Let Kids and Teens Be Kids and Teens

Over the past few years, there has been a great deal of furor regarding gender.  The loudest groups are those who argue that gender is determined at birth and those who argue that gender is a something that is determined after birth, when the individual decides what he or she wants to be.

A baby’s sex is determined at the moment of fertilization. Out of the forty-six chromosomes that make up a baby’s genetic material (twenty-three from the male and twenty-three from the female in a typical situation), only two of those chromosomes (in a typical situation) — one from the male and one from the female — determine the baby’s sex. Two chromosomes. The sex chromosomes.

A Y chromosome creates a boy and an X chromosome creates a girl. The outward sign of gender develops at around nine weeks, but rest assured that long before the outward sign of gender develops, the gender is already determined.

That being said, all embryos begin as females and when the Y chromosome expresses itself, this confirms the embryo is most definitely male.

Interesting enough, peer-reviewed studies have proven that if a man has more brothers than sisters, he is likely to have more sons than daughters, and if a man has more sisters than brothers, he is likely to have more daughters than sons.

The number of men and women in the world is pretty much equal more or less. Yes, men hold a slight lead with 102 men for every 100 women (based on data from 2020).  That works out to be 504 men (50.4%) to 496 women (49.6%) per 1,000 people.  And this is interesting mostly because when it comes to flipping a coin where there are only two possibly outcomes, that nearly 50-50 split happens every single time.  It makes sense it would also happen where gender is concerned. Don’t get mad at me for sharing that with you. That’s what the data bears out as being a fact, and it’s been bearing out that fact since the 17^th century believe it or not.

In a pamphlet published by the American Psychological Association titled “Answers to Your Questions about Transgender People, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression,” it states the following: “Transgender is an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression, or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth.”  That definition is pretty straight forward and clear.  Basically it states that if you feel you are a gender different than your biological sex, you are transgender, but that does not mean you are the other sex.  It means you identify as the other sex.

Basically the knowledgeable opinion of medical researchers and scientists is that biological sex is determined at conception, and gender, which is a social construct that determines behavior, is one that happens after birth.  That being the facts, it means a transgender male is still female despite taking on the social expectations of a male, and a transgender female is still male despite taking on the social expectations of a female.  In other words, a transgender male is not a male and a transgender female is not a female.

If extremists at either end of this discussion would stop long enough to see there is place for both sides to exist and co-exist, life for everyone in the middle would settle back down again.  There would be no need for the insistence on knowing what someone’s pronouns would be as those who took on the social expectations of the gender they wish to present as would lead to everyone using the pronouns that person would expect, with the exception of they/them which isn’t a biological or social possibility.

It’s also time for people to understand that children and teens can be gender nonconforming as they search for a way to express their identity.  Just because a boy likes to bake in the kitchen and isn’t into contact sports doesn’t mean he’s anything other than a boy who likes to bake in the kitchen and isn’t into contact sports.  Likewise, just because a girl likes to climb trees and fails to abide by the social expectations of sugar and spice and all that’s nice doesn’t mean she anything other than a girl who likes to climb trees and fails to abide by the social expectations of sugar and spice and all that’s nice.

What there isn’t is more than two genders.  Even when things go wonky as sometimes happens in nature, a person feels drawn to identify as a member of one sex more than the other.  Even those who say they are bi-sexual have a slightly more identifiable (to them) pull towards one sex or the other. Again, it’s that coin toss moment that determines which side has the stronger influence.

So let’s stop rushing children into making decisions when they are minors with regards to their sexuality and sense of gender.  Let them explore how they feel about traditional and non-traditional roles, and let them make wise decisions instead of pushing them into decisions that could radically alter their lives until the day they die.

If a child asks you, “Am I [opposite biological sex]?” listen to their concerns. Talk with them about the value of being themselves instead of buying into what others are telling them about who they are. Remind them that if a person almost never knows what they want to be when they grow up when it comes to a career, chances are just as high they won’t really know what they want to be until they grow up and decide what they are when it comes to gender. Let them know they can do things that are usually associated with the opposite biological sex without being worried they were born in the wrong body.

What all these arguments about transgenderism and transphobia and all things trans seem to be doing is throwing society backwards to a time when male and female roles were rigidly defined and no one dared to deviate from those inflexible and unyielding roles. Let children and teens be children and teens without forcing the expectation of making a forever life-altering decision that most likely won’t play out well for them later on as they enter adulthood. When they decide for themselves as adults, without interference in childhood, they are far more likely to feel at ease with their decision.

