Society

All About Sex And Gender.

Posted on November 4, 2012

When I was a grade school student I found this book entitled “BEING SEXUAL AND CELIBATE” in our house in the province. This was previously owned by my uncle who was a former seminarian back then and it is written by Keith Clark. The first impression was, I did not grasp the whole thing about the book.  But I remember though that one of the many things Keith discussed here was his discussion about sexuality and according to him human has three levels of sexuality. These are:

1. Biological level. The very easy way to know the gender of a person is based on the physiological manifestation of sex, the genital or the sex organ. It is considered as the “shallowest”  identification and it gives parent  a hint on how they will be treat their child later on. As shown in the photo below:

2. Psychological. Clark’s explanation in psychological level of sexuality is how a person feels about his soul. This is basically dealing with a persons perception of his sexuality.  If he feels his a man, then he is a man… same thing as being a woman. Gender identity disorder rises when there is the element of “discontent” to a person’s biological status.

Status has two kinds: The ascribed and the achieved. Sex is an “ascribed status”  because sex  itself is a nature  assigned to a person without his/her interference. Achieved status is the opposite.

In philosophizing this article I encountered a problem of how do we identify gender? Because for me, gender possesses a higher or deeper sense of meaning since it embodies the range of a persons femininity and masculinity which entirely depends on sex, social roles, and sexual identity. My humble thesis here is “When a person decides for himself, anything around and between the process of making such decision forms part the totality of his achieved status.”  So this reconciles the conflict of identity of sex and gender as ascribed and achieved statuses.  Since psychological level of sexuality involves a persons decision, psychological sexuality gives rise to issues regarding human identification of gender which most of the time inconsistent to his assigned sex or what we call transexualism.

3. Spiritual level of sexuality. Generally it is the intimate connection of a person to his God. Specifically the persona of  the person each time he connects to his Deity, the way he presents himself to God, the Ethics of a person towards fulfilling his mission as a son or daughter of the Lord.

Homosexuality. Discontent. Deviation. 

I believe that there is such thing as discontent in sexuality. Discontent is a product of  a persons repression in his way of living life. It  is the product of  repression of  freedom and the constriction of self in terms of gender expression. When a person cannot express his wholeness, when  freedom; suppose to be the feeling of “boundlessness” to do things which does not need to hide or seclude in order to stall self from social judgment is just a mere recitals of dreams.  Discontent is when people around are  “rationally  irrational” and “imperfectly perfect” which gives them the permission  and the posture of superiority  as a license to judge unevenly which will leads to a deeper sense of segregation in the society.

For example, homosexuality is still considered as deviation or disobedience to the conduct of  the society. According to my Sociology professor, homosexuality is a form of tolerable deviancy. Meaning, it disobeys  social norms and expectation but the society tolerated such deviation since the only difference is the “audience” or the people is now receiving this “feel” that homosexuality as nonprejudicial to collective good. Which I think is right! With my personal biases. Indeed, gays and lesbian are acknowledged and tolerated without any interference but are considered a normative violation.

THE WEST. SEX. CHURCH. TRADITIONAL AND LIBERTARIAN

The vast network of internet and its penetration to the whole society open windows for  Eastern people to see the western world on how they deals with homosexuality. Good thing we saw them that open. Thus influence our thinking of “today”. Until the modernization of “today”. . . still, religious people thinks and treated homosexuality as a sin. It is usual for the church to cling to their traditional way to view issues regarding our  morality. I believe that homosexuality is like sex out of marriage. They  carries the same weight. One thing I learned before was the Catholic line of teaching is greatly influenced by an Ancient Greek philosopher named Aristotle.

Applying Ethics by Olen & Berry states that St. Thomas Aquinas a mediaeval thinker incorporated Aristotle’s idea in Church Doctrine.

St Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle

First of the four doctrine adopted by the church from Aristotle is (1) nature has its purpose.  For the church, the purpose of sex is for reproduction. (Maybe God is too bored reproducing human by making a humanesque figure from mud. JOKE) —Beyond this purpose is immorality.

Immorality is the unacceptable conduct in a society. Since every society has there own gauge of what is moral and what is not, they put up an imaginary “column” to what is good and what is bad. The conflict here is when the society is influenced be a bigger body that influenced humanity for hundred of years from culture, tradition, beliefs, way of living up to way of thinking. Catholicism in the Philippine gains cultural and traditional significance and we are bored hearing this over and over again since grade school.

According to Aristotle, (2) everything has a feature that defines a characteristic. We human, our defining characteristic is we are rational and therefore has the capability to think and the capability to engage in fully human love. The third one is (3) everything in nature has its proper good. When a person is engaged in a fully human love he is also opening himself to a cycle.

In love, the church treated it this way:

That human love is not just a romantic love but a love that will be elevated to parental love. Parental love is when you produced children. Parental love is the completion or perfection of the cycle. So, true human love is not just romance and personal sexual pleasure. This builds a strong framework that sex in effect is for procreation and not just lust or any “platonic” reasons.

