Joe Dubey's Response

• Shame, Sex, and Anthropology Thread by Vick Kelly, 10/29/97
  
  

Date: Sun, 19 Oct 1997 22:13:01 -0400

From: Joseph M. Dubey, M.D.

To: tomkins-talk@tomkins.org

Subject: Shame, Sex & Anthropology

Of course the First Affect was Interest-Excitement, and then came Shame. In the proper order of things, the first thing a baby should hear is "Kitchy-Coo!" as someone tries to excite its attention, and the next thing should be "No!" as it reaches, explores and, eventually, pees in the wrong place.

I worry, though, about describing any of our human operations as more "natural" or primal than any other. We are, after all, part of the Natural Order, and whatever things we can squeeze out, no matter how "unnatural" they may seem to critics on the other side, will ultimately become part of our natural history. As a species, we are probably no more sexually confused than any other. My dog, (recently dispatched by Dr. Kebarkian) humped anything that moved at his eye level. If it happened to be a female dog, voila! Puppies. The stimulus seems to have been something other than species or gender. We might eventually find that the same holds true for humans, and that some combination of movement, touch, sight, smell and sound sets off the series of affect scripts which most often, but not necessarily always, excites conventional sexual preference.

The trouble is that we have historically used romanticized or theocratized notions of Nature in order to justify coercion in the interest of maintaining whoever happened to be on top at the time. Hence, a mix of religion (What ought to be) and anthropology (What was and is) is inherently dangerous, when catalyzed by politics. (What comes out of the barrel of a gun.)

One day I turned over some cinder blocks in the garage, setting a bunch of potato bugs scampering. "Imagine that", someone said. "That bug design has not changed in 60 million years!"

"Sure, but remember," sez I, "Our DNA is just as old as the potato bugs'. They got theirs right 60 million years ago. We are still screwing around."

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