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Jan. 24th, 2004 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheAfter reading this fascinating post in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
autodidactic's journal, I thought I'd post more excerpts of my "Women, The Body, and Transcendence" paper. The beginning will be familiar to those who encountered previous portions.
One cannot observe American society without noting how Americans continually obsess about the body. From diet strategies to sodomy laws, the whole of society is based on recognition, assessment, and regulation of the body. For example, all babies are assigned a gender. Gender is codified with physicality; thus a male is presumed to be a man and a female a woman. This marker provides society a way to classify, to identify, the body.
From a societal point of view, the body must be controlled because the body represents nature. Nature is understood to be antithetical to civilization. Civilization equals culture and reason, the very things humans strive to maintain and further; nature is reckless and chaotic, bringing with it uncertainty, anarchy, ruin of civilization. As long as the body remains unchecked, the basis of our culture and identity, indeed our very existence, is threatened.
Because it represents such a threat the body is despised, and particularly hated are our orifices. Orifices are deemphasized in our culture because they remind us that we are animal. Sneezing and coughing are considered at best impolite and at worst dangerous, as diseases can be transmitted in such manners. Dieting has taken on tremendous cultural importance: the stress on reduction of food intake indicating that the mouth must be made invisible; the less people eat, the fewer instances that the main utility of the mouth must be made apparent. Belching and the expulsion of gas are considered major social transgressions in "polite" company, as the sounds or smells of such bring to the fore the unavoidable functions of the body. Urination and defecation take place in private places and are very much private acts--even people who are married often do not interfere (for example, by continuing conversations, or even simple interruptions) with these acts. Menstruation is considered in many religious and cultural beliefs as one of the dirtiest occurrences in human activity. Nocturnal emissions, too, draw a sense of shame and secrecy, an idea that one has done something wrong. Sex, then, becomes entirely suspect, as it can at any given time incorporate all human orifices: mouth, urethra, anus, vagina. Sex, as an act, involves all of our indicators of animality.
One can examine this phenomenon of orifice-hatred by examining one of the vestiges of culture: our language, especially what is considered as obscenity. All of these words are of the utmost obscene nature in our language, and all of them involve relations of the body, orifices, or sex: fuck, shit, motherfucker, cocksucker, cunt, piss*, asshole, and to a lesser degree in contemporary culture, tits and bastard. (All except bastard constitute the notorious "seven dirty words" that cannot be said over any broadcast medium. For more information, see FCC v. Pacifica Foundation in its entirety.) As society controls the body and speech concerning the body, the regulation of obscenity in our language falls under society's jurisdiction.
Laws governing obscene language have always existed. As Nadine Strossen states, "Just as our society tends to view sex itself as inherently dangerous, so too our courts view words or images that describe or depict sex" (Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, p. 51). While modern obscenity laws focus almost exclusively on sexual images and words, older laws unquestionably defined what words concerning the body were acceptable in everyday speech. In Roth v. United States, a case brought before the Supreme Court in 1957, the Court ruled that obscene material was that which appealed to the prurient interest. This interest was described as "shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex or excretion which goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation." Nudity is the body itself, sex is the epitomal physical application of that body, and excretion is the neverending natural function of that body. Not only did these obscenity laws demarcate what was disallowed, by necessity it presented what was acceptable. The permitted speech was that devoid of the body--that which concerned the mind, mental activity, and rational pursuits. Law becomes inextricably entangled in the mind-body dualism, not just influencing the cultural bias toward the mind but enforcing it, by creating a criminal class of those who do not conform to the prevailing cultural standards of "decency."
autodidactic's journal, I thought I'd post more excerpts of my "Women, The Body, and Transcendence" paper. The beginning will be familiar to those who encountered previous portions.One cannot observe American society without noting how Americans continually obsess about the body. From diet strategies to sodomy laws, the whole of society is based on recognition, assessment, and regulation of the body. For example, all babies are assigned a gender. Gender is codified with physicality; thus a male is presumed to be a man and a female a woman. This marker provides society a way to classify, to identify, the body.
From a societal point of view, the body must be controlled because the body represents nature. Nature is understood to be antithetical to civilization. Civilization equals culture and reason, the very things humans strive to maintain and further; nature is reckless and chaotic, bringing with it uncertainty, anarchy, ruin of civilization. As long as the body remains unchecked, the basis of our culture and identity, indeed our very existence, is threatened.
Because it represents such a threat the body is despised, and particularly hated are our orifices. Orifices are deemphasized in our culture because they remind us that we are animal. Sneezing and coughing are considered at best impolite and at worst dangerous, as diseases can be transmitted in such manners. Dieting has taken on tremendous cultural importance: the stress on reduction of food intake indicating that the mouth must be made invisible; the less people eat, the fewer instances that the main utility of the mouth must be made apparent. Belching and the expulsion of gas are considered major social transgressions in "polite" company, as the sounds or smells of such bring to the fore the unavoidable functions of the body. Urination and defecation take place in private places and are very much private acts--even people who are married often do not interfere (for example, by continuing conversations, or even simple interruptions) with these acts. Menstruation is considered in many religious and cultural beliefs as one of the dirtiest occurrences in human activity. Nocturnal emissions, too, draw a sense of shame and secrecy, an idea that one has done something wrong. Sex, then, becomes entirely suspect, as it can at any given time incorporate all human orifices: mouth, urethra, anus, vagina. Sex, as an act, involves all of our indicators of animality.
One can examine this phenomenon of orifice-hatred by examining one of the vestiges of culture: our language, especially what is considered as obscenity. All of these words are of the utmost obscene nature in our language, and all of them involve relations of the body, orifices, or sex: fuck, shit, motherfucker, cocksucker, cunt, piss*, asshole, and to a lesser degree in contemporary culture, tits and bastard. (All except bastard constitute the notorious "seven dirty words" that cannot be said over any broadcast medium. For more information, see FCC v. Pacifica Foundation in its entirety.) As society controls the body and speech concerning the body, the regulation of obscenity in our language falls under society's jurisdiction.
Laws governing obscene language have always existed. As Nadine Strossen states, "Just as our society tends to view sex itself as inherently dangerous, so too our courts view words or images that describe or depict sex" (Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, p. 51). While modern obscenity laws focus almost exclusively on sexual images and words, older laws unquestionably defined what words concerning the body were acceptable in everyday speech. In Roth v. United States, a case brought before the Supreme Court in 1957, the Court ruled that obscene material was that which appealed to the prurient interest. This interest was described as "shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex or excretion which goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation." Nudity is the body itself, sex is the epitomal physical application of that body, and excretion is the neverending natural function of that body. Not only did these obscenity laws demarcate what was disallowed, by necessity it presented what was acceptable. The permitted speech was that devoid of the body--that which concerned the mind, mental activity, and rational pursuits. Law becomes inextricably entangled in the mind-body dualism, not just influencing the cultural bias toward the mind but enforcing it, by creating a criminal class of those who do not conform to the prevailing cultural standards of "decency."