HISTSEX ARCHIVES: 19-30 April 2000
© Lesley Hall and list contributors
NB During this month there were various server problems, thus the chronological sequence is not consistent and some messages may appear twice.
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 22:13:40 +0100
The main reason I offered some defence of the biological model vis-a-vis
rape, is because Chris White --provocatively signing herself "an inveterate
cultural materialist/social constructionist" -- asked a question which I
think merited a negative answer. She suggested that "if it is possible to
locate such a phenomenon as a female rapist, . . . might it strengthen the
cultural conditioning claims, over and above any biological element"? No, I
don't think so.
Let me clarify, as I think Chris misunderstood my point. (1) A feminine
female heterosexual rapist probably *would* support the constructionist
model. (2) However, one of the features of the biological model is that
homosexual women have biological characteristics of men (such as
male-pattern finger length), namely (in many studies) they have
characteristics typically created by largish amounts of androgen in the
womb [I'm oversimplifying these studies]. It therefore follows, that if most
of the "female rapists" one can cite are lesbians who follow masculine
patterns of behaviour or women with biological masculine characteristics,
then this data would support the biological model rather than the
constructionist model. (3) The data, modern and historical, suggest that
"the female rapist" is typically either a lesbian or a noticeably masculine
female. (4) I did not mean to suggest that lesbians were biologically
conditioned to be violent, but that, according to the biological model, they
were biologically conditioned to follow male patterns of behaviour. (I
acknowledge that they are also *culturally* conditioned to follow male
patterns of behaviour: here is one instance in which the biological and
constructionist model agree with one another! I mentioned the cases of Linck
and Lister because they seem to have involved biological factors as well as
male behaviour.)
Chris makes the valid point that rape (in many cultures, particularly
Western cultures) is defined as penetration and cannot legally occur without
a penis. But this is true mainly in the higher reaches of legal discourse.
In actual trials, assault is the primary feature of the case, and if women
committed assault in which sex was present, they could still be prosecuted
for assault even though they could not be prosecuted for rape. And the trial
records would show, even if the charge was assault rather than rape, whether
or not some sexual element were present. I mentioned the case of prostitutes
assaulting their punters in order to steal their money. The fact that these
women were not charged with rape reflects the fact that they did not commit
rape, not the inability of the law to define their action as penetration! In
a similar way, men charged with sodomy, which requires anal penetration,
were regularly acquitted of sodomy because penetration could not be proved;
they were then charged with "sodomitical practices" which in some
circumstances could involve only kissing or dressing up like a woman. In
other words, the trial records will reveal a wide range of non-penetrative
sexual data despite the fact that the law says that sodomy equals anal
penetration full stop. Court records (and magistrates' records of
investigations that preceed trials) are full of data that is not directly
linked to strict legal definitions. Eighteenth-century English trial records
contain virtually no data about women engaging in violent behaviour
connected with sexual aggression. It seems to be a male thing.
If a youngish child were sexually assaulted by a female, this would almost
certainly result in a complaint for assault, and reach a stage of indictment
if not conviction, regardless of the legal definition of rape. Such cases
are not recorded in 18th-cent. English records. It would also probably be
reported in the newspapers, but I have found no such cases. Women on
occasion were in fact with brutal or cruel treatment of their children or
young servants. If a sexual element was present in this abuse, it would
certainly have been mentioned, but I have not noticed it. The specifically
*sexual* element in abuse of the young seems to be a male thing.
If a man were sexually assaulted by a female, I can almost guarantee you
that this would come to the attention at least of the newspapers. There is a
tremendous amount of data about different forms of violence recorded in
18th-cent newspapers, and a tremendous amount of data about titillating and
sensational occurrences (that never got to the courts). Even if people
thought it terribly funny rather than illegal for a man to be sexually
assaulted by a woman, instances would certainly be reported in the
newspapers. (At least if it occurred in semi-public, as did a very great
deal of sexual behaviour in the 18th cent.). But I have found no such cases.
For the newspapers from 1710 to 1730 (which I've been going through this
month) I've noticed literally hundreds of cases of women murdering their
bastard newborn infants, hundreds of cases of men sexually assaulting
(young) women, scores of cases of women murdering their husbands (and rather
less of men murdering their wives), and hundreds of cases of women being
violent in the context of theft. But I have found no cases of female sexual
assault in these newspapers. In other words, historical data shows many
women
who are violent despite cultural constructs, but hardly any women who are
specifically *sexually* violent despite cultural constructs. This suggests
to me that *non-cultural* factors are probably more important for the
phenomena of *sexual* violence.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 21:20:29 +1000
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re: pornography: Hera's discussion of modern pornography
Hi,
Thanks for the thoughtful response - I don't have time right now but I will
respond to this eventually.
regards,
Hera
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 12:25:49 -0500
From: David Nicholas Harley <David.N.Harley.4@nd.edu>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
>Tim wrote:
>>To suggest that men are culturally conditioned (rather than biologically
>>conditioned) to commit rape would have to ignore the overwhelming evidence
>>that among mammals and primates, aggressive violence is a significant factor
>>in male sexuality rather than female sexuality.
Chris Dummitt wrote:
>I can't claim to be an expert on mammal and primate behaviour but it is
>interesting to note that when the socio-biologist wrote in to comment on
>this discussion, she claimed that rape is in fact rare among most primates.
David Harley comments:
One of the advantages of being a sociobiologist or an evolutionary
psychologist is that you get to pick your own examples. How often have we
heard humans compared to chimpanzees, when the author or speaker wishes to
stress the instinctive nature of aggression. However, the testes size and
social organization of chimps are not very similar to humans. The bonobo
would make a far closer analogue, and very different conclusions would be
drawn about what might be innate in humans. In effect, these groups of
scientists license themselves to select some human characteristic which
they wish to explain, or even justify, and then they pick their species to
allow them to tell precisely the Just So story that they want to tell.
This is the return of natural theology, under the guise of biological
determinism.
David Harley,
Dept. of History,
University of Notre Dame,
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
tel.: 219-631-7789
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 20:34:34 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
As noted in a previous posting, Chris accidentally
misidentified me as the author of these words. The author
was responding to my earlier post, which was something of a
polemic *against* sociobiological interpretation. ;)
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
On Wed, 19 Apr 2000, Dar Weyenberg wrote:
> Hello Tim
> I am curvious how you are using "sex/gender" in the your statement (below).
> >
> >Tim wrote:
> >.....
> ........
> > Since the rape-like patterns
> >>of sexual behaviour that male mammals and primates practise are instinctual
> >>rather than culturally learned, it's hard to see why cultural conditioning
> >>would be the overriding factor for the virtually identical kind of behaviour
> >>in human males (and not present to a significant degree in human females).
> >>To say that men are brutes by nature may be to overstate the case, but there
> >>really is no scientific doubt that sexually dimorphic factors such as
> >>hormones play an important role in sexuality as well as sex/gender, and that
> >>hormones are biologically inherited, not socially constructed.
> >..........
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 08:52:53 +0100
Chris White writes:
>So do we all give up and go home now? If men are 'naturally' (hormonally,
>whatever) rapists, what justification is there for not killing them all,
>keeping their sperm, and annihilating all male progeny? There may be no
>scientific doubt, but that was equally true of humeral theory, the sun
>orbiting round the sun etc etc. To what extent do scientists (and every
other
>breed of student) only find the answers to the questions they (can) ask?
>
I grant you that modern scientists can still confuse cause and effect, as
did past scientists, but this kind of relativist attack on science (which
seems to be typical of the constructionist line) betrays a very slim
understanding of modern science. If you really do not know that there is a
difference between knowledge about the four humours and knowledge about
oestrogen and androgen, if you really think that the theory that the planets
orbit the sun will be superseded by another theory just as was the theory
that the earth was the centre of the solar system, then I think you may be
hopelessly lost in a magical world of constructionist semiotics.
Incidentally, when comparing the science of the past to the science of the
present, it is important to use the science of statistics as a dividing line
(i.e. when determining the relative doubtfulness or trustworthiness of past
and present theories), as that is a non-constructionist measuring tool that
past scientists lacked.
>As to Linck and Lister, I would see this as much more akin to females
>adopting the kinds of normative masculine behaviour that society values and
>rewards. Can you, in cultural terms which determine women to be either
>asexual or less sexual than men, be sexually active towards other women
>unless you are something of a man? And what differences are there between
the
>17th and 18th centuries, where in the former the common belief was that
women
>were the more lascivious and insatiable sex, while in the latter women were
>naturally less sexed, or just plain deviant (in which I include being
working
>class and a woman of colour)?
>
The idea that women were the more lascivious and insatiable sex was a
cultural construct, often found in literature, e.g. Restoration dramas. I
don't think there is much historical evidence that this was mirrored by real
life. That is, the cultural construct actually didn't have much effect in
persuading or encouraging women to actually be more lascivious and
insatiable. This construct was used mainly in misogynist attacks on women,
and was probably designed to encourage women to be *less* sexually active.
However, there is no evidence that this had much effect either. The evidence
suggests that until towards the late eighteenth century, women were just as
desirous of and happy to engage in non-penetrative sex (i.e. mutual
masturbation) as men were, and that, on the other hand, men were just as
unwilling to engage in penetrative sex before marriage as women were. Quite
a good summary of the studies about these slow changes in behaviour is
contained in Tim Hitchcock's _English Sexualities, 1700-1800_ (1997).
The suggestion that Linck and Lister "adopted the kinds of normative
masculine behaviour that society values and rewards" is something I find
hard to follow. Lister was financially independent and did not adopt
masculine behaviour in order to be valued by society; much of the time her
behaviour was ridiculed by society. Linck was beheaded and her wife was
imprisoned for three years. It is generally the case that society punishes
rather than rewards women who adopt "normative" masculine behaviour.
It is also generally the case that society punishes rather than rewards
extreme violence in men. Men are culturally encouraged to be dominant and in
some sense "aggressive", but it is difficult to document that they are
culturally conditioned to be rapists or to commit violent sexual acts upon
members of the civic community. Men who do so are very frequently executed,
pilloried, fined and imprisoned. Much of the law during the eighteenth
century was devoted to controlling rather than encouraging male violence.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 09:12:59 +0100
This statement has been mistakenly attributed to Tim, but is mine.
Yes, I used the term "sex/gender" in order to bring us back to the idea that
the sexed body is very close to (though not identical with) the gendered
body. It is commonplace these days to distinguish between cultural gender
and biological sex, and this can be a very useful distinction, but I think
that the total split between them alleged by constructionists has gone too
far and clouds more issues than it clarifies. In actual fact (e.g.
documented by historical data and anthropological data etc.) there is *a
very high degree of congruence* between sex and gender. Biological
scientists, notably scientists in the field of genetic and hormonal research
and evolutionary biology, argue that this degree of congruence is so high
that it cannot be satisfactorily explained by cultural conditioning, but is
very likely a result of biological factors that favour sexual dimorphism.
Since sexual dimorphism is common to (virtually) all species, I agree with
these scientists that it is impossible to believe that cultural factors
would be the paramount explanation for it in the human species.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: Dar Weyenberg <dweyenbe@students.wisc.edu>
To: Histsex:For historians of sexuality <histsex@listbot.com>
Date: 20 April 2000 04:29
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
>Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
>Hello Tim [**wrong: should be Rictor**]
>I am curvious how you are using "sex/gender" in the your statement (below).
>In other words, a slash gender implies the same or interchangability in the
>commonsenical use of the words. Or in other words, (in your usage of the
>term), is the sexed body the same as the gendered body? If this is so? why
>duplicate?
>Thanks
>dar
>
>At 09:32 AM 4/18/00 -0700, you wrote:
>>Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>>
>>
>>Tim wrote: **[wrong: Rictor wrote:]**
>>.....
>........
>>
>>>To say that men are brutes by nature may be to overstate the case, but
there
>>>really is no scientific doubt that sexually dimorphic factors such as
>>>hormones play an important role in sexuality as well as sex/gender, and
that
>>>hormones are biologically inherited, not socially constructed.
>>..........
>
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 08:32:17 -0400
From: Sheila McManus <smcmanus@yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Rictor Norton wrote:
> (2) However, one of the features of the biological model is that
>homosexual women have biological characteristics of men (such as
>male-pattern finger length), namely (in many studies) they have
>characteristics typically created by largish amounts of androgen in the
>womb [I'm oversimplifying these studies].
I think the reason why so many lesbians dispute the biological/reductionist
"explanations" is that 1) there have actually been very few of these sorts
of studies that have included lesbians; 2) the sample tends to be
pathetically small (for example, the recent 'finger length' study involved
fewer than 300 people, female and male, homo and hetero); and 3) their
findings rarely match the (admittedly purely anecdotal) experiences of me
and my lesbian friends.
The finger length study did an odd segue into the womb-androgen theory by
citing a study conducted solely on gay men and found that gay men tended to
have more older brothers than heterosexual men. I refuse to take
seriously any study conducted on gay men which proposes to then apply its
findings to lesbians, or any study which will not say exactly how many
actual lesbians were involved, or any study which 'explains' lesbians by
seeking and then finding ways in which we are 'like men'. Nevertheless, in
the spirit of mocking male-dominant science a group of my lesbian friends
and I compared our fingers. Out of a group of 9 lesbians, only 2 had
'lesbian' [i.e. 'male pattern'] fingers, and of those 2 only one had more
than one older brother.
A couple years ago the 'explanation' was that our inner ears were 'like
those of heterosexual men'. Well, what's it to be then? Is it our ears or
our fingers? Am I not a lesbian if my ears or fingers do not resemble
those of straight men? Do my ears or fingers speak a deeper truth about my
sexuality than I do when I say I'm a lesbian? I must admit that as a
historian, a feminist and a lesbian, I find these biological/reductionist
"explanations" to be both pathetically tedious as well as personally
hilarious.
Sheila McManus
* * * * * * * * * *
Sheila McManus
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, York University
smcmanus@yorku.ca
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 09:09:02 -0700
From: chris dummitt <cdummitt@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Hello all,
I just want to apologize for wrongly using Tim's name below. The word's
are Rictor's but I had been having an extended conversation with Tim and
mistakenly used his name.
sorry
>
>
>>Tim wrote:
>>>To suggest that men are culturally conditioned (rather than biologically
>>>conditioned) to commit rape would have to ignore the overwhelming evidence
>>>that among mammals and primates, aggressive violence is a significant
factor
>>>in male sexuality rather than female sexuality.
>
>Chris Dummitt wrote:
>>I can't claim to be an expert on mammal and primate behaviour but it is
>>interesting to note that when the socio-biologist wrote in to comment on
>>this discussion, she claimed that rape is in fact rare among most
primates.
>
>David Harley comments:
>One of the advantages of being a sociobiologist or an evolutionary
>psychologist is that you get to pick your own examples. How often have we
>heard humans compared to chimpanzees, when the author or speaker wishes to
>stress the instinctive nature of aggression. However, the testes size and
>social organization of chimps are not very similar to humans. The bonobo
>would make a far closer analogue, and very different conclusions would be
>drawn about what might be innate in humans. In effect, these groups of
>scientists license themselves to select some human characteristic which
>they wish to explain, or even justify, and then they pick their species to
>allow them to tell precisely the Just So story that they want to tell.
>This is the return of natural theology, under the guise of biological
>determinism.
>
>David Harley,
>Dept. of History,
>University of Notre Dame,
>Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
>
>tel.: 219-631-7789
_______________________
Chris Dummitt
Doctoral Candidate
Department of History
Simon Fraser University
_______________________
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Margaretta Jolly" <jolly@moa.u-net.com>
Subject: Re: sociobiologist clarifies re male sexual violence
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 18:19:07 +0100
I forwarded the recent discussion on sociobiology once again to my mother
who has given a fuller explanation of a sociobiological model of
determinism. (I hope I'm not contravening listserve etiquette in bringing in
someone like this, I just thought it an unusual opportunity to bring
together different perspectives that usually don't exchange much - won't add
any more to it.) Margaretta
"I am interested in Chris Dunnit's reply--he certainly did not need to
apologise! He should hear how nasty us sociobiologists are about each
other!
There are just two points that I want to take up: first, his last rather
brass suggestion that sociobiologists should learn some history of gender
roles. This is fascinating in its own right--I wish I knew more. However,
what little I do know suggests that in essentially all historical periods,
and
all cultures, men are more violent than women. There are lots of
pharmacological studies showing the role of testosterone and testosterone
analogues in promoting aggerssion. And a lot of studies in other mammals
(eg
mice) showing the heritability of differences in aggression thresholds. OF
COURSE culture shapes the expression of such differences, and OF COURSE a
man
may go through adult life without ever hitting someone else, let alone
raping
them. And OF COURSE we all want to shape society to minimize violence,
whether
sexual or not. But to argue that there are no biological influences on
behavior is a bit extreme. Or even arguing that aggression may not be
coupled
to, and serve the ends of sexual reproduction.
The more interesting point is how to read that last sentence, which is
what
Dunnit calls taking the effect of rape and making it into a cause. It is
worth
really understanding this, because it underlies all evolutionary thinking.
