Duck, Rabbit? Rabbit, Duck?

I’m sure you’ve all seen the illusion below before. It’s a duck’s head. Or is it a rabbit’s head? It has been reproduced in so many books and magazine, even since it first appeared in 1892.

But how does this illusion help us to understand the philosophical ideas about reality, interpretation and language?

The duck-rabbit was used by the gay philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) to illustrate just that. Basically, what he said was that the duck-rabbit can be interpreted in the mind as two different things – a rabbit or a duck – but never as both. To do so would mean coming up with a new interpretation of the image in our mind that is neither, a new image called a duck-rabbit. All we are doing by using the new name “duck-rabbit” is creating a new way to describe it, but the image itself hasn’t changed.

Until “duck”, “rabbit” and “duck-rabbit” can all define the image perfectly, none of them can. So, according to Wittgenstein, it is pointless trying to describe it at all. That’s what he originally believed about philosophy itself. It can’t be described perfectly, so that it encompasses all philosophical beliefs. That means there’s no point in philosophising. Yes, he talked himself out of his own job! Later he modified his views to concentrate on language and logic.

Wittgenstein said that that some sentences can be interpreted differently at different times by different people in different circumstances, just like the duck-rabbit can be interpreted differently. He used the duck-rabbit image to represent philosophical concepts such as consciousness, morality, justice and equality. Our mind interprets these differently depending on the context in which we use them. For instance, justice for some may be vigilantism to others, depending on the context. Neither is adequate to define justice with ultimate precision.

In another little puzzle Wittgenstein asks us to imagine a group of people carrying one box each. Inside each closed box is an object which the carrier refers to as a beetle. But how do we know that each person uses the word “beetle” to describe what is in everyone else’s box? Only a common consensus on the definition of “beetle” which agrees with what is contained in their own box can make them all say that they all have beetles in their boxes, even if they can’t see them. Once the definition of “beetle” has been agreed they can all imagine a beetle in every box.

Wittgenstein used these language-games, as they are called, and others, to explain how he believed concepts cannot be described if there are no precise words to describe them. He emphasised the role of context. If I say “rose” you’ll immediately imagine something in your mind which you perceive as “rose”. Is it the same thing as I am imagining? Without knowing what context I imagine “rose” to be it is impossible for everyone to know what I mean. Actually, “rose” is the colour of the table-top I’m sitting at as I write this. Were you right? Wittgenstein would say that it doesn’t matter whether what you imagined was the same as mine, because your definition is still correct as far as you perceive it.

Language-games are the stock in trade of comedy, and thanks to Wittgenstein we realise how good jokes work. In the end it doesn’t matter, for example, if the duck-rabbit is just a duck or just a rabbit. The concept behind comedy, particularly double-entendres and puns, is that we perceive jokes differently in different contexts. Unlike Wittgenstein’s early views on philosophy, we can define the joke to make it understandable to all.

This leads me on to one of the classic sketches in British comedy. In fact, it was voted the best comedy sketch of all time by BBC viewers. It explains Wittgenstein well in that it displays how our perception and definition shifts as the context of the words change. This sketch may be difficult to understand if English isn’t your primary language. But that in itself explains Wittgenstein. Comedy, like philosophy, only works if there is a universally accepted logic behind the use of words.

This sketch pays tribute to one of the men in it. Ronnie Corbett, one of the UK’s greatest and best-loved comedy actors died recently and was buried last month. He’s the shopkeeper in this sketch. The other man is another much-missed comedy great, Ronnie Barker, who wrote this sketch.

A Feast of Firsts for Passover

We’re coming to the end of the Jewish festival of Passover right now, so today we look at lgbt Jewish culture. Perhaps more than any other faith Judaism has become a form of secular cultural identity. Many Jews don’t think of themselves as having any belief at all but embrace their Jewish ancestry and heritage with pride.

As with other faiths there is a multitude of different denominations within Judaism with different doctrinal attitudes to the lgbt community. These differences range for the Orthodox Jewish opinion based on the much-quoted and even greater misinterpreted scriptural verse, as it is with extreme Christian groups, from Leviticus. The verse was translated into English many centuries ago as “do not lie with a man as you would with a woman, since this is an abomination”. Many extreme believers and atheists alike have misinterpreted, often deliberately to justify their bigotry, the word “abomination” which doesn’t even appear in the original scriptural texts.

While the debate about ordaining lgbt clergy is still going on in many faiths Judaism in one of the first to appoint openly lgbt clergy of all genders. Needless to say, it is in the newer, more liberal denominations that this has occurred. The traditional Orthodox Jewish denomination does not ordain openly lgbt rabbis though some have come out after ordination.

Among the first achieved by lgbt rabbis are the following, arranged by denomination.

ORTHODOX JUDAISM
1999    (USA) Rabbi Steven Greenberg comes out, the person most often referred to as the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi.

