What is Gender Good For

So this article asks 'what are men good for', of course the author was asking it on the level of sociological gender differences, but I found myself last night asking 'what are women good for' on a personal level. Aside from my sexuality, I am not sure it matters to me whether a woman is a woman or a man. Surely the fact of a person's gender is part of the mental frame through which I interact with that person; it's part of the mental frame through which they interact with the world, just as it is part of mine.

I think I am uxorious because my wife is the person she is, and happens to be a woman; if she were a man, she'd either be my best friend or I'd need a different word than uxorious to describe myself and a different phrase to describe our relationship than 'female led'. (I am so not an apologist for female led relationships.)

So I sincerely wonder, on a personal level, after one's sexuality is discounted, is gender merely a part of my social reference frame, and then not even a very important part? What is gender good for? To what extent have we managed, will we ever manage, to surpass our gendered evolution? Does it matter?

Differentiation Predilection

I was wondering last night on the possibility that all female led dynamic symbols are nothing more than 'accidentally eroticized' (metastatic) symbols, when I suddenly, surprisingly and happily wondered why it mattered. After all, what works works, so even if female led symbols aren't perfectly reflective of 'objective reality', what matters is that female led symbols be accurate to the reality of a person's (or to a couple's) experience, that female led symbols be transparent and accurate enough.

However I think this interestingly illustrates my predilection for increasingly differentiated symbols, even when the differentiation is unnecessary to adequately and accurate portray my experience. On one hand I think this tendency reflects my natural human curiosity about the nature of things and demonstrates my desire for my symbols to be true (e.g. make sure they are adequate and accurate to my experience), yet on the other hand I also think it shows a certain academentic prejudice for differentiated symbols over compact ones.

Realistically there is always going to be metastatic spillage between symbols, because symbols will always be more finite than our human experience; communication with symbols will always be an imprecise 'science'. Realistically we only need symbols good enough to reflect experiential meaning and significance, not good enough to be experiential meaning and significance.

I say 'academentic' because I think it is one of the peculiar dementias of academia (and to some extent western civilization in general) that once we learn the valuable skill of differentiation applied to our environment (e.g. science, technology), we continue to needlessly (and sometimes heedlessly) apply this skill to all our human experience. Yet when we ignore the many meaningful non-physical dimensions such as emotions and spirituality (and this is partially why many feel they're 'missing something' and 'return' to more compact 'new age' worldviews), it only illustrates how paying attention only to differentiating phenomena at the expense of experience makes our lives feel meaningless.

Empathy and Other (Female Led) Notes

First I should point out that while I have believed in the past that moving from a differentiated awareness 'back' to a compact awareness is nearly impossible, I was glaringly and obviously wrong. I myself managed to re-attune the differentiation of some parts of my worldview perspective to a more compact experiential mode by reattaching more essential, more emotional, more experiential, meaning to the existing symbols that worked for me and eliminating symbols that in their differentiation no longer held experiential meaning for me.

I think of the process as threefold: (1) realizing other ways of arranging my 'interior framework' existed (this was the difficult as it involved admitting 'previous mistakes'), (2) realizing I was able to rearrange my 'interior framework' (a difficult matter of self esteem and gumption), and (3) finding an 'interior framework' more congruent with more of my experience (i.e. congruent to both my reasoning capacity and my emotional compass, c.f. empathy below; this was difficult in its time consumption and demanding patience). However, the compacting movement can be made, and for the sake of increased meaning and significance should be done, and there are people who accomplish this (with varying degrees of success) all the time.

Contemporary society's academic aspirations are usually towards differentiation, yet there exists a large contemporary 'new age' trend 'back' towards a more holistic, and often mystical, compact worldview. Yet neither of these is better than the other, for regardless of this spectrum, the best thing is to have a worldview, a mental and spiritual framework, that adequately reflects all of your experience, including both your interior and exterior experience.

I have said in the past 'female led' relationships, like most relationships, defy any rigid categorization; while my (female led) relationship is based on love, romance and empathy, there is, of course, the kink for control sex bargaining female led relationship (see also here), and a myriad of intervening possibilities and combinations. I think it is the similarity of the external view, despite the widely varying internal differences, makes the female led symbol difficult to interpret in any singular manner.

I usually view female led relationships now as simply one kind of system (a catalyst) that works (for some people) at getting (back) and sustaining that transcendent magic and 'fire' of love and romance. Our relationship is far more 'centered on she' than that 'she leads me'; in many ways she's merely a higher ranked 'co-captain' on our ship. Yet when I think about 'female led' as "a particular, forced (and perhaps reinforced 'til engrained) or natural dynamic of empathetic interaction (with a very important feedback loop) that somehow maintains a transcendent love and romance that occasionally becomes erotic", (believe it or not) I still sense something not quite accurate enough for me.

