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THE_PLASTIC_FALLACY
October 4-7, 2008
A few points on the curve:
Consider the changing radical
status of the sex toy.
There was a time when feminists
turned on the dildo. They PENIS_ENVY
looked on lesbians using a
strap-on as an admission
that Freud's "Penis Envy" theory Was all this a result
had some merit -- do women of the doctrine that
regard themselves as incomplete everything is political?
men?
There was a 60s notion that
The seat (?) of the female the Vietnam war was a result
orgasm was the clitoris, the of sexual repression on the
"vaginal orgasm" was a myth, part of the country's leaders.
and the ideal female-on-female
sex act was cunnilingus. There were hopes that one
could save the world with
That lasted ten years or so, erotic dancing and porn
before the "sex positive" movies.
crowd began to undermine it.
"Get over yourself.
And start having
orgasms." I usually credit San
Francisco as the
Dildos were back birthplace of this But then,
on the scene, and change. I don't San Francisco
by the end of the think that's *too* probably had
80s vaginal orgasms inaccurate. a lot to do
didn't seem so with the sex
absurd either and politics
(there was much connection in
talk about g-spots). Question: how is it the first place.
possible for a group
of fanatics to sell
women on doctrines
that tell them how
their bodies are Wouldn't you think
supposed to respond that personal
to stimulus? experience would
immediately shoot
down any such attempt?
Women are weird.
Dildos were evolving around that
time as well, moving away from In any case, this is
realistic duplicates of penises a pretty good example
(usually in that pink color that of an aspect of
Crayola used to call "Flesh") to sexuality being a
more stylized shapes. "social construct".
An innovation of the 90s But then, a biological
that was popular with at determinist could take
least one lesbian of my it as significant that
acquaintance: the thigh the social construct
strap dildo. didn't hold for very
long.
Does it all come down to
interaction with another
consciousness? So then why
not teledildonics?
THE_NEW_FLESH
I think the interesting
issue with sex and
technology is that
changes can take place
that drive a wedge
between things that
were conceptually
welded together. Wedges and
welds, again.
Birth control plus
antibiotics didn't I really need
(quite) transform the some new cliches.
world into the
pornoverse, but it did
change our perspective
on our customs, made
us think a little
harder about the way EXCUSES
we were going to do
things, and our
rationales for doing
things that way.
My claim is that the sex-love
distinction got much more
well-defined after technical
controls for veneral disease
and pregnancy were available.
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