. The effort comes with lessons, and new ways of being polite. Nod to the ones who make space for you to pass, but maybe you don’t say thank you out loud; it might spread germs. Perfecting the eye smile while masked.

We are all in this together, and we are also each having our own unique experience, depending on where we were when the music stopped. There is time, a time out from business as usual, to step back and reassess how things were, and what should change. It is truly a moment when everything is up for revision and re-envisioning.

Glaring inequalities are coming up and being exposed to the light of everyone’s attention, personified by triggering events witnessed by all in this new age of social media and global information connectedness. In our time apart we can see how differently people are suffering the disruption we are all conducting together and separately.

It is a moment of crisis, and opportunity, as the saying goes. All systems are under scrutiny in the harsh light of this moment. As we slowly begin to come back together, we know we don’t even want it to be the same again.

"Close scrutiny will show that most 'crisis situations' are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are." Maxwell Maltz

Hunting for a Better Way to Live

“If cats could talk, they wouldn’t” - Nan Porter

I am writing this in a moment in ourstory when an unprecedented proportion of the humans from Earth are confined and restricted to some extent beyond their usual circuits of movement. As we suffer this, or anything, we feel more compassionate toward others, so say the experts.

“One small cat changes coming home to an empty house to coming home.” –Pam Brown

Animals are people too. My kitty is confined to the interior of our large communal house, even though he is sometimes curious about what else might be out there. What is out there would like to kill him. Foxes, coyotes, bears, and cougars roam just outside the door. Then there are all of the diseases and parasites he avoids by not going out, some of which are a danger to us other animals. Also, he is a danger to the birds who live there. Indoor cats, on average, live twice as long, and I can say, quite happily.

He is like a naive child, oblivious to the perils I know too well, having lost several pet chickens to the local predator community. A young child may want to run into the street, but no sane parent would let them. So, like a loving parent, I meet his needs to socialize, play, and pretend stalk, and feed him food that is as close as I can get to harmless to others. So, he is a veganish cat. We get him food that is organically grown, non GMO, all plant based, taurine fortified and so on, formulated just for the dietary needs of cats. 

(We have this. Housecats as well as pet foods are somewhat human-contrived.) 

I say veganish, because after all, there is no pure vegan anything. The food travels on roads that have cut through wildlife habitat. Getting and burning the fuel needed for delivery degrades the climate and pollutes the air, water and soil. The packaging, the truck, even growing the plant food, all cost the environment as well. Though to be fair, all of these functions can be done way more sustainably if we change out to more ecofriendly ways of doing things. Ways we already know.

All of our cats have been veganish, since 1995, when plant based cat food first became available. All have made it to at least age eighteen, and always in good health. Two of them were age nine when they started on vegan cat food, and the interesting thing is, their personalities also transformed with their diet. They stopped hunting! These were suburban cats who had been mouse and bird hunters, and they just lost interest in hunting. They stayed on the deck or just by the house and didn’t roam far. 

Only after stopping the so called obligate carnivores diet, one cat first began to be interested in always sampling a little of whatever food I was eating, and, oddly, also liked to occasionally dig in ant hives and lick them up as they came pouring out.

The other one, who could effortlessly pull a bird right out of the air before, now ate her vegan food out on the deck, then sat back and enjoyed sharing it with her own fan club of bird friends every day, who came just inches away to partake as she passively watched. In the days before she died, the enlightened gaze she wore literally gave darshan, the special blessings of an Awakened One, to all who saw her.

My present young pet is very nice, but he is no saint. He gets very excited when he sees birds out the window, and his jaw quivers, leaving little doubt about what he would like to do. And he can, and does, bring down and eat any house fly that happens into the house. But he gets just as excited when I bring out the cat toys.

Like my kitty, and like all of the humans who might dream of going and doing things they can’t do now, we are all confined to some sphere anyway, all the time. My cat sees the window bird; a monogamous happy partner appreciates seeing an attractive person walk by; a teen sees a fast sports vehicle that they can’t have go by; a person considers a big pile of cookies, but decides, nice, but not today. A young athlete dreams of someday scaling Everest, but finds it works for them to just do some elevation hikes now and then. A kid says they will fly to the moon when they grow up, but gets into studying astronomy instead, and decides that too much pollution is made in actual moon trips. I personally would love to fly, but I am waiting for a far more advanced mode of doing it than our present day crude, dirty, noisy, rude, intrusive and dangerous flying technologies. Perhaps it will not come in my lifetime, which is OK.

