> well, my pointing out that my pussy is a biological "fact" as much as
> brian's desire to fuck other men is a biological "fact" was playing on
> precisely what should trouble you when you read the statement brian
> originally made, to wit:
>
> "There seems to be no advantage to suppress people's desire. And
> unlike race, gender, ethnicity, etc., sexual desire is not socailly
> constructed."
>
> he wanted to cordon off gayness as a special case. everything else is
> socially constructed, according to the assertion, but sexual desire is
> not. The problem, it seems to me, is that such an assumption
> fundamentally misunderstands--as Katha Pollitt seems to have done on
> this list a while back--what people mean when they talk about how
> things are "socially constructed." (see the archives. search terms
> katha, barbara ehrenreich, time magazine)
I've read this message over and over-- and it's probably no fault of Kelley's that I can't tell what's being argued here.
It might help to define what "socially constructed" means. Does this term apply solely to social conventions (i.e., blue for boys, pink for girls)? Does it apply to social conventions which arose because they seem to work, or fulfill a strong utilitarian basis (the development of paper economies, the training system for physicians, the shapes of chairs)? Is it a catch-all for anything that's not solely derived from the genes or the brain (capacity for language, eye color, bilateral symmetry), even if we have _no idea_ if it's socially "constructed" or not?
Frankly, when people say that _anything_ is "socially constructed," I suspect that people are simply using quasi-technical terms to look sophisticated. It's an easy win-win. If you're describing something that's actually very simple and straightforward, using technical verbiage makes you appear to be more precise. But, if you're describing something vague and ill-defined, or something which no one else seems to grasp, then the technical terms make this wispy stuff _seem_ more substantial.