But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo

 

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

I have had this book on library request for nearly a year. I get the feeling someone forgot to return it for months, and that is the cause of the delay. I did finally get it. 

 

It is a short novella, best read in a single sitting. (I read the first chapter, got interrupted, then got back to it and finished the rest.) 

 

I am not entirely sure how to describe it, but the best I can come up with is:

 

“Lesbian Spider Bluebeard meets Mexican Gothic”

 

But that also misses a lot of things. It is actually quite impressive how much the author manages to fit in a sparse narrative, from a detailed and fascinating fantasy world to themes of actually seeing people and being seen in return. All this in 111 pages.

 

Hache Pueyo is a young author of Brazilian and Argentinian parentage. She spent a good bit of her childhood living in Spain. She is fluent in at least three languages - Portuguese, Spanish, and English. Other than that, biographical information is a bit sparse. This is her first novel, but she has written short stories, non-fiction, and translations. 

 

According to interviews, she wrote the book quickly once the idea came to her - it took a couple of days, and very few changes were made to the final product. It does not feel under-edited all all, to be clear: it is a tight, focused, well-plotted, well-written book. 

 

She wrote the original in Portuguese. She wanted to publish it in English as well, but, lacking a big contract, couldn’t afford to pay a translator. So she did it herself, because she could. In interviews, she describes some of the challenges of that, but I felt she did an impressive job of keeping the cultural references without losing an English reader. 

 

The title of the book comes from a poem in the earliest known version of the Bluebeard tale. It is English, whereas the better known version is French. There are, of course, many different twists on the story, under various names. Bluebeard, of course, but also The Robber Bridegroom, and the one the author borrowed from, Mister Fox. You can read that version here.

 

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold,

Lest that your heart’s blood should run cold.

 

But Not Too Bold uses that poem throughout the story. To be clear, this book is not Bluebeard. But it is significantly influenced by Bluebeard. 

 

We are introduced at first to “Capricious House,” the usual horror gothic mansion - in this case, patterned after the old Catalan mansions the author remembers from her childhood. It has a large staff, which is paid well in exchange for secrecy and faithful service. The staff is usually drawn from a local orphanage, and works there for life. 

 

At the top of the staff hierarchy are the majordomo, one of the few males employed, and the “keeper of the keys,” a female role. Indeed, no males are ever allowed to go up to the third floor, let alone the attic, where the owner of the house, Anetema, lives. 

 

As we soon find out, the long-time keeper of the keys, Ms. Matilde, is dead, and her protege, the young Dalia, is next in line. 

 

Oh, and by “dead” we mean “eaten by Anetema,” who is an “Archaic One,” part of a race of pre-human monsters who take on various shapes. There are few left anymore, and they are all in hiding. Anetema is mostly like a giant spider, but she is able to (sort-of) pass as almost-human when she needs to. But it is all an act, and it falls apart of you look too closely. 

 

We also find out that Anetema has had a series of “brides,” each of which lasts a few weeks before getting eaten. 

 

Each of the brides - and indeed anyone Anetema eats - becomes a “memory” - Anetema weaves a miniature of the person, which is then placed in a doll-house recreation of Capricious House, and, like a tiny automaton, performs its usual duties and pleasures repetitively in the house. 

 

The problem is, someone has stolen one of these “memories.” Anetema, suspecting it was Ms. Matilde, ate her. But, having second thoughts, she will test the theory. If another theft occurs while Dalia spends the night alone with Anetema, then it wasn’t Matilde, and the real thief will have to be found. If no other theft occurs, then it had to have been either Matilde or Dalia, so Dalia will be the next victim. No pressure.

 

I’ll stop there, but the story goes both in the direction of Bluebeard, and also in a very different one. The ending is a bit of a surprise, but makes sense. And it isn’t as dark as I expected either.

 

I didn’t write down any particular lines in this book, because it worked much better as a quick read. I found it engrossing, and a good bit of gothic horror. 

 

A few notes, however. First, I use “Lesbian” in my description, but there is no sex depicted in the book. Don’t expect bodice-ripping anything, although some form of sex is implied at times. Although, to be honest, I am not at all sure that “sex” is what would happen given the species issues. The little we are given implies something a lot weirder. 

 

However, there is definitely food porn in this book. The descriptions of food are everywhere - some that are a bit out there like fried spiders, and others that are traditional desserts from South America. All of it is all too lovingly described - you might get cravings from reading it.

 

On the other hand, if you have a problem with spiders, this book might be a bit intense. Spiders are mostly not scary, but they are everywhere, from the pet tarantulas all the staff have to the spider-woman at the center of the story. The author loves spiders, and it shows. Since I think spiders are really cool, I liked that part. Your mileage may vary. 

 

But Not Too Bold isn’t the kind of book I regularly read, but I ran across it on a list and thought it looked interesting and unusual. And that is what it turned out to be. (Also, female author, recent book, in translation - all things I make an effort to include in my reading.) 

 

If you like gothic horror, spiders, food, and LGBTQ themes, you might find this interesting to check out. 

 

Dinner With King Tut by Sam Kean

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

I have enjoyed reading Sam Kean for years. Here is the list of books I have read and written about over the years:

 

Caesar’s Last Breath

The Disappearing Spoon

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons

The Violinist’s Thumb

 

There are a couple others of his that I haven’t read - I am a bit behind, apparently. Anyway, Dinner With King Tut is his latest. 

 

Kean took on this book because of his frustration with archeology. In his opinion, it should be a thrilling discipline, but all too often becomes just tedium - sifting through sites for shards of pottery. He admits all of this is necessary, but wishes it were more alive. 

 

And he was thrilled to find out that, at the supposed fringes of the discipline, there were people engaging in “experimental archeology” - that is, trying to recreate things from the past, from food to weapons to music to….well, everything. 

 

He makes an excellent point that all too often, archeologists speculate about how things were back in the day, but miss whether such speculative ideas would have been actually practical to do or useful for their purpose. 

 

(Back in the day, Calvin and Hobbes took a potshot at this, with Calvin guessing about the uses of household objects he buried and dug up.) 

 

So, experimental archaeologists do things like make Viking bear, make mummies (of chickens), bake bread, play Aztec ballgames, and much more. This has led to insights as to how the past really was. 

 

For this book, Kean actually experienced all of the things he writes about, sometimes to hilarious results. Particularly his ball-playing participation. And his attempts at performing a trepanation. (Not on a human - or anything alive at the time - don’t worry.)

 

The book is definitely different than his previous books. In this one, he intersperses substantive information about his topics and his experiences with recreating the past with fictional stories that tell a plausible story of the past as an example. 

 

For me, the stories were okay but not great - a bit like the recreations you get on TV rather than compelling fiction. Kean isn’t a fiction writer, and it shows a bit. They aren’t bad, just a little flat. 

 

Also, they tend to be a bit bloody - lots of people die in various ways. So perhaps be prepared for that. 

 

The book spans the entire globe, and ranges in time from our earliest Homo Sapiens history to about 500 years ago. (Because Aztec ballgames, of course!) In each chapter, Kean introduces the basics of the time and place, then begins with a bit of fiction, discussing elements of each part of the story in light of archeology and the experiments that he participates in. 

 

As the title indicates, food is a particular focus of the book, and Kean tries all kinds of crazy stuff, from ostrich eggs to acorn pancakes to various insects. He’s definitely a good sport, willing to try anything. Some were tasty, others not so much. His particular embarrassment is that, despite trying to follow directions exactly, his acorn flour was dreadful - not at all like the delicious pancakes he ate later. As he notes, he would die pretty quickly if transported back to an earlier time. 

 

Like Kean's other books, don't expect a scientific treatise or detailed treatment of his subjects. The books are for fun, and for a pop-historical and pop-scientific introduction to interesting things. You may very well learn something, of course, but entertainment, not education, is the primary goal of the book. And in that, it succeeds. It is a fun read, with a side dish of learning. 

 

I’m not going to go through the book in any particular detail, but just mention a few lines and facts and ideas that caught my eye. Your mileage may vary on what appeals to you. 

 

First up is part of Kean’s defense of experimental archaeology. 

 

However laudable our brains, we Homo sapiens are builders and makers deep down. To truly grasp something, you have to use your hands.

 

Kean returns to this idea throughout the book. Here is an example. 

 

Sadly, [Lyn] Waldey’s experiments never made it into the scientific literature. When she submitted a paper about the discovery of the world’s oldest bed, the editors loved all the traditional archaeology - the digging-through-dirt stuff. But they refused to include her experiments on the re-created bedding or the ash ring, even as informal observations. This sort of snobbery would have offended the likes of Charles Darwin, who ran many such casual experiments in his backyard, experiments that often sparked future research. 

