Monday, January 22, 2007

Rendered Genders--the Future?

Sexual identities. They're the original binary opposition.
In terms of procreation, species survival, sexual identities being the uber-binary split can't miss. And yes, I know, such a split, such an opposition didn't begin with Homo sapiens, but we're the first species to cognitively make the acknowledgement for it, unless the higher apes are higher than we think.
And, considering the semiotic knot tying binary opposition to signifiers, does this make the binary split of sexual identities the ur-sign, the ur-signifier (you're either female or you're not; you're either male or you're not), the sign from which all others spring forth?
(Alright, I could do a big tangential job here concerning what just popped in my head, hearing "ur" in the pronunciation of Earth, from which anything and everything we conceive springs forth, but I won't. I've got a point to make below. This "urth" thing'll wait for another blog entry, perhaps.)
Ah yes, my point. My point comes from Halperin's essay, his chronicling of the sexual practices of ancient Athenian society. According to Halperin, sexual identities for the Athenians weren't based on preferences of either heterosexuality or homosexuality, but rather upon relationships of "superordinates"--male citizens--and "subordinates"--women, foreigners, slaves, etc. Superordinates had their way, any way, with whomever in the subordinate class--and "class" is the key term here. This is class interest, with the embedded potential for class conflict. This relationship of "ordinates" is purely economic. This is Marxism before Marx, with a freaky sexual bent.
Yes, yes, the point. It's nothing Marx-related, really. It's the way the Greeks redefined the binary split of sexual identities, shifting sexual preferences--they allowed anything, it seems--to economic privilege. And economics affects everyone involved in the two big tiers of the opposition: male/female and heterosexual/homosexual. This means YOU!
And shifts and redefinitions bring us into the current time and into the future, where the binary opposition of sexual identities might be threatened, in ways the ancient Greeks could never've imagined even if they chose to. There are strange shifts afoot.
It seems sexualities are being conceived with little to do with sexual preference, but rather with environments.
Remember metrosexuals? Clean, tidy urbanites who could be either straight or gay, as long as they were found in metropoli. It appeared their chief sexual preference had something to do with shacking up not so much in the city, and not with the city, but with basic city life. Please, no Candace Bushnell jokes!
I don't know what happened to the metrosexuals; the term seems to've died away like a great auk and the elephant bird.
(I should bring up here that I think the title character in Forster's Maurice might be a proto-metrosexual; then again, given the comparatively effete nature of males in Edwardian England, I think much of the populace of the era and place might be proto-metros.)
Virtual environments? There's the telesexual set, the gang into teledildonic devices (punch teledildonics into Wikipedia, if you dare!), wherein spatiality trumps contact, where pleasure exists in the space separating two or more partners anywhere in the world, of either gender, I'd imagine. Does this constitute an original gender, something the metrosexuals couldn't do.
And the future? Consider the shifts. Cloning, for one. What kind of sexual preferences or genuine gendered offshoots might emerge in a clone-friendly environment (an environment where there'd be no scarcity of pleasurable resources--take that, Marx!), after cloning sets in as a commonplace practice?
Might there emerge a sexual preference for relations with one's clone, a kind of (apologies in advance) full-body external masturbation?
Narcissisexuals?
Replicasexuals?
Simulacraphelia?
Tampering with the chemical levels of estrogen and testoserone in one's clone, petrie-dishing up a female or male pleasure-copy of yourself? Gender-hacking?
I don't know if such shifts, if they ever happen, would threaten the binary opposition of sexual identities. After all, there'd still be a hierarchy of "ordinates" in a cloned set, right?
Right?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I liked your Blog?

I truly hope mine didn't have to be that good. I rather thought Halperin somewhat to alot annoying

peace

Anonymous said...

i wanted to add regarding cloning and sexual preference,
Studies :
This might actually solve the age old quandry of nature versus nurture..