Pedagogical
Mechanisms at Play in a Disciplinary Society
By: Atty. Mark Gil J. Ramolete, MA Philos
INTRODUCTION
The purpose of what follows is to
discuss certain pedagogical mechanisms at work in a disciplinary society. This
mechanisms must be clearly exposed and unveiled to be understood to do “critique
upon limits” with the hope of freeing and entangling “docile bodies”
from the shamanistic spells of a disciplinary society.
By pedagogical mechanisms, I mean
to refer to power discourses and paradigms kept in place by institutional power
brokers and agents like schools, churches, families, states, and other similar
institutions that may wield power, control and dominion over the persons of
individuals. These pedagogical mechanisms to be discussed are as follows: (a) sexuality
made as a domain of panoticized experience by the science of sexuality, (b)
institutionalization of bio-power, (c) the phallic structured belief on the
mimetic order, (d) the presence of exclusive laws and the dominance of phallic
linguistic currencies, (e) the concept of natural substratum, and (f) the
objectification of persons. On the other hand, by disciplinary society, I mean
to refer to a society that anchors itself on established norms, rules and codes
of conducts that are prescribed if not commanded upon member/resident
individuals in such society through the prescription and intermediary of
prescriptive if not commanding agencies like schools, churches, families,
states, and other similar institutions.
The course of my argument will be
as follows: First, I will discuss sexuality as a domain of
panoticized experience. Second will be the discussion on the institutionalization
of bio-power. Third will be the discussion on the phallic structured belief on
the mimetic order. Fourth will be the discussion on the presence of exclusive
laws and the dominance of phallic linguistic currencies. Fifth will be the
discussion on the concept of natural substratum, and lastly, the
objectification of persons. These pedagogical mechanisms shall be discussed in
the light of Michel Foucault’s views on such topics substantiated by the views
of some scholars on the same topics. Having presented the outline of the course
of my discussion of the topic presented above, we can now begin our discussion.
SEXUALITY:
A DOMAIN OF PANOTICIZED EXPERIENCE
The
views we currently have on sex and at the same time sexuality are basically
shaped by two pedagogical paradigms namely ars
erotica and scientia sexualis.
These two pedagogical paradigms, most specifically that of the views put
forward by the science of sexuality which finds anchorage in the power of the
confessional and observatory, are fed in our consciousness by power brokers and
agents at play in our midst in order that the disciplinary societies we find
ourselves embedded into may exercise some level or degree of influence, control
or possibly dominion on people’s minds, bodies and consciousness.
There are numerous societies in
the past like those in the East who have endowed themselves with ars erotica. The kamasutra, shudo, geisha and devadasi
are eastern practices that manifested the engagement with this masterful
art. The effects of this masterful art, which are considerably more generous
than the spareness of its prescriptions would lead one to imagine, are said to
transfigure the one fortunate enough to receive its privileges: an absolute
mastery of the body, a singular bliss, obliviousness to time and limits, the
elixir of life, the exile of death and its threats. In the engagement with this masterful art,
one is able to transcend the spatial and physical limits of one’s body. This can be done when the person who engages
himself/herself in this art uses his/her power of imagination to go beyond
spatial and physical limits. Consequently, the occurrence of a blissful
experience in the body and even to the soul is achieved. Even if one engages in this masterful art, it
is not a sufficient guarantee that the person could get the privileges attached
in the engagement in this art. Ars
erotica just like ars musica
provides a reverberating effect not only to the body but also to the soul. When
one engages with ars musica, it
should be remembered that the person, either the performer or the listener,
should be one with the music being produced in order to extend its powerful
therapeutic effect to the lonely and searching soul. Sometimes, some persons do not only project a
sweet smile when they hear a certain music, but these persons also cry because
from the deepest recesses of themselves, these individuals have been touched by
the reverberating effect of the music. Just like ars musica, only when the person unites himself/herself to its
purest form in the execution of ars
erotica as a masterful art that the person could be considered as the
fortunate one who can accept the privileges attached to this art. Different
from the performance of ars musica,
the performance of the ars erotica
must not be publicly made nor to be publicly known, but something that should
remain a secret, as Michel Foucault puts in:
This knowledge must be deflected
back into the sexual practice itself, in order to shape it as though from within
and amplify its effects. In this way,
there is formed a knowledge that must remain a secret, not because of an
element of infamy that might attach to its object, but because of the need to
hold it in the greatest reserve, since according to tradition it would lose its
effectiveness and its virtue by being divulged. Consequently, the relationship
to the master who holds the secrets is of paramount importance; only he,
working alone, can transmit this art in an esoteric manner and as the
culmination of an initiation in which he guides the disciple’s progress with
unfailing skill and severity.
The execution of ars erotica must remain a secret not
because of the abomination, dishonor or disgrace attached to its intent or
purpose which is sex, but for another deeper reason. In order to intensify and to magnify the
experience of bliss through a carnal activity in the skillful execution of ars erotica, its masterful execution
must remain clandestine, undisclosed, and surreptitious. Thus, the surveilling
effect of the confessional has no basis for its use in the context of ars
erotica unlike in the sphere of scientia
sexualis.
Medieval to contemporary western
societies, on the other hand, have created a totally different approach to
sexuality through the establishment of scientia
sexualis or the science of sexuality.
As Michel Foucault puts in:
On the face of it at least, our civilization
possesses no ars erotica. In return, it
is undoubtedly the only civilization to practice a scientia sexualis; or
rather, the only civilization to have developed over the centuries procedures
for telling the truth of sex which are geared to a form of knowledge-power
strictly opposed to the art of initiations and masterful secret: I have in mind
the confession.
While ars erotica has portrayed sex as an exceptional and a blissful
experience that is not something dirty, shameful and sinful, scientia sexualis, on the other hand,
constitutes an opposite or contrasting view of what sex is. The science of
sexuality has depicted sex as a worldly experience or a carnal vice of the
flesh portrayed to the extreme with a tendency to produce a dirty, shameful and
sinful experience not only to the body of the person but penetrating also the
soul. This depiction of sex can be observed through the obsession of certain
societies of the confessional, specifically those societies that were
cultivated starting from medieval Western societies. With such portrayal of sex by the science
of sexuality, the sexual aspect perceived to be an indispensable aspect of the
totality of an individual has to be constantly monitored for a possible
transgression of the flesh.
The creation of this monitoring
system to be performed either by the person concerned or by a particular
institution is aimed towards the discursive unveiling of the truth about sex.
