The fallacy of the conventional relationship (and the invention of homosexuality.)

The fallacy of the conventional relationship is the fact that is exists backwards from what it was meant to be. When we seek sex, love, and marriage as ends in themselves we’re using the icing of the cake to build the foundation of our houses. How did it come this? The way we came to this was by creating sex as an identity. The things of nature like eating and sleeping don’t give us an identity unless we do it in a way that isn’t the norm or exists in the mainstream. If someone is a vegetarian it will become one of their defining features, because most people aren’t. The only way this would be overlooked is if something even more obvious replaced as our master status. The dominant group always has entitlement to label subordinate groups. It’s not till subordinate groups can put enough differences aside and find something in common that they can have leverage against the dominant group. For instance a white male is the dominant group here. The white male has the ability to criticize the other white male by calling them fag or pussy, because it’s a sign of femininity imposing the idea that the dominant person is less than dominant. When we see a white man we call him a man…just a man, but when we see a black man we call him a black man, because we’ve made black his master status. Finally, of course we have a gay man, who isn’t just a man but a man who is gay. We tend to overlook all the other features because the dominant group allows themselves make this the only feature that matters. It’s not till all minorities of a certain kind can combine groups based on a similarity rather than difference that action can occur against an existing power, which will either cause an overthrow or integration into the mainstream.

We can then say that it was the creation of gay as an identity that helped create a chain reaction to all other sexual identities, and this caused a change in the definition of love and marriage as well. First if we go back to the Victorian era we find that the ideas set forth by Benedict in the 850’s of sodomy and procreation was still in place. It was the enlightenment that we believed through more discourses we could eventually create scientific ways of looking at the world objectively, but the complete opposite seems to have happened. The enlightenment influenced by old ideas through religious belief decided to categorize all the forms of sodomy into scientific discourses. This is when homosexuality was given its own identity, and with the identities we give things come definitions. We defined homosexuals as people with feminine traits that were trapped in men. In the 1890’s this brought about the idea that existed opposite which was heterosexuality. We could no longer define ourselves through procreation and sodomy because we created new identities through discourse.

The purpose of marriage in the Victorian era was to procreate. Sex wasn’t seen as something that should be enjoyed but instead was seen as a byproduct of something that could happen in the course of trying to make a child. People married for their love of god and the ability to make children. There was no mutual affection beyond the time of trying to procreate. Men would work long days and spend time with other men. Children were used to communicate through when the spouses wanted to talk, and women in many cases formed romantic relationships with other women that we can find in letters about how they missed each other’s kisses and embrace. Since there was now a definition for homosexual, being heterosexual had to be defined against this, and whenever the dominant group labels a subordinate group it’s double repressive. When we invented race in the enlightenment and created categories of people with definitions, and states in the US created one drop of blood laws saying just one drop of black blood makes you black (but a drop of white blood couldn’t make you white), we divided the vast array of color and shape of people into categories and once we are not of one category we have to define ourselves by not being in that category. That means to be white is to not have any of the traits we claimed were black. This double repressive attack consolidates the things we want to be because we become defined what we can’t be. It doesn’t only repress the subordinate group but causes the dominant group to repress themselves.

At the same time hetero/homo was becoming an identity people were starting heavily urbanize. One of the things that defined gender before this migration was the jobs people performed. A man did harsh physical labor and women stayed in the home and nurtured the children. Men started taking on white collar jobs that involved more cooperation and “feminine” traits, and women began to move into the workforce. In the early 1900’s Sigmund Freud managed to create many more discourses through psychoanalyses. He proposed that sexuality is primarily for pleasure and what comes after can vary, whether it is self expression, love, or procreation. At the same time this was going on there was a new crisis emerging. Women were becoming more educated and started gaining more economic power. This allowed women to stop being so dependent on men for financial needs of men, which was a large reason they married. They also married just to procreate but as they read Freud and became more independent they decided they liked finding their own ways to express themselves. This put the institution of marriage in crisis. In order to maintain the institution of marriage the purpose for marriage had to be redefined. Instead of having its focus on procreation it was based on sexuality and expression. A good sexual relationship is a loving relationship, and if two people love each other they should be able to express this through good sex. This is what allows things to be sought out for the pleasure in themselves rather than the icing on the cake.

The next big change came during WWII. During the war men were grouped together for long periods of time and many of them started to emotionally bond in a way that lead other things. After the war some new groups formed in the underground during the 1950’s in what we call the closet. The 1960’s and 70’s however were when big revolutionary movements were occurring. This was a time of criticizing institutions and seeking to change them. We had Vietnam War protests, black panthers, civil rights, free love, gay rights, feminism, and a long list. The argument at this time of homosexuals was to be called gay, because homosexuality was actually a pathological term that wasn’t removed a disease from psychiatric books till 1973. Since marriage was now defined a good sexual relationship and no longer procreation, and people were also criticizing intuitions like marriage for claiming that the only way people can express their love and have sex is through marriage, we end up with the argument sex and love can be enjoyed for what they are in themselves as a form of expression and identity. This is the point where love and sex become separate ideas, and sex and love are no longer ways of expressing the other. Sex is simply for pleasure or expressing ourselves. The dominant group still views the sexual norm as penis and vaginal penetration as a way of expressing love and having a good relationship. We still have commercials like Viagra to reinforce this norm. The commercials present the idea that if your relationship is going downhill it’s probably because your sex life is failing you in age. All you need is a pill to fix your sexual ability and then you can have a better loving relationship with this, and it will always be a man and a women in the commercials, which is to subconsciously reinforce that this is the norm as well as sex is the norm used to create love and love sex.

