For those who are curious Jonathan/Joan Roughgarden is in ecology and studies nonlinear dynamic ecological-economic systems. Pretty interesting stuff actually. Barkley Rosser On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 20:12:00 -0800 (PST) berlin at socrates.berkeley.edu wrote:
> > What of the question of technology, more specifically reproductive
> > technology? It seems that it has much social and ideological implications
> > for gender/sexuality questions.
>
> I know someone who thinks that marriage is completely outdated (an
> attorney; attorneys have a 65% divorce rate or so) and he plans to use one
> of these new services like hellobaby.com where you can choose a sperm and
> egg donor online, and even arrange for a surrogate mother. One merely
> requires the money to pay for this. But he's convinced that this is the
> wave of the future (not for infertile couples but more as a *positive*
> brave new world type scenario in the future, and apparently a number of
> clinics are making money this way already.
>
> In the field I work/study in, there is this very prominent professor at
> Stanford who just had a sex change this year and went from being Jonathan
> Roughgarden to Joan Roughgarden. In her picture, it looks pretty
> convincing too. She's published so much and is the leader in her field,
> and I heard she may even be a dean?? Anyway... she's probably the most
> high level person I've ever heard of who has done this. But other than
> this news initially making the rounds, people haven't been really
> commenting or bothering her about it at all, so far as I can tell. I
> suppose in order to be really free you have to rise to a position of
> power. In my department, it's like, people are very civilized in terms of
> tolerance issues but are out in another dimension in terms of class issues
> or current politics. There is a woman with a lot of long facial hair on
> her chin, and nobody would ever consider commenting behind her back, and I
> never hear racial or homophobic jokes (altho, despite this being the bay
> area, there are still a lot of really homophobic people around in general
> - I was surprised when I moved here), but only 2 out of something like 55
> of the TAs in the department participated in the recent strike and my
> perception was that most people had never even considered or thought about
> the larger picture issues involved in their lives.
>
> christine p.
>
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu