Wednesday 11 November 2015

Excerpt

She likes to shag with men inside huge flurry costumes. If I knew Greek, I could propose a "-philia" for it.





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It is probably too much to ask, at this historical juncture, to do with "paraphilia" as Beier does with his neologism of "dissexuality"
—to squarely define it as "a sexual expression of a failure to conform to social norms" (Beier, 1998, p. 134)
and thus to acknowledge that the sex offence is simply a banal battle between a resourceful conspiracy of social conformists ("society") and the incidental erotic dissidents it loves to hate.

Although entertained by anthropologists for decades (Gayle Rubin is one), such an honest admittance will be resisted by most people who derive a career and a daily wage from the formulaic convention that they are working with sick (not just ill-fitting) people.

>>


from "'Paraphilia': Acultural or Anti-Anthropological?"
Diederik F. Janssen, MD
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
[Sexual Offender Treatment, Volume 9 (2014), Issue 2]


I do not remember how I stumbled on this, but I found it oddly comforting.

In the history of the world, societies have condoned - or even considered desirable - almost every kind of [sexual?] behaviour, that has been (or is) considered deviant in some others.

The ways the ancient Greek managed the education of their youngsters springs to mind (not only the Athenians and their curious habit of mentoring promising young males over the points of well doing adult males'... a-hem, but also the Spartans tradition of having their daughters vigorously making athletic exercise in the nude, along with their brothers), but the examples goes way beyond it, and reach contemporary times.

For example, some may feel odd that, while the practice of infibulation is rightfully condemned throughout the whole developed world, in a lot of the same places circumcision (as practised by the traditional Jews) is not so strongly condemned.

OK, I feel it odd.

If one takes a step back, and doesn't consider the statistics about post-operative complications (*) - which shouldn't really count in a moral evaluation - both practices are results of traditions that requires parents to somewhat mutilate their kids, way before these are able to express an informed consent.

Both should be considered abhorrent by a modern society, not just the one that is a tradition of a bunch of poor immigrants from West Africa.

Kissing is another example... theoretically, per Pope Alexander VII's 1666 proposition, it is a deadly sin for a catholic to kiss, out of lust, even if from the beginning there is no possibility whatsoever, for anything more spicy to happen. 

Swingers may seem a modern development, or as a symptom of the debasement of the modern world mores, but Ritual Spouse Exchange and Co-Marriage had been part of the Inuit culture for centuries(**),  before the first swinger club ever opened.


The Pharaohs of Egypt practised and endogamy so strict, that it involved relatively often father-daughter incests and a lot of sister-brother ones,  with offspring (it is a mystery to me, how they managed for two and a half century the kind of generic derive that one can see in the Borbone portrayed by Goya - apparently, the original genetic stock was remarkably good).

In the same line, some thirty years ago a social researcher found, spelunking through Parochial registers and correlating names and dates of the newborns, that in an area of the Northern Italy it was customary for daughters to be initiated to sex by their fathers, the night before the wedding.

The tradition should have died sometime at the half of the XIX century (just some millennia after the act was declared illegal), but God only knows from whence it came - my suspect, the late neolithic.

In some places today, being an active homosexual doesn't make you a posh consumer, to be courted by advertising companies looking for those dimes you are not (were not... times are a' changin') going to spend into raising your kids.

In these places, it makes you liable of death by decapitation, with a cheering crowd all around, or at least of a lengthy stay in mandatory therapy (***).

And the list goes on, and on, and on.

So, whatever is your favoured paraphilia, cool your head and relax.

Sometime, somewhere, in the past or in the future, in the fullness of time, there is a society where it was, it is or it will be considered "cool" (****) .
In the meanwhile, be a good citizen, bide your time and fake believing what the social conformists around you say of the argument.

Don't let them know that you know that they are just ass-holes full of shit.
They usually do not take it as lightly as they should.


* Infibulation tend to produce problems throughout the whole life of a great many part of its patients, usually by complicating urinary processes. Male circumcision, a lot  less so... but, botched circumcisions resulting in lifetime impotence - or complete loss of the penis - are not unheard of.

**  Possibly motivated - at the very bottom - by a dramatic need to keep the genetic pool as dynamic as possible, in some of the less populated regions of the planet? If the -roughly- 10% of illegitimate children that every society seems to produce is indeed a survival need of human groups,obviating to it in a place where you can spend years before meeting someone outside your group can require pretty drastic measures

*** The fact that admitting homosexuality as a normal inclination implies to admit that a lot of sexual mores are in effect arbitrary societal customs, has often been used as an excuse to oppose this recognition ("if we start with them faggots, then bestiality, then incest... where to draw the line?" - I draw it on the SSC border). By the way, I am not sure... is homosexuality still a grave illness, in China, or they finally reached this century, on it?

**** I was going to say, unless it involves some homicides, then I remembered the various moments in history where human sacrifices have been considered more than acceptable. By the way, if you live in a society where entertaining your personal -philia is a problem to you, and know of one contemporary place  where it is no, start sparing money for the plane ticket, kid. Millions did it already.... and, don't worry. The families never understand why. 



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