Birth.Movies.Death top editor Devin Faraci steps down after sexual assault accusation

@Lyzzy

Alright, I think I getcha.

@Alan

Yeah, but : If you believe that women are pressured by a patriarchal society to perform heterosexuality for the benefit of men/ hegemonial masculinity (leading to lots of regret, suffering, vague or missing consent etc) you’d be very likely to abhor the idea of using a similar dynamic to urge people to perform another kind of sexuality. This fine line between helping people deconstruct binaries and pressure them to have sex with you is one that (among others) a lot of transgender activist have to walk regarding cis lesbians — or bi folks who are new to the concept of us.

@Dali

I practice, I am extremely leery of dating cis men at this point in my life, but that has nothing to do with who I’m attracted to

Makes sense

I am amused when I cause people to question their sexual orientation

Thanks for that, btw ?

@Dalillama

I’ve encountered people who identify themselves as bisexual and mean that e.g. they’re attracted to men and nonbinary people but not women.

Can confirm – I’ve met folks who use this definition. Another definition I’ve seen argued, and which I think makes enough sense that I’m happy to use it for myself (it’ll do, y’know), is that if we take “bi” to mean “two”, then, fine – I’m attracted to folks who are the same gender to me, and also to folks who aren’t the same gender as me. That’s two groups!

And we now have the technological capacity to actually keep track of all those variables on a patient-specific basis, which, outside emergency situations such as Lyzzy is discussing, should remove the need to make any assumptions at all. So long as you’re going to your doctor/clinic, they can* have all your specific information at their fingertips.

*In principle. In practice there are a variety of issues, but they are mostly resolvable as part of the massive reform U.S. healthcare needs anyway

Agreed, totally. And, yeah, if someone tried to claim “we have to misgender our patients because the clinic’s so dreadfully underfunded”, I’d boot them into next week, cartoon style.

@Lyzzy

I meant that expecting people to overcome their social conditioning and actually love/have sex with people of all genders because their usual boundaries are very likely a social construct is considered beyond the pale for most activists. Although I’ll admit that it was nice getting a few quys sceptic of their heterosexuality /heteronormativity before I could finally have gender affirming surgery.

Sometimes I wonder if orientation should be something we only define retroactively. We reach the end of our lives, go over the records, tot up all the people we were attracted to, and calculate what our sexuality was. Then they can include it as a footnote in our obituary.

Re: big intersex discussion. Okay! So I’ve had interesting conversations with friends, speculating about a possible connection between both intersex and trans status and chimerism, vanishing twins, and other factors I don’t have enough education in biology to speak knowledgeably about. (I hasten to add that my friends were pontificating on their own experiences – we weren’t just, y’know, shootin’ the breeze about strangers’ bits.)

Keeping that in mind, as things stand generally, the term “hermaphrodite” is considered inappropriate to describe humans, due to significant and traumatic historical misuse, but is still used to describe other animals that use a different system of reproduction than ours. But, the thing about the legendary Hermaphroditus is that he was originally a man, was magically merged with another person (the nymph Salmacis), and became a new person with a new sexual configuration.

You can see how the legend aligns with my friends’ theories – enough that, being classicists, they thought “hermaphrodite” was quite a fitting term. Naturally, that’s just their particular viewpoint, and the term’s generally considered passe for entirely legitimate reasons – plus, hey, they could be all wrong, and trans and intersex phenomena have nothing to do with twins or chimerism after all. But, the legend certainly describes human experience better than it describes the kind of critters that are still called hermaphrodites. They don’t adhere to the human “can impregnate/can birth” binary, but not doing so is their normal – it’s not any kind of exception or rarity, like Hermaphroditus was. If anything, it’s just the bad old scientific misuse of the term being perpetuated, just ’cause trees and sea slugs can’t complain about it being both historically and literarily inappropriate.

I meant that expecting people to overcome their social conditioning and actually love/have sex with people of all genders because their usual boundaries are very likely a social construct is considered beyond the pale for most activists.

Yeah, because telling folks that they must have sex with some person/class of people, or else they are [insert some negative opinion about them] is, in fact, beyond the pale.

It would be nice if sexuality didn’t exist. But it does exist and it has real impacts on people. Expecting someone to overcome that = expecting them to have sex with people to whom they are not attracted = trying to require them to have some kind of “approved” sex = not okay.

