Sex is All Fluxed Up
I always push for folks to begin seeing their world (I almost said “the world”, but the point being, that doesn’t exist!) as very a personal, unique story told from their perspective.
This begs the question – “well, what other stories await to add to mine?”, to begin filling in the communal puzzle of our-story-together (as a family, and as a culture), creating a Story, begging all the Big Stories of other peoples to be added to our own, not contradicting, but enriching each other.
Roles don’t comprise reality. What-actually-happens, to you or someone else, makes up “reality”. In an intact culture, Roles help us navigate reality. In a toxic culture, they replace reality, acting as a shield against what-we-actually-experience. They begin to “mis-map” our experience into bizarre prescriptive (“you should behave this way…”) models of relationships.
You are [sic] not the Teacher, and I am [sic] not the Student. You are [sic] not a Woman, and I am [sic] not a Man. You may move through the world woman-ing, and I may do manly things, and we may enrich these roles and express them in a healthy way, but at core our bodies move in a dazzling, thundering, dynamic storm of circulating desire for the other-than-us, with potentials and predispositions, but nothing hammered down or definite.
I believe healthy, lightly-held roles make this whirling chaos of yearning more navigable, but they do not replace it. I feel fine to have chosen my version of the role of “man”, but it does not eclipse that one can pick from an infinite array of gender roles. Truly one must pity a culture reduced to the poverty of choosing from “he, she, and it”. He, she, and it? Really? Wow.
You understand I don’t have a terrible amount of confidence in the culture of science, but it still feels satisfying to hear scientists speak to this. I like to think that a culture of inquiry who, in theory, values what they observe more than what they want to see, will sooner or later cross paths with my own thinking, and bring to the table their own eloquence. To wit:
From Alternet.org, “Why Are We Often Terrified of Our Own Sexuality” by Michael Ventura:
Alice Dreger is professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. This summer, on August 21, during the controversy over whether South African runner Caster Semenya was a man or a woman, Dreger published an essay in The New York Times in which she stated: “The biology of sex is a lot more complicated than the average [person] believes.”…Dreger informs us that there exists no scientific test to determine whether a person is, finally and definitely, female or male!
…When I discussed this essay with an especially well-informed shrink friend whom we’ll call Zachariah, he said, “The fear of encountering one’s in-betweenness in the sexual trance is probably the least discussed aspect of sexuality. The secret of sex is that sense of the free-floatingness and boundarylessness of it, the way you float through the boundaries of male and female, the unpredictability of it. Sex remains a mystery because of this shape-shifting quality.”…
…There’s no fixed place in the realm of the senses — no “there” there. What you know changes every time you go into it. As was told me once by a woman whom we’ll call Zia, “There are things you have to learn all over again, every night.”…
…Sexuality is scary because it’s where we meet ourselves most directly, without filters, without verbiage, and, if we go far enough, without fixed roles. It’s where we meet ourselves with and through the Other — this Other with whom we journey into the realm; this Other, a partner as fluid we are…
…Sex is scary the way the sea is scary, the way a storm is scary — because it’s elemental, and, as in all great elemental things, the same qualities that make it so powerfully beautiful can make it powerfully frightening.
Huh. Just like the rest of our world.
August 20th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
A very thoughtful and penetrating article, Willem. Thank you. I’ve found that living in this civilization renders me very role-neurotic: both desperate to make sense of my path through the world and terrified of limiting myself by taking on a constricting or dysfunctional role. In the realm of gender this takes the form of a fear of chauvinism and male dominance, of taking on all that rot about “Godly Leadership” and “Spiritual Headship of the Family” I was raised on. But in fleeing from that, I find myself crippled, unable to confidently express desires or make a decision even when my wife desperately wants one from me, because that would make me a Domineering Man. Ugh!
The problem with rejecting a broken model is you then need a healthy model to replace it with. That’s what I’m still chasing, and having difficulty finding.
I read that article on sex a bit ago and found it paradigm-busting and ultimately inspiring–it spoke right to a lot of my sexual and gender neurosis and opened up a lot of blockage in how I view my sexual and emotional being. Just like making good art, the sexuality the article speaks of is free from obsessive worry or self-judgment; it’s a free and joyful exploration concerned with nothing but the present moment. As I wish to love, in all things.
