The Good Post Gallery

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I appreciate Nathan's input, and would like to say that I wasn't alleging that the "new" (a problematic concept by itself, as it is in a way the result of a strong trend that can be traced back to 1890 at least) sexuality model is superior to others.  Neither, for that matter, was Foucault, whom I was drawing on, who disagreed with the modern sexual model in two major ways:

A. people tend to fool themselves into viewing sexual expression as an act of rebellion and liberation when they are, in fact, playing into the "rebellion" dialectic and actually further ensnaring themselves.  By thinking of frank discussion of sex as a rebellion, they actually reinforce its status as a taboo.  By transgressively "breaking the taboo" they are in fact reinvigorating its existence. 

B.  By obsessively classifying people based on their sexual tastes, it transforms that into an immutable part of someone's identity.  The label "homosexual" becomes an inescapable prison in a way the Medieval sodomite never was: "sodomy" is an act one does, and one could (and did) abandon the label by ceasing the act.  A "homosexual" isn't defined by what he or she does, but by what he or she is, and it limits their courses of action.  Similarly for a heterosexual, the sheer act of definition based on sexual tastes ends up forcing one into a limitation of attraction to  50% of the population.  This concept, that one should only be attracted to one of the two sexes, was unknown in the Greek world, and Foucault (and, frankly, I) think that the latter attitude is preferable to the modern liberal attitude of "It's OK to be gay/whatever."  Gay rights as it was framed ends up leading to imprisoning people with a label that reduces them to only having access to lovers of one sex, whether the same or the opposite, and actually increased boundaries between the two: "gay" and "straight" become non-overlapping categories.  It's the reason why Foucault himself never considered himself gay and fiercely opposed the word in general, despite his love of many men.



Getting to Nathan's point, I agree that shame does, in fact, have a real place in sexual discourse, and one that has too often been denigrated by people that worship the discourse of sexual liberation.    Sexuality, when it becomes too loud or too boisterous, can become an actively harmful habit.  How many people dismissed the allegations against Dominique Strauss-Khan by saying things along the lines of "that's just how the French are, they have more sophisticated notions of sexuality" etc.?  People did, in fact, try to defend alleged rape (that particular case, of course, didn't happen the way originally portrayed, but remember that this is before we knew that) as somehow akin to Mitterand's affairs and whatnot.  People defend the systematic misogyny prevalent in, say, the attitudes of a Berlusconi as an example of virile womanizing, then condemn the same tawdry conduct in Egypt.

My main point is that one of the biggest problems regarding sexual discourse is the liberation trap.  People who think that they are flouting a societal taboo by talking about sex and do so for the racy thrill of transgression are themselves constructing said taboo every second.  The attempts to "shock" and declare proud opposition to cultural taboos are like a fly in a spiderweb: by struggling, you only get yourself more and more trapped.  There is no such thing as "liberation," sexual or otherwise.  This is by far the most valuable lesson in Foucault, IMO, and one of the reasons he ended up becoming such an enthusiastic supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini in the end...so many people dismiss that chapter in his life as out of place with his message when it really is the culmination of his message.  Stop struggling against "repressive" discourse and settle down and the cessation of struggle will help free you.

Granted, I wouldn't advise going that far. 

[Tetro Kornbluth]

That argument was comprehensively debunked, destroyed and generally reduced to the status of a stock joke almost as soon as Barnett published his book. The only people who take it seriously are people who are not to be taken seriously.

Anyway, and to just go over a couple of points that are obvious rather than insightful, Britain's status as a 'superpower' (to use a ridiculous and ahistorical term in this context) was effectively ended by the First World War, even if the Foreign Office continued to believe otherwise. The repeated economic fiascoes and diplomatic humiliations of the 1920s and 1930s are testament enough. That the Empire itself was doomed was obvious to all observers by the 1930s, which is why debates on the issue tended to verge on the hysterical. The stresses and strains of the Second World War merely completed matters. Even if this were not true, of course, talk of 'decline' misses the point and shows what might be thought of as an imperialist mindset; the Post War period was one of unprecedented (and almost unbelievable for many at the time) prosperity for ordinary people in Britain. When Macmillan said that people had 'never had it so good' he was being a paternalistic dick, but he was also quite correct.

Anyway, and if we're talking about Britain in the twentieth century, It really comes down to whether you'd rather live in a slum, work in a job that may well end up killing you, be bow-legged from rickets and shorter than you'd rightfully be because of malnutrition, have no financial security whatsoever and access to only limited medical services but live in a country with vast Imperial possessions overseas, or whether you'd rather have the opposite.

I was just about to post that...

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Yeah, there have certainly been cases in which the godawful state of mental health 'treatment' in the U.S has clearly contributed to a massacre (I dimly recall that being the case in the VA Tech thing anyway; though I might be remembering wrongly), but that's about as far as you can go. Most of the rest of the time we are generally talking of after the fact diagnoses, and often of the 'well, you'd have to be mentally ill to do a thing like this' variety. Which is about as useful as a chocolate blast furnace.

In any case, most people (and by 'most' I mean 'in excess of 99 per cent') people with mental health problems are no more dangerous than the rest of society. That includes the minority of cases that are things more obviously 'scary' than depression and the like. I don't see how increasing the stigma - something that is utterly ludicrious given how common mental health problems are - helps anyone. It certainly wouldn't help to prevent these regular little massacres; the violent punctuation marks of contemporary American society.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Context necessary

Is it Sam Spade's ego?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

As someone who is on the Atlas instead of at party talking to girls because there was simply too people there and I got bored quickly, I have to admire the bluntness of this:

Yeah, I've referenced sex a few times.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

One little thing that I have observed, is that all this gender war stuff fades as you get older. It's just so pointless - and stupid. And within each gender, there are a range of attitudes, and over time, those attitudes tend to come closer together a bit. On the emotional level particularly, experience, and having the endured the hard knocks, counts. In the end it is about compatibility, sexually and interests, and temperament. And we learn to tack to accommodate, as we learn that it is not all about me.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

WALL OF TEXT THAT NO ONE READS BUT YOU SURE HOPE LOOKS IMPRESSIVE AND 'SCIENCEY'.

MISLEADING GRAPH

ANOTHER WALL OF TEXT (SEE ABOVE FOR DETAILS, ETC.)

LAUGHABLE TABLE

ANOTHER WALL OF TEXT (IBID)

MISLEADING GRAPH

SMUG CONCLUDING REMARKS

Context somewhat necessary though you can guess what he is referring to.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I was going to post exactly what Scott has just posted.