The Biological Template
The development of human intellectual capability has produced a wider range of emotions than perhaps we even have names for. Our transcendental complexities and desires have a need to be resolved that far outstrips Nature’s faculties for maintaining equilibrium in the world. In The Social Construction of Sexuality Jeffrey Weeks comments on the intrinsic importance of how people view biology to their conclusions about sexuality, “I do not wish to deny the importance of biology. The physiology and morphology of the body provide the preconditions for human sexuality. Biology conditions and limits what is possible…I prefer to see biology as a set of potentialities which are transformed and given meaning only in social relationships (page 6)”. He also describes the “opposing” perspective on biology – “Yet they all see a world of nature which provides the raw material we must use for the understanding of the social. (page 6). So there seems to be two schools of thought – one that sees nature as an important touchstone for defining the way things should be and one that sees it as a jumping off point.
I tend to agree with Weeks. Biology is simply the tools we have. Our capacity for thought has unleashed everything else. We as humans have taken our selves out of the cyclical spheres of nature and into a realm of uncertainty. Reverberations of individuals’ thoughts, work, and collaboration over the entire human history has led to a flood of new information about the world as well as broadened the capacity of the mind, it makes sense that our problems now exist in a realm not governed by nature. We’ve created a huge scope of new things – complex infrastructure, weapons, etc. – consequently the ways we react to things are going to be new, and the way to a utopian society is still uncharted territory (though much searched for) so we have to have new, original discourse.
How do you feel about biology’s relationship to sexuality? How much does it govern the way we develop social infrastructure and how much do you think it should?
And to make these approaches more tangible I wanted to ask the question:
What do you think about biological arguments against homosexuality – that homosexuality is wrong because, if it were “right” then men would be able to procreate with each other?
Foucault constantly scrutinizes the way power dynamics function. His clarification of how power operates is revolutionary: Power flows through every individual’s social actions and reactions; power isn’t only operating through authority, it’s operating through us. In Part Four of The History of Sexuality Foucault unifies his theories about power with social examples, particularly what he calls a “socialization of procreative behavior (Foucault, 105)”. The repeated emphasis on the connection of economic power factors to the socialization of sexuality is something that also comes in to play in the Weeks essay. Foucault says that there was an “economic socialization” of sex – meaning that the “incitements and restrictions” would serve to emphasis sex as strictly for utilitarian purpose. Weeks expands on the routes economic influence can take: “Domestic patterns can be changed by economic forces, by class divisions to which economic changes give rise, by the degree of urbanization and of rapid industrial and social change…The relations between men and women are constantly affected by changes in economic conditions (Peiss 7)”. So if we consider how economic conditions change and enter new domains than we see that there is no one way of “socializing” sex, which is stifling for a people still trying to evolve, but that we need to evolve our way of thinking with these changes.
What can the procreative behavior and rates of ethnic communities tell us anything about their construct of sexuality? How can we apply Foucault’s analysis of the interplay between politics and power and sexuality to a country like China? Politics dominate the modern expression of sexuality. The government formulated the famous “one-child policy” first instituted in 1979 based on social and economic concerns about overpopulation.
Tags: Biology, China, Economics, Foucault, Power, Power Dynamic, Sexuality
