Kevin's Watch

I wondered whether this would be better in the Tank or here. Sexuality is pretty politicised, but my approach to it is mainly philosophical, so here it is. You'll probably be seeing a few posts from me of sexuality issues, as I suggested they may be worthy of their own forum, to which Orlion responded: "Get Posting!"

To kick things off, here's a little spiel I posted on an article on Alternet, which highlighted ways in which gender expectations for men are just as narrow as for women, if not more so nowadays. You can read the article here: www.alternet.org/sex/147626/5_stupid%2C ... age=entire

Basically it's a list of things expected of men: Fighting, Being a good husband, but not being "whipped," want sex all the time, have a stiff upper lip (for god's sake no crying), avoid "gayness"- unless you're gay I was pretty amused to discover I fulfilled none of the "real man" criteria whatsoever. Here's my response to the article:

As a straight male, boy am I in trouble with the gender police.

I've never been in a fight. Worse, I've been in physically aggressive situations and refused to fight. I enjoy intellectual discussions with (intelligent) women, and my dick is not the only tool I bring to bed with me. Greta didn't mention this one, but I find it difficult to get into sex without at least some foreplay. Sometimes I don't feel like sex at all, although the last time I got laid does tend to factor heavily in this. I am emotional, even when I'm not suffering from depression, and have been known to lie in bed and sob my little heart out. I am sometimes mistaken for being gay, in fact the list of strangers who have hit on me is pretty evenly divided between men and women. Not a very large list, anyway. I'm a student so I'm poor, I study humanities, so I'm likely to remain poor. I have zero mechanical skills. I am hugely indifferent to sports (especially fucking rugby, I'm a NZer and I'm really hoping we lose again at the Rugby World Cup.) I even briefly had erectile problems while I was on medication for emotional problems (double emasculation!)

The secret for not giving a shit about any of this? Platonic female friends. Every guy should have some. I challenge any male to have strong, close female friends and not be a feminist. [/i]

Good post, Cambo.

I said "many" topics!

Here's as good a place to state the following: It seems that most people have this idea that a man is either a)heterosexual, b)homosexual, or, at times, c)bisexual. No one seems to understand that a man (and for that matter, a woman) could possibly not care... I guess that'd be a non-existent sexuality.

You bring up other good points, people don't view sexuality by the generalized terms stated above, they view it as one very specific type. As a result, if you don't fit into that specific heterosexual type, you must not be heterosexual! It's a very narrow view... and very prevalent.

Thanks, Alaintha!

Yes that's true, Orlion. For example, it's considered rather usual for women, particularly teenaged girls, to "experiment" with members of the same sex. If they choose to, for example, kiss one of their girlfriends at a party, nothing is automatically assumed about their sexuality. They'd have to jump into bed with each other before you could reasonably assume they were gay. Even then it may be somewat open.

Not so with guys. You see two guys cuddling, you'd think they were probably gay. Holding hands or kissing, it's a damn certainty...or is it? I just read an article from the same site about "mostly straights," guys who are, well, mostly straight. They prefer girls, but would not be averse to a little all male action, in one form or another. It was astonishing how many commentors said, more or less, "oh, just be honest and admit you're bisexual already." As if resisting a clear label was somehow dishonest and immoral.

Personally, I'd like to see all sexual labels of any kind become irrelevant, or at least much less important. A society in which sexual identity was extremely fluid, and everyone just did whatever they wanted with whoever they wanted to do it with.

Cambo wrote:A society in which sexual identity was extremely fluid, and everyone just did whatever they wanted with whoever they wanted to do it with.

Well, that is sorta what we have. We just have a hell of a lot of people who think you shouldn't.

Personally, as long as it's consensual, I don't care what you do or how you get off.

--A

I don't think that's what we have, as evidenced by our overwhelming need for labels such as "mostly straight." Even the most liberal person gets very uncomfortable if you start taking away their ability to categorise. What comforts me is that the more labels you create, the more meaningless they become. "Mostly straight," what does that even mean? Straight implies you are exclusively into people of the opposite sex. So you exclusively like women..most of the time? My hope is that as our ever-expanding efforts to be tolerant and all inclusive by creating labels for everyone ("it's okay, you're just mostly straight. I'm cool with that) create more and more ridiculous labels, people will realise that all the labels were ridiculous in the first place.

Whose overwhelming need? I certainly don't have such a need...

And there are plenty of people who are out there doing whatever they want with whoever they want.

--A

I know, and that's great! But I do think that the tendency is still too much centered around putting people in boxes for my liking. I wouldn't say I have an overwhelming need, either, but I'm still guilty of it sometimes.

It's a natural human characteristic to define things. It helps us understand our environment, and provides us with "templates" for social interaction.

--A

This is true, and I don't want to get rid of definitions entirely. I just think we need to give them a lot less power over our thoughts. As soon as you define something, you limit it, you set boundaries. That's necessary, but caution is also needed, particularly with something as subjective and ambiguous as sexuality.

I think it's funny when you get to know people, and you watch them dance around the subject of questioning someone for the purposes of categorizing them... it's like the SNL skit 'Pat', but about preference instead of gender.
There are some people who desperately need to know so they can pass their judgment, and then there are some people who desperately need to know so as not to inadvertently offend, and then there are some people who are simply curious to know because they can't help themselves but wonder.
In my life, I have been on both ends of all three such quizzes.

dw

I think I most often fall into the latter category. I am by nature a very curious person, so when I'm first getting to know someone I probably do start looking for what kind of caegories people fit into. Of course, the ironic thing is that as I get to know a person better they begin to exhibit all kinds of quirks and behaviours that don't at all fit with the labels I had them pegged with. People just aren't that simple, most of us are very nuanced.

