Abortion Rights Curtailed

News from South Dakota!

I’m pro-choice. I support the right to abortion. So excuse me if I get a touch irritated when attempted violations of that right are being made in what seems like every state government in this country.

Which brings us to South Dakota. 

Governor Dennis Daugaard passed a law on March 22 that makes women in South Dakota who are seeking abortions to go to a pregnancy help center so as to receive assistance and advice intended “to help the mother keep and care for her child.”

Things wrong with this bill:

1. Stop making it harder for women to have abortions! This is a difficult decision already, and it’s really no business of the state government what medical procedures women are undergoing as a result of decisions they’ve made themselves.

2. So now, they have to go to a pregnancy help center. They have to go to their doctor, then hike off to some clinic with fluorescent lighting and overly smiley attendants, then go back to their doctor. After three days. They clearly aren’t capable of making the decisions themselves, so they need help. Government-mandated help, to tell them all of the options, because, you know, abortion, pregnancy and adoption constitute an incredibly difficult list to memorize. And women need it told to them in simple terms.

3. Even worse, since the kind of consultation described above is present in other states as well, these pregnancy help centers must be staffed by anti-abortionists. I cannot believe this is even legal. The women have to go to centers (which have a disgustingly disingenuous title, by the way) to be talked at, excuse me, to, by pro-life ideologues whose job it is to convince these women that they’re making the wrong decision. The response from a founder of one of these centers? “What are they so afraid of?” Ms. Unruh asked. “That women might change their minds?” What this disgustingly flippant answer fails to address is concerns that women might be bullied, badgered, intimidated, shamed, guilted or psychologically harmed because unqualified anti-choicers are making them feel dirty, immoral and incapable of making autonomous medical decisions. I’m sure that worry is completely unfounded.

And it gets more ridiculous. South Dakota already has the lowest abortion rate in country except for Wyoming and Idaho, less than a third of the national rate. Doctors already have to drive in from Minnesota to perform abortions. Those doctors are heroes, by the way. But of course more restrictions are necessary. Even more than the one-day waiting period and counseling informing women that their abortion “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being” that are already in effect.

Why? Why are the Republicans doing this? According to Roger Hunt, one of the legislators, 

“There’s greater assurance that a woman considering an abortion is going to be fully informed about all the risks and about all the options. That’s not being done at the current time.”

So, basically, because they can. What nonsense. All of this anti-choice propaganda is being thrown at women all the time. They know what their options are. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood tells them everything they need to know. They’re an incredible organization.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t been emphasized as it should. The NYT article says 

“Each side regularly accuses the other of manipulating and coercing women.” 

This is a perfect example of bullshit centrist journalism. Yes, they regularly accuse each other. But only one of those is true. The New York Times never bothers to do the journalism required to tell the readers the truth. Instead, they leave it to the Planned Parenthood president, who explained exactly what the excellent policies of Planned Parenthood are, and says, perfectly, 

“They’re not licensed, they’re not regulated, they’re not accredited and they’re openly ideological…[The fact that women are] legally mandated to be coerced by people who aren’t even medical professionals — not that they should be coerced by anyone — is really beyond the pale.”

At the end of the day, this is just Republicans passing anti-woman legislation and not bothering to do anything about, you know, jobs, or anything else important. So glad half the country identifies with this party.

God of the Gaps, or How Wrong Can an Argument Be?

It's been a while, but I've been busy.

Anyway, at some point, I promised myself I wouldn't do this (referring to atheism/theism or evolution/creation debates) anymore, but this is just too frustrating to ignore.
HuffPost, that bastion of rigorous thought, has a gem on its page today, found here.

It is, of course, a reasonable argument for the existence of god. Because the other ones aren't, obviously, but this one will rectify all the mistakes of millennia of arguments and come up with a conclusive proof that all reasonable people must accept (that must is, of course, descriptive rather than normative.