I think we are all evolving. There is a famous case of the pet lion in the 1940s, who became a vegetarian on her own, and refused to touch meat for the rest of her life, even when they tried to sneak it into her food. There are millions of vegetarians in the world who still hunt, but now they do it in clothing stores, or online shopping, or with cameras, or by adding the names of bird species to their life list.  

I think the whole predator and prey psychology is evolving. Those who project their own struggles onto their pets use words like “obligate carnivore”. They think their pets need to go kill something, because they are not all that far removed from this urge themselves. But hardly anyone kills people anymore; the murder rate has been falling for centuries. And literature, culture, and movies provide a format for those urges to be considered and reconsidered without harming anyone.

May the same soon come to pass with the completely unnecessary and cruel murder, enslavement, and torture of animals. May it soon be regarded as we do murder and slavery, as a thing of the past. No one with a beloved pet would want to treat them that way, yet they blithely trot off to the supermarket to buy a can of death to put in their pet’s food dish. A can of chopped animal bodies, stolen from the child of some mother animal that loved them. It is exactly the same as chopping up your pet and eating them.

Thieves have the habit of always looking over their shoulder and worrying that someone will steal from them. It is like that with the meat eating syndrome of denial, guilt, blame, and defensiveness, and the psychological need to project, and conveniently ignore. There is another way. One can deal with it honestly. 

And it hurts to give out hurt. What sane person would ever want to needlessly inflict harm on others? Yet our system is doing just that, inexorably, every day.

You can choose to shift, to evolve, to respond consciously to a natural preprogrammed evolutionary urge, but with an action that fulfills your need in a more elegant, tantric, and harm reduced way. It even feels good to do good. Usually you will find it is even more satisfying!

“Animals are my friends … and I don’t eat my friends.” –George Bernard Shaw

Omni’s Colorbook

My newest book is out today, albeit only on this link, so excited for you to get a sneak preview! 

I have been working on this one for years. Everything I know about color, from this colorist artist:)

Understanding color in art, lifestyle, philosophy, and psychology.

A fun little book of Omni’s art, and thoughts and meandering commentary on color in art and life. This 173 page book is full of colorful illustrations on every page, color insights, and useful tips for using color in your life, art, and mind. You will learn things about color perception and yourself, as waves of color wash over you, with a chapter on each color and more.

To read the Omni’s Colorbook on your device in its entirety for free, 

CLICK HERE:

House on Fire

“Look out where we're headed

Or we may not survive!

Gotta stop the way we're going

Or we just might arrive! 

We better be wisin', wisin', wisin', wisin' up!”

- River Rising, by Sunheart 

Returning home from a walk today I find the house filled with smoke. A burner on the stove is on and the hot empty pan is pouring forth with smoke, while a few feet away, my oblivious housemate sits staring at their phone screen. They have lost their sense of smell. 

The frogs are boiling. We are doing this to ourselves. We are filling our house with smoke. The fire seasons around here on the left coast are doing things none of the firefighters have ever seen, “firenadoes” and storms of fire that create their own weather. 

We are in the midst of an unprecedented planetary crisis and I do not mean the current viral epidemic which has momentarily brought much of the world’s commerce to a pause. In the space of one human lifetime, we have unraveled much of the web of life on Earth. In this eyeblink of time, eighty percent of the worlds’ bugs, birds, and animals have been trampled to death by our heavy footsteps of industrialization. The planet is on fire.

Staring glumly at this situation three months ago, in early January, I ponder the legal case for an intervention by higher forms of life who may be available to call upon, much like the galactic cops. Aliens, ancient ancestors who may be about and watching from afar, angels, what not. I looked up the particulars for the Prime Directive in the legal annals of the Star Trek literature:

“The Prime Directive:

“It is known throughout the Universe that ET civilizations cannot involve themselves in the affairs of planets unless invited in unity by all the leaders of a planet. 


“The only exception to the 'Prime Directive' is if a civilization is on a collision course to harm or destroy other planets or their own home planet. Then, corrections to prevent this can be made, because the inhabitants might harm or destroy beings on co-existing dimensions of their own planet or perhaps even throw their planet out of orbit and harm other planets in their own solar system. But there would still NOT be an alien invasion, there would just be intervention to prevent global disaster.


“As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Starfleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely.”


