From: smorine@nyx.cs.du.edu (Suzanne Morine)
Subject: Re: Challenging Gender Roles (was 2 straight 2 B gay)
Keywords: sex, gender, dogma, gay rights
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 20:03:55 GMT


joelp@cs.man.ac.uk (Joel Parthemore || Pharos Project) writes:
>Suzanne (Morine) (smorine@nyx.cs.du.edu) writes:
>    >joelp@cs.man.ac.uk (Joel Parthemore || Pharos Project) writes:

[puzzling disagreement about the use of the word "awe" wrt sex deleted]

I couldn't figure out what this disagreement was about, and looked up
the word "awe" (and "awful") in the dictionary, really as a distraction.

Um  ...turns out I was using an obsolete meaning of the word "awe":
"fear or dread"  <blush, laugh> :-D   I don't know how I mapped that
meaning onto "awe", unless it was all of those religion classes in
the Catholic schools...

Actually, the "deliberate ignorance" type of idea you bring up later rings
true of what I think I had in mind - along with "fear or dread".  Maybe 
there's a fear/dread I've sensed people projecting onto sex/gender issues
that finds expression in a deliberate ignorance.  Sometime, when I'm not
so sick of this  :-), maybe I'll set out to find a word or phrase that
describes the phonomenon I was referring to.  I did use examples and other
words besides for "awe", so, hopefully, I got the idea across already.

Anyway, now the disagreement makes a lot of sense.  The first definition
of "awe" (not to be confused with "awww", which is said to little babies
:-) ) in my dictionary is "an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration,
fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful,
or the like."

Seems like an involuntary type of thing, and I can see why you objected
to what would read as my apparently implying that sex should not be
held in awe - as if one could control such a feeling.  It's just as
true that you coudn't tell someone *to* feel awe; awe can't be directed
from the outside.  I don't know if a directive is what you were trying
to convey here, but it seems like it, from the emphasis on "should":

>        >>Well, hmm, I think sex *should* be held in awe.  I think
>        >>it is held in awe for good reason:  the drives behind it seem
>        >>central to our definition of human....

>    >When I said "awe", I was thinking of an awe of the fact of sex.

>I think I grok, but the facts of sex probably awe me (or ``overawe'' me) as
>much as the emotional experience of it.  They intertwine.

My definition of sex seems to be much more basic than yours.  Something
involving at least two bodies, with at least one of them reaching orgasm.
A sort of minimal definition that includes everything from what a prostitute
sells to customers to what a loving couple does together.  Note that it also
includes adult rape and child rape. 

That people blithely talk about sex as if it could never be anything bad,
such as the last two, or even just an unpleasant experience, boggles my
mind.  What other subject is handled this way - divided into the good and
the bad, calling the "good" one thing ("sex"), and the "bad" another thing
("rape")?  (And an "unpleasant sexual experience" simply does not happen
- of course!)  To my mind, sex is sex, and, like 'most anything else, it's
value depends on how it's used and in what situation.  I don't see any
reason for this special treatment of the sex act.  Like "using a child
harness" (note: these aren't always used irresponsibly) or "killing"
(note: you can kill a fly), the name of an activity can call to mind
any of a range of values and meanings.  ('Nuff said...)

Interestingly enough, it's that sort of special treatment of the subject
of sex which I was noting in my previous posts!  Nothing directed at you
specifically; a lot of people use the "sex = good" equation.

>Sex seems forever to be talked about (soap operas, dreadful pop love ballads,
>supermarket tabloids) and never *talked* about (the lack of awareness of safer
>sex, the plight of gay teenagers).

Yes.

> The awe-inspiring Reality gets substituted
>with something we can handle more easily, feel in control of: Love is
>substited by love, Sensuality with sensuality.  Anything that hearkens back to
>the truly *awesome* Reality is going to make people uncomfortable.

This is an interesting distinction.  It calls to my mind a sort of
progression:

People want to communicate, and words get invented to convey ideas.  One
word has to mean the same thing to anyone using and/or hearing the word
- otherwise communication does not happen.  We learned this so very
painfully this week with the word "awe"...!  So if the idea behind a word
is not fitting reality (what people usually try to talk about, of course),
that idea behind the word suddenly becomes a *hinderance* to communication.

*Then* some people start to prefer the alternate reality formed by the
ideas behind words, preferring it over Reality (as you put it), and we
start seeing things like:

[from later in your post:]
>My experience of ``traditional family values'' suggests that they require
>maintaining an active level of ignorance between people, and of course,
>careful maintenance of the image:  reality substitutes for Reality.

Then suppose some reality-avoiders happen to use only myths that society
doesn't happen to challenge by, say, the person's middle ages.  Having
never learned to face facts (or to question their assumptions), their
reality-avoidant behavior has by now become a solid model for their
children.  Their children learn, quite naturally, that it doesn't matter
what's in Reality (as you say) because the alternate-reality is what one
has to report to.

