>On 19 Oct 2000, at 23:02, kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto. wrote:
>>
>> As far as I can see, sexuality is a paradox, and the demise of determinate
>> forms of sexuality can only mean a subordination, not a sublation.
>
>Interesting watching the World [sic] Series tv commercials, a
>couple of spots for an insurance company, one of a single mother
>out on a date who refuses an ill-timed offer of marriage (sleep with
>me now, it'll be ok, we'll get married later, whattaguy) despite her
>babysitter hassle because she is insured by John Hancock,
>another of a lesbian couple in a hospital delivering a baby with no
>worries 'cause their premiums are paid -- hey and it's very cool that
>they didn't even use the word lesbian, they just showed it, oh yeah,
>fuckin with the bible belt right in the middle of america's (2nd)
>greatest pasttime! ...Sure... That's how the people who make
>commercials can live with themselves: they actually think they're
>doing something! Yet another spot featured a Brian Lambish
>looking gent offering an inside look at a late-night internet help-
>desk office populated by a heavily gothed pierced tatooed sexually
>ambiguous satanic phone operator, and mr. Lambish offering an
>button-down serious biz alternative (well, the real Lamb's alright,
>you know, it's just the phenotype they were using). Also there is
>that Normal, Ohio show which is an excuse for gay-bashing alibied
>as liberation, no?
Capitalism, in itself, does not "liberate" human beings, sexually or otherwise. It simply introduces a new terrain of struggles, in this case by reorganizing the mode of reproduction while reshaping what we make of it. In the process of capitalist reorganization of the mode of reproduction, we (in rich imperial nations) became "liberated" from some of the old ways (e.g., marriage for the purpose of producing male heirs); at the same time, we got "interpellated" into assuming new "identities": "heterosexual, homosexual, & bisexual."
This process of reorganization, however, is not a linear process of Progress. In rich imperial nations, the innovations of reproductive technologies have reintroduced the sense that "infertility" is a "medical condition" to be "cured." A good number of women came to seek this "cure," at tremendous physical & financial costs. After the end of actually existing socialism, women in ex-Eastern bloc nations lost past gains & have been suffering from the renovated & intensified gendered division of labor. Fundamentalism is reactionary in the true sense of the word: a mixture of the modern reaction against capitalist modernization & the selective accommodation to it. Consider the state of Iranian women after the Iranian revolution against the Shah, for instance.
Yoshie