As
the late, great Niko Tinbergen said, there are four different kinds of
causes:
the immediate cause, development, phylogenetic evolution, and function of
any
behavior. (The four causes also apply to any anatomical trait.) The
immediate causes are what went on to provoke the behavior (eg, wartime
conditions, drunken spree, unlucky woman passing by, soldiers' peer
pressure).
The developmental causes include everything from testosterone in utero and
puberty, to unhappy childhood. Phylogenetic causes include being a human
primate, not a more chivalrous ringtailed lemur. Finally, the adaptive
function, if any: adaptive behaviors increase the chance of reproduction.
This
has nothing to do with conscious purpose: it is a short-hand phrase for
natural
selection on the genes of past generations of humans, which has favored
those
traits that resulted in surviving offspring. "Serving the ends of sexual
reproduction" ONLY applies to this kind of cause.
One might point out that human male tendencies toward care for spouses,
and
love and support for children, are as culturally widespread and far more
individually common than rape. They also function for successful
reproduction,
and have in all probability been selected for as genetically coded
tendencies
in our species.
Only they do not make salacious copy for the likes of Randy Thornhill.
If anybody wants to read a sociobiological book, with subtitles like
"Instinct is not Fate", and "Instinct is not necessarily right", they could
buy
a copy of "Lucy's Legacy, Sex and Intelligence in Human Evolution."
Alison Jolly
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 09:25:45 -0700
From: chris dummitt <cdummitt@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
At 10:13 PM 19/04/00 +0100, you wrote:
>
>Let me clarify, as I think Chris misunderstood my point. (1) A feminine
>female heterosexual rapist probably *would* support the constructionist
>model. (2) However, one of the features of the biological model is that
>homosexual women have biological characteristics of men (such as
>male-pattern finger length), namely (in many studies) they have
>characteristics typically created by largish amounts of androgen in the
>womb [I'm oversimplifying these studies]. It therefore follows, that if most
>of the "female rapists" one can cite are lesbians who follow masculine
>patterns of behaviour or women with biological masculine characteristics,
>then this data would support the biological model rather than the
>constructionist model. (3) The data, modern and historical, suggest that
>"the female rapist" is typically either a lesbian or a noticeably masculine
>female. (4) I did not mean to suggest that lesbians were biologically
>conditioned to be violent, but that, according to the biological model, they
>were biologically conditioned to follow male patterns of behaviour.
Why call these woman manly or masculine? It seems to me the biological
features you are talking about are size, hormones, etc. Only if you talk
about generalizations can you talk about these things being male or
masculine. To give such features a sex is to use a cultural metaphor that
you are imposing on them and not necessarily one that is natural. After
all, if these are woman, why call them masculine. Certainly, there are men
who display characteristics that you call feminine. But, you must be clear
that the use of this designation of manly women and feminine men is an
imposed metaphor that makes things easier for the person who designates and
inevitably speaks to the kinds of cultural assumptions made by the
designator. To call such women manly is to simply suggest that you have an
idea of femininity that excludes them.
>If a man were sexually assaulted by a female, I can almost guarantee you
>that this would come to the attention at least of the newspapers. There is a
I am not at all certain of this. I don't think newspapers are always
reliable sources on numbers.
>tremendous amount of data about different forms of violence recorded in
>18th-cent newspapers, and a tremendous amount of data about titillating and
>sensational occurrences (that never got to the courts). Even if people
>thought it terribly funny rather than illegal for a man to be sexually
>assaulted by a woman, instances would certainly be reported in the
>newspapers. (At least if it occurred in semi-public, as did a very great
>deal of sexual behaviour in the 18th cent.). But I have found no such cases.
>For the newspapers from 1710 to 1730 (which I've been going through this
>month) I've noticed literally hundreds of cases of women murdering their
>bastard newborn infants, hundreds of cases of men sexually assaulting
>(young) women, scores of cases of women murdering their husbands (and rather
>less of men murdering their wives), and hundreds of cases of women being
>violent in the context of theft.
This finding of women murdering their husbands and little report of
husbands murdering their wives really speaks to the reliability of
newspapers as sources. From my reading of statistical works on the history
of murder, I would be very surprised if husband murderers outnumbered wife
murderers in western cultures. This suggests that newspapers are best at
revealing cultural values -- generally, what titillates -- and not accurate
statistical representations.
christopher d
_______________________
Chris Dummitt
Doctoral Candidate
Department of History
Simon Fraser University
_______________________
***
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Margaretta Jolly" <jolly@moa.u-net.com>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 14:52:27 +0100
I'm not sure sociobiologists are as cavalier as implied below - there has
been an upsurgence of looking at Bonobos rather than Chimps as the closest
species to humans, and much interest in the biological determinants for
cooperation, nurturance, playful rather than aggressive sex ... these are
arguments currently going on between sociobiologists too.
Margaretta
-----Original Message-----
From: David Nicholas Harley <David.N.Harley.4@nd.edu>
To: Histsex:For historians of sexuality <histsex@listbot.com>
Date: 20 April 2000 13:55
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
>Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
>
>>Tim wrote:
>>>To suggest that men are culturally conditioned (rather than biologically
>>>conditioned) to commit rape would have to ignore the overwhelming
evidence
>>>that among mammals and primates, aggressive violence is a significant
factor
>>>in male sexuality rather than female sexuality.
>
>Chris Dummitt wrote:
>>I can't claim to be an expert on mammal and primate behaviour but it is
>>interesting to note that when the socio-biologist wrote in to comment on
>>this discussion, she claimed that rape is in fact rare among most
primates.
>
>David Harley comments:
>One of the advantages of being a sociobiologist or an evolutionary
>psychologist is that you get to pick your own examples. How often have we
>heard humans compared to chimpanzees, when the author or speaker wishes to
>stress the instinctive nature of aggression. However, the testes size and
>social organization of chimps are not very similar to humans. The bonobo
>would make a far closer analogue, and very different conclusions would be
>drawn about what might be innate in humans. In effect, these groups of
>scientists license themselves to select some human characteristic which
>they wish to explain, or even justify, and then they pick their species to
>allow them to tell precisely the Just So story that they want to tell.
>This is the return of natural theology, under the guise of biological
>determinism.
>
>David Harley,
>Dept. of History,
>University of Notre Dame,
>Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
>
>tel.: 219-631-7789
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 16:49:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Mario Rups <markin@patriot.net>
Subject: Re: "rape free" cultures - one last thought
On Mon, 17 Apr 2000, Lesley Hall wrote:
> Also, I believe that the chances of pregnancy occurring from a single act of
> intercourse, as opposed to several acts over a period of time, are fairly
> minimal in the human (presumably the rapist has no way of knowing whether
> the woman is ovulating - or do sociobiologists invoke some kind of pheromone
> effect??)
And how would the rapist know when another man is ovulating? By which I
mean to say that the notion of rape as somehow associable with the need /
desire to propagate does not take into account male-on-male rape.
Frankly, my instinct is that rape is about *dominance* and establishment
of same: vide the expression "f*** you", which I would suggest has the
flavour of "I can f*** you", i.e. "Stop / stand down / get lost /
whatever, I'm the dominant one here." Even if one isn't.
Rape, I've always suspected, is the ultimate way of demonstrating one's
utter and complete contempt for and power over the (direct or indirect)
victim. That it takes an overtly sexual shape clouds the issue.
Mario Rups
markin@patriot.net
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 17:51:25 -0700
From: Eric Grace <ericgrace@home.com>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
Chris White thus:
Why is there such a wedded commitment to the notion that
>gendered patterns of behaviour are biological? .... etc.
A recently published book (whose details I don't have in front of me but
can dig out if requested) recounted the story of a Canadian boy whose penis
was damaged by botched circumcision in infancy. Leading ideas on gender
construction at the time (Dr. Money?) suggested he be castrated, reshaped,
and raised as a girl. The case is particularly significant because he was
one half of male twins. To cut a long story short, the "girl", who was
given only female clothes and toys and discouraged from male pursuits,
never accepted this role. From infancy, he never acted feminine -- in fact
was more butch than his brother. Despite the dresses and dolls, and
constant "reinforcement" of female identity from parents, relatives (who
didn't know) and doctors, the child wanted to watch his father shave, not
help mom bake cakes. Adolescence brought crisis, and he was due for major
surgery and hormone treatments when the truth was revealed to him. He had
surgery to restore a penis and is now married to a woman and adopted her
children.
While human behaviour and biology are clearly very plastic, this particular
case demonstrates unequivocally the primary role of biology -- presumable
genes rather than sex hormones since the "boyish" behaviour was present
from early infancy.
Eric Grace
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 22:10:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: "David F. Greenberg" <dg4@is3.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: "rape free" cultures - one last thought
I've not yet read the new Thornhill-Palmer book on rape, so I cannot
comment on it directly. Nevertheless, I believe I can make a few
contributions to the discussion. The argument that a propensity to rape
would confer greater reproductive fitness, and so would be selected for,
is a familiar one from other evolutionary psychology writings. I was
exposed to it for the first time in a paper written by Mary Pavelka, a
Canadian primatologist, and presented at a conference in Portugal some
years ago. Chris Dummitt's objection - that rapists are generally not
seeking to procreate is probably well-grounded factually, but
irrelevant. The evolutionary psychology argument doesn't say anything
about the intent of the rapist. It offers an explanation of the origins of
a desire to rape, not a desire to procreate. Nevertheless, the argument
that Margaretta Jolly found likely when she wrote on April 17, that rape
" has benefited rapists to the extent of leaving offspring often enough to
be a potential behavior in alarge number of men" is not very obvious, for
several reasons. Because the chances of a random rape resulting in
conception are quite low (I have heard figures quoted of 1 in 50, but
don't know how sound that estimate is), a man will have much greater
success in procreating if he is able to gain the willing participation of
his sexual partners. A raped woman is not likely to stay with him, if she
is able to get away. If this is so, it would only be someone who couldn't
get a consensual partner who would turn to rape. Second, someone who
attempted rape (in the days before there were police and prisons to deal
with rapists) would have run the risk of violent resistance from potential
and actual victims, and from their kin. Chances of serious injury or death
might have been high. If this was so, reproductive fitness might have been
hurt by attempting rape. Third, we have to consider the circumstances of
people living in small bands. Cooperation in collecting food, and fending
off predators would have been important. Anyone who seriously antagonized
other members of the band might have been able to continue as a member of
the band, and his survival might have been jeopardized. Moreover, if the
band members were close relatives, incest prohibitions and inhibitions
would have made a rape within the group unappealing. This would not apply
to the rape of someone from a different band. But such a rape might lead
to violent retaliation not only against the rapist, but also against other
members of the band. Band members might, in this circumstance, try to
discourage such rapes for fear that they, too, would be targeted. Now, in
response to Rictor Norton's observations about rape, culture and
biology. I, too, have read extensively in 18th century English court
records, though probably not to the extent he has. I do not recall any
instances of women raping. However, if one accepts that there were few
lesbians, one would not expect many cases of women raping or attempting to
rape women. One might not expect many cases of women trying to rape men
because one cannot coerce a man to be sexually aroused. Norton is
concerned only when explaining the sex difference in rape when he argues
against cultural influence, but that is not the only source of variation
to be explained. The incidence of rape varies greatly among men - if one
is concerned with the rape of strangers, there are strong variations
across space, time, and social categories like class. Another point
concerns the efforts criminologists have made to identify specialization
in criminal activity. Those efforts have generally concluded that most law
violators do not specialize. They tend to commit a wide range of
offenses. None of these studies have found a high degree of specialization
among rapists. The typical arrest record of a rapist is likely to look
like the typical arrest record of an assaulter or a robbery or a
burglar. The age distribution of rapists is also similar to the age
distribution of other crimes involving interpersonal violence. Rates
of rape have, in recent years, dropped in the United States, in
parallel to drops in other crime rates. All this suggests to me that if
there is an inherited component to criminality
(as various studies suggest there may be) it is not likely to be something
that is highly specific to a particular activity like rape. It may be a
personality trait that has implications for involvement in a number of
different kinds of crime. - David Greenberg, Sociology Department, New
York University
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 20:59:50 EDT
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
I have to agree (you'll be surprised....) with Sheila about the tediousness
and hilarity of such studies as that of finger length. I'm interested to know
how those academics who subscribe to such beliefs as
lesbians-in-possession-of-male-anatomy respond to those who self-define
and/or live as lesbian and who have heterosexual fingers, inner ears,
brothers or whatever? Is the self-definition delusory? Or the science bad?
Chris W
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 11:54:02 +0100
-----Original Message-----
From: chris dummitt <cdummitt@sfu.ca>
To: Histsex:For historians of sexuality <histsex@listbot.com>
Date: 22 April 2000 03:24
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Rictor said:
>>The data, modern and historical, suggest that
>>"the female rapist" is typically either a lesbian or a noticeably
>>masculine female.
>
Christopher said:
>Why call these woman manly or masculine? It seems to me the biological
>features you are talking about are size, hormones, etc. Only if you talk
>about generalizations can you talk about these things being male or
>masculine. To give such features a sex is to use a cultural metaphor that
>you are imposing on them and not necessarily one that is natural. After
>all, if these are woman, why call them masculine. Certainly, there are men
>who display characteristics that you call feminine. But, you must be clear
>that the use of this designation of manly women and feminine men is an
>imposed metaphor that makes things easier for the person who designates and
>inevitably speaks to the kinds of cultural assumptions made by the
>designator. To call such women manly is to simply suggest that you have an
>idea of femininity that excludes them.
>
Rictor responds:
In most human societies men are significantly (not universally, but to a
significantly high degree) taller, larger, stronger than women: to call
this set of characteristics "masculine" is not to impose a cultural
metaphor, but to make an objective observation that these characteristics
are typical of males, in which context it seems entirely reasonable to use
the word "masculine". I was not imposing stereotypes on Anne Lister or
anyone else. I was simply observing that from the very little data we have
about females engaging in rape or sexual assault, it would appear that the
females concerned do exhibit features that are significatly linked to the
biological constitution of males, which therefore would give some support to
the biological model rather than the constructionist model. I do not think
there is any evidence that the relative ratio between males and females with
regard to height, size and strength are culturally determined, and to use
"masculine" and "feminine" in the context of these characteristics is more
than to play with metaphors. Physical characteristics can be culturally
influenced, for example the patrician class is usually taller than the
peasant class because they are fed better and better cared for medically,
but I think the ratio of difference in size etc. of males and females stays
constant within the class. In some societies a physiological difference can
be culturally imposed upon females, e.g. the case of foot-binding, but I'm
not aware of any data suggesting that evolutionary cultural practices are
the reason why males and females have different bone structures in general
and overall, though I suppose that might be possible.
Rictor said:
>>If a man were sexually assaulted by a female, I can almost guarantee you
>>that this would come to the attention at least of the newspapers.
>
Christopher responded:
>I am not at all certain of this. I don't think newspapers are always
>reliable sources on numbers.
>
Rictor responds:
You're quite right that newspapers are not reliable sources for making
arguments based upon statistics. But I think it is still fair to say that if
a certain kind of incident is virtually never reported by newspapers, then
there is a fair degree of likelihood that such incidents were rare. What
we're talking about is degrees of probability, which is the central problem
of historical research. Newspapers do of course have various kinds of
"ideological agendas". But if 18th-cent. newspapers regularly refused, say,
to report cases of female rapists because they wanted to construct an image
of woman as weak and chaste, then it is hard to see why they reported so
many cases of women murdering their newborn infants.
Rictor said:
>>For the newspapers from 1710 to 1730 (which I've been going through this
>>month) I've noticed literally hundreds of cases of women murdering their
>>bastard newborn infants, hundreds of cases of men sexually assaulting
>>(young) women, scores of cases of women murdering their husbands (and
>>ratherless of men murdering their wives), and hundreds of cases of women
>>being violent in the context of theft.
>
And Christopher objected:
>This finding of women murdering their husbands and little report of
>husbands murdering their wives really speaks to the reliability of
>newspapers as sources. From my reading of statistical works on the history
>of murder, I would be very surprised if husband murderers outnumbered wife
>murderers in western cultures. This suggests that newspapers are best at
>revealing cultural values -- generally, what titillates -- and not accurate
>statistical representations.
>
Rictor responds:
You're quite right to question my statement about marital murders, and I
withdraw it. I do have the impression that the newspapers reported slightly
more cases of women murdering their husbands than of husbands murdering
their wives, but I have not attempted to count figures, and my impression
may well be wrong. My statement was, however, a parenthetical remark, and
not crucial to any of my argument. Newspapers certainly do reflect cultural
values, but I think you are wrong to suggest that newspapers merely reveal
cultural values rather than report factual incidents: I think these
18th-cent. newspapers report incidents pretty objectively, though these
incidents can of course reveal cultural values and trends. Different
newspapers with different ideologies (Whig, Tory, Radical, Revolutionary,
Liberal, Conservative, Unitarian, whatever) generally have very similar news
reports (at least in the 18th cent.) covering incidents of "crime", and I
cannot detect any overriding ideologies in distorting the criminal data. And
in most cases the accuracy of the reports is confirmed by legal records.
Some 18th-cent "newspapers of records", incidentally, are in fact excellent
sources for statistics about births, deaths, marriages, accidental deaths,
and murders. I think it would be a great loss to sexual history to
dismissively "problematize" such newspapers as mere ideological mouthpieces
(though that charge could indeed be laid against many late 20th-cent.
newspapers!).