 

I have to mention a few things about the ancient Egypt chapter, of course. It is reasonably well known that the Egyptians had no idea what the brain did, so they removed it and usually threw it away. In this case, Kean mentions the guys that embalmed a body donated to science, trying to mimic the Egyptians as closely as possible. They got the brain out by pulverizing it with a rod, adding water, and draining it out. “Like a milkshake” they said. 

 

Also fun is that they, in the service of authenticity, used real natron - natural deposits of salts - in the preservation. 

 

Fully committed to authenticity, Brier dug the natron himself in Egypt, and recalls that sneaking hundreds of pounds of unidentified white power through customs at JFK Airport was one of the more ticklish aspects of the project.

 

Brier also quipped about the mummy, which is still well preserved at room temperature, “He’s dead and well.” 

 

Another of the more hilarious experiments involves Kean trying to open a coconut using a traditional Polynesian tool. He is supervised by an experienced coconut cracker, who at one point prevents him from a rookie mistake. 

 

If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can disembowel yourself. 

 

One chapter is on China in the 1200s, which is an era I wasn’t that familiar with. Key to the story is that China had a booming trade with the Middle East, long before Europe even became aware of China’s vast civilization. (About 40 percent of all humans at the time lived in China.) 

 

We tend to think of all the “modern” inventions that were actually created in China, but China itself gained many of the foundational ideas in math, science, chemistry, and medicine from the Islamic countries. 

 

China had a fairly large population of Islamic traders and other residents, which led to ethnic and religious unrest at recurring intervals. 

 

In this chapter, Kean discusses trebuchets, and his experience in firing one. Yep, these were used in China as well as Europe, and they were introduced to the Chinese by Muslim traders - Chinese writings of the time refer to them as “Muslim trebuchets.” 

 

And where did Kean go to fire these crazy devices? Utah, of course. (I’m not entirely surprised that Logan, Utah, is the place to go for working trebuchets. It seems to fit.) 

 

Anyway, there is a description of the crew that matches my experience of Utah.

 

He’s joined by his trebuchet-firing crew - young dudes in dirty jeans with chew-can rings worn into the back pocket; most study history or classics at Utah State. 

 

So, true story: my wife and I go to the Utah Shakespeare Festival most years, and a few years ago, we were enjoying cocktails on the patio of the classy bar in Cedar City one evening. (We try to subvert Mormon Country when we can…) 

 

These young dudes, very white and hayseed and Utah-as-heck, had apparently been tying one on at the more redneck bar, and were clearly smashed. One guy was worse, though, and he spent a few minutes retching into a bush as his buddies tried to get him home. 

 

A few minutes later, one of the buddies comes to our bar (where apparently they started their night), and said, “Can we look around? Brayden can’t find his dip.” 

 

The funny thing is, before that, my wife leaned over and said, “I bet one of them is named Brayden…” 

 

So yeah, reading that description, I knew exactly what he was talking about. 

 

Also in this chapter is a discussion of “elixirs,” alchemical recipes said to do everything from expanding lifespans to treating illnesses. Some of these had actual scientific merit, but others…didn’t. And many were dangerous. 

 

Sinologists have estimated that at least a half dozen Chinese emperors died on the throne as a result of drinking elixirs. There was a fine line between immortality and death.

 

In the final chapter, there are some fascinating culinary experiences. The description of blue corn masa is somewhat familiar. I do wonder though, about his claim that you can’t really get true nixtamalized corn products here in the US. (He is from the east coast, and his mention of Whole Foods as a potential source that didn’t pan out reveals his lack of connection with genuine Latin American groceries.) 

 

We have a local Vallarta that does its own tortillas - and its own hominy, in various colors - and I am pretty sure those are done the right way. I could be wrong, but they definitely taste like he describes, and they don’t keep well. 

 

His description of eating the various insects is pretty fun. I don’t have a lot of experience, but I have eaten a few over the years. They are mostly fine, as he noted. 

 

And, of course, the Aztec ballgames. I hadn’t read a particularly helpful description of the rules previously. It seems most archeologists are concerned with the courts and balls and equipment, but not actual gameplay. 

 

But Kean found people who still play the game. And he got to embarrass himself on the court a bit. 

 

What struck me particularly is that the Aztec game has a significant trait in common with Quidditch. I have previously complained that the rules for Quidditch were clearly written by someone who didn’t understand games - and I stand by that. (I don’t think I did so on my blog, but I certainly have in person.) 

 

Basically, because the Snitch ends the game, and is worth so much, catching the Snitch is the only thing that matters during most phases of the game. This is mostly because the game won’t end until someone catches the Snitch. This makes all the other parts of gameplay mostly irrelevant. 

 

Now, the parallel facet of the Aztec game is that there is a similar high-value play: you can hip-bump the ball through a vertically oriented basket (or ring) on the side of the court. That will be an instant win. 

 

But, there are some differences. First, it is highly difficult to put the ball through the ring, and so it rarely happens. Second, the game has a limit and can end without a basket. So, the other parts of gameplay actually matter - the ring is just a crazy fluke that might happen once in a hundred games. In the game Kean plays in, there are a few close calls, but no ring scores. 

 

Because this chapter is set during the time that the Conquistadors were invading Central America, there is also a discussion of gunpowder. And, for reasons, tests of various recipes for ancient gunpowder that contain everything from vinegar to arsenic. Cliff Rodgers, one of the people running the experiments (including ancient cannons) opines that the recipes may have been matched to the uneven quality of the steel in the guns. 

 

“But I could be wrong,” he admits. “Maybe they just didn’t know what the hell they were doing.” 

 

And maybe that is the theme of the book, deep down. Experimental Archaeology is really all about that question: what works? Is something we see in ancient culture useful, or is it just a guess. Many things, of course, turn out to be purposeful - ash to repel ticks, parrots to find land, flints for knives. But others - the elixirs, certain ingredients in gunpowder, and others - are stabs in the dark, attempts to figure things out, personal preferences, or perhaps just superstition. Experimental Archaeology can be a part of discovering which is which. 

 

As usual Sam Kean was a fun experience, and a good lighter read. 

Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

This book is epically long and information intense, checking in at over 700 pages of small print, not including the extensive endnotes. It was ten years in the making, and involved thousands of interviews, most of which never made it into the book. As it is, the author followed specific people whose stories are in the book for nearly a decade, following up on their lives. I took a ton of notes, so this post is going to be long. Fair warning. 

 

To even describe the book isn’t easy. Solomon starts with the ideas of vertical identity (something that is common to parents and children) and horizontal identity (something that is not common to parents and children), and then looks at ten specific ways that these “horizontal” identities affect relationships between parents and their children. 

 

This is bookended with chapters that are specifically about the author. The first is his childhood experience and relationships with his parents - and his identities vertical and horizontal. For example, he is Jewish, which is a vertical identity - he shares that with his parents, and will share that eventually with his children. But he is also gay, while his parents are not. That is his horizontal identity, and the way that he and his parents came to terms with his identity sets the stage for discussing these other identities. 

 

Solomon also has some other traits that inform his experience and writing. He is prone to depression (a prior book was about this - it’s an inherited trait in his family), he is dyslexic (more so than me, but like me, with good education from a parent, has obviously become quite literate), and he is (although he never says so in the book, it is pretty obvious) neurodivergent - probably on the autism spectrum.

 

The closing chapter is about how he became a parent. A parent in a somewhat complex blended family, which opens further areas of discussion of the ideas earlier in the book. 

 

Perhaps the central question in the book is how humans deal with difference, particularly when that difference causes discomfort, difficulties, challenges, and heartbreak. 

 

I re-read what I just wrote above, and, while it is, in my view, true, it is also terribly incomplete. The scope of this book goes beyond a summary. 

 

The book is also intensely personal - the stories of the people he encounters are each unique, even as the challenges are widespread. Every parent, every child is different, unique, fascinating. 

 

For the most part, Solomon is descriptive rather than prescriptive, choosing to observe, learn, reconsider. At the times where he does offer what he sees as the best approach, it is difficult to disagree with him. He operates from compassion and empathy, not judgmentalism; and his quest to understand rather than lecture means that he approaches even the most problematic of his subjects with respect and humanity. 

 

This is to be applauded, and the main reason I think that even those who may disagree with some of his ideas will find him thought provoking and just plain decent. 

 

There are a few places in the book where I did disagree with him in relatively minor ways, and I will note those as I go along. But I do want to be clear that the disagreements are minor, and usually about his choices in emphasis or interpretation of factual evidence, not about moral issues. 

 

To use an example, while his chapter on transgender children is mostly good, I would have changed a few things (which, again, I will note in that part of this post), but he is no J. K. Rowling - not even in the same universe. Usually, the issue is in him giving (in my opinion) a bit longer leash to discredited ideas than he should, typically in service of letting his subjects speak, even when they are objectively wrong. 