Peace,
-Joel
PS This post is a veritable back-linking extravaganza! You’ve given me a lot of archived treasures to dig into.
August 21st, 2010 at 9:20 am
Willem:
This post is not related to the subject matter, but I struggled to find a post where I could post this.
I have been reading your website for a long time and have wanted to post on a subject you have talked about for quite some times–the notion of factuality. You have talked about how animist languages do not worship facts. But I see one hole in this. The hole I see is that there are some things in our world that I happen to see as facts. I also have struggled immensely with writing in E-Prime or E-Primitive in the forms you have mentioned and seem that while I agree with the spirit of your intentions for that language, I find myself unable to write or speak without “to be” or other nouns.
You have argued the notion of afactuality, and rightfully pointed out the flaws in facts regarding the rising sun. Yet I still see certain facts. One other example–the inevitability of death. We all eventually die, and I see that as a fact. How could you explain the fact that all humans pass away eventually in aworld of afactuality? I’m curious about your response.
August 21st, 2010 at 9:48 am
James,
Think of it this way, you can speak about all the phenomena of the world “afactually” and honestly (meaning, you can speak about them as personal observations rather than immutable realities), but you can’t speak about all the phenomena of the world” factually” (meaning even modern research accepts that observers impact what they observe in certain contexts).
Most of our stories and observations suggest that all humans die eventually. When we see the same thing over and over enough times, we call that pattern. Calling it a fact doesn’t make it more real, and if we do, again we stumble into the territory of error – what if one human being, somewhere, whether in the past or future, had a biological switch missing that made aging an inevitability? What does the “death” of a human mean, anyway – babies comprise the material of both of their parents, and yet we conceive of them as separate beings.
This may sound nitpicky if you remain unaware of the scientific epigenetic revolution going on right now: http://discovermagazine.com/2006/nov/cover/article_view?b_start:int=3&-C.
So, what do we have now? Holding on to factuality, with any kind of honesty (I’ve met plenty of people who happily hold onto it dishonestly, by saying “facts are facts” and turning their brains off), has become extremely difficult. We could have this conversation forever, possibly, chasing down one “fact” after another, with me offering other ways to see that “fact”, but…for me the point remains this:
For intact indigenous people, the so-called scientific epigenetic revolution has brought no “new news” at all; for countless millenia they’ve known about ancestral ghosts, taken them seriously, and dealt with them accordingly. But to the “fact” people, they come to these kinds of realizations kicking and screaming.
To hold on to the cultural fallacy of factuality means to put blinders up that constantly impede new information. Certainly, we can collect a lot of information, refer to it as “facts”, and still successfully put rockets on the moon. But the enormous amount of fascinating phenomena going on that factual bias blocks out…do you really want to miss out on that?
Changing your reasoning to an animist, observational mode simply opens you up to more information and experience. I leave it up to you, whether you find this of value. For me, everyday revelation makes life worth living! For many others, it terrifies them. They want a stable world. I don’t. I respect their decision, although it baffles me.
August 23rd, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Thank you. I have a reply to say, but am currently suffering from a bout of flu. I actually feel intrigued by your perspective.
Btw, I actually temporarily went on the REWILD forum as “Dickens” about three years ago where I discussed some of these topics with Jason. I have mixed feelings on the issue of writing, and I had a hard time seeing eye to eye with Jason because due to my autism, I learned how to write and read before I could talk, and gravitate toward that form of communication more naturally than speaking. I don’t have any ill will toward Jason, I just was born with a brain that views things this way, but also view things based on my own opinions, since due to my autism, my experiences and observations routinely seem different than other people. I’ve had to live based on that “observational” attitude much of my life to socially survive.
August 25th, 2010 at 8:54 am
I actually agree with ideas about observational mode. A large part of my work involves discussing observations, and having been autistic my entire life, I’ve had to live in a world where I observe things differently than other people.
Thank you for clarifying this to me, Willem.