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devonmeyerSo I just realized that this was going to be late. I typed it up yesterday but decided to wait until today to post it. Why, I will never know, but either way... Here it is... Late but still in.
I just finished reading this passage by Spillers, and I think the best way to summarize my feelings about it are: this stuff is messed up (with maybe a few synonymous words thrown in here and there). This passage reminds me of a direct conflict with what I observe as the object of sexuality, as well as its advantages and disadvantages.
For instance, between two completely free individuals, as long as sexual relations are consensual, nothing should be morally outrageous, from my vantage point, about the two gettin' it on. Not that it's always going to end well, but if both consent freely and knowingly, and neither is subject to trickery, there's nothing wrong with it.
As this passage points out, however, there are many a case, especially in our own country's history, where one party was not completely free. I'd even go so far as to say that if a slave and slave-owner loved each-other, and their relations were both completely romantic and everything... Hell, even if the two got hitched beforehand, the conditions under which the feelings for one-another had their genesis were anything but free. I'd venture to say that this is just an extraordinarily skewed, yet still quite definite branch of rape.
And this brings me to the thought that I had just after finishing the paper: is there any society where no enslavement exists? Well the obvious answer to this is NO. We are, I'd argue to some degree for our own benefit, enslaved by customs, laws, jobs, the physical and sociological nature of being humans; does this mean that all sex is essentially rape?
I mean look at it this way (this is going to be a terribly cliche example, but it highlights my point). Take the example of a woman having sex with a very rich and powerful man, given that she would not have done so if he were anything but a rich and powerful man. Or even if the fact that he is a rich and powerful man causes her to fall in-love with him-- you could argue that she was initially 'in it for the money,' but discovered feelings for him along the way. Isn't this, essentially, the same example as above, with the slave and the slaveholder? Of course, my example has some chauvinistic underpinnings simply due to the extreme cliche-ness of the anecdote, but I think you catch my drift.
The fact is that slavery itself needs to be evaluated if this essay is going to have any merit to speak of.
And that's my take.
(once again, sorry this was late)
I just finished reading this passage by Spillers, and I think the best way to summarize my feelings about it are: this stuff is messed up (with maybe a few synonymous words thrown in here and there). This passage reminds me of a direct conflict with what I observe as the object of sexuality, as well as its advantages and disadvantages.
For instance, between two completely free individuals, as long as sexual relations are consensual, nothing should be morally outrageous, from my vantage point, about the two gettin' it on. Not that it's always going to end well, but if both consent freely and knowingly, and neither is subject to trickery, there's nothing wrong with it.
As this passage points out, however, there are many a case, especially in our own country's history, where one party was not completely free. I'd even go so far as to say that if a slave and slave-owner loved each-other, and their relations were both completely romantic and everything... Hell, even if the two got hitched beforehand, the conditions under which the feelings for one-another had their genesis were anything but free. I'd venture to say that this is just an extraordinarily skewed, yet still quite definite branch of rape.
And this brings me to the thought that I had just after finishing the paper: is there any society where no enslavement exists? Well the obvious answer to this is NO. We are, I'd argue to some degree for our own benefit, enslaved by customs, laws, jobs, the physical and sociological nature of being humans; does this mean that all sex is essentially rape?
I mean look at it this way (this is going to be a terribly cliche example, but it highlights my point). Take the example of a woman having sex with a very rich and powerful man, given that she would not have done so if he were anything but a rich and powerful man. Or even if the fact that he is a rich and powerful man causes her to fall in-love with him-- you could argue that she was initially 'in it for the money,' but discovered feelings for him along the way. Isn't this, essentially, the same example as above, with the slave and the slaveholder? Of course, my example has some chauvinistic underpinnings simply due to the extreme cliche-ness of the anecdote, but I think you catch my drift.
The fact is that slavery itself needs to be evaluated if this essay is going to have any merit to speak of.
And that's my take.
(once again, sorry this was late)