 

I will admit at the outset that I have some skin in this game. I have children for whom gender and sexuality defy the binary that right wingers insist on, and autism spectrum runs in my wife’s family. I also am neurodivergent myself, although not specifically one of the usual diagnoses, and my neurodivergence is one reason that I was eventually rejected by my birth parents. Like the author, seeing the issues from both sides - as parent and as child - is interesting, and my experience as a child has certainly informed how I have chosen to parent my own kids. 

 

Before diving into the text, I also want to applaud Solomon for using this book to make a powerful argument in favor of diversity, integration, and human thriving. The world would be a far better place if more people approached their own lives and the lives of others with his level of grace. 

 

Son

 

The first chapter, “Son,” introduces many of the key concepts, in addition to being a compelling story of a kid who grew up gay and “effeminate” and took some time to find his way in the world. 

 

The opening sentence, in fact, contains so much that is important, that I will quote it and a few more. 

 

There is no such thing as reproduction. When two people decide to have a baby, they engage in an act of production, and the widespread use of the word reproduction for this activity, with its implication that two people are but braiding themselves together, is at best a euphemism to comfort prospective parents before they get in over their heads. In the subconscious fantasies that make conception so alluring, it is often ourselves that we would like to see live forever, not someone with a personality of his own. Having anticipated the onward march of our selfish genes, many of us are unprepared for children who present unfamiliar needs. Parenthood abruptly catapults us into a permanent relationship with a stranger, and the more alien the stranger, the stronger whiff of negativity. We depend on the guarantee that in our children’s faces that we will not die. Children whose defining quality annihilates that fantasy of immortality are a particular insult; we must love them for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do. Loving our own children is an exercise for the imagination. 

 

So much there that I wish I had understood as a child. So many parents view their children as clones of themselves, in one way or another. On the one hand, my parents didn’t force their particular hobbies and pastimes and careers and so on onto us. There was no expectation that I would play high school basketball like my dad, and it was fine that music became my thing. 

 

On the other, my parents increasingly (and to this very day) expected that I would be a clone of them in terms of religious beliefs, cultural preferences, and political affiliation. These expectations - indeed demands - are what led to the breakdown of our relationship. The author discusses this phenomenon a bit in the chapter as well. 

 

For me, with my own children, I have made a conscious effort (not always successful) to appreciate who they are, not who I think they should be. 

 

Insofar as our children resemble us, they are our most precious admirers, and insofar as they differ, they can be our most vehement detractors. From the beginning, we tempt them into imitation of us and long for what may be life’s most profound complement: their choosing to live according to our own system of values. Though many of us take pride in how different we are from our parents, we are endlessly sad at how different our children are from us. 

 

I feel this very much, and that is why I am committed to breaking the cycle if I can. My parents made very different choices from their parents. And I made very different choices from either my parents or my grandparents. My children live in far too interesting times and I know that that fact alone means their choices will of necessity be different. But I also want them to know that they are free to be different from me, and that I love them for who they are. (Something I have not received from my own parents.) 

 

The passage on “horizontal identities” is good. 

 

Often, however, someone has an inherent or acquired trait that is foreign to his or her parents and must therefore acquire identity from a peer group. This is a horizontal identity. Such horizontal identities may reflect recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences, or values and preferences that a child does not share with his progenitors. Being gay is a horizontal identity; most gay kids are born to straight parents, and while their sexuality is not determined by their peers, they learn gay identity by observing and participating in a subculture outside the family. 

 

As the parent of LGBTQ kids, this has been very true. It has been an experience to be the safe home for their queer friends to come to, and I am richer for having that experience. But it is a subculture I will never be a part of and will never fully understand. It is a horizontal identity. 

 

As a gay man, Solomon recounts how his own experience of feeling isolated, then discovering his tribe, and his eventual realization that being different is an identity that actually brings solidarity and community. 

 

Having always imagined myself in a fairly slim minority, I suddenly saw that I was in a vast company. Difference unites us. While each of these experiences can isolate those who are affected, together they compose an aggregate of millions whose struggles connect them profoundly. The exceptional is ubiquitous; to be entirely typical is the rare and lonely state.

 

None of us are “normal,” honestly. There is no category of “fully normal in every way” that some people fit in. We are all divergent, all unique, and all in some way “fall short” of the specified “normal.” No wonder Imposter Syndrome is near universal. 

 

I should note here that Solomon discusses the tension between something being an identity and being an illness. In the case of disabling conditions, he correctly notes that both can apply. Deafness is an illness but also an identity, as the next chapter explores in more detail.

 

I also loved his ideas about families, and his pushback against Tolstoy in this matter. 

 

All offspring are startling to their parents; these most dramatic situations are merely variations on a common theme. Much as we learn the properties of a medication by studying its effect at extremely high doses, or look at the viability of a construction material by exposing it to unearthly supertemperatures, so we can understand the universal phenomenon of difference within families by looking at these extreme cases. Having exceptional children exaggerates parental tendencies; those who would be bad parents become awful parents, but those who would be good parents often become extraordinary. I take the anti-Tolstoyan view that the unhappy families who reject their variant children have much in common, while the happy ones who strive to accept them are happy in a multitude of ways. 

 

This leads into a reason the author gives for writing the book:

 

Broadcasting these parents’ learned happiness is vital to sustaining identities that are now vulnerable to eradication. Their stories point a way for all of us to expand our definitions of the human family. It’s important to know how autistic people feel about autism, or dwarfs about dwarfism. Self-acceptance is part of the ideal, but without familial and societal acceptance, it cannot ameliorate the relentless injustices to which many horizontal identity groups are subject and will not bring about adequate reform. We live in xenophobic times, when legislation with majority support abrogates the rights of women, LGBT people, illegal immigrants, and the poor. Despite this crisis in empathy, compassion thrives at home, and most of the parents I have profiled love across the divide. 

 

This book was published in 2012, and times have become far more xenophobic since. While I think parents have gotten even better at loving and protecting their divergent children, society as a whole is moving in the direction of eugenics and genocide. Not everyone, or even a majority, but those with the money and power. 

 

Related to this is a fascinating paragraph in the issue of gay rights, something the author cares deeply about for obvious reasons. He brings up an argument that I hadn’t really thought about, but which makes a lot of sense. 

 

Much of the debate around sexual-orientation laws has turned on the idea that if you choose homosexuality, it should not be protected, but if you are born with it, perhaps it should. Members of minority religions are protected not because they are born that way and can’t do anything about it, but because we affirm their right to discover, declare, and inhabit the faith with which they identify. 

 

Um, yeah. One of the reasons that I have rejected the right-wing view of sexuality is that there is literally no argument against gay sex except bigotry. Every single argument eventually boils down to “we think God hates gays.” The only argument is a religious one. Okay, I’ll concede that misogyny is also an argument. In fact it is the root argument in the religious argument. I firmly believe in religious freedom, and key to that freedom is that others do not get to use the power of government to force their beliefs on you. 

 

I will mention in this context the discussion that followed about how gay fetuses will be gleefully aborted by anti-gay bigots despite their supposed opposition to abortion the minute a prenatal test for gayness is developed. And that if a drug were available to prevent gayness, Evangelicals would line up to use it. Solomon recounts with dismay that even being subjected to discrimination is no protection against being a bigot in other areas. His Jewish mother who struggled to accept his gayness. The lesbian couple with a transgender kid who approved of the murder of abortion doctors. Black people who hate Jewish people. And so on and on. I love his concluding point. 

 

Everyone is flawed and strange; most people are valiant too. The reasonable corollary to the queer experience is that everyone has a defect, that everyone has an identity, and that they are often one and the same. 

 

Several things have made him struggle - dyslexia, gayness, depression - but they also made him who he is. I can relate to that. 

 

The discussion of the question of disability is fascinating. On the one hand, a disability of any kind can cause problems for the one who has it. But also, many of the disadvantages exist because society refuses to accommodate. 

 

Ability is a tyranny of the majority. If most people could flap their arms and fly, the inability to do so would be a disability. If most people were geniuses, those of moderate intelligence would be disastrously disadvantaged. There is no ontological truth enshrined in what we think of as good health; it is merely a convention, one that has been strikingly inflated in the last century. In 1912, an American who lived until the age of fifty-five had had a good, long life; now, death at fifty-five is considered a tragedy. Because most people can walk, being unable to walk is a disability; so is being unable to hear; and so is being unable to decipher social cues. It’s a matter of votes, and the disabled question these majority decisions. 

 

As noted in this context, being unable to walk is an impairment, but being unable to enter the public library is a disability - one imposed by majority vote. 