Church says, engaging into sex without love and to engage into sex not open to the concept of procreation violates human nature and therefore violates our dignity. Since it violates dignity, sex is a wrongful conduct that constitutes a “sin”.  This does not mean that unmarried sex with love and commitment is moral. Remember that everything in church has purpose, everything has characteristic, everything is proper good and the last idea is (4) those three are intimately related to each other. Here, the purpose of marriage takes place. Marriage is a union of two to become one so that they will be acceptable to the society and to God.  The church said, it’s immoral to have sex when there’s no sincerity and fidelity: Two elements of union that only marriage can provide and latter will justify that sex without marriage is immoral.  This is a very TRADITIONAL PERSPECTIVE about sex.

On the other hand, sex has a libertarian perspective.

Sexual revolution in 1960s to 1980s played important role to change the how sexuality is recognized as an existing reality.

This revolution is the “coming-out” of issues regarding premarital sex, masturbation, pornography, sexuality, and Erotic fantasy. It was rarely a view out of enlightenment when people see opportunity of “openness” in matters regarding sex.  One of its concepts is the idea of FREE LOVE.

Free love emerged as a sexual revolutionary concept in the mid 60’s that taught the hippies the concept of “power of love and the beauty of sex as part of student life.” Primarily a counter culture idea but its public manifestation was ended in the mid 80’s because of the public awareness of AIDS and other fatal sexual diseases. Other sexual revolutionary idea includes explicit sex on screen, the use of contraception and pills, premarital sex, and the normalization of pornography.

All of these are libertarian perspective about sex. Therefore, libertarian is synonymous to “freedom” or “openness” in sex. According to Sociologist/Anthropologist Margaret Meads who conducted a study about psychosexual development of adolescent in the island of Samoa, Sexual freedom experienced by teenagers is an easy transition from childhood to adulthood.

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Aside from the reality that sexual revolution is coined with “freedom”, it is also a new form of capital exploitation in the form of pornography and other sexual acts that elicits and involves the monetary economy.

The general libertarian view about sex is like the usual conduct of human. Conducts like playing tennis, cooking, and other usual activities. So it does not give burden of eternal damnation or exacerbate such conduct as disobedience to God. Remember that in a libertarian perspective, as long as the manner of conduct of sex is not dishonest, done not in a manner of coercion, exploitation and does not violate obligation and fundamental rights of a person, this conduct is acceptable. Example of this is rape (insertion of any object to any orifice). The two elements of sex to be considered as rape are (1) force and (2) intimidation. If the act of sex is not coercive, then sex is just an acceptable conduct of two people.

 The mechanism of this view is often regards to ask “why not”. Why shouldn’t sex be treated like any other activities? Why we considered moral playing tennis with a person we don’t love but immoral to have sex in a person we don’t love? Why we say it’s moral to eat lunch with the same sex but immoral to have sex with the same person?

WHY?

As far as I know, sex is not just growling.

——

Our Goal In Life Is Death.

Posted on October 27, 2012

Have you ever think of death or practically dying as your own choice?

Six months ago I wrote a very sad poem about death. I was contemplating to have one. I don’t know if I am serious but what I generally feels inside that I want to die. Here’s my poem:

DEI

I just woke from a shallow sleep,

I sigh, open the window and take a deep breath.

Yesterday was awning to death.

Desire to die.

Wanting to die.

Forget dreams just die!

Forget family- forget the madness of the world.

FORGET EVERYTHING just die.

I slept like a sleepless drunkard as if I never desired to live.

When sleep has forgotten me I laid my body tired and dream for a

silent death.

I count people on my wake.

I think of people mourning at me.

The fragrance of blossoms.

The tears and laughter of friends, their receptions and regrets.

My dreams of vivid sunrise and flashes of skies left me growling.

Darkness is gazing the undying emptiness of untenanted space and;

Death is a disturbance that betrayed my wholeness.

They never cease.

Dei in heaven,

You know oh lord you know,

That in a slow afternoon of Sunday, I grappled hopelessly towards you.

It might be a product of superficial and wrong view over “life” but I don’t want to deal with this factor. The thing that I want to emphasize is this: As a human, we lies into the portion of being vulnerable to experience and wanting  death.

According to Sylvia Plath(1932–1963), a blooming American novelist, short story writer, and poet in her controversial poem Lady Lazarus,  “Dying is an art like everything else.” Suddenly, four months after she wrote the poem she committed suicide by placing her head in the oven.

Dying is an art.

It might be viewed that death is something beautiful. A masterpiece of dying. It is an art like anything else. Dying is an artistic process which involves the freedom and boundlessness of an art without  no foe and restriction.  There are many way to die. One dies because of natural death. One because of accident which suddenly occurs without knowing and the other might die because of sickness and infirmities.

 Some choose to die. Is it possible that a person is capable of choosing his death? Of course yes! Human are born to be a rational being. We are capable of thinking and reasoning which distinct us from  the other lower being. Rationality is acting on reason which accords to the fact of what is true and real. Therefore, there is a rationality of death where a person dies according to his “self determination”. He determines his own death. It is like how Sylvia Plath and other  people who committed suicide determined and chose their fate by destroying themselves.

