The Diversity of Human Experience
For Sexuality Essay Scroll Down The Page
Reflection
While searching for the information that I would use to help me write this piece of writing I was deciding how I wanted it to be. It was confusing at first because I had these pieces of information from class discussions, articles on the subject and I also had my own ideas about one of the subjects concerning sexuality. Once I decided on the basic structure of the essay I jumped right into writing it. Usually the planning process takes me a while. It is only until I feel the pressure of needing it done is when I truly begin my work. However with this topic I really found it easy to begin almost immediately.
By writing this essay I wanted to share the information I have gained on sexuality and some of the darker aspects to sexuality according to the American culture according to the articles I read on the subject. I also wanted to express my ideas on things without actually making it less formal. In the end the audience is the one who decides.
The audience that this writing is aimed towards is general. Anyone who is old enough to read through it can hopefully learn something from this and if not hopefully it will spark some new ideas or scenarios within someone's mind. I would hope that people would be interested in this essay because it shows information that people may not be aware of and that would open their eyes to some truths about the harsh reality that is life. The essay also expresses ideas that I would consider radical and unusual. Overall I am pretty satisfied with the way that the piece turned out.
If I had the opportunity to re-write this piece the only thing that I would do is make it better. I really believe that it is my best piece of writing in my forbidden knowledge class. This is the essay where I really had not trouble writing what I wanted to express and it is also the one that I had the most fun writing. It never really seemed like work but a trip of self-exploration on where I stand on things and on how there is a world of everything out there for people to discover.
What can be discovered through this essay is the reality of sexuality in America. I see a contradiction between how most of the readings express the message of striving for the better and for the just. They express the need for equality through race and freedom right along with gender. But once again there is a group of people who are excluded from that. As you will read in my essay when it comes to decisions about your own sexuality it is usually the doctors and surgeons who decide on it, not you. That's not equality or freedom, instead that is ignorance and oppression.
This piece helped me realize and understand the goals set for me by taking this University Studies class. The one that I would say really connects to this essay is the diversity of human experience. The process has enhanced my appreciation and understanding of human experience. As it shows in the essay one particular one being sexual orientation, but I have also learned a great deal about class, race, gender and especially about ability. All the readings on sexuality have drastically changed my view on the matter. For example I feel like I understand people and myself better because of it. I have also included another essay on this page that deals with culture. That ties in into my gained insight into race, which has been reinforced to a great power by all the readings.
Orlando Heredia
UNST 121 B
2 December 2003
Sex, Gender: Natural?
Most, if not all the time that an answer is needed it is usually looked for in nature. People turn to nature as the ultimate influence in life and its uncontaminated blind order of things. So it is comprehendible that when it comes to sexuality, nature is the commanding force in whether something is natural or not. Or at least that’s how things are perceived. At this point in time sexuality is a big part of life and in order to be perceived as sexually correct you are expected to have been created that way by nature. Anyone or anything that is less than natural is seen as an abnormality. What does nature say about sex and gender? Is sex and gender both natural?
Sexuality is something that has remained a taboo through the ages and up until now people find it hard to talk about. The problem might lie in the fact that it is and probably always will be a very controversial issue. However this century has redefined sex and gender in many ways. As a result new worlds of writings and sciences that specify on the subject have risen. One of many of those writings is a well thought out and mentally stimulating article titled “Making the Cut” by Martha Coventry.
“Making the Cut” presents us with the subject of genital mutilation and its roots. It also has to do with the road that has led to present day practices of genital mutilation. It deals mostly with the female sex and experiences. According to the article all procedures that are used to remove or to change the appearance of a woman’s genitals are now grouped under the term “clitoroplasty”. This procedure had been recognized but not regularly used until a man named Baker Brown made it popular and hard to argue with in his time. He basically brainwashed people and benefited from it. Baker Brown believed and expressed that masturbation was the cause of many of the diseases that haunted women. His solution was simply to mutilate them. However there is proof that performing a clitoroplasty didn’t stop women from being able to masturbate. “They tried to stop me from masturbating… ‘Didn’t work’” (Coventry 54).
