sluts and blogs
Well today I responded to a post from Bitch, Ph.d, which I thought really summed up my predicament and possibly why I have become a little...okay... somewhat focused on sex lately. It seems to me well not this blog so much... but the other one I run is really bound up with both the dissatisfaction I feel about the work I am doing and the location of the institution I work for. I think I have been trying to work through some of this at school, by introducing papers that critique a lot of the assumptions about identity that dominate discourses, and it seems in deeply conservative towns such as this, these discourses or felt to be naturally, to my eyes overwhelmingly so.
I was taken aback though that discussions of hegemony and gender and the construction of feminine identities was shouted down by many of the female students. In the written feedback on the course one wrote that there was too much about gender and another about sexuality particularly homosexuality... so I guess that they didn't even the point of the course.
So I guess I have given up that particular crusade, which of course was a crusade designed to benefit me, but frankly dismantling the discourses of common sense really benefits all those that are powerless, made so by whatever identity features they possess... Which leaves me with what? Well, nothing less than a feeling that I cannot make a difference even with those with whom I have direct contact...
SO that may be why I blog, perhaps this text universe is a heterotopia... those out there who know about these things please feel free to let me know? Here I know I could talk about all matters erotic as they pass through my mind, some staying longer than others of course... but somehow I still feel constrained...
I was reading today in a blog where some one's blog was happened upon by a friend, and they tutted about the sluttiness, and felt that despite 20 years friendship the discoverer never really knew the author. The author responded by the way that his sluttiness was a recent phenomena related to his seropositivity.
I don't understand the discoverer's righteous indignation. Is one honour bound through friendship to disclose all? Certainly not, I would say. One is free, surely, to pick and choose aspects of one's life to share, as much as pick the targets for such communion. Deceived and deceitful are not at issue here, as it seems that the author has not claimed a life of chastity at any point. Most friendships in fact are based on shared identity features and interests. It would be foolish to presume that the sum of another individuals interests or features was exactly the set that intersected with yours....
oh well I should mark essays. But the thrill has gone.