Let us see. It begins,

“In our recent dialogue I have noticed a consistent theme. It was frequently remarked that religious lines of argumentation lack reason. The contention seems to be that most, if not all, religious systems rely solely on wholly unsubstantiated faith to support their beliefs.”

So, there’s a somewhat valid point half-buried in here, which is that it is often assumed that religious arguments are, ipso facto, irrational, and it’s possible that that’s a problem. Here we need to think about the words we’re using, because what it is to be rational is a matter of some debate. In common usage, it generally just means sensible, as in, it makes sense to me. In a more rigorous philosophical way, it refers to those ways of thinking which are deliberative and logical. The first has more than a hint of intuitionism, and so gives us a poor test to establish the validity of an argument. After all, arguments for god frequently “make sense” to those who already believe. Regarding the second definition, my Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Religion will furnish as many consistent, well-reasoned arguments for god as you care to read. To contend that religious arguments are necessarily irrational is empirically incorrect, and furthermore ignores the history of philosophy, in which Alfarabi, Aristotle, Aquinas and Maimonides, rationalists all, promote their conceptions of god and religion.

On the other hand, most religious systems do rely on unsubstantiated faith to support their beliefs. The “all” and “solely” are strawmen, as clearly there exist nontheistic religions along with secular aspects of religious thought. Moving on, though, it’s an entirely valid claim to make that religion is in large part based on faith. Many believers themselves make such a claim, saying that not only do they trust in the existence of unseen things, but that this faith is indeed a virtue. All of Rambam’s Thirteen Principles of Faith (notice the title) begin with the phrase, “I believe with perfect faith.” Aquinas counts faith among his theological virtues, the cultivation of which leads to full happiness and defines it further as Paul does, saying "Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not." If there were no element of faith in religion, then it would either be prescriptive without foundation, and thus incredibly weak, or subject to an enormous amount of change as empirical evidence comes to light. So the essay has not gotten itself off to a good start.

But then arises the main portion of the argument, which we are told will consider the naturalistic account of the origin of life, in particular its failings. After an entire paragraph of promises that much high level intellectual work has been done on behalf of the author’s position, the subject is introduced with,

"One might suppose that in the six or so decades since the discovery of the DNA molecule by Watson and Crick during which researchers have been investigating the origin of life they might have come up with some pretty solid leads to explain it. The truth of the matter is that we see scientists coming up surprisingly empty-handed and that even within scientific circles, the few hypotheses they do have are shredded to ribbons by their colleagues within the scientific community.”

Ok, firstly, citation needed. Vague, gleeful allusions to a heartwrenchingly disunited scientific community are all too common in this kind of piece, and not appreciated. Secondly, and I really cannot believe I have to say this, but the fact that hypotheses are getting proposed and then rejected by the broader scientific community is how science works, and more importantly exactly how it is supposed to work. Criticize the Baconian method if you like, criticize the historical materialist nature of science, criticize empiricism, but please do not disparage an enterprise you contend has failed for doing exactly what it sets out to do. Finally, we do have some leads, not that it matters. If we had not a semblance of a shadow of an idea, that would not indicate that naturalism had somehow failed. Is this the argument you would have used before we came to a (moderate) consensus on the Big Bang? But, in fact, we do. The Oparin-Haldane hypothesis, for one. And others. There’s a wikipedia page. You should have read it before you wrote this.

“So how is a non-religious scientist expected to contend with this dearth of hard evidence?"

By turning to you for answers, of course! Because that’s what scientists do when they don’t know the answer.

Now comes the copypasta of ostensibly relevant quotes.

"One must conclude that ... a scenario describing the genesis of life on Earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written." (Dr. H.P. Yockey, physicist, information theorist and contributor to the Manhattan Project)

A physicist, information theorist, and most-destructive-thing-people-ever-created-creator, but interestingly enough, not a biologist. That’s not a sufficient argument, of course, as information theory is very important in biology. But pretty much only creationists take Dr. Yockey seriously, as he provides so many pithy tidbits on the failure of science to do what he wants (in this case, defund SETI). Criticisms of his argument can be found here and here, and even those take the Dembski threshold too seriously, as far as I’m concerned.

