Male or Female? They decide. You live with it.

Kazimierz Pułaski (Casimir Pulaski)

In this era of the #MeToo movement and the public outcry against the crimes women have been subjected to, we are finding out more in the graves and questions about who or what is buried where. It seems that women have been found in graves purportedly to be men's graves, throwing a monkey wrench into the debate. Sometimes the women have been found to be posing as men prior to the exhumation -- at least as far as modern historians and anthropologists are concerned. Now it turns out that these women are indeed biologically women, at least as far as the historical record is concerned, and their gender muddies the waters historically. Or do they?

It seems these women are considered by our modern technology to be intersex, outwardly appearing to be men when in reality they are biologically women. It is rather a sticky wicket as far as modern society sees these things.

The issue is not only the identity of the skeleton but the public outcry that would have these intersex skeletons declared male or female and an end put to the whole question. That is not going to happen when women are denied their proper place in history (at least in the case of women being exhumed and found to be Viking warriors.) Will this too become a sticky wicket because the exhumed body appears to be female or the person who was interred passed as male though s/he is being considered intersex -- neither one or the other or both male and female in one body?

There are those, like talk host, Ben Shapiro, talks about how men and women are biologically determined and speaks out about blurring the gender lines. he forgets that all through history there have been men posing as women and vice versa and that is endemic throughout history. This gender fluidity is not new but has been around since the beginning of time. It seems that man-made gods do make mistakes -- or so it seems when intersex skeletons shatter our certainty about the factual evidence when male graves are exhumed and the male turns out to be female, as in the case of Casimir Pulaski the Polish soldier who fought in the American Revolution and is the father of the American cavalry, except that Kasmierz Pulaski's grave shows a female was buried instead of Casimir.

The point is that Casimir lived his life as a male, appeared to be a male, but was actually intersex, having the features of male and female. He had the soft features of femininity but had a mustache and male pattern baldness and his skeleton was definitely female. Casimir who has a holiday in his honor in Illinois and Chicago specifically lived his/her life as a male and is remembered for his exploits as an officer in Washington's army. No one questioned his gender or his identity as he was purportedly a male -- or at least posing as a male, specifically a male officer. He passed for a male, identified as a male, and was buried with honors as a revolutionary war hero, a male. It wasn't until now when his grave has been exhumed that his skeleton is definitely female. There's the rub.

There really is no issue, not in modern times, when the public at large accepts sexual reassignment was the father of the cavalry) the cavalry, and was buried with honors. That his skeleton proves him to be otherwise than he saw himself and passed for male doesn't matter. He chose his gender and lived his life as a man. He is who and what he said he was and his female skeleton does not change that at all.

Female Viking?
A 19th-century illustration of the contents of the tomb, which was quickly
identified after its discovery as that of a high-ranking warrior.CreditCredit
Evald Hansen/The Swedish History Museum 

Unlike modern times, a man passing for a woman or vice versa is something we expect and seldom say anything. This is not someone who is a female, decidedly so, who has chosen to take hormones and has had the surgery to become a male, but someone whose gender is considered intersex, having the features of a man, dressing as a man, and being buried as a man being found to be a female.

This is not one of those cases. This is a biological anomaly that has been discovered long after the fact and does not fit in with the male/female dichotomy of the past. Most likely, his parents didn't bat an eye at their son being intersex and accepted him as he was. He earned honors and excelled at being a soldier, fighting in the Revolutionary War, earning honors as a horseman, being so good at it that he created (surgery as normal, de rigueur.)

Would liberals, or others so inclined, change the history to favor the female skeleton found in his grave or will we simply let it go and let him be who and what he decided to be? I think it is possible that though we can change the physical appearance of a man to be a woman or vice versa, we should let history decide what had already been decided. We should accept Casimir Pulaski as a male and let history show him as a male, reserving our opinions to ourselves. What does it matter that Casimir was intersexed, both male and female, and let history remain as it was and is forever?