Such an aim, however, is not the ultimate aim. The discursive unveiling of the
truth about sex is just a pretext to a deeper end which is the formation of
knowledge/power that has to penetrate and course through the already
circulating knowledge/power sustaining the existence of persons and
institutions in a society. To elaborate further the fixation of the
confessional by the science of sexuality, Michel Foucault avers:
Since the Middle Ages at least,
Western societies have established the confession as one of the main rituals we
rely on for the production of truth: the codification of the sacrament of
penance by the Lateran Council in 1215, with the resulting development of
confessional techniques, the declining importance of the accusatory procedures
in criminal justice, the abandonment of tests of guilt (sworn statements, duels,
judgments of God) and the development of methods of interrogation and inquest,
the increased participation of the royal administration in the prosecution of
infractions, at the expense of proceedings leading to private settlements, the
setting up of tribunals of Inquisition: all these helped to give the confession
a central role in the order of civil and religious powers.
Such a fixation of the
confessional has been formed in order to elicit internal forces and motivations
from a person, with the eventual end of protecting the society or providing a
blanket of protection for those who are in power. Likewise, such fixation of
the confessional can also be seen as a defense mechanism for the dominant
sexual culture to constantly linger in time, where such dominant sexual culture
is used as the norm and standard in the achievement of a desired sexual
pleasure. Part of the drawing out of
information from individuals in these societies is the sexualization of persons.
This sexualization of persons takes place where individuals are given specific
descriptive names through the predominate sex through which a person is
attracted to or is intimately engaged in, thus, the 19th century terms
homosexual and heterosexual, and the 20th century term bisexual. This sexualization
of individuals has been put into place to provide the necessary vertebrae of
the discursive unveiling of the truth about sex, that is, the hermeneutically
construed truth about the limitless and extensive causal power of sex. By
categorizing individuals according to the predominate sex through which a
person is attracted to or is intimately engaged in, this act of categorization
can facilitate further the ought-to-be observance of a desired sexual pleasure
and redirection of pleasure. These ought
to be observances of a desired sexual pleasure and the redirections of pleasure
have to be strictly anchored on the values that have been put into place by the
dominant sexual culture, in this case, the dominant heterosexual culture. It
can be seen in this case that the individualization of individuals is
facilitated through the sexualization of persons. Persons come to know
themselves as subjects of desires and pleasures through their
sexualization.
To further elucidate the
confessional as a ritual of discourse where sex has been caught in a discursive
form, Michel Foucault offers a descriptive view on how the confession works:
The confession as a ritual of
discourse in which the speaking subject is also the subject of the statement;
it is also a ritual that unfolds within a power relationship, for one does not
confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not
simply the interlocutor but the authority who requires the confession,
prescribes and appreciates it and intervenes in order to judge, punish,
forgive, console, and reconcile; a ritual in which the truth is corroborated by
the obstacles and resistances it has to surmount in order to be formulated; and finally, a
ritual in which the expression alone, independently of its external consequences,
produces intrinsic modifications in the person who articulates it: it
exonerates, redeems, and purifies him; it unburdens him of his wrongs,
liberates him, and promises him salvation.
In order to elicit information
from a person who is subjected to the confessional, the company of another
individual or individuals who shepherd or even coerce one to speak play a crucial
and indispensable role. The reason behind this is that the standing of that who
confesses presupposes the need for guidance or even therapeutic or punitive
transformation of the person concerned. As this ritual works within a person or
between or among persons, the confession creates and sustains power
relationships. The creation and sustenance of power relationships take place
because the position of the subject that listens and acts on what one has
listened from another subject is inevitably different from the standing of the
person who confesses or speaks. In this case, the confession unfolds within
power relationships and at the same time allows the further intensification of
these power relationships.
By allowing the secret of the flesh
and the body to be examined, interpreted, or even reformulated, the
individualization of individuals through their sexualization can be achieved,
and thereby contributing to the already circulating knowledge/power. As Michel
Foucault claims, “it is in the confession that truth and sex are joined,
through the obligatory and exhaustive expression of an individual secret; this
time it is truth that serves as a medium
of sex and its manifestations.” Through the immersion of sex in a discursive
form because of the perceived limitless causal power of sex, sexuality has been
treated as a moving force within a person.
As a moving force in a person, sexuality has to be constantly confessed,
examined, and articulated. Any possible transgression of the flesh has to
remain open and known to be given the possible therapeutic redirection of
pleasures. As Michel Foucault avers:
It is no longer a question simply
of saying what was done__the sexual act__and how it was done; but of
reconstructing, in and around the act, the thoughts that recapitulated it, the
obsessions that accompanied it, the images, desires, modulations, and quality
of the pleasure that animated it. For
the first time no doubt, a society has taken upon itself to solicit and hear
the imparting of individual pleasures.
Any craving for pleasures, though
there is still the need to keep such enjoyment of pleasures in secret, has to
conform to social prescriptions that have been put into place in the
relationships of individuals for their proper observance. Consequently, any construction of truth has
been treated as means for sex to be further known and for every expressions of
sex to be comprehended.
The fixation of the confessional
by societies that have endowed themselves with the science of sexuality
concerning the discursive unveiling of the truth about sex is firmly rooted in
the argument, that “principle that endowed sex with an inexhaustible and
polymorphous causal power.”
As Michel Foucault puts in:
The principle of sex as a “cause
of any and everything” was the theoretical underside of a confession that had
to be thorough, meticulous, and constant, and at the same time operate within a
scientific type of practice. The
limitless dangers that sex carried with it justified the exhaustive character
of the inquisition to which it was subjected.
The perceived inexhaustible and
extensive causal power of sex has not only affected and influenced the way
people think and behave in the West, but also in the East. The different
history of conquest and occupation of Western countries of Eastern lands had
brought into the shores of the East the principle of sex as the “cause of any
and everything.” In such case, it
resulted to the teaching and to the encouragement of people in the East to
idealize and to practice the confessional as a means of getting in touch and in
control of the possible transgression of the vice of the flesh and the possible
redirection of erotic desires to experience pleasure. It is now this principle
of sex as the “cause of any and everything” constituted by the science of
sexuality that has supported and buttressed the views of many to consider
sexuality as something that is purely and entirely a natural category. In this
context, many have treated sexuality as an already there category in the self,
that is, something that is already given in the self that there is no more
human action involved when it comes to sexuality. This could be the reason why
some oftentimes scorn, laugh, insult or stereotype some individuals who have
gone against the sexuality that is deemed socially and statistically normal or
natural. As Michel Foucault puts in:
Situated at the point of
intersection of a technique of confession and a scientific discursivity, where
a certain major mechanisms had to be found for adapting them to one another
(the listening technique, the postulate of causality, the principle of latency,
the rule of interpretation, the imperative of medicalization), sexuality was
defined as being “by nature”: a domain susceptible to pathological processes,
and hence one calling for therapeutic or normalizing interventions; a field of
meanings to decipher; the site of processes concealed by specific mechanisms; a
focus of indefinite causal relations; and an obscure speech (parole) that had
to be ferreted out and listened to.