 

This leads into the question of what is appropriate to do regarding any particular difference that may be a disability. What level of pain and risk is worth it to “fix” something. And exactly why are we making the attempt. 

 

How urgent is any problem and how dire is the solution? That is the proportion that must be entertained. It is both essential and impossible to tease apart the difference between the parents’ wanting to spare the child suffering and the parents’ wanting to spare themselves suffering.

 

I think about this often in the context of the authoritarian parenting I endured as a child and teen. I’m sure my parents thought that breaking my will was for my own good - to spare me suffering, if not in this life, then surely in the life to come. But was it really to spare me? Or to spare them the discomfort of a child who challenged them, talked back, and insisted on following his own conscience rather than theirs? 

 

Another passage haunted me regarding my own childhood. 

 

A child may interpret even well-intentioned efforts to fix him as sinister. Jim Sinclair, an intersex autistic person wrote, “When parents say, ‘I wish my child did not have autism,’ what they are really saying is, ‘I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and that I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.’ Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.”

 

My parents desperately tried to “fix” me. To make me into someone they wanted, that they could love. They wanted me to not exist, and someone lovable to move in behind my face. Sadly, they got their wish: my sister. The child that they love for who she is, not for the performance I was required to put on. 

 

Later in the chapter, Solomon explains why he relies on stories in this book. He has an excellent point. 

 

Though I have gathered statistics, I have relied primarily on anecdotes because numbers imply trends, while stories acknowledge chaos. 

 

As helpful as statistics can be for many reasons, a book about relationships is, of necessity, about people, and people are…chaotic. 

 

As a final thought about this chapter - the one I took the most notes on - I will go with this truth. 

 

While denying the anger and tedium of parenting can be crushing, dwelling on it is also a mistake. Many of the people I interviewed said that they would never exchange their experiences for any other life - sound thinking, given that exchange is unavailable. Cleaving to our own lives, with all their challenges and limitations and particularities, is vital. 

 

Our lives make us who we are. 

 

Deaf

 

Some of my earliest memories involve deafness. When I was very young, my parents owned three houses on a lot - we lived in the front one, and rented the other two out. One of the longest-term tenants we had was a deaf woman from the megachurch we attended at the time. She was capable of reading lips, but struggled with speech. As my parents so often did back in the day, they raised us to show respect, be kind, and do what you can to accommodate others. Unfortunately, what ASL I learned back then is gone from my memory. 

 

I feel like I have always had deaf acquaintances, mostly through church, but also in the community. For example, a worker at our local grocery story. My eldest kid took ASL in college, and has hung out with the deaf club from time to time over the last few years, which is pretty cool. 

 

What is definitely true is that the deaf community is a community. It is bound together in strong ways, and has its own unique subculture, which Solomon explores in this chapter. 

 

Interestingly, the deaf subculture goes way back. As in, there is a record of a thriving deaf community in the Hittite empire 3500 years ago. That’s before the earliest possible date for Moses, by the way. 

 

One of the places the author visits for this chapter is a village in Bali, where deafness is the norm. He notes that, because everyone is capable of communicating without spoken language, “where deafness does not impair communication, it is not much of a handicap.” He also noted that “In this community, people talked about deafness and hearing much as people in more familiar societies might talk about height or race - as personal characteristics with advantages and disadvantages.” 

 

This and other chapters also include a lot of fun history. Like the time Alessandro Volta put metal rods in his ears and connected them to an electrical circuit. He got a nasty shock, but also heard sound, implying that electrical impulses were part of hearing. (And they are.) 

 

Dwarfs

 

One of the first things I learned in this chapter was which terms are preferred for people with the various conditions causing dwarfism. Apparently, “Dwarf” is fine, and “little person” is too. “Midget” is decidedly not, unless one is a cute MG sports car. Like many other areas, certain terms, originally descriptive, have become slurs. So, as we always should, check before using a word. 

 

If you want a fairly deep dive into the causes of dwarfism, this chapter will give you that - throughout the book, Solomon can’t help nerding out about whatever he is writing about. That’s one reason the book is so long, but also why it is a good read. Context matters, and he always tries to provide it. 

 

Medically speaking, “dwarfism” refers to any person who is four feet ten inches or shorter due to a medical condition. So, my mother barely missed the cutoff on size, although I do not believe she has any specific medical condition that led to her height. 

 

Any chapter like this is bound to get into some weird territory, such as the controversy over “dwarf tossing.” Apparently, it is expressly banned in a handful of states, but technically legal in others. And there seems to be some dispute within the community as to whether it is a valid way to earn a living, or a dehumanizing spectacle. I guess it never occurred to me that this might be the subject of legislation, but there you have it. 

 

More seriously, though, is a problem that recurs throughout the book. Historically, the existence of bodies that are unusual - humans that don’t fit the majority definition of “normal” - has been blamed on the parents. And particularly the mother. 

 

Unusual bodies have been described throughout history as reflections of sin, as omens from the gods, as the basis for laughter or charity or punishment. 

 

Even today, anti-LGBTQ groups insist that if being gay isn’t a choice, it comes from bad parenting - particularly a mother who is too cold. Or too smothering. Or something. Blame the parents. 

 

I’ll just mention one other discussion that stood out: limb lengthening. This is an ethical minefield in every possible way. It is an extremely painful process that takes over a year, and has to be done to minor children. Is it worth it? Is it an attempt to cure a “defect” that doesn’t really exist? It’s definitely worth a read for all of the different perspectives Solomon is able to show - particularly from those who have dwarfism.

 

Down Syndrome

 

One of the great heartbreaks of the last decade is the moral disintegration of my former faith tradition. 

 

When I was a kid, I remember the churches I was a part of embracing disabled people in a way that the larger culture did not. In particular, churches integrated kids with Down Syndrome in a way that made them feel a part of it all, and trained us impressionable young humans to see disabled people as fully human and deserving of respect and kindness. 

 

Yes, back in the day, Evangelicals were on the front lines of disability rights. Hard to believe now, right?

 

Because these days, they are cheering the dismantling of laws and agencies that protected the disabled, and are also ecstatic about the stripping of healthcare access for the disabled. Medicaid has got to go, right? 

 

So, reading this chapter was emotionally troubling in a way that the others often weren’t - it reminded me of what I used to have, and no longer have: membership in a religious community that gave a rat’s ass about other people. 

 

There are plenty of interesting things in this chapter. One thing I did not know, for example, is that Down Syndrome isn’t just something that has existed since humans first evolved - it is found in chimpanzees and gorillas as well. Presumably a common ancestor was prone to it. In any case, Down Syndrome is caused by a random mutation, not a recessive trait, although older parents are more likely to have a child with Down. 

 

Also highly fascinating is the extended discussion of the effects of intensive interaction with infants and children with Down. 

 

Many specific techniques are invaluable in addressing particular needs, but the long and short of it is that disabled children, like nondisabled children, thrive on attention, engagement, stimulation, and hope.

 

Autism

 

This chapter is one of the more personal ones for me. Autism runs on my wife’s side of the family, and many of her relatives are on the spectrum. One of my kids shows some traits as well. 

 

One particularly excellent facet of this chapter is the way that the author discusses the issue of causation. Autism is a spectrum and a syndrome, not a specific disease like Down Syndrome or dwarfism. We don’t actually understand what genes cause it, or even which ones determine specific traits. It is more a constellation of symptoms and traits than a single disease. 

 

Because of this, there isn’t any easy “cause” that we know of, other than that, like literally every other mutation-based issue, it is slightly more common in children of older parents. 

 

Autism is also so different in its manifestations. There is a huge difference between someone who struggles with social cues, and someone who is non-verbal and plays with their feces. Not all autistic people struggle with noise or textures, and not all are capable of hyper-focus. The spectrum isn’t just a line between “unable to function” and “is able to find coping mechanisms,” but a whole three-dimensional puzzle of interacting traits and symptoms. 

 

Solomon argues that this really makes autism not a single thing at all, but a bunch of related things. I think he is likely right about this. 

 

For the most part, this chapter was really good. I did have a few quibbles. First, and most problematic, is that he gives too much space to the vaccine lie. Not that he says it is true - he does note that the extensive study of the issue has revealed zero connection. 

 

What he fails to do, in my opinion, is to lay out the truth clearly: it was always a fabricated lie. Andrew Wakefield and his financial backers literally falsified data with the goal of selling a product. This is why he was stripped of his medical license and why his “study” was retracted. 

 

This wasn’t a mistake, it was a grift, a fraud perpetrated on the parents of autistic children, that has been unfortunately magnified by irresponsible media, moronic celebrities, and now the brain-worm infested charlatan in charge of Health and Human Services. Solomon should have made all of that clear. 

