On sex and personhood
July 28th 2009 22:26
What is the difference between masturbation and copulation?
What more is there to sex than friction?
What does having another person in the room supply? -- Another person, that is, as opposed to a blowup doll, or a dildo, or a plastic vagina.
Or are they no different from a blowup doll, a dildo, a plastic vagina?
At a first pass, one might speak of responses, both conditioned and genetic. How we're primed to act in the presence of other people. How the mirror neurons in our brains fire. The effect of another's physical proximity, smell, sound, touch.
And one might speak also of changes in consciousness -- how we react under the gaze of another person, the different thoughts and feelings this limits us to or enables.
But Kant apparently says something like, "in sexual relations, one person is always made into an object".
It seems to me that Kant is basically correct. For if, when you initiate sex, part of the point is your own pleasure, then to some extent you're using the other person, and they're a means to an end.
Some of the moments of greatest pleasure are when you're not thinking of the other person -- when the words that go through your mind, the things your consciousness focuses on or holds uppermost, aren't directly to do with the other -- when you're lost in sex, or when you're focused on a sensation or a fetish or a detail (the appearance of a foot, the sound of a voice), or you're fantasizing about something.
If you're mainly thinking about technique, then to some extent you're objectifying.
A surgeon who thinks only of technique is objectifying and distancing.
But often, surely, you're conscious that they're conscious. There are, for most people, dimensions to the experience and activity of sex that wouldn't be there if the other were merely an object.
You're for instance aware of:
-- Another entity that feels certain things when you do or don't do certain things.
-- An entity you can dominate or submit to, humiliate or empower.
-- An entity with intentions, expectations, desires, happinesses, sadnesses. And there is a game in delaying, frustrating, violating, or abiding by those expectations and desires.
-- The concept of person. A blowjob isn't just wetness and pressure and heat; and it's not just the taboo of sexually interacting with mouth and face: -- part of the experience is that this is a person's face.
Is awareness of desires the same thing as regarding someone as a person?
The sex worker who wishes to please her client, while holding him at a distance, and considering him a means to an end?
The sociopath who takes into account other people's desires, without those desires meaning anything?
I'd want to argue that there are shades of grey. You can personify at the same time as objectify.
What does it mean to objectify? What does it mean to treat someone as a "sexual object"?
I've written a lot on this topic elsewhere. Part of my claim is that objectifying is about failing a little or a lot with respect to ideals about how we should treat persons.
What does it mean to regard a person as a person (rather than as a lampshade, or a writing desk)?
(What does it mean to regard a cave as a home, or a milk crate as a chair, or a bulky dictionary as a door-stop?)
It probably includes having certain things foremost in your consciousness, or being primed, predisposed, to react in certain ways, or with certain limitations.
The temporal dimension to sex: -- in a complete sexual act, is it ever only one or the other -- seeing the other either as a person or as an object?
Much of S&M must rely upon personhood. For what is the pleasure in whipping an inanimate object?
There are any number of reasons for S&M. But it sometimes seems that the point is to convert person to object.
The mistress might whip to focus her slave's consciousness on the present, to concentrate his consciousness on his body, to reduce his consciousness to bodily sensation, to make him aware of his existence, right now, as a physical thing in the world.
But what if she succeeded? Would there still be pleasure in the activity, for either party?
Dual seeings...
Much sexual pleasure might have something to do with the play of oppositions -- hidden and revealed, male and female, dominant and submissive.
This may be the case for S&M also -- the simultaneous perception of someone as both person and object, or of a bodily part as both animate and inanimate.
A lady interested in needles and knives once spoke to me of the enormous thrill she experienced on reading the words, "I am not just a person. I am also a piece of flesh."
The discourse of erotic fiction sometimes points to the pleasure -- the power-pleasure, and the sexual pleasure -- of regarding a person as a "plaything", "sex doll", "fucking machine". Presumably the pleasure would be absent if one tried to regard an actual toy as a toy.
Jeffrey Dahmer fantasized about drilling holes in the skulls of his victims to create sexual zombies.
In A few good men, Jack Nicholson suggests "There is, believe me gentlemen, nothing sexier on earth than a woman you have to salute in the morning. Promote 'em all I say." -- So the description might partly be of an experience where your lover is perceived also as "superior officer".
Sexual roleplay -- "cheerleader", "nun", "nurse", "policeman"... They're dressing up, and it's fake, and you know it's fake. But are such fantasies really so different from seeing a person as "my husband", "my boyfriend", "my lover" -- or from getting a Nicholson kick from fucking a superior -- these are also "seeing as", these are particular perceivings and projections.
