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Re: Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality
Posted by diogenes on 2026-September-23 14:06:52, WednesdayIn reply to Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality posted by Pharmakon on 2026-September-22 02:55:11, Tuesday
Of course,[W]omen and men make their own sexual histories. But they do not produce their sex lives just as they please. They make their sexualities within a particular mode of organization given by the past and altered by their changing desire, their present power and activity, and their vision of a better world.echoes Marx's Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.And the extension of Marx's point to sexuality is particularly apposite, since we readily see how our ideas of what we desire are shaped, or repressed, by the shifting cultural matrix. (For example, sex and love between boys at English boarding schools became less common with the rise of a visible gay identity that would mark out these desires as indicative of an irksome sexual identity.) This would seem to support the idea that "contesting the notion of homosexual and heterosexual persons" would be a way of challenging these repressive behaviours. Still, it is the case that the majority of adults seem pretty comfortable with being placed in one or other of these boxes. What is needed, I suppose, is the recognition that boys may love and admire a man or another boy, and that this doesn't necessarily mark them out as "homosexual". It requires a recognition of the complexity of human emotions and sexuality which the very notion of sexual identity seems to militate against. (Though it seems difficult to imagine a plausible route to a world in which we cease to define ourselves in terms of sexual identity. Even I, though I reject labels such as MAP or pedophile, regard myself as a pederast.)  |
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