In a sense, Casimir Pulaski is a genetic oddity and there are many such genetic oddities that have been and always will be. Liberals can have this one since Casimir and his parents decided how to deal with his intersexuality and call him male. No one needs to change anything, just live with the knowledge as a fact we found out long after it mattered to him and his family. Nothing will be harmed nor should it be. Nor should it matter to historians, anthropologists, and #MeToo proponents that sometimes gender doesn't matter. It's all about who and what the person was when they were alive, not now that anthropologists and historians have discovered the world is far more complex and interesting than it originally was.

The same is true of whether or not women were Viking warriors. No doubt, some of them were also intersex and their original gender matters only to nitpickers now that their skeletons have been exhumed and what we thought we would find turns out to be different than we originally expected to find. If a skeleton turns out to be male or female, the fact remains that during their lives they were who and what they were and we cannot change the past nor can we predict the future. Let them be and move on. Celebrate what they achieved and do not seek to tack a gender to their exploits or use them to further your gender cause now or ever.

Sometimes people choose to be inside and their appearance to the world at large should allow them to be what they feel they are and the manner they wish to be seen. Gender is fluid and we have reached the point where a person can choose to be whatever gender they decide. We have the surgical techniques to reshape their outward form to coincide with their inner truth and accept them as they are or as they wish to be. That is all and all about it. They decide how they wish to appear and we should applaud them for their deeds and exploits and not pin them to whatever makes US happy when it is the person's desires and wishes that are paramount. That is all that matters.

That is all. Disperse.

Forbidden Planet

Forbidden Planet has always been my favorite science fiction movie since I first saw it as a child at the theaters and on television. I was captivated by the story, which is what was meant to happen by filmmakers who took some liberties with the original book by Irving Block and Allen Adler, a fact I didn't know until I found the book earlier this week.

I am no stranger to the way Hollywood changes books to fit the Hollywood version of happily ever after when there is no happy and sometimes no ever after. Very seldom does Hollywood stick to the script, except in the case of Cecil B. DeMille, and that is mostly because he remade his blockbusters at least three times and used the same script each time. The problem is that even DeMille changed the script to fit his vision of what the book should look like; I know that because I actually read Ben Hur:A Tale of the Christ, for instance, by Lew Wallace, who also wrote several other historical novels. That is a story for another time.

Although director, Fred M. Wilcox, stuck pretty closely to the book's dialogue and story, he softened Edward Morbius and left out the dialogue that covers the real reason why Morbius was such a danger to mankind and the universe and chose to die with the planet. Morbius committed the ultimate sin; he wanted to create life.

Do you remember the scene at the Gateway -- it was called the Teacher in the movie? Morbius at down at the machine with the probes touching his head and he "sculpted" a figure of Altaira, his daughter. Morbius said the figure was alive because Altaira was alive in his memory from moment to moment. Big lie! And what about Alta's friends? How did they get to Altair IV and remain exactly the same for 2000 centuries (that is 200,000 years in Earth time when math is applied)? Would not animals brought from Earth to Altair IV have adapted to their new world with protective coloring and attributes? Wouldn't they also have been destroyed in the night and day that destroyed the Krell? And yet there are monkeys (one of five different species, all males), two female deer obviously in their first year of life, and a Bengal tiger roaming the planet far from any other herds or visible life, and they just happened into Morbius's compound. Funny how the men from Earth spaceship C-57-D never glimpse any movement or signs of herds or life of any kind on Altaira IV when they arrived.

Also missing from the movie is Major Ostrow, the doctor, dissecting a titi monkey Captain J. J. Adams just happened to back over when they were trying to uncover Morbius's secret meetings with the Krell still alive and kicking on the planet. The rest of the monkeys were also absent, but that may be due to having to deal with five monkeys on the set. They weren't really needed since the point of the monkeys in the first place was deleted from the script.

Are you beginning to get what is missing? What Hollywood thought too shocking for the American family in 1956 to grasp and see splashed across the scene in Disney's best special effects?