So let us examine several points:

1.“..unless invited in unity by all the leaders of a planet. “

So, who are our leaders? Do we mean kings, despots, tyrants and strong men and their descendants who have seized power by force and rule without consent of the other people? If you believe in equality, are we not all leaders, at least when we are leading by pointing out the truth? 


What about the situation that billions of people are in today, who would like to stop wrecking the planet, but wonder how because they do not have freedom of speech or power to make policy, or in many cases, even the knowledge of what is being done and its consequences. Aren’t they effectively without legitimate leaders, but are instead hostages and victims themselves? 


Do more evolved beings really think that the billions of Earthlings will ever all agree on anything, or that the ones in power are any more than bullies and usurpers of power, power that justly belongs to the sovereign souls of individuals? What about the case of democracies where the vote was stolen by trickery and the corporate thieves who are destroying the planet? As the saying goes, does not your right to swing your fist end before it reaches my face?


2.“the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred”

(sen·tient ;/ˈsen(t)SH(ē)ənt/; adjective; able to perceive or feel things.)   Many animals are sentient by this definition and many of them do have cultures of their own, almost all of which we humans have destroyed or are destroying.


3.“to harm or destroy other planets or their own home planet.”

We are systematically wiping out the natural habitat of most of the other species of critters and plants on Earth, and more entire species are going extinct every day. We are poisoning and degrading water, air, and earth for short term gain of imaginary wealth in the form of money. Our actions have reached the level of threatening most life on the planet. Our so called leaders have not managed to slow or stop, much less reverse, this process. (Until the last few weeks.)


4. As to the “right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution” and “the normal and healthy development” of our species and the other ones on the planet, there is nothing “normal” or “healthy” about current developments. Therefore, the prohibition against intervention does not apply.


We would not be asking for interference or invasion, merely  “corrections” and “intervention to prevent global disaster.”


I conclude we have a good case to ask for this kind of help from our heavenly friends.

So, three months ago, I put in such a request for intervention:

“As a free being, sovereign soul and beloved child of Creator, as a leader of the planet by virtue of being a coequal member of a democracy, and by the right of being an embodied citizen of Earth, I am calling for assistance from all benevolent beings on and around the planet, in intervening to correct the current course toward planetary catastrophe.”

Suddenly, there was this pandemic! Now we stand in the quiet center of this hurricane of global disaster, in a tiny little moment of a minuscule but palpable time out. Could this be the intervention I was asking for?

This crop circle appeared in Wiltshire, UK, on May 31st, 2020. It is really a very elegant intervention. As the humans hunker down all over the world at this moment, the creatures are rebounding. The air is cleaner in many places than it has been in decades. Seismologists are noticing that the planet is literally vibrating less, due to the quieting down of human activities. Bird songs are heard in some cities for the first time in anyone’s memory. Wildflowers are coming up in unmowed parks and fields. Large animals are venturing out and roaming through empty city streets. It is not unlike the cases of Chernobyl and Fukushima, where the humans have abandoned the scene of radioactive accidents and nature has moved in, creating zones where wildlife is once again massively flourishing.

“Who’s your agent, kid?” inquires the big grim reaper called Climate Catastrophe, to the little baby grim reaper called Covid 19, in one cartoon I saw. The hurricane is not over, this is a quiet eye moment in the huge climate catastrophe storm. But it is like an intervention. Come out and feel the peace now, listen to the birds, smell the clean air. And let us quickly absorb the lesson being offered by this mega disrupter.

Who knew that the whole world could act in unison this way? Who knew that when faced with the fear of imminent personal bodily harm, the leaders of the world and corporate titans could stop, and turn on a dime? (Why, world peace is practically breaking out; because it’s um, dangerous to wage war right now!)

Maybe we did not need an intervention by outside forces. Maybe this one is simply a gift from our own karma. 

Most of the great plagues of history have started just like this one, by infectious agents jumping species due to humans exploiting animals by murdering and consuming them, enslaving and abusing them, or simply by destroying or disrupting their habitat.

Change is demonstrably possible, clearly we can fix our big problems if we simply want to.

