Student 23's blog

I am not a Trekkie—or at least I’ve never admitted to being one.

When I was young, I was that kid. I was the kid who everybody hated, and who hated everybody, and enjoyed it. My peers singled me out from as early on as I can remember. Having very few friends, I developed a hobby, bolstered by an overactive imagination, of sensationalism and overreaction; some time around the fourth grade I decided I was an alien from outer space.

The story was elaborate: my alien parents had switched me with the real Rachael, and used the human child's DNA to make me an exact copy of her. My real self, the alien, had blue skin and eyes on long stalks, and seven fingers on each hand.

Now that I've posted "Sex in Flatland", I feel the need to elaborate on some of my own opinions that wormed their way into what I meant to be a lighthearted satire-- good fun for all, you know?-- but never would have found a place in their entirety. Specifically, I'd like to address the second-to-last paragraph, in which The Good Doctor dismisses the idea of Gay Pride.

I fully realize my position on the issue might warrant me my share of hisses and thrown tomatoes by many, but I must make it known: I agree with Dr. Pentagon.

By popular request, I've uploaded to Serendip the good doctor Pentagon's article on the mating habits of his fellow Flatlanders. Enjoy!

I wrote the attatched essay as a response to Abbott's Flatland, a novella that's risen to cult status among math geeks everywhere. Flatland is at once an exploration into the geometry of higher dimensions, a commentary on classism, and a dark caricature of Victorian prudishness and misogyny. But the one thing that Abbott never mentioned was sex. How would geometrical figures reproduce? Would they enjoy it? And what about sexuality itself-- is it as variable in two dimensions as it is in our three?