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PeonForHer -> RE: heterosexual males sucking cock (1/27/2009 9:31:35 AM)
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A few years ago, a faculty committee at Harvard produced a report on the purpose of education. “The aim of a liberal education” the report declared, “is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”
Though that suffers a little from the modish deconstructionist philosophical tendency, I think it's broadly correct. This debate seems to be suffering because most people are thinking in terms of only three categories of sexual preference: homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual. There is just one of two ways to allocate someone to their category - by their action, or by their motivation. It's all too rigid, IMO.
All sorts of little questions arise that could weaken that rigidity. In no particular order - re the act defining someone's sexuality - would the act of a woman feeling another woman's breasts make her bi or even a lesbian? Doubtless the answer would be "no" if the woman doing the feeling happened to be a nurse in a clinic. The motivation in such a case clearly makes a huge difference. But we're not allowed to consider motivation here, are we?
As for motivation: If I once had a crush on a 12 year old but never did anything about it, would that make me now and forever a paedophile? I don't think so - if I was only 12 at the time myself and haven't felt the same way since. How's motivation to be defined? If I have a sleeping-dream that involves some sexual act, is that to be considered the same kind of motivation as a day-dream? And then there's that line of thought stretching back to Freud which has it that there's a sexual component in any kind of attraction for, or even aesthetic appreciation of, anything at all. We all know about architects' love of skyscrapers rising proudly to penetrate the sky. Most women will see aesthetic qualities about other women's bodies without necessarily feeling anything strong enough to be called "sexual attraction" for them. Likewise - though I suspect fewer - men feel similarly about other mens' bodies. In short, the whole debate needs a good dose of loosening up. It's ridden with knee-jerk horrors and fears.
Having said that, I think it is characteristic of students to be enamored of their "learning" and be over confident, if not arrogant, regarding same. I know, I was there, once upon a time. Life and experience teach us that things are not always as they seem and that , as we gain experience, we become more aware of how little we really know. I say this with all due respect, Davan. At least you, being a student, may have an excuse for your intellectual conceits. Many others have no such excuse, they simply cling to their own views.
Yes. A much-noted phenomenon is that of students learning enough to be able to ditch commonly-held prejudices, only to take up a well-established range of minority-held prejudices instead. Those sorts of prejudices can take a decade or more to shift, if they ever do. I should know, because I've had a fair few of them.
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