For instance it seems easy to say the female led dynamic becomes erotic because of its effectiveness as a purveyor of romance and love symbols, but my experience is that sometimes the dynamic, the love symbol itself, is eroticized. And while this may simply be metastatic spillage, while one might explain such submissive 'surrogate bliss' (or 'sub space') as sublimation through semi-opaque symbols, one must hold the female led power dynamic as (comparatively overly) transparent for love yet simultaneously semi-opaque for another thing. It seems an overly complicated resolution.

Moreover, there is the experience of the fateful and predestined 'confluence of spiritual purpose' I describe above as being co-captains on the same 'spiritual boat'; surely this often happens to many people not in female led relationships, if perhaps to different degrees, and surely some of those people who journey together only do so for a brief time and later part ways. And while I believe we will be different based largely based on my experience, I think I missed something about the macroscopic, holistic, love-blind, accepting, perspective: empathy.

I already described how my newfound acceptance of other people is based on my newfound self-acceptance, but how I moved from self acceptance to human acceptance was through empathy. My wife empathetically values my freedom and so often does not want to tell me what to do, does not want me to change for her. I think a passion positive attitude is another application of empathy in response to everyone's need to obtain meaning and significance, because everyone is passion addicted.

I used to say I didn't care what other people thought and did, yet really I did care because I believed they were wrong about most things. Now when I say don't care what other people think and do (for the most part), it is because whatever it is may be functional for them and they may have (the pursuit of) happiness by it - and I hope it is so. I think the difference here is one of empathy for other people's positional experience in their life and the possible differences of life lessons people are destined (or fated) to learn; I realize not only that it is not my place to judge them, that I do not have the wherewithal to judge them right or wrong, but by empathy I am predisposed towards hope and belief that they are right, if only right for themselves.

I previously suggested some rather negative internal motivations for choosing a female led relationship (guilt, lack of self-esteem, dependency) and while I believe these motivations may exist for some people in (female led) relationships, yet do I continually survey the positive internal motivations, the erotic truth of spiritual co-captaincy. (And the final important point:) I think the difference between these is not only a clarity of the female led symbol to purvey love and respect (whatever actions this may entail), but also an intense attention to the interior compass, and just as I discovered my emotions could be a part of my internal compass needle, so also do I believe (female led) relationship empathy is a valid part of our (relation)ship's compass needle.

(And now what I think may be the next stop:) In the constant struggle to maintain loyalty, I wonder if I might be able to apply a(n) (empathetic) change of perspective (as I did with my interior, with society and other people and with my spouse) to anything I want in my life. (1) Know there are other ways of viewing a thing (or even a person?), (2) Know I am able to change the way I view that thing, and (3) find a perspective more congruent with my internal experience (all my internal experience).

Arguing with 'Wrong' Passions

Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still. ~ Dale Carnegie

I think what I meant about social and political issues is that it's hard for me to tell other people they are wrong for getting the meaning they get from the things they get meaning from. I do act against some things that others believe adamantly, yet I wouldn't tell those who vote against what I vote for, for example, that they are wrong; even though my position may not win, I couldn’t tell someone they are wrong for wanting meaning and significance, for acting to obtain it. I may disagree with their actions and even want some people policed or put in jail for their harmful actions (for example), but if they truly believed they act meaningfully 'right' by their symbols and framework, wouldn’t tell them they are wrong to try gaining meaning and significance with the symbols and framework they have.

Of course I might argue they should know better than to have such a closed or untenable (in some way) framework, someone should teach them better, or have already taught them better; yet I wonder if these 'shoulds' and 'oughts', dependent as they are upon another different framework being 'right', are an attempt to invalidate (and justify the invalidation of) a person's humanity by taking away what they do have, their symbols, their framework, their life meaning and significance.

I certainly believe in educating those who want education, those who are open to thinking to considering, to dialogue, to dialectic, to the education of their frameworks and themselves; but when they are not open and willing, when they are convinced of their rightness and will consider no alternative to the rightness of their meaning, significance or framework, I think it is wrong (in addition to likely being unfruitful) even to try to convince people of anything different. I believe there may be some things we shouldn't or can't effectively argue about; and though I may vote against them or stop their actions if I can, I rather feel I should treat other's passion as valid to their humanity, as my passions are valid to my humanity.

I don't believe anything should go, but when I think about the larger picture of our common humanity, inevitably someone's passion does win out, someone's human desire wins, the power of meaning and significance wins, (some part of) humanity wins significance – and significance building through passion and experience is, to me, part of the fascinating point, if not possibly the whole point, to being human.

Different People, Different Passions

I haven’t always been this way, but I avoid confrontation and the threat of confrontation in general these days, avoid social and political issues, though I often pay close attention to people's opinions because they are so indicative of their frameworks, of their symbols, of their passions, and of the meaning and significance they find in being alive. The flip side of feeling there are so few people I can have a thoughtful topical discussion with is that there are so many people with whom I may discuss their opinions and passions, their frameworks and symbols, their life meaning and life significance.