Elyse Bruce
20 February 2024

The Best Winter Driving Award Goes To …

The first snowfall of the year arrived over the past few days, and social media has been filled with photos and comments about how the snowfall has affected people.  Most photos, comments, and memes talk about the beauty of the first snow fall or about how fierce Mother Nature can be.  However, some comments and memes are anything but nice.

You know the memes and comments I’m talking about, right? The ones that denigrate how people are dealing with the snowfall.

There are northerners laughing at southerners about how they are struggling with having to drive through a few inches of snow while crowing about the prowess of northerners to be able to navigate a couple feet of snow without too much difficulty.  Instead of arguing my opinion versus their opinion, it made more sense to research the facts.

First off, let’s share a map of what constitutes the southern states in the U.S.

Now that we have established what are southern states as opposed to northern states, let’s continue with a few more facts.

According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System for 2019 through to 2021, with adjustments for vehicle miles traveled and the total winter fatalities per state, the most dangerous state for winter driving was a northern state: Michigan.

The second most dangerous state was Alaska followed by Ohio, Pennsylvania, Montana, and Illinois.

Now you would think that a southern state would rank in the Top 10 but that’s not what the facts indicate, and that’s interesting all in itself because South Carolina has the third-worst drivers in the US according to the information on file with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  First and second place go to Montana and New Mexico respectively.

So when someone from a northern state claims that southerners don’t know how to drive when it snows, the facts indicate it’s actually northerners who struggle with knowing how to drive when it snows (because it obviously does snow in nearly all of the southern states and it even snows in Texas).

Florida is the only state that can be discounted in this discussion as it’s rare to see any amount of snow in that state but even if there was snow that fell in Florida, the majority of residents in Florida aren’t Floridians by birth (that title goes to only 36% of the population).  The number one source of Florida transplants come from New York followed by New Jersey, Georgia, Illinois, and California.

Getting back to the point of this blog entry, when northerners decide the cautious attitude of southerners when it comes to snowfalls and snowstorms is something worth ridiculing, maybe it’s time to step back and consider the data about how northerners deal with driving in the snow.

Instead of pointing fingers and laughing at drivers living in southern states, maybe a few things can be learned by those doing the finger pointing.

And at the end of the day, if you really want to challenge your driving skills, maybe it’s time to visit Japan and Canada which are noted for having the most snow every year.  Yes, on Japan’s main island of Honshu lies a city known as Aomori that averages 311 inches (nearly 26 feet) of snow every year. Second and third place go to Sapporo (Japan) and Toyama (Japan) respectively, and fourth place goes to Woody Point, Newfoundland (Canada) that averages more than 21 feet of snow every winter.  Forest Montmorency, Quebec (Canada) is a close second with an annual snowfall total of 20 feet.

But just coming from a place where a lot of snow falls every year doesn’t guarantee good winter driving skills.  It just means the person knows what a lot of snow looks like at any given time during the season.

So let’s take a break from disparaging others for their driving habits and start focusing on how we drive those snowy roads.  If you’re a great driver, that’s fantastic. If you’re less than stellar when it comes to driving under certain circumstances, put effort into improving your own driving skills.

Driving through snow and snowstorms isn’t easy, and sometimes the best way to deal with snow and snowstorms is to not drive through them at all.  Stay home instead.  Make some hot chocolate and work from home (if you can) or hang out with loved ones (pets count as loved ones).  If you have a roof over your head, be grateful (not everyone can lay claim to that).

And be kind.

Elyse Bruce
16 January 2024

Rabbits and Deer v Hawks and Bears

The spread of coronavirus is caused by an exponential increase: A pattern that shows sharper increases over time due to compounding. We learned about this at school when we studied geometry.

Years ago, a popular shampoo ran a popular ad suggesting that if you were pleased with the product, to tell two people who would in turn tell two more people and then did the yada yada version for that generation by repeating and so on and so on and so on. With every telling, the screen doubled the number of faces telling others about the shampoo until the screen was one big screen of faces acting like pixels to create the image of the shampoo bottle being advertise.

Both the shampoo ad and the coronavirus numbers are examples of exponential patterns.

At this point, when it comes to the pandemic, there’s either going to be an exponential decay in the future, or food chain mathematics will kick in. We learned about that at school when we studied natural science.

Take for example an eco-system with an abundance of delicious grasses and plants for herbivores to feast upon. In time, rabbits and deer make their way to the area and since predators are few and far between, they enjoy the bounty of the area and begin to reproduce more rapidly than they would in a sparce eco-system.

The hawks come because rabbits are part of their food chain, and bears come because deer are part of their food chain. For a while, rabbits and deer are still able to grow in number despite hawks and bears also being in their environment, but eventually, those rabbits and deer will find themselves on the losing end and they will see their numbers dwindle.

