Gender relations

Franz Erhard Walther, 1983 - Paris, Centre Pompidou - by A. Barake

Still digesting the readings from Thanksgiving...

I read Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" recently, and as I was driving in this morning, it hit me how such a study can be a good reflection on the state of gender relations at a point in time yet how it is just that, a touch point  since these relations are so varied, so much in flux, constantly evolving and I asked myself if her study was of any use in day-to-day life.

The sample size being dealt with is huge- 3 billion give or take a few million on each side of the equation, and this results in a large variety of sexual behaviours, variability and variety. The middle of the bell curve is very broad, even if we limit it to Western culture, as she does.

Yes, we are a laboratory for sex, as we should be. Until we get totally artificial about it, survival and renewal require this experimentation. Since our brains are so adaptable, interest in sex requires huge variety I guess. There is no end to the variations, and the minor things are as exciting as the major ones, however you define the categories. Marketing and advertising depend on this instinct as their currency of the new.

Despite the difficulty of categorizing such a complex topic, De Beauvoir's expose covers and uncovers much ground. Her method is to work at the delta she perceives between gender status, behaviour and emotion in every context of her time, and historically where she can.

One observation which struck me was the notion that a large number of  women she observed define themselves through a male spouse or mate, as a means to gain territory, because of the cultural power disparity that existed. Desire and power, the old story, examined with great perspicacity and dissected and countered with new approaches. The central thesis of the book.

I extrapolated this notion to the study of relations between gay men and hetero women - to try to answer the question of why there can be friendly attraction without sexual attraction. Also, to test whether there was a converse with lesbians and hetero men. There isn't in a general sense. De Beauvoir has a chapter on lesbianism, and she concludes that the relation between heterosexual and same-sex desire is much closer and symmetrical in women than in men.

Having also read what Camille Paglia says about homosexuality, I am not sure that one can conclude anything like that. The spectrum is very broad as I wrote earlier, and maybe de Beauvoir's snapshot is just a reflection of what she could see, or what was visible when she wrote the book at mid-century.

Gender relations and sex remain very difficult things to generalize about, and I think it goes back to the idea that we are attracted to the new, to variety, and that behaviours that test and taste that variety are usually good for evolution, for survival, so long as they are not culturally or biologically damaging.

As the culture and the population widen, the behaviours that can be experimented with can grow, there are wider safety margins, and there is also motivation and opportunity. The taboos and secrecy around sex that act as cultural anchors to maintain tribal cohesion loosen as the tribe expands to include the planet's population. The need for protectionism disappears, reflecting the monetary and commercial globalization.

This may be why there is a resurgence of fundamentalist thought, a backlash, a clinging to what can be perceived as a moral high-ground, based on limited communications, limited population size, limited cultural migration. Pockets of resistance.

Oh yes, the book was banned by the Vatican. Go figure.

Half-baked vs open to possibilities? A manifesto.

studio series A. Barake 2008

I like the unfinished.

Whether it be studies, sketches, snippets of songs, or first drafts.

They seem alive, they allow for the future.

The future that I can choose to defer, giving me the hope of potential, of life going on.

Half-baked means that dinner is coming.

I also like the fully realized. It is post-coital, closure, comfort, time for closing the eyes and savoring.

So what is left not to like in this spectrum?

The mediocre, the completed in haste, the delivered for money not love, the faked, the cliche , the pandering to mass appeal, the blue smoke sentimentality of bad films by Spielberg and his ilk.

Playing the devil's advocate, I can see that the charges of laziness and lack of discipline can be laid. Other lesser judgements could be "wishy-washy", indecisive, uncommitted.

Yes, all valid categories for this approach, but the Venn diagram is flawed. These are not super sets of the incomplete. The incomplete is the super set of the attributes I list, and of many others. The incomplete action is the existential act, the rest is just noise and judgement. Being incomplete may not lead to riches, mass appeal, or to classic status, but it can reflect life and happiness. Certainly for me.

Themes versus categories

From my flickr

Trying to make sense of experiences and events can lead to categorization.

I try to resist that, given that I think and have written here that categorizations are usually trade-offs between understanding and convenience.

A grouping is as good as the criteria used for grouping, and there's the rub.

Rational categorizations, the ones used by encyclopedias, are part of our cultural thinking. What I think is missing from the cultural tool arsenal is emotional grouping. (I really should say it is missing from the serious argumentative arsenal, but is very present in rhetoric, which can have a bad name.)

I think the reason for that is individuality. Emotions are based on experience, and this differentiates the perceived and experiential validity of the grouping depending on the audiences' family, clan, nation, etc... This may be why AI is so hard.

But...

now we have the means to not generalize.

We can simulate individuals, mirror them really, and build networks of relationships, like Facebook and other network applications do, and map the emotional gradients and correlate to the other more usual and accepted categorizations and deal with the rhetoric.

But I did not begin this post to write about that.

I want to write about the notion of theme, which is a categorization of emotion and fact, intertwined, used in the arts.

Let me give an example: the outsider theme

I was reading Edward Said's autobiography over (Canadian) Thanksgiving, where he talks about his feelings of being between cultures, and I related it to other immigrant and emigrant writings. Rushdie provides liner notes to Said's book, and I believe that Hitchens was a supporter and friend. I mention this because both are contrarians and sometimes wilful outsiders.

How to describe, or even define the theme of "the outsider"? How does it differ from a category?

Outsiders may feel kinship based on the feeling of belonging, which is rooted in emotion, even in biology.
Attempting to completely categorize the theme of the outsider with words will fail, because one has to feel as an outsider to completely know and understand. Sometimes the feeling is due to internal stuff: memories, wounds, predispositions, inheritance, rather than external immediate factors. It is not reliably induce-able and I would also say that it is not measurable - yet.

For example, a novel's or a painting's theme is a shot in the dark, a collection of experiences and perceptions manipulated to model a simulacrum or resonance of the theme in the audience's mind.

The success of the work depends on the accuracy of the resonance between "player" and "listener", and sometimes on the group think that comes with it, the meme concept, aided by marketing, and that is how culture moves along and changes. Evolution in action.

Happy (survivalist) themes succeed more easily, thus escapist magic, futuristic fantasy, sex stuff. Stuff that is more emotionally ambivalent like Graham Greene's and J.M. Coetzee's  works provide themes that can take root, sometimes grow into the main thread, the canon, produce seed, and thus can join other classics in the taxonomy or network of thematic relationships we call culture.

Themes versus categories. We can now manage thematic encyclopedias. The Web is the perfect tool for this.