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Paul Marks" <pkmax@camtech.net.au>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 09:52:43 +0930
----- Original Message -----
From: Eric Grace <ericgrace@home.com>
To: Histsex:For historians of sexuality <histsex@listbot.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 22, 2000 10:21 AM
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
> Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
> Chris White thus:
>
> Why is there such a wedded commitment to the notion that
> >gendered patterns of behaviour are biological? .... etc.
>
>
> A recently published book (whose details I don't have in front of me but
> can dig out if requested) recounted the story of a Canadian boy whose
penis
> was damaged by botched circumcision in infancy. Leading ideas on gender
> construction at the time (Dr. Money?) suggested he be castrated, reshaped,
> and raised as a girl.
The story of 'John and Joan' is well documented. It is particularly relevent
because Money always claimed
that this case demonstrated the veracity of his argument about sex/gender.
>
> While human behaviour and biology are clearly very plastic, this
particular
> case demonstrates unequivocally the primary role of biology -- presumable
> genes rather than sex hormones since the "boyish" behaviour was present
> from early infancy.
Rather than, as you say:
demonstrates unequivocally
maybe
suggests arguably
This child was 8 years when his penis was accidently removed. Are you
suggesting that life before age ???
has no affect on the gender development of children. I am suggesting that
because he was raised as a boy, at least for the first few months of his
life, this played some role in shaping his identity.
Paul
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Alejandro Levis" <ancient-andean@almapintada.com>
Subject: Re: "rape free" cultures - one last thought
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 23:36:23 -0400
Just thought I'd mention that in Araji's book "Sexually Aggressive Children"
research is cited indicating that some 25% of sexually aggressive children
(children = under 12) are female and their most common offense commited by
these girls is penetrating a much younger child digitally or with an object.
These female children offenders were victims of multiple types of abuse,
abusiveness that is common to most European cultures, but not to the
majority of non-western ones. Learned behavior? Yup.
Levis
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 13:13:45 +0100
I attach Marc Breedlove's response to Sheila McManus's critique of his study
of finger-length ratios.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
Regarding our recent article in Nature looking at relationships between
finger lengths, sexual orientation and birthorder, Sheila McManus wrote:
>I think the reason why so many lesbians dispute the
>biological/reductionist "explanations" is that 1) there
>have actually been very few of these sorts of studies
>that have included lesbians;
It's true that S. LeVay did not examine women's brains, for the simple
reason that his measures could only be done post-mortem, and gay men were
dying at a much higher rate than were gay women. But there are certainly
studies of heritability of female orientation (M. Bailey), and D. McFadden's
otoacoustic emissions, as you discusse below, featured lesbians.
>2) the sample tends to be pathetically small (for
>example, the recent 'finger length' study involved fewer
>than 300 people, female and male, homo and hetero);
In fact, we had 720 subjects. If it is "pathetically small", anyone else
could feel free to gather more. Furthermore, small sample sizes would only
make it more difficult to find real differences between groups, while
parametric statistics estimating the chance that a seen difference is an
error (i.e., P values) remain equally unbiased no matter what the sample
size. In any case, according to the report in the Philadelphia Inquirer,
biologist R. Trivers of Rutgers was, independently of our group, in the
midst of the same study and found the same difference between lesbians and
heterosexual women. With a replication already on the scene, it would
appear that our pathetically small sample size was quite large enough.
>and 3) their findings rarely match the (admittedly
>purely anecdotal) experiences of me and my lesbian
>friends.
Diane Sawyer had the same reaction as you. And in both cases, I'm guessing
you had even more pathetically small sample sizes than we did? A glimpse of
my lab a few years ago would have indicated that women are taller than men.
Hmm... perhaps I should publish that somewhere ("Men Actually Shorter than
Women, Research Shows") before I get scooped?
>The finger length study did an odd segue into the womb
>-androgen theory by citing a study conducted solely on
>gay men and found that gay men tended to have more older
>brothers than heterosexual men.
No, R. Blanchard and colleagues have examined both male and female
populations. What they find is that there is a birth order effect among men
(gay men have an over-representation of brothers among their older siblings
or, put another way, men with more older brothers are more likely to be
gay). But there is no birth order effect in women (A. Bogaert).
>I refuse to take seriously any study conducted on gay
>men which proposes to then apply its findings to
>lesbians,
Just as Bogaert, studying lesbians and straight women, found no birthorder
effect on female sexuality, we found no birthorder effect on female finger
ratios. Blanchard finds a birthorder effect on male orientation and we
found a birthorder effect on male finger ratios (men with older brothers had
smaller finger ratios than men without). This was the only instance in
which we applied birthorder effects to lesbians, and it is logically quite
sound--there is no birthorder effect on either orientation or finger ratios.
>or any study which will not say exactly how many
>actual lesbians were involved,
Our graph clearly indicates we surveyed 153 lesbians. Perhaps you did not
know that this is what "N = 153" means?
>or any study which 'explains' lesbians by seeking and
>then finding ways in which we are 'like men'.
We were not seeking to find that lesbians were "like men", we were testing
to see whether they were. The data, already independently replicated,
indicated they were. (Only as a group, of course. The differences are
subtle, just as the sex difference in height is subtle, making it easy to
find exceptions). We were also testing to find whether gay men were "like
women", but found no data to support that notion. And we reported that.
>Nevertheless, in the spirit of mocking male-dominant
>science
>a group of my lesbian friends and I compared our
>fingers. Out of a group of 9 lesbians, only 2 had
>'lesbian' [i.e. 'male pattern'] fingers,
Gee, in our sample, most women, of either orientation, had index fingers
slightly shorter than the ring finger. It was the *mean* ratios that were
different between the groups (the lesbian mean 2D:4D was slightly less than
that of heterosexual women). How many straight women did you compare them
to? This misunderstanding of our results (shorter index finger means a
woman is a lesbian) was hilariously utilized by the _National Enquirer_ to
analyze photos of Hollywood stars. So you're in good company in your
misunderstanding.
>and of those 2 only one had more than one older brother.
OK, good. Remember, no one has ever found a birthorder effect on
orientation or finger lengths of women. So this observation is either a
confirmation of our report or a non-sequitur.
>A couple years ago the 'explanation' was that our inner
>ears were 'like those of heterosexual men'. Well,
>what's it to be then? Is it our ears or our fingers?
Why on earth would you assume that hormones would affect only one part of
the body? The most powerful aspect of steroid hormone action is that,
because they travel throughout the body, they can and do affect many
different target tissues. Would you next suggest that the steroids in birth
control pills must affect ovulation from the ovary OR the lining of the
uterus, but not both?
>Am I not a lesbian if my ears or fingers do not resemble
>those of straight men? Do my ears or fingers speak a
>deeper truth about my sexuality than I do when I say I'm
>a lesbian?
Here we're in complete agreement. No, you cannot tell, with any acceptable
degree of accuracy, a person's orientation by looking at fingers or ears.
Our data clearly show there is considerable overlap between groups. And, of
course, we take it as a given that the true standard of a person's sexual
orientation is what they tell you about themselves in a context in which
they feel secure (i.e., with guarantees of anonymity).
>I must admit that as a historian, a feminist and a
>lesbian, I find these biological/reductionist
>"explanations" to be both pathetically tedious
I suppose you should continue your career as a historian rather than a
biologist, then. I doubt I will ever offer public comment on any historical
treatise, but if I do, I'm sure I'll actually read it first.
>as well as personally hilarious.
Cheers,
Marc Breedlove
*****************************
S. Marc Breedlove
Psychology Department
3210 Tolman Hall; MC1650
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-1650
(510) 642-8615; fax: 642-5293
breedsm@socrates.berkeley.edu
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/psychology/breedbio.htm
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/psychology/breedcv.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 16:26:33 +0100
Members of the list may be interested to know that during the past couple of
weeks I have added more than 20 new items to my website on "Homosexuality
in Eighteenth-Century England", bringing the total now to 50 items. They are
all primary documents: trial records, newspaper reports, some literary items
and some sermons and homophobic diatribes, mainly for the period 1700-1750.
There are a couple new lesbian items, e.g. Two Kissing Girls of
Spitalfields, 1728, which I don't think has ever been published or mentioned
in historical studies before:
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/1728kiss.htm
and The Game of Flats (i.e. lesbianism), 1749
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/1749flat.htm
References to heterosexual sadomasochism and the sexual enjoyment of urine
and excrement are also mentioned, in one of the Letters of Philogynus, at:
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/1726phil.htm
Half a dozen items for the period 1750-1770 will be added in the next couple
of weeks.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Paul Marks" <pkmax@camtech.net.au>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 10:01:57 +0930
OOPS! Typo in my response.
That should have been
8 MONTHS OLD NOT 8 YEARS
Paul
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 06:04:14 EDT
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Eric Grace's example of the emasculated twin is fascinating. How is the
conflict of
gender role and its perception documented in this case? Is it anecdotal (by
child or parents) or medical (anatomical/psychological)? In other words, is
the past reconstructed in the terms of 'present' truth ("it's really a boy")
or are there any properly trustworthy accounts? The fact that the child
ultimately self-defined as male might mean there is a powerful cultural need
to make sense of a slippage between gender identities by ascribing a
straightforward biological explanation, by interpreting or reconstructing
past behaviour.
Rictor Norton wrote:
<< it would appear that the females concerned do exhibit features that are
significatly linked to the biological constitution of males, which therefore
would give some support to
the biological model rather than the constructionist model. >>
I'm puzzled by this. Which features? The old, oft-repeated myth that lesbians
use their clitorises as penises, since they are blessed with a freakishly
large one which proves they are that kind of person? (Such an organ is of
course to be found only in 'foreign' women who are obviously
over-sexed....and will make every attempt to corrupt nice normal women.)
David Greenberg wrote:
<<Moreover, if the band members were close relatives, incest prohibitions and
inhibitions
would have made a rape within the group unappealing.>>
'Unappealing'? Errr, are you arguing that an earlier stage of civilisation
incest prohibitions worked effectively to prevent such activity? The fact
that such prohibitions existed seems to imply that they were socially
necessary. There isn't much tendency to say to people not to do something if
they never do it. Or think of doing it.
Chris W
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 10:01:29 -0700
From: Eric Grace <ericgrace@home.com>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
>This child was 8 years when his penis was accidently removed. Are you
>suggesting that life before age ???
>has no affect on the gender development of children. I am suggesting that
>because he was raised as a boy, at least for the first few months of his
>life, this played some role in shaping his identity.
>
>
>Paul
>
I think you mean 8 months. That's quite a claim if you suggest that the
first few months so strongly influence the subsequent 16 years that they
predominate over a much longer period of opposite influences and over
inherited characteristics. In some species, imprinting establishes an
object of sexual attraction: with, I suppose, its corollary of their own
species and sexual identity. There may be a similar period in human
development, but I don't know if there is much credibility in the stories
of wolf children.
In any case, this approach to human identity postulates the discredited
tabula rasa concept. It is undeniable, I think, that genetic makeup
provides each of us with a given set of possibilities and determines the
parameters of such things as temperament, physical health, and
intelligence. We admit these things in, say, dog breeding, so why not in
humans? Because extroversion/introversion, physical strength etc. can be
modified TO A DEGREE does not mean they don't exist or aren't important.
Gender is related to possession of the XX and XY genes among others and
genes produce more than sexual anatomy. There are behaviours characteristic
of each sex and related to the biological roles of each sex. Why should we
be an exception among mammals? (I am a zoologist and interpret our species
as the naked ape).
Eric Grace
___________________________________________________________________
From: ddh@arts.gla.ac.uk
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 11:10:59 +0000
Subject: Re: Eunuch medical technicalities
The Russian Skoptsy sect were not eunuchs in the conventional sense but did
practise ritual castration. See:
Laura Engelstein, Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian
Folktale (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1999).
Dan Healey
Department of History
University of Wales Swansea
Swansea SA2 8PP
healey_dan@hotmail.com
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 03:45:59 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
Eric Grace asked:
"Gender is related to possession of the XX and XY genesamong
others and genes produce more than sexual anatomy. There are
behaviours characteristic of each sex and related to the
biological roles of each sex. Why should we be an exception
among mammals? (I am a zoologist and interpret our species
as the naked ape)."
My response, as a non-scientist historian with some exposure
to cultural anthropology, is that we are not exceptions, but
we are at the extreme end of the continuum of behavior
constructed (at our extreme) culturally and (at the other
extreme) genetically. As I said in a previous post: culture
is the human adaptation to life on earth. While other
species do indeed manifest culture as well (this knowledge
has come along since my undergraduate days), none proves
both so fully reliant on it and as capable of manipulating
the environment with it, as we.
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 12:18:01 +0100
I attach a review of Colapinto's book on the John/Joan case (which is the
book we've been talking about in this thread). The reviewer (particularly in
his concluding paragraphs) rather overstates the case and oversimplifies a
complex issue, but Colapinto's book seems to be generally regarded as being
trustworthy. It may answer some of the questions Chris White raised.
John Money, the well known sexologist who decided in favour of sex
reassignment in this case, is the man most responsible for defining the term
"gender" as it is used today, and the alleged success of the John/Joan case
was the main prop in his argument that gender is socially constructed.
Sexologists agree that the John/Joan case was a failure, and it seems almost
indisputable that Money knew it was a failure yet nevertheless continued to
allege its success in his textbooks. The well known sexologist Vern Bullough
addressed the issue in January and February this year, and said:
"Money was
wrong on the John Joan case and he compounded his error by refusal to
discuss
it or admit it. . . . As I said several years
ago at the SSSS meetings, John should have publicized his failure himself
years ago. We had known about for many years and I have included the
failure
in many of my books. It is not new. Money has been an innovative scientist
and made important contributions, but he has also often been wrong, and the
measure of a great scientist is the willingness to admit this. In my
correspondence over the years with John, I have begged him to do so, but he
seems to feel that if he admitted he was wrong, his legal defense would
crumble. I am not certain it would. Colapinto brought out in the open what
we have discussed in sex meetings and our books for several decades."
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
Book review from the Globe and Mail:
'Cauterized to a crisp'
IAN BROWN
Saturday, February 26, 2000
AS NATURE MADE HIM
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl
By John Colapinto
HarperCollins, 279 pages
Among the fears men are subject to, having your penis cauterized to a
useless crisp during a botched circumcision ranks pretty high. To then be
castrated; have your emptied scrotum butterflied into rudimentary vulva; fed
female hormones and dressed and raised as a girl, against all your male
instincts; subjected to the rude scrutiny of the medical profession and the
incessant cruelty of one's schoolfriends; and subsequently decide, as a
teenager, to go back to being a boy, thereby requiring a double mastectomy
and the construction of a troublesome artificial penis -- well, that strikes
this man as sheer hell on earth.
That is precisely what happened to David Reimer, beginning eight months
after his birth in Winnipeg's St. Boniface Hospital on Aug. 22, 1965. Born
as Bruce and raised as Brenda, she didn't learn she had come into the world
a boy until she was 15. By then, Reimer was the most famous subject in
developmental pediatric science -- a foundation not just of
late-20th-century medicine, but of late-20th-century thought as well, in the
form of "unassailable proof of the primacy of environment over biology in
the differentiation of the sexes," as John Colapinto puts it in As Nature
Made Him: The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl.
Reimer was proof that nurture trumped nature. Feminists in particular (Kate
Millett in Sexual Politics was one) loved to cite the case as "proof that
the gender gap was purely a result of cultural conditioning, not biology."
Meanwhile, Dr. John Money, the sex researcher who oversaw Bruce's
transformation into Brenda, was elevated to godlike status, and is still
considered by many to be the equal of Freud, Havelock Ellis, Alfred Kinsey,
Masters and Johnson, and even Darwin. And all for an "experiment," a "game
of science fiction" that was a bust from the word gonad.
All this is now well known, or soon will be, thanks to Colapinto's plain but
gripping biography of David Reimer. Colapinto, a Canadian journalist based
in New York, first wrote about Brenda Reimer's case in December, 1997, in
Rolling Stone. Reimer subsequently asked Colapinto to collaborate on a book.
In return, Colapinto could reveal Reimer's true identity, use real names.
Manitoba had already given the world Louis Riel and Colin Thatcher, but
Reimer was Manitoba's Frankenstein.
Faced with a son who suddenly had no penis, the boy's parents went into
shock. Doctors in Winnipeg dithered, and suggested they raise him normally
until someone could attempt a phalloplasty, an artificial penis. A tricky
bet even today, the gizmo back then resembled one of Fred Flintstone's
appliances. But one night on television, Ron and Janet Reimer heard a suave
and confident sex researcher named John Money claim that gender-damaged
children could be raised in either sex -- without complication. Money was
the director of something called the Gender Identity Clinic at the
prestigious (and American) Johns Hopkins University hospital in Baltimore,
Md. Ron and Janet contacted him immediately.
John Money contacted them right back. He'd begun his career studying
hermaphrodites, children who displayed indeterminate, damaged or mixed male
and female genitalia. Money had concluded -- albeit on speculative
evidence -- that 95 per cent of hermaphrodites fared equally well,
psychologically, whether they were raised as boys or girls. From there it
was but an imaginative step to his first, last and most famous theory.
