Square pegs in fractal holes

Just your basic fractal

For whatever reason, gender and sexuality issues have become interesting to me of late. Maybe it was the horror of the massacre in Orlando. Maybe it's the failure to classify it as a hate crime. Maybe it's the relentless drumbeat of Republicans and religious fanatics (lots of overlap, but not exactly the same thing) calling for laws that validate discrimination against people based on their sexual preference or gender identity.

Before I get too deep here, which doesn't take much in this particular topic, I should state what should be obvious: The world is a very complicated place and human being are very complicated creatures. And there are a lot of those complicated humans in this complicated world. To expect all of them to fit within a set number of rigidly defined boundaries is simply ignorant. Have you ever met people? What about them is invariant? Even the simplest interactions are different from one person to the next.

Men don't understand women. Women don't understand men (they think they do but even men, stupid as they are, are not all totally transparent). Kids of the same parents and gender can be vastly different. People of differing race, ethnicity, nationality, whatever, do not a homogeneous mass make.

Even if limit our discussion the the good old USA, we're talking about around 350 million people. And even when you're talking about 1 country with 5% of the world population, you can't convince me that there is not going to be a wide spectrum of human beings.

To try something I made up masquerading as scientific analysis, let's just postulate that there are 1000 different human responses to stimuli. I'm almost positive a gross underestimation; it's more likely between 10 and 100 times that. I probably had a few thousand already today, and it's only noon. But even working with 1000, basic counting theory would then say that there could be up to 350 billion different responses. You want me to believe that they're all the same or all fit into 2 groups, gender-based or otherwise? Or any sort of set number of groups? Why? Because the Bible?

I'm not trying to unlock the mysteries of differences. I'm just saying it makes a lot more sense that there would be differences than that there wouldn't. And denying that reality and discriminating against people because they're different in ways you don't and can't understand is simply bigotry.

Oh, and read this article. It was the cover story of the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday and it's horrifying.