We lost power during the storm last night so I never got to post this... I see many others have made valuable comments so I'll forego some of it :). But a key point to me is that one's subjective frame affects the world of the possible even in "scientific" results.
The stories and categories we make for gender, sexuality, desire are very powerful. People edit their life experience to fit into one of the axiomatic stories, even if the story is "alternative." If you are not one of the standard "types" you and your experience do not exist. Do you remember when the gay community did not believe bisexuality really existed? those suckers were "confused" about their "true" identity. Remember the age of political correctness when a lesbian could not REALLY be butch or femme? it was a sign of internalized hetero oppression that needed correction. You must have men friends who fondly remember the older gay man that mentored them in the scene when they were young but would not talk about it openly because our modern frames are all about "abuse" and "recruiting" and those NAMBLA weirdos. We tend to have a fixed set of lenses to look through, and they color the picture and define the universe of the possible -- what is not "possible" is thrust into the shadows. Not possible but yet... it exists.
What if we wrote: Bottoms' desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic — it is dominated by the yearnings of “self-love,” by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need.
hmm.... is there some... conflation going on here? Desire is made of so many axes. Woman/man/gay/straight/top/bottom are really such crude approximations of what is an infinite number of compass points, some as fine as a nano-hair... Life is more complex than "Nomads of Gor."
No need to get into the assumptions behind mapping between women's lubrication and desire -- others have mentioned this. Sometimes rape victims experience lubrication, but it does not mean that they "wanted it" or enjoyed it, or worse, that all women really want it.(You can see the competing frames here -- we are only comfortable with absolutes, pick only one).
And we won't even touch the third rail about power, sexuality, and desire and how they intertwine...
Have you noticed that I hate essentialism?
also, clearly, my thoughts not improved in clarity for having sat overnight... :)
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 12:40 pm (UTC)The stories and categories we make for gender, sexuality, desire are very powerful. People edit their life experience to fit into one of the axiomatic stories, even if the story is "alternative." If you are not one of the standard "types" you and your experience do not exist. Do you remember when the gay community did not believe bisexuality really existed? those suckers were "confused" about their "true" identity. Remember the age of political correctness when a lesbian could not REALLY be butch or femme? it was a sign of internalized hetero oppression that needed correction. You must have men friends who fondly remember the older gay man that mentored them in the scene when they were young but would not talk about it openly because our modern frames are all about "abuse" and "recruiting" and those NAMBLA weirdos. We tend to have a fixed set of lenses to look through, and they color the picture and define the universe of the possible -- what is not "possible" is thrust into the shadows. Not possible but yet... it exists.
What if we wrote: Bottoms' desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic — it is dominated by the yearnings of “self-love,” by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need.
hmm.... is there some... conflation going on here? Desire is made of so many axes. Woman/man/gay/straight/top/bottom are really such crude approximations of what is an infinite number of compass points, some as fine as a nano-hair... Life is more complex than "Nomads of Gor."
No need to get into the assumptions behind mapping between women's lubrication and desire -- others have mentioned this. Sometimes rape victims experience lubrication, but it does not mean that they "wanted it" or enjoyed it, or worse, that all women really want it.(You can see the competing frames here -- we are only comfortable with absolutes, pick only one).
And we won't even touch the third rail about power, sexuality, and desire and how they intertwine...
Have you noticed that I hate essentialism?
also, clearly, my thoughts not improved in clarity for having sat overnight... :)