"Sexual behaviour and orientation as male or female does not have an innate,
instinctive basis," Money wrote early on. Environment, not biology, was what
mattered. With that, one of the biggest bandwagons in a century of
bandwagons lumbered into motion.
Money's theory fell upon fertile ground. For starters he'd provided the
medical profession with a simple surgical solution to the traumatic and
vexing problem of what to do with an intersexual infant. Medicine itself was
still rebounding from a late-19th-century wave of discredited, biology-based
gender theories. Freudianism, behaviourism and other learning-centred models
of human behaviour were the hot new thing.
The only fly in this rich theoretical ointment was that Money had no actual,
scientific proof that nurture trumped nature when it came to assigning
genders. To his further frustration, his main theoretical opponent, Dr.
Milton Diamond, of the University of Hawaii, kept pointing this out. Gender
identity, Diamond insisted, wasn't a shirt you could change on a whim: It
was hardwired from conception. Besides, Diamond claimed, to truly test
Money's theory, he would need to find a normal, unequivocal male reared
successfully as a female. And they were hard to come by.
Enter eight-month-old Bruce Reimer, an otherwise normal boy who had just
lost his penis to a clumsy cauterizer. More perfect still, he had a still
intact identical twin brother -- a genetic clone who would then serve as the
perfect experimental control.
Money knew Bruce was his ticket to fame. He convinced the Canadian boy's
parents -- neither of whom had finished high school -- to castrate and raise
him as a girl. What he appears not to have told them, Colapinto discovers in
the course of some meticulous reporting, was that the procedure was
completely experimental.
(Let's break here for a moment, gendered reader, to speculate why
researchers study the subjects they do. Colapinto's father was himself chief
of urology at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, and nightly told his
children stories of babies losing their penises and being raised girls.
(Money, on the other hand, was raised in fundamentalist circles in
post-Victorian New Zealand. His father beat him for breaking a window, and
died early. His mother and her spinster sisters had nothing good to say
about men when they took over the future sexologist's upbringing. "I
suffered the guilt of being male," Money later wrote. "I wondered if the
world might really be a better place for women if not only farm animals but
human males were also gelded at birth." This was the man who, with Brenda
Reimer on full display, became the most powerful sex researcher in the world
and the mentor of an entire generation of medical researchers.)
There was only one wee problem. The Brenda experiment wasn't working -- and
hadn't been since 1969. Brenda wore dresses and longish hair, but "there was
nothing feminine about Brenda," as his twin brother Brian later admitted.
When four-year-old Brenda saw her father shaving, she wanted to shave too.
She beat her brother up easily and regularly, and was the dominant child of
the pair. She hated dolls and Girl Guides, loved guns and trucks. When asked
by her Winnipeg psychiatrists (most of whom were afraid to contradict the
famous Dr. Money) what she saw herself as, Brenda described a 21-year-old
man with a mustache, a sports car and girlfriends. When her voice cracked
despite female hormone treatments, Brenda's mother told the girl she was
going to sound just like Marlo Thomas. Meanwhile at school the other kids
called Brenda "Cavewoman." She even peed standing up.
None of these facts prevented Money from describing the experiment as a
complete success, year after year, in paper after paper and book after book.
Despite mounting trauma, Brenda was encouraged to think and behave like a
chick. When that didn't work, Dr. Money browbeat her. Worse still, he forced
the twins to "practise" their "proper" coital positions -- Brenda playing
the female and Brian playing the male. In return, they hated Money and tried
to commit suicide.
Today, of course, a surging tide of evidence indicates gender is indeed
biologically based, and not learned at all. How we use or express our
masculinity and femininity, yes, Frederique, that you can play with. But
which one of the two genders we are, in our deepest selves? Not debatable.
Gender identity appears to reside in a cluster of cells in the human
hypothalamus, not in a parade of artificial costumes and public rituals.
Researchers have recently even speculated a biological basis for
homosexuality. But that hasn't stopped Money from claiming the new findings
are lies, the work of anti-feminists and his myriad enemies. Brenda he
simply never mentions any more.
For good reason. To the doctor's chagrin, she never agreed to the
reconstructive surgery that would have given her a vagina. Thus when her
father finally told her, at the age of 15, the truth about her birth and her
accident -- one of the really harrowing passages in a book full of them --
Brenda began immediately to live again as a boy, as her true male self.
Today, David Reimer (self-named, after the David who fought Goliath) is
married, with three stepchildren. He has both sex and orgasms, thanks to
microsurgery and a new phallus fashioned from the muscle and veins of his
forearm. He works as a cleaner in a slaughterhouse, washing away the stains
of butchered meat. (Could that be any more psychologically revealing?) He
also has an ironically resilient sense of himself as a man, which is why
Colapinto calls him a true hero.
Meanwhile, five years after Brenda switched back to being what she was all
along, thoroughly demolishing John Money's theories, the doctor was still
recommending gender re-assignments. In 1987, when yet another Canadian boy
lost his penis to cauterization (it must be a national hazard), his parents
took Money's advice, had him castrated and raised him as a girl -- with the
same apparently disastrous results. Yet Money still has supporters in
powerful positions throughout the medical establishment. Doctors hate to
admit they backed the wrong horse.
It wasn't so long ago, of course, that doctors were reviled as little more
than ambitious barbers. David Reimer's terrible adventures suggest some of
them still should be. They also suggest that in a world dominated by
bullying experts and arrogant technologies, we should pay attention to our
instincts. Like our bodies, they belong to us, and us alone. When we own
them, we can trust them, for they are true.
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 10:16:48 -0400
From: Sheila McManus <smcmanus@yorku.ca>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
I would like to thank Dr. Breedlove for his response to my critique and I
am indeed guilty as charged - I have not read his study directly nor have I
seen any charts associated with it, and my impressions of his research were
based on articles carried in 3 newspapers here in Toronto and one on-line
article. And while I really should know better than to expect accuracy in
newspapers, the only pathetic defence I can mount is that what I read had
little in common with Dr. Breedlove's own summary of his work!
I expect he and I would still find many things to disagree over, but such
disagreements ought not to be based on ill-informed perceptions of another
discipline's research.
Sheila McManus
* * * * * * * * * *
Sheila McManus
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, York University
smcmanus@yorku.ca
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 02:20:52 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Re: Ann Lyden's questions on women and pornography, in re Eric Grace ,
post of interview excerpt
Before we answer Ann Lyden's questions, I think we should
ask: what does women's "participation" in/consumption of
pornography (including that which men recognize as such)
prove--"consent"? --agency? --empowerment?
In a political system where "no" doesn't mean _no_ when it
comes to women's participation in sex (see, e.g., Diana E.H.
Russell, *Rape in Marriage*), what does "yes" mean?
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 09:51:48 -0500
From: "M.E. Buszek" <buszekme@chickmail.com>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
On Mon, 24 Apr 2000 23:23:35 Anne Lyden wrote:
>How long does a sex shop have to be open before it moves beyond being 'a
>cultural fad'? What about Good Vibrations in San Francisco, and its
>catalogue, which is readily available around the USA? It was started by a
>woman, and has a lot of women on its staff, would it count?
Hear, hear! There is also Toys in Babeland in New York City--Good Vibrations' east coast counterpart. This store (like GV--which I believe recently celebrated its 25th anniversary) also caters to a female clientele, and is owned/operated by women, selling pornographic books, magazines, art, vibrators, and dildos as well as material on sexual health, feminist theory, and tantric sprirituality. (Much of the above can be found in male-geared porn shops as well...but that doesn't keep any of this material from being an important part in many generations of women's sex lives--particularly lesbians and bi women.)
As for the Dworkin-MacKinnon "backlash" that is supposedly fueling women's experimentation with/enjoyment of pornographic materials (as if all women are ordinarily, "naturally" reviled by the very large and diverse category--which does indeed count many centuries of bodice-rippers in its numbers), in the twentieth century alone one can count many individuals before Dworkin-MacKinnon's legal/literary crusade for whom one could argue pornographic material was a medium. (Colette, Nin, Jackie Susann, Bunny Yeager, the Samois group, just to name a few off the top of my head.)
Also...as a woman of the third wave generation of feminism, I'm very interested in
seeing which ways women's research is going to swing, so to speak, on the issue as
women my age enter academe, administration, activism, and other positions of
power. Since childhood, I've always been not only interested in erotic material, but
also felt that my power to infiltrate the stuff (both visually and imaginatively) has
been a direct result of my early association with feminism...and I hardly think I'm
alone in my generation in feeling this way. Any others on the list with ideas?
Maria-Elena Buszek
Ph.D. Candidate
Kress Foundation Department
of Art History
The University of Kansas
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Lesley Hall" <lesleyah@primex.co.uk>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV, pornography etc
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 19:52:58 +0100
Something which hasn't been addressed (as far I recall) in this discussion
is the question of whether it's viable to constitute a category 'men' who
rape, consume pornography etc. Is this actually true of all men? Is it not,
rather, a percentage - which I would hypothesise varies quite wildly from
culture to culture? Does anyone have any statistics (dubious though I
suspect these would be)?
Re pornography, it has occurred to me before now that a viable market
for a product doesn't need anything like take-up by 100% or even a majority
of the population - what it probably needs is a steady market of dedicated
consumers. I read a fair amount of science fiction but I believe that sf
readers make up less than 10% of the reading market, which itself is (maybe)
around 50% or less of the population. Within that my own tastes veer away
from the most popular blockbuster successes and towards perhaps the more
feminist end of the sf spectrum. Nonetheless I can find a relatively steady
supply of the kind of thing that I like.
Therefore, does the existence of pornography in the marketplace mean
that there is actually a vast general demand for it, or is there rather a
steady demand from a core consumer group, with perhaps a penumbra of
occasional users?
This is a question I also pose to myself about resort to prostitutes in
C19th Britain - was there enough of a consumer group to sustain a market
without having to invoke the possibility that every man in London was
constantly going to prostitutes?
Questions.... Is there an economist in the house?
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 15:44:06 -0400
From: Cristina Nelson <crn@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Drag-request for info
Dear Colleagues,
I have posted a request for info before and have been delighted with the
response. So I thought I would send another RFI.
I am a doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill and am writing a (US history)
dissertation on women's underwear, US, 1940-70 (roughly). Much of the
dissertation has to do with gender roles, business history, and the like.
In a recent conversation w/ my advisor, she made an excellent point, and it
is with that point in mind that I make this RFI.
She said that the population most likely to verbalize explicit sexual and
gendered notions about women's underwear might be men in the drag
community, and she urged me to, 1.)look for books and publications which
might contain reflections on the part of drag queens (dragfolk? dragsters?
What's the correct term?); and, eventually, 2.) interview some of them.
To whit: I would love to get suggestions for books and other publications,
in fact, even visual media (for instance, I have already looked for some
films that exhibit, in one way or another, women's underwear, such as
_Psycho_ and _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_; perhaps _Glen or Glenda_ might be a
good one for my chapter on drag) that will help me conceptualize a chapter
on drag.
In addition, if anyone knows how I could go about interviewing dragfolk, I
would like to know about that as well. Ideally, to discern change over
time, I should interview someone who was active ( a drag entertainer,
perhaps) in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's. I know that Provincetown MA has
a big drag community, so if anyone can steer me to someone there, that'd be
great, as I will be in Boston the 2nd week in June.
I look forward to your responses.
Cristina Nelson
UNC-Chapel Hill
History Department
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Donna Larsen" <ladydonna85@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 13:46:12 PDT
Here in Seattle we have Toys in Babeland, they have been opened now for
about four years ago now. This was founded and is owned and operated by two
women. They recently opened a branch in New York City and their catolog is
available on the Web as well. They also sell porn and erotica geared towards
women, though they have porn depicting all sexual orientations.
>How long does a sex shop have to be open before it moves beyond being 'a
>cultural fad'? What about Good Vibrations in San Francisco, and its
>catalogue, which is readily available around the USA? It was started by a
>woman, and has a lot of women on its staff, would it count?
>
>Anne Lyden
>Ph.D Student, Cornell University.
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 17:51:04 +1000
From: Hera Cook <hera.cook@history.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Finger pattern study
Hi Mark Breedlove,
Could you please explain what the statement below means. What is being
'like men'?
1. What are such characteristics?
2. How does one ascertain these and independently replicate such
findings?
and -
3.Please give a reference for this study.
"We were not seeking to find that lesbians were "like men", we were
testing
to see whether they were. The data, already independently replicated,
indicated they were. (Only as a group, of course. The differences are
subtle, just as the sex difference in height is subtle, making it easy
to
find exceptions)."
Some questions that trouble me regarding these claims follow. It is
indisputable that the number of women who identify themselves as
lesbians has grown hugely since say 1970. Suppose for the moment that I
accept your conclusions that there is a physical/genetic component to
lesbianism. What hypothesis could I, as a historian, work on for earlier
decades? This genetic component must still have been present - what
effect did it have? What did the women whom this research says have male
characteristics do? Remain unmarried or have a different kind of
marriage to the marriages of women with feminine characteristics?
In other words if these characteristics are not socially constructed but
physical, what effects do they have in periods during which a gay
identity/behavioural pattern is not socially acceptable? [If it is
argued that such women in these periods take on concealed gay identities
- work in homosocial contexts for example then it should be possible to
test this even now]
What is being identified as significant, as 'like men', about these
women with the lesbian finger pattern? Their object choice, their sexual
behaviour, their choice of active/passive roles within relationships?
These claims about causation of gay identity imply substantial beliefs
about 'normal' heterosexual females.
It may be that the characteristics identified as masculine and feminine
are character traits that people, such as myself, might agree exist if
they were labelled in a different fashion, i.e. not as masculine and
feminine. (Please remember how radically such claims have changed over
the past century - why should a current claim be more reliable?) The
statistical differences revealed (assuming for the moment I accept that
the methods used prove the traits exist in the given individuals*) mean
only that there is a tendency of a certain strength. It might be
possible that these traits lead women toward outcomes that will vary in
different societies or in different periods in the same society. So in
this society at this time these traits may lead to some of these women
becoming lesbians - what might these traits lead to in other contexts
and where might they lead other women?
There are many such questions and I could go on producing them. However,
it appears to me that regardless of how rigourous the use of statistics
or sampling etc is, use of terms such as masculine and feminine means
introducing cultural construction. The suggestion that the science we
are dealing with here is analogous to Einsteinian physics is completely
untenable.
Nor is that true only of the socially constructed elements. I do not
believe that scientific understanding of hormones is good enough to
justify claims that androgen will produce x behaviour or physical
result. For example, perhaps x behaviour leads the body to produce more
androgen. Finger length is obviously fixed I agree, but the conclusion
that `at least some homosexual women were exposed to greater levels of
fetal androgen than heterosexual women,'' is the researcher's
hypothesis. It is a claim and not an observation made during the period
the fetus is in the womb.
I would not argue that all sexed human experience is culturally
constructed but that most is. Having a baby is a female experience,
having a penis is a male experience - but beyond that?
Hetero/homo/bisexuality is culturally constructed from an age, and to an
extent, where I believe that we should accept any behaviour as
culturally constructed unless we can indisputably prove it is not. For
example, in the sad case of the eight month old castrated boy - his
parents 'knew' he was male and many studies show that parents treat male
and female babies differently without being conscious they are doing so.
It is obvious that the extended family and friends would have known the
mother had two boys - we know children who were adopted and not told
often felt something was wrong without knowing what. The man the baby
became also comments that he learned while he was a girl to sympathise
with women because they were treated badly - in other words he had an
incentive to see himself as male. This does not mean that there was not
a genetic/hormonal case etc but that this account cannot prove the case
either way - it is just terribly sad.
*the semi-random self-selection of the finger pattern sample and the
filling out of a 'detailed questionnaire' does not impress me greatly.
And the number of brothers provides an obvious opportunity for socially
constructed influence - how about measuring men who had the requisite
number of brothers but were taken away from them at birth and grew up in
a different birth order? Sorry, I know the answer is money - but if the
funding does not exist to do more demanding studies then firm
conclusions cannot be drawn. All these studies are cheap and small and,
as with the gay gene studies, I find it hard to accept they prove what
they claim to prove.
Regards,
Hera
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 17:29:24 -0700
From: chris dummitt <cdummitt@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
>Rictor responds:
>In most human societies men are significantly (not universally, but to a
>significantly high degree) taller, larger, stronger than women: to call
>this set of characteristics "masculine" is not to impose a cultural
>metaphor, but to make an objective observation that these characteristics
>are typical of males, in which context it seems entirely reasonable to use
>the word "masculine". I was not imposing stereotypes on Anne Lister or
>anyone else. I was simply observing that from the very little data we have
>about females engaging in rape or sexual assault, it would appear that the
>females concerned do exhibit features that are significatly linked to the
>biological constitution of males, which therefore would give some support to
>the biological model rather than the constructionist model. I do not think
>there is any evidence that the relative ratio between males and females with
>regard to height, size and strength are culturally determined, and to use
>"masculine" and "feminine" in the context of these characteristics is more
>than to play with metaphors.
christopher responds:
I'm afraid I will continue to insist that you are imposing a cultural
metaphor onto larger women by calling them masculine. I won't argue that
this metaphor is logical and helps us understand them. YOu are right. It
makes sense. But other metaphors could make sense too, for example,
comparing them with other groups of people who are generally larger and
stronger. Your choice of gender as an analytical category reflects your
own focus on sexual difference as the important definining characteristic.
