Tell people that they are not allowed to see it.

Show glimpses of it through thin gauze. Talk about how it needs to be protected from the hungry, angry gaze of men who want to steal the precious orange and devour it.

Advertise how it is better and more delicious than apples, plums and bananas.

But keep it hidden.

Then it will be fetishized.

were you comparing them?


Cher

So, I can't narrow down one example that's more inflexible than others.

Though I can give the example of sexual orientation. Our culture discourages homosexuality. Kids get bullied terribly for it. Yet, plenty of people become homosexual despite all of the persecution and social stigma against it. You can't explain that by socialization.

Neither can you explain from socialization why some people are more rigid about their sexual orientation than others. Bisexuals have no trouble being attracted to both sexes.

Therefore, I guess sexual orientation would be one common trait.

Another trait for example: I doubt that you can socialize in a love of anal penetration. Yet, I know of some people who love it the first time they try it, and continue to their whole lives. Some try it and find it horrendously unpleasant. They try it again and still find it terrible. I tend to think you either have the capacity to enjoy it or you don't. Sensation will trump socialization every time.

Nothing is taken in a vacuum. As human history demonstrates, the division of homosexuality and heterosexuality, indeed the very identities themselves, are social constructs that came into existence within the past 300 years.

You are born neither gay nor straight. Your sexual identity is subject to fluidity that can change over the course of your entire life.

"You can't explain that by socialization." - False

We utterly and completely disagree on basic facts. But I'm prepared to try anyway.

You never answered my assertion about homosexuality. If it's fluid, why would anyone become homosexual in this culture? The social push seems to be in the other direction. The rewards for homosexuality, other than having better sex and loving somebody who matters to you, are nonexistent.

The social constructs of sexual identity did not just come into being in the last 300 years. If you believe that, you haven't looked very close. I know it's fashionable in pop science and progressive politics to deny the obvious about this. There's a certain illusion that we were once free and then messed it up in the modern world. Fact is, the constructs existed; what didn't exist was the terminology, because social science hadn't started to examine them yet.

On your point about sexual identity changing, that's an incomplete description. To be perfectly accurate, it changes for some people, not others. And that will be true no matter what. Because flexibility to social influence varies from person to person, and trait to trait within a person.

Even though some people can and do change their sexual identity in their lifetimes, have you asked whether that was either a flexibility they always had, or if-- more likely-- their brains changed organically? Either the balance of their brain chemistry changed-- shutting off one set of brain tissue and activating another-- or they have a brain tumor, or had a stroke, which have the same effect. That doesn't imply they were always open to social influence about it.

Really, exclaiming that people are the totally influenced by their culture is as much as an attack on freedom as saying they are set with every trait from birth and can never change them. Arguable, it's more of one. Because then you have to ask why the politically powerful group shouldn't "cure" homosexuals, since society created them to begin with. And if society is actually making the decision, while nothing comes from the individual, doesn't society then have a right, or perhaps even a duty to intrude on our psychology? The ability to mold and make decisions implies a superiority or even a supremacy over the individual.

But, thankfully, this isn't exactly the way it is. Everything, every trait every more in society also comes from its individuals.

But the essentialist argument, that we are "born this way," is untenable. However popular a sentiment that has become, it is still not correct.

"The social constructs of sexual identity did not just come into being in the last 300 years." - Modern social constructs of sexual identity have come into existence within the past 300 years. Before that, sexuality was performative, not rhetorical.

All sorts of abject identities are perpetuated and kept alive; even encouraged, albeit in ways less obvious. But sexual attraction is not a born characteristic. It is learned and does not take true form until considerably further along in life.

What I said about not curing homosexuality was a statement only on the curing of homosexuality. That is all.

If sexual orientation is so fluid you would think more people would be able to "change" - especially considering the pressures involved.

Are you uncomfortable with sex/sexuality in general? Do you yourself tend toward asexuality? I'm asking in all honesty, not attempting snark.

I am theoretically pansexual and practically bisexual.

Also that "socially conditioned" =/= "bad." I think I read a bit more into your argument than was really there. Which tends to happen in text-only conversations.

I'm thinking of a couple examples. One is Clive Davis, who took on a male lover later in life. The reason he offered was that he looked at the person, not the sex of the person. Meaning, I think that he fell in love with that particular person and it thus didn't matter what sex the person was.

Another is a study of women who were in lesbian relationships. I wish I could remember the researcher but it's eluding me at the moment. Essentially, however, the study showed that the women in the study had almost all had relationships with men. The essential word from that study was "fluidity."

