On Mon, 6 Oct 2003, joanna bujes wrote:
> Miles writes:
>
> "When people like me say
> "sexuality is socially constructed", this is what we mean:
> the translation of sexual activity into sexual identity is
> historically and culturally contingent, not natural and
> necessary."
>
> What confuses me is the need to build an identity around an act.
> Sometimes I am inspired to make love to a woman; sometimes to a man. So
> what? Why do we have to construct an ideology, or an identity, or
> anything out of that?
>
> This is not pretended obtuseness; it's a real question.
>
> Joanna
>
I agree it's a crucial sociopolitical question. Why did the linkage between the sexual act and the sexual type occur? It's clearly not innocent, nor necessary, nor inevitable. --A bit of vulgar marxist speculation: the maintenance of an ideology of individualism, of people with "deep" sexual identities, is a crucial component of modern capitalism.
Elton John CDs, blow 'em up Hollywood movies, Judy Garland DVDs, Monday night football: an endless array of products to celebrate, demonstrate (and most of all delineate) sexual types. To be gay/straight is to--buy the appropriate constellation of commodities. I don't suggest this is a conscious strategy on anyone's part, but like much of capitalism, it's an emergent property of a system that "individualizes" consumers.
--And dare I draw an analogy between religion & sexual identities in a capitalist regime? Heart of a heartless world, opium of the masses, and all that?
Miles