6/26/11
straight sex is a misogynistic construction
the symbology of sex vibrates deeply with the misogynistic conception of the world. the vagina is conceived as a crevasse, a hole, an emptiness to be filled, occupying only negative space. the penis is the filler, occupying positive space; it is the source and origin of pleasure (the man being the "pleaser"). the penis/man creates sex when he enters the void/woman (let there be light...); he performs this creation in the process of taking her over, of invading her then conquering her. in dominating her he fulfills her needs and desires, needs and desires that she could never fulfill for herself.
6/18/11
the forgotten queers
Gandhi said, "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." Before we can be hated, people under the queer umbrella must first become an object of attention.
Being hated could be a sign of progress because if it means Gandhi Phase 1 ("first they ignore you") has been surmounted. What precedes open hate is erasure, whereby queer people are made to be invisible. In part this means that queerness is an unspeakable topic. When it needs to be referred to in order for it to be repressed, there's opaque language like "obscenity" and "sins against nature".
Queers are also made to be unthinkable: we all learn an elaborate system of sexuality and gender in which there are two (and only two) natural and opposite sexes that exert mutual attraction, each with its own (complementary) personality archetype, designated place in the world, and code of acceptable behaviour. In Gandhi Phase 1, the sexuality-gender system is taken for granted and mostly subconscious. Concepts like heterosexual and cisgender cannot even be intelligibly expressed because there are no counterpart queer concepts to contrast them with. There are also, as far as anyone is concerned, no queer people.
Once Gandhi Phase 1 has been overcome, people whose sexuality or gender does not fit into the dominant sexuality-gender paradigm are automatically seen as deviant, abnormal, derivative, ancillary or suboptimal because the sexuality-gender system is the fixed foundation of all thinking about bodies, pleasures, and desires. This is where gays and lesbians are; at some point beyond Gandhi Phase 1. At least they can say no one is ignoring them anymore.
Consciousness of gays and lesbians has exploded onto the cultural scene, whereas before they were relegated to unconsciousness. However, there are many more queer people who have not yet broken out of the erasure phase. We are hardly a blip on the cultural radar.
People who are transgender, transexual, trans*, genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, pangender, intergender, agender, third gender or third sex, drag queens, drag kings, androgynes, transvestites, crossdressers, two-spirits, hijras, kathoey, travestis, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, paraphiles, polyamorous, intersex or any other queer identity are sidelined from discourse. These are the people whose very existence has yet to be recognized.
An egalitarian society needs awareness of queer people of all stripes. We cannot accept rights for just a few; in the 1950s, the fact that women in Canada could vote did not make it okay that First Nations people couldn't. That gays and lesbians are now racing towards Gandhi Phase 4 ("then you win") does not make it okay that most queer people are still at the starting gate.
Being hated could be a sign of progress because if it means Gandhi Phase 1 ("first they ignore you") has been surmounted. What precedes open hate is erasure, whereby queer people are made to be invisible. In part this means that queerness is an unspeakable topic. When it needs to be referred to in order for it to be repressed, there's opaque language like "obscenity" and "sins against nature".
Queers are also made to be unthinkable: we all learn an elaborate system of sexuality and gender in which there are two (and only two) natural and opposite sexes that exert mutual attraction, each with its own (complementary) personality archetype, designated place in the world, and code of acceptable behaviour. In Gandhi Phase 1, the sexuality-gender system is taken for granted and mostly subconscious. Concepts like heterosexual and cisgender cannot even be intelligibly expressed because there are no counterpart queer concepts to contrast them with. There are also, as far as anyone is concerned, no queer people.
Once Gandhi Phase 1 has been overcome, people whose sexuality or gender does not fit into the dominant sexuality-gender paradigm are automatically seen as deviant, abnormal, derivative, ancillary or suboptimal because the sexuality-gender system is the fixed foundation of all thinking about bodies, pleasures, and desires. This is where gays and lesbians are; at some point beyond Gandhi Phase 1. At least they can say no one is ignoring them anymore.
Consciousness of gays and lesbians has exploded onto the cultural scene, whereas before they were relegated to unconsciousness. However, there are many more queer people who have not yet broken out of the erasure phase. We are hardly a blip on the cultural radar.
People who are transgender, transexual, trans*, genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, pangender, intergender, agender, third gender or third sex, drag queens, drag kings, androgynes, transvestites, crossdressers, two-spirits, hijras, kathoey, travestis, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, paraphiles, polyamorous, intersex or any other queer identity are sidelined from discourse. These are the people whose very existence has yet to be recognized.
An egalitarian society needs awareness of queer people of all stripes. We cannot accept rights for just a few; in the 1950s, the fact that women in Canada could vote did not make it okay that First Nations people couldn't. That gays and lesbians are now racing towards Gandhi Phase 4 ("then you win") does not make it okay that most queer people are still at the starting gate.