2009    (Israel) Rabbi Ron Josef comes out, the first openly lgbt Orthodox rabbi in Israel.

 

CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM

2011    (USA) Rachel Isaacs, the first open lgbt woman to be ordained a Conservative rabbi.
2014    (USA) Mikie Goldstein, the first openly lgbt man to be ordained a Conservative rabbi.

REFORM JUDAISM
1981    (UK) Rabbi Lionel Blue comes out, the first openly lgbt Reform rabbi.
1984    (UK) Sheila Shulman and Elizabeth Tilvah Sarah, both openly lgbt, ordained as Reform rabbis.
2006    (USA) Elliot Kukla, the first transgendered rabbi of Reform Judaism.
2014    (USA) Rabbi Denise Eger, the first openly lgbt President of a Reform conference.

RESTRUCTIONIST JUDAISM

1985    (USA) Deborah Brin, the first openly lgbt to be ordained a Restructionist rabbi.

2007    (USA) Rabbi Toba Spitzer, the first openly lgbt President of a rabbinical association.

2013    (USA) Rabbi Jason Klein, the openly lgbt male President of a rabbinical association.

 

RENEWAL JUDAISM

2005    (USA) Eli Cohen, the first openly lgbt man to be ordained a Renewal rabbi.

2006    (USA) Chaya Eisfield and Lori Klien, the first openly lgbt to be ordained Renewal rabbis.

 

OTHERS

1963    (USA) Sherwin Wine, and openly lgbt rabbi, founds the Humanist Jewish denomination.

1998    (USA) Malka T. Drucker, the first open lgbt rabbi ordained by a cross-denomination seminary.

2012    (USA) Emily Aviva Kapo, the first transgender rabbi ordained by “Conservadox” Judaism.

 

As a prelude to an article I’ll publish next month, there is also a Jewish humanist movement. It was founded in 1963 by Rabbi Sherwin Wine (1928-2007) and is the only major Jewish denomination founded by an openly gay man. Humanist Judaism is not specifically an lgbt denomination but is the most lgbt-friendly of all of them. Although a non-religious organisation it still uses the title of rabbi for its leaders and teachers.

 

There are many other lgbt Jewish religious and secular organisations and a list of them can be found on the JQ International website here.

Romeo and Charlotte

It’s one of those quirky synchronistic facts that would be difficult to believe if it appeared in a work of fiction, but today we celebrate both the birthday and death of William Shakespeare. What makes it even more quirky is that he was born (as far as we can determine) and died on the national saint’s day of the country in which he lived, the feast day of St. George of England (the UK is still the only country in the world that doesn’t celebrate it’s national day with a public holiday).

On several occasions I’ve written about Shakespeare, particularly here where I explain why I don’t believe any theory that he might have been lgbt. Here I looked at the coat of arms of one of his lgbt namesakes and possible relatives. Today we look at a Shakespearean character and actor.

Many actors have made their names and reputations playing Shakespearean roles. Such great lgbt actors as Lord Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ian McKellen and Fiona Shaw have all received plaudits for their roles as leading Shakespearean characters. On a little quirky sideline here, the name Hamlet is forever associated with Shakespeare, but it is an actual name. One of my ancestors was called Hamlet Marshall who was 8 years old when Shakespeare died, and there were others in the family called Hamlet.

In my “Around the World in 80 Gays” series I wrote about Shakespeare’s first tragedy “Titus Andronicus” and how it influenced the modern genre of slasher films. While Titus Andronicus is still a relatively unknown character to most people another is very well known, Romeo.

Just like my “80 Gays” series I’m pulling several different elements together to connect “Romeo and Juliet” with Nottingham and an American actress.

Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876) was one of the most celebrated actresses of her time. As you can see, this is her bicentenary year. In 1845 Charlotte began appearing in “Romeo and Juliet” in London and later went on a national tour, which included two nights in Nottingham in February 1847. Below is the actual bill that was posted up at the theatre. You may not notice it as first, but look who’s playing Romeo. It’s Charlotte Cushman herself. Playing Juliet was her younger sister Susan.

Women taking the leading male Shakespearean role isn’t new. Some recent female actors have played male leads, most notably Fiona Shaw as King Richard II. But even Charlotte wasn’t doing anything new. Sarah Siddons played Hamlet in the 1770s but it was well received. Charlotte Cushman, however, made a huge step forward by not playing a tragedic character. Audiences were more receptive to a woman in a romantic lead, even though Romeo dies in the end. A love story was more acceptable.

Charlotte’s vocal talents helped her to be convincing. She had a wide vocal range, and her “unfeminine appearance”, as one Shakespearean historian puts it, made her portrayal of Romeo very convincing and it was a smash hit. It is said that she brought the character out of its then portrayal as a young love-besotted sop into a more heroic and tragic young man. In a way Charlotte Cushman made it possible for Leonardo di Caprio to portray Romeo without dragging the character down to the level of a soppy drip of a teenager.