If I remember the name of this study, I'll be back to post it.


Cher

Almost every bisexual I've met makes this claim. And almost every gay and straight person I know (and I know a lot of both) disagrees with it. In fact just recently I said that to the lone bisexual person in a mixed crowd and ("It's funny how bisexuals always say that&quot and every gay and straight person present laughed and signaled agreement (we're all friends, so it wasn't mean laughter - I just wanted to point out that only the person who self-identified as bi claimed all of our sexualities were totally fluid)

And bisexuals, while lucky enough to have a more fluid sexuality, are in a very small minority.

From both anecdotal and limited statistical evidence, I feel safe saying that people who strongly self-identify as gay in their teens (like the gay friends I went to school with) strongly identify as gay in their mid to late 40s. Similarly for straights. Occasionally a straight person turns out to simply be in the closet. But once they come out they don't turn back, ever. And if they're gay, they come out as gay, not bisexual. Neither do they write off their 20 or 30 years in the closet to sexual preference confusion or change. Its always "I was always gay and living a lie".

The scientific research on this isn't anywhere close to conclusive yet every single open-minded gay and straight person I've ever met has pretty much been in agreement about this. For the vast majority of human beings, orientation is something you discover quite young and it stays that way until you die. Experience tells me its a more fluid in women than men, but not that much. People may go through several sexual fetishes in their lives but for most, they will always be enjoyed in an identifiably gay or straight context.

Personally the fact that I almost always hear these sentiments either from radical gender theorists or self-identified bisexuals convinces me that they reflect ideology (the "blank slate" mentality that has infected much of American social science) and wish-fulfilment respectively.

I admit, there isn't enough settled science on this to make a strong claim. But 43 years of personal experience among very diverse groups of people of all orientations make claims that our orientations aren't in most cases "fixed" before puberty (whether by genetic, epigenetic, congenital or other means) sound quite preposterous.

ps. One more admission. My experience is heavily weighted towards guys, both gay and straight. I have a sneaky suspicion the sample size of women I've known that intimately is too small to draw brought conclusions about sexual fluidity from anecdotal evidence. But it certainly holds true for guys of whom I have known a hell of a lot.

"most often the attraction is generated directly in the mid-brain in puberty"

Do you know a lot of boys, in puberty, that have seen a lot of female breasts?

They just deepen the sense that one is seeing something forbidden.

The forbidden fruit.

To all men at all times.

Fetishization has to do with sexual objectification, not the "hidden." Men do not obsess over the female body because it is out of their reach. They obsess precisely because it is always within their reach.

The female body is NOT within their reach.

They have no ability to reach the female body except in secret ways where their sense of tittlilation and shame and the sense of finding a secret is activated.

You should be aware, I think, that things that are easily within reach are not valued. The perceived value of things is ALWAYS related to its scarcity. A basic law that is equally true here.

Girls are raised with the awareness that they have this thing that must be protected -as if it is a golden treasure. And so, it is treated as a golden treasure.

Boys are raised as if they must be the active seekers of that thing. They "ask" girls out on dates, they "find" a girlfriend.

Unlike girls, they are sent the message that they are hungry little beasts with a dirty thing between their legs (as opposed to the "golden treasure&quot .

The golden treasure becomes the object of ritual attention ("fetishized&quot because it has been treated as a treasure by everyone and hidden.

Reducing the identity of the observed, manipulated by the observer.

The fetishization of breasts, as well as other body parts of women, reflects the fact that women and their bodies are considered broken up and abject.

The proliferation of pornographic images of women is in fact a demonstration of accessibility assigned to the female body. It is within the reach all men at all times. We are constantly creating new ways in which to make this access more prevalent and accepted. There is nothing forbidden about the transaction. It is the result of an explosion of sexual rhetoric.

between scarcity and perceived value that is reflected in all other things?

The value of the female body is subject to the ideology of the Patriarchy. It is not a shift-able continuum altered by availability. It is always available at all times.

Gold, diamonds, water, food, information, true friendship...

The value of all those things is directly related to their rarity and difficulty to gain access to.

But breasts are somehow different?

I don't buy it.

It's not a tough concept, really..

Fetishization is about sexualizing the abject.

Fetishizing is treating something with ritual attention.

Most fetishes have nothing to do with sexuality, but reflect the importance they are given.

That is the opposite of devaluing something.

To put it more clearly, if the female body were devalued, it would not receive ritual attention.

I think that is obvious and barely worth arguing about.

