Concepts of Gender

A couple weeks ago, Hannah mentioned that she thinks that she sees three independent traits of people that often are all called "gender." The first was the gender that a person identifies as. The second and third were the extent to which a person does manly things and the extent to which a person does girly things.

The discussion started with Hannah mentioning that her advisor had at some point in the past changed her first name from Katrina to Katrin. The new name still clearly identifies her advisor as a woman, but sounds less girly.

Hannah said that she sees herself as a woman, but generally does not like things that are considered girly. However, she doesn't see herself as a "tomboy" either, since she doesn't tend to like manly things either. The example she gave was athleticism.

As for me, I identify as a man, and I like to think that I do whatever I feel like doing, regardless of whether it's manly or girly. Realistically, though, I'm sure I'm influenced by what society tells me I need to be doing based on my gender. Nonetheless, I cry at movies, and I'm proud of it. (Also plays, and also one particularly touching dance performance.) I also hike up mountains in the snow uphill both ways with ice axes, and I'm proud of that, too.

Summiting the highest point in Arizona at 12,600 feet.

Cooking potatoes for my housemates at Dabney's retreat.

algebraic representation theory fried rice

Mitka had made too-wet rice and left it in the pot for a few days, and also keeps bringing home olives and not finishing them, so Yasha gave him a deadline to do something with that rice and those olives.  I came home to a steaming heap of fried rice.

Mitka:  "It's algebraic representation theory fried rice!"
me:  "... huh?"
Mitka:  "It's algebraic representation theory fried rice: you take everything and just put it in there, and pretend that what you get is a real thing."
me:  "I think I don't have the mathematical background to participate in this conversation."

Algebraic representation theory fried rice turns out to be tasty.

my visit to the Mirror Maze

First of all, many thanks to Hannah, Dmitry, and Yasha for their hospitality. Thanks to them, I had a very pleasant stay, delicious soups, omelets and fried potatoes, not to mention great conversations. Walking with Yasha around Cambridge was great.

There was a somewhat surrealistic feeling on this visit too. We came to US when I was starting graduate school in mathematics and Yasha was four. So Yasha may remotely remember me taking qualifying exams and now he just took a qualifying exam and, here we are, living, if only for a few days, in the same apartment. Does it count as a mirror image? Or may be it is somewhat related to isotropy of time. (I read Dmitry's earlier post). Well, some additional transformation is involved, I guess...

Talking about the exams and past memories, here is a story I think is worth sharing. I was preparing for an exam (a final for a course). Yasha was five or six years old. I asked him to play by himself, but as every person of his age he would come to me every 10 minutes and ask something. So at some point, I said "If you keep bothering me like this I will fall through on my exam!" (I said this in Russian and "to fall through on a exam" is an idiom meaning "to fail an exam"). To my surprise my warning bought me about half an hour of a quiet time. Then Yasha appeared with a worried look on his face and asked me if I am well prepared now. I said that I am doing rather well, and he is behaving very well, but I might need a bit more time. Yasha started to leave my room with still extremely worried expression on his face.  I became concerned with his look and asked "Yasha, why are you so worried?" "Because, I don't want you to fall through the ceiling on the exam!" - exclaimed Yasha. It turned out that, first of all, he did not know the idiom, but most importantly he had recently visited a university building where a ceiling was repaired. The surface was removed and underside of the upper floor along with some infrastructure were exposed. It may have looked as an aftermath of someone falling through a ceiling! After I reassured Yasha, that no such disaster was about to happen, he became a normal happy child, bothering me every 10-15 minutes.

At our first dinner, Dmitry proposed to raise our glasses "for things we like, people we like, and problems we like". Then we had a discussion whether the "problems we like" would make sense for non-mathematicians, but because all four of us were mathematicians I don't think we were qualified to make a judgement on this. Nonetheless, in my unqualified opinion, this wish can be understood in much broader sense. Everything that we choose to do will unavoidably lead to some problems, but it is great when those are problems we like! As for the people, I definitely spent past weekend with people I like.  Best wishes to you, mirror mortals!

Hannah quotes and a little on OCD

Me: Do you happen to have anything I could use to draw a moustache?
Hannah: No, I don't. But maybe Yasha in his great stash of stashes might have some makeup. (pause) For staches.

Hannah: When my brother was little, he used to want to be a garbage compactor when he grows up. I'm not sure if he wanted to be the truck itself or the operator. [...long discussion about vehicles and drivers ensues, involving Thomas the train engine] 
Yasha: Thomas definitely has his own volition, and an independent operator who's a human being.
Me: That would be cool -- to have your own free will, but just in case you need one you also have an operator.
Hannah: (wistful) Oh man, I have so many operators...


Hannah: (after I point out that she eats M&M's in such a way that there's always as close as possible to the same number of every color):
Yeah. But I really can't eat M&M's. When there's the same number of every color there's no way to decide which color to start with. I can't start with the same color every time because that's uneven. But I can't start with different colors every time -- that's uneven in a different way!
[We convince her to well-order her M&M's -- put the M&M's in a line and eat them from the end one at a time -- this is what I do with menus]
Hannah: I feel like I have to order them in a way that looks random. And it takes some mental effort to remember to take them from the end... [But this way seemed to have something to it -- Hannah repeated  it the next time she ate M&M's].

---

After the conversation about M&M's we compared OCD's. Yasha has trouble throwing things away. I mentally rearrange letters in books to make consonants and vowels alternate in a satisfying pattern. It's fun being crazy when everyone around you is crazy. But maybe more people are crazy than you'd think -- afterwards I talked to my cousin Anna (who needs a blog -- I'm looking at you:). She seemed surprised at our reaction -- "Is there any other way of eating M&M's??"