A few years later Charlotte followed Sarah Siddons’ lead and took on the role of Hamlet, and her final role was as Lady Macbeth, the role which made her famous in the 1830s. Throughout her life Charlotte sought female companionship, and her last partner, the sculptor Emma Stebbins, looked after her in her finals years of illness.

With celebrations around the UK to commemorate Shakespeare’s 400^th anniversary there seems to be no end to the popularity of England’s premier playwright, and even if most people never read a Shakespeare play his characters remain in our cultural consciousness and will continue to inspire artists, actors and film-makers for generations ahead.

Olympic Alphabet : M is for ...

MEDAL COUNT

Team LGBT has been remarkably successful at the Olympic Games (I’ll deal with the Paralympics in a separate article in June). Considering my list of lgbt athletes (as of today's date) now numbers 224 that is a small number compared to the 128,420 Olympians (excluding the Youth Olympics) listed by the International Olympic Committee.

The full list of lgbt medallists, which will be made available on the opening day of Rio 2016, is long, much too long to reproduce in full today, but to give you an idea of how successful they are, out of the 224 listed Olympians 113 have won at least one medal. That’s over half of them! And of those 113 medallists 44 have won more than one.

Between them the 44 multi-medallists have 131 medals in total. Almost a third of these were won by 15 Winter Olympians. Again, there isn’t room to list them all today, so here are the Top Ten Medal Winners.

	Name	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Ian Thorpe	5	3	1	9
2	Ireen Wüst	4	3	1	8
3	Karin Büttner-Janz	2	3	2	7
4	Anja Pärson	1	1	4	6
5=	Greg Louganis	4	1	0	5
5=	Jayna Hefford	4	1	0	5
7	Marnie McBean	3	1	0	4
8=	Daniel Kowalski	1	1	2	4
8=	Blyth Tait	1	1	2	4
10	Robert Dover	0	0	4	4

NOTE: This table counts the total number of medals won by each athlete. Other 10 athletes have won 2 gold medals each. I haven’t placed them higher than Pärson, Kowalski, Tait and Dover because they won fewer medals than those four overall. The top 6 multi-gold-winning lgbt champions all make it into the top 10.

Since the early years of the modern Olympics all top 8 finishers in every event have received Olympic Diplomas. The top 3, of course, also win gold, silver or bronze medals. Only 60, just over a quarter of the 224 lgbt Olympians, have not placed higher than 9^th position. The following table shows how many lgbt Olympians have finished in the top 8 and received Diplomas.

Gold	Silver	Bronze	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th
83	60	61	27	27	37	19	16

What we can see immediately is that most lgbt athletes have achieved the top placings. The figure of 83 Olympic champions in a group of 224 is phenomenal. It would seem natural to expect larger numbers in the lower placings, but you can see that when it comes to top places lgbt athletes are very successful. A similar analysis of non-lgbt-identified Olympians would be a major task considering how many thousands of them there have been, so I don’t want to make any comparisons.

But which nation has won the most medals? Of course, the nation with the most athletes is likely to come top. Generally speaking, that is exactly what we find. Below is a table of the top 10 lgbt medal placings according to nation.

	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	USA	29	11	11	51
2	Canada	13	8	6	27
3	Netherlands	10	10	11	27
4	Australia	10	12	4	26
5	Germany (including East & West)	3	8	1	11
6	Norway	4	1	4	9
7	Great Britain	3	0	4	7
8	Denmark	6	0	0	6
9	Sweden	1	3	2	6
10=	Poland	2	1	1	4
10=	Czechoslovakia/Republic	1	2	1	4
10=	New Zealand	1	1	2	4

Now, the top 10 medal placings arranged by sport.

	Sport	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	swimming	8	6	6	20
2	ice hockey	9	5	4	18
3	track & field	8	7	3	18
4	football	7	0	10	17
5	equestrianism	2	3	11	16
6	hockey	8	1	5	14
7	speed skating	5	6	1	12
8	figure skating	3	4	3	10
9	handball	8	0	1	9
10	diving	5	2	2	9

NOTE: I place ice hockey higher than track and field because more gold medals were won. Likewise with handball and diving.

There is further analysis according to team and individual events, but I’ll leave that for another time. Analysis of medals won by athletes who were openly lgbt compared to those who weren’t is more difficult because of incomplete information of when some athletes came out.

I hope all the number-crunching hasn’t been too much of a statistical overload. I know for a fact that these statistics will change before the end of Rio 2016 as more lgbt Olympians compete and more are identified.

More number-crunching next time, I’m afraid, when I number-crunch the numbers of lgbt competitors at individual games, and I take a trip down memory lane.