The Hip

Roberta F., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Morn the Gorn, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Hip?

The hip, or hypanthium, is the reproductive center of a rose. It hosts the pollen-producing stamen and almost completely contains the ovary, and it itself develops into the fruit of the rose after pollination. Utile not only in botany but also in semiotics, it lends simile to a host of human symbols—namely, any that have to do with the reproductive process. The ovary, testes, egg, sperm, womb, child, and, amusingly, the hips all have their place in this essential superwomb of the rose. As I just betrayed, I liken the rose hip most closely to the human womb, and it appeared to me a fitting theme for this website.

The Womb…?

Funnily enough, this website will take about nine months to fully develop. The womb emerges as a natural allegory. As well as the narrative of the site, the initial development of my idea of worldbuilding will reach a cohesive state by the end of this course series. After this embryonic fast tracking, I probably won't actively pursue the topic, but of course I will continue to add to it tangentially. I think that keeping the womb in mind will allow both of us to be content with each new page as a progression from the last.

Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This seems too specific.

Indeed, I have ulterior motives for establishing the rose hip as the theme of the site. For starters, I am a transgender woman, and, while I don't necessarily crave a womb, it is one of those elusive symbols of femininity which I vaguely envy. I feel that in a space such as this that I have so much control over, I should grant myself some fantastic contradictions like that.

So what?

I find, as you will soon, that gender tends to make its serpentine way into every subject I study. Clearly, it has taken over even this first page. I treat its definition quite liberally, and, for the sake of discussion, the reader who wants to really interact with my thoughts should at least temporarily open their mind to what some would call "woke gender nonsense".

And the biology lesson?

There's also the rose connection—the Rose connection, as that is my name—admittedly not so independent from the transgender aspect. I stylize many of my projects, including this one, after my personal theme. Perhaps its purpose is simply to make it easier for me to imagine that, instead of being trapped in my dread body, I have taken refuge in (or as) the site.

"There are at least three." - Joe Biden, on how many genders there are

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