File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9804, message 54


Date: Wed, 01 Apr 1998 13:34:07 -0500
From: "Charles Brown" <charlesb-AT-CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us>
To: LeoCasey-AT-aol.com, marxism-thaxis-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU=20
Subject: Re: M-TH: Porn and Sex Debates



From: Charles:
  With regard to Leo those who agree with
him on these issues, you keep tossing out that
there was no identity "heterosexual" before capitalism,
   But you never say what the historically constituted sexual
  institutions were. Do you claim there were=20
  any sexual and gender identites ? WHAT WERE THEY ?
 Until you say what they were your mention that
they were different does not support your position over
 mine.   What was the relationship
between them ?  The permutations and combinations
are fairly limited.  Aside from identities, what
 do you claim were the actual practices ? More or
  less sex between the different types of people ?
 Are you claiming that people were less sexual identity
  fetished in feudalism ? slavery ?
  I am no more stuck with the sexual and gender
 identities under captialism than you are  You use
the terms hetero etc. more than I do. When
 I talk about hetero, homosexual etc. I am usually
 responding to you in your framework. It takes
 a sleight of hand to then attribute to ME your
theoretical framework.  What I said was
 a long term institution is MONOGAMY, after
 Engels. My approach
 to sexuality focusses on monogamy not hetero/bi/
homosexual. You are the ones with the fetish of
sexual identities. You all
  talk about monogamy  very little.=20
     The posturing by all of you as more able to
think critically , less unconscious of your motives and
  all that shit , you only assert it and do not
 demonstrate it or prove it by your arguments. The
 repeated use of it is intellectual arrogance, but
 not persuasive argumentation.=20


Leo-
With regard to the debates between Yoshie, on the one hand, and Charles, =
Body
and Jerry, on the other hand, I think that a much more thorough grounding =
in
the literature which analyzes the nature of gender and sexual oppression =
would
have kept the latter folks from some very basic misreadings of points =
which
Yoshie made which are really rather unexceptional. A distinction between
modern and contemporary sexual identities and roles (ie, heterosexuality,
homosexuality, bisexuality), on the one hand, and sexual acts between
individuals of the same or different  gender, on the other hand, is
fundamental to any understanding of the phenomenon, but time and time =
again
Yoshie's view of the "withering away" of the institution of heterosexuality=
 is
confused with a "withering away" of sexual acts between individuals of
different genders. Her point is that the very notion of human identity, an
inner truth of the person, based solely on sexual acts -- a notion which =
only
appeared historically at the end of the European Renaissance -- will not
survive an end to oppression based on sexuality; in this respect, not only
heterosexuality, but also homosexuality and bi-sexuality, will "fade =
away."
Indeed, all of these terms have social meaning only in relation to each =
other,
so the end of one necessarily involves the end of the other. The only =
thing I
would anticipate about sexual acts in a society where there is no longer
socially normed sexual identities (and I think that Yoshie would probably
agree, if I do not misunderstand here) is that they might well be a great =
deal
more diverse, since the pressures towards social conformity would no =
longer
hold. The inability to separate the sexual identity and role from the =
sexual
act is, therefore, an inability to think critically about the dominant
ideologies of sexual oppression.

This inability is also present, I believe, in the way in which the =
category of
the 'natural' is being tossed around in these discussions. That is, it is
being used as one of the poles in an antinomy of nature and culture. It =
needs
to be pointed out that this form of the natural-cultural distinction is a
fundamental form of ideologies which justify power relations in the West, =
and
not simply sexual power relations. From Aristotle on, for example, slavery =
in
the West was defended as the natural order of things -- some human beings =
were
naturally dependent upon the rule of others. The ideological structure of
racial oppression took the form of identifying the European with culture ( =
and
therefore history), and the non-European with nature (who therefore is =
pre-
historical); the ideological structure of sexual oppression the form of
identifying the man with culture (the world of work and poltics) and the =
woman
with the natural (the world of the family and childrearing. The notion =
that
heterosexuality -- a sexual identity and role which is really the recent
historical product of the modernizing West -- is natural, and that other
sexual identities and roles are not, privileges the sexual identity which =
is
the social norm at the expense of the sexual identities which deviate from =
the
norm. It also is so poorly suited to understand the sexual as a point of
intersection of the natural and the cultural, since they are posited as
opposed forces.

Enough for now. I'm posting this and a few other "quickies" and going to =
bed.

Leo




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