Human beings, characteristically try to reform and improve themselves. Inescapably, at any historical moment, they do so in terms of knowledges and beliefs about the kinds of creatures that they are. Over the first sixty years or so fo the twentieth century, human beings – at least in the advanced industrial and liberal democratic societies of the west – came to … Continue reading »
Filed under The Discursive Gap …
Interrogating Sex and Gender Categories: an Asexual Case Study
Until 2001 there wasn’t an asexual community. Why was this? The question is more complex than it appears. The internet was a necessary condition because it allowed a geographically dispersed group to connect. Was it a sufficient condition though? It provided the infrastructure for a disparate group to connect. However there still had to be … Continue reading »
The Discursive Gap
“I came to identify as asexual this way: I have never understood the desire to engage in the acts that define sex, from kissing on down the list. My body doesn’t function that way – it doesn’t excite me. Other things excite me: a good protest, a fine steak, reaching the top of a mountain … Continue reading »
The Difficulty of Working Out Who You Are: Sexual Categories, Sexual Culture and Asexuality
The talk I gave at the recent Spotlight on Asexuality Studies event: http://markcarrigan.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/markspotlight.mp3
The Sex Drive Hypothesis
Characteristically, the scientist confronts a complex interaction system – in this case, an interaction between man and opium. He observes a change in the system – the man falls asleep. The scientist then explains the change by giving a name to a fictitious ’cause’, located in one or other component of the interacting system. Either … Continue reading »
Romance yields to ‘friendship with benefits’?
An interesting article in today’s Times (which I can’t link to because of the paywall) about the growth of ‘friendship with benefits’. It reports findings of research in the US which suggests that such relationships are becoming a lot more demographically varied (rather than being the preserve of university students) and that “unexpectedly … both … Continue reading »