Caught in a crossroad between the
technique of confession and scientific discursivity, sexuality has been treated
as a purely and entirely natural domain in the totality of the individula. The
interest to know sexuality in a scientific way by the science of sexuality
opens up possibilities to construe sexuality as an inherent-biological category. Nonetheless, the meeting of Western minds
with Eastern minds did not also prevent some of the ideas of some societies in
the East particularly their versions of the erotic art to influence and to
affect the way some people in the West think and behave. One concrete example
is the unveiling to the West the then perceived notorious work of Indian
eroticism called the Kamasutra. The Kamasutra contains principles of love
that classify and categorize almost every kind of sexual union in a practically
precise and accurate way. In a sexually repressive atmosphere in Victorian
Britain in 1883 when the first secret publication of the Kamasutra took place,
the Kamasutra was openly condemned; however, the Kamasutra soon became one of
the most pirated books in the English language. However, the interplay of ideas about sex and
sexuality produced by ars erotica and
scientia sexualis through the
encounters of people from the East and the West has not prevented the science
of sexuality to take a dominant role in shaping views, beliefs and perspectives
about sexuality. This dominant role
assumed by scientia sexualis can be
observed on how most societies value the indispensable role assumed by the
confessional not only in religious institutions, but including also academic,
political, social, judicial and economic institutions. The obligation to
confess is now relayed through so many different points, is so deeply ingrained
in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effect of a power that constrains
us; on the contrary, it seems to us that truth, lodged in our most secret
nature, “demands” only to surface; that if it fails to do so, this is because a
constraint holds it in place, the violence of a power weighs it down, and it
can finally be articulated only at the price of a kind of liberation.
An illustration on how most
societies, specifically disciplinary societies have constituted the act of
confessing as an obligation is the encouragement of some religious institutions
of their respective flocks to constantly confess their sins (not excluding
those hermeneutically construed sexual sins like solo-me) to experience purification
or “kaginhawaan ng loob at kaluluwa.” Another example is the encouragement of a
rape victim in a rape case and the encouragement or the coercion of a rapist to
confess in a precise, accurate and immaculate way to the court what actually
transpired during the occasion of rape. The objective now of eliciting
information from both parties in a rape case is to render a just and fair
judgment. The rendered judgment in
return can be utilized to punish, to correct or to reform and to set as an example
to others to be in control of themselves and to redirect their pleasures
according to standards and norms at work in the society.
INSTITUTIONALIZATION
OF BIO-POWER
It is through the power of life
that the continuous temporal existence of persons in this world is
assured. However, it is also through
the power of death that the end of persons’ temporal occurrence in every
individual’s own situatedness as embodied subjectivities is experienced.
Through the inevitable contradiction involved between life and death, people
have devised certain mechanisms of transcending death while still alive. These mechanisms can be considered as means
of lording over death in order to exercise power over life. Some would prefer to plant a tree. Some would prefer to write a book or any
written document that can be published. Some would prefer to have a legitimate
or an illegitimate son or daughter. All
these are mechanisms that are devised in order to transcend death. By planting
a tree, one can leave a legacy through the fruits of the tree or the end
products of the tree. By writing a book
or any written document that can be published, one can leave a legacy through
the story or the epistemological contribution that others will have to remember
or to reminisce. By having a son or a
daughter, one will be assured of continuous existence of one self through the
genes that will be passed down to one’s children through the help of another
generative cell from another person. From
these alternatives is the mechanism that primarily originated from the West’s
practice of the science of sexuality. Michael Foucault calls this as
“bio-power” which he describes as ”the power over life, throughout its
unfolding, that power establishes its dominion; death is power’s limit, the
moment that escapes it; death becomes the most secret aspect of existence, the
most private.” Because of the desire to experience life in
the best possible way, the concept of “bio-power,” has been devised, enforced
and institutionalized in people’s socially constructed purview through the
anchorage point provided for by the sovereign power of the state in order to
“bring life and its mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations and made
knowledge-power an agent of transformation of life.”
In order to regulate life or to
exercise a certain kind of power over life, individual bodies of persons and
populations have to be subjected to power for their standardization and
normalization. Michel Foucault clarifies:
It was at the pivot of the two
axes along which developed the entire political technology of life. On the one hand, it was tied to the
disciplines of the body: the harnessing, intensification, and distribution of
forces, the adjustment and economy of energies. On the other hand, it was applied
to the regulation of populations, through all the far-reaching effects of its
activity.
Because of the Western belief
produced by the practice of the science of sexuality, that sexuality can be
considered as “a means of access both to the life of the body and the life of
the species, sexuality was employed as the principle of measure and
intelligibility for the disciplines and as basis for regulations.” As Michel Foucault further elucidates:
This is why in the nineteenth
century sexuality was sought out in the smallest details of individual
existence;, it was traced down in behavior, pursued in dreams; it was suspected
of underlying the least follies, it was traced back into the earliest years of
childhood; it became the stamp of individuality___at the same time what enabled
one to analyze the latter and what made it possible to master it.
Individualization in this case is
achieved into what is called the sexualization of persons. This sexualization
of persons can only take place through the standardizations or normalizations
of behavior anchored on the supposed “pagkatao” of the person. This
individualization of persons in a given society can only take its desired shape
and form provided that something is standardized and normalized only if something
has not been standardized and normalized. Michel Foucault continues:
But one also sees sexuality
becoming the theme of political operations, economic interventions (through
incitements to or curbs on procreation), and ideological campaigns for raising
standards of morality and responsibility: it was put forward as the index of a
society’s strength, revealing of both its political energy and its biological
vigor. Spread out from one pole to the other of this technology of sex was a
whole series of different tactics that combined in varying proportions the
objective of disciplining the body and that of regulating populations.
The “two poles of bio-power,”
namely, “the procedures of power that characterized the disciplines: an
anatomo-politics of the human body and the entire series of interventions and
regulatory controls: a bio-politics of the population”
ensure the constitution, organization and eventually the institutionalization
of the “technology of life.” Michel Foucault uses the term bio-power in the
same way with the power over life and technology of life. Nonetheless, be it
bio-power or power over life or even technology of life, all terms are pointing
out to that kind of power that has the aim to regulate and administer life.
Because of the perceived
indispensable role of sexuality in inter-subjective relations and the crucial
role assumed by sex in the continuous existence of people as an essential
element of a state or a society, sexuality
through “sex became a crucial target of a power organized around the
management of life rather than the menace of death.”