 

The other issue I had is that the chapter tends to focus more on lower-functioning children - the ones with profound disability - at the expense of a hard look at how society marginalizes all autistic traits, even the ones which might be seen as adaptive. I mention this because in the other chapters, he spends more time on how society could make life easier for disabled children and adults. It’s a matter of emphasis, not substance, however. 

 

Part of my quibble here may be because I recently read Oliver Sacks’ book with a chapter on autism, and it was so good that I wish Solomon had taken a similar approach. 

 

There are so many good things in this chapter, whatever my quibbles, and I do want to quote some of them. For example, this bit of dry humor:

 

It sometimes seems that every parent whose child is thriving feels compelled to write a hubristic volume effectively called What I Did Right. Many such parents generalize from strategies that may only by chance have coincided with their children’s “emergence.” 

 

Somewhat related: I wrote a post voicing my frustration that my parents credited the fact that I “turned out well” to actions that actually harmed me. 

 

Very related to this is the question, which Solomon explores at length, of whether “treatments” for autism are about helping the autistic person, or about making things easier for their parents. 

 

Many neurodiversity activists question whether existing treatments are for the benefit of autistic people or for the comfort of their parents. Idiosyncrasies may be unsettling, but how much torment should a child go through to relinquish them? 

 

Part of the problem here is that too many “Autism Advocacy” groups are there to seek ways of forcing autistic people to be more like neurotypical people, rather than to improve the lives of autistic people. As Alex Plank of the Wrong Planet website is quoted:

 

“The organizations that have the best connections are the ones founded by parents of people with autism, which aren’t going to have the same priorities as the autistic people themselves, especially if the parents’ idea of success is to make their kid the same as the parents when they were kids.”

 

Again, that is back to the “reproduction” versus “production” problem: are we making duplicates of ourselves, or are we creating entirely new human beings? 

 

Ari Ne’eman, another autistic person interviewed had an excellent insight as well:

 

“Society has developed a tendency to examine things from the point of view of a bell curve. How far away am I from normal? What can I do to fit in better? But what is on top of bell curve? Mediocrity. That is the fate of American society if we insist upon pathologizing difference.” 

 

From Camille Clark:

 

“Autistic people are valuable as they are. They don’t have value only if they can be transformed into less obviously autistic people.”

 

I have many autistic friends, dating back to Junior High, and I value them - they are good people, just a bit different.

 

And another quote, from Judy Singer, also on the spectrum:

 

“The Internet is a prosthetic device for people who can’t socialize without it.”

 

I mention this in part because I hear a lot of complaining about the internet and social media and how it supposedly replaces “real life” socialization. Some criticism is legitimate of course: the billionaire class uses it for misinformation, for example. 

 

But for many of us, we would be unable either physically or psychologically to maintain many of our connections without the internet. I myself hate talking on the phone, and the idea of having to call dozens of people a week if I wanted to have a connection sounds like hell. But I can drop an email, or have a brief interaction on Facebook or Discord. This way I have connections to friends and family across the continent, or even just the next city over. Beyond that, I have now met several people I met online (including through this blog) in real life, and they were exactly the same people in person as they were online. (And they have said the same about me.) 

 

For introverts generally, and for autistic people in particular, technology has been a positive in many ways. 

 

One final thought from this chapter, which I think may be the best line in the book:

 

The attempt to dictate black-and-white policy about a spectrum condition is inherently flawed. 

 

I think this can and should apply to humanity in general. We are all on a spectrum, a three-dimensional rainbow of existence and traits and flaws and strengths. Attempting to dictate black-and-white policy is tremendously harmful, and really only works to privilege the already privileged and harm the vulnerable. 

 

Oh, and I can’t forget: no chapter on autism would be complete without a bit of Temple Grandin. 

 

“It would be nice if you could prevent the most severe forms of nonverbal autism. But if you got rid of all the autism genetics, you’d get rid of scientists, musicians, mathematicians, and all you’d have left is dried-up bureaucrats. I see a picture in my mind of the cavemen talking around the campfire, and off in the corner, there’s the Aspie guy, and he’s chipping the first stone spear, figuring out how to tie it to a stick, cutting some animal sinews to do it. Social people don’t make technology.” 

 

Something to keep in mind. Neurodiversity makes us all richer. 

 

Schizophrenia

 

I have a lot more experience with Schizophrenia from my job than I do personally. It doesn’t run in either my family or my wife’s family, and the people in my life with mental illness have tended to be on the bipolar or depressive spectrum instead. This is probably random chance more than anything. 

 

Because of this, I found this chapter to be full of facts and experiences that I was not that familiar with. Solomon’s characteristic empathy pervades this chapter, as mental illness has a profound effect on people and their families. 

 

At the outset, Solomon notes that Schizophrenia has traditionally been blamed on the parents - the assumption was that it was caused by abuse. This is, of course, bullshit. As is the related idea that curing mental illness is simply a matter of positive thinking, willpower, or moral courage.

 

I was intrigued to see one of my favorite philosophers, William James, put in his two cents. (James also wrote an incredibly influential book on psychology, one which has aged better than Freud, in my opinion.) James characterized this metaphysical approach to brain illness as follows:

 

“The religion of the healthy minded,” celebrating “the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, and trust, and a correlative contempt for doubt, fear, worry.” 

 

That contempt is practically the mantra for White Evangelicalism, by the way. Blame everything - poverty, illness, suffering - on the victims. 

 

Speaking of which, one of the best parts of this chapter is Solomon’s evisceration of the way the United States treats victims of mental illness. He includes some horrifying statistics (which are actually not at all surprising.) 

 

As of the writing of the book, 150,000 people with Schizophrenia were homeless. One in five people with Schizophrenia is homeless at any given time. 

 

At least 300,000 mentally ill people are incarcerated. Very few of those are imprisoned for violent crimes, and most are there for crimes they would not have committed had they been properly treated. As much as a quarter of our prisoners are mentally ill. 

 

Basically, we are paying huge sums of money to incarcerate people for the “crime” of being ill. And it costs us far more to do so than it would to house and treat those same people. 

 

I sometimes think that the emphasis on insight among psychotic people is like our focus on contrition among criminals. Self-awareness and remorse imply that aberrant people are more like us than their actions suggest, and that consoles us. But they serve little advantage unless they change behavior.

 

This will come up again in a later chapter, but it certainly applies here. Mass incarceration of mentally ill people isn’t fixing anything, and costs us more than treatment. The only reason to continue to do this is a misguided sense of revenge mixed with fear. 

 

Disability

 

The title is short, but not that specific. This chapter looks at children with serious, debilitating disabilities. The term the author uses is Multiple Severe Disability (MSD) which encompasses a wide variety of diagnoses, from brain damage to physical issues. For the most part, the cases looked at are ones that involve mental issues rather than just physical, so they involve mostly people who cannot speak for themselves. (A contrast to other chapters, where the children very much do speak.)

 

Perhaps more than any other chapter, this one is filled with ethical minefields. Everything from selective abortion to puberty prevention and a whole lot in between. Navigating this chapter was difficult for that reason - all the things you might think are easy, or have a single correct answer turn out to be wicked-complicated and often no-win. Solomon’s approach of listening, thinking, and giving grace to people for whatever decisions they make is about as good as any of us can do. 

 

More than with the other chapters, these are parents dealing with utterly life-altering issues that have profound and mostly negative effects. You don’t have the hope of medication or treatment. There are few work-arounds that result in a more normal life. And so there is a lot of grief and ambivalence. 

 

Alan O. Ross writes in The Exceptional Child that parents’ expectations “invariably include that the child will be able to surpass, or at least attain, the parents’ level of socio-cultural accomplishment.” He continues, “When the child does not conform to this image, the parents must learn to cope with the dissonance between their image of ‘a child’ and the reality of ‘their child.’” The tension often has less to do with the severity of the child’s disabilities than with the parents’ coping skills, the dynamics among healthy members of the family, and the importance the parents place on how people outside the family perceive them. Income, time available to focus on the child, and support outside the family are all significant factors. 

 

I have seen this in families I have known and know. Some people cope incredibly well. But they are often aided by economic stability, good insurance, and so on. I also have seen churches step up and become the “village” that is needed. As I mentioned previously, this used to be one of the bright spots about organized religion, but it seems to be giving way to a Social Darwinist approach, which is a devastating loss. As a person unconnected to a church for the last 9 years, I have tried at least with the people in my life to be a help, not a hindrance. 

 

I’ll end with the way the chapter ends: with the issue of ambivalence. 