3/16/11
looking for consciousness beyond the brain
my impression of human consciousness (drawn from what I've read and heard) is that a genetically human brain cannot become conscious on its own. it needs 1) a personal history 2) inside a body in 3) a rich physical/perceptual environmental and 4) to be steeped in interaction with other brains. this interaction means that the brain is 5) absorbed into the medium of cultural information. the brain, in other words, comes to exist in a sea of memes (quanta of cultural or semiological information) as a tight "island" of memes; as a dense cluster of connections between bits of cultural/semiological information. the conscious self is a node in a cultural network. the brain is constructed into a roughly discrete pattern in a rich and tangled network of culturally-transmitted patterns and processes
crucially, the functional architecture of the brain is organized such that it can 6) operate in a language (e.g. Zulu, Hindi, Icelandic). language turns out to be what fundamentally enables certain global or semi-global habits of thought, these habits or organizing principles of the brain being essential to consciousness, such as 7) making analogies or isomorphic mappings, 8) categorizing all elements of perception (and hence, the world) into concepts based on these analogies, 9) subsuming lower-level concepts/categories into higher-level ones, and 10) abstracting away essential information from situations, ignoring swathes of noise and redundancy in the process. analogical categorization transforms perception into experience. abstracting the essences of experiences transforms them into something more abstract: situations. as human beings, the situation is the dominant genre of our conscious experiences. the world is not just categorized into concepts but into interactive narratives with actors, atmospheres, themes, tensions, dilemmas, goals, outcomes, triumphs, and frustrations. consciousness is a kind of perpetual motion machine: the aforementioned narratives go into the ontogenesis of an increasingly fluid and agile I. as I blossoms, it generates increasingly more (and more elaborate) narratives that feed right back into its growth. this is the self-fueling engine that powers our inner light
language creates some analogue of an internal map of the brain's information, with each word or phrase acting as a "landmark" so that the information can be located and "called up" at any time. words also serve as a way to organize information, similar to how a colour-coding system might work if it used thousands of shades. as a third function, words mobilize information, recruiting chunks of it for use in thinking. a brain cultivated by culture and language into a mind becomes capable of 11) organizing mental events/experiences in a pseudo-serial fashion and 12) to "perceive" itself or obtain information about its own state, such that it can reflect on what it is doing (internally or as a body in motion). to become conscious, a brain needs to 13) reflect on its own reflections, reflect on those meta-reflections, and in this way build enormous towers of self-inquiry that perpetually grow in an endless string of self-stimulations. focusing on how a brain manages to analogize, categorize, serialize, and meta-meta-meta...reflect, we can begin to see how it comes to author a story of self
crucially, the functional architecture of the brain is organized such that it can 6) operate in a language (e.g. Zulu, Hindi, Icelandic). language turns out to be what fundamentally enables certain global or semi-global habits of thought, these habits or organizing principles of the brain being essential to consciousness, such as 7) making analogies or isomorphic mappings, 8) categorizing all elements of perception (and hence, the world) into concepts based on these analogies, 9) subsuming lower-level concepts/categories into higher-level ones, and 10) abstracting away essential information from situations, ignoring swathes of noise and redundancy in the process. analogical categorization transforms perception into experience. abstracting the essences of experiences transforms them into something more abstract: situations. as human beings, the situation is the dominant genre of our conscious experiences. the world is not just categorized into concepts but into interactive narratives with actors, atmospheres, themes, tensions, dilemmas, goals, outcomes, triumphs, and frustrations. consciousness is a kind of perpetual motion machine: the aforementioned narratives go into the ontogenesis of an increasingly fluid and agile I. as I blossoms, it generates increasingly more (and more elaborate) narratives that feed right back into its growth. this is the self-fueling engine that powers our inner light
language creates some analogue of an internal map of the brain's information, with each word or phrase acting as a "landmark" so that the information can be located and "called up" at any time. words also serve as a way to organize information, similar to how a colour-coding system might work if it used thousands of shades. as a third function, words mobilize information, recruiting chunks of it for use in thinking. a brain cultivated by culture and language into a mind becomes capable of 11) organizing mental events/experiences in a pseudo-serial fashion and 12) to "perceive" itself or obtain information about its own state, such that it can reflect on what it is doing (internally or as a body in motion). to become conscious, a brain needs to 13) reflect on its own reflections, reflect on those meta-reflections, and in this way build enormous towers of self-inquiry that perpetually grow in an endless string of self-stimulations. focusing on how a brain manages to analogize, categorize, serialize, and meta-meta-meta...reflect, we can begin to see how it comes to author a story of self
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