The general idea behind the Dembski threshold is that life is extremely improbable, so its natural formation is impossible. This deeply problematic conflation of improbability with impossibility is addressed by relying on the number of particles in the universe times the number of seconds since the universe began (I’m glad, by the way, that we’re accepting that number on “faith”) being orders of magnitude higher than the odds against life happening. The general problem with that being that there’s no reason why the universe has to cycle through all possible configurations before getting to the one we’re interested, which is why despite there being ~8E67 ways to lay out a deck of 52 cards, no particular ordering is impossible. Even if we accept that, though, there are many issues with the argument, including the fact that, by and large, the numbers don’t fall on the far side of this “Dembski threshold.” Leaving all that aside, it’s possible that this quote is right, but even so, the theory we need hasn’t been written…yet. The history of supposedly intractable problems solved by science is long, and the history of “Golly gee, I have no idea” is less paved by success.

"The theory behind theory is that you come up with truly testable ideas. Otherwise it's no different from faith. It might as well be a religion if there's no evidence for it." (Dr. J. Craig Venter, Biologist and one of the first people to sequence the human genome)

Ah, Craig Venter, beloved by accomodationists and creationists alike. Quite a few problems with this one. Firstly, that’s an egregiously broad use of the word ‘theory’ which just contributes to the confusion surrounding the issue. Whatever leads we have on abiogenesis, they are hypothesis about how things came about, not overarching organizing principles, so let’s get that straight. Next, yes, of course, testable ideas are paramount, but that doesn’t make expecting a naturalistic explanation to arise, as it has every other time, faith. Furthermore, hypotheses and theories can still be helpful in ascertaining various ways of looking at an issue, as in string theory, and also, things like Bayesian probability can actually give us near certainty on things that can’t be tested, like the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. And then, finally, methodological naturalism has a track record unlike essentially anything else, so comparing the vast intricacy of ritual, symbolism and entrenched faith that constitute religion to an expectation that science will, as it so often does, win out, is patently ridiculous. There are different kinds of faith being talked about here, and conflating them is bordering on intellectually dishonest.

The author goes on to assert that we can either accept science on faith, an inherently silly notion, or we can believe in the power of chance, which is an argument that has always been at the bottom of the proverbial barrel in ongoing debates of this kind, so I won’t address it, except to say that the quote that follows it from Robert Shapiro is ruthlessly quote-mined from a scientist who believes in nothing like what this article is promoting and has in fact written several books about potential origins of life. He continues on the irrelevant chance tangent and adds in some more quote mining for good measure (“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going,” is followed directly in Francis’ book by “but this should not be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions.”)

Then he moves into a complete misunderstanding of evolution.

“Evolution can only begin once we already have a dazzlingly complex, self-replicating, living cell with which to work” is a completely untrue statement. Any replicator with semi-fidelitous hereditary factorsundergoing attrition will evolve. That’s how the math works, and the real world, too.

Rabbi Adam Jacobs then says something absolutely remarkable, not only for its utter absurdity, but also for its sheer disrespect for all philosophical positions mentioned.

“That -- the origin of that first cell, not what happened thereafter -- is the fundamental basis of disagreement between theist and atheist.”

I really, deeply, fundamentally, hope that’s not the truth. Because I pride myself on rationality and truth, science being a phenomenal method of using the former to get to the latter, and many religious people pride themselves on not only those things, but a much more far-reaching understanding of the divine than highly negentropic chemical generation. But he goes on to his even more ridiculous conclusion:

“I posit to you that all the evidence points, in an obvious and inextricable way, to a supernatural explanation for the origin of life. If there are no known naturalistic explanations and the likelihood that "chance" played any role is wildly minute, then it is a perfectly reasonable position to take that a conscious super-intelligence (that some of us call God) was the architect of life on this planet. Everyone agrees to the appearance of design. It is illogical to assume its non-design in the absence of evidence to the contrary.”

