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 --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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