This can go on for generations.  And these people don't know why they
think like they do nor why they should change it.  Yes?  We're back to
the type of world where some subjects are not looked at realistically
(communications and/or hands, alternatively, sex and gender).

---------
>My mother once told me something to the effect that you're not *supposed* to
>know the person you're married to....  (She and Dad have been married 38
>years.)

That's priceless!!!  Ha Ha Ha


>We create structures to contain (confine) things that cannot be contained in
>structures. But without structures, we could never understand anything at
>all....  Form is useful.  Form is necessary.  Form breaks down.

To my mind, we have to communicate, these structures have to get formed
and will be flawed.  Fine, we keep refining them.  It is no surprise that
some people start thinking the structure is all there is.  They even protest
the refining/fixing process, etc.

----------
>Ever wonder about the people who talk about their ``awful'' childhoods, and
>express great gratitude that they're over?

	awful  adj.  1. inspiring fear; dreadful; terrible.
	  2. extremely bad; unpleasant; ugly.  3. full of awe;
	  reverential.  4. solemnly impressive,; inspiring awe.

No, I don't wonder about them; it always seemed obvious to me they meant the
sort of "awful" described in the first two definitions!

---------
>Sex -- or rather, the feelings and motions that found their expression in sex
>-- *did* change my life and my identity.  [..situational details deleted for
>brevity..]

So sex was the agent of that personal change, of what came to light, for
you - much like an envelope and paper can carry an important message...yes?


---------
>So why do Christians keep wanting to put God somewhere ``out there''? --
>safely out of reach.  Why are people so bad at finding God in each other?
>(And I can't stand the ``my buddy Jesus'' stuff that people come up with,
>either.  ``Well I was just chatting with him, and he said....'')

Are these rhetorical questions?

I'm hesitant to answer them because I only know for sure what you mean by
the last example, and those people are so rare (I think I've met 2, maybe
3 in my lifetime) that I won't generalize.  My own sense with these people
has been that they want to make me jealose, or to make me feel lacking, or
even cowed by their holiness - basically that they're insecure.  Just
"Armchair Psychoanalysis".  Also, sometimes it seemed they wanted to get
attention.  Breakfasting with Jesus, indeed.

And, maybe a distant god is a non-threatening god, and claims of
closeness to god can keep other people away, too.  Just maybe.

And I like to consider: how likely is it that someone with a personal
relationship with god would wear it as a badge.  Wouldn't they share
the love/knowledge/whatever?  The people I think of when I read your
questions couldn't even get their character's role right.

>    >After all, can a person totally understand another person? No.

>Thankfully.  Otherwise we'd run out of things to do, at which point we might
>as well close shop and die.

Hey!  Speak for yourself.  Me, I live for ideas.

-------
About "Roles":
(me)
>    >I can't imagine any large descriptive pair of roles for men
>    >and women that could actually work for a majority - even a
>    >narrow majority - of the people.

>Again, I don't exactly follow your use of ``large''.

"Large" and "big" were words I threw in just in case you might decide that
I was saying there is *no* difference between men and women - an absurdity.
When I threw the word "large" in, I thought, oh, surely he won't jump to
such a ridiculous inference from my statements.  Maybe I should have
said "involved, detailed, roles" instead of "large descriptive pair of
roles"; you still seemed to infer that I don't know some basic facts:

>Women and men are, at some level, biologically different. [...]  But
>somewhere, we are biologically different [...] We are not a race of androgenes,
>[...]

No.  Duh.  Really?!  :-)  !!!!

--------
And More About "Roles":
>[...] aren't, as you observe, descriptive at all -- because they're fixed,
>because they're used for fitting people into, because they imply a certain way
>that things *should* be.

>One of my fascinating experiences of living in another culture (Germany,
>England) is the discovery that something like ``national character'' does seem
>to exist.  (And yes:  the stereotypical American really *does* exist.  Blaah.)
>Observations can be made about groups of people that simply do not apply at
>the individual level.  Groups and individual members of groups can be highly
>independent entities.

From those statements, and in some others, I think your meaning of "roles"
is a sort of anthropological one.  To observe a culture for a period of
time and note how things tended to work, to draw a sketch of the way a
culture worked.  I agree that such observations are useful.  (Also, I would
like to hear what americans look like to someone who has lived elsewhere
for long periods of time.  I imagine they'd be broad characterizations,
even caricatures, but still, interesting and perhaps useful.)

From my seat (and from the dictionary) "roles" are more like directives: an
act to play, along with concepts of what's "proper" and what's "not proper".

So our problems in coming to an agreement about the usefulness of roles
seems to be down to our defining "role" differently.  I think we agree
much more than it has appeared so far.  I think that as long as the
observations do not become directives, that works fine - I think is also
what you've been saying.

--
--Suzanne Morine          smorine@nyx.cs.du.edu
--"Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort
--of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle."  Helen Keller
--