No. No, no and no. Absolutely not. The evidence in no way points to a supernatural explanation for everything. What evidence? Where? And in what way would we account for the natural world pointing to a supernatural explanation? All the lack of evidence hurled at the scientists is there for the theist, doubled, and then squared because the evidence for the supernatural, if your philosophy allows for such a thing, would have to be insurmountable. And it’s not. This is not a reasonable position. It’s a tentative one, until we find an explanation for abiogenesis, and then this God of the Gaps nonsense is going to move on to something else.

The key phrase in this paragraph is “the appearance of design.” Not design itself, the appearance of design. And that can be and will be accounted for. Let us not pretend otherwise.

As for the prolix quote that ends the piece, that too is mined from a naturalist scientist who is pointing out the difficulties and limitations of materialism, and the deep and abiding commitment anyone who wants the truth has to make to it, so as to be seduced by easy explanations which give us no further understanding of the universe and as such fail the enlightenment project.

I like to have my intelligence respected, so let us have no more of this.

Anger About the Ambiance of Alcohol

So I wrote about drugs before, but if I’m going to be honest, that’s not everything. That’s the intellectual analysis, certainly, but as it pertains to my life, alcohol and drugs (pretty much just pot) manifest themselves in a very specific way, one that I don’t want to have anything to do with.

People drink for all sorts of reasons. Given how many times I’ve had this particular conversation, I think I have a good idea of what the major ones are. As far as I can tell, it is: it tastes good, it’s a social lubricant, it’s what college kids/20-somethings/high school students/whatever broad community someone considers themselves a part of does, to get drunk, to relax, to forget, to not be sad.

And I think these are almost all terrible reasons. Drinking because you like the taste is fine, within moderation. I happen to hate the taste of alcohol, so that’s one reason for me. Doing something because your community expects you too is stupid unless there’s something fun or meaningful or important about it that underlies the social pressure, and to me, that’s all pretty obvious. Getting drunk is dangerous, painful and unhealthy.

Every other reason has something to do with emotion and comfort, with yourself or in a social situation. If you are trying to make something in your life go better, that’s great. Bettering yourself is almost always a worthwhile endeavor. The problem is that none of those problems are caused by lack of alcohol. They’re caused by something entirely different, and if you never bother to find out what those underlying causes are, your betterment will be artificial, short-lived and you’ll be missing out on a chance to understand yourself better. If you’re unhappy or socially awkward, those are things about your life you should acknowledge and do something about in a healthy and positive way. Alcohol seems like a pretty poor choice for that kind of thing. Again, I’m taking a consequentialism tack, here. A drink that calms you down, to extend the analogy, a hit off a bong - probably not awful things. Not something I want to partake in, but fine. But this is a general habit that people have of not understanding the causes of their problems, and that’s not the kind of person I want to be.

Finally, and possibly most relevantly, there’s a culture that alcohol creates. It’s a culture in which anything goes, in which you can be your stupidest, worst self and have a bullet-proof excuse for doing so. It’s a way to do all the things you’re ashamed of, be the person you wish you were (or weren’t) without shame or guilt. I guess to some people, that sounds fantastic, but I’m not ashamed of myself, and the parts of myself I don’t like are not shoved down into the depths of my consciousness only to be lured out by the presence of ethanol. If there’s a way I want or need to become a better person, I will work at it, day in and day out, until I’ve achieved it. Alcohol is an easy way out. People always tell me it lowers inhibitions. And if I happen to like my inhibitions? What then?