The article also went on to talk about cosmetic genital surgery. This has to do with the “problem” of a child being born with genitals that are either too large or too small (depending on sex), and the procedure to correct that. The controversy with this is that many times a child is simply operated on and converted to the opposite sex. The doctors believe that is what is best for the child. ‘About five times a day, surgeons change the shape of s child’s healthy clitoris” (Coventry 56). The decision taken by strangers has a very profound and psychological effect on the children who grow up to be troubled adults and outsiders to society.
Cosmetic genital surgery is the ultimate statement to people that if they had this done they are not normal, they are not like everyone else and so this suggests to them they are not accepted. “Between birth and age 13, I was never outright ashamed about my body because there are certain things you don’t talk about in polite society. I don’t remember anyone telling me it was bad but I picked up on the fact I was different and that this was not a ‘good’ difference. The doctors would poke and pod me and because my genitals were always the center of attention, that made me ashamed” (Coventry 57). This article suggests that sex is natural but only that of male or female, any other scenario outside of this is unnatural. Well what about people who are born with partly developed genitals belonging to both sexes? That happens naturally so why is it not recognized as a third sex, as being natural and healthy.
One solution that might make it possible to recognize such happenings as natural is to wait and let the people decide if they are happy with themselves or if they want to go under the knife. Most likely people would choose to stay the way they were and that would help feed the need for that population, the image and the social standing of such people. If that happened than there would be more than just two sexes that would be seen as natural. Different people would be compatible with other people who are different. What would draw the line at natural would be if a sex were somehow controlled by something other than pure chance and nature. So this article sees sex as natural (although only two sexes), so what of gender, what articles deal with that and what do they say. Do they state that gender is natural or not, or do they suggest it as a thing that is understood and not emphasized.
The perfect article to answer such questions is that of Laurie Essig. It is titled “Queer in Russia: A Story of Sex, Self, and the Other”. In this article Essig Writes about the many sexual preferences that individuals embody, concentrating mainly in Russia. Essig expresses her thoughts and experiences with gays, lesbians, transsexuals, bisexuals, and transvestites. The article shows the reality of how Russia is moderately more accepting to these sexual preferences than the homophobic America that we live in. One area in particular is really stimulating and revolutionary. It is the section where Essig writes about transsexualism. This section really gives an understanding of what transsexualism is and any individual who might read the article will gain a better understanding and change their view on transsexuals. According to this article “transsexuals are those who are under the impression that their bodies are not their own and ‘cannot actually engage in sexual relations because such intimacy would occur in an alien body’” (Essig 37). This scenario is amazingly and strongly intriguing. So far the article would prove that gender is not natural but when you open up your mind and intellect it becomes a mistake to think it so.
The idea that a transsexual believes he or she inhabits the wrong body might not be an idea after all. Many people in this chaotic world that is earth believe in reincarnation. Reincarnation is the belief that a soul continues traveling body to body after death and that it gains experience needed to complete the journey. Well if this is true than that can completely explain transsexualism. What if when a soul is traveling and inhabiting another body it enters the wrong sex in some weird way. But what if that was not the plan, something happened and things didn’t go according to plan. And maybe the memory, feelings and essence of a past life, in which the person might have been of the opposite sex, is overwhelmingly present and vivid. That would probably give you the feeling that transsexuals feel. If that were or is true than it could be argued that gender is truly natural with no exceptions. But this might not be a though that every person who reads Queer in Russia will have. So for now it can be seen that the article suggests that gender is not natural. How you may ask, well there is a second very interesting section of this article.