Not to pile on your opponent here, but their argument seems counter-intuitive and self-contradictory.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but.. isn't the entire reason some feminists rage on about "objectification" due to the fact that the female body is, in fact, valued greatly... far moreso than the mind/personality/emotions/etc?

Read The History of Sexuality. It is considered a canonical text on the subject of sexuality.

The female body, or images of the female body? There's a fairly significant difference between the two. There's very little emotional, physical, or mental investment required in order to access an image, which in no way is a substitute for a physical being. You really can't compare the two, if that's what you were doing.

I'm being tongue in cheek, but only partially so.

If you never experienced life a 15 year old boy with raging hormones, you really cannot understand what it feels like. Relatively speaking, women do not ever have to feel that they will not be able to experience sex.

So if you're expecting some sort of sympathy towards the male pubescent sexual obsession, you're sorely mistaken.

We were discussing your claim that the idea that the female body being inaccessible is "absurd".

I merely countered that statement with a reminder of the facts.

No call for sympathy and no invitation for you to notch up the "huffiness".

Can you level out and continue or should we call it a day?

I possess no sympathy for the stereotypical hormone drunk pubescent male.

I did not ask for sympathy for him.

We are having a (hopefully) intellectual discussion about why breasts are given ritual attention.

Sympathy for pubescent boys is not part of it. But the fact that such boys exist IS.

maybe where you live.

Combined with the fact that that poster is admittedly a man.

Clarke Kent: I am angry, oh so angry, oooooh so very very angry about all the rizmofological hobsnitzery!

Lex Luthore: Anyone know where I can get a cape dry-cleaned?

what is the evolutionary usefulness of women being so disproportionally attractive to men than men are attractive to women?

In many animals, certainly in the case of primates, the males fight each other for access to the females.
In that context, whether the female is attracted or not is not the main determining factor in the passing on of genes.
In most primates, the female accepts the male that has attained the alpha position.

Of course there are interesting counterexamples. For example, among the apes, females do "cheat" (have sex on the sly with lower level males)

And among bonobos, the LEAST sexually dimorphic of the apes, the female has a major role in choosing mates.

Orang males, on the other hand, basically rape the females, being MUCH larger and more powerful.

, due to the unresolved strength deviances between males and females, we (men) are still forcing ourselves on females at a subconscious micro-behavioral level? And this pattern has become genetically ingrained over so many generations that most females, if they are acting on their genetic programming, choose a partially diluted, oppressive alpha male despite maybe harboring a subconscious aversion for them. That would explain a lot of unhappy marriages.

I like the way you think, Shanko.

As a non expert, that makes me feel good because I can tell by your user name you probably have a lot more understanding of the field. I have been doing some reading lately. I'm very interested in how evolution is linked to egalitarianism and cooperating, which I'm sure you know is a hot topic these days.

It is a fascinating concept and bonobos are a truly unique species that can help us gain understanding of those issues.

Or go to a bar and pick up a woman.

You are fundamentally misunderstanding my argument.

Those desperate measures you point to reflect scarcity (or the perception of it), not over-abundance.

God is merely a concept. But, as a concept, God is universally accessible.

And since we really seem to be drifting off into Woo/Soft Science swamplands, this is where I get off.. have fun storming the castle.

The fact that you can view something does not mean it's accessible to you. The same goes for people.

Bodies can be viewed in Western culture, but not necessarily accessed. Even the media does not portray women that way.

so I'm going to bow out.

These things certainly do seem to be ubiquitous, and they are definitely accessible to some, but not to all by a damn sight.

Yours seems to be more in line with the existential, while I'm thinking of the more "colloquial" use.

If you're a man who has trouble meeting women, but you're surrounded by men who not only don't have that problem, but even seem to sometimes fall into sexual encounters like it's an "Oops! How did that happen!?" sort of thing for them, while in the meantime it seems that women barely look at you enough to avoid bumping into you -- the world makes you feel like a big loser for that.

If porn and prostitutes are your only outlet, that's not going to provide much relief or satisfaction, it's just going to drive home the loser feeling.

The gun fetish is one that really amazes me; finding violent death and the tools to cause the death a sexual turn-on is maladaptive and sociopathic. Finding breasts a sexual turn on is sociopathic if it is only breasts-as oppposed to the person- that are the turn-on. Many women and men experience sensual arousal through sexual attention paid to thier breasts. Humans have all sorts of erogenous zones- some unusual, some ordinary- the thing to keep in mind is that sensuality shared can be a positive experience for a loving couple, while objectification always leads to negative results, to say the least. There seems to be some sort of difference between holding a fetish and finding some aspect of your lover especially sensual.