Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.
Nathan
Moderators
Atlas Superstar
Posts: 34,513
|
 |
« on: April 02, 2012, 01:20:01 AM » |
|
Mystified because androgynous, I think. For a lot of men it's a clash between sameness and alterity.
For me doubly so, since I'm about one more Goddamn bout of gender dysphoria during finals week away from snapping; I have a profound recognition of the entirety of the form, which is heightened and almost eclipses the alterity in the cases of these aspects of the body of which you are speaking, particularly legs. Since outward-directed sexuality for me is pretty much nonexistent as a factor in my life, there's a sort of dreaming semi-narcissism to this, except I'm not immensely happy with my own body for obvious reasons, so the entire construction in my head just ends up turning into an aesthetic sense obsessed with Same and Other bodies.
(By the way, there is a way in which othering can be a positive thing, it's just that it can be very hard to come by. It is a process that actually creates a lot of our perception of time. Read Emanuel Levinas on the subject, bearing in mind that when he starts actually talking about sex directly is when I personally start taking him with a grain of salt.)
A lot of this aesthetic sense is of course things we might not have developed on our own, things nobody might have developed on their own. I should point out that the basic aesthetic principles that underlie this sort of thing are not uncommon in biological women, even putatively heterosexual ones. This particular kind of feminine-inclined technical androgyny is very classical, very hieratic. Describing it as universal is completely off-base, though, and if it has biological origins (which to be honest it probably does somehow or other) I really don't think it's biological any more at this point. Then again, considering my feelings on the subject of sexuality I might not be the world's most unbiased source on that.
|