We can address the social construct of sexuality, and work to overcome and get rid of it, without putting expectations onto the sex lives of individuals. Maybe later generations will have it better than we do wrt sexuality, but it’s not okay to tell anyone that they have to have sex with some person/group of people, or else we’re going to think less of them.

I also have to say that I’m not convinced that sexuality is entirely a social construct in the same way I’m not convinced that gender is entirely a social construct, and for the same reasons. If it were, then non-straight people wouldn’t exist. I mean, full stop. For hundreds of years everyone in Western society was socialized to be straight, and yet somehow non-straight people came out of that? Not sure how that’s supposed to work.

The social aspect of sexuality and the innate aspect are elided, which is not legit, and it would be great if that social aspect went away and people were no longer expected to perform sexuality. But once the performance of sexuality is gone, is innate sexuality gone? Are people just universally attracted to everyone at that point? I have to say that I don’t think it will work that way. I’m willing to be wrong on this, but I can’t come up with an explanation for why some people were socialized to be straight and yet are not straight without resorting to some innate characteristic that is much stronger than socialization.

Would it be anyone be willing to give me their impressions about how I view sex and gender? I’m working on my commenting rules for my blog (I’m a bit intimidated by the moral and ethical realities of planning to teach about aggression on the internet) and this would be a good time. I start with the rules I need for me as half of the ideas going in and this could be useful. One involves not getting overtly analytical of what people express without good reason. I don’t want to be threatening to people who are used to being analyzed in bad ways.

Would anyone prefer that I do not? If that is the case I don’t mind. I know that I have made some people uncomfortable from time to time and I accept that. I do get casual with the science on brains and human behavior, and sometimes too casual. Having an element of casualness is a habit because I’m used to conceptually disassembling myself as an object and the associated knowledge has been useful in things like arguments. But it’s a useful thing if I train it properly and I want to be entertaining on my blog.

I do try to have means of learning how to strip bias from the picture, but I would understand any skepticism. It’s a process of thinking about how the science combines with the people I interact with that I developed because of my “morally obsessional nature”. I have to account for human-“average”, human-tourette’s syndrome, human-adhd, human-ocd as entirely separate filters for interacting with the world outside of references or journal articles.

I want to make sure that the ideas about sex and gender that I have been tested so they can be at their best with respect to things like implicit bias and keeping it under tight control.

Also, there’s people who will follow their usual routines for dating so you think you have enthusiastic consent. Right up to the point where they tense up and stop you, horrified (or leave after the fact, or express their doubts and grief later etc).

I’m not going to deny that this is a thing, and I’m not going to deny that it feels really shitty and alienating when it happens to you. Pressuring people to have sex or else [we think less of them] is not the solution. I’ve been in the position of thinking everything was fine only to run into a sudden and unexpected wall of Not Fine, even though I appear to be cis; although this is an experience that more or less likely to occur given a person’s characteristics, it can happen to anyone.

I seem to have mixed two thoughts: Regrets about basically being seen as a monster / adopting that perspective as a possible outcome to minimize damage and trying to outline strategies for dating while in this condition.

You’re not a monster and I’m sorry you’ve ever been perceived as one. I don’t know how to interpret the rest of this in light of the original statement, which was about “expecting people to overcome their social conditioning and actually love/have sex with people of all genders because their usual boundaries are very likely a social construct”. It’s that word expect that is pinging my spider sense right now. There’s no way to expect someone to do something without being (or worse, performing) disappointment when they don’t do it. That is a form of pressure, and pressure in a sexual sphere gives me weird and unpleasant reactions.

People have bad reasons to refuse sex sometimes, transphobic and homophobic and fatphobic, and all kinds of really shitty reasons. But I’m never going to think its okay to expect them to have sex anyway, no matter how shitty their reason might be. People can refuse sex for any reason and that reason needs to be respected, even if it’s a morally reprehensible one.

Social control is neither total (we aren’t a hivemind) nor unambigious. Still I also don’t believe attraction is only socially imbued. That’s not what socially constructed means, according to my understanding.