It isn’t long before the bears find themselves in a spot of trouble when humans show up with various licensed and approved hunting instruments and licenses in hand and make use of what they bring with them.

Now the average rabbit in the wild weighs between 2 and 3 pounds. The average buck in the wild weighs between 150 and 300 pounds, and the average doe in the wild weighs between 100 to 200 pounds. For simplicity sake, let’s average that out and say 188 pounds (so two does or one buck).

Hawks eat between 15 to 20 percent of their weight every day, with hawks in the wild weighing between 3 and 4 pounds. In a month, one hawk will eat its own weight in prey (this case, about 2 rabbits per month).

The average bear in the wild eats between 80 to 100 pounds of food per day which is the equivalent of a small doe every day, or a small buck every other day.

A whitetail deer has a gestation period of 200 days (that’s 6 1/2 months), and a rabbit generally has a gestation period of 31 to 33 days (a month plus a day or two more sometimes). The deer usually gives birth to two fawns, but studies have shown that whitetail fawn have a 67 percent of not surviving their first year even when predators are ruled out of the picture according to the Wildlife Society headquartered in Nashville (TN).

It’s almost as bad as the mortality rate for rabbits as 44 percent die in their first month of life according to the Missouri Department of Conservation, and only between 20 and 25 percent actually make it to their first birthday. That means that with the average litter averaging 5 to 6 bunnies, you can count on 4 or 5 not making it very far in life.

Let’s say the area has a rabbit population of 10 couples and they produce 60 bunnies. We know that nearly half those bunnies won’t make it past the first month, and the ones that do, aren’t adults weighing 2 to 3 pounds until they reach they are a year old. That means a hawk eating the equivalent of two adult rabbits per month might find itself eating four to six smaller rabbits per month instead.

Since the average number of hawks in a group is between 4 and 5, that’s a lot of adult and non-adult rabbits preyed on every month … at least ten adult rabbits and who knows how many non-adult rabbits if adult rabbits aren’t victimized that month. Let’s assume the non-adult rabbits are three months old, which means approximately 15 of them will be picked off.

As for the deer, they won’t be faring too well either. Bears are usually solitary animals, so one bear on its own can easily prey on 30 small does every month or 15 small bucks every month. Of course, it could be 8 larger bucks every month or 10 larger does every month. It could be any combination actually as long as one assumes the bear is eating what keeps the bear satisfied.

Deer tend to travel parcels of 6 deer so a bear can decimate around a pretty big number of parcels over the course of a month.

The way to address the danger of wiping out the rabbit and deer populations is to bring in stewardship that will balance out the situation and encourage the predators to move along to greener pastures or wait for a predator to take out the hawk and bear in the equation.

The point here is that while the environment was conducive to supporting rabbits and deer who then began reproducing, when hawks and bears arrived, that environment didn’t change — the circumstances did.

What does this have to do with the current pandemic, you might well ask?

We are, in many respects, the rabbits and deer of the situation, and the COVID-19 variants are the hawks and bears.

The vaccines, social distancing, masking, and more represent stewardship just as vaccines have done when combating preventable diseases such as polio and smallpox. At the end of the day, wouldn’t you rather have stewardship resolve the pandemic than an even more dangerous predator — perhaps a predator that could enjoy hawks and bears as well as rabbits and deer?

Elyse Bruce
21 January 2022

Neuroscience and Happiness

First let me start off by making it perfectly clear that not only am I not a neuroscientist, I have never played one in a movie, on television, on stage, or for Hallowe’en. I am, however, very familiar with the state of being happy (happiness being a state of mind).

Six years ago, a Dutch neuroscientist came up with the Top 10 Happiest Songs which came about when a British brand reached out to the neuroscientist to create the scientifically accurate list in the first place.

Now I don’t doubt for a minute that there are certain criteria that the majority of people have set that results in them finding their nirvaniest of places (as in the ultimate state of being, not the band) when listening to music. According to the neuroscientist, that criteria was mustic that was “slightly faster than [the] average song (between 140 and 150 beats per minute on average), written in a major key, and either about happy events or complete nonsense.”

Of the ten songs the neuroscientist listed, I didn’t happen to agree with any of his choices with the exception of “Walking On Sunshine.” Many of the songs actually had their roots in negativity so I don’t really know how he linked those songs to happy events unless he was linking them to complete nonsense.

Pharrell William’s song “Happy” was released in 2013 (2 years before the neuroscientist created his playlist). Now if ever there was a feel-good song that should have made the list, that song is definitely one song that should have been included. It’s fun and happy and has a bit of nonsense thrown in. It’s danceable even if you have two left feet, and well, no one can possibly feel badly when they hear this song.