While it may be true that
bio-power is organized and institutionalized because of the need to manage and
to administer life, the fact is the administration and management of life are
mere pretext to address that deepest fear of humanity———death. This fear of
humanity is the fear of the menace and threat of death since the human person
who possesses a temporal body is a “being-towards-death.” Once the human person
enters the threshold of death, he/she will be doomed into the most private form
or shape of existence. The elicitation
of information about his/her life, “pagkatao” or any practice of the self will
be considered to be the most difficult endeavor to be done assuming that it is
still possible to be done. This can be
the reason why under the criminal justice system of the Philippines provides
that “criminal liability is totally extinguished by the death of the convict,
as to the personal penalties; and as to pecuniary penalties, liability
therefore is extinguished only when the death of the offender occur before
final judgment.” There is no more use continuing the trial of
the accused and the continuous elicitation of information in order to render
judgment when the accused is already dead. Indeed, elicitation of information
to ensure the enhancement or to ensure the correction of any practice of the
self is only made significant when the affected person is still alive; thus,
the need to manage and to administer life. Furthermore, with the desire of most
human beings to respond to the most primal need towards self-preservation,
different norms, practices, rules and regulations have been constituted and
enforced in order to manage and to administer life in order to satisfy this
primordial need. Since sexuality through
sex has been viewed to provide a convenient approach to the existence of the
body and to the existence of the species, sexuality has thus become central in
the deployment of the technology of life.
THE
PHALLIC STRUCTURED BELIEF ON THE MIMETIC ORDER
Is it always necessary and
obligatory that if one possesses a penis, then that person has to display and
project aggressive tendencies? If one
possesses a vagina, then is it always necessary and compulsory that the person
concerned should display and project passive tendencies and capabilities? Under
the psychoanalytic tradition developed by the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund
Freud, a concept emerged——the mimetic
order. It states that the masculine
is taken to signify “activeness” while the feminine, on the other hand, is
taken to signify “passiveness.” The
notion of passivity and activeness is derived from the movement of the sperm
and the egg in the process of copulation.
During the process of copulation, the male pursues the female for the
purpose of sexual union, seizes hold of her and penetrates her.
The generative cell with a tail produced by the male subject in the form of a
sperm is anatomically considered to be actively mobile while the ovum produced
by the female subject is treated to be passive in the fertilization
process. The sperm has to swim and
search the ovum inside the female body in order for the ovum to be
fertilized. In the fertilization
process, the one who enters and swims into a foreign body (the female body) in
order to inseminate is the gamete or the sperm.
Thus, the term active has been ascribed to the male subject because of
the generative cell that comes out from him.
The ovum or the egg, on the other hand, does not anymore need in the
fertilization process to enter and swim into a foreign body in order to be
fertilized. The egg after its release
from the ovary to be fertilized in the fallopian tube shall simply wait for an
appropriate encounter with one potential and victorious sperm after surviving
the long-distance swim to the tube.
Thus, the term passivity has been ascribed to the female subject because
of the generative cell that comes out from her. Once the ovum is fertilized
inside the tube, where most fertilization takes place, the ovum must be
implanted in the uterus. Since it is natural for a male to produce a sperm and
a female to produce an egg, persons in certain societies have mimed the
relationship of the sperm and the egg in the way these persons think, act and
behave as human subjects. As Luce
Irigaray writes:
My way of envisaging things, these
“things,” would therefore imply that the psychic is prescribed by the
anatomical according to a mimetic order,
with anatomical science imposing the truth of its model upon “psychological
behaviors.”
The given remark of Luce Irigaray
is intended to expose that through the intimate adherence of anatomical science
to the mimetic order, anatomical
science has provided a framework for both male and female subjects to think, to
conceptualize, and to visualize themselves as active and passive subjects
respectively in a phallocratic ordered society. The anatomical science can be
considered as the agent or the receptacle through which the mimetic order is perpetuated in the
psyche of concerned human subjects. As an agent towards the perpetuation of the
mimetic order, anatomical science
constituted the so-called “anatomical model.” It may not have been the intention of
anatomical science to impose its own truth among the psyche of some persons,
but anatomical science through the “anatomical model” has provided the
necessary conditioning for some human subjects in a phallocratic ordered
society to believe in the notion of passivity and aggressiveness basing it on
the phallic structured belief in the mimetic
order. Such conditioning has acquired its necessary form through the
incorporation of anatomical science in its scientific linguistic economy active
and passive terms specified in the “anatomical model.” This gives rise to the
experience of sexual repression.
The phallic structured belief in
the mimetic order can be seen as the
matrix of a repressed sexuality. But how can a repressed sexuality in this
context arise? A person can experience a repressed sexuality through its immersion
and belongingness in a phallucratic ordered society. But what is with a phallic
society that can expose a person to the experience of a repressed sexuality? It
is primarily due to the intimate connection and adherence of anatomical science
to the mimetic order, providing male
and female persons in a phallucratic ordered society a framework or mentality
to constitute themselves as aggressive and passive subjects, respectively.
The phallic structured belief in
the mimetic order has contributed on the
way persons of unorthodox sexualities are viewed. This belief on the mimetic order has provided the very foundation through which the
notion of unintelligible genders is articulated on the basis of “intelligible
genders.”
Likewise, “intelligible genders”
are accorded their cultural legitimacy status not only because of the belief on
the mimetic order, but also because of the principle that
came out as a result of the phallic structured belief on this order. This
principle refers to the “principle of coherence and continuity.” To illustrate this principle vis-Ã -vis to the
constitution of intelligible genders, let us take the case of Nataraki and
Nasudi. Nataraki is male because he is born with a penis. Since Nataraki has a penis, the culture of
Natariki dictates that he is a man. Consequently, Nataraki’s culture dictates
that he should desire the other gender.
If Nataraki observes the “principle of continuity and coherence” as
prescribed by his culture, that is, the connectedness or the inter-connectedness
of sex-gender-desire/male-man-desire a woman, then Nataraki is considered to
have an “intelligible gender.” With Nataraki’s observance of the
societal-cultural prescription of being a man without any discontinuity or
interruption, Nataraki’s gender as a man is considered comprehensible,
sensible, easily understandable or even logical. Nasudi is female because she
is born with a vagina. Since Nasudi has a vagina, the culture of Nasudi dictates
that she is a woman. Consequently, since Nasudi is a woman, Nasudi’s culture
dictates that she should desire the other gender. If Nasudi observes the
“principle of continuity and coherence” as prescribed by her culture, that is,
the connectedness or the inter-connectedness of
sex-gender-desire/female-woman-desire a man, then Nasudi is considered to have
an “intelligible gender” just like in the case of Nataraki. Assuming that
Nasudi observes the societal-cultural prescription of being a woman without any
discontinuity or interruption, the conclusion is Nasudi’s gender as a woman is
considered comprehensible, sensible, easily understandable or even logical just
like with Nataraki. However, if
Nataraki and Nasudi will both commit an interruption and discontinuity from the
“principle of continuity and coherence” prescribed by their cultures by
desiring or through an intimate sharing of libidinal desires with the same sex
or even to both sexes, then both Nataraki and Nasudi will be considered as
having “unintelligible genders,” genders that will be considered queer,
peculiar and difficult to comprehend. The sexualization of Nataraki and Nasudi
as desiring subjects with either “intelligible genders” or unintelligible
genders is inseparable from a cultural matrix. Because of not having subservient identities or simply because of having
non-conformist genders in accordance to the “principle of coherence and
continuity,” some persons would have to bear the experience of being
stereotyped, scorned, hated, insulted, ostracized, dehumanized, and objectified
because of their sex or their sexuality.
