Quote from: Genevieve Swann on May 08, 2009, 06:49:05 AM
... Anyone who goes after a relationship with sex as the primary motive is an A hole. ...
Isn't there some sorta middle-ground that allows that not everyone's required to follow through on my particular biases? I mean, some people enjoy, yep, really enjoy, sexual congress and some of those people prolly don't have those unions (and prolly neither do their partners) for reasons other than having good sex, or adequate sex, or whatever.
Voltaire once remarked that "there's a bit of gonad in all human actions and thoughts." I imagine that there's a lot of truth to that as I really don't know anyone who got married or into long- or short-term relationships without there being a sexual union that was also part of the deal.
Again, I see that A hole bit as on the romantic and ideal side of the scale and one that doesn't actually take into account human reality for the most part. I mean, I think I get what your talking about and I definitely agree that we have mostly here in USA been conditioned to have this rosy lil view of a relationship that transcends sex or takes not into account sexual attraction. But, over the past few hundred years our culture also seems to have developed a "puritan"(?) goal that sees a sort of next world idealism as the perfect and regards anything material (except money and power) as a lesser station of being human. A sort of striving to be always aetherial rather than material. Of course the actual cultural reality is that we are at the same time perhaps the world's most material culture in history. Even entry to Heaven's Gate seems to be based on how well god blesses one with material fortune. An elect with a stuffed wallet, definitely Puritan again.
I suspect that none of us are particularly hot on being solely objectified, but the fact remains that in the largest parts of our lives we are both objectified and objectify others. I mean how do you avoid it? I don't know anyone who transitioned, for example, to be totally "ugly" and unblending, a caricature of womanhood or manhood.
If we were truly after that aetherial ideal life wouldn't we just not give much of a damn about how we looked or were regarded by another?
So, I think the notion that we are trying to find something more core to the person than looks or a sexual organ is a positive and even good quest. But I don't believe that the ideal is much in vogue in the material lives we all lead.
As an example I hope Kat doesn't mind if I use them. I have never actually met them, but I have read them for a good long while now and at first glance in reading thought they were remarkably intelligent. That lasted about two weeks until I read some stuff I thought was outrageously nasty and cruel. So we clashed for some time.
Yet, the longer I read, even just trying to find something I could disagree with the more impressed I became with what I saw as a really positive set of qualities in intelligence, learning, experience and just pretty good writing and thinking. I moved off of the confrontational stuff and actually realized I admired their ability and found it attractive. Yet, I had never seen a picture even of them until like two weeks ago when they linked one for us to see for a day or two.
Did that picture capture a person I had found I had come to respect and enjoy talking with? I dunno. I had pretty much objectified them as someone I enjoyed sharing chats with about things we found mutually attractive: culture-watching, social standards, bike-riding, photography, history and some mutual agreements on things that had to do with transsexing and trangender themes.
Now, that was a positive objectification of them. But, I don't really know them. I have no "real" basis for having a positive view of them and I am well-aware that they are certainly not everyone's cuppa tea here at Susan's. So there's parts of them that I tend to leave out in my views about them. And all of that from 3000 miles away having never actually even shaken hands with one another. In my mind I have objectified this person as someone I like and have a high regard for, but I really have no basis for that except that I like most of the words and the ideas and stances I see think I see them expound here.
My guess is that we all do that and especially through this medium. We get a feel for a person and they may or may not have any definite irl qualities like the ones we grant them through this aether.
IRL, we see someone who's attractive to us physically, get to know them (hopefully) a bit and maybe involve ourselves in a relationship with them of some sort, maybe sexually as well. Do we "really" know that person or do we consistently objectify them in positive ways? Well, at least until we get aggrieved with them over some foible we see or some clash of personality we see.
The idea that we want someone sexually for how their bodies are configured seems to me just a part of our lives. Your example of "chubby ->-bleeped-<-s" was a great example of that. It doesn't perforce mean that the chubby ->-bleeped-<- is just after obesity or rolls of cellulite though. It's just a physical quality that attracts them. If the relationship goes past a one night or a few nights stand then there will be more to it than simply that original attractor.
As someone said, it's kinda like only dating as a prospective love interest men of African descent or women of Scandinavian descent. It's an attractor. Whatever else occurs or doesn't isn't, imo, anymore valid or invalid because of the original attractor. It's just something we generally do.
Nichole
