Re: space & gender

diane celia hodges (dchodges who-is-at interchg.ubc.ca)
Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:44:34 -0800

At 11:18 PM 3/2/98, Ricardo Ottoni Vaz Japiassu wrote:
>Hi Diane,
>
>That's a facinating theme of discussion, study, research... I'd like to
>know more about your thoughts over that issue. Had you any book or
>article published about it?

I've written a novel about lesbian relations,
but I haven't pursued a scholarly work in this area...although I admit
I've often wondered "why" I don't...

>
>Some people think that beeing "gay" is an option. You choose a social
>mask/character and consequenytly a "gay way of life". Someone can have
>homossexual sexual relationship although this fact doesn't make him a
>"gay": Because "gay" is a way of life, a choice, a social behavior. In
>thesis, as Freud had said, everyone is bissexual.

Personally, i think it is more likely that everyone is sexual. Even the
notion of "bisexuality" supposes a duality, where there isn't one, really,
in practice. Many bisexual theorists are now talking about
poly-sexualities, which is interesting, in terms of pluralities, and
certainly congruent with the relations you describe.

>
>Many escort boys who offer their "ass" to men or "eat" someones's "ass"
>don't consider themselves as "gays". They do that for money and their
>sexuality is very restricted to genitals.
>
>In the other hand there are many "homosexual" people who are married
>with a partner of the oposite sex and although they can be designated as
>homossexual, they do not act like gay people. They look like "straight".
>And indeed they can be considereded "straight" because to be "straight"
>is a "way of life"...

Here we call this "straight-acting" or "straight-looking" and you'd be
surprised how many people explicitly seek gay partners who are
"straight-acting" or "straight-looking;" -

for the same reasons, that "straight" is a "Way of Life" and
"gay" is a "*secret* way of life."

>
>What do you think about it? What makes someone homossexual?
>Cultural-social constrains or biologic ones?

What makes someone heterosexual? Or, more interestingly,
how do folks manage to become aware of their differences in a culture which
relentlessly legislates the denial of difference?

Jay's recent discussions about bio-culturalism, to me, articulate the most
"reasonable" relational-construct. Given the fantastic complexities of the
human organism,
and the profound ignorance we cultivate with regards to the complexity of
the human organism; it seems likely to me that, biologically, there are
infinte variations of sexual identities which are *possible*, but which are
for example, surgically altered at birth.

For instance, recently much publicity has been generated about
hermaphrodites - persons born with gentials of both sexes; or with
physical "abnormalities", such as a "girl" with a penis (elongated clitoris);
or a "boy" witha vaginal canal...

For years doctors have made decisions about whether these children are
"girls" or "boys" and it is only now that these people, as adults, as
saying "You made the wrong decision" -

meaning children who were surgically "corrected" to be either a boy or a girl,
are identifying differently from their bodies' development;
(e.g., girls with "penises" which are removed at birth identify later as
"boys"; in spite of the anatomical "corrections"... "boys" who are "turned
into girls", later insist they are "boys"...) -

obviously the problem is the duality - the insistence that there are only
girls/boys/men/women/ and so on. There are probably sexual identities
which we have yet to
identify because we cannot allow oursleves to conceive of plural
sexualities as being "natural"...

on the cultural front: - yikes!!!

As a child care worker, I have met young children whom *I* have
"identified" as gay; different; and
I've witnessed how quickly educators react/intervene/correct this differences -

one four-year old girl said, as she was getting dressed to go home for
lunch, that she wanted to have a husband when she grew up.
Her twin sister then piped up, "Not me! I'm going to have a girlfriend for
a husband."
which delighted me,

and horrified the other teacher. She quickly, and uneasily, corrected the
2nd girl, "Well, you can have a girlfriend AND a husband..." and while the
girl insisted, "no," she wanted a girl
for a husband, the other children started arguing with her, no, you can't.
You can't.

I think that the "why" question is perhaps not the most useful question for
understanding how identities develop and distort through life-long interactions.

I think we are all probably sexual, in that we have sexual drives;
how these manifest in cultures is, I suspect, very much organized by
complex social constructs and relations.

How about you? What are you thoughts?
diane

"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right." Ani Difranco
*********************************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction,
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada

snailmail: 3519 Hull Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada V5N 4R8