My argument is not weakened by a statement that the relative ratio of size
between men and women is constant. I'm not disputing the relevance or
usefulness of your metaphor. I am simply pointing out that this reflects
your own concern with sexual difference. Why not just treat them as a
different type of woman? Why make the comparison? The answer, to these
questions, of course, is that the comparison helps you understand them
better. The emphasis here is on "you" and not "them".
_______________________
Chris Dummitt
Doctoral Candidate
Department of History
Simon Fraser University
_______________________
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 17:47:16 -0700
Subject: Re: Drag-request for info
From: "David Robinson" <dmrobins@U.Arizona.EDU>
Just an observation:
I would bet that transvestites rather than drag queens would have more to
say about women's underwear. Drag queens do drag as public performance, so
their focus is on articles of apparel that can be seen by others. There's a
lot of drag talk about wigs & makeup & pumps, but relatively little (in my
experience, doing some drag myself and just being a gay man in various gay
communities) about women's underwear.
However, men who dress in women's clothing for sexual excitement or else
because of gender identity would, it seems to me, be more likely to be
concerned with women's underwear (as well as with other feminine attire).
David Robinson
Univ. of Arizona
___________________________________________________________________
From: "King, Michael" <m.king@rfc.ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 09:09:08 +0100
Your argument depends crucially on the preparedness (or lack of it) of men
to report sexual assault by women to the police or others. It also depends
on the level of coercion used.
In a national study of sexual assault on men, we found that 46% of reported
cases involved women as the perpetrators.
Coxell A, King M, Mezey G, & Gordon D. (1999) Lifetime prevalence,
characteristics and associated problems of non-consensual sex in men: a
cross sectional survey. British Medical Journal 318:846-850.
Michael King
-----Original Message-----
From: Rictor Norton [mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk]
Sent: 19 April 2000 22:14
To: Histsex:For historians of sexuality
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Histsex:For historians of sexuality -
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
The main reason I offered some defence of the biological model vis-a-vis
rape, is because Chris White -provocatively signing herself "an inveterate
cultural materialist/social constructionist" - asked a question which I
think merited a negative answer. She suggested that "if it is possible to
locate such a phenomenon as a female rapist, . . . might it strengthen the
cultural conditioning claims, over and above any biological element"? No, I
don't think so.
Let me clarify, as I think Chris misunderstood my point. (1) A feminine
female heterosexual rapist probably *would* support the constructionist
model. (2) However, one of the features of the biological model is that
homosexual women have biological characteristics of men (such as
male-pattern finger length), namely (in many studies) they have
characteristics typically created by largish amounts of androgen in the
womb [I'm oversimplifying these studies]. It therefore follows, that if most
of the "female rapists" one can cite are lesbians who follow masculine
patterns of behaviour or women with biological masculine characteristics,
then this data would support the biological model rather than the
constructionist model. (3) The data, modern and historical, suggest that
"the female rapist" is typically either a lesbian or a noticeably masculine
female. (4) I did not mean to suggest that lesbians were biologically
conditioned to be violent, but that, according to the biological model, they
were biologically conditioned to follow male patterns of behaviour. (I
acknowledge that they are also *culturally* conditioned to follow male
patterns of behaviour: here is one instance in which the biological and
constructionist model agree with one another! I mentioned the cases of Linck
and Lister because they seem to have involved biological factors as well as
male behaviour.)
Chris makes the valid point that rape (in many cultures, particularly
Western cultures) is defined as penetration and cannot legally occur without
a penis. But this is true mainly in the higher reaches of legal discourse.
In actual trials, assault is the primary feature of the case, and if women
committed assault in which sex was present, they could still be prosecuted
for assault even though they could not be prosecuted for rape. And the trial
records would show, even if the charge was assault rather than rape, whether
or not some sexual element were present. I mentioned the case of prostitutes
assaulting their punters in order to steal their money. The fact that these
women were not charged with rape reflects the fact that they did not commit
rape, not the inability of the law to define their action as penetration! In
a similar way, men charged with sodomy, which requires anal penetration,
were regularly acquitted of sodomy because penetration could not be proved;
they were then charged with "sodomitical practices" which in some
circumstances could involve only kissing or dressing up like a woman. In
other words, the trial records will reveal a wide range of non-penetrative
sexual data despite the fact that the law says that sodomy equals anal
penetration full stop. Court records (and magistrates' records of
investigations that preceed trials) are full of data that is not directly
linked to strict legal definitions. Eighteenth-century English trial records
contain virtually no data about women engaging in violent behaviour
connected with sexual aggression. It seems to be a male thing.
If a youngish child were sexually assaulted by a female, this would almost
certainly result in a complaint for assault, and reach a stage of indictment
if not conviction, regardless of the legal definition of rape. Such cases
are not recorded in 18th-cent. English records. It would also probably be
reported in the newspapers, but I have found no such cases. Women on
occasion were in fact with brutal or cruel treatment of their children or
young servants. If a sexual element was present in this abuse, it would
certainly have been mentioned, but I have not noticed it. The specifically
*sexual* element in abuse of the young seems to be a male thing.
If a man were sexually assaulted by a female, I can almost guarantee you
that this would come to the attention at least of the newspapers. There is a
tremendous amount of data about different forms of violence recorded in
18th-cent newspapers, and a tremendous amount of data about titillating and
sensational occurrences (that never got to the courts). Even if people
thought it terribly funny rather than illegal for a man to be sexually
assaulted by a woman, instances would certainly be reported in the
newspapers. (At least if it occurred in semi-public, as did a very great
deal of sexual behaviour in the 18th cent.). But I have found no such cases.
For the newspapers from 1710 to 1730 (which I've been going through this
month) I've noticed literally hundreds of cases of women murdering their
bastard newborn infants, hundreds of cases of men sexually assaulting
(young) women, scores of cases of women murdering their husbands (and rather
less of men murdering their wives), and hundreds of cases of women being
violent in the context of theft. But I have found no cases of female sexual
assault in these newspapers. In other words, historical data shows many
women
who are violent despite cultural constructs, but hardly any women who are
specifically *sexually* violent despite cultural constructs. This suggests
to me that *non-cultural* factors are probably more important for the
phenomena of *sexual* violence.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "James Paterson" <jimjamtwo@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 06:59:41 PDT
Dear Rictor,
This site on the 18th century sounds wonderful, and I mean to look at it as
soon as I get time. (I've been saving these references up myself, but it
seems I no longer need to bother!) In the meantime, though, I wonder if you
can help me with a problem. When did the word "Sodom" (and the other words
derived from it, e.g., sodomitical) begin to be used to refer specifically
to male/male sex in English discourse? I've looked at some 16th century
usages of the word, and I'm not at all convinced that male/male sex is
involved. What do you think?
James Paterson,
Department of History,
University of Sydney.
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: "rape free" cultures - one last thought
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 15:42:49 +0100
I haven't read the Thornhill-Palmer book either (so perhaps we are all doing
too much hypothesizing!).
David Greenberg's argument that rape would not have a procreative benefit to
ancient human societies seems persuasive, and seems effectively to counter
one of the theories of evolutionary biology. However, his argument seems to
be valid primarily with regard to rape *within* the kin group. He says that
rape outside the band would be likely to encourage retaliation by the other
band, so people would discourage rape. But if a warlike conflict already
existed, or if a band regularly attacked an opposing band any, then any
*additional* fear of retaliation because of rape is less likely to be
relevant.
I think there is the view that rape occurs mainly *outside* the kin
group, and the common pattern of *rape of strangers* may reflect this.
There's a lot of historical evidence about the frequency of rape during war,
from the squabbling of the ancient Greeks over their slave girls as booty of
war, to the rape of women by conquering soldiers during the Bosnian
conflict--
specifically for the purpose of spreading their seed in the opposing ethnic
group. Although Lesley Hall has also mentioned the marked inefficiency of
rape as a method of procreation, my understanding is that the raped women in
the Bosnian conflict are right now giving birth to the offspring of these
rapes in sufficient numbers to require the setting up of special units in
hospitals to care for them (apparently some mothers are killing these
children as soon as they are born). I cannot confirm that this is true. It
may be one of the myths engendered by wars, but this is what has been
reported in the higher quality newspapers. If it is true, then it would
suggest that perhaps rape, when performed by sufficient numbers of men,
would indeed be a successful strategy for spreading one's gene pool into
opposing groups, and thereby extending the population of your own tribe.
One final thought: Rape in historical terms often involved abduction (the
literal meaning of "rape") of women from a different group, bringing them
into
one's own group, and repeatedly raping them (which might overcome Lesley's
point that rape is procreatively inefficient because it is only a single
act) --
thereby literally reducing the offspring in the opposing group and
increasing the offspring in one's own group. This historically important
aspect of abduction has not been discussed in this thread. Looking at this
from an evolutionary biology point of view, a community with 20 females can
maximally produce 20 offspring every 9 months, so the abduction/rape of a
man into the community would not increase the number of possible offspring,
whereas the abduction/rape of a woman into the community *would* increase
the total number of possible offspring -- which might be one evolutionary
reason why women seem to be raped significantly more often than men.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 13:15:50 -0400
From: Cristina Nelson <crn@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: transvestites
Dear Colleagues,
David Robinson has made an excellent point, that the people I should be
looking at vis-a-vis my dissertation on underwear are transvestites more so
than drag queens. To that end, let me rephrase my request: How would I go
about getting interviews and memoirs of men who dressed in women's
underwear. I would imagine that to be difficult, especially getting the
information from men who were dressing in, say, the late forties/early 50's.
Again, any ideas and specific references would be welcomed.
Thanks.
Cristina Nelson
UNC - Chapel Hill
History Dept.
___________________________________________________________________Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 13:05:42 -0500 (EST)
From: Sandra Reineke <sreineke@indiana.edu>
Subject: Content Analysis of Women's Magazines
We are a small research team of sociologists, political scientists, and
scholars of gender studies, who would like to undertake a comparative
study of women's magazines. Our research aim is to elucidate how mass
cultural texts, such as women's magazines, function in the reproduction of
gendered identities and, specifically, women's social practices.
We are interested in finding out about how to manage the complexity of
content analyses of mass media texts, such as women's magazines. Are
there indexes for women studies' related contents (in contrast to indexes
about fashion and beauty related content)? If so, do such indexes exist
for all or only some national editions (US, UK, France, etc)? For specific
magazines only?
Also, how to undertake a content analysis that combines/compares textual
and photographic (visual) materials?
Lastly, what theories could be employed to measure the readers' perception
of the content?
We are particularly interested in US, French, and East European
publications. You may reply privately to sreineke@indiana.edu.
Sandra Reineke
Indiana University
___________________________________________________________________
From: Kazetnik@aol.com
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 17:05:39 EDT
Subject: Re: sociobiology, rape, TS/TV, pornography etc
Hi all. Some thoughts on recent posts:
Maria-Elena Buszek wrote:
<< Since childhood, I've always been not only interested in erotic material,
but also felt that my power to infiltrate the stuff (both visually and
imaginatively) has been a direct result of my early association with
feminism...and I hardly think I'm alone in my generation in feeling this way.
Any others on the list with ideas? >>
I found this question interesting because I found my own answer slightly
disconcerting. I have never (till now) considered linking use of erotic
material with my feminism, perhaps because of the pervasiveness of the
Dworkin-MacKinnon paradigm where, even if erotica is stimulating, there is a
sense that one should reject it or certainly not regard it as a source of
liberatory pleasure, because of the women exploited in its making, even when
they (deludedly according to this model) assert that they find it empowering.
And now I'm wondering to what extent I infiltrate such material. In other
words, that I am not objectified by its scopophilic construction of female
sexuality, but am constructing a resisting scopophilia. Might there be a
difference between visual and textual material in women's capacity to
infiltrate erotica? Going to have to sit with that one :)
Chris Dummitt writes to Rictor: <<Your choice of gender as an analytical
category reflects your own focus on sexual difference as the important
definining characteristic.>>
Absolutely. Of course there are times in history or in different cultures
where other analytic categories take precedence over gender, or where gender
may not signify at all. Obvious examples would be pre-abolition slave
societies, Nazi Germany, Israel etc etc. Also, note that there are in fact 3
genders. Male. Female. And disabled. If this were not so, why are there three
kinds of public lavatory? A while ago, a friend sent me the 4 categories of
person believed in by an Aboriginal tribe -- male, female, neuter and edible.
What do all these things do to sociobiologists' beliefs in the absolute
primacy of sex/gender in creating identity and behaviour?
Lesley writes:
Something which hasn't been addressed (as far I recall) in this discussion
is the question of whether it's viable to constitute a category 'men' who
rape, consume pornography etc. Is this actually true of all men? Is it not,
rather, a percentage - which I would hypothesise varies quite wildly from
culture to culture?
Now this is an excellent question. What is a man? Who qualifies? Does it
change over history? And do all men share a fundamentally violent and
objectifying tendency regardless of when and where they live(d)? And for
those of us with men in their lives (all of us?), do we really experience
masculinity as an homogenous identity around which we have to negotiate for
our own safety?
Back to Canton 1899....
Chris W
___________________________________________________________________From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Finger pattern study
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 09:17:37 +0100
Hera,
Marc Breedlove is not a member of the HISTSEX list, but I've forwarded a
copy of your response to him and I'll post any response he might care to
make. By the term "like men" I think was limiting himself to "like men in
regard to finger length ratios" and one or two other features related to
handedness that was the specific subject of his research; that is, he was
not trying to classify lesbians as being "like men" across the board in any
larger sense (though I suppose that would be the net effect when you
consider a series of related studies made in the past couple of years). I
don't imagine he will want to get much involved in historical issues, that
are not his discipline.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 18:23:34 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Resending: Lesley Hall asked: do "men" exist? (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 19:27:09 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <hodgdont@imap2.asu.edu>
To: "HISTSEX: FOR HISTORIANS OF SEXUALITY" <histsex@listbot.com>
Subject: Lesley Hall asked: do "men" exist?
Hello, everyone
Can we generalize about "men" as a group, and if so, who are
"men"?
While my first impulse was to take this as a straightforward
question, as Lesley intended it. But then it occurred to me
that, before the list gets all tangled up with trying to
answer the question, we might do well to recognize that in
cases where they who ask are postmodernists, they're
actually posing a riddle rather than a question.
You can stump many a "modernist" with this one by 1)
getting her/him to commit to the answer "yes," and then 2)
asking that s/he produce a definition and concrete
supporting evidence, as a scholar dedicated to coherent and
clearly defined categories in the pursuit of knowledge.
Then, 3) deconstruct all efforts at coherence by exposing
the contradictions inherent in each attempt. Since the
category is socially constructed, there is no coherent
answer to it -- that's why respondents do well to keep
reminding themselves that this is a riddle. But if they
insist on trying to answer the question, a few failed
attempts will open the way to the argument that, since "men"
and "women" don't exist as discrete categories, any movement
for social change built on such a shaky foundation will only
replicate the fallacies of the discourse it seeks to
interrupt. Finally, 4) suggest that the only strategy
likely to work is one that "plays with gender" in precisely
the same way that the question functions as a riddle. You
know -- Foucault's "bodies and pleasures" applied to women.
(Oops -- I mean, "women.")
The way out of the riddle -- if you're a "modernist" like me
and you're looking for one -- is to answer the riddle, not
the question. Break the riddle down into a set of
*questions* that you *can* answer *as questions.* Is there
broad faith in the veracity of the *idea* that "men" exist
in "nature"? (Yes.) Is there any evidence for the existence
of "men" apart from human efforts to reify that social
category? (No.) Is there a political system devoted to
reifying the *idea* that "men" exist? (Yes. If the riddler
wants evidence, you can recite the litany of crimes against
women-as-women, with statistics.) Do those who occupy the
reified category "men" benefit from that politics? (Yes.
The statistics compiled by the U.N. Decade for Women serve
nicely here.) Do these facts not point to the existence of
a political sex-class called "men," which is *real* even if
its founding assumption is *untrue*? (Yes. Or, as we from
the U.S. state of Maine would say: "Ayuh.")
Many of you will recognize the source of my solution to the
riddle as the thesis statement of Andrea Dworkin's 1978
essay, "The Root Cause" (in paraphrase): "The existence of
two distinct sexes is *real,* but not *true.*"
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
___________________________________________________________________From: "Kimberly Hirsh" <khirsh@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: Resending: Lesley Hall asked: do "men" exist? (fwd)
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 23:52:25 -0400
Interesting questions... In the simplest meaning: "adult males" men exist.
Once you go beyond genitalia specifics, it gets tricky. In the home, there
are "chores" or "jobs" which are often defined by which gender performs
them:
MEN JOBS
taking out the trash
mowing the lawn
taking care of pets
bringing in the newspaper
WOMEN JOBS
scrubbing
cooking
rearing children
However, I know very few homes where these distinctions ACTUALLY exist. My
father vacuums and does dishes, my mother does yard work. It's pretty well
spread out between them. My grandparents do adhere to their stereotypical
"gender roles" but I think that's less because of their gender and more
because of personal preference. I hate doing dishes, but I don't mind
taking out the trash. I don't like vacuuming and dusting, but using a push
lawnmower is ok by me. Does this make me a man? I don't know. Being
rather familiar with the purely biological side, I know I'm a woman. But
other than that? I can't say.