If love can be sex and sex can be love, or they can exist separate and people can use them to express their identities, then the purpose of a relationship is no longer marriage and possibly procreation. If this is the case gay people can have an identity equal to that of straight people now. After the movements of the 1970’s came many other forms of deviant sexuality. The lesbians, transsexuals, transgender, S&M, feminists, and bisexuals all began to emerge. Now that the deviant group was growing in number they did what most groups do when they grow big enough…they started dividing into factions against one another and accusing each other of standing in the way one another’s political actions for equality. In the 1990’s the queer movement formed with the message of sexual ambiguity and disassociation with sexual labels. Sex should be a way of expressing ourselves and nothing more according to the queer movement. Giving ourselves sexual labels divides us and causes us to lose power against what is seen as the sexual norm, and the queer movement doesn’t want to change the institutions as was wanted in the 1960’s and 70’s, but instead want to be accepted into them and integrated.

The institution of marriage isn’t the only thing in jeopardy. Love is also in jeopardy, and reason is because we no longer value these things as icing on a cake, but foundations to build our lives on for the sake of them, and for the sake of them because we think they’ll make us happy within themselves. We have sex thinking it will bring us good feelings in itself, but feel alone and a need to repeat the action again when this is done in itself for itself. Perhaps only a porn star can have sex for the sake of it and expression, because it’s used to create stability in all other parts of their life and isn’t for pleasure. When we seek out love it’s because we’re taught that love is happiness, but in many cases we find ourselves falling of love. The greatest day of a women’s life is her wedding day. She prepares herself for this day for many years thinking this is the day that will make the rest of her life wonderful, and after she is married she finds all the buildup was for a one day event that never becomes anything more after that day, because seek happiness in the event itself. We never find happiness in things that only allow us to be something. We only find happiness in things that allow us to become something. We can be married, be loved, be sexual, but we are not becoming better people because of this. If we were asked to have a choice to move in with our best friends growing up would we? Of course we would. We would want to live with our best friends because we not only find pleasure in their company, but friends try to better each other, and share hobbies in common, and friends all belong to a community of other friends. The only reason we may not be friends with our best friends from childhood is we moved away when we grew up.

That means the way we find happiness is by taking the gifts nature gave us for subsistence with one another and use them to become something greater. If we observe the modern relationship what do we see are the activities taking place? I observe four things. Couples eat, drink, watch movies, and have sex together. If we were to take these activities and do them alone what would we find? We do them when we’re bored and depressed. We over eat when we’re bored or depressed. We drink when we’re bored or depressed. We masturbate when we’re bored or depressed, and we watch movies for the same reason. Movies may be the only one that can have some positive aspects because we can learn some things through story lines, but we use these activities to pass time and not become anything more than we are. This is why the modern relationship is in jeopardy. People get married or want to find love just so they can pass time together. Now people don’t have to be miserable alone. We can be bored, depressed, and broken with other people. This is why we need to self bureaucratize, because we need skills that we can use to make ourselves better people in order to share those skills in the public. Eating, sleeping, sex, movies, drinking, aren’t skills we can share with others in the public and they don’t our own lives better. It’s not till we have abilities we can share with others that we might find friends that share the same abilities, and this can be a cornerstone for a good friendship where two people may realize they can communicate well too, and have a long lasting friendship where they can better each other. If we can have this then we can put the icing on the cake and seek love and possibly marriage with some of these people. When we find rituals we can participate in together we can become better people together. We are in jeopardy because nothing is sacred anymore, and everything is profane and seen as happiness in itself…but it’s not.

Why do we fear getting married? We fear marriage because we fear divorce, and we fear them both because we’ve been hurt. Broken people produce more broken people and unless we find a community that shares things with us that can fix us we will never be whole people capable of sharing a good life with someone else. We run away from what we fear and what we don’t understand and we prefer the opposite of what caused us pain. If we’ve only had bad relationships we will begin to value no relationships, or relationships with strange rules in place like no living together. We end up valuing the thing that is unstable over the thing that has more potential to be stable, because we attempted the thing we were told could give us stability with broken people who hurt us and took away our faith in it. This is why the conventional marriage is in jeopardy. We value the thing within itself in an opposite manner than will bring stability or don’t value it at all for something more unstable we are familiar with because it feels safe and it’s not that other thing.

In nature there were certain elements in place that allowed the community of life to flourish, and those are important today as well to build stable long term futures with people:
1) Belong to a community of friends based on shared stories, language, and beliefs.
2) Share a utility with these people like props in the play of life to fit the story. Ex. a church has books, music, and a community acting out rituals together. A band has instruments. A gym has weights.
3) Seek economic interdependence with the people who share your stories and utilities the most frequent. Create a community of life that celebrates their sameness.
4) Make sure the person we become the most mutual with is also friends with all the others in our community to create social pressure and emotional stability by giving other insights and the ability to create emotional outlets in other besides the one we’re mutual with.
5) Use the first two to perform rituals that help us become better people in the sacred so we don’t just pass life in the profane manner.