Deviate

Deviate

Adult nonfiction
I've known David for decades, since he and my children were
little kids. One week I found myself wondering where David was and
who the new guy in UMaine's Multicultural Center was.
You already guessed. The new guy was David--shaved and with a
very short hair cut. It took me two days to figure that out.
Beau Lotto, author of Deviate, would not have been surprised.
David had changed enough to not match the David template in my head.
When I heard him speak in a very distinct stacatto I altered my David
template to encompass the new image he was projecting.
Lotto, a neuroscience professor with over two decades of
experience, shows readers that life is more interesting and cooly
complex than most of us imagine. We don't perceive reality. We
can't. We didn't evolve to do so. We evolved to maximize our chances
of not getting chomped by predators. Those of us walking on the Earth
today descended from ancestors able to survive long enough to pass on
their genes.
So what do we perceive? We see, hear, smell, feel, and taste
our perceptions of reality. Let's face it. We are bombarded by
gazillions of stimuli that are inherently meaningless. Our brains are
tasked with creating meaning out of this chaos. If we had to
consciously take in every fragment of reality we'd be overwhelmed and
immobilized.
We have a lot to help us. We have evolutionary knowledge. We
have cultural effects. People from individualistic societies use
different eye motions to process pictures than people from more
communally oriented ones. We have past experiences which are not
limited to physical ones, but can include reading and thought.
It's not all one sided. Our perceptions and actions change our
environments.
Let me give you an example from my life. Most of my time on the
Earth I was perceived as female based on the equipment I was born
with. I was treated in a myriad of ways as first a girl and then a
woman. Then a few years ago I did my first drag show. I did the
theme song from Grease. I won a trophy. People told me what a good
job I did impersonating a guy. Only I wasn't; I was being me. I tend
to walk, dance, sit, and take up space in a typically masuline way.
All my life people have told me to sit more demurely, walk more
daintily, and take an interest in make up. Yuck!
If I wasn't female, I also wasn't transgender. I wasn't so
estranged from womaness that I'd want to transition. I'd been
radiantly pregnant. I loved being a mother.
So who was I? Fortunately I discovered that the terms gender
fluid or nonconforming fit me like a glove. I incorporated this
epiphany into my identity. This caused me to feel, think, and present
differently. But change didn't stop there. Encountering me as two
spirit (my favorite term for gender fluid) changed the way people
perceive and treat me. I'm a changed person navigating an altered
environment.
How cool is that?
If you have the chutzpah to question just about everything you
believe about how you perceive life, you'll find Deviate to be a must
read.
On a personal note, today is Eugene's birthday. He isn't much on
birthdays. He says it's just another day. I think he doesn't like
being the center of attention. I made molasses cake which you serve
up with Cool Whip for his birthday cake. I gave him a card and a gift
card from a local sporting goods store. Amber plans to throw a family
party for him and Adam early in February.
I have my cat shirts and some other favorites hanging in the studio
closet. So how many cat shirts do I have? 25. It's a good start.
A great big shout out goes out to Eugene who I hope is with us a lot
more years!!!
jules hathaway


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