That’s just the personal part, too. In general, parties are, how shall I say, gross. Drunk/high people are often clumsy and irritating. They revel in the profundity of a conversation that would feel stupid to have sober. They almost never want to talk about anything important or interesting or novel in a sophisticated, meaningful way. There are certainly enjoyable aspects, but when everyone I know comes back saying how disgusting it was, I really want to know why they go back. The parties I’ve most liked are those in which I got to be…exactly who I always am. I got to talk to interesting people, have fantastic conversations, be loud and personable, dance and frolic, meet and hug. I do those things all the time, and I’m proud of who I am. Other people, on the other hand, do things they don’t appreciate or respect. They do things they wouldn’t normally do. If alcohol pushes you to do things you lose respect for yourself for, you need to change your priorities or your drinking habits. If it makes you have more respect for yourself, why don’t you bring that into the rest of your life?

And then there’s this arrogance. I’ll never know what it’s like and how amazing it is if I don’t try it. I’m uptight. More like, I have enough respect for myself to not want to do things I would disapprove of, and enough respect to cull all the best parts of some experience into the life I lead every day. This is a statement for me, a life-affirming idea that my life can be something I never want to escape from. I stumble home drunk, collapsing with laughter and exhaustion after a well-lived day. I dance on tables, jamming to great music and kinesthetically expressing myself with friends. I stay up too late having great conversations. I look up at the sky wondering what the meaning of life is. I meditate calmly. And I never wake up with a hangover and dozens of pictures to un-tag.

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Also, this is a good read: click

A Thoughtful Analysis of Drugs: A Tee-Totaler's Perspective

I’ve been thinking about drugs lately. It almost seems ridiculous to think so much about them, given that I don’t do them and don’t really want to, but it’s important to me to think about what kind of person I am and why.

If I choose a certain life path, avenue or even just set of activities, I want to know why, and whether that’s an end in itself or a manifestation of something else. It helps me understand myself better and also the way in which I might or should interact with other people. I know plenty of people who take a live and let live tack, but that’s never made much sense to me. If there’s something that you think is immoral or stupid or ridiculous or, on the other hand, important or true or significant, then other people living their lives differently might rightfully prompt you to have certain opinions about them. If, however, the differences are only varied ways of approaching a universal goal of some kind, that’s entirely different, and the distinction is important. I mean, life is a series of normative claims anyway, about how you think life ought to be lived. What is universal, what is objective and what circumstantial, subjective or coincidental is up to each of us to figure out. The point remains that there seems little point in have a coherent, intelligent, logically consistent worldview if you don’t apply it to the world.

The conflict is as follows: I don’t drink or do drugs, I have no intention of doing either, and I don’t think that it’s a particularly good idea. Yet, I know the history of drugs and enhanced consciousness, pain relief, art and various other aspects of human existence, so I would feel inconsistent Puritanically dismissing all of it.

Sometimes, when I’ve been thinking about something deeply for a long time, I encounter a common saying or a basic analysis that explains almost everything I was confused about. This, of course, makes me feel rather unintelligent, but I’m willing to accept that in the search for understanding.

In this case, it was a random AlterNet article about Paris Hilton that only partially talked about drugs. Nonetheless, there was a particular sentence that stood out to me. “Paris Hilton wants to use drugs, either to get in touch with reality or to escape from it.” It might very well be that obvious, and it completely failed to occur to me, probably because I’ve had a very particular type of experience with drugs and alcohol (alcohol is a drug; why don’t people realize this?), and the dialectic didn’t make any sense. But obviously, what I have a problem with is not drugs themselves, it’s their consequences. What they do to people, what people do with them. And if they were used for something else, maybe I wouldn’t mind so much.

So, here’s the deal. I value thoughtfulness, intelligence and engagement with the world. Using them to disengage, to forget, to not have to think deeply about yourself, is evidence that you don’t think those values are always worth upholding. In which case, we disagree, and I will form opinions based on that fact, because those are deeply important to me.

