For breakfast, I had peanut butter

on toast and thought about all the people in the world who hate peanut butter, which I just can't imagine because it's my number one comfort food. I eat it when I want to feel sedated. It's probably 90% fat, with a little bit of protein, and it feels like a rock inside my belly dragging me to the ocean floor, where I will sit for a long while until it's time to resurface.

It seems that entire cultures dislike peanut butter. The British come to mind. I don't know if Venezuelans dislike peanut butter but when I asked Rafael's mom if she wanted some, she wrinkled her nose and firmly declined. Maybe certain families like peanut butter and others don't. There are so many controversial foods that are delicacies in some cultures and dispised by others. Examples: Kim chi, animals with exoskeletons, dolphins, Vegemite, spicy peppers, Haggis, and so on.

There's this suggestion that people don't venture outside of their food comfort zone because they are culturally constructed to eat specific foods. This means that we are born 'tabula rasa' and our food preferences are programmed by the culture where we are raised.

Americans use the phrase "culturally constructed" like it's ketchup; it's an all-purpose explanation condiment that we slap on top of everything. Isn't it possible that our bodies are fundamentally different depending on where we live? Is it possible that our bodies need food based on environmental factors and not cultural factors? (This is the whole basis of the local food movement.)


Extending this thought a little further, I think it's possible that some people are actually phisiologically - and as an extension of that, psychologically - different than others, so much so that they can morph our conception of what it means to be a human being. To me, it's shameful that we don't have a more expansive definition of humanity. Many folks are already frustrated with the gender binary and there's a whole lotta activism around expanding our definitions of gender and sexuality. However, if we limit our discussions of the body to analyzing gender, our discussions neglect the kinds of bodies that are different in other ways. It's as if once we see a body that is different, we attempt to throw it into a gender discussion. Does she look masculine? What pronoun does he prefer?

I can't help but think of Star Trek's aliens, each looking mostly human but being of an entirely different planet and species. Take Leuitenant Wharf, for example, who is pictured at left. It makes me wonder if aliens ever do invade earth, and they happen to look just like us, will we call them human? And if those aliens hate peanut butter, will we write papers about how they are culturally constructed to dislike nuts? Can you imagine the kinds of confusion aliens will create when it's unclear which side of the gender divide they sit on? In fact, I think alien gender will intrigue us the most. Whether or not they eat peanut butter - which is equally interesting - will be secondary.

No one wants to talk about difference because difference has been the basis for war, discrimination, genocide and other host of tragedies on an epic scale. It was believed that African American slaves didn't deserve the same rights as whites because they weren't human. In order to achieve liberation, Africans needed to prove that they were human and not just animals. In other words, they had to prove that they were the same as white people and fit themselves into the Bible, the Constitution, and a society from which they did not originate.

It just seems to me that justification for discrimination is based on the "human-ness" of another person. For example, many folks who are pro- death penalty argue that a person who has committed a heinous crime has lost "his or her humanity."

Moving to discussions of disability. Instead of thinking of disability as a mutation according to natural selection and the work of God, we think of it as a difference contrary to that of being human. Disability is treated according to an archetype of a human body and is "corrected" in order to match this particular body. For example, I wear "corrective" hearing aids. Children with bipolar disorder are given "corrective" medications. Even appearance has become another form of disability that needs correction via plastic surgery.

All I'm saying is that it's a scary time. If we truly believe that there is an archetypal human, and that some people fall into this category and others don't, then it sets us up for further belief in the disposability of some people over others. As I write, scientists are probing into the human gene map and deciding which genes are desired and which ones are not. In other words, they are deciding what it means to be a human. Beauty, athletic achievement, social norms such as marriage and family, food choices ... all of these things relate to a definition of a human being that probably never existed and (hopefully) never will.