Describe and analyse an aspect of your life which has been affected by COVID-19, using what you have learned in this unit.

SOCI1010 Welcome to Week 9: Love, Marriage and Friendship

AGENDA ➤ Love: we will explore romantic love, in particular, as well as

sexual love

➤ Marriage: we will discuss various kinds of unions between people and how we categorise them

➤ Friendship: we will similarly look at the various types of friendships that exist and consider how our cultural context influences how we experience friendships

➤ Overarching theoretical idea: in exploring the topics above, we will consider how the ideas of Michel Foucault, particularly the concept of biopower, impacts on how we see our relationships and desires (as well as those of others!)

…the body: chromosomes (X,Y) and hormones

…not the act!

SEX VARIETY/INTERSEX ➤ There is a lot of diversity in

terms of biological sex yet it is not much discussed

➤ Intersex people are not clearly male or female (often but not always pathologised)

➤ The term ‘hermaphrodite’ is widely considered stigmatising and outdated, though it is still used in some scholarly work

Five genders are recognised among the Bugis people of South Sulawesi. The bissu (pictured) is considered to be an embodiment of all genders and sexes and this gives them special abilities

GENDER: MASCULINE, FEMININE AND QUEER ➤ Transgender: physical sex does not match gender identity (not

= gay/lesbian)

➤ Cisgender: physical sex matches gender identity (not = heterosexual)

➤ Gender queer: opting out of the gender binary, rejecting heteronormativity (not = gay/lesbian)

GENDER ➤ Concept of gender popularised in 1970’s to highlight

historically and culturally contingent nature of the social roles, characteristics, and values assigned to the categories ‘male’ and ‘female’

➤ Gender is social, not natural (while there are trends, it does not reflect essential ‘biological’ differences - example of polyandry in South Asia)

➤ Gender also varies cross-culturally and across age groups

SEXUALITIES ➤ Does sexuality describe something you do — or something

you are?

MICHEL FOUCAULT (1926 - 1984) ➤ French philosopher, literary critic,

social theorist

➤ Influential. Studied relationship between power and knowledge and how they are used as a form of social control through social institutions

➤ Known for his work on various social institutions such as medicine and psychiatry, education and also for his work on the history of sexuality

FOUCAULT - BIOPOWER ➤ Takes the form of daily practices and routines through which individuals

engage in self-surveillance and self-discipline, and thereby subjugate themselves

➤ Can be seen as the social and political investment in the regulation and management of health and sexuality

➤ Instead of ordering people to be a certain way, society pressures them to police themselves and each other (think about our ideas of what it means to be ‘healthy’ and ‘normal’)

➤ Other examples of where you can see bio power at work: ➤ Family-support legislation (‘baby-bonus’, etc) ➤ Sex education in schools (what is considered healthy and proper?) ➤ Vaccination programs, vision and hearing screening for children ➤ Studying birth and death rates, disease distribution

THE BIRTH OF THE CLINIC 1963 ➤ Under the medical gaze, a person is merely a malfunctioning

organ, not a person to be considered as a whole entity

➤ Medicine, through the creation of disease categories, acquired the power to define the ‘normal’ and identify the ‘deviant’

➤ Power as totalising and individualising

For a sexual interest or orientation to be considered healthy and normal, it must

be…?

HETERONORMATIVITY ➤ Homosexuality was removed from

the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973. It is still considered a mental illness in several cultures

➤ Heterosexuality is the ‘norm’ against which homosexuality defined as ‘unhealthy’ or ‘deviant’ (heteronormativity)

➤ …and the DSM still provides a ‘norm’ against which various aspects of humanity are often judged!

…NOT SO NORMAL ➤ Some sexualities/sexual tastes are

considered abnormal, discouraged, stigmatised and/or pathologised

➤ Paraphilias — the experience of sexual arousal provoked by atypical objects, situations, or individuals

➤ DSM still provides a ‘norm’ against which various sexual practices are judged too

➤ Examples?

SHIFTING NORMS - BDSM? ➤ Combination of the abbreviations B/D

(Bondage and Discipline), D/s (Dominance and submission), and S/M (Sadism and Masochism)

➤ BDSM is now used as a catch-all phrase covering a wide range of activities, forms of interpersonal relationships, and distinct subcultures (*NOT* always conventionally ‘sexual’ — example: pup play)

➤ BDSM communities generally welcome anyone with a non-normative streak who identifies with the community; this may include body modification enthusiasts, animal roleplayers, rubber fetishists, and others

EROTOCENTRISM ➤ Erotocentrism: a belief that your own sexual behaviour and preferences are

superior to all others and that your own sexuality is the standard by which all others should be judged

➤ Example: the tendency to divide ‘vanilla’ from ‘kink’ and to presume that such a thing as ‘normal’ or natural sex and arousal exists

➤ Anything deemed abnormal or ‘unnatural’ can elicit reactions of disgust

➤ Something as simple as a kiss can be seen as disgusting. To illustrate, the Tonga tribe in Mozambique see kissing as being spectacularly gross. “Look at them,” early ethnographers once overheard, “they eat other’s saliva and dirt”

EROTOCENTRISM: WHY DO WE CARE? ➤ In his ‘History of Sexuality’ (1976),

Foucault discusses how Western views of sex changed over the past few centuries. Among others, two new ideas:

➤ 1.) the nature of our sexual desires reveal some fundamental truth about who we are

➤ 2.) we are obliged to seek out that truth and express it (…but it’s a trap!)

SEXY SOCIAL CONTROL ➤ Anglo Western societies have developed sciences of sex (think: sexology) and

fostered ‘confessional practices’ to further these sciences

➤ Biopower is a means to regulate and normalise certain types of sex (label rather than prohibit) (History of Sexuality, pp. 136-150)

➤ The label of ‘sexuality’ (like gay, lesbian, etc.) is a product of biopower and the modern discourses on sexuality, not an inner, true, natural identity (History of Sexuality, pp. 68, 105)

DISTINGUISHING ‘NORMAL’ FROM ‘DEVIANT’ ➤ Foucault: the categorisation of homosexuality as a mental

illness shaped modern understandings (and frequently resistance) of homosexuality

➤ Some categories, however, can be a normalising force

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. 1977, pg. 304