The real reason for the Krell's demise in the book is hinted at in several ways on the screen, and the annihilation of an entire species becomes more of a punishment for usurping the Universe's -- or God's -- power. It is the same power that Dr. Morbius usurps and why he wants to hold onto the planet without Earth involvement. He has gone beyond Earth's power and he wants to keep it that way.

Major Ostrow dies in the movie after using the Krell Gateway to expand his mind, but in the book he does not do so rashly. He is detailed, at his own request, to watch over Morbius and Alta, while the captain makes the ship ready to rocket back to Earth with Morbius and Alta in tow -- even if they have to be tied and gagged. Doc takes the opportunity to expand his own mind slowly and safely over the course of the night while Morbius is in the hands of psychotropic medication that keeps him awake -- mostly because Morbius is afraid to sleep -- and blissfully drugged. Short bursts from the Gateway give Doc what Morbius missed when he was first exposed and lay in a coma for a night and a day -- knowledge. What Morbius has spent 20 years trying to achieve Doc gets in his safe short bursts of Gateway use. Doc understands what really destroyed the Krell and what is at the heart of the Force that has torn apart some of the ship's men. At least Hollywood left that part alone and got most of it right.

It was Morbius's souped up Id that was sneaking out when he was asleep to tear the ship's men limb from limb and sabotaging their ability to contact Earth. That monster of the unconscious mind no longer ruled by social convention or reason and fueled by the unlimited power of the Krell furnaces is determined to keep Earth from knowing what Morbius has done and wishes to continue doing -- create life.

There it is, the reason behind Morbius's furtive actions and his warning to stay away from the planet or be destroyed by the Force. (This is a different Force from the Force that a Jedi uses, although it could be a taste of what perverted Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, but that's another story altogether and happened much, much later.)

Alta's friends are Morbius's attempt to create life, life that when dissected could not live. The vital organs are missing and what is left between what organs are part of the animal's makeup is a kind of stringy gelatinous mass like bloody stuffing. Remember, Morbius is not a biologist for a philologist, a scientist of words and languages. He has probably the most basic knowledge about how life is put together and thus he fills in the blanks in his knowledge with the bloody stuffing. It is unlikely that the animals even eat and certainly couldn't procreate since that would take a more profound understanding of biology than Morbius possesses.

In the book, Alta tells Captain Adams that her friends just appeared one day when she was a child and had been there ever since. Animals that do not age or procreate or kill for food or grow old and die, but what a life is the absence of true life. Life means growth and change and inevitably death. Morbius hasn't gotten that right yet.

The book is a good one and I recommend it for fans of the movie and for fans of science fiction.

While I enjoy the movie still, I find myself looking for clues in what Hollywood decided should be on the screen for what was central to the book. Morbius confronts his monster at the end and Doc does die, but Doc dies of exhaustion and not from a single blast of using the Gateway. Doc was much smarter than that. Morbius is alive and still on his feet at the end of the book. He sets the self-destruct sequence and choose to go down with the planet while Captain Adams and what remains of his crew fly away with Robby the robot and Alta, thus destroying the might and power of the Krell and their drive to create life that killed them -- and Morbius -- in the end.

While the idea of creating life without a god's sanction might have been anathema to the mind in 1956, it is all too familiar in the 21st century where life can be -- and has been -- created in a test tube and the technique for cloning and growing human cells in Petri dishes and test tubes. Modern scientists regularly create life from retroviruses and lethal strains of bacteria to used as weapons to cloned sheep and very like humans as well as growing skin for burn victims. I wonder how far we are from creating a furnace powered by the heart of this planet that will fuel the dreams and nightmares of our collective Ids and Egos and end our race in a night and a day. Moreover, I wonder if that is what happened to Atlantis. Did Atlantean scientists tap too deep into the Earth's core to fuel their experiments with creating life and awaken the volcano on their island to their destruction? Who knows? Not all such scientific imaginings are the realm of fiction.