If not, great. I know, as I said, about all of the incredible artists, writers, poets and musicians who were able to engage reality in new and fantastic ways. I know about the scientists who were able to use drugs (on themselves and others) in order to understand the human brain, consciousness and perception better. I know about the political statement that taking some drugs makes, and how important that can be. I know the good it can do people, and I respect all that. Michael Pollan says something great about this:

“Obviously, 99.9 percent of the time, drug experiences are not making any contribution to culture whatsoever, and they're usually a complete waste of time and can also lead to all sorts of problems. So I liken them to mutations: you put out enough novelty in the world in the form of insider experience, and some of it is bound to be really productive, in the same way that if you put enough mutations into a gene or an organism, some of them are going to produce incredible advances.”

That kind of rigor and thoughtfulness, I really respect, and I share his opinions. I don’t think that drugs can do any of that for me, so I don’t do them. But I hear about people being productive and intelligent and thoughtful with their drug use, not letting it consume but rather enhance their life, and I can give my support.

Date of Manufacture: 26.10.1992

The next post or two is going to be a one-sided conversation. All of blogging is a one-sided conversation, to some extent, but I want to take the opportunity of having an outlet on the internet to explain in full and excruciating detail some aspects of my life that people seem at once entirely engrossed in, begging to understand, and at the same time only asking because it’s a passing curiosity, not something they want to hear me pontificate on for minutes at a time. Next time, instead of sitting down to have these conversations for the 1293^th time, I’ll just refer people to my blog.

So, part 1: My age.

I am, at the time of this writing, 17 years old. I was born on October 26, 1992, a Monday, in the Salt Lake City Holy Cross Hospital. It’s not a particularly interesting date, except that apparently Even James Ussher, the famous 17^th century Irish archbishop who decided that the world was created in 4004 BC stated that while the world had begun on October 23, the Antichrist was born three days later. I’m actually rather proud of that kind of heritage, but other than that, the day is only important to me because of the way I track time with the sun and earth and moon and all that.

I lived a somewhat normal life for several years, growing up on Miami Beach, learning to swim at a very early age and falling in love with a Books and Books on Lincoln Road. When I was 4, I was placed into kindergarten. I don’t think my parents had their eyes set on a precocious future for me. They’re psychologists who study child development, especially learning and cognitive development. They know all of the studies that have demonstrated that slightly older children tend to do better and be overall more successful. I’ve never asked them, but I speculate that they felt, given that I could (and did, avidly and eagerly) read, that I was ready to enter formalized schooling.

The school wasn’t even all that formal; I went to Fairglade Elementary School, a gem in Southern Miami that is, unfortunately, no longer in existence. Its ideals were letting kids learn at their own pace, making sure they got outside, roughed around, played on the swings and learn in interesting and varied ways. I recall, for example, being given a math textbook for a grade higher than my own and learning long division in the grass outside. There was also an area with many trees and sticks and brush and bramble called “The Woods” which we just adored playing in.

But I digress. The point is, this school didn’t care that I was a little young. They took me right in. Then, at some point, I was in the kindergarten room, and I was asked by the teacher to go into the first grade room, where they were learning (and I may never forget this) about the layers of the earth using eggs. There was a chant, which was “Inner core, outer core, mantle, crust” which one said rhythmically and with glee. I began a motley schedule, taking some classes here and some there. I remember the next year, I took some classes with the first grade, some with the second, and naps with the kindergarten class.

I believe the reasoning of the school was that I was intellectually ready. One of my favorite teachers, Ms. Stacey, told me the story later that she had once encountered my four-year old self in the Quiet Room reading a Dr. Seuss book. Surprised, she asked me to read it to her. Once I did, she suspected that I’d memorized it, so she grabbed another book and asked me to read that one, too. As I recall, she was fairly impressed.

I never found out why my parents agreed to it, except that they probably were told by the school that it was in my best interest, and to be honest it probably was. I don’t recall elementary school being all that difficult. I wasn’t particularly mature, and was emotionally somewhat unstable, crying a fair bit. Then again, I was between four and eight.

