Charles Brown wrote:
> biological heterosexuality
Why is it so important to you to defend this concept? What's at stake?
Doug
^^^^ CB: You know: fact-checking.
>From the standpoint of theory , the truth is at stake :That many humans
have biological heterosexual instinct is the truth, a fact.
By the way, the full statement , full truthful proposition is: Many humans have heterosexual biological instinct, and therefore heterosexual relations are the result of both cultural learning and instinct. I am not saying that heterosexual relations are not the product of culture. They are the product of both biology and culture, _both_ They are unusual as compared to most other human conduct in which the structure is less determined by biology. Heterosexual symbolic relations are unusually "heavy" in their signified component, as compared with most other human relations.
The truth in what Butler is espousing is that in general human relations are heavily weighted to the signifier side. That is the lesson of structuralism, Levi-Straussian structuralism in the first place, in origin. Levi-Strauss is the originator of structuralism as used by Butler and the others , Foucault , Lacan et al.
>From the standpoint of practice ,mass consciousness of this truth is as
desirable as mass consciousness of any important social scientific claim
or fact. By knowing this truth and others, masses are more likely to
live better lives, socially. Do the right thing. Make the revolution
,even.
Actually, masses kind of already know this. This is one of those situations where academics, particularly social and arts discipline academics, know less than non-academics ( "on average" , in comparing Bell curves of the two groups, academics/non-academics. Of course , _some_ academics know it, and some "non-academics" don't)
So, in a way, the reason for giving left voice to this fact on heterosexuality is to help retain or obtain mass credibility for left theory and ideology, political education. Masses are more likely to listen to the left on all our other issues if we have a factual, credible position on this. If we go around saying in our theoretical political education statements that heterosexual attraction is 100% the product of learning, people will be less likely to believe us on our claims on other social facts on which we have the factual position, like class, race, other dimensions of gender.
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