In
an interview made by IRIN (Integrated
Regional Information Networks) with Dawn Betteridge, Betteridge,
Betteridge remarks:
Sexual orientation does not in itself make
the LGBT community targets of abuse.
The problem is that of patriarchy.
By adapting the clothing, behavior typical of a “butch lesbian” or the
“effeminate male,” the LGBT community is perceived as a threat to masculine
dominance. Lesbians who mimic men are
seen to be challenging male superiority. Rape and violence against lesbians are common.
The men who perpetrate such crimes see rape as curative and as an attempt to
show women their place in society.
To
perceive rape by some as curative is but a concrete manifestation of a society
that has deeply absorbed the ideals of the mimetic
order, that is, that women should be penetrated while men should do the
penetrating act. Such belief simply reinforces the notion of passivity and
activeness.
Though sexual repressions commonly
occur among women, men, too, are victimized. Take for example the harsh and
repressive treatment of homosexuals in Iraq is a problem that is deeply rooted
not only in the local culture, but has also religious underpinnings. As Sheikh
Ali Amar, a cleric at a mosque in Baghdad explains, “Muslims believe that
homosexual behavior is an offence against Islam and anyone who behaves this way
should be sentenced to death without compassion."
This given explanation could also be the reason why discrimination against
persons because of their sexual orientation is not only rampant in Iraq but
also in Iran. In a report
made by IRIN, two teenagers on the 19th
of July 2005, Mahmoud Asgari, who was then 16 years old, and Ayaz Marhoni, who
was then 18 years old, were publicly hanged in Mashad, provincial capital of
Iran’s northestern Khorasan province, on charges of homosexuality. Prior to the
boys’ executions, the teenagers were reportedly held in prison for 14 months
and severely beaten with 228 lashes. While Iranian authorities asserted that
the two were part of a criminal gang that raped a 13 year old boy, some human
rights groups were arguing instead that Asgari and Marhoni were apprehended,
tortured and eventually executed for “mutual consensual sex.”
From
all the previously discussed instances of sexual repression, one distinctive
attribute is common to all of them, that is, all the persons involved have
committed an interruption and
discontinuity from the “principle of continuity and coherence” prescribed by
their cultures by desiring or through an intimate sharing of libidinal desires
with the same sex or even to both sexes. These persons have been considered as
having “unintelligible genders,” genders that have been considered queer,
peculiar, and difficult to comprehend. Such linguistic constitution of the idea
of who is queer, peculiar and difficult to comprehend again points to
the direction of the phallic structured belief on the mimetic order. With the
constitution of the linguistic currency of passivity and activeness, the 21st
century homosexual not only the “19th century homosexual became a
personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type
of life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly
a mysterious physiology”
where the confessional in a religious, political or psychological
strategization has assumed a crucial role as to the formation of knowledge-power
relation vis-Ã -vis to the sexual desires of persons. The eventual constitution
of the homosexual as an individualized person has been ensured with the culture
of exclusion anchored on the principle
of permission and prohibition. This is
to say that if something is permitted, then something must have been
prohibited. The heterosexualization of desire is permitted and prescribed. Therefore, homoeroticism or the
homosexualization of desire or even the bisexualization of desire is prohibited
where the dominant sexual culture is anchored on the heterosexualization of
desires and intimate relationships. Such prohibition is constituted as a means
of ensuring the dominant existence of the permitted and the prescribed. Permitting
the existence of a prescribed and desired sexuality necessitates the need to
prohibit a sexuality that is not desired and not prescribed. With the interplay of prohibition and
permission in shaping and reshaping the meaning of sexuality, docile or
subservient identities and rebellious or assertive identities are
constituted.
Sexual repression is neither a fabricated issue nor an invented issue by
persons who are treated to belong to the so-called sexual minorities just to
demand for the recognition of their rights for their protection as
persons. Sexual repression arises as a
necessary consequence of having a society whose cultural libidinal ideals are
conditioned, influenced and shaped by the belief on the mimetic order.
EXCLUSIVE
LAWS AND PHALLIC LINGUISTIC CURRENCIES
People do not only need love and
sex for the continuous existence of the species. They also need laws to regulate human
behaviors. Laws can be considered as places of refuge where people seek shelter
against the encroachment and intrusion of their basic rights, such as the right
to life, liberty and property, as individuals in a given community. As provided for under the 1987 Philippine
Constitution, “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without
due process of law, nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the
laws.”
Law
are like atolls or islets of empowerment. For the continuous existence of human
species, love and sex have to be complemented by laws. Laws help to promote and
ensure the actualization of meaningful relationships in people’s modes of
togetherness as subjects. But how do
laws come into being to secure their much needed presence in existing modes of
togetherness as subjects? Before laws
are promulgated and eventually be enforced by a legitimate or a sovereign
power, laws should be given the necessary form by language. Language refers to anything that can be
spoken, conceived and understood. Language
refers to an open system of signs by which intelligibility is insistently
created and contested. Language serves as a medium through which
something is represented, articulated and signified. Functionally, it is through language that
something is normalized, standardized, abnormalized and excluded. Love is
embodied in the person of the lover or the beloved while the meanings that the
lover or beloved wants to convey can be expressed through the embodiment of
language; laws are also embodied through language. The lifeblood of laws is not
only generated by a legitimate or a sovereign power promulgating or enforcing
the laws, but also through the embodiment of language. Laws can guide human
actions and regulate human conducts to promote meaningful relationships because
laws have the potential to effectuate their binding powers through language. As
pointed out by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, “law is a rule and
measure of acts whereby man is induced to act or is restrained from acting; for
lex (law) is derived from ligare (to bind), because it binds one to act.” However, it is important to note that
language and its function in laws may valorize only the masculine while the
feminine is not being valorized in certain areas of human relationships. Adapting
the feminist view of Luce Irigaray in the je, tu, nous, she points:
Because the power of semen is not
immediately obvious in procreation, it’s relayed by the linguistic code,
logos. This wants to become the
all-embracing truth. Men’s appropriation
of the linguistic code attempts to do at least three things: (1) prove they are
fathers; (2) prove they are more powerful than mother-women; (3) prove they are
capable of engendering the cultural domain as they have been engendered in the
natural domain of the ovum, the womb, the body of a woman.