“Social construction” is a very imperfect idea in its current form, particularly with respect to gender. I’m using the term because it’s an easy shorthand that everyone here will understand, not because I’m in love with it. Imbuing characteristics is one aspect of social construction, not the totality of it, and I’m not claiming that it is; I’m actually sort of trying to debunk it. IMHO the social construction model is at its best when framing the way people interact with one another, and the way people perform something (in this case gender). It’s useful for describing how race can be a real thing despite having no biological basis whatsoever. It’s at its worst when it drills down into gender and sexual essentialism, and it does this a lot.

The problem with that would be the antithesis of your initial question: Why would anyone let their sexuality be socially influenced then?

Nobody “lets” themselves be socially influenced.

Fascinating discussion. I feel like I have to go through this thread and look up every fourth word (sort of like the first time I went through my pathology texts in med school), but that’s good too.

Unfortunately, I just worked nine hours and only saw 11 patients thanks to bloody inefficient paper charts (seriously, wasn’t Obamacare supposed to fix that?), so my brains too fuzzy to actually elucidate rational questions or comments.

I’m going to sleep. After I skype with the smarter Dr. Joekster. Because she (very definitely identifies as female) is much more important than sleep.

See you all tomorrow.

@Policy of Madness

Pressuring people to have sex or else [we think less of them] is not the solution

Yes. Like I’ve been saying since the beginning. Maybe you got hung up on the “getting guys sceptical” part? (i.e letting them explore on their own terms just what their attraction to me would change for them, after full disclosure and trying to get them as prepared as I could) It was supposed to be sorta-humorous contrast. Kinda subversive. Probably way to vile in that context. Sorry.

You’re not a monster and I’m sorry you’ve ever been perceived as one. I don’t know how to interpret the rest of this in light of the original statement, which was about “expecting people to overcome their social conditioning and actually love/have sex with people of all genders because their usual boundaries are very likely a social construct”.

Which I described as “likely not the best of ideas” of the people to did it (refering to political lesbianism) and beyond the pale..which I also reiterated a lot now.

But I’m never going to think its okay to expect them to have sex anyway, no matter how shitty their reason might be.

I agree a 100%. This was also always my policy. Same thing for swallowing regret over rejection, not being hung up etc. I’m afraid you misunderstood me somewhere.

IMHO the social construction model is at its best when framing the way people interact with one another, and the way people perform something (in this case gender). It’s useful for describing how race can be a real thing despite having no biological basis whatsoever. It’s at its worst when it drills down into gender and sexual essentialism, and it does this a lot.

Hm. Ideology and social construction where very powerful tools for me to understand just how I could’ve been willfully ignorant enough to try to go trough with being a boy all the time, overperforming masculinity above and beyond what was required to not provoke a negative reaction, at some point living in an elaborate fantasy world where it would hurt less yet still not daring to question the validity of my gender until I practically stumbled upon contrafactual information. And yes, I did allow myself to be influenced. I made some conscious choices along the way to believe what others told me and to do as they said. I wanted to belong to be good and thought it was the right thing to do — and I really don’t believe I’m the only human who does.

Still, peoples sexualities are valid even if they are based on words,narratives, expectations or lack of experience. One can offer bits and pieces to help people free themselves of problematic beliefs and explore but that process is limited by the autonomy of the subject. Disregarding that autonomy is psychological violence, disregarding it to pressure subjects into sex is rape. Both are horrible, reprehensible and wrong.

@Brony

I would love to do some hermeneutics but I think the caffeine has finally run it’s course and I will drift to sleep in about an hour or so (0500 in Germany). I’d have more time tomorrow though if you want to. Want to share a link?

I must have, and I apologize.

Okay, I’m glad that’s over but I can understand your concern.

I’m glad you never ran into the gender essentialist core of the social construction of gender, because it’s there and it’s ugly.

I can vaguely recall something like that from way back but it’s faint. Can you give me a pointer? Was it about TERFS thinking that it was the mens plot to dominate women?

@Brony

So…I would somehow use the search function to comb the forum for your posts and try to get an interpretation of your views then post it here? I mostly lurked so far…

@Lyzzy
Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. The intention is to post something later if no one has any objections. It helps to get my thoughts in order if I know people are ok with it.

If that sounds strange I understand. It’s a consequence of the social overload I usually feel.