On the forefront of this century is humanity's battle against numerous issues related to civil rights and social acceptance. I do not think I am alone when I say that the fact that we as a society are still so pervaded by racially-driven prejudice, fear of the "other," and the insistence of the gender binary seems ludicrous. However, in that astonishment and disappointment, we cannot disbelieve. Disbelief is ultimately a means for perpetuation of that with which we are so disgusted.

A refusal to acknowledge the actuality and prevalence of these issues will lead to what we can call a "snowball affect." If we look to history to educate ourselves in preparation for our future, we can see that denying an issue only allows for greater margins within which that issue can swell. As an issue balloons out, it presses down upon us as a society, as a nation, as a human race, and multiplies the ammunition stockpiled for our destruction and collapse. Under this pressure, society becomes frantic and deranged, and the issue implodes. We spit at each other; we segregate bathrooms; we bomb coffee shops; we demolish forests; we shoot up schools; we jump from buildings; we incarcerate the innocent and allow the real criminals to own the jails - all the while we believe the lies in the media, rely upon the distractions of reality television, harbor faith in a nine-to-five, zero-mobility job, ingest and utilize products that harm us. We focus on our menial individual lives, and let the ammunition tear away at our humanity like shrapnel.

Instead of contributing to the culmination of what is essentially the most destructive destroyer of society, we should believe, yes, and acknowledge, yes, these issues, most of which have been expanding and contracting throughout centuries. One of the most prevalent of these issues is that of racism. New studies are addressing this issue by categorizing racism as a mental illness. I both agree and disagree with this theory.

Bill Nye (the Science Guy) had a public debate with Tucker Carlson on Fox News regarding the issue of climate change. After being repeatedly interrupted by Carlson's repetitious and unproductive questions, Nye brought forth the suggestion that those who deny climate change suffer from psychological delusions or "cognitive dissonance." Essentially, there are two realities: The individual's reality - one's personal perception of the world and what it is - and the actual reality - the evidence of scientific fact or truth. Cognitive dissonance explains that, when the evidence doesn't align with a sufferer's individual reality, that evidence is denied as though it holds no merit, and the sufferer adheres even more tightly to his or her individual reality. I can see this being a potential explanation for racism. There is evidence that the color of one's skin has nothing to do with the accuracy of their moral compass, their tendency to revert to violence, or their capacity for intelligence; however, those who have a perception of a world in which whites, for example, are better people, more reasonable, and more intelligent than blacks and suffer from cognitive dissonance refute the evidence and perpetuate their perverted reality. What follows suite is a recruitment of ignorance; those who hold a skewed and factually unsupported perception attempt to impress this worldview upon others.

Another issue, and the issue that inspired me to write this article, is that of "gender fluidity" or the "gender spectrum." Before reading Margaret Fuller's "The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men. Woman versus Women", I considered this to be a relatively new issue. Although what was then known as sexual and gender "deviance" and "perverseness" existed in the past, I didn't realize that an open discussion was occurring at the time these derogatory terms were popular and commonplace to refer to homosexuality and cross-dressing, for example. After reading the aforementioned piece, originally published in The Dial magazine in 1843, I realized that the concept of gender as a spectrum has been around a lot longer than the 21st century has. Fuller writes, "Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman," rather gender is a "gradation of nature" (Baym 744-745). What I found most salient in this excerpt from Fuller is the word "dualism." Dualism is "the division of something conceptually into two opposed or contrasted aspects, or the state of being so divided." It is known that humans employ something known as "binary opposition," which is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. If it is not one, it must be the other. The following argument attempts to tackle why humans are limited to this thought process, and boils down the necessity of binary opposition in decision making: in the world we live in, everything we do is a choice or decision. In order to reasonably navigate that world, we are always doing something, and if we're not doing it, then we are doing the opposite.

I recently wrote an article entitled "Transcending Race Terminology". In that article I explain the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which claims that the structure of a language determine a native speaker's perception and the culture (link below). In the English language, we see binary opposition almost (if not) always in effect. Our language is practically reduced to antonyms for each feature of our world. Some popular binaries are "white" and "black," "hot" and "cold," "tall" and "short," and most importantly to this article "man" and "woman." This binary speech significantly influences our culture and how we think about "man" and "woman:" like a dualism, which Fuller alluded to.

Just like my article "Transcending Race Terminology", we must learn to transcend gender terminology. Just because our language attempts to confine and limit the way we discuss gender, and almost forces us in most circumstances to operate within the binary of "man" and "woman," we can implicitly accept and understand that there are complexities of this issue in which our neurological need for a binary approach cannot change or water-down.

What I found most interesting was that the concept of gender as being fluid or existing on a spectrum (a "gradation") was being discussed by visionary feminists and women advocates in the 1800s.

Why are we still talking about the issue? Why does it feel so new? Why have we allowed hundreds of years to pass without having successfully addressed these issues and solved the problems that come along with them? How is it that we can build giant u-shaped skyscrapers* and access any piece of information in the entire world by clicking a mouse, but cannot grasp these little complexities among ourselves and employ acceptance?

When did the saying "it's not rocket science" become so frivolous? Nowadays, rocket science seems to be a lot more easily achieved by the human race than living in unconditional acceptance of one another.

I have one answer that addresses all of these questions: we are so focused on our advancements in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, (STEM) and have completely lost focus on liberal arts and the humanities. We as a people are learning so much about the world, it is jaw-droppingly impressive, and yet we are marinating in stupidity about ourselves. Police officers are shooting unarmed 12-year-old black boys and there are still cults of people who are up-in-arms about gay marriage? A transgender woman can't use the bathroom she wants? What's the point of the giant u-shaped skyscraper if it's filled with a bunch of blind, judgmental, misled fools.

*Giant U-Shaped Skyscraper: http://www.sciencealert.com/a-giant-u-shaped-skysc...

References

Fuller, Margaret. "From The Great Lawsuit: Man versus Men. Woman versus Women." 1843. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. By Nina Baym. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. 739-47. Print.

Link to Fox News Clip: http://video.foxnews.com/v/5340303824001/?#sp=show...

"Transcending Race Terminology": https://www.theodysseyonline.com/how-race-terminol...