Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Banter 43: Gender & Sexuality - The Identity, Cultural Contexts, Language, & Biology Of

Sunday, January 13th at 6pm
at Jill Alexander's house (cfalls)

This fall, Naya has been filling out college applications.  Some offer her the standard three options for gender: Male, Female, Decline to Answer.  Others offer her 32+ options for her gender.  As an 18 year old who has grown up watching society actively morph in further support of expanding concepts of gender and sexuality, she advocates for people being able to be whatever/whoever/with whomever they wish to.  She was in attendance at Interlochen Arts Academy when the transgender policy changed, and the first transgender kids switched cabins; this context & these insights are so different from my own at that age. Yet, she pauses upon seeing 32+ options becoming the norm on an application, and she'll have to fill us in on which box she ticked.  Also she said the applications ask what your personal pronoun preference is - him/her, they/them, ze/zie (zeself/zieself), hir/hirs. I'm using Naya and these college app. experiences to frame the topic, not because she is that well-steeped in current trends on these topics, but because her experiences even in rural, pretty homogenous Montana, are so much different than our experiences of society in the varying decades we each were her age.  It's likely that none of our college applications or job applications offered us more than two gender options, for example.  As ever, the world we imagined to be solid is actively changing and churning like a glacier grinding on the bedrock beneath. 

 Here are those 32 genders, though this list is now viewed as fairly limited.



I've come across a few lists for 2018 that have 112 genders.  It's fascinating to read through the definitions.  Are these genders, or are these moods, or are these expanding valuation of those around us, or are these taking this too far, or do we have farther to take this?

In reading these genders, they seem tied to sexuality more than I expected (or want), but sexual orientation bridges into the second part of our topic.  Some websites espouse 17 or so sexual orientations, while others list around 10, and of course these numbers seem a bit categorical.  Here's a basic overview from a university website of about 10 sexual orientations:  http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/sexinfo/article/overview-sexual-orientations








Let's dive into these topics, look at our biases and blindspots, avoid confusing ourselves/our experiences with others, learn new information, apply it to ourselves (maybe in ways we never have!) and apply it to those around us, and then gather and discuss artfully and graciously and honestly.

I'm so glad that our group is comprised of different age groups, some varying socioeconomic contexts, mildly varying cultural contexts; yet we appear to be largely cisgender and prone to heterosexual relationships and white.  I wonder if it would be possible, in addition to gathering materials for the blog, to draw in a person or two who has a different ethnicity, gender sense, sexuality sense, etc., not just for this discussion topic, but in general for the good of our group?  I'll be trying to woo my friend Jared from Berkeley to make a January trip out; this topic is something he has studied and explored much much more than me, and his setting of Berkeley helps that tremendously as well. In a convo we had last week about these topics, he said, "I am quite interested in abolishing most references to gender, and degendering all things non-human, personally.  Frankly, I rarely see gender as a useful explanatory or descriptive mechanism." I've also just met a Blackfoot spoken word poet who I'd like to ask; this poet would offer such a differing vantage point and is also well-versed in "non-mainstream" concepts of gender and sexuality.
_____________________________________________________ Contributions:

 From Nia (though she can't come yet):

"Gender is Not a Spectrum" by Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, Aeon, 2016.  Written by a political philosopher at the University of Warwick (UK).
https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison
_____________________________________________________
From Mitch:

 I have steeped myself in researching this topic and, yet, found no good, simple external source to share...just posting some thoughts I had as I studied.

The concept that sexuality didn’t fit into two categories wasn’t taught to me until late high school (through the Kinsey 7 category hetero/homo-sexual scale’).

The idea of continuum and scales as it related to sexual attraction was eye-opening to me.

Being slow on the uptake this topic helped me to learn that there are, actually, four components to sexual identity all of which, also, are on a scale:

Sex
Gender
Attraction
Expression

I like how that is framed and it helped me understand and empathize with the complexities that non-binary individuals face in defining themselves (and being ‘defined’ by society).

Here is where I become a bit of a selfish curmudgeon, though. 