And what about “Can’t Stop The Feeling” by Justin Timberlake? Isn’t that one of the happiest songs of the past five years? Sure it came out a year after the neuroscientist’s ultimate list but surely it should have bumped one of his songs into the #11 slot while it was added to his Top 10.

How about Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration?” If ever there was a song with boatloads of happiness and good feelins, that song has to rank right up there, right? I mean, that song’s been making people express happiness for almost 30 years straight. Ask any DJ these days, and s/he/they will tell you that song is requested a weddings and parties all the time!

Unlike the Dutch neuroscientist, I didn’t just stick with songs with English lyrics. It would be a shame to not include songs like “Ça fait rire les oiseaux” by La Compagnie Créole. Even if you don’t understand the lyrics (which I do), it’s all about being happy and is a celebration of being happy.

But one of the songs that really encompasses what being happy is all about is Bobby McFerrin’s song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” because it acknowledges that things happen in life that we can either take us down or we can rise above. It’s decided by your state of mind. Yes, I realize the song talks about all kinds of negative situations, but it keeps reminding listeners that your state of mind determines how you will roll with the punches and whether you’ll be getting back up on your feet any time soon.

In any case, there are countless songs out there that fit the Dutch neuroscientists criteria, and even if the songs you love dancing to don’t fit that criteria, if it makes you dance, dance like no one’s watching because, in the end, if it makes you happy to dance, how others feel about your dancing only matters to them.

Elyse Bruce
19 November 2021

Effective Feedback

I believe there are two ways to give feedback. One way is to complain until the business or person about whom you are complaining does something to make you go away. The other way is to point out what the issues or problems are in the hopes the business or person will rectify those issues or problems …. and to not expect a freebie for having provided them with the information.

The second way is what I call giving effective feedback, and when done without expectation of any freebies in return, it creates a win-win situation: The issues and/or problems can be addressed and resolved, and any customer who interacts with them after they have addressed and resolved those issues and/or problems will not have the difficult experience you went through that led to giving effective feedback in the first place.

If you’re wondering how this works, let me explain further.

In September I bought a whole chicken from a well-known brand. The packaging alerted me to the fact that some giblets might be missing. As luck would have it, all of the giblets plus the neck were missing. I was surprised everything was missing but didn’t give it much thought either since we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and workers are harder and harder to come by.

In October, I bought a whole chicken from the same well-known brand, but at another store. As with the September purchase, the packaging alerted me to the fact that some giblets might be missing. I was taken aback when all of the giblets plus the neck were missing with this chicken as well. What were the chances that I would get two whole chickens with all the giblets and their necks missing twice in a row?

This month, I was at yet another store when I bought a whole chicken from the very same well-known brand and as with the previous two, the packaging alerted me to the fact that some giblets might be missing. Once again, for the third time in a row, all the giblets were missing as was the neck. Statistically speaking, if I have a knack for picking the one whole chicken each time, I should be putting some effort into picking the winning scratch-and-win lottery ticket at the nearby gas station.

In other words, I doubt I have that knack, and I suspect there may be problems at their plant which they may not know about hence the three whole chickens in a row that don’t align with the packaging claims that only some giblets may be missing.

Now the purpose of providing feedback is so the brand can pinpoint where the giblets and chicken necks are going that they aren’t winding up where they should. If the problem cannot be resolved, then it provides the brand with the opportunity to change the wording on their packaging so it isn’t misleading to the consumer. Just print packaging that states no giblets are included and neither are any necks.

How will this help me?

If they fix the problem or change the packaging, the next time I buy a whole chicken from their brand, I will know what to expect. Problem solved. And other consumers who have experienced similar situations to mine will also know what to expect from that brand the next time they buy a whole chicken once the problem is resolved or the packaging has been changed.

Everyone wins that way.

And in winning this way, no one walks away with bad or hurt feelings. The problem has been identified. It can be resolved, or it can be left the way it is. This allows the consumer to then decide if s/he will continue buying that brand or find another brand they feel is more in tune with their needs.

That’s the silver lining in the cloud of making businesses and individuals aware of situations that are causing issues with others without expecting freebies for having pointed out where the shortcomings are.

The next time you feel compelled to give someone a piece of your mind, pause a moment and ask yourself if you are doing this to make them aware of an issue or problem they need to resolve, or if you’re doing this to get some freebies, or if you’re just looking to let off steam even if the person you blast hasn’t got the power to do anything about addressing what has upset you.

Elyse Bruce
12 November 2021