“A season has changed, the dawn has come, and then you realize

You look around and notice there’s a new light in peoples’ eyes

An ya know what to do, the birds are singing it; you can feel it in the air

All the animals know, trees are rustling, the murmuring sound is everywhere

It’s time to wake up, link up, speak up, and thrive”-from Thrive, by Sunheart

“Humanity’s lungs are under attack, but the world is breathing. The Earth is restoring its balance and with it we are. We have heard stories of blue skies in China and dolphins returning to the canals of Venice. Our “sacrifice” in economic and leisurely activity is granting the Earth a much-needed rest. Stanford University researchers estimate that about 77,000 lives are saved by emission reduction in China alone, even daring to ask if the “lives saved from this reduction in pollution caused by economic disruption from COVID-19 exceeds the death toll from the virus itself.” Marian Brehmer

Smiling from Behind my Mask

Confessions of an Introvert Smiling from Behind my Mask

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." -Rahm Emanuel

Of course I fear and feel for the vulnerable ones, and appreciate the heroes fighting the the virus on the front lines to protect us all. And while my communal household is isolating and hunkering down, I too look forward to the reopening of the outside world.

Still, I have to admit, this is an introvert’s dream. And other than the above mentioned stipulations, I’m lovin’ it.

When I was a child, the grown ups bought me a huge sweatshirt emblazoned with a quote from the comic strip Peanuts, “ I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand!” I can relate to that. Those guys really got me. I loved to pull my arms and legs into the giant sweatshirt and have my own little tent space.

Fortunately I can still do my daily roam on the hiking trails all around where I live in the rainforest. But it has always bothered me to walk through people’s toxic body products cloud when I passed them on the trail. My delicate veganish sense of smell gives me nasal superpowers. I smell every cologne, antiperspirant chemical, hairspray and whatnot that goes by me. I often even know what people have eaten as well! But the new trail etiquette is to actually leave the trail, and let the person pass. Hey, works for me.

I love the quiet now. Fewer cars going by, fewer airplanes roaring overhead. Just birds! All over the world, during this incredible global timeout, city people are hearing the birds, and pollution levels are plummeting! I hope everyone is using their time out to reconsider how we do business as usual. How many car trips are really justifiable? How many jobs really require the burning of fossil fuels to get into the office, and how much of this can be done from home? 

And we have become way too casual about flying. I get that it is a blessing to be able to hop on a plane and quickly get to the bedside of that dying relative, or for the wildfire crew that needs to quickly assemble in another state. But the word blessing also means to pierce, or tear open. The fact is, the technology of flying on the planet at this time is shredding the environment. It is crude, primitive, dangerous, dirty, wasteful of natural resources, toxic to all concerned in every way, and at least ninety percent unnecessary. It is rude to all of us who have to put up with the roar above us, it contributes in a substantial way to the current extinction crisis on Earth, and it encourages our most selfish and impatient impulses. I hope the airline industry crashes. And may we all rest in peace!

And we certainly do not need swarms of drones, droning out the birds and invading our privacy from above, to deliver pizza.

There are those, (not us introverts,) who will of course say that we need to physically go into the workplace or school in order to socialize. But we can do this at the time and place of our own individual choosing! Must we sit in rows, military style, as our lessons are administered to us? Let’s throw out the factory model of education. It is quite obsolete.

I note that despite this moment of unprecedented heavy use, the internet is still functional. We do not need to add more electromagnetic pollution to our atmosphere with five G. Underground fiber is way quieter and cleaner.

I also note the abundance that allows us all to still eat and heat in a time when the economy is in a so called sudden depression. Where do you think all of the gains of civilization have been going all these years? I mean by that our wealth of shared information, our infrastructure, our myriad ways of doing more with less, our wealth inherited from the work of those who came before us. We have a whole lot of slack and abundance, and we work too many hours, but why?! 

Our money system, which lets the rich roll all the planets’ labor and natural resources into tiny paper or electronic balls for their own super powers, is the way it is, only because we allow it. We allow it only because we have bought into the propaganda that tells us that there is not enough for everyone so we must fight each other. It is a toxic and misguided meme of infinite economic growth, the philosophy of a cancer cell.

We have way too many people working at jobs that are unneeded, unhealthy, unhelpful, or just plain toxic and dangerous for all life on the planet. Let’s get serious about the universal basic income, so people can get creative, or think deeply about solving the real problems of the world instead of just scraping by, or just take a healthy and much needed rest!

I hope we learn from this crisis. I hope we learn ways to keep calm, because muddled thinking results from stress and fear. 

One thing is for sure, this is a turning point, a crisis offering opportunity, and the world will never be the same again.

“Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think." -Jawaharlal Nehru