Kinsey said that ‘it is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories…the living world in a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.’

I know this to be true. Unfortunately, human nature is to categorize, define and put everything into neat little buckets.

I celebrate the wide diversity of human sexual expression and attraction but I cringe and kick and fight against the creation of a term for every, virtual infinite, combination. 

I am a lumper, not a splitter. I dislike boxes.

As someone who’s sex, gender and expression align, with an attraction to the opposite sex, I know am swimming in a pretty large, boring bucket of gender identity privilege (where every rom-com is written for me).

I recognize that it is selfish to complain about new terminology when society has binary labels that apply pretty well to me already.

For the record, I’m down with the pronoun. It took me years to learn to use the preferred 'he/she' pronouns for trans acquaintances and I am ashamed that it, initially, felt ‘weird’ to do so.  I am also cool with 'they/their/them' when that is preferred. 

What I am struggling with is the creation of hundreds of labels for infinite set of possibilities for sexual identity and expression.

The inner hippy in me just took a big drag and wants to say, ‘Labels are bullshit, man. Can’t we all just be people traveling on our own cosmic journeys.'

It’s cool if people want to create terms and find them helpful for conversation, but too many can cloud communication and create arbitrarily confining delineations.

It reminds me of music sub-genres. 

Electronic Dance Music is diverse. Knowing the difference between Ambient and Techno is helpful if you dig the music, but only the hardest core fans are going to care about the nuances between Detroit, Acid, and Dub Techno (and many of them will be spending more time fighting over categorization than simply enjoying the music). 

From a sexual identity perspective, for acquaintances, I may need to know if someone is Country or Rock and Roll. 'Do you prefer ‘you’ or ’y’all’?'. I don't need to get into the sub-genres. 

For my close friends and lovers I don’t want a label for preferred sub-genres at all. Give me poetry, prose and song about sex, gender, attraction and expression…not societies boring, prescriptive labels.
____________________________________________________

 From Isaac (via his sister in law, Gender Studies prof. at U. of Idaho):
_______________________________________________________________________________

From Sabine:



The first time I walked up to this sculpture at the Louvre, I walked up looking at it from this angle, from behind.  I didn't know the title of it.  I simply was drawn by the long, exquisite female curve of bum, hip, low back, shoulder, hint of breast, neck, all impossibly made to look so soft out of marble.  It caught my breath.  I was 19 or 20 and hadn't seen art of this quality before.  I fell in love, pupils dilated, I had found my place and purpose in an instant - amid the arts.  Then I walked around to the other side of the statue.  I was taken by total surprise.  I wish I could see a photo or video of my face and body language in that moment, as I recall it being a full body response.  And then I broke into a deeply pleased smile for my second reaction, "Ah, art, only you, I'll be loyal forever."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5eI_-9ZQ5g  (see the full walk around here)

I think there is worthwhile terrain for us to discuss at banter night in that reaction and body response to the sculpture (and to the topics at hand) in all variation of people who might approach said statue from behind.  Also, I visually prefer standing behind the statue, or looking at it from the angle of the image above.  I don't think this is because of the lack of penis from this angle; rather, I think the lines of the sculpture are more pleasing, but perhaps I am deluding myself, and like Isaac's film above, I want guises and disguises in place.

Also, the history of the statue is interesting.  It conveys to me how this stuff is new to some of us based on our own contexts, so we react to our contexts bumping into other contexts, but this stuff is so not new.  Can we talk of that feeling (that many feel in society right now) of things being new and totally revamped and changed from the old, tried and true, ways, when these gender/sexuality fluid concepts are no more new than being human gently hammering away at our own form in a block of rock.

Sleeping Hermaphrodite history, pulled from the Louvre website: 

The ambivalence and voluptuous curves of this figure of Hermaphroditos, who lies asleep on a mattress sculpted by Bernini, are still a source of fascination today. His body merged with that of the nymph Salmacis, whose advances he had rejected, Hermaphroditos, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, is represented as a bisexed figure. The original that inspired this figure would have dated from the 2nd century BC, reflecting the late Hellenistic taste for the theatrical.