According to a book entitled “Anatomy of Suicide”  the causes of suicide can be synthesize in four rational acts.

1. Suicide can be a practice to those people who wishes to prevent pain and personal suffering of the body and soul. This includes (1) physical and mental pain like what happened to Sylvia Plath and other people who lose the battle against depression.
2. Suicide can be an outcome of man’s courage severely put into a test like what happened to kamikaze pilots during the second world war.
3. Suicide can be a vindication of a person’s honor like what a samurai soldier do if he failed in his mission and failed his master.
4. Suicide can be a way of sacrificing life to be an example to others.

All of these are rational acts because a person uses his own reason to decides his own death. Rationality of death or rationality of suicide is a reflection of our morality.

According to Professor Shelly Kagan from Stanford University, life can be viewed in a Cartesian plane. Wherein, Y axis represents the intensity of  life’s experiences and the X axis which represents the duration of life.  It can be viewed this way:

3 ACTS OF LIFE

This figure shows that your life becomes “nothing” for a while and a person  were able to maneuver to recover and return to the life worth living.  It will be irrational for a person to kill himself in the point C because he were able to surpass the negative part of life.  Killing his self in this point in effect avoids him the large part of lifes opportunity  that will be better of living. However, it will be rational to kill himself in the point B because he will be able to avoid the problem what we will meet in the in the act II which is the most horrible point in your life. Point A will avoid him from a huge part of act I which is a life worth living and  committing suicide is a premature plan, -thus making it irrational.

This figure represents a wonderful recovery under act III up to the persons natural death. But what if this will not be the situation.

Consider this figure, wherein act III is almost near to natural death but he will be able to recover.  Obviously it will be rational to commit suicide in the point A. It is also rational for others to kill themselves in point B not to avoid the perils of the second act which now exists as history but rather avoiding their upcoming natural death. Sometimes suicide in point B is an act to prevent the aftermath in the act II.

This  figure illustrates a life that will be succumbed into life that is better of dead so dying is definitely a rational option.  Now, when will be the exact time? If you will die in the point A you will loss a short while of a life that is better living so dying in the point B will be the perfect option. For example, John has a severe form of Alzheimer’s Disease and he is confronted into a situation where he is contemplating to commit suicide. John is now facing a scenario that entails a reality that his life in the near future will be better of dead. Assume that we will put a point C near the vertical blue line, is it still possible to commit suicide? The answer is yes, either to avoid the aftermath and the exhaustion of the act II or to avoid the natural death.

Before considering the options illustrated above, we have to first answer two philosophical questions. One is a question of rationality and the other is a question of morality. A question of rationality is “when will be suicide a rational thing to do?” and on the other hand, the question of morality is, “Is suicide moral?”

The rationality of suicide arises after considering two very important questions:

1. Are you better of dead?

2. Could it ever be rational for a person to trust his judgment if the answer to the first question is yes?

The problem in answering this question is when a person perceived that his life is so bad and he thinks that he is better of dead, is most of the time, he is not  thinking clearly. So the fact that his mind is clouded entails that he  cannot trust his  judgment.

According to Philosophers, the very question that a person is better of dead does not make any sense. They made an assumption that in order to make comparison, we must consider the condition of the person before and what condition a person would be afterwards, if  they make such decision. The problem with people is they both satisfy this two question. It is like saying “I have a very good life before exactly opposite to my worthless life today and certainly a life full of worthless in the future.”  We satisfy these two conditions that’s why the worth of asking the question “Am I better of dead?” greatly diminished. The second question will not be answered because death is an end and non existence is not a “state of condition” because state and condition presuppose existence. So the condition of the second question will not be met.

Going back to the illustration, in general, we are not certain to what entails the future. Therefore, the  recovery in the third act remains possible making suicide nonsense after all. Prof. Kagan refers this  as a “crystal ball” which is the capability to foretell the  future. Since human has no crystal ball, suicide is considered as playing all odds or simply gambling your own life. Fortunately human always gamble for life in the sense that we are always in a point to taking risks in every  decision we make. We sometimes turn left or turn right or even going forward or backward. We agree into uncertainty.  We are like dancing with the thrilling melody in the midst of darkness.

 Filipino Culture and beliefs

The Filipino culture and beliefs as we know is deeply influenced by Catholic dogma, and taking one’s life is considered a serious and grave sin against God.  The theological argument here is  life is a property of  God and it is His gift to the world and to be able to destroys it carries a heavy  assertion of dominion over God. It is a grave offense because we lies into the belief that only God can decide our death  since He is the one who gives us life.

My question is “Is it possible to walk with God even that person committed suicide?”

The answer lies on the view of the scripture about suicide. Once a person comes and walks in faith with Christ he will be forgiven for his sins as long as he walks in the light.  According to the book of Romans, those who walked according to the spirit and with Christ they will never suffer condemnation. How I dream that I can also walked with God the same way.

Note: I wrote this not in a defiance against the teaching of the church. I wrote this as a plain rational human being.