Modern Sirens

listen to me. the first hairless hominin was homo erectus, about 1.6mya. naked. anatomically modern humans like us evolved 350-270,000 years ago. also naked. when do we first have solid evidence for consistent human use of clothing (bc it's when the clothing lice genome evolves to diverge from the head lice genome lol)? only 170,000-83,000 years ago. before that? BUCKASS NAKED. and even when we did start using clothing? well, as we know from excellent textile archeologists such as elizabeth wayland barber, a LOT of early human clothing was likely more decorative than functional – i.e. the string skirts that you see on some of the 'venus figures' from the upper paleolithic, which were solely decorative but would NOT do anything for warmth.

now consider eridians, whose bodies are functionally impenetrable unless they're actively eating (which is a private activity anyhow), who are carnivores (thus having no need to cultivate plants – aka the source of most textiles – like humans do), who live on a planet with no sun exposure (so probably nothing like earth plants anyways) and no fucking seasons (no need for rain/snow protection!), who evolved to exist ONLY in very specific & stable temperature ranges (like most life on erid, per andy weir), who have five fucking hands to hold things, are famously so good at multitasking that doing just one activity sucks for them, and CANNOT FUCKING SEE!!!

so where the FUCK is eridians' evolutionary or social impetus to develop ANYTHING akin to clothing supposedly coming from? N O W H E R E. you heard me.

decoration like the celebration jewelry, absolutely – though notice that was clearly designed for its auditory qualities and ability to show up on sonar, not anything approaching the level of coverage that human clothing has. rocky's engineering lederhosen (leather! bc again, carnivores!) as a (evolutionarily speaking) modern development to help hold tools, yeah, totally. carapace carvings, 100%.

Take this with a grain of salt but I find it interesting and have spent a decade in arguments about it, so. The (US) audience for many hands-on / interactive events that appeal to both kids and adults, based on all the marketing data I have personally collected or paid tens of thousands of dollars for from third-party agencies, basically says that women ages 30-45 are driving almost all the social media views. Many of those women are trying to plan educational and fun excursions for their children ages 2-13.

The problem comes when you, the adult who is actually invited to participate in said activities, comes to an event with a lot of families with children ages 2-13. People with social graces will say: "I need to let the children enjoy this; it is uncomfortable if I take a spot from a child. Also if I am a man or otherwise have some caution I might be worried that as a solo adult surrounded by kids I will be seen as suspicious." So they just watch from a distance and then usually go home. Which to me sucks because there's often nothing inherent about the activity that makes it enjoyable only to kids.

But too many events don't seem to be at the stage of understanding you need to signal in 1) the advertising and 2) the actual physical setup that both adults and kids are welcome, or need separate stations, or hours that are for certain age groups. I think this is why a lot of museums started doing adult nights, especially science museums. If you ever go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, this will be abundantly clear: the museum is genuinely designed to be fascinating to anyone from a preschooler to a postdoc but unless there's space to allow for all and curated exhibit design with big and small tables, for example, it triggers the mental block of "let the kids have this".

Anyway I spent a decade of my life arguing two things:

Built the event so that both kids and adults have separate and mixed space and train the activity leaders how to welcome and engage the whole spectrum of participants.

Recognize that sometimes you actually do need to provide a separate interaction time or space to make the adults feel welcome, especially childless adults, or at least signage to make sure everyone understands that no, it's actually the point.

I usually work on events that have "low threshold, high ceiling" activities so your mileage may vary. (Meaning: anyone can try doing the thing, even at a very basic or shallow level; the ones who want to go deep focus or discussion about what's behind the activity will find the presenters are VERY capable of talking details or having a back-and-forth about it all day.)

I had a really fun time running an event at a big public television station's festival where just as many adults without kids accompanying them did the activity as kids did, and stayed for a full hour or more as it really was pure fun, and also sensory-friendly compared to much of the other activities. I also wore myself out trying to argue with co-event organizers over the years that hands-on stuff really does appeal to everybody BUT sit-down performances and lectures usually really do have age categories, and it can be a big waste of money to try to combine the two in one mega-event if you don't have ticket revenue or reservations to judge interest by in advance.

That said, I definitely find more events run by neurodivergent people or audiences try harder to be welcoming – especially if the presenters get to engage in their special interests with all kinds of people.