In Filipino cultures, fathers are
considered as the “haligi ng tahanan” while the mothers are considered as the
“ilaw ng tahanan.” In this kind of
hermeneutical twist, these cultures have given more preference and inclination
to the masculine or the male subject in terms of the constitution of certain
meanings in the context of certain modes of human relationships. This leads to
the marginalization not only of female subjects but also some male subjects. For
instance, usually on a date, customs dictate that it should be the man who
should treat and pay for the bills because as a future “haligi ng tahanan,” he
should be a good provider not only for his wife but to his children as well. Some
female subjects would even prefer to have boyfriends that are sporting a
particular brand of car or a motor bike to show that their boyfriends have the
potential to become a good provider. It is noticeable also that as beings
thrown into the world through the romantic relationships involved between
parents, children are given names for social and at the same time for legal
recognition from others. Examining carefully how names are arranged, mothers’
surnames in the Philippines are pitifully and obscurely placed in a
non-strategic location between the first name and the surname that is under the
paternal linguistic economy.
All these cited examples only point to one direction that the father is the
“haligi ng tahanan” and the mother is the “ilaw ng tahanan.” Luce Irigaray shares the view when she
remarks:
Man seems to have wanted, directly
or indirectly, to give the universe his own gender, as he has wanted to give
his own name to his children, his wife, his possessions.
These views regarding the “haligi
ng tahanan” and the “ilaw ng tahanan” have been carried to the extent that they
have also influenced the shaping and molding of some provisions of law under Family
Code of the Philippines. The Family Code
provides:
The future spouses may, in the
marriage settlements, agree upon the regime of absolute community, conjugal
partnerships or gains, complete separation of property, or any other regime to
govern their property relations. In the absence of a marriage settlement, or
when the regime agreed upon is void, the system of absolute community of
property as established in the Family Code shall govern.
Under this provision of law, it is
a general rule that when the spouses failed to come up with a valid and legally
binding marriage settlement before the marriage or when the marriage settlement
agreed upon is contrary to law, good morals, good customs, public order and
public policy, then the regime of absolute community shall govern the property
relations of the spouses. In order for
the marriage settlement as well as any of its modification in correlation to
other guidelines set forth by the Family Code to become legally binding not
only between the spouses but also to third parties, certain requisites as
provided for by the Family Code should be followed, namely: (1) it must be in
writing, (2) it should be signed by the future spouses involved,(3) it must be
executed before the celebration of the marriage, (4) the marriage must be
celebrated, (5) and it should be duly registered in the civil registry and
registry of property to bind third persons.
Under the regime of absolute
community of property, everything shall be held in common, and the provisions
of the Civil Code on co-ownership shall complement whatever matters not
provided for by the Family Code regarding the absolute community of property
between future spouses. What constitutes then the absolute community of
property? The Family Code provides:
Unless otherwise provide by the
Family Code or in the Marriage settlements, the community property shall
consist of all the property owned by the spouses at the time of the celebration
of the marriage or acquired thereafter.
However, the following shall be excluded from the community
property: (1) property acquired during
the marriage by gratuitous title by either spouse, and the fruits as well as
the income thereof, if any, unless it is expressly provided by the donor,
testator or grantor that they shall form part of the community property; (2)
property for personal and exclusive use of either spouse; nonetheless,
jewelries shall form part of the community property; (3) property acquired
before the marriage by either spouse who has legitimate descendants by a former
marriage, and the fruits as well as the income, if any, of such property.
In consonance now with the law,
donated properties, bonuses, properties which are considered inheritance and
underwear are only few examples of properties deemed not included in the
absolute community of property. Be it
noted that the provision of the law on the administration and enjoyment of the
community property is also similar to the conjugal partnership property. The
Family Code provides:
The administration and enjoyment
of the community property (or the conjugal partnership property) shall belong
to both spouses jointly. In case of
disagreement, the husband’s decision shall prevail, subject to recourse to the
court by the wife for a proper remedy, which must be availed of within five
years from the date of the contract implementing such decision. In the event
that one spouse is incapacitated or otherwise unable to participate in the
administration of the common properties (or conjugal properties), the other
spouse assume sole powers of administration. These powers do not include the
powers of disposition or encumbrance which must have the authority of the court
or the written consent of the other spouse.
In the absence of such authority or consent, the disposition or
encumbrance shall be void. However, the transaction shall be construed as a
continuing offer on the part of the consenting spouse and the third person, and
may be perfected as a binding contract upon the acceptance by the other spouse
or authorization by the court before offer is withdrawn by either or both
offerors.
It is by this assertion or
enunciation of the law that shows preference to the “haligi ng tahanan.” As a general rule, the administration or
enjoyment of the community properties or the conjugal properties shall belong
to both spouses jointly. Exception to
the general rule, in case of disagreement in the administration and enjoyment
of the community properties or conjugal properties (not covering disposition or
encumbrance) between the spouses, the decision of the husband shall prevail,
subject to recourse to the court by the wife for a proper remedy with five
years prescriptive period; otherwise, the contract will become legally binding.
Simple disagreement alone or disagreement per se cannot be the cause for the setting
aside of the contract. As pointed out by
Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Jose C. Vitug:
The “disagreement” itself” does
not constitute per se a cause for setting aside, for instance, the contract
entered into in the implementation of that decision, which the law, in effect,
authorizes when it had provided that “the husband’s decision shall
prevail.” The contract of course, may
be annulled or rescinded but limited to grounds that, under the laws of general
application, may render them either as voidable or as rescissible.
When, for example, the husband
secured the consent of the wife to mortgage or to sell a community property or
a conjugal property with a vitiated consent through mistake, violence,
intimidation, undue influence or fraud, then the wife could file a case in
court for a proper remedy. But if the
wife is just a plain housewife, waiting for an allowance either from her
husband or from her sons or daughters, or the wife is just earning an income
good only for her own subsistence, how could the wife file a case in
court? Assuming that the wife will avail
of the services of the Public Attorney’s Office, still the wife cannot escape
the fact that she will still be spending a considerable amount. These possible
scenarios only demonstrate the inconvenience that the wife may have to go
through because of phallic inclined provisions of law incorporated in the
Family Code.
In terms of law on the enjoyment
and administration of the community properties or conjugal properties, the
following provision of law in the Family Code also shows more preference and
inclinationation to the “haligi ng tahana” as compared to the “ilaw ng tahanan:”
The father and the mother shall
jointly exercise parental authority over the persons of their common
children. In case of disagreement, the
father’s decision shall prevail, unless there is a judicial order to the
contrary. Furthermore, the law contends that the father
and the mother shall jointly exercise legal guardianship over the property of
their unemancipated common child without the necessity of a court appointment. In
case of disagreement, the father’s decision shall prevail, unless there is a
judicial order to the contrary.
It is a common scenario in
families that some mothers do not usually aggressively assert their own voice
in the family. Sometimes, when a child
asks permission from the mother to date someone or to engage in a particular
endeavor, the mother usually says, “consult first your father before I give my
permission.”
