Most plants are hermaphrodites. They use the unisex bathroom. Also plant masturbation is of some concern. Is it really masturbation if you get yourself pregnant? Do bees count as sex toys? Or is it bestiality?

Ben it's not beastiality its formicophilia.

And as a humorous side note I was talking to a train conductor the other day and apparently a big problem is men who get aroused by trains.

Most usually wear a coat, are naked underneath and flash the train while jerking off.

Yes there are porno videos of trains going by. And I wish I still had the link but he showed me a video of the conductors talking to each other because a guy had tied his cock and balls to a railway signal.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the wheat doesn't give a flying fig.

And until such point that we can grow embryoes in a test tube by combining two female eggs, it requires an egg from a female and sperm from a male to have a successful conception. And all the hand wringing and wailing and gnashing of teeth will not change that.

Perhaps I can convince these people that the laws of gravity are a construct of the patriarchy?

What an interesting culture they have up at Berkeley. We should send a mycologist to study it. I'm sure the report would come back that it's toxic and indigestible. Possibly another side effect of affluenza.

Ben, that's some good stuff.

You guys sound like a bunch of TURFS,

Transplant Unaccepting Radical Farmers

I grew up on a farm, and Dad was also a biologist. Amy's understanding of agriculture is basic but correct. The Bezerkley view appears to lack grounding in Biology, practical farming experience or any other aspect of reality. Perhaps they mean to talk about gay and transsexual farmers, but if that's the case, why don't they say so?

As for plants, they are often hermaphroditic, but without the plant form of heterosex - the pollen reaching the pistil - most forms of food production would fail. As for livestock, the only variation on heterosex that allows food production is to substitute a turkey baster for direct contact between male and female.

Farming is the picture of Americana... hard working men with sweat on their brows driving very large machines, taming nature, pouring their products into a capitalist system and allowing people to consume yummy stuff that's not always good for them.

In any case... in science a "theory" is something that has been proven so well that it can be considered proven entirely. (Hypothesis is the unproven version.)

One of my English teachers (a PhD grad student) explained the idea of "theory" on the other side of academia, and I could only summarize it thusly: A "theory" is the deliberate distortion of observations of human behavior and history by viewing those behaviors and histories through a particular ideological lens, excluding other data.

She *almost* said just that.

I found it shocking that universities seem to have embraced this idea of purposeful myopia. But perhaps it's one of those things like promoting the incompetent in industry... give them their own office where they can't actually muck around in the serious work people are trying to accomplish.

OMG I want to take that class!

911! Transgendered! I think they need to add Rape Culture and Police Brutality to the syllabus.

Bee-stiality! I love it, Ben!

Joking aside, there does seem to be a difference in gender relations between hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies.

I know farmers who are gay. I know farmers who are lesbians. I probably know trans farmers, but I can't say that I really check. If professors want farmers to be more diverse, maybe they should pop down to the Central Valley and walk around.

The guy giving the lecture competes on the gay rodeo circuit as a bronc rider. He's a PhD candidate in Maryland. So, maybe not quite so ignorant as I thought.

At least a decade ago, claims were made that math and physics (all sciences really) were sexist and a "feminist math" was needed. Nothing, absolutely nothing came of it because there is no such thing as a feminist math, only math. Same with physics.
Just because one can use big words like "heteronormative" does not mean the rest of the text makes any sense or is profound.

When I was growing up, TV aired an ongoing documentary about Oliver Wendell Douglas, a trans farmer. Sadly, his wife Lisa was not nearly as accepting and famously declared herself to be allergic to his lifestyle "choice".

Arnold Ziffel was one of TV's first real life depicted otherkins.

In science, a theory so rigorous and tested is called something else: a law.

Newton's laws of motion.

The 4 laws of thermodynamics.

Wait for it...patriarchal norms to keep the transformers down. Meanwhile, I'll be in the cissie's room. What can I say, I'm a transginger.

The law doesn't allow people to torture animals, although we eat animals, and shouldn't. Similarly, we must not allow farmers to ingnore the gender requirements of treatment and fairness for the plants we allow in their custody, although we eat plants, and shouldn't (1).

We must raise awareness that we eat only the female gender of chickens and turkeys, almost exclusively, although we shouldn't. This ongoing, massive discrimination against almost exclusively female animals (2) has pervasive effects on our culture of discrimination against females, partial females, and hope-to-be females. Eat the males, save the females!

(1) If you must eat something, beans are allowed, along with processed bean products such as tofu and soy milk.

(2) The male chicks are killed shortly after hatching. This may be unfair, on which further gender study is needed. How do the hens, exclusively female, feel about this?

(Trigger warning: sarcasm. It is hard to tell what is sarcasm these days.)

Plants are unsure which bathroom at the airport they are allowed to use.

Also, they have to remove their roots for x-raying.

Morons like this VALIDATE the ever widening disdain for intellectual pursuits.

Assholes like this are why people vote no when it comes to education funding. Why they complain when they read about the asinine things scientific federal grant money gets spent on and call for the suspension of all science funding

Aside from the fact that this guy, who claims to be an environmentalist, thinks that using insects as a third party PAID sex surrogates to have oragzamless sex with hundreds of partners (many of whom could very well be your own children) is "heteronormitive." Personally I think its about as far away from vanilla -straight-people-sex as you can get.

He further wants to have a conversation about how 'unfair' it is to plants that " the manipulation of reproduction and sexuality are a foundation of agriculture"?

Sounds like he went on an acid trip and never came back

"This talk highlights the normative ways that popular culture, food activism, and government regulations have framed sustainable food systems in the United States."

Alice Waters, Marion Nestle,and Joel Salatin could all give a talk like that. The political lenses they look through would all be different, but being outspoken and analytical about food systems is an important thing given how central food is to defining a culture. Kier's is a little more out there than most, but it still might provide some interesting insight.

Now, he might be a batshit-crazy loon too, but I'd be interested in hearing his ideas at least once before assuming he thinks wheat can be gay.

"Now, he might be a batshit-crazy loon too, but I'd be interested in hearing his ideas at least once before assuming he thinks wheat can be gay."

Nah. There's only so many hours in a day, and this has a high probability of being a waste of time. Maybe he does have some good ideas, but if so, it's on him to use saner language to describe it.

Indubitably CousinDave