 

The dark portion of maternal ambivalence toward typical children is posited as crucial to the child’s individuation. But severely disabled children who will never become independent will not benefit from their parents’ negative feelings, and so their situation demands an impossible state of emotional purity. Asking the parents of severely disabled children to feel less negative emotion than the parents of healthy children is ludicrous. My experience of these parents was that they all felt both love and despair. You cannot decide whether to be ambivalent. All you can decide is what to do with your ambivalence. 

 

And this is why Solomon doesn’t condemn the parents who found themselves unable to deal with a profoundly disabled child, and found other alternatives. 

 

Prodigy

 

This chapter might at first seem out of place. But it really isn’t. When talking about prodigies, we are not talking about highly intelligent children as a whole, but ones who demonstrate an unusual ability at an adult level at a very young age. 

 

Solomon chooses to look at musical prodigies rather than the other sorts, but one could do the same for math or art or any other expression. 

 

These are children who are different in such a significant way that they really are not able to have a “normal” childhood. As a musician, I certainly know about prodigies. I am not one of them - I have some level of talent, but mostly the willingness to put in a lot of work. Most of us professional musicians are like this, actually, and that includes most world class performers. 

 

I recently went to an event with Itzhak Perlman, and he played early footage of childhood recitals. To be sure, he was really good, but he also played like the kid he was. Well above average talent, but a lot of hard work. And not a prodigy. 

 

Likewise, many child prodigies never become world class adults. And this also leads to a near-impossible dilemma for parents. 

 

A parent is the progenitor of much of a child’s behavior, telling that child repeatedly who he has been, is, and could be, reconciling accomplishment and innocence. In constructing this narrative, parents often confuse the anomaly of developing fast with the objective of developing profoundly. There is no clear delineation between supporting and pressuring a child, between believing in your child, and forcing your child to conform to what you imagine for him. You can damage prodigies by nurturing their talent at the expense of personal growth, or by cultivating general development at the expense of the special skill that might have given them the deepest fulfillment. You can make them feel that your love is contingent on their dazzling success, or that you don’t care about their talent. Prodigies invite a sacrifice of the present to the putative future. If society’s expectations for most children with profound differences are too low, expectations for prodigies are often perilously high. 

 

This chapter also includes a good bit of background of the beliefs regarding genius, from Plato to the present. Unfortunately, any honest history of this would have to discuss eugenics, and this book does. In fact, there is a name that appears that is of particular interest to me, as his racist and authoritarian beliefs inspired Hitler…and also one of the false prophets (James Dobson) that my parents followed, to the great detriment of my family. I’ll quote the bit about him from the book:

 

Paul Popenoe, who advocated forced sterilization of the “inferior,” asserted that “no son of an unskilled laborer has ever become an eminent man of science in the United States.” Hitler was well versed in the work and ideas of Galton and Popenoe; indeed, Popenoe enthusiastically collaborated with his Nazi counterparts, and defended them until it was no longer advantageous to do so. 

 

Dobson’s ideas, and indeed the organization he founded, Focus on the Family, is nothing more or less than the repackaging of Popenoe’s eugenics with a spray paint of religion to hide the swastikas. Dobson worked for Popenoe, borrowed his ideas, and had Popenoe write the forward to his first book. The line from Hitler to Popenoe to Dobson to Trump is literally a straight line. 

 

On a more positive note, I loved the discussion of absolute pitch. I have a version of this, as do most string players (and many musicians in general), although not at the level of some. I can, indeed, name pitches by hearing them, but only within about a 3 octave range. I am hopeless at very low and very high notes, and most proficient in the range of the violin and viola. Not coincidentally, instruments I play regularly. 

 

In the book, there are descriptions of people - mostly the prodigies - who easily hear the pitch that non-musical sounds are at. And often complain they are out of tune. And yes, I totally do that. I name the pitches of motors and electronics and all kinds of stuff. Birds too. It does indeed bother me when something is out of tune, even if it isn’t even a tune. 

 

Unsurprisingly, some fairly famous people end up in this chapter. One is Scott Frankel, a Broadway composer best known for Doll and Grey Gardens. But before that, he was a piano prodigy. His difficult relationship with his parents mirrors that of many of the subjects of this book - parents who projected themselves onto their children in a controlling manner. Much like the father of pantheon prodigy Mozart did. A couple quotes from this passage:

 

“She wanted to be in charge of where I was going to go to school, who my friends were going to be, what career I was going to have, whom I was going to marry, what I was going to wear, and what I was going to say. When I started to veer from her notions, it enraged her. She was mercurial, carnivorous, and boundary-disrespecting and thought of me as an extension of herself. My father was unable, or unwilling, or both, to protect me from her.”

 

Um, yeah, that sounds a lot like my parents. In my case, the control came at least somewhat from both of them, not just my mom, although her need for control lasted into my adulthood more than my father’s. 

 

When he told his parents he was gay, they were livid. “I resented the parochial affection,” he said. “You get the whole package. You can’t pick the shiny bits from the other bits.”

 

I want to tell my parents this as well. You get the whole package. You can’t just use me for the parts you like, and demand I give up my identity for your comfort and bragging rights. 

 

And believe it or not, Frankel’s experience was less insane than that of violinist Vanessa-Mae. Her mother controlled everything, including the sexualized album cover released when she was a teen. But it gets worse! She was not allowed to have friends, because that might distract her. 

 

And worse! 

 

Her mother said, “I love you because you are my daughter, but you’ll never be special to me unless you play the violin.”

 

And worse!

 

Vanessa-Mae chose a new manager when she was twenty-one, “desperately hoping for a normal mother/daughter relationship.” She wanted companionship instead of supervision. Her mother has not spoken to her since.

 

Yikes. 

 

While many performers are self-involved, it is often the parents of prodigies who are most obviously narcissistic. They may invest their own hopes, ambitions, and identities in what their children do rather than who their children are. Instead of cultivating curiosity, they may sprint for fame. Though they sometimes seemed pitiless to me, they were seldom vindictive; the abuse they perpetrated reflected a tragic misunderstanding of where one human being ends and another begins. 

 

This chapter is nearly as disconcerting as the one on disability, because it too raises uncomfortable ethical dilemmas that do not have neat answers. 

 

Rape

 

This is another interesting choice. And yet another that raises ethical issues. I’ll get to those. 

 

The chapter focuses on children conceived as the result of rape, so fair warning that reading this chapter could be seriously triggering. There are some graphically violent rapes, but also a lot of child abuse, sexual and otherwise. There are some seriously fucked up males in this chapter, make no mistake. 

 

Solomon is correct, however, that being the product of a rape is a debilitating condition. It can (but doesn’t always) result in difficulties in the relationship between the mother and child. It results in serious and unnecessary social stigma. And, unavoidably, it leaves the child with a complicated sense of self and connection (or not) to the child’s biological father. 

 

The one most fixable, of course, is the societal one: as Solomon points out, “Society is likely to judge both the mother and child unkindly.” This should not be so. 

 

One thing that is truly excellent about this chapter is that Solomon clearly understands that rape isn’t really about sex, but about power. It is a violent and dominating expression of a power differential. And not merely the physical size differential, but the social power of males over females in our patriarchal society. (One need only look at the fact that Trump has spent his entire adult life preying on women and children, with zero consequence to understand that reality.) 

 

It was interesting to run across, once again, authors Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, and their pseudo-scientific defense of rape as a darwinistic advantage. (The best takedown of this is Jaron Lanier’s brilliant and timely (if really nerdy) essay against cybernetic totalism, “One Half A Manifesto”.)

 

I want to discuss one of the moral dilemmas in this chapter by mentioning a personal experience. The moral question, of course, is whether one should abort a pregnancy that resulted from a rape. This is heightened by the fact that a significant portion of rape victims are minor children. (The Ohio case of the 9 year old is just the tip of the iceberg.) As most people are able to understand, putting a child’s body at risk with a pregnancy and birth at that age is morally appalling and cruel. 

 

On the flip side, though, plenty of raped children are pressured into abortions that they may not want. 

 

Let me say at the outset that I think the anti-abortion view on this is, without doubt, the most morally repugnant approach, completely disregarding the rape victim’s needs and humanity by reducing her to an incubator for a fetus. Whatever the difficulty of the moral issues involved, they should not be solved by government intrusion into the womb. 

 

I’m not going to attempt a full defense of the pro-choice position in this post, although I have considered writing a series. Suffice it to say that the anti-abortion industrial complex is younger than I am, and lies about literally everything, including theology and church history. 

 

What I think is more interesting in this context is the examination of the emotional territory. As Solomon notes, some children conceived in rape have gone on to become the most passionate anti-abortion crusaders. 

 

I knew one of these. She is the mother of a former friend (who has gone rabidly and obnoxiously right wing, which is why we don’t talk these days), and was the result of a rape. And not just a rape. Her biological mother (as she found out many decades later) was raped at age 13 by her stepfather. As happened back then, the victim was sent away for the pregnancy and birth, was forced to give up the child for adoption, and the incident was never again mentioned. 