Besides the laws and practices
mentioned that have glorified and have given more preference and emphasis to
the masculine or the phallus, there are also the sodomy laws and other similar
laws that strictly forbid and prohibit penetrative sex even if done by two
consenting male adults because of the deeply entrenched belief that it is
against nature or deemed unnatural. Some of the countries that has Anti-sodomy
laws include Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Afghanistan
and India. These countries and the
others together with laws against homosexuality that they perpetuate simply
cater persons to the exclusionary mode of standardizing and normalizing sexual
desires and behaviors. As U.N. Secretary General Ban KI-moon said in a speech
he made in New Delhi India on January 12, 2015, “anti-sodomy laws breed
intolerance.” With the presence of these laws as anchored in the active versus
passive sexual framework advocated by the mimetic theory, the heterosexual
eroticizations of persons are ensured.
Consequently, it clearly sets a culturally marked demarcation line
between what is sexually natural and what is sexually unnatural. However, the
problem that is now contributing to the sexual repression and marginalization
of persons of unorthodox sexualities is the making of what is culturally agreed
upon as natural. In other words, the problem is rooted in the transformation of
what is numerically constituted as normal as that which is natural, and what is
not numerically constituted as normal as that which is unnatural, aberrant,
even sinful or immoral. This is primarily the problem why gay persons like
Tariq are forced to live a life full of lies.
Tariq, who was then a 24 year old fine arts student in Lahore, Pakistan
at the time of the interview with IRIN, shares his experience of sexual
repression as a gay person:
My life is a lie and I know it.
Part of the lie is agreeing to a marriage arranged by the family. People here are not ready to talk about
homosexuality so they are certainly not ready to talk about gay rights. They tell me it’s a sin to be gay. But the real sin is not being allowed to be
who I am.
Living in a context similar to that
of Tariq would really force a person to live in the closet; otherwise, he/she
could potentially experience not only the marginalizing effect of the socially
standardized heterosexual norm but also the ostracizing arm of the law. In a similar situation with that of Tariq,
the problem of “honor killing” that finds support in some legal codes or
doctrines has placed the lives of some individuals in dismal situations and
will continue to do so. One such example
is Article 111 of the Iraqi Penal Code that exempts from prosecution and
punishment men who kill other men or female relative in defense of their
family’s honor. Article 111 of the
Iraqi Penal Code provides that he who discovers his wife, one of his female relatives
committing adultery or a male relative engaged in sodomy then kills, wounds or
injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty. According to the Human
Rights Ministry in Iraq, the problem of honor killing often occurs when a man
is believed to be gay. This is evident
in the statement of Abu Qussay who had killed his son after discovering that
his son was gay. Abu Qussay shares in an interview made by IRIN:
I hanged him in my house in front
of his brother to give an example to all of them and prevent them from doing
the same.
IRIN reports that after the
murder, Qussay was arrested, and he was charged with the killing but released
after one month in prison after a defense lawyer explained why Qussay committed
the crime. Besides Abu Qussay, Kudaifa
Abdul Lateff could also possibly become a potential killer in the name of
honor. Kudaifa Abdul Lateff shares how
he deeply despised homosexuals in an interview made by IRIN:
If I found that my son was doing
something like that (referring to the involvement of some male teenage Iraqis
in the commercial sex trade through force, fraud or consent), I would kill him
straight away, because it is an offense against GOD and a crime against
honor. Homosexuals are nothing more than
animals.
Honor killing is not just a
problem suffered by persons having unorthodox sexualities in extremely sexually
repressive societies like Iraq, but also a problem where oftentimes the victims
are women. In a documentary made by
Hemisphere, it has been reported that “each year the United Nations estimates
that 5,000 women are killed around the world murdered by fathers, brothers, and
husbands for so-called immoral behaviors as having an affair or taking a man
without the father’s approval. The
actual number of victims could be much higher since the majority of crimes are
unreported.” If
governments concerned like Iraq, Jordan and Pakistan just to name a few of
these countries where honor killing is practiced would not get tough with their
jobs to throw away the practice into complete oblivion, more and more persons
will continuously suffer a grim fate or worst, subjected to painful or horrible
deaths.
THE
CONCEPT OF NATURAL SUBSTRATUM
For
years, it is the common notion that a woman is not an authentic woman if she
does not bear a child, that is, the husband’s child in a monogamous or even in
a polygamous marriage. Furthermore, if a
woman refuses to bear a child, then that woman is either condemned or seen with
less value as compared to other women who readily submit themselves to the will
of their phallic structured society to bear a child. As Michel Foucault points out in The History
of Sexuality regarding the hysterization of women’s bodies beginning in the
18th century:
The feminine body was
analyzed———qualified and disqualified———as being thoroughly saturated with
sexuality; whereby it was integrated into the sphere of medical practices, by
reason of a pathology intrinsic to it; whereby, finally, it was placed in
organic communication with the social body (whose regulated fecundity it was
supposed to ensure), the family space (of which it had to be a substantial and
functional element), and the life of children (which it produced and had to
guarantee, by virtue of a biologico-moral responsibility lasting through the
entire period of the children’s education): the Mother, with her negative image
of “nervous woman,” constituted the most visible form of hysterization.
From
this remark of Michel Foucault, it is clear that in the past, child bearing has
been made obligatory, necessary and even mandatory simply because of the
perceived epistemological paradigm unveiled by the anatomical science. Such
epistemological paradigm is supposed to be a mere paradigm, that is, a model. However,
such model has been made universal and necessary instead of being contingent. By
making what is supposed to be contingent as universal and necessary, this state
of affair has led to the creation of a coerced body leading to the creation of
a sexuality that is repressed and forced towards the socialization of
procreative act, and its ultimate consequence is the neglect, marginalization
and disregard for one’s subjectivity.
With the advent of the feminist
movement, the notion of a woman as a mere natural substratum or receptacle of
the seed implanted by the male subject has been changed and reformed to some
extent. It has widened the woman’s identity. Women now have a choice whether or
not to bear a child. Unfortunately, there are still exceptions in some
communities in some countries where women are still imprisoned and entangled in
the view that they are just mere receptacle of the seed and where some women
still remain not emancipated and not enlightened, with no freedom to give their
own subjectivity a voice. Samira’s
experience can be cited as a concrete example.
Samira is a Yemeni who was married to a Yemeni cousin at the age of 15. Samira
remarks in an interview made by IRIN:
It is normal to marry at age 12 in
my village. You can't choose the man
you’re going to live with.