The section deals with what are called sworn virgins. Sworn virgins are women that assume the role of masculine identity by swearing to lifelong celibacy before a group of lineage elders. Violation of the oath was punished by stoning or by burning. The reasons for a woman to go to these extremes are very understandable. One is the need of a patrilineal family group for a surrogate son, no sons having been born or all having died in childhood. Surrogate sons were important for the patrilineal inheritance of family holdings. Another is the desire of a woman to escape an arranged marriage with an undesirable groom. The women who made such a choice where accepted into the community as males and they were known in the community where they lived as cross-gendered people (Essig 200). This view on gender presented by the article certainly does implicate that gender is not natural but cosmetic. It is used whenever and however for whatever purposes an individual might want. And is sexuality and gender what a person wants it to be? In the end it is better to understand yourself than to just blend in to the livestock that line up to be branded. This leads to the last of three great articles on sexuality.
“A Theology of Sexual Pleasure” by William R. Stayton, is a valuable piece of reading material for anyone with a wonder about anything related to sex. The writing within this article is gold to those who wish to understand themselves better. What this article does is get you or help you on your way to well being within a sexual body. As already mentioned once, sexuality is very controversial and taboo. Stayton tries to get beyond this with his piece. It deals with religion and misunderstandings through it. Many people confuse what religious books, organizations, and persons say about sex. Many times words are taken the wrong way, not as in bad but as in not literal. “Contrary to the belief of many Christians, the bible is not a sex book…” “It is a shame that so many within the Christian faith have dwelt on a few scriptural references and force-fit them into their own concepts of sexual morality” (Stayton 1).
Stayton includes work by other writers to give you not just an understanding of you sexually, but of the opposite sex and a small percentage about other taboos in the sexual world. He includes detailed charts, scales, and representations of sexuality. He explains the need for humans, especially children and young adults to understand sexuality because if the understanding is not there when needed than the person or persons might develop problems and confusion. “The fact is that most childhood and young adolescent sexual acting out is a form of experimentation based on sexual ignorance” (Stayton 6). Stayton also reinforces the fact that because something such as religion might be wrong in some aspects about sexuality, it does not mean that it doesn’t matter or has nothing valuable to contribute to an individual. “it is my thesis that love, spirituality, and sexuality are bound together” (Stayton ).
Overall Stayton’s article is in existence for individuals to discover about themselves and to be healthy about sexuality. It exists to unify your thoughts, ideas and insecurities into one powerful ball of intellectual mass on sexuality.
So what can be gathered from these great articles and from their content is that sex no matter what is natural, and gender can still be somewhat subjective but in the end it looks like it is not natural. Gender can be manipulated and successfully developed with individual as to serve for personal reasons and comfort ness. No matter what they still remain powerful factors of society and its acceptance towards a person sex concerning sexuality.
Orlando Heredia
Philip Jenks
UNST 121B
14 November 2003
Culture
What is every human endlessly striving for to gain? No, it's not money. You can get money if you had this. It is knowledge and knowledge is something that that we all understand helps make us better in ways over time. But has anyone ever heard of knowledge that if known may in fact harm you or change you for the worst. There is such a type of knowledge, as considered by the individual, and that knowledge is branded forbidden. When pondering upon the subject of forbidden knowledge, people will most likely what influences the decision to brand something as forbidden knowledge? The reality of this question is that this type of knowledge is extremely subjective. There are countless factors that contribute to the distinction of forbidden knowledge. However there are a few familiar ones that the majority of individuals might agree upon as being a contributing factor. For example there is gender, class, sexuality, and many more. But ultimately I believe that the biggest contributing factor for our decision to recognize something as forbidden knowledge is our culture.
Before I can express any ideas I must recognize that culture, like forbidden knowledge, is also very subjective. As a result I wished to find a definition for culture that I could write and that was somewhat universal. I found my answer in the Longman Advanced American Dictionary. It defines culture as, "the ideas, beliefs, and customs that are shared and accepted by people in a society" (340). This definition of culture makes sense and satisfies me. However my idea of culture is a bit more personalized. In my definition of culture the ideas, beliefs, and customs derive from religion, race and gender. For me it is necessary to contain those components in order to have culture.