 

Unfortunately, this person found her mother’s story and identity only after her mother had died, so they never got to talk. 

 

But, because of this background, this person was vehemently anti-abortion. 

 

One can understand the emotional reason, of course. To imagine one’s self as not existing is traumatic. Perhaps even more traumatic than realizing one will die someday. So, to cope with the very real possibility that one might not have existed, one can turn that existentialist crisis to advocacy. 

 

The problem, though, is obvious: any of us could have never existed. 

 

I have five children. It is super easy to imagine a world in which we had stopped at four. If we had, my youngest would never have existed, and the world would have missed out on their unique personhood. 

 

But we stopped at five instead. So child number 6 never existed. He or she would have been great, I’m sure, because all my kids are great. But that child never had a chance to exist. Is that a moral wrong? 

 

This goes for any of us. Our parents may never have met. They may have been infertile. If they delayed parenthood, we might have been different people. 

 

You can go down this rabbit hole endlessly, of course. Every child I didn’t create is a child that never had a chance to exist. And neither did that child’s descendants. There is a lot of “what if” regarding theoretical children. Maybe we might look instead at doing better for the ones who are actually born. Just saying. 

 

Crime

 

I was not expecting this chapter to be as good as it was - it really is quite thoughtful. Plus, Solomon not only met with children and parents, he followed up for years afterward, to see where things went. 

 

One of the points he starts with is that, for the most part, crime isn’t a vertical identity. Most criminals have to figure out how to do antisocial things on their own. 

 

Obviously, there are exceptions - the Trump family comes readily to mind, as to other figures of organized crime. And sure, there are some families for whom substance abuse is an intergenerational illness. But a surprisingly high percentage of those who commit non-drug crimes come from parents who have no criminal record. 

 

One thing that was quite fascinating in this chapter is the difference between those criminals who grew up in horrible situations and those who came from good homes. For the most part, trauma, neglect, abuse, and so on, tend to lead to criminality through predictable paths: the joining of a gang to find belonging, for example. 

 

In contrast, those who came from good backgrounds really tend to be actual psychopaths, devoid of conscience. Those are the freaky ones that defy easy answers. 

 

Juvenile crime results from the interplay of the genetics, personality, and inclinations of the juvenile himself; the behavior and attitudes of his family; and his larger social environment. The idea of the bad seed seems outmoded, but some people seem to be born without a moral center, much as some people are born without a thumb. The genetics of decency are well beyond our primitive science, but despite boundless love and support, some people are geared toward violence and destruction, lack all powers of empathy, or have a blurry sense of truth. In most people, though, the criminal potential requires external stimulus to be activated; the intense, internally determined psychopath of the movies is unusual.

 

We are experiencing right now the results of putting psychopaths in charge of our government. I also have personal experience of the destruction in a family when someone with psychopathic traits is allowed to run amok. Our society’s greatest failure may well be our bizarre love affair with narcissists and sociopaths. 

 

What is clear from this chapter is that what the United States is doing to address crime is mostly counter-productive. Prisons tend to increase recidivism rather than reduce it. Incarceration for mental illness fails to solve the underlying issues while costing more. Meanwhile, wealthier sociopaths - like, say, Trump - are allowed to run free and cause far more damage than a petty crook could ever dream of. 

 

Even those in law enforcement know this. 

 

Fight Crime: Invest in Kid, an organization led by more than twenty-five hundred police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, and others in law enforcement, states, “Those on the front lines in the fight against crime know that it’s impossible to arrest and imprison our way out of the crime problem.”

 

Another observation is interesting to me:

 

Criminality is an identity, and like any other form of organized brutality - football, war, arbitrage - it can beget great intimacy. The social imperative is to suppress criminal behavior, but that should not preclude noticing its identity. I deplore violence, but I recognize the military intimacy it allows men who have no other occasion to bond. Indeed, I recognize that the conquests by which the map of the world is drawn derive from the loyalty and aggression of young men.

 

I haven’t even gotten into all of the family dynamics in this chapter, but those are fascinating as well. 

 

Transgender

 

If you had asked me a decade ago, I would never have imagined that transgender issues would be on my radar. Now, it has become a defining issue for our family, and I have had my world greatly expanded as a result. 

 

As I mentioned, I have kids for whom the gender binary does not work. I am not going to give out personal details, particularly in this vicious political climate, but suffice it to say that I have first-hand experience as the parent of a transgender child. 

 

I can say from this experience that literally everything the right wing says about transgender people is an absolute fucking lie. Everything. It’s all gross, vicious, nasty hate, lies, and slander. 

 

Fortunately, Solomon very much gets this. 

 

I did note a few quibbles with this chapter, and I will start with those, while also noting that these are minor. If everyone in our society was as gracious and decent as Solomon is in this chapter, the world would be a far better place, particularly for transgender people. 

 

My first quibble is that in places he uses “transman” and “transwoman” rather than the preferred “trans man” or “trans woman.” For those unaware, the difference is between defining transgender people as somehow a foreign species, rather than acknowledging that a transgender man is in fact a man, and a transgender woman is a woman. 

 

Since this book was published in 2012, however, I am not sure whether that preference was known, or even if it was a thing. Thus, it might be like running across “colored” in an old book - it would have been an acceptable and non-bigoted term when it was used. 

 

The second issue comes in a passage about gender-affirming surgery. My issue is, as with most of my quibbles, one of emphasis and contextualization. 

 

Solomon notes the one-percent regret rate on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender people. But he does not mention either that gender-affirming surgery is done all the time on cisgender people. Most non-cancer-related mastectomies are done on cisgender men, for example. And he does not mention that those surgeries come with a far higher regret rate. It would have been helpful had he highlighted that. 

 

But, these more minor issues aside, I think the chapter overall is good. It is heartening to read about so many other parents who have done the right thing and embraced and loved their children for who they are. 

 

Let me start with the opening paragraph.

 

Western culture likes binaries: life feels less frightening when we can separate good and evil into tidy heaps, when we split off the mind from the body, when men are masculine and women are feminine. Threats to gender are threats to the social order. If rules are not maintained, everything seems up for grabs, and Joan of Arc must go to the stake. 

 

Solomon also correctly notes that transgender issues are gay issues, because both are rooted in the policing of gender expression and the enforcement of the gender hierarchy. 

 

Those who are ignorant about homosexuality and transgender culture tend to confuse and conflate them with reason: homophobia has always targeted gender nonconformity. 

 

Because this book is about parents and children, I am happy to see that Solomon also takes the time to think about - and ask about - the effects on parents. This does not in any way detract from the fact that the primary person affected in all of this is the transgender child. But, like with any of the other situations described in this book, parents too are affected. 

 

Many parents of trans kids described to me grieving for the child they had lost, even as they gained another. 

 

I can say from experience that this is true. I can also say that it is far more difficult to break the neural pathways that lead to using the wrong pronouns or using a deadname than I expected. Patterns exist at the subconscious level that resurface when you don’t expect. Fortunately, my kids have been gracious about this. 

 

I also do want to make clear that this feeling of loss doesn’t mean disappointment or lack of love. Most of us parents of trans kids understand that we lost what we thought we had, not what we actually had. The child that exists now is the same one that has always existed. The emotional landscape doesn’t match the intellectual knowledge, and emotions aren’t something we can help feeling. I do want to assure any of my kids who read this that I love them for who they are, and wouldn’t trade them for the child I thought I had. 

 

I should also give a trigger warning on this chapter, because there is some really nasty, hateful stuff in here as well. 

 

For example, there is a now thoroughly discredited case study of a person who was “treated” for feminine behavior, and used as an example of how gender expression can be changed. 

 

In fact, the therapist involved later joined the Family Research Council (a recognized anti-LGBTQ hate group).......and was later revealed to be gay himself. Oops. 

 

Unfortunately, the test case subject committed suicide a few years later, something that is conveniently hushed up by the anti-LGBTQ lobby, who still claims “success” in treating “effeminacy.” 

 

There is another harrowing story about a parent of a transgender kid in the South who had to give up her job and move away after the Klan targeted her. 

 

Oh hell yes, the root of the anti-transgender movement is the Klan. Surprise! Who would have thought that a group that dehumanizes people of color would also hate those who don’t conform to rigid ideas of gender? I am all astonishment!

 

There are so many good things in this chapter too, though. So many parents are affirming, so many parents are thoughtful, and more of the relationships are intact than I expected. (Statistically, rejection of LGBTQ children by their parents is a huge problem, fueled by hatemongers in the pulpit. Fortunately, a lot of parents are choosing to ignore the hate-fueled false teaching.)