Very true, Cambo. To me, I use categories more to describe people to other people. For example, if a friend of mine asked me, "What sort of person is Avatar?" I'd probably say something like, "Oh, he's a laid-back fellow." That hardly describes him with justice, but to say the truth ("Why, Avatar is Avatar") would mean nothing to the person, so I fall back on categorizing.

Same thing with sexuality. Saying, "he's straight/gay" only gives someone a general idea (which is necessary to begin with.) However, once you get to know them, that ceases to be an effective label. I may be heterosexual, but that doesn't mean I'm attracted to all women.

So labels are good for initial inquires, but should be dropped once more information is obtained.

Yeah, I'm just curious about everything. But to say that definitions should have less power over our thoughts is easy. To actually make it so, much less.

I think much of our development has been geared specifically toward achieving the most accurate definitions possible. The problem is the assumptions we make, both about their accuracy, and based on them.

Hopefully, we're smart enough to give more credence to the additional, later information once we have it. But even if we are, the generalisation almost always acts as the starting point at the very least.

--A

I had this problem with the one philosophy paper I took in first year. Philosophers are obsessed with definitions. They're always looking for ways to make them as pinpoint accurate as possible. About the only definition that we've ever managed to get exactly right is "bachelor." A bachelor is an unmarried man. Simple. Most definitions are either too wide (they include things that they shouldn't) or to narrow (they exclude things that should be included.

The funny thing is, the whole point of searching for accurate philosophical definitions is so philosophers don't have to rely on intuition for understanding concepts. Intuition is (rightly) seen as leading to disparate understandings between philosophers, risking long, arduous debates based on pure misunderstandings. A proper definition, it is assumed, will give some agreed upon foundations for a debate. BUT what do philosophers use to decide if a definiton is too wide or too narrow. Intuition, of course!

Reminds me of a Tool lyric:

Over thinking, over analysing separates the body from the mind
Withering my intuition, leaving opportunities behind

Of course, the world would be a pretty messy place if we went purely by intuition all the time. But I think when it comes to sexuality, and sexual identity, that's absolutely what we should do. Hellfire, just go with what feels right.

But then I realise that maybe rape or paedophilia feels intuitively right to some people, which won't do. Then I want to say, "do what you feel like, as long as the other person feels like doing it too." But that's a stipulation, narrowing the definition of what's sexually "right" to exclude non-consensual acts.

Now I'm confused...

It's even messier further down the road you hinted at:
Definition is, by definition, a limiting act. As soon as you define something so that you "know" it, you literally make other things unknowable...by definition.
Of course, most people have at least some ability to intentionally shift viewpoints to look at the hidden places. But to do so, you must alter some of your definitions....oops.

One of my philosophy professors was writing a book or paper or something that overlaps this...not so much as a solution to the problem, but as a set of frameworks for looking at the problem. He told a story that he was including in the book to our class [I don't recall now if it was a story of actual events, or a story he made up to illustrate his point...I think the former]
Anyway, bunch of philosophers arguing whether itching was or was not a kind of pain. It went on and on, getting nowhere for a long time...and then someone "solved" it, said the whole argument was ludicrous because: If you have an itch, you scratch it. And you scratch it until either it stops itching, or until it hurts. One of the points of the story was that, though neither itch nor pain had been precisely defined, nevertheless a valid and meaningful distinction had been made.
Similar can be said of your pedophilia person: it may be "sexually right" for the person to feel the desire...but acting on it is wrong, because we can make valid and meaningful distinctions on "child," "consent," and "violation" of the child. Same for rape, except the "child" term.
That argument cannot be made for adults, though. On homo-hetero, and other sexual things, we can only make arbitrary distinctions...at least I haven't seen any valid and meaningful ones on the issue.

And Av, you point at an interesting conundrum: humans have a very powerful psychological tendency to experience a very specific thing, and then generalize the experience into a category. But also the ability to examine and take apart those categorizations. In general [though there seems some overlapping territory] the first takes place in older brain structures, the second in more recently evolved sectors. There are hints, but no certainty AFAIK, that the first is innate...but the second, while partly innate, can be both/either expanded or limited by context, learning, and decision/choice.

So...we're getting better at understanding each other? That's good news.

Cambo wrote:So...we're getting better at understanding each other? That's good news.

Well, we at least have the capacity to get better at it.
Like many things, I think the actual happening is what people call "cyclical," but I call "spiracular" cuz I don't believe in circles...what goes around only sorta comes around. When we survive the downturns, we get better on the upturns, and so far, in the aggregate, we've survived all the downs. I think we'll continue to do so.

Cambo wrote:I had this problem with the one philosophy paper I took in first year. Philosophers are obsessed with definitions. They're always looking for ways to make them as pinpoint accurate as possible.

I've got a degree in philosophy. And yes...I'm very keen on definitions. Unless we're operating from a shared definition, we'll always talk past each other, because each of us will mean different things when we use the same term/concept.

--A

Yeah that's something the philosophers get right, in principle anyway. I just find amusing how they try to escape from intuition as a basis of reasoning and usually fail. Just accept that intuition is a valid part of how we think and move on.