索男知道这些名词都是什么意思吗？

http://www.mitbbs.com/article_t/Military/50142415.html

发信人: WCNMLGB (CCC), 信区: Military
标  题: 索男知道这些名词都是什么意思吗？
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Wed Mar 28 18:58:28 2018, 美东)

CONSTRUCTING CONSTRUCTS
Omnisexual, gynosexual, demisexual: What's behind the surge in sexual
identities?
In 1976, the French philosopher Michel Foucault made the meticulously
researched case that sexuality is a social construct used as a form of
control. In the 40 years since, society has been busy constructing
sexualities. Alongside the traditional orientations of heterosexual,
homosexual, and bisexual, a myriad other options now exist in the lexicon,
including:
pansexual (gender-blind sexual attraction to all people)
omnisexual (similar to pansexual, but actively attracted to all genders,
rather than gender-blind)
gynosexual (someone who's sexually attracted to women—this doesn't
specify the subject's own gender, as both "lesbian" and "heterosexual"
do)
demisexual (sexually attracted to someone based on a strong emotional
connection)
sapiosexual (sexually attracted to intelligence)
objectumsexual (sexual attraction to inanimate objects)
autosexual (someone who prefers masturbation to sexual activity with others)
androgynosexual (sexual attraction to both men and women with an androgynous
appearance)
androsexual (sexual attraction towards men)
asexual (someone who doesn't experience sexual attraction)
graysexual (occasionally experiencing sexual attraction, but usually not)
Clearly, people felt that the few existing labels didn't apply to them.
There's a clear "demand being made to have more available scripts than
just heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual," says Robin Dembroff,
philosophy professor at Yale University who researches feminist theory and
construction.
Labels might seem reductive, but they're useful. Creating a label allows
people to find those with similar sexual interests to them; it's also a way
of acknowledging that such interests exist. "In order to be recognized, to
even exist, you need a name," says Jeanne Proust, philosophy professor at
City University of New York. "That's a very powerful function of language:
the performative function. It makes something exist, it creates a reality."
The newly created identities, many of which originated in the past decade,
reduce the focus on gender—for either the subject or object of desire—in
establishing sexual attraction. "Demisexual," for example, is entirely
unrelated to gender, while other terms emphasize the gender of the object of
attraction, but not the gender of the subject. "Saying that you're gay or
straight doesn't mean that you're attracted to everyone of a certain
gender," says Dembroff. The proliferation of sexual identities means that,
rather than emphasizing gender as the primary factor of who someone finds
attractive, people are able to identify other features that attract them,
and, in part or in full, de-couple gender from sexual attraction.
Dembroff believes the recent proliferation of sexual identities reflects a
contemporary rejection of the morally prescriptive attitudes towards sex
that were founded on the Christian belief that sex should be linked to
reproduction. "We live in a culture where, increasingly, sex is being seen
as something that has less to do with kinship and reproduction, and more
about individual expression and forming intimate bonds with more than one
partner," Dembroff says. "I think as there's more of an individual focus
it makes sense that we have these hyper-personalized categories."
The same individuality that permeates western culture, leading people to
focus on the self and value their own well-being over the group's, is
reflected in the desire to fracture group sexual identities into
increasingly narrow categories that reflect personal preferences.
Some believe this could restrict individuals' freedom in expressing fluid
sexuality. Each newly codified sexual orientation demands that people adopt
increasingly specific criteria to define their sexual orientation.
"Language fixes reality, it sets reality," says Proust. "It paralyzes it,
in a way. It puts it in a box, under a tag. The problem with that is it
doesn't move. It negates or denies any instability or fluidity."
There's also the danger that self-definition inadvertently defines other
people. Just as the terms "heterosexual" and "homosexual" demand that
people clarify their sexual preference according to their and their partner
's gender, "sapiosexual" asks that we each of us define our stance
towards intelligence. Likewise, the word "pansexual" requires people who
once identified as "bisexual" clarify their sexual attraction towards
those who don't identify as male or female. And "omnisexual" suggests
that people should address whether they're attracted to all genders or
oblivious to them.
In Foucault's analysis, contemporary society turns sex into an academic,
scientific discipline, and this mode of perceiving sex dominates both
understanding and experience of it. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
summarizes this idea neatly:
The new terms for sexual orientations similarly infiltrate the political
discourse on sexuality, and individuals then define themselves accordingly.
Though there's nothing that prevents someone from having a demisexual phase
, for example, the labels suggest an inherent identity. William Wilkerson, a
philosophy professor at the University of Alabama-Huntsville who focuses on
gender studies, says this is the distinctive feature of sexual identities
today. In the past, he points out, there were plenty of different sexual
interests, but these were presented as desires rather than intrinsic
identities. The notion of innate sexual identities "seems profoundly
different to me," he says. "The model of sexuality as an inborn thing has
become so prevalent that people want to say 'this is how I feel, so perhaps
I will constitute myself in a particular way and understand this as an
identity'," he adds.
In the 1970s and 80s there was a proliferation of sexual groups and
interests similar to what we've seen over the past five to 10 years, notes
Wilkerson. The identities that originated in earlier decades—such as bears,
leather daddies, and femme and butch women—are deeply influenced by
lifestyle and appearance. It's difficult to be a butch woman without
looking butch, for example. Contemporary identities, such as gynosexual or
pansexual, suggest nothing about appearance or lifestyle, but are entirely
defined by intrinsic sexual desire.
Dissatisfaction with existing labels doesn't necessarily have to lead to
creating new ones. Wilkerson notes that the queer movement in earlier
decades was focused on anti-identity and refusing to define yourself. "It'
s interesting that now, it's like, 'We really want to define ourselves,'
" says Wilkerson.
The trend reflects an impulse to cut the legs out from under religious
invectives against non-heteronormative sexualities. If you're "born this
way," it's impossible for your sexuality to be sinful because it's
natural, made of biological desires rather than a conscious choice. More
recently, this line of thinking has been criticized by those who argue all
sexualities should be accepted regardless of any link to biology; that
sexuality is socially constructed, and the reason no given sexuality is "
sinful" is simply because any consenting sexual choice is perfectly moral.
Though it may sound ideal to be utterly undefined and beyond categories,
Proust says it's impossible. "We have to use categories. It's sad, it's
tragic. But that's how it is." Constructs aren't simply necessary for
sexual identity or gender; they're an essential feature of language, she
adds. We cannot comprehend the world without this "tag-fixing process."
The proliferation of specific sexual identities today may seem at odds with
the anti-identity values of queer culture, but Dembroff suggests that both
work towards the same ultimate goal of eroding the impact and importance of
the old-fashioned binary sexual identities. "Social change always happens
in non-ideal increments," Dembroff notes. So while today we may have dozens
of sexual identities, they may become so individualized and specific that
they lose any significance for group identities, and the entire concept of a
fixed sexual identity is eroded.
"We demand that sex speak the truth," wrote Foucault in The History of
Sexuality. "We demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply
buried truth of that truth about ourselves which we think we possess in our
immediate consciousness." We still believe sex reveals an inner truth; now,
however, we are more readily able to recognize that the process of
discovering and identifying that truth is always ongoing.
Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated both the date
Foucault published 'The History of Sexuality' and the number of years
since publication.
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