I place religion as the central component of culture. Religion has always had major influence in the make up of society. Almost every place in the world, no matter how remote it is, has a belief system that would be considered a religion. Religion is mostly about ethics and how you will ensure your path to an afterlife or to a great life here on earth. It also gives you your basic ethical views on life and its participants. If something that is within your grasp and yet it stands between you and the afterlife, then religion would most likely consider it forbidden knowledge. Because of that there are certain components about life that are considered forbidden knowledge. Ancient Greek culture was exemplary when it came to forbidden knowledge. Their religion came in the form of myths and cautionary tales. One of the most dominating myths is that of Prometheus and Pandora. According to the Ovid Prometheus was a titan who created mankind and all the animals on earth. When the god Zeus tried to keep fire from man Prometheus stole it and gave it to man in order to save humanity from extinction. In return for his disobedience, Prometheus was damned to be tied onto a giant rock. Once there, a vulture would eat his liver everyday, and then it would regenerate during the night. The same exact cycle would begin over again the next day, everyday. (Mythology 1-7).
Another example of religion and its influence on forbidden knowledge is the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. According to this story the people who walked among the earth came by a plain in the land of Shinar and decided to dwell there. They also decided to build a tower that would reach the heavens. When the lord saw this he decided to punish the people. He decides to transform their universal language into dozens of different ones so that they would not be able to communicate and try to attain too much knowledge and power (Shattuck 16).
In many ways, religion is the foundation of forbidden knowledge. I say it is religion because God is my religion and without god there would be no forbidden knowledge. Without God there would be no knowledge at all. Religion is also deeply connected to ethics. That is where humanity derived its ethical code of conduct. It is because religion is the one that shows that there is good and evil. Now, if you are not afraid of evil or any sort of threatening existence, than you should not have any ethics. It is reasonable because in the end you have no one or no thing to fear. If that is true than what's your reasoning for being good, if not to stay away from evil.
The Prometheus myth and the story the Tower of Babel are ways in which religion helps to define and make the line between knowledge and forbidden knowledge clearer. These two myths are some of the earliest that actually show human kind that you should limit yourself when it comes to things that you necessarily don’t understand or that you don’t need to understand. Now that we have these myths we can see how we need to be careful about what we wish to learn and find out about. If there is something that is left alone most of the time, there is probably a reason why. And even though someone might not see it other do, and others have their reasons. There is always a reason for something and if you understand that you might save yourself from the forbidden. But once again we come back to what forbidden is to different people.
Religion ties into my other component of culture, race. I read an article on the importance of being a functional colored human being. The article is aimed specifically at black males but the word black can be substituted by any other race, it is universal. Marcus Garvey wrote the article and it is called "Living for Something". There is a specific section of the article that I saw as an influence on forbidden knowledge. The section states that, "the Anglo-Saxon sees beauty through himself…" and so when, "…the Negro attempts to see beauty through aquiline features of an Anglo-Saxon then he images the homeliness and ugliness of his own features because his features are [d]ifferent to those of the Anglo-Saxon" (227). What I obtain from this article is the fact that when you are racially different you may not always know why others look so different to you. Like the article says, you might see others, or yourself, as ugly but that is because you are lacking the knowledge or insight that that race might have about it self (Garvey). The article shows how knowledge of another race might sometimes be forbidden, but not because you shouldn’t know it, but because your racial makeup doesn’t allow you to see it. It is forbidden not because it is bad but because you cannot know it unless someone teaches it to you. It is a very simplistic type of forbidden knowledge, but still forbidden. Those are my reasons for including race into the components of culture.
My last and final component for my own view of culture is gender. Gender is a very important because it is never really the same in any culture. Many cultures see gender as a measure of power. Your gender could mean the difference between a hard life and an easy life. One example is the Hispanic culture. Many of the older generations believe that women are just objects for men to have their way with. Even some of the women in that culture back up the idea. The women are treated as inferior and therefore are not allowed the same access to knowledge that men are. This scenario may not be very dominant anymore but it is still alive. This shows how knowledge might be forbidden to you depending on your gender. And it is not always just forbidden to women, but to men too. Cultures have very clear boundaries on the roles of gender and sometimes discussing or revealing gender secrets is not allowed. One example that comes to my mind is African tribes. Sometimes tribes have rituals and traditions that prohibit specific knowledge to be passed on unless you are next of kin or simply jut male. I have seen plenty of the discovery channel and I have been introduced to these situations by the magic of television. However the reason of why some cultures have a different view on women than man can be explained by religion.
