Three Disturbing Things

1. There were six pickled fœtuses at the Phyletisches Museum today. Human fœtuses: one aborted at four weeks, one at eight weeks, one at twelve weeks, one at sixteen weeks, one at twenty-four weeks, one at thirty-three weeks. Some of them were curled against a preserved slice of uterus, cut away so that you could see the tiny limbs tucked into the tiny body. They're suspended in formaldehyde, and arranged so that you imagine it's the same fœtus aging. I found myself talking to the biggest ones, as if they were babies, and alive, and needed comforting. Whose were those uteruses?

2. In the same room, there is a chart – a recent chart, inspired by the Out-of-Africa hypothesis – that illustrates the degree of relationship and distance between the human races. Races, so called. There's no human race that can't be undone with a single act of sexual reproduction. Not that you'd think so, to look at this chart.

3. One of the stranger papers at the conference last week was titled "What Women Want - Men Want Something Different". I'm of the "one is not born a woman" school, so I'm unreceptive from the get-go to evolutionary accounts of why "women" and "men" behave the way they supposedly behave. Even if I weren't, though, even if I thought I was nothing but my biology, and that my biology was something static and predetermined and identical with that of 51.2% of my species, this paper would have gotten my goat, by her beard. It went like this: women want men who will enable their babies to prosper, high status men with lots of money; men want women who are healthy and fertile, and monogamous, so that they can be sure that they're investing their paternal energy into their own offspring; there is no upper limit on women's desire for their mate's status and wealth; and so men are driven to relentless capitalism; cue – smoke-stacks, landfill, disposable ermine earmuffs; conclusion – the environmental apocalypse has been caused by women's desire.