File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 1295


Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 22:59:04 -0500
From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1-AT-osu.edu>
Subject: BIOLOGY (was Re: M-TH: Re: Porn)


Mark writes:
>I don't know if one of the proscribed persons is permitted to comment, but
>neither you nor James Heartfield seem to have any conception at all of what
>exactly the 'natural substratum', as James engagingly calls it, of socially-
>constructed personae actually is. Strange; are you not persons of flesh and
>blood?

Pain and pleasure seem biological to me. Can't speak for James, though.

>I'm tempted to ask James why the minnesingers so obsessively pursued
>their  romantic prey if there was no biological basis at all
>to their behaviour, and if it so clearly transgressed the prevailing medieval
>norms and they only got drubbings or in some cases, were castrated or had
>their heads buried in flower pots where small citrus trees grew, nourished
>by the unavailing tears of a distressed lady; but the same chaos lurks in
>James's head as now does in yours so I won't bother.

Lots of people go fight in imperialist wars as cannon fodders for the
ruling class.
Does that activity have a biological basis? Is it a marxist thing to do to
explain it biologically?

In your view, does rape have a biological basis or explanation for it?

>Altho you deny being a culturalist you and James both are exactly that;
>followers of the school of science as culture, and of a particualrly
>obscurantist take on the material basis of human nature at that.

I don't think sociobiology is really a science, in fact.

>Even supposing that heterosexuality was a social construct (that the word is
>new ought not fool anyone who isn't a pedant) nothing alters the fact that
>even
>when the human population was only one percent of what it now is, it only got
>that way by procreating thru heterosexual sex, and given the parlous
>circumstances, humanity had to do a lot of it and it had to construct its
>social relations primarily around the task of conserving life. So the
>imperatives which produced family life were always present (just as --
>and James is woefully ignorant on this point -- trying reading some
>Desmond Morris among the fancy Verso tomes, James -- many species of
>mammals manage all kinds of courtship, sexual play and display even
>in their rude state of nature).

Can't you make a distinction between sex acts that lead to
reproduction--and not all sexual activities between a man and a woman lead
to that--heterosexuality as institution, naturalized norm that abnormalizes
other preferences, heterosexuality as idealized + naturalized + socially
enforced identity-fetish, etc.?

One doesn't have to be heterosexual to reproduce. Ancient Greeks seems to
have reproduced themselves without thinking that homosex negates their
masculinity, etc., as many straight guys think now. Their practices can't
be called heterosexual with the meanings we attribute to the word now.

Regarding BIOLOGY, to reproduce (even without a help of modern medicine),
the only thing one has to do is to insert semen in a vagina, during the
period when one is fertile. You don't even have to do anything sexual to
reproduce. This is a BIOLOGICAL fact of life.

Yoshie




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