tatiana sez:
Diana, I didn't claim
> sexuality could change as a result of amnesia -
no no of course, no _I_ said it, i mean i think i said it, or rather at
the time that
was what i was thinking, or wondering, that if a queer women had amnesia,
would she forget she was queer under certain conditions of
re-socialization?
Actually, sexual identity and sexuality are different things. Sexuality
belongs to the sphere you like so much - "neurology, and other brain
sciences, or endocrinology, brain chemistry, human kinetics, and other
biological
sciences". It can't be lost - we are what we are.
you think sexuality is here, hm. okay, i'm going to have to pause on this
because the difference between sexuality and sexual identity is not so
clear to me, given the sexualization that takes place prenatally - that
is, "is it a boy or a girl" carries with it enormous implications in the
identity of the birthed child, - but then there are infants with born
with what are euphemistically called "ambiguous genitals" and are
surgically altered to be a boy or a girl,
and are often (approx 30% of the time) wrong about the choices made at
birth,
thus manufacturing a whole set of the population who are genitally
mutilated and socialized into the "wrong" sex - so maybe sexuality is
organic.
but we're not talking about boys vs girls when we talk about sexuality, we
are talking about sexual preferences, aren't we? i mean, the boy-girl
thing is a gender issue, totally social/political.
the sexuality thing is about queers and straights and trannies and so on
and who knows what kinds of sexualities are out there?
Personal identification (sexual as well) belongs to the domains of
psychology and I assume it may be lost as a result of amnesia.
hm, oops. okay, since i don't believe in psychology, i'll have to say that
sexual identification belongs in the realms of the
social/political/cultural landscape wherein a person interacts.
and i also reckon that these interact with the body, in multiple ways, so
that the differentiation between the biological and the
social/political/cultural becomes a bit muddy, for me, in contexts of
sexual identity. what do you call yourself, i mean, and let's face it,
millions of men and women go through midlife changes from het-lives to
queer lives,
and VERY few queers transform into hets, so i'd have to reckon this is a
largely unexplored terrain, too, in terms of the relations between memory
and sexuality.
Speaking
hypothetically as a plot for a fiction novel lost sexual identity may lead
a
character through many different situations starting probably with the
relations which traditionally dominate in the society your character lives
in. And she (is it she?) will need some time to realize, to become aware
what her real desires are. She will have to go the same way an adolescent
has to go before he/she comes to understanding of his/her sexuality.
interesting - in the fictional context, the woman is queer, but closeted,
working in R&D to find cures for Alzenheimer's - she discovers (ooooh!)
that the corporation is also developing a pharmaceutical that will erase a
person's memories for the Witness Protection Programs, that is, people
unwittingly have their memories erased and are provided with new
identities - this increases the success of the WPP and so increases the
number of folks who are willing to participate - the nastiness being that
they are never told they will be re-programmed, so to speak. So the
erasure here is presumed to be complete,
- in trauma-based amnesia, the memories are repressed, so what i am
looking at is artificial
erasure, and new identities being provided in particular communities
designed for this
work.
so the woman finds out, threatens to blow the whistle, and is 'given an
injection' so to speak,
given a new identity, including a boyfriend.
now, under these conditions, what are the chances that she would accept
the boyfriend's version of their relationship? would she accept her life
as a het,
or would it, at some point, become obvious that she isn't a het at all,
and (my own questions, can this lead her to retrace her steps and figure
out what happened) -
in any event, i am fantastically intrigued by the implications of
sexuality and memory,
although highly wary, now, of making any claims about the relations.
hmmmmmmmm.
thanks for needling this one tatiana, it is tricky to maneuver, altho my
reckoning is that the woman eventually seeks out the queer community, and
eventually is recognized by her old friends, who had attended the mock
funeral, and that her life is forced into a new script based on this
sequence of events.
HUH.
diane
Tatiana
**********************************************************************
:point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.
(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
university of colorado, denver, school of education
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