Of course on one hand I can afford to ignore so many issues because my social and political circumstances allow me to ignore. Yet on the other hand it occurs to me people may have been ignoring and watching other people for millennia even when it may have behooved them not to; and I like to think they simply liked their particular outlook, attitude and framework more than they feared whatever social and political threat they faced. Of course on the more cynical hand, they may have feared changing their particular outlook, attitude and framework (or feared the consequences of standing up in society) more than they liked what they could have stood up for. Yet all these people, their attitudes, passions, symbols - their lives and the significance of their lives are different, and I can’t help but think, different isn't necessarily wrong.

So while there lurk issues of immediate relevance to the subjects I generally explore, such as female supremacy for example, I simply avoid it. It isn't just that any sort of supremacy isn't my thing (and it isn't), it's more accurate to say I have different passions, different symbols and a different framework. So I don’t argue, I either watch in fascination or ignore, as with so many social and political issues; while these things matter to people and matter to current life and the living of current life they are fully functioning symbols and flashpoints to people just as much as people who firmly believe and hold opposing points of view.

Yet a line must be drawn; at some point I have to say I am going to do something about this issue – but without an current exemplative issue I have a hard time knowing quite where to draw that line.

Uxorious Social Patterns

We all have a limited resource of self, a finite amount of time and energy that I believe more likely to vary by how we spend it than by the total amounts we each have. It's almost a proverb how new couples spend less of themselves upon their older social relations, but I wonder if uxorious men are simply more disposed, predisposed, towards having intensely intimate relationships but less contact with other people overall, whereas other people might tend towards having fewer intimate relationships and more contact with people overall.

On one hand, I myself have never been a very social person, never so much a matter of choice as just who I am, and so I've never  really felt any lack in circle friends, extended family or even acquaintances, before or after I after I dedicated myself to my wife. It isn't only as if having more but less intimate relationships just 'wasn't my flavor', it's more as if it tasted lackluster to me, though surely I had nothing to compare their luster to save with what I wanted and desired.

Yet I know everyone is different and different isn't wrong; perhaps I've simply attached more internal meaning and significance, more interior worth, to intimacy than to something different. Or perhaps it's more complex than this: perhaps people experience significantly different interior satisfaction by having either more relations with less intimacy or fewer relations with more intimacy; but I have no idea how anyone would ever discover such a thing or whether it has any uxorious correlation.

The Sex Game

Yet the sex game goal is gaining social status, and it often has such gradual change it leaves many bewildered players looking back unsure if they haven't already lost. They feel as if they've lost something anyway, and if they aren’t quite sure how they lost it, neither are they entirely sure what it was. When suspecting it's sexual currency or social worth, they hope it's not entirely lost, perhaps only partially off the market because currently they're unsure what the rules are for getting it back on.

Of course, the game has never had any unbreakable rules, partly because though sex is fun to play, it's more than just a game, possibly not a game at all. Obviously when we're already using our market worth to hold down whatever social status we may have already gained with it, we can't continue to use it for gaining more on the market. Yet while occasionally we later feel marketability loss, we shouldn't forget we're currently using that worth for more than staking a social claim with bragging rights.

For while desire is the unavoidable fate of every human interior and woven within the very flow of our lives, love is but one interactive destiny we have the freedom to seek as a culminating fruition of our inmost desire. Let us not confuse the two, for whatever game of desire we've had, once we get where we're going, we must face forward, learning love as an act of destiny.

Gender: Kinked, Bent, or Straightened

As an adult who recently discovered his erotic truth, I found very quickly I needed to question that truth in terms of an eroticized gender role switch. Since gender is a social construct, not an anatomical or biological difference (though there is no lack of theories connecting the social differences to biological differences), I realized I could be eroticizing the 'taboo' switching of a social role.

There are, of course, people who find switching gender roles (various dress-up, sissification, forced feminization, etc.) kinky and erotic, and well, hey, that's okay. However, I think for me there's too much disconnect between such sexuality and the idea of gender equality.  And whether it's gender prejudice or discrimination, mixed-up gender fears and phobias, or even gender attraction and sexual desire, we each make our peace with gender equality, whether that peace is consciously made or not.

Personally, I do not believe there should be such well-defined gender roles, thus much of the arousal, taboo, guilt, humiliation etc. based on breaching such socially recognized gender roles just doesn't have much personal value. Even the mere titillation of 'bending' gender a little bit bothers me because I don't believe society should be so rigid as to easily see gender as being 'bent'. Even 'erotic cross-dressing' (i.e. not transgendered psychology) seems to somehow fall afoul the idea that clothing makes the man, or the woman, or is somehow a significant difference between them.

This is not to say words and concepts like 'emasculation', 'sissification', or 'feminization', do not hold meaning for me; I certainly understand what people mean when discussing such ideas. I just look forward to the day when they generally have more historical value than contemporary. I don't believe my erotic truth has much to do with society, or gender roles, or their switching, but ultimately, I can’t help but think perhaps gender in society needs no play, no drama, no 'role'.