It was middle school that was really difficult. I went to a small school, with all of thirty kids in my grade. I had told a girl named Grace Heisenbottle that I was nine years old the first day of class, because it hadn’t occurred to me that I shouldn’t. I had enough sense to ask her not to tell. As far as I can tell, she didn’t hate me until I started doing better than her in all of our classes (she had been the top of the class in the elementary school adjoining the middle school). At that point, she told some girl named Alex D. (we had so many Alex’s, they were differentiated by their last initials), and together they told everyone and allied the grade against me. I recall having all of two friends through 6^th grade and 8^th, with a blip of social success with some incoming students during seventh (who subsequently joined the popular crew the next year). I was fairly miserable for large portions of the time, but that definitely had less to do with my age than with my inability to comprehend why people would expend conscious and considerable effort making me unhappy.

Moving right along, high school was fine. I had a enough friends, and people didn’t really seem to care, except for a few bad apples (also known as a fourth of the male portion of my grade). They made fun of me, but by that time, I had accumulated a measurable amount of self-confidence, and I put it very much to use, making sure that they could hate me all they wanted, but I would always be an ambitious, intelligent, successful, quirky young girl I could be proud of. Looking back, of course, I realize that those qualities didn’t perhaps make me the most approachable of people, but I didn’t much care. I wouldn’t have traded that independent spirit for all the friends in the world.

I really didn’t understand why people disliked me so much. I hated being called annoying in middle school. It was such an easy way to dismiss the whole of who someone was, which felt absolutely awful. In all fairness, though, as someone who came from an unconventional primary schooling and was young, I probably was. Adults always told me that everyone else was jealous. As a child of low self-esteem, I couldn’t understand why anyone could possibly be jealous of me. It seemed the height of absurdity, not to mention arrogance, to think that I was ostracized because of something good about myself. Even as my self-assuredness grew, it was never really something I got my head around. But it continued nonetheless.

So, after a high school experience that was adequate, but left much to be desired, that gave me the notion of people who would love me for who I was but without fully fulfilling on the promise, I got to the University of Chicago. And I made a decision. I wasn’t going to tell a soul how old I was. I value truth, clarity, transparency and honesty, but not at the cost of my emotional well-being, especially as the knowledge wasn't exceptionally important to anyone but myself. I realized, of course, that anyone who cared wasn’t someone I would want to be friends with, but the first weeks in a new state, school and life stage aren’t exactly the time to be going through the torture of applying a litmus test to the population.

Anyway, it worked. No one knew, no one treated me differently. I made a name for myself as a loud, opinionated, argumentative, intelligent student who could hold her own or better with anyone, cared a great deal about the world, politics and deep thinking. When the news came out and got around, it was gradually, slowly, without any of the excitement of gossip. I could play nonchalant, showing by example that if it didn’t matter to me, it shouldn’t matter to anyone else, and that I would accept no change in attitude towards me. Of course, people hated me anyway. But now I knew; they couldn’t handle me, regardless of my date of manufacture. Admittedly, it’s difficult to have someone who’s present and takes up space and wants to talk about interesting, complicated things all. The. Time. And who just never lets up and who, by the way, is an easy target because she’s two years younger than you. But I finally understood that that really wasn’t my problem. Eventually, it became old news, something to joke about in lightness and jest, and something I could finally be completely proud of, without the tinge of social and emotional stress.

So the next year, I did it again. The age I am has affected my life in many ways, has given me a different perspective and vantage point. In that way, it is and will always be a part of me. But of the things people could know about me, it is one of least important and least interesting parts of me. So I decided if it was that irrelevant, I wouldn’t let people judge me for it. I expect a certain amount of respect from my peers, whether they like me or not, and if this was they way I was going to ensure the life that I wanted, then I was damn well going to do it. At this point, most people know, but again, it’s not important, it just happens to be the case. By the way, my birthday’s coming up.

And that is the story of my age, what it means to me and why I don’t tell people even though I am totally and completely proud of it.

I think I’m awesome, and I will never apologize for my birth certificate.