"How to stop your man from straying"

personally, I preferred revol's critique of anyone who took this stuff seriously.

Surely the best way to oppose prescribed gender roles is just to ignore them? I mean genetic determinism is pretty easily discredited - as all you need to do is act contrarily to how the genes say you should behave.

it's not a case of intellectually rejecting certain notions - it's perfectly possible to do that and still feel insecure etc.

I mean teenage siblings of friends of mine know all about the bullshit pressures they are subjected to, of which the media is a part, but still have to deal with the very real consequences of 'just ignoring them'.

I agree.

But maybe they're not ignoring them enough?

we're social beings and no amount of knowing all this stuff is bullshit and ignoring it gets away from the fact this bullshit mediates our social interactions. i mean it seems to me that confidence etc is simply a performative mask which conceals the fact there is no essential self to be true to, but maybe i've just been reading to much post-theory

The other thing that's come to mind is that the whole 'men need strange pussy' thing is just another facet of the ideological buggery of darwin which began with t.h. huxley. there's an article by an 'LSE expert' on BBC News' 'most emailed' list right now (link), saying that the human race might split into two species in 100,000 years time - blatant naturalisation of class, and blatant nonsense given as nobody's an expert in what will happen in 100,000 years (and afaik LSE has no natural science courses so their employment of an evolutionary theorist is pretty suspect ideologically in itself), civilisation has only existed for little over 10,000 years ffs.

that's really funny (the evolutionary article I mean). I'm still not convinced that we shouldn't just ignore that "expert".

I know what you mean about the real effect of stereotypes, etc., though. Proabably a bit naive of me to say just ignore them. Maybe - as much as possible ignore them - is better. The alternative does seem to be trying to find some alternative niche identity to subsume oneself in.

revol: well yeah, but nobody's been dicussing cosmo for several pages. not that i can justify 'doing something about it' specifically over general organising that includes a critique of roles per se, i'm more just bored at work and pursuing my hobbyhorse of firefighting your flames

john: yeah, i mean i think i took 'ignoring' to include refusal to acknowledge the real consequences - i mean we should just ignore 'race', it's a non-concept and a non-issue, but we can't just ignore the fact there is a lived reality of 'race', racism etc which exists independently of it's intellectual poverty.

The tension between women as sexual beings is hardly new, but I think noticing and commenting on things isn't a bad thing to do. I think it comes down to the simple idea that men are suppose to want sexually available women, but to not want their women to be sexually available.
Plus the notions of performance etc that are widespread now actually move away from the sexual act, it's about watching and performing. A Guardian article a few months back mentioned the difference between sexy and sexual, the idea that sex is becoming divorced from its physical context in favour of a visual one.

i think Zizek (i'm not obsessed, just haven't read much psychoanalysis ) talks about sex as masturbation, where people become mutual props for each other in some kind of self-oriented aesthetic/phantastic act, or something.

you mentioned the guardian though which means revol will be off on one calling us liberals for the next three pages

i haven't read any lacan and not much zizek, but i've never really got this claim, is it basically the (freudian?) assertion that the only psychological connection between sexual partners is the fantasy that the other sees you as you see yourself, a sort of vicarious narcissism?

i mean sex is obviously more than mere penetration (and yes that phrasing implies male agency and female passivity if you're a pedantic heteronormative liberal feminist), but i don't know if the narcissism thing is true. i mean there's always a fantasmic element (which can even standalone if we're going to do literary criticism, pace Eyes Wide Shut), but is that always masturbatory? i mean it sounds like one of lacan's phallocentric inheritences from his 'return to freud' :?

It just reminds me of the 'bisexuals' I knew at college who were so narcissistic that all sex was masturbation to them, whether they were alone or not.

I'm not sure, but I think that sex has a real physical basis and that that cannot be ignored.

I don't think he denies the existence of the sexual act though does he? But fantasy and fiction are sexual relationships Revol, because they do require the presence of the other person, even if the act is entirely composed of F and F and the partner is interchangeable because it is all about projection there is still a requirement for the other person.

Oh my god! Joseph K. is a lesbian!

I'm not sure if I'm misreading you here, but I thought all acts were already mediated. I think I'll have to check my lacanian dictionary when I get home.

deleuze told me so, i've been becoming-woman obviously

yeah i suppose there are various questions, like is a sexual partner always essentially interchangeable because of the necessary phantasmic element to sex? i don't think they are, since that phantasmic element could surely be dependent on a specific person? Lacan's position (no chuckling at the back) kind of seems a fairly bourgoise one (which if it stems from Freud is unsurprising), reducing all sexual agents to a homogenous abstract sexual labour, and positing alienation as fundamental to sex

which in fact affirms Cosmo's position, as the 'strange pussy' is constantly discovered in phantasmic form, detached from the physical person (and physical pussy) of the woman who wants to 'stop her man from straying'

but of course i haven't even read lacan let alone understood him, so it is possible he isn't just an obsucure apologist for womens' mags ;)

I reckon that's probably because of one of Lacan's principle differences with Freud, or at least differences of emphasis. Thus, for Freud, the Oedipal drama is played out between subjects, for Lacan it's played out between subject positions. This is how come the (M)other can at once desire and be the Phallus.

(Do I win a fiver for that one?)

fuck knows, will a fiver stop you rubbing in the fact i'm way out of my depth?

It's just stuff I remember from back when Zizek was cool, in the mid-90s.

and i was in primary school :?

i have a feeling critiquing lacan via revol via zizek wasn't very clever, but i still don't think i agree with what revol said about the neccessary narcissism

It depends on how you figure the narcissitic subject, really. I don't think it's a question of a self-sufficient, monadic subject falling in love with itself. It's more a matter of lack gazing on lack.*

Sweet suffering Christ, I'm full of it today.

* This is, of course, if you buy the whole "lack" thing. Personally, I much prefer Levinas' account of desire, which is about as far from Lacan/the psychoanalytic tradition as you can get. The best thing about lack is that I got to write something about the psychoanalytic turn(s) in political theory called Is it because I is lack?

Hi

You bookworms all need a good hard shag.

Love

LR

Lacanian psychoanalyisis in 'only good for wordplay' shocker

fuck knows, haven't read levinas either. i'm obviously far more of a romantic than i realised in not wanting to reduce sex to some alienated and alienating masturbatory ritual of a narcissistic atomised subject. takes the fun out of it really.

Or for revol....

Hi

Depends. I'd have thought a synthesist of your calibre would have found a way of incorporating them into one giant sticky, smelly, celebration of their whole species-being.

This whole sex/farting binary is totally reactionary.

Love

LR

revol: right, yeah. but i thought you said lacan's view that you were repeating was that sex was essentially narcissistic masturbation ("pretty much")? :?

for the third time in quick succession; my position on the matter; fuck knows :?

For Lacan, narcissism is pre-Oedipal, and originates in the so-called "mirror stage," where the unity of the subject is staged in & through its self-regard. With the priviso that there is no "self" prior to the regard.

What he actually said is "There is no relationship," rather than "There is no sexual relationship." What is at stake in the narcissistic is something other, and something perhaps more fundamental even than (sexual) pleasure -- it's the (false) coherence of the subject. Although clearly that coherence can & does become libidinally invested. Thus the sexual relationship is fraught with risk, as the copulatory shunt with the desired other (that is at once myself, and the guarantor of my subjectivity) can destabilise my subjectivity just as surely as it can shore it up.

I would like to make clear that I think this is a load of shite.

in what way?

Yes, shite. I mean, look at it, for fuck's sake.

So not all bad news, then.

Yeah, I was going to point that out, but I'm too polite.

Plus I thought I'd leave you to your autocritique.