I think you pointed important features of the question.
I'd like to know and read more about cultural-historical aprroach of
sexuality. Any sugestion?
I'd like to know diane celia hodges wrote:
>
> 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
>
>