Because all of the components of culture are connected together I feel that they go in a circle. Like I stated in the preceding paragraph, part if not, the reason of why cultures look down upon women may be religion. All through out history women have been portrayed as sinners, tempting and responsible for troubles. One of the earliest ones is that of Adam and Eve (Shattuck). As we all know Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and doomed mans future. So did Pandora and her curiosity for the contents of her box (Shattuck). Another one that comes to mind is the wife of bath tale (Shattuck). All of these stories and myths portray women as weak, too curious for their own good, and lesser than man. The men are portrayed as very strong willed and able to restrict themselves. When the cultures turn to faith and religion they automatically see women as weak. Another reason might be the fact that god himself proclaimed women to be judged and seen as inferior.
Religion, race, and gender mix and overlap into each other in a way that it forms a circle and the result of that circle is culture. Culture is the biggest influence in the choice for branding forbidden knowledge. But it also depends on the culture and the way that culture sees the world and itself within that world. It is also good to understand what a culture thinks is necessary to know or not to know.
While in the subject of culture I begin to think long and hard about my own culture and how I have been neglecting it in a way. What made me realize this was a movie that I recently rediscovered. The title of the movie is MY FAMILY. I had seen it 5 or 6 years ago when I was in my gangster stage. The movie deals with gangs and society, which in return ends up with family. And the first time that I saw the movie all I got out of it was that gangsters where tough and that their families didn’t understand them. At that time I didn’t see the true message. What I didn’t see was that the movie had to do with culture and family values.
I will summarize the movie in order for you to understand where I'm coming from. It starts out with a man who goes to California and leaves Mexico behind. Once there he starts a family and they have many children. Then the movie skips to when the kids are older and it shows how they live a very different life then their parents did. They are involved with gangs and don’t really believe in the old customs. One of the girls considers herself a political rebel. Cops kill one young man, another helps an illegal alien become legal by marring her and beating the system. Yet another becomes a nun and then ends up marring the priest that she works with, and the youngest one becomes ashamed of his Mexican background and culture because he wants to marry into a white family. There is endless good quality information in this movie and it would take up hundreds of page to talk about. It is full of symbolism, family, culture, and ethics.
There are many parts through out the movie that reminded me how powerful and important family is to my people. The reason of why I mention that is because even though I have not forgotten my family values and aspirations they slowly start to fade over time here in the U.S. It has to do with the simple fact that life here is different and so are the values and customs of families. I am not complaining in any way, I don’t regret coming here because I like the opportunities that I have been given and the liberty in which I live my life.
What I am trying to express though this is that after seeing the movie again I was humbled once more and realized who I truly am. After a while you forget that not everyone is as well off as you and this movie makes you remember all your family back in Mexico. So this movie changed my view on my world as of now and reminded me of my experiences as an ethnic person. In the end of the movie all the characters gain a better understanding of life and their role in it. So when I saw the characters in the movie I saw a small part of me reflected in them and it brought back all the true culture, ethics, and aspirations that I used to have and compared them to what they are now. The things that were important to me before back in Mexico have changed, and morphed into hybrids of Latino American ideas.
Watching MY FAMILY also influenced me in making a new view on culture that is personal and not so much universal. The way I see it my culture is not that of Mexico alone. Although it is not Chicano culture it is mixed with the humbleness and ethical views of Mexico but without the rigidity of it. I have realized that the culture of young people like me who come to the U.S at an early age is change. Our culture is change and adaptation. So in the end what we read and experience plays a huge part in shaping who we are and how we perceive the world around us. Sometimes what we see or experience changes our view on the world back and closer to the way we used to see it, sometimes it was the right way and sometimes it was the wrong way, but it changed.