 

There is an interesting line about parenting that I think warrants quoting. 

 

Perhaps the immutable error of parenthood is that we give our children what we wanted, whether they want it or not. We heal our wounds with the love we wish we’d received, but are often blind to the wounds we inflict.

 

Perhaps the part I liked best in this chapter was the discussion of how we might move beyond the gender binary in a healthy direction. This quote from Shannon Minter, a human-rights advocate, is illuminating. 

 

Minter believes that the unifying challenge for gender activists is to create a society in which gender is disestablished as a legal concept. “Everything short of that is going to entail significant incoherence,” he said. “There is no sensible, much less scientifically valid, way to classify people based on race. The Supreme Court has recognized that. We don’t put race on birth certificates; race is no longer a legally relevant category except as a self-identification. That must also happen with gender.”

 

I mean, that actually makes a lot of sense. We don’t put our race on our identification, because it has no legal relevance. Why should gender be relevant, except as an excuse to discriminate against women? Minter further compares gender to religion.

 

“It would be shocking to think that the government could define somebody’s religion. It needs to be just as shocking that the government could define someone’s gender.” 

 

Solomon points out that most of what we assert as “masculinity” or “femininity” is culturally specific. Even since the 1990s, I have seen a change in what many people - particularly right wingers - consider to be sufficiently “masculine,” for example. Solomon quotes from the Victorian Era - not that long ago in fact. 

 

As I worked on this chapter, I kept returning in my mind to Tennyson’s beautiful tribute to Arthur Henry Hallam, in which he wrote, “And manhood fused with female grace / In such a sort, the child would twine / A trustful hand, unask’d in thine, / And find his comfort in thy face.” Our received notions of masculinity and femininity are a modern conceit. Though Hallam was neither trans nor gay, his magnetism inhered in this blending of strength and gentleness, boldness and compassion. I remember first reading Tennyson’s lines when I was a teenager, thinking that he celebrated this friend for the very qualities that most troubled me in myself. I wanted to be something noble, not just a boy who had failed at real masculinity and was making do. I wanted to emulate what was best in my father and mother, in the life of the mind, to which men often stake first claim, and that of the heart, in which women usually have the upper hand. I saw in Tennyson’s bracing words an encomium not to an androgynous face, but to the intricate nature of beauty. Masculinity and femininity here seemed not locked in binary competition, but fused in collaboration. Anyone with an open heart should know that the world would have ended long ago without the translators who convey male and female meanings across gender’s fierce boundaries. It may be a recent phenomenon for that to be an identity, but what has changed is the characterization of such people - not their eternal merit, not their uncanny, necessary splendor. 

 

Damn, that’s so good. I have said many times over the last few decades that it seems like it was easier to be a man in the Victorian Era. Not because of Empire or some silly notion of masculinity, but because a man could show tenderness, emotion - indeed all of the so-called “feminine” virtues and traits without having his manhood immediately questioned. Hallam has become immortal, due to the luminescent beauty of In Memorium - but these days, he would be called gay slurs, and relentlessly bullied. Our current notions of gender expression really are a modern conceit. And by that, I mean that they are not only far different from the Victorian ideal, they are a far cry even from the 1980s or 90s. There truly has been a rise in toxic, stunted views of masculinity, and everyone suffers for it. 

 

Solomon is correct that transgender and other gender-bending people have always existed, and have always been necessary. It is a blessing to the parent of a transgender child, and it is a blessing to have one in one’s life. 

 

There is one final passage I want to mention in this chapter. Solomon ends with the idea that an ideal future might be like the one in The Left Hand of Darkness (although he doesn’t mention the book.) One in which humans are able to choose their own gender at any given time, without need for surgery or hormones, and without social approbation. Where one could switch back and forth, and experience it all. 

 

Like Solomon, I am cisgender and comfortable in that, but both of us have wondered what it would be like to experience life as a female. In particular, it would have been convenient had my wife and I been able to split the burden of pregnancy and childbirth. Does this mean I identify as female? Nope, not at all. I have no wish to present as feminine other than the curiosity of “what if?” A world in which gender isn’t so all-important and socially determinative does sound like a better world to live in for everyone. 

 

Father

 

This chapter is largely about Solomon’s journey to fatherhood, which is a bit complex. I won’t attempt to describe it all, but the end result is a very blended family including his kids, his husband’s kids, and the women who are part of that extended family system. 

 

As a young Evangelical, of course, I would have read this with horror. A broken home! Kids without a mother and father in the same house! Assisted reproduction!

 

The horror.

 

But, as I rapidly approach 50, having spent decades working in law, and observing alternative family structures, I have come to understand that “family” is far more than the “nuclear family,” which is another modern affectation anyway. And a way that society and extended relatives avoid taking responsibility for the next generation. 

 

On the one hand, I have recognized that despite the fact that my family was “stable” - my parents have been married over 50 years - it was also highly dysfunction. Right now, it is unfixably fucked up. So a “nuclear family” is not the panacea I was taught it was. 

 

On the other, I have seen numerous blended families that were filled with love and connection, despite divorces and remarriages.

 

I have also seen loving gay and lesbian families where children have thrived. 

 

It is all about the specifics. To take the anti-Tolstoyan position again: Unhappy families are mostly alike. Every happy family is happy in its own way. 

 

In describing his initial trepidation about becoming a parent, Solomon notes the societal prejudice, and further argues that it is most virulent when it comes to people with differences and disabilities choosing to reproduce. In the chapter on deafness, for example, deaf parents who give birth to deaf children are often blamed, as if choosing to have a child that shares a trait is automatically bad. 

 

The right to reproduce should be among the inalienable ones. Yet the prejudice against anomalous people is revealed most clearly when members of horizontal identity groups who have the potential to pass on aberrant traits decide to have their own children. Many people are outraged when a disabled or challenged adult produces a disabled or challenged child. 

 

This all too quickly can mutate into open eugenics. Because, after all, don’t most of us have some undesirable traits we might pass on? For me, I know I am risking that my kids will have cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, and allergies. Should I have foregone reproduction because of that? Should Solomon avoided having children because they might share his dyslexia or depression?

 

Or, as Solomon points out, should African-Americans not reproduce, because being black in the United States is a serious socioeconomic disadvantage? Eugenics all the way down…

 

Disabled parents commonly are castigated for birthing disabled children. But are they the only ones who (arguably) care more about themselves than their potential children?

 

Yet self-absorbed parents everywhere exploit their children for reflected glory on the soccer field, in the chess club, at the piano. Narcissism is a myopia hardly limited to disability activists.

 

As technology progresses, it will probably become easier and more affordable to select for specific traits. And anyway, is that different than selecting a sperm donor with a high IQ, or a specific hair color? 

 

William Saletan, national correspondent at Slate, wrote, “Old fear: designer babies. New fear: deformer babies.” Of course, “deformer” babies are designer babies, too; they just don’t follow the most popular designs.

 

Solomon pushes back against the very idea that we can make “better” children at all. 

 

I would propose that only by allowing people born with horizontal identities not to change does one allow them to get better. Any of us can be a better version of himself, but none of us can be someone else.

 

He also notes that “diversity” means a lot more than permitting women and minorities and gay people to participate. It also means avoiding monoculture, which is inherently weak. (Something white supremacists like Stephen Miller fail utterly to grasp.) 

 

All of these horizontal identities matter, because they enrich the whole, and add true diversity and thus resilience. 

 

I’ll end with a brilliant paragraph that I think reflects my own experience as a parent. 

 

When I was born, the common view was that nurture decided almost everything. In the decades that followed, the emphasis shifted to nature. In the last twenty years, people have talked more broadly about the intricate ways that nature and nurture propel each other. I was intellectually persuaded by this nuanced integration, but the experience of having my own children has made me wonder if a third element is involved, some unknowable inflection of spirit or divinity. One’s children are so specific, and the notion that they wouldn’t exist if one hadn’t conceived them at the moment one did feels impossible. Most of the parents I interviewed for this book said they would never want other children than the ones they had, which at first seemed surprising given the challenges their children embody. But why does any of us prefer our own children, all of them defective in some regard, to others real or imagined? If some glorious angel descended into my living room and offered to exchange my children for other, better children - brighter, kinder, funnier, more loving, more disciplined, more accomplished - I would clutch the ones I have and, like most parents, pray away the atrocious specter. 

 

Indeed. 

 

There are so many good things in this book: the compassion and empathy, the reminder that we as parents don’t reproduce ourselves but in fact create new and unique humans, the countless stories of human adaptation to challenges, the reminder that we all thrive when everyone thrives, and the true commitment to the embrace of human diversity and difference. 

 

Both as a child and as a parent, I find there is a lot to learn from this book and the many people who are in it.