Queer And Feminist Theories Of Sexuality And The Erotic

Alike gender, sexuality is also a social construct, especially when looking at the period before the 18th century, when one’s sexual orientation did not matter, hence there being no need for justification, just as pointed by Foucault: “Sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much concealment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit.” (3). And the 19th century came and brought with it a big change, and not only did people become engulfed by social norms, whom they should abide at all costs, but they also had to keep their sexual preferences under lock and key: “But twilight soon fell upon this bright day, followed by the monotonous nights of the Victorian

Unlike sex, the sexuality of a woman is not black or white; it is a complex multi-dimension abstract idea that is repressed from women by society. A female’s sexuality is viewed from our phallus-centered society as the male’s counterpart. Women are viewed as objects for men’s sexual behavior such that the female’s sexual preference is there for men to get off and our language on how we treat them solidifies this idea. Society has made a women’s sexuality so complex that it is unknown to women what they truly like. It has come to a point where if women do not have knowledge about the most sexual part of them, they won’t understand that sex is a type of knowledge in which society is blocking from them. Society is trying to impose a males sexuality,

Contemporary understandings of sexuality are not the same as back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Understandings and terminology in the past hold multiple differences and similarities than our current contemporary understandings.

Human sexuality is a common phrase for all, and anything, pertaining to the feelings and behaviors of sex for the human race. Sexuality has been a topic that has been discussed and studied for as far back as 1000 years B.C. and is still being studied today. As the discussion of sexuality has progressed through history, theories have been created based on research and experiments that scholars have implemented, based on their own perceptions of human behavior. Out of the many theories that pose to explain sexual behavior, Sexuality Now explained ten that are seemed to be the most overlapped, and built off of theories. Of these theories, two that were discussed in the text were the behavioral and sociological theory. These two theories cover some of the basic ideas of what could possibly influence a person’s sexuality.

In Audre Lorde’s, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”, she addresses about the term “erotic” that holds variations of meanings and implications behind it. It has a broader spectrum which connects the physical, emotional, and spiritual realms. In her interpretation, “The erotic is a resource within all of us that lies a deeply female and spiritual plane, rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling,” (Lorde 54). Erotic means the fullest satisfaction one can feel in life that gives people power, and be in search for that feeling in other aspects of their life. It allows a person to view their life in a different perspective, with more regard to what they desire rather than the demands of the society that connotes erotic

In every society, people tend to segregate groups that break with what’s seen as socially right. In Anne Sexton’s poem “The Touch,” and in Samuel Delaney’s story “Aye and Gomorrah” perversions are represented with people’s abnormal sexual preferences, which often appear to be isolated by desiring homosexuality. Although the isolation occurs differently in both texts, the presence of homosexuality defines that objects labeled as perversions undergo emotional and physical separation in an attempt to adjust to the social stigma.

Rubin discusses sexual hierarchy and how people are constituted within it based on types of sexual practises. She approaches these schemas as a basis of understanding how various institutional forces such as Medical communities and Religious communities define good sex versus bad sex and how their discourses define how people should see various types of sex. She emphasises that “marital, reproductive heterosexuals are a lone at the top of the erotic pyramid” (279). From this point, any type of sex falls under the heterosexual ideal is considered bad sex. Rubin further argues that “sexual liberation has been and continues to be a feminist goal” and states that both the LGBTQ+ community and Feminists often debate internally whether sexual liberation is good or not

This definition feels all-inclusive because it accounts for non-heterosexual relationships and allows for pleasure to be the focal point. The most challenging part of this article is very similar to my typical issues with the readings. It bothers me to know that many women will continue to let the stigma surrounding their sexuality affect their daily lives. We are being held back by not being able to safely and comfortable express every part of ourselves without judgement.

When asexual people are represented in the media, they usually are not explicitly called asexual, or their lack of sexual attraction to others is driven by emotionlessness, detachment, or apathy. The association with asexuality and mental health disorders such as sociopathy fails to understand the key component of asexuality, which is asexuals do not feel sexual attraction, and just that. Asexuals can be completely able to feel romantic attraction, although some do not. No part of the definition of asexuality says asexuals must be completely cold and heartless. People are able to be kind and compassionate without forming sexual or romantic bonds with other people.

Is the need for acceptance of one’s sexuality as important as other issues like poverty, unemployment, global warming, natural disasters and proper health solutions for Ebola, Lyme that put our survival itself at risk? When meditating on this question, let us also analyse our own sexual fabric. We set the standards of our own yardsticks to measure a sexual identity as valid/ invalid, normal/ abnormal, natural/ unnatural, acceptable/ unacceptable, moral/ immoral and finally good/ bad.

In Jeff Erbach’s The Nature of Nicholas we witness a treatment of the queer or gay as Other. Indeed, the film takes on a very literal representation of what Diana Fuss calls “the homosexual as abject”. The implications of Fuss’ claim on The Nature of Nicholas, therefore, calls for an analysis of how the abject as non-normative is schematized, and used to negotiate the ontological boundaries between Self and Other. Indeed, Fuss’ claim in juxtaposition with the film’s diegesis, produces a discussion of how western narratives of sexuality often require a certain repression of the elements that trouble the stability of the heteronormative “I”, both within one’s self and with in society.

Seeing that these are the only two moments that actually seemed to tackle conversations outside of heterosexualism, I am still trying to understand how readers are meant to think of sexuality in “My Beautiful Enemy.” I have since tried to apply Sara Ahmed’s work, specifically her reading titled “Queer Feelings” and Adrienne Rich’s work on Compulsory Heterosexuality. Both authors note moments of manipulation for women, in such a way that these moments cannot afford to be diluted from a larger scope. They are undeniable parts of a whole, and at their most dangerous, they are seen in conjunction with the mask of progressiveness. For Ahmed this manipulation is framed as “repetitive strain injuries” (RSIs) “Through repeating some gestures and not others, or through being orientated in some directions and not others, bodies become contorted; they get twisted into shapes that enable some action only insofar as they restrict capacity for other kinds of action.” (145). For Rich this manipulation is the general way all bodies are conditioned to expect an innate heterosexuality and the specific violence this allows women to be subjected to during every phase of their lives. “One of many means of enforcement is, of course, the rendering invisible of the lesbian possibility, an engulfed continent which rises

In the early 1800’s Victorian True Love was a union of non-erotic actors (men and women) that viewed sex as a form of procreation. True Women were defined by their distance from lust and True Men who were less in control of their lusts, aspired the same freedom from sexual desires (Ferber, Jimenez, O'Reilly Herrera, & Samuels, 2009). In 1892, heterosexuals were defined as individuals that had abnormal urges in both sexes, while

Are issues of diversity represented fairly, realistically and accurately or problematically in Australian schools in regards to issues of gender, sexuality and sexual identity.

Throughout history, definitions of sexuality within a culture are created and then changed time after time. During these changes, we have seen the impact and power one individual or group can have over others. In the Late Nineteenth Century into the Early Twentieth Century, we see multiple groups of people and or authorities taking control over the idea of sex and how they believe society is being impacted by sex. At this point in time, society had groups of people who believed they had the power to control how society as whole viewed and acted upon sex. Those particular groups and ideas changed many lives and the overall definition of sexuality within that culture.