What about politics? Do men vote for men, and women who have been misled
into "oppression" by men also vote for men? I hope gender doesn't influence
too many voting decisions, but I'm not sure. And here's a thought:
Throughout the history of civilization, a small group of elite rules a large
group which seems capable of overthrowing the elite with proper
organization. Does the concept of men "controlling," "oppressing," or
"ruling" women follow this trend? There are about half as many men as there
are women. In many nations, 10% of the people control 90% of the land. In
previous years in South Africa, the small white population controlled the
large black population. Why are women classified as a minority? By sheer
numbers they aren't one, but there are many career fields in which they ARE.
I'm not attempting to take a side, just playing Devil's Advocate and
throwing out more questions. That's what I love about this forum; there are
no answers, only an endless set of questions...
Kimberly Hirsh
khirsh@email.unc.edu
YOUR MOMENTARY MODICUM OF MAMET:
I don't think there is any information to be gotten from television. I think
it's an illusion. It's an interesting narcotic.
"Are you familiar with Twiggly, the gnome who guards the entrance to the
cave of knowledge?" --She-Beast
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 23:38:16 -0700
From: Melissa Korte <mk0005@drake.edu>
Subject: prostitution and pornography
Hello List,
I've been looking through several books mentioned by list members on the topic of pornography (thank you, by the way, for your cites!) Anyway, I was just wondering how list members view prostitution in relation to pornography? Is it a cause, or effect? Or, is there no relationship? Does this have something to do with modern culture's profusion of pornography as a result of repressed sexuality?
Searching, Melissa Korte
Drake University
___________________________________________________________________Date: 27 Apr 2000 09:05:29 -0000
Subject: Admin message
As doubtless everyone has noticed, there have been severe hiccups in
message dissemination on the list over the last few days, and problems in
accessing the most recent archived messages. Listbot were having 'external
server problems', which seem now to be resolved, though I think there are
still a number of messages archived which haven't yet turned up in my
mailbox, which may start turning up. (I didn't know if there was much
point in sending a message about this while the problem was current!)
Also - usual invitation to new subscribers or those who have not already
done so to introduce themselves and their interests in history of
sexuality to the list.
Lesley Hall
histsex-owner@listbot.com
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Kimberly Hirsh" <khirsh@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 14:35:24 -0400
A friend of mine was given the Kamasutra by her mother when she was 14 years
old. She didn't get her first kiss til she was 17. Now, at the age of 23,
she is a raving proponent of sexual activity. I, too, have felt an openness
of discussion between myself and my mother which I think has led me to be
much more open-minded towards and interested in material on sexuality. My
mother recently offered to give me her copies of The Joy of Sex and the Joy
of Sex II. I think the behavior of other females in a young girl's life
influences her comfort level later on. Open communication between female
friends and relatives on the subject of sexuality really encourages an
awareness of it which I think is healthy.
Kimberly Hirsh
khirsh@email.unc.edu
___________________________________________________________________
From: "King, Michael" <m.king@rfc.ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: "rape free" cultures - one last thought
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 08:25:00 +0100
It is quite untrue to say that men (or women) cannot be coerced into sexual
arousal. This is quite a common (and perplexing/distressing) phenomenon for
many rape victims of either gender.
Michael King
___________________________________________________________________From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: prostitution and pornography
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 14:48:16 +0100
Melissa Korte asks:
>I was just wondering how list members view prostitution in relation to
pornography? Is it a cause, or effect? Or, is there no relationship? Does
this have something to do with modern culture's profusion of pornography as
a result of repressed sexuality?<
I think that pornography is neither cause nor effect of prostitution, but
merely an *accompaniment*. Pornography was used by prostitutes as a venereal
incitement for their clients, and to suggest "postures" and fantasy
situations for re-enacment in the brothels. In eighteenth-century London,
prostitutes sometimes carried collections of pornographic prints with them
as they walked the streets, and inside the bawdy houses there were
collections of famous pornographic books such as Aretine's Postures and the
pseudo-medical Onania, as well as pictures of naked women hanging on the
walls. Randolph Trumbach documents this use of pornography by prostitutes in
_Sex and the Gender Revolution, Vol. 1_ (1998) and I have documented the use
of pornographic prints in making homosexual pick-ups in the late 18th/early
19th century in _Mother Clap's Molly House_ (1992).
There are a lot of references to the employment of pornography by
prostitutes in much earlier periods: the word "pornography" means "whores'
writings" and I think originated from the observation of the body of
writings and visual aids often found in brothels. It's not a modern
phenomenon, and occurs in numerous instances untouched by puritanic
repression alleged to exist in some modern societies. Pornography became
widely available to ordinary people (rather than just wealthy people) with
the invention of cheap printing techniques in the eighteenth century.
Similarly the profusion of pornography today is the result of increasingly
cheap production and distribution costs and the techniqes of mass marketing.
Cheap labour costs are also a factor. Most of the models in contemporary gay
video pornography are boys from Eastern Europe where the economies have
collapsed and they will do virtually anything for a pittance. Naked Russian
Army lads are very prominent at the moment, trying to supplement their
non-income from the army. I believe it is also true that women from Eastern
Europe make up a large proportion of the prostitutes now working in the
capital cities of Western Europe. Some of this is the result of voluntary
immigration, and some is the result of abduction and trafficking in females.
I think that economic factors will often explain more about the historical
development of prostitution and pornography than something as vague as
"repression of sexuality". (Though of course I also believe that an innate
biological predisposition to enjoy sex is also important!)
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 08:41:53 -0500
From: Gail Bederman <Gail_Bederman@Brown.edu>
Subject: Re: Partial-birth abortion: link in "evolution?"
One final thought on this question--a bit late, as I was out of town when
this discussion was going:
Pilar asked:
> If there is a history of
>sexuality, there must be an evolution of sexuality (as with anything). Is it
>possible to discuss an evolution of abortion? If so, is partial-birth
>abortion the next or final logical link in the evolution of abortion? What
>could be a next possible phase of this evolution? How would this affect
>human culture?
Abortion has a very complicated and, in some ways, an ironic history,
particularly in the United States. It sounds like you may be defining
"evolution" as differing from "history" in that "evolution" might move
towards some more developed or defined end. [e.g from amoeba to human] If
this is what you mean, I don't think that abortion has an "evolution"--it
only has a history. (So I'm agreeing, here, with previous postings which
have made this point in an international context.)
In the United States, for example, there have been times when abortion has
been widely available, whether illegal (e.g. in the 1930s) or legal (e.g
after Roe in the1970s). Conversely, there have been times when abortions
have been difficult to obtain, whether illegal (e.g. 1950s) or legal (e.g.
in many parts of the US today). Abortion's availability has fluctuated
over time, rather than moving in one direction. The same holds with the
timing of abortion: sometimes most surgical abortions were performed later
in pregnancy (e.g. mid-nineteenth century) and sometimes, early in
pregnancy (e.g after _Roe_.)
Seen in this type of historical context, "partial birth abortion" can't be
seen as a link in any "evolution"of abortion, whether towards greater
availability or towards later timing. It's only the issue that American
debates about abortion are focussing on at this moment in history. It is
not likely to be a harbinger of some new stage in the development of
abortion, whether in the US or out of it.
For more information on the history of abortion in the US, there is an
excellent book on the subject: Leslie Reagan's _When Abortion Was a
Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973_ (U. of
California Press, 1997) It covers what women did to obtain abortions,
what types of abortion providers and services were available, and the
complicated ways the law and medicine both reacted to women's desires for
abortion, and tried to control women's access to abortion. The book does a
great job of showing how and why these factors have changed and fluctuated
over time.
By the way, since this is the first time I have posted on this list, let me
say that I teach US women's history at the University of Notre Dame in the
US, and I'm working on a cultural biography of Madame Restell, aka Ann
Lohman (1811-1878), America's most notorious nineteenth-century abortionist.
Gail Bederman
History Department
219 O'Shag Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Gail.Bederman.1@nd.edu
Phone until May 28:
(401)353-5003
___________________________________________________________________ From: "Philip Stokes" <philip.stokes@btinternet.com>
Subject: Introducing myself
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 21:18:00 +0100
I'm a bit of a hybrid - a documentary photographer who's chosen to commit
himself to academe, and am affiliated as Hon Research Fellow of the
Nottingham Trent University, where until my retirement in 1997 I taught
photographic practice, history and theory of representation.
All my life I have despised censorship [as a teenager I composed dog-Latin
epigrams against it], but it took a fortuitous ringside seat at the
Ovenden/Oliver investigations to truly radicalise and activate me, and move
the study of censorship to the centre of my research interests. I write and
do conference papers and other things in UK and overseas universities, and
expect to produce a book centered on the issues around the photographic
representation of children.
So, if you want a set of keywords that encompass my relationship to the
topics that might appear in your list, then:
censor; child; pornography; puritan; law
would be reasonably comprehensive. There are of course other subsets. I
shall sit around now and see what the list threads are, jump in as it seems
appropriate and pick the archive over when I've a spare moment.
I look forward to participating.
Regards,
Dr Philip Stokes
Honorary Research Fellow
The Nottingham Trent University
philip.stokes@btinternet.com
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: sociobiology and the politics of rape
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 08:35:49 +0100
Yes, it is almost certain that men would be less likely to report being
sexually assaulted by women, especially if the sexual coercion did not
involve a high degree of violence causing physical damage. However, this is
true *in general*, for women as well as men, i.e. women until very recently
were reluctant to report rape unless serious physical damage was caused
(e.g. resulting in hospitalization etc.). Most of our historical knowledge
about rape, e.g. in 18th century London, is not actually as the result of
reports to the police, but because people (sometimes watchmen) overheard a
woman screaming in a dark alley or open field or riverside, or because a
passer-by came upon a nearly unconscious woman, or because doctors had to
deal with serious physical damages. And then subsequently the incidents are
reported in the newspapers or recorded in trials. An unpreparedness to
report rape (whether by women or by men), especially at this level where
coercion is violent, thus could not be the sufficient reason or even very
plausible reason for explaining why women are never (or virtually never)
revealed as the assailant in these situations. The most plausible
explanation seems to me to be that women *in actual fact* are rarely
rapists. Your study, in contrast, has found a very high percentage of women
as perpetrators of sexual assault on men, and is very interesting indeed.
Since you refer to the issue of level of coercion and use the abstract
phrase
"non-consensual sex", I assume you have used the modern legal definition of
"sexual assault" in which violence or even overbearing physical force can be
entirely absent. An Abstract of your paper would be useful for the list.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 13:02:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: "David F. Greenberg" <dg4@is3.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: "rape free" cultures - one last thought
I accept Rictor Norton's observation that in conditions of war, where a
group may capture women from a different band, village or tribe and take
them as slaves, concubines, or wives, that this activity might well
increase reproduction. If the combat were undertaken for this purpose,
then the fatalities associated with combat might outweigh the increased
procreation, but if the combat were taking place anyway that would not be
so. A question that might be asked is how common such conflict was during
most of human evolution. In some parts of the world it is common enough in
modern times. It is my understanding that in the highlands of New Guinea
this is a chronic phenomenon because the land is overpopulated relative
to the food that can be produced from it. This leads to violent conflicts
over land, pigs, and the like. When the population of the earth was not as
high, this sort of conflict might have taken place only rarely, e.g. under
conditions of drought. I don't think that much is known about how common
warfare was prior to relatively recent times. I also wonder whether the
kind of organized activity involved in members of a band organizing a raid
on another group and bringing back the women is the kind of activity that
would be coded genetically. I would be interested in hearing the views of
the biologists on this point. - David Greenberg
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Margaretta Jolly" <jolly@moa.u-net.com>
Subject: Re: "rape free" cultures - one last thought
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 00:07:37 +0100
David Greenberg wrote that Margaretta Jolly found likely when she wrote on
April 17, that rape
>" has benefited rapists to the extent of leaving offspring often enough to
>be a potential behavior in a large number of men" is not very obvious, for
>several reasons.
First: this was my mother, Alison Jolly's argument, not mine! However, she
also added the following that is nearer David Greenberg's point:
"One might point out that human male tendencies toward care for spouses, and
love and support for children, are as culturally widespread and far more
individually common than rape. They also function for successful
reproduction, and have in all probability been selected for as genetically
coded
tendencies in our species. Only they do not make salacious copy for the
likes of Randy Thornhill. If anybody wants to read a sociobiological
book, with subtitles like "Instinct is not Fate", and "Instinct is not
necessarily right", they could buy a copy of "Lucy's Legacy, Sex and
Intelligence in Human Evolution." Alison Jolly
Finally, I also find it extraordinary that lesbianism could be defined
through finger length etc, based on similarly personal experiences as Sheila
McManus and Chris.
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 10:50:35 -0700
From: Eric Grace <ericgrace@home.com>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
Thanks, Rictor, for identifying the name of the book. Here's the review
from NYT:
Eric Grace
February 20, 2000
X + Y = Z
An account of the John/Joan case, in which doctors tried to
turn a baby boy
into a girl.
By NATALIE ANGIER
In April 1966, Bruce and Brian Reimer,
8-month-old identical twin brothers, were taken
to St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg,
Manitoba, for what should have been a routine
surgical procedure. Both boys suffered from
phimosis, a relatively common condition in which
the foreskin of the penis seals at the tip, making
urination painful. Their pediatrician had
recommended a simple solution: circumcision.
Bruce was chosen first and placed under anesthesia.
After fumbling around a couple of times with the
electric current on a cautery device, Dr. Jean-Marie
Huot, a general practitioner, began slicing away at
Bruce's foreskin -- and seared off the rest of the
penis along with it.
The initial accident should have been enough for any
family to endure, but as with the travails of Job or
Oedipus or Lear, the plot only darkens from there.
For reasons that I will never fathom, the doctors
with whom Bruce's parents, Ron and Janet,
consulted were unremittingly grim about their son's
future as a penectomized man. Not only would he
be unable to have normal sexual relations or get
married, they said, but ''he will have to recognize
that he is incomplete, physically defective, and that he must
live apart.'' Faced with such a
dire prognosis, the parents decided on a dire ''cure.'' They
took the advice of John Money, a
renowned sex researcher at Johns Hopkins University, and had
their son turned into a
daughter.
Or, rather, they tried to. As John Colapinto makes achingly
clear in this riveting, cleanly
written and brilliantly researched account of a world-famous
case, Money's effort to prove
the plasticity of human sexual identity by transforming Bruce
into Brenda was a cataclysmic
failure. Bruce was castrated and given a cosmetic vagina; he
was plied with dolls and
dollhouses as a child, clothed in the frilliest of dresses,
and tutored on how to be ''clean''
and ''tidy''; he was even given estrogen as a young teenager
to build up breasts and hips.
Yet he never accepted his designation as female. He never
felt, looked or acted like a girl.
Instead, he felt like a freak -- incomplete'' and
''physically defective,'' one might say. And if
he hadn't finally learned the truth about his past at 14, and
reclaimed his male identity, he
might well have chosen to ''live apart'' -- unless he
succeeded at committing suicide first.
The story of Bruce/Brenda Reimer is better known to the
public as the ''John/Joan'' case,
the pseudonyms adopted in a 1997 report by Milton Diamond, a
biologist at the University of
Hawaii, and Keith Sigmundson, a psychiatrist from Victoria,
British Columbia. The report,
which received prominent international media coverage
(including a front-page story in this
newspaper by this reviewer), revealed the tragic reality
behind a case that had long been cited
in scientific and popular literature as a glorious success,
courtroom proof that a person's
sexual identity is made, not born. In 1998, Colapinto wrote a
long story about the case for
Rolling Stone, which won him a National Magazine Award, but
which nonetheless had
relied on pseudonyms and an obscuring of telling details.
''As Nature Made Him'' dispenses
with the anonymity.
We learn that John/Joan is a hardworking family man in Canada
named David Reimer: in
returning to his malehood, he decided that he didn't like the
name Bruce and so rechristened
himself after the biblical hero who, in defiance of the odds,
slew the giant Goliath. We learn
the stories of all the Reimers and how each suffered from the
extended struggle to maintain
the farce that was Brenda. Janet Reimer fell into repeated
clinical depressions requiring
hospitalization. Ron Reimer became an alcoholic. Brian
Reimer, the twin brother whose
penis remained intact, resented all the attention paid to his
''sister'' and so turned into a
young thug, dropped out of school and tried to kill himself
by drinking drain cleaner. As for
Bruce/Brenda/David, he was miserable from the outset, faring
so poorly in his feminine role
that his teachers wanted to leave him back, starting in
kindergarten and continuing grade after
grade. The child was relentlessly ridiculed by his peers,
male and female alike. Why, one girl
wanted to know, does Brenda insist on standing up when she
goes to the bathroom?