What's indicated is the diversity of interactions -- the limitless field of possible ways to see something as. The person/object dichotomy is ultimately insufficient to cope with sex -- what we actually do, how we behave, how our consciousness operates.
Notes
-- Robert Nozick writes eloquently on the play of desires in sex in The Examined Life (1989).
-- The image of the male torso comes from LightWay Nutrition, LLC.
What more is there to sex than friction?
What does having another person in the room supply? -- Another person, that is, as opposed to a blowup doll, or a dildo, or a plastic vagina.
Or are they no different from a blowup doll, a dildo, a plastic vagina?
***
At a first pass, one might speak of responses, both conditioned and genetic. How we're primed to act in the presence of other people. How the mirror neurons in our brains fire. The effect of another's physical proximity, smell, sound, touch.
And one might speak also of changes in consciousness -- how we react under the gaze of another person, the different thoughts and feelings this limits us to or enables.
***
But Kant apparently says something like, "in sexual relations, one person is always made into an object".
It seems to me that Kant is basically correct. For if, when you initiate sex, part of the point is your own pleasure, then to some extent you're using the other person, and they're a means to an end.
***
***
If you're mainly thinking about technique, then to some extent you're objectifying.
A surgeon who thinks only of technique is objectifying and distancing.
***
But often, surely, you're conscious that they're conscious. There are, for most people, dimensions to the experience and activity of sex that wouldn't be there if the other were merely an object.
You're for instance aware of:
-- Another entity that feels certain things when you do or don't do certain things.
-- An entity you can dominate or submit to, humiliate or empower.
-- An entity with intentions, expectations, desires, happinesses, sadnesses. And there is a game in delaying, frustrating, violating, or abiding by those expectations and desires.
-- The concept of person. A blowjob isn't just wetness and pressure and heat; and it's not just the taboo of sexually interacting with mouth and face: -- part of the experience is that this is a person's face.
***
Is awareness of desires the same thing as regarding someone as a person?
The sex worker who wishes to please her client, while holding him at a distance, and considering him a means to an end?
The sociopath who takes into account other people's desires, without those desires meaning anything?
I'd want to argue that there are shades of grey. You can personify at the same time as objectify.
***
What does it mean to objectify? What does it mean to treat someone as a "sexual object"?
I've written a lot on this topic elsewhere. Part of my claim is that objectifying is about failing a little or a lot with respect to ideals about how we should treat persons.
***
What does it mean to regard a person as a person (rather than as a lampshade, or a writing desk)?
(What does it mean to regard a cave as a home, or a milk crate as a chair, or a bulky dictionary as a door-stop?)
It probably includes having certain things foremost in your consciousness, or being primed, predisposed, to react in certain ways, or with certain limitations.
***
The temporal dimension to sex: -- in a complete sexual act, is it ever only one or the other -- seeing the other either as a person or as an object?
***
Much of S&M must rely upon personhood. For what is the pleasure in whipping an inanimate object?
***
There are any number of reasons for S&M. But it sometimes seems that the point is to convert person to object.
The mistress might whip to focus her slave's consciousness on the present, to concentrate his consciousness on his body, to reduce his consciousness to bodily sensation, to make him aware of his existence, right now, as a physical thing in the world.
But what if she succeeded? Would there still be pleasure in the activity, for either party?
***
Dual seeings...
The tease of hidden and revealed...
This may be the case for S&M also -- the simultaneous perception of someone as both person and object, or of a bodily part as both animate and inanimate.
A lady interested in needles and knives once spoke to me of the enormous thrill she experienced on reading the words, "I am not just a person. I am also a piece of flesh."
The discourse of erotic fiction sometimes points to the pleasure -- the power-pleasure, and the sexual pleasure -- of regarding a person as a "plaything", "sex doll", "fucking machine". Presumably the pleasure would be absent if one tried to regard an actual toy as a toy.
Jeffrey Dahmer fantasized about drilling holes in the skulls of his victims to create sexual zombies.
***
Sexual roleplay -- "cheerleader", "nun", "nurse", "policeman"... They're dressing up, and it's fake, and you know it's fake. But are such fantasies really so different from seeing a person as "my husband", "my boyfriend", "my lover" -- or from getting a Nicholson kick from fucking a superior -- these are also "seeing as", these are particular perceivings and projections.
What's indicated is the diversity of interactions -- the limitless field of possible ways to see something as. The person/object dichotomy is ultimately insufficient to cope with sex -- what we actually do, how we behave, how our consciousness operates.
Notes
-- Robert Nozick writes eloquently on the play of desires in sex in The Examined Life (1989).
-- The image of the male torso comes from LightWay Nutrition, LLC.
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