Thinking about sexuality and sex and gender and all the variations. A spectrum, a graph, I am convinced the utterly male macho heterosexual man and utterly female, feminine, heterosexual woman are the real anomalies, the only actual queers. Most of us are a bit off the ideal, in this as in all things. Perfection is sterile and vulnerable. Only when error and variation are present is there life. Messy, complex, vibrant life.
I've been reading about new information coming out of genetic research, stimulated in large part by the search for a cure for AIDS - closely tied to homosexuality. Poetic, really. Rich pickings, myriad complexities.
It begins with XX and XY, but even that is flawed, as it can become XXY, XXX, XYY... we ring the changes from before we have our full compliment of DNA. The card shuffle is just the beginning, since we also have mitochondria just from mum, mosaicism, and our receptors for hormones can have incomplete expression, or mum's uterus contaminated by previous occupants... um, older siblings. Not to mention how it all gets triggered differently when we hit puberty. An apparent girl can become masculinized, an obvious boy exposed as female. Or what looked like one or the other begins to form into a bit of both. We've only begun to suspect environmental chemicals' effect.
Then, of course, is how this is interpreted through the pressure of culture, twisted by expectation and a societal imperative for simplicity and clarity. Subtlety and confusion are not well tolerated by rigid cultures.
It's not just a matter of inclinations, but of degree. Is asexuality the opposite of sexual obsession, or the flipside of bisexuality? Why is dress sense a part of it? Except that it does seem to be? What is core, what artifact?
Not that I think there is a moral matter here, but that understanding would enlighten us to how our minds work. Computer networks reflect human brains that create them.
We are all part of these natural processes. However man-made and artificial, there is no outside. It may have gone askew, toxic, cancerous, but that too is part of nature. Our houses and freeways and factories are as organic as a bird bower, or a beaver dam, or a wasp nest.
Change is inevitable and imperfection critical.
Sin is built in, necessary.
3 comments:
Then we get to the idea of sin. What is it and who gets to define it? Sin is just like the idea of time: a human construct designed to mold the behaviors of human beings huddled together around the same fire, hunting and gathering for the greater good, overriding the natural instinct for self-preservation.
Or, is gathering into communities an act of self-preservation?
Your posts make me think...which is good. Thanks.
Crow,
I have no answers. Only the sense that perfection is anathema.
just wanted you to know that i'm still here, still reading, just not commenting. but this post was so beautiful and well thought out that i had to chime in.
thank you, as always, for your thoughtful, meditative, nun-judgmental writing. this is good stuff. reminded me of the leonard cohen line "there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in" and my own acceptance of the imperfection of what was supposed to be a perfectly circular tattoo - i had to embrace its imperfection because it spoke to the handmade nature of it.
at any rate, lovely post.
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