The whole sad, sorry business makes one sputteringly furious
at a shifting series of targets:
at the sloppy circumciser; at a society that says the penis
makes the man; at John Money, for
performing a harrowing psycho-anatomical experiment on a
human child; and at scientists
who dare to tell any of us that they know, oh, yes, they
know, what little girls and boys are
built of. At the same time, the reader can't help admiring
the Reimers for deciding to reveal
themselves so starkly, and so thoughtfully, in their
interviews with Colapinto. If the book
has any flaw, it is that Money emerges as almost too evil to
be believed. In addition to the
ordinary scientific sins of arrogance, opportunism and
bombast, he apparently added sadism
and perversion.
Colapinto recounts the twins' recollections of the games that
Money forced them to play,
starting at 6, during their annual visits to his office --
games the parents never knew of.
Apparently out of a belief that ''sex rehearsal'' helps to
solidify sexual identity, the famous
doctor had Brenda get down on all fours and Brian come up
behind and put his crotch
against her buttocks; or Brenda would be made to lie on her
back, legs spread, with Brian
lying on top of her. There is no doubt that Money is a
willfully flamboyant character who
enjoys shocking people and railing against America's sexual
prudishness. Yet because he
broke off contact with the author early on, we never hear his
response to the portrait of him
as a whole, or to the accounts of his ''games,'' which are
children's memories and thus not
necessarily reliable. In addition, even those who have had
their own run-ins with Money
acknowledge that he has made substantial contributions to our
understanding of all forms of
human sexual behavior. Nevertheless, the evidence seems
overwhelming that, when it came
to the twins, Money was a self-satisfied bully who saw what
he wanted to see. Even when
he at last had to admit that the Reimers were no poster
people for his theories of sexual
plasticity, he failed to correct the scientific record, and
instead simply stopped mentioning or
writing about the case.
The Reimers were left to mend their broken lives on their
own, and, mostly, it seems,
they've succeeded. David Reimer had a reasonable phallus
facsimile constructed for him
through plastic surgery. He married a woman he adores, Jane
Fontane, and adopted her three
children. He has the most masculine sort of job imaginable,
working in a slaughterhouse. He
even sees some good having emerged from his experience. He
may not have ever wanted to
be a girl, he said, but being forced to play the role for all
those years made him sympathetic
to how girls and women often are perceived. ''I remember when
I was a kid and women
were fighting like hell to get equal rights,'' he recalled.
''I said, 'Good for them.' I kind of
sensed what position women had in society. Way down there. .
. . And I didn't want to go
way down there.'' He also hopes that having his story out
there will save other children from
undergoing similar horrors.
Indeed, David Reimer's case is not merely of macabre and
isolated interest. An estimated 1 in
2,000 babies is born with anomalous genitals -- an enlarged
clitoris, a tiny penis, labia fused
into something resembling a scrotum. By current practice, the
great majority of those infants
receive cosmetic surgery in an attempt to ''fix'' their
genitals, in part as a result of Money's
proclamations that a child's psychic and physical sexual
identity can -- and must -- be molded
to conform unambiguously to one gender or the other. Members
of advocacy groups like the
Intersex Society of North America claim that their early
surgeries left them scarred and often
sexually dysfunctional, and they are now struggling to change
standard medical practice so
that doctors desist from chopping and sewing and instead
leave a baby's unusual genitals
alone.
One of the most startling of Colapinto's finds was a paper
written in the 1950's, describing
the lives of 250 adults who had been born with unusual
genitalia but had not been fixed,
surgically or otherwise. Despite ''sexual ambiguity of no
mean proportions,'' the study said,
the adults expressed great satisfaction with their lives.
They seemed normal, self-confident,
with a ''conspicuously low'' rate of neuroses and psychoses.
The author of the report was a
young doctoral candidate named John Money.
Natalie Angier writes about science for The New York Times.
Her latest book is ''Woman:
An Intimate Geography.''
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 10:10:49 -0700
From: Eric Grace <ericgrace@home.com>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
Members might be interested in this extract from an interview with Steven
Pinker, author of How the Mind Works. The entire interview is at
http://bookwire.bowker.com/bookinfo/article.aspx?6044 Pinker's analysis
of neurophysiology and evolution/adaptation are central to the debate on
human nature.
Eric Grace
HB: Let me come at it another way. When you're establishing differences
between men and women with regard to sexuality you say,
"there is virtually no female market for pornography." But that's just not
true anymore.
SP: It's largely true. Go into a magazine store and count the number of
magazines aimed at female customers versus those aimed at
male customers. Check the Combat Zone, the web sites.
HB: But the point is Web sites, Internet news groups and phone chat lines
include women. That's something new in the culture and I
feel you won't allow it because it strays too far from some fundament of
adaptionism.
SP: I disagree with you on the facts. It comes down to one of us actually
going out and measuring what has been going on. The
difference between men and women is minimized in intellectual circles where
there is a certain chic to interest in pornography among
women, especially women who call themselves feminists, partly as a reaction
to the Dworkin-MacKinnon version of feminism. But if
you look to the grass roots, if you go into convenience stores in 50
randomly selected sites in the United States, and look at the
magazine rack, go to the Combat Zone in any major city and count the number
of peep shows aimed at men and women...
HB: But the successful new sex shop in Boston is not in the Combat Zone.
It's called Grand Opening and run by women.
SP: When you get to the realm of cultural fads, superimposed on our basic
sexuality, there are the usual fashion cycles. Hem lines go
up, hem lines go down. The tail fins come, the tail fins go. And so taste
for genre fiction or what's considered hip or avant-garde is
going to be independent of basic emotions. Is it a pervasive change, a
lasting change or an avant-garde phenomenon among a certain
segment of the cultural elite?
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 23:23:35 -0400
From: Anne Lyden <ael9@cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: sociobiology, the politics of rape, TS/TV
At 10:10 AM 4/24/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
>Members might be interested in this extract from an interview with Steven
>Pinker, author of How the Mind Works. The entire interview is at
>http://bookwire.bowker.com/bookinfo/article.aspx?6044 Pinker's analysis
>of neurophysiology and evolution/adaptation are central to the debate on
>human nature.
>
>Eric Grace
>
>HB: Let me come at it another way. When you're establishing differences
>between men and women with regard to sexuality you say,
>"there is virtually no female market for pornography." But that's just not
>true anymore.
<cut>
>SP: I disagree with you on the facts. It comes down to one of us actually
>going out and measuring what has been going on. The
>difference between men and women is minimized in intellectual circles where
>there is a certain chic to interest in pornography among
>women, especially women who call themselves feminists, partly as a reaction
>to the Dworkin-MacKinnon version of feminism. But if
>you look to the grass roots, if you go into convenience stores in 50
>randomly selected sites in the United States, and look at the
>magazine rack, go to the Combat Zone in any major city and count the number
>of peep shows aimed at men and women...
>
The problem with at least this portion of the interview is that there is no
clear definition of 'pornography.' Many different sorts of texts/ material
can have an erotic effect on people (to state the obvious) - and not just
visual representations of genitalia or the naked body. I rather suspect
you need a broader notion when it comes to women. One source of female
erotic, I suspect, is the ever popular romance novels, which have become
increasingly erotic in their content over the past 10 years or so. Such
novels indicate that women are increasingly wanting explicitly erotic
material - but it is potentially different material to what men seem to
want. Would such novels be considered pornographic? Why do we have to
look at magazines and peep shows to ascertain women's interest in
pornographic material? That sort of assessment is assuming that men and
women are going to seek sexual excitement in the same or a similar manner -
it seems to me, that the foundation of such an assessment is wrong. I know
that I have made some rather crude generalizations, but I get very
irritated by assumptions that because something is not readily legible
according to one system of knowledge it is not there.
>HB: But the successful new sex shop in Boston is not in the Combat Zone.
>It's called Grand Opening and run by women.
>
>SP: When you get to the realm of cultural fads, superimposed on our basic
>sexuality, there are the usual fashion cycles. Hem lines go
>up, hem lines go down. The tail fins come, the tail fins go. And so taste
>for genre fiction or what's considered hip or avant-garde is
>going to be independent of basic emotions. Is it a pervasive change, a
>lasting change or an avant-garde phenomenon among a certain
>segment of the cultural elite?
>
How long does a sex shop have to be open before it moves beyond being 'a
cultural fad'? What about Good Vibrations in San Francisco, and its
catalogue, which is readily available around the USA? It was started by a
woman, and has a lot of women on its staff, would it count?
Anne Lyden
Ph.D Student, Cornell University.
*******************
Anne Lyden
English Department
250 Goldwin Smith
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-3201
(607) 255-6800
******************
___________________________________________________________________
Subject: Re: Drag-request for info
From: Gillian Rodger <grodger@worldnet.att.net>
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 23:53:11 +0000
Christina,
It might not be exactly what you're looking for but I remember some
discussion of intimate clothing (and other things) in the book _Female
Fetishism_ by Lorraine Gamman and Merja Makinen. Published in the US by NYU
Press (1994).
Gillian Rodger
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 12:29:07 +0100
James Paterson asks:
>
> When did the word "Sodom" (and the other words
>derived from it, e.g., sodomitical) begin to be used to refer specifically
>to male/male sex in English discourse? I've looked at some 16th century
>usages of the word, and I'm not at all convinced that male/male sex is
>involved. What do you think?
>
The word "Sodom" will probably refer to the biblical city in most instances.
The words "sodomy and sodomite" will probably refer to sex between men in
the majority of instances (i.e. above 50%) in nearly all periods, but it
will depend on the context. In the context of sermons or theological
writing, there's a good possibility it will refer to abominable beastliness,
that is vice in general rather than male/male sex in particular, whereas if
the context also includes a reference to Italy then it will almost certainly
refer to male/male sex specifically. The historians Alan Bray in
_Homosexuality in Renaissance England_ (1982) and Jonathan Goldberg in
_Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities_ (1992) have argued that
the terms referred to a large concept of moral disorder (which doesn't
necessarily include sex, much less homosex) "quite often" through the late
seventeenth century. I have argued in _The Myth of the Modern Homosexual_
(1997) that such instances are exceptional rather than typical. The
historian Michael Young in his book _King James and the History of
Homosexuality_ published late 1999, has collected a lot of evidence showing
that Bray's argument that there is an immense difference in the Renaissance
understanding of sodomy/sodomites and the modern understanding, is not
correct, and that the modern understanding of sodomy/sodomites was already
common in the early 1600s, and possibly even earlier.
Michael Young has commented:
QUOTE
As part of his "revolutionary" view, Bray alleged that
"premodern" sodomy was worlds apart from "modern" homosexuality. These are
supposed to be two entirely different social constructs. Bray described
sodomy in monstrous, horrific terms, a sin against god and nature, one
aspect of a more all-encompassing moral depravity, a sin associated with
witches, atheism, etc. The evidence surrounding James shows that this is
too reductionist and too monstrous. As Bray himself briefly noted at the
outset of his book before proceeding to focus exclusively on sodomy,
James's contemporaries had lots of ways of thinking/discoursing about sex
between males. I found a multiplicity of views, words, and analogies.
These alternative ways of discoursing about sex between males reduced the
subject to more prosaic terms. Some of them actually look more like
"modern" homosexuality than "premodern" sodomy. By the same token, if one
thinks honestly about it, there are lots of people still out there in our
world today who continue to employ the more horrific discourse of sodomy.
In both ways, then, the alleged gulf, the immense distance, between
premodern sodomy and modern homosexuality shrinks.
ENDQUOTE
The case in England is difficult to judge because there is so little
evidence in comparison to other European countries. Alan Rocke in _Forbidden
Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence_ (1997)
has reviewed the treasure trove of abundant court evidence in Florence, and
demonstrated that by the early 1400s, "when Florentines used the words
"sodomy" and "sodomite" in a generic way they probably had sexual relations
between males in mind, since these were by far the most common and
conspicuous, and aroused the greatest public concern." It's a bit hard to
understand why the medieval scholastic abstract meaning would predominate in
England, especially as late as the late seventeenth century, and especially
since England split from the Roman Catholic Church.
But all that said, each case is specific and can require specific analysis
to weigh up the pros and cons about how the term should be understood. If
you collect references to Sodom, you need to get Paul Hallam's delightful
_The Book of Sodom_ (1993).
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 17:28:30 -0700
From: chris dummitt <cdummitt@sfu.ca>
Subject: Re: sociobiologist clarifies re male sexual violence
I think my disagreement with much sociobiology - including the response
below - is often (though not exclusively)a matter of the relative weight
that should be accorded biological explanations.
> There are just two points that I want to take up: first, his last rather
>brass suggestion that sociobiologists should learn some history of gender
>roles. This is fascinating in its own right--I wish I knew more. However,
>what little I do know suggests that in essentially all historical periods,
>and
>all cultures, men are more violent than women.
But, even if this is true, what does this really tell us besides the
obvious?
And making generalizations in this way obscures as much as it explains.
For example, English murder rates in the middle ages could be as high as 20
per 100,000 population while in 1900 they were approximately 1 per 100,000.
This is a dramatic change and a biological focus is clearly of little
significance in understanding it. So when sociobiologists make arguments
about human origins in primordial small groups and then try to connect this
with violent behaviour in modern life, they are making huge leaps of faith.
You simply cannot compare across cultures and time without serious study.
Social organization is not just one among many factors in the explanation
of violence. It is the pre-eminent explanation.
There are lots of
>pharmacological studies showing the role of testosterone and testosterone
>analogues in promoting aggerssion. And a lot of studies in other mammals
>(eg
>mice) showing the heritability of differences in aggression thresholds. OF
>COURSE culture shapes the expression of such differences, and OF COURSE a
>man
>may go through adult life without ever hitting someone else, let alone
>raping
>them. And OF COURSE we all want to shape society to minimize violence,
>whether
>sexual or not. But to argue that there are no biological influences on
>behavior is a bit extreme.
I would never argue that there are no biological influences on behaviour.
But I would argue that these are in most cases minor and, if we are truly
interested, as you profess to be, in understanding and eliminating violence
then it is to the historical variation that we must turn.
If experts in the humanities and social sciences make arguments that
emphasize the cultural at the expense of the biological, it is because we
operate in a context which gives greater credit to biology and science
generaly.
_______________________
Chris Dummitt
Doctoral Candidate
Department of History
Simon Fraser University
_______________________
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2000 19:27:09 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Lesley Hall asked: do "men" exist?
X-Sender: hodgdont@email2.asu.edu
Hello, everyone
Lesley--I hope that I'm remembering at least the nub of your
first question. Graceful soul that I am, I erased it when I
tried to reply. The context was, can we generalize about
"men" as a group, and if so, who are "men"?
While my first impulse was to take this as a straightforward
question, as Lesley intended it. But then it occurred to me
that, before the list gets all tangled up with trying to
answer the question, we might do well to recognize that in
cases where they who ask are postmodernists, they're
actually posing a riddle rather than a question.
You can stump many a "modernist" with this one by 1)
getting her/him to commit to the answer "yes," and then 2)
asking that s/he produce a definition and concrete
supporting evidence, as a scholar dedicated to coherent and
clearly defined categories in the pursuit of knowledge.
Then, 3) deconstruct all efforts at coherence by exposing
the contradictions inherent in each attempt. Since the
category is socially constructed, there is no coherent
answer to it -- that's why respondents do well to keep
reminding themselves that this is a riddle. But if they
insist on trying to answer the question, a few failed
attempts will open the way to the argument that, since "men"
and "women" don't exist as discrete categories, any movement
for social change built on such a shaky foundation will only
replicate the fallacies of the discourse it seeks to
interrupt. Finally, 4) suggest that the only strategy
likely to work is one that "plays with gender" in precisely
the same way that the question functions as a riddle. You
know -- Foucault's "bodies and pleasures" applied to women.
(Oops -- I mean, "women.")
The way out of the riddle -- if you're a "modernist" like me
and you're looking for one -- is to answer the riddle, not
the question. Break the riddle down into a set of
*questions* that you *can* answer *as questions.* Is there
broad faith in the veracity of the *idea* that "men" exist
in "nature"? (Yes.) Is there any evidence for the existence
of "men" apart from human efforts to reify that social
category? (No.) Is there a political system devoted to
reifying the *idea* that "men" exist? (Yes. If the riddler
wants evidence, you can recite the litany of crimes against
women-as-women, with statistics.) Do those who occupy the
reified category "men" benefit from that politics? (Yes.
The statistics compiled by the U.N. Decade for Women serve
nicely here.) Do these facts not point to the existence of
a political sex-class called "men," which is *real* even if
its founding assumption is *untrue*? (Yes. Or, as we from
the U.S. state of Maine would say: "Ayuh.")
Many of you will recognize the source of my solution to the
riddle as the thesis statement of Andrea Dworkin's 1978
essay, "The Root Cause" (in paraphrase): "The existence of
two distinct sexes is *real,* but not *true.*"
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
___________________________________________________________________
Subject: Re: Sexuality and pornography
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 09:51:38 -0500
From: "Michael J. Murphy" <mjmurphy@artsci.wustl.edu>
The problem with questions such as what is or is not pornography is their
location of meaning with the image itself and not with conditions of
viewership. This is the most simplistic, flat-footed and reactionary
approach to imagery, especially photographic imagery, i.e. it is what it
appears to show. The undefinability of the pornographic image rests
precisely with this problem--any image can become prurient depending on
the viewer's use of it.
