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Ladies and Gents: How Ya Gonna Act?

  
  

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The Natural Way
06:45 / 05.04.02
God, does anyone really believe that fetish is genderless? Fetish is just a bloody portal into a whole world of sexy narratives....and who deals in degendered sexy narratives?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:35 / 05.04.02
Fleegled by Grant:

Chocolate is sexy, and it has no gender.

I think Dao's theory's refutation of this would probably be something along the lines of "No, because the *enjoyment* of chcolate is physical, and to enjoy something physically you need a body, and if you have a body you must have a gender, and your gender will affect how your body processes and reacts to the chociolate, so the sexiness of chocolate is inextricably linked to gender." Or "Don't be so ridiculous, you infantile nematode; chocolate is so unsexy that it might even go out with you", depending on which It's-a-bit-more-complicated-than-that avatar he is being today.
 
 
Dao Jones
10:04 / 05.04.02
I would never call anyone I didn't like a nematode.

I also don't deliberately complicate. That's not part of the ethos. I do attack entrenched positions - 'revolutionary correctness', if you like - ideas which are unassailable by virtue of their apparent moral or ideological rightness, never mind whether they actually work, or represent what really goes on.

Regarding chocolate, I'd say that since chocolate makes happy hormones in the brain similar to those produced during sex, it's more the case that chocolate and sex are a similar kind of pleasurable. If we then describe chocolate as sexy, it's because we're mired in a sexual understanding of the world and the body, and that throws us right back into issues of sex, sexuality and gender.

But to be honest, I think that if you take a look at what I said before, I pretty much covered that with my more broadly-formulated version.
 
 
No star here laces
11:37 / 05.04.02
"And are we, I ask again, limited to gendered or "gender-ambiguous" for discourses of the sexy? Can something not be sexy but genderless?"

Clearly it cannot. Sex is no longer about simple heterosexual binary gender encounters. But that is its origin, and it's meaning when applied to animal and botanical reproduction. So I would suggest that sex and gender are inextricably linked in the human mind, even though our interpretation of gender within sex has been hugely exploded by the direction our sexual behaviour has taken.
 
 
Lurid Archive
12:08 / 05.04.02
Fetsishes can be part of a gender based narrative, but I don't think they have to be.

aussieintn: Actually, I was sort of quoting you when I said that patterns of behaviour were part of personality but I see the distinction you are making. I was definitely thinking about the problem of applying the scientific method to psychology. In particular, your contention that one should rarely interpret change of behaviour as a change of personality. I think I can see how behaviour can change without personality also changing, but are you saying that this is (in a mature personality) the way such change should almost always be interpreted? That leaves me unclear as to what you are saying personality is.
 
 
grant
14:34 / 05.04.02
Regarding chocolate, I'd say that since chocolate makes happy hormones in the brain similar to those produced during sex, it's more the case that chocolate and sex are a similar kind of pleasurable. If we then describe chocolate as sexy, it's because we're mired in a sexual understanding of the world and the body, and that throws us right back into issues of sex, sexuality and gender.


Maybe implying sex by its absence - since the brain-response is similar, but it's all about tongues and stomachs and brains (which aren't quite so gender-determined) and not about genitals.
 
 
Morlock - groupie for hire
15:23 / 05.04.02
Sexy is in the eye (mind) of the beholder? In which case gender is only as relevant as the observer believes it to be.

I'm reminded of the thread a while back about people's mental images of Barbelithers as yet unmet in meatspace. Attraction to the idea of a person.

Hmm, must think some more.
 
 
bitchiekittie
15:32 / 05.04.02
Maybe implying sex by its absence - since the brain-response is similar, but it's all about tongues and stomachs and brains (which aren't quite so gender-determined) and not about genitals

there are a lot of people wouldnt put anything lacking the genitals or some method of stimulating such in the "sexy" category....more of "in the eye of the beholder". for some the entire concept of sex is held completely within those boundaries - "the ol in-and-out", and the reaching of that “ultimate” goal - which is where a lot of confusion comes from. if you cant separate the act of sex from the idea, then where can you go?
 
 
Disco is My Class War
03:14 / 06.04.02
My brain is still in a puddle of post-direct-action mush, but I just want to say that this thread interests me, both in its original form about whether 'girly-girl' posters get taken seriously or not, and about sexiness 'without' gender. Maybe, just maybe, it might be constructive to loosen the definition of 'gender' to something consisting in more than two categories?
 
 
grant
21:19 / 08.04.02
I think, from a theoretical standpoint, I prefer the idea of temporary genders to multiple genders.
If all the sub-categories of techno confuse me, how can I keep track of multiple genders?
 
  

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