The modern history of the statue

Discovered in Rome near the Baths of Diocletian in 1608, this statue was one of the most admired masterpieces of the Borghese Collection in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1619, Cardinal Scipione Borghese commissioned the Baroque Italian sculptor Bernini to carve the mattress on which the ancient marble now lies. In the same year, David Larique worked on the restoration of the figure of Hermaphroditos. The work came to the Louvre after it had been bought, together with the rest of the Borghese Collection, by Napoleon I from his brother-in-law, Prince Camillo Borghese. Although the figure of Hermaphroditos in the Louvre is the best known, three other versions of the ancient statue have sometimes been compared with it: that of Velletri (also in the Louvre), that in the Uffizi in Florence, and a third version in the Villa Borghese in Rome.

The story of Hermaphroditos

There is nothing improper in this work, but it still intrigues the viewer. Hermaphroditos, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, had rejected the advances of the nymph Salmacis. Unable to resign herself to this rejection, Salmacis persuaded Zeus to merge their two bodies forever, hence the strange union producing one bisexed being with male sexual organs and the voluptuous curves of a woman. Stretched out in erotic abandon on the mattress provided by Bernini, the figure sleeps. Yet Hermaphroditos has only fallen half asleep: the twisting pose of the body and the tension apparent down to the slightly raised left foot are indicative of a dream state.

An embodiment of Hellenistic taste

This work is a Roman copy that was probably inspired by a Greek original of the 2nd century BC. Pliny the Elder cites a Hermaphroditus Nobilis by Polykles (Natural History, XXXIV, 80), but since he does not describe it, one hesitates to compare it with this sleeping Hermaphroditos. The subject reflects the taste for languid nudes, surprise effects, and theatricality, all of which were prized in the late Hellenistic period. The work is designed to be viewed in two stages. First impressions are of a gracious and sensuous body that leads one to think that the figure is a female nude in the Hellenistic tradition; this effect is heightened here by the sinuousness of the pose. The other side of the statue then brings a surprise, revealing the figure's androgynous nature by means of the crudest realism. This effect of contrast and ambiguity, indeed this taste for the strange that plays with the viewer's emotions, is the result of the theatricality of some Hellenistic art. This utopian combination of two sexes is sometimes interpreted as a half-playful, half-erotic creation, designed to illustrate Platonic and more general philosophical reflections on love.

From Jill Alexander: 

  • Judith Butler's Gender Trouble:  http://lauragonzalez.com/TC/BUTLER_gender_trouble.pdf
  • Gender comments from Jill: 

    Starting with the science that all mammals at conception are female, and that there needs to be two inherent shifts to become male — a hormonal one and a gonadal one — my own take from that is that we are all both to begin with since the two interruptions excite the nascent clitoris to extend into a penis, and the embryonic fallopian tubes to become testicles.

    In the past, studies that showed little differences in male and female were not taken seriously nor published.

    However, there are significant differences in some areas as shown in other studies:

    • Girls have greater verbal ability early on
    • Boys excel at mathematics
    • Boys have better visual-spatial acuity
    • Boys are more aggressive

    Social settings tend to magnify differences as boys tend to play with other boys and girls with other girls which interact into adulthood.

    I went to Mills College and in the 80s Mills realized that while their students — all women — tended towards high performance in most areas, they proved less strong in mathematics and the hard sciences.  They rewrote the curriculum to include both subjects as continuing core courses, and the first graduating class from the curriculum had a small percentage of graduating women going into graduate school in those fields.  At the end of a decade, slightly less than 50% of the women were taking on math and science in graduate school.  So impressive was the outcome of this change that other women’s colleges incorporated the Mills curriculum into their own with similar results.

    Johns Hopkins Medical School many decades ago took on transgender surgeries when all that was available were out of the country places that did them with unspectacular and often botched results.  The Medical School did a thorough program at every level to take on these unhappy men and women — mostly male into female — to study “differences.”  I’ll say more about their findings at Banter Night.

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