Some of the best and most sophisticated analyses of 'pornography' call
into question the veracity and verism of the photographic image to show
that despite their claims to a visual realism, photographs are highly
unstable visual fields whose meaning is contingent not just within their
conditions of production but also their arena of reception. I'm thinking
here specifically of Abigail Solomon-Godeau's work on nineteenth-century
pornography and Richard Meyer's wonderful work on Mapplethorpe's 'S/M'
photos.
If you want to end sexual violence against women, begin by helping people
to become self-conscious of the ways they use images, including images
which purport to depict sexual violence against women.
A better question than 'what is the nature of pornography?' might be,
what should it mean that anti-pornography feminists are claiming a
veristic transparency for pornographic photography at the exact
historical moment of phtoography's greatest crisis at the hands of
digital technologies? In our post-photographic age, what should it mean
that ostensibly liberal progressives are insisting on the stability and
self-explanation of imagery?
We must somehow move from the mastering knowledge of 'I know it when I
see it' to 'I cannot know everything through vision.' This has been and
will continue to hold the greatest potential for subversion in a time
increasingly dominated by the visual.
IMO.
Mike Murphy
Michael J. Murphy, M.A.
Graduate Student, Dept. of Art History and Archaeology
Washington University, St. Louis
mjmurphy@artsci.wustl.edu
"An infinite mirror would no longer be a mirror" -Jean-Louis Baudry
___________________________________________________________________ Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 12:56:46 -0700
From: Eric Grace <ericgrace@home.com>
Subject: sexual self-mutilation
I have had a bad shock today and though I hesitate to introduce a personal
note to this group I seek some guidance that I feel members may provide. I
learned that a friend of mine a few days ago amputated his entire genitals
(penis and testes). He is early 30s, and has had sexual relationships with
both sexes I believe but mainly men. I do not think he is transsexual
(wants to become a woman) but suffers from dislike of being gay, and of
thinking men only want him for his body. He is a very sensitive and
reactive person, probably abused as a child from what I know, and not given
to much self-reflection or sharing of thoughts and experiences.
Anyway, I obviously cannot discuss the details of his case but worry about
what identity he can possible have at this point, as a gay man with no
genitals. I would like references to historic and cultural traditions (?)
of self-castration or other relevant examples, and to have interpretations
of this phenomenon so that he (and I) can have a context to relate to. It
is a very hard thing to imagine somebody doing and I don't know what future
he may have if he is unable to find some connection with other examples.
Thank you, and sorry if this is a bit out of the ordinary line of
discussion. Any thoughts will help, as it is a field I know little about.
Eric Grace
___________________________________________________________________ From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Finger-length ratios and sexual orientation
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 09:34:27 +0100
The following article from the San Francisco Chronicle gives a fairly
accessible summary of the findings that were published in Nature a few weeks
ago. Marc Breedlove, the author of the research, agrees that this newspaper
report is a fair summary of his findings [unlike many other sensationalist
reports, found especially in the British tabloids]. Though Breedlove's
findings were published only a few weeks ago, they have already been
replicated.
Breedlove is by no means ignorant of the social contexts of sexuality. On
another list he has made some interesting comments following on from
responses to his study. For example, he acknowledges that "the big question
is to what extent homosexual people behave in a sex-atypical fashion because
they grow up in a culture that says homosexuals are supposed to behave in a
sex-atypical fashion. We all agree that children learn sex-role information
while growing up and going through adolescence. Are gay people supposed to
be too unintelligent to engage in social modeling? I don't think so. Are
there fewer homosexual models in their life than straight models? Sure.
But there's plenty of information out there about what homosexuals are
supposed to be like, and I imagine a teenager experiencing a growing gay
orientation is very good at finding and attending to that information. The
strongest evidence that this isn't the whole story for gay people is that
some people, very early in life, begin behaving in a sex-atypical fashion
before, we're pretty sure, they know what sexual attraction is, much less
what they feel about it."
Breedlove has not yet documented the *cause* of this significant
difference, but has commented: "from all we know about the various
influences of hormones, genes, etc., on mammalian somatic sexual
differentiation, androgen is far and away the front runner as likely
candidate. We won't know for sure that androgen's responsible for the
finger ratios until more experiments are done. Several are underway. Most
importantly, any *social* mechanism mediating the sex difference in ratios,
or the birthorder effect on ratios in men, or the difference in ratios
between lesbians and straight women, seems unlikely. Not impossible, but
unlikely."
=============
Article from the San Francisco Chronicle:
Finger Length Points to Sexual Orientation Anatomy quirk called possible
biological clue
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
Thursday, March 30, 2000
In a study sure to provoke a lot of self-examination, a University of
California at Berkeley team has found that differences in the lengths of
one's fingers may yield clues about sexual orientation.
Lesbians on average turned out to have more ``masculine'' hands than
heterosexual women -- with the index finger significantly shorter than the
ring finger. There was no such difference in the hands of gay and straight
men, however.
A brief summary of the study, led by Berkeley psychologist S. Marc Breedlove
and undergraduates Terrance J. Williams and Michelle E. Pepitone, appeared
yesterday in the science journal Nature.
Although the results may seem a bit puzzling, experts said it's only the
latest of several studies that suggest hormones in the womb have a powerful
affect on sexual orientation and behavior throughout life.
Previous research has found certain differences in brain structures as well
as other anatomical distinctions between gays and straights.
The evidence is mixed, however, and nobody claimed the latest findings will
settle the debate over how sexual orientation is shaped by biology versus
environmental factors.
Nor can finger lengths be used as a reliable guide to very much of anything,
although it's long been known that men tend to have longer fingers than
women.
``The differences are subtle,'' said Raymond Blanchard, a pioneer in gender
and sexuality studies at the University of Toronto's Center for Addiction
and Mental Health. ``There's no way anybody could use this to screen a
date.''
The latest study was based on the fact, which was already apparent to
scientists, that males tend to have a different pattern of finger lengths
than females.
In men, the index finger tends to be a bit shorter than the ring finger.
These same two fingers on women are typically about the same length. The
male-female difference tends to be more pronounced on the right hand, for
reasons experts cannot explain, regardless of whether the person is left- or
right-handed.
These gender differences can be picked up in very young children, strongly
suggesting they arise because of prenatal influences. Based on a host of
animal studies and other research, it's almost certainly a product of
androgen levels -- testosterone and other male hormones -- in the womb.
Scientists now suspect that finger lengths may be a marker of how much a
fetus was exposed to these masculinizing sex hormones. The same prenatal
influences may affect behavior and sexual identity throughout life.
Breedlove and his Berkeley colleagues appear to be the first academic
researchers to bother checking whether there is any appreciable difference
in finger-length ratios linked to sexual orientation in adults.
They set up booths last summer at a gay pride event in Oakland, the annual
Solano Stroll in Berkeley and at the Castro Street Fair in San Francisco.
Fairgoers were offered a free $1 lottery ticket in exchange for having their
hands photocopied and filling out a detailed questionnaire.
After examining the hands of 720 adults, Breedlove's team discovered that
the average finger-length pattern for lesbians closely resembled that of
males. That is, the index fingers on lesbians who were surveyed was judged
to be significantly shorter than the ring finger.
Researchers concluded that ``at least some homosexual women were exposed to
greater levels of fetal androgen than heterosexual women.''
Hand patterns between gay men and heterosexual men revealed no such
difference. But the surveys yielded other intriguing clues.
It was already known that men with more than one older brother are slightly
more apt to grow up to be homosexual than are firstborn males.
The new study suggested that males with older brothers are subjected to
higher levels of androgens in the womb than are eldest sons.
As a result, the study says, men with more than one older brother have a
significantly more masculine right hand than men without older brothers.
That is, the right index finger is more often shorter than the ring finger
on the same hand.
There was no such effect in men with older sisters.
Breedlove said it's a complete mystery as to how a mother's body could
``remember'' how many male children she had borne, where this signal was
kept and how it could influence hormone levels of a later- born child.
He also cautioned against making too much of the differences in the hands of
gay and straight women.
FINGER ANALYSIS
Researchers say heterosexual women usually have index fingers equal in
length to their ring fingers. Lesbians on average have finger length similar
to men's in which the index finger is shorter than the ring finger.
Typical female finger size
Index finger equal in length to ring finger
Typical male finger size
Index finger slightly shorter than ring finger
Source: Nature Chronicle Graphic
2000 San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/03/30
/MN25703.DTL
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Kimberly Hirsh" <khirsh@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 23:55:54 -0400
In American Sex Laws, Posner has an entire section on sodomy. The word
often refers to any non-vaginal penetration-- between either two men OR
between a woman and a man. It also sometimes refers to activity between two
women. If you are interested in a legal standpoint (as MacKinnon is) then
this book is EXCELLENT:
American Sex Laws
Richard Posner
Kimberly Hirsh
khirsh@email.unc.edu
YOUR MOMENTARY MODICUM OF MAMET:
I don't think there is any information to be gotten from television. I think
it's an illusion. It's an interesting narcotic.
"Are you familiar with Twiggly, the gnome who guards the entrance to the
cave of knowledge?" --She-Beast
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 11:55:01 +0100
James Paterson asks:
>
> When did the word "Sodom" (and the other words
>derived from it, e.g., sodomitical) begin to be used to refer specifically
>to male/male sex in English discourse? I've looked at some 16th century
>usages of the word, and I'm not at all convinced that male/male sex is
>involved. What do you think?
>
The word "Sodom" will probably refer to the biblical city in most instances.
The words "sodomy and sodomite" will probably refer to sex between men in
the majority of instances (i.e. above 50%) in nearly all periods, but it
will depend on the context. In the context of sermons or theological
writing, there's a good possibility it will refer to abominable beastliness,
that is vice in general rather than male/male sex in particular, whereas if
the context also includes a reference to Italy then it will almost certainly
refer to male/male sex specifically. The historians Alan Bray in
_Homosexuality in Renaissance England_ (1982) and Jonathan Goldberg in
_Sodometries: Renaissance Texts, Modern Sexualities_ (1992) have argued that
the terms referred to a large concept of moral disorder (which doesn't
necessarily include sex, much less homosex) "quite often" through the late
seventeenth century. I have argued in _The Myth of the Modern Homosexual_
(1997) that such instances are exceptional rather than typical. The
historian Michael Young in his book _King James and the History of
Homosexuality_ published late 1999, has collected a lot of evidence showing
that Bray's argument that there is an immense difference in the Renaissance
understanding of sodomy/sodomites and the modern understanding, is not
correct, and that the modern understanding of sodomy/sodomites was already
common in the early 1600s, and possibly even earlier.
Michael Young has commented:
QUOTE
As part of his "revolutionary" view, Bray alleged that
"premodern" sodomy was worlds apart from "modern" homosexuality. These are
supposed to be two entirely different social constructs. Bray described
sodomy in monstrous, horrific terms, a sin against god and nature, one
aspect of a more all-encompassing moral depravity, a sin associated with
witches, atheism, etc. The evidence surrounding James shows that this is
too reductionist and too monstrous. As Bray himself briefly noted at the
outset of his book before proceeding to focus exclusively on sodomy,
James's contemporaries had lots of ways of thinking/discoursing about sex
between males. I found a multiplicity of views, words, and analogies.
These alternative ways of discoursing about sex between males reduced the
subject to more prosaic terms. Some of them actually look more like
"modern" homosexuality than "premodern" sodomy. By the same token, if one
thinks honestly about it, there are lots of people still out there in our
world today who continue to employ the more horrific discourse of sodomy.
In both ways, then, the alleged gulf, the immense distance, between
premodern sodomy and modern homosexuality shrinks.
ENDQUOTE
The case in England is difficult to judge because there is so little
evidence in comparison to other European countries. Alan Rocke in _Forbidden
Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence_ (1997)
has reviewed the treasure trove of abundant court evidence in Florence, and
demonstrated that although the terms could be strictly defined (e.g. in law)
in accordance with the scholastic category of "unnatural practices" and
subtle moral sins, in nearly all ordinary and legal usage the terms referred
to sex between men. Rocke says: "when Florentines used the words "sodomy"
and "sodomite" in a generic way they probably had sexual relations between
males in mind, since these were by far the most common and conspicuous, and
aroused the greatest public concern." Incidentally, Rocke has demonstrated
that "sodomy" cannot be understood to universally mean anal intercourse
specifically. He has found a fair number of examples of Florentine
"sodomites" who fellated lads and kissed, fondled or masturbated their
partners while they were penetrating them anally -- enough examples to
demonstrate that "sodomy" was a dynamics of mutual pleasure rather than the
dynamics of power. Rocke demonstrates that the Classical model (where a
dominant partner monopolized phallic pleasure in the sexual encounter) had
significantly changed by the Renaissance. Oral intercourse comprised 12
percent of confessed homosexual relations. The court recorders sometimes
called it "sodomy ex parte ante", sodomy from the front. (Rocke has found
that this did not mean front-to-front anal intercourse; e.g. ejaculation in
the mouth is sometimes mentioned when this term is used.) Rocke has found
numerous cases of charges that "he sodomized him with his mouth". The
standard pattern in the cases involving fellatio was for the older male to
suck the penis of the younger male before inserting his penis into the anus
of the younger male: this clearly demonstrates that the alleged "ideology of
penetration" is very much overexaggerated, as insertor/receptor roles were
not rigidly adhered to in these encounters. The net effect of many of
Rocke's findings is that "sodomy" refers generally to *sex* between men,
rather than specifically to *anal* sex, whether between men and men or men
and women or whatever.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Rictor Norton" <norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: sexual self-mutilation
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 10:57:52 +0100
Eric,
If your friend has not been able to make use of the history of gay men to
make sense of his life as a gay man, it is doubtful that he will be able to
make use of the history of such things as the hijras of India or the eunuch
priests of Cybele to make sense of his new life. _Cassell's Encyclopedia of
Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit_ (by R.P. Conner, D.H. Sparks and M. Sparks,
1997, reprinted in paperback 1999) is one of the most comprehensive sources
for understanding the eunuch transgender type in history. A search of the
Internet for "hijra" should turn up the basic references for that
phenomenon. Serena Nanda has written especially well on hijras; there is an
early version of one of her essays in _The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader_
(H. Abelove, M.A. Barale, D.M. Halperin, Routledge, 1993), but she has
continued work on the subject and may have published a book on this
recently.
But frankly, there are many physiological, social and psychological issues
to deal with initially before trying to give a historical context for your
friend's new circumstances. I suggest that you contact Cheryl Chase, at the
Intersex Society of North America
cchase@isna.org
after having a look at their website
http://www.isna.org
but you may have to give her some reassurance that this is not a hoax.
--
Rictor Norton
mailto:norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk/rcnorton.htm
___________________________________________________________________
Subject: Byzantium
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 06:57:16 -0800
From: "andrei-f" <andrei-f@goplay.com>
Hello,
One of the correspondents on the Androphile site has asked me about
sources on the male love habits of Byzantine emperors (Nicephoros,
Basileios, Constantine, etc.) This is a topic with which I am not at
all familiar. Can anyone here recommend source materials?
Many thanks,
Andrei
___________________________________________________________________
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 07:34:58 -0700 (MST)
From: Tim Hodgdon <Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu>
Subject: Re: Sexuality and pornography
On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, Michael J. Murphy wrote:
> Histsex:For historians of sexuality - http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
>
> The problem with questions such as what is or is not pornography is their
> location of meaning with the image itself and not with conditions of
> viewership. This is the most simplistic, flat-footed and reactionary
> approach to imagery, especially photographic imagery, i.e. it is what it
> appears to show. The undefinability of the pornographic image rests
> precisely with this problem--any image can become prurient depending on
> the viewer's use of it.
Michael: Aren't you setting up a "straw feminist" here? It
seems quite obvious to me that the feminist antipornography
argument about sexual objectification is that _men_ do it,
in the social context of membership in the dominant, reified
sex-class -- not that meaning magically inheres in the
photographs. It is the sexual politics of pornography's
production, distribution, and consumption that makes it an
issue. Moreover, they argue that it is the context that
makes pornography "sexy." Only in the context of
hierarchical gender relations would such endlessly
repetitious photographs hold any great fascination.
When you assert that
> If you want to end sexual violence against women, begin by helping people
> to become self-conscious of the ways they use images, including images
> which purport to depict sexual violence against women.
you might be interested to know that John Stoltenberg, _What
Makes Pornography "Sexy?"_ (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions,
1994), describes in great detail the workshop/theater
exercise that he and members of NYC Men Against Pornography
have developed to create a context within which men might
become much more self-conscious of the ways they use images.
Check it out!
Tim Hodgdon
Ph.D. candidate
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tim.Hodgdon@asu.edu
___________________________________________________________________
From: "Charles Moser" <docx2@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: sexual self-mutilation
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2000 08:52:22 -0700
Dear folks,
I found the link below and thought that it could help explain Eric
Grace's friend. In fact, there seems to be a cult of these, though I have
not seen any professionally. I have not heard of anyone having regrets,
i.e. showing up at a physician or therapists office asking for help. Be
warned, the URL is graphic.
Take care,
Charles
http://www.bmeworld.com/hormstr3/page5.html
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