OK, I make no pretenses of knowing what life is all about. But I have spent a enough time on this spinning blue ball to tell you what it is not:Life is not Cake or Death.There are nuances, shades of gray, degrees of risk, sides of a story, and more than one way to skin a cat.But try to talk to people about politics, and it always gets resolved to either “Cake or Death”.Try to talk to a politician about policy, and it always gets resolved to either “Cake or Death”.Try to talk to a Preacher about religion and our place in the Cosmos, and it always, as sure as Buddha rose on the third day and saw his shadow, gets resolved to either “Cake or Death”.And God help you if you ever have to talk money with a bean counter, because “Cake or Death” is the motto of every MBA program on the effing earth.Not following this? Fine, let me ‘splain it. Not every decision can be made so effing lead pipe simple that the only choice is a beacon to the blind, a symphony to the deaf, or hot fiery awful death. There is no intelligence in “Cake or death”. Monkeys could make the call and be a damned sight quicker about it. Offer a spider monkey some delicious bundt cake, and a ball of vipers, and see what happens. That’s right, the cake is gone and the snakes get an aversion complex. Maybe they would like some cake until they get over it?If I am forced to walk this earth surrounded by only cake picking monkeys, than so be it. Monkeys are fairly entertaining, or at least they are when you tease them. But Noooo! I have to drag this earthly bondage along to God knows what end surrounded by people that claim to be intelligent, and whose only response to a complex issue is to ask “can you give me the Cake or Death version?” AUUUUGGGGGHHHH!Hey, I like a rigged game as much as the next guy. You know, “heads I get cake, tails you lose your cake to me”. Go ahead, flip a coin. Be daring. Sport.I curse the life that is “Cake or Death”, and all that sail in her.
the evidence for being "born in the wrong body" is largely unconvincingI had an interesting conversation with an internationally fairly famous philosopher (as far as any philosopher is famous) about this belief - her view was that it is a very masculine-socialised world view, deriving from Descartes, whose separation of the mind from the body, and whose rational (but reductive) proof of existence was, "I think, therefore I am" was a peculiarly gendered & classed view.To be able to separate one's mind/thinking from one's body & bodily functions, is a privileged position: a position that suggests one is not a manual labourer, for example, in a position where the labour of one's body is at the centre of continued existence (food, shelter).Or it's a position which suggests that one is not subject to bodily conditions which can dominate one's consciousness (regular/cyclical uterine pain from ovulation and menstruation, or swings in mood caused by hormonal cycles), or it's a position which suggests that one has not been through experiences where - as much as one is a thinking being - one's body takes over - pregnancy and childbirth, for example.Women have always been necessarily aware of our bodies; we rarely have the luxury of pretending we are only minds/consciousnesses. I'm privileged to spend most of my time thinking, but I am still reminded daily that I live in, and only exist in, my sexed female body.I suspect it's always been easier for men, and particularly privileged men, to behave as though they are minds only.