The following year after her first
marriage, Samira had her first child. Because of giving birth at a very young
age, Samira suffered from complications. For 10 days after the birth, Samira
suffered from bleeding. During the 16
days she spent in the hospital, she could not walk or hold her baby. Triggered by the loss of blood during her
first childbirth, Samira, who was already 28 years old at the time of the
interview, continues to suffer from deep-vein thrombosis. She continues to have
pains in her legs and often goes to the hospital. Because of her medical problems, due to
giving birth at an early age, and the fact that she is now separated from her
second husband, Samira is prevented from maintaining employment in the capital,
Sana'a. Naseem Ur Rehman elaborates his observation in an interview made by
IRIN on the persistence of early marriage in Yemen:
Early marriage is one of the
biggest development challenges in Yemen. This is because no groups have yet
outgrown the practice. Marriage usually ends a girl’s educational prospects,
which has wide implications for development in a country with one of the
largest education gaps in the world. A mother who is not educated is
imprisoned, and is trapped in the cycle of reproduction.
Sharing the same perspective on
the persistence of early marriage, in a 2004 study, sponsored by Oxfam UK, the
Shima study reveals to IRIN that “throughout all segments of Yemeni society,
Yemenis have given a high value on the virginity and moral virtue of girls, and
this places pressure on families to marry their girls earlier so as to reduce
the possibility of premarital sex.”
The experience of Samira alone
represents the plight of some women in the world where these women are trapped
by the practice of some cultures that place so much value and significance
towards early marriage, thus, treating women as mere commodities who are
valuable only as mere “receptacles of the seed” of life. This unfortunate, sorrowful and agonizing
state of affair in life can be traced back to the phallic structured society.
Luce Irigaray confirms this given assertion:
Our civilization are lacking in
two respects; they present us with two repressions, two injustices or
anomalies: (1) women, who have given life and growth to the other within
themselves, are excluded from the order of the same which men alone set up and
(2) the girl child although conceived by a man an a woman, doesn’t enter as the
father’s child with the same status as that accorded the son. She remains outside culture, kept as a natural
body good only for procreation.
Even
with the advent of the feminist movement, some residues of women’s oppression
because of phallic structured society engendering exclusion can still be
seen. Despite the mushrooming of
different women’s groups, NGO’s and organizations seeking to promote not only
“equality” in certain aspects of social and civil lives, but also the need to
recognize and to respect the differences between the sexes, much efforts have
still to be done to fully liberate women from their utilitarian significance in
the procreative process and in the satisfaction of a masculinist centered
desires. This is the reason why in many
families in the Philippines, some fathers and surprisingly some mothers tell
their daughters, “saan ka laengen nga agadal iti collegio anak ko; umdasen nga
ammom iti agbasa ken agsurat gapu ta iti saan nga agbayag ket maasawaan kanto
ket masapul nga agtalinaed ka iti uneg iti balay ta napinpintas met laeng nga
adayo no sika a mismo ti mangtaripato kadaguiti annak mo ken iti agbalin to nga
asawam.”
Driving deeper the socially
constructed view that treats women as mere “receptacles of the seed,” is the notion
of visibility and default. In the psychoanalytic theory developed by Sigmund
Freud, Freud postulates that “the little girl is a little boy where the
clitoris of the former is deemed as a mere penis equivalent.” Explaining this postulate of Sigmund Freud
concerning a woman, Luce Irigaray writes:
Women’s castration is defined as
her having nothing you can see, as her having nothing. In her having nothing
penile, in seeing that she has No Thing.
Nothing like man. That is to say, no sex/organ that can be seen in a
form capable of founding in reality, reproducing its truth.
However,
this Freudian notion on the very nature and constitution of a woman has only
led to a very unfortunate and skewed understanding of a woman. This Freudian
notion simply caters to the perpetuation of passivity as a determining nature
of femininity and aggressiveness as the determining nature of masculinity. Luce
Irigaray writes as a reaction to Freud’s notion of a woman as a castrated male:
She remains forsaken and abandoned
in her lack, default, absence, envy, etc. and is led to submit, to follow the
dictates issued univocally by the sexual desire, discourse and law of man. Of
the father, in the first instance.
This
notion of absence and default has now caused women in a patriarchal society to
tame their sexual and at the same time physical drives and energies——repressed
sexuality. To make this point clearer, women have to be narcissistic in a
patriarchal society and women are expected to act and to behave in a tender and
gentle manner; otherwise, doing the contrary could make those people whose
consciousness are conditioned by the mimetic order to call them flirts or
bitches. This notion now of absence and default in women has caused the very
understanding of men and women in a phallocratic ordered society that what is
readily protruding and visible are signs of power or authority while that which
does not protrude and remains invisible, such as a “hole,” is a sign of
subordination and passivity. This is further manifested by the customary
practice of bowing the head before a personality or a prominent figure of
authority. The structure of the person
bowing is in the form of a curved line (vagina) as indicative of passivity and
subordination while the structure of the person bowed upon is in the form of a
vertical line (penis) as indicative of aggressiveness and sovereignty. Oum Mohammed’s experience can be cited to
exemplify the above point. Oum Mohammed
is an Egyptian who married at a very young age of 16 just like Samira. Her marriage has caused her so much pain and
trauma. Her marriage to a man who
constantly beats her and who has simply treated her as mere “hole” shows the
passive and subservient status because of her lack and default. She is deemed incapable of creating her own
truth and establishing her own being as a person. Oum Mohammed imparts her experience of
domestic violence, perpetuated by her husband, in an interview made by IRIN:
From the day I married him, he hit
me over matters big and small. He told me that all women should be beaten. I didn’t protest because I was afraid he’d
throw me and my children into the street. I’d seen my father hit my mother, and
in every house in the alley a man hits a woman.
IRIN reports that Oum Mohammed’s
story is just one of 700 case studies that the Association for the Development
and Enhancement of Women (ADEW), a local NGO, has collected over the past
several years. IRIN further
reports:
According to the NGO, domestic
abuse is common in Egypt. A 2001 survey conducted in low-income neighborhoods
found that 96 percent of women had been beaten at least once by their
husbands. Such violence is often
condoned by society, or even by the victims, experts’ say. A majority of the
women surveyed in a government study, for example, said a husband had the right
to beat his wife if she talked to him disrespectfully, talked to another man,
spent too much money or refused her husband sex. If a woman goes to the police
station to report domestic abuse, the police adopt “the cultural perspective
that the man has the right to do it”, says ADEW officer Bahira El-Gohary.
But why do women in a phallic
structured society readily submit to their castration? Citing the
psychoanalytic tradition developed by Freud, women readily submit to the idea
of their castration because from the very beginning of their development as
human beings, they have been already conditioned, educated and made to believe
that the phallus is the emblem of human sexual pleasure. In a society whose cultural-sexual values
have been conditioned by the paradigm of sexual pleasure advocated by the
mimetic theory, the phallus has been made as the “master-signifier" in
terms of power in the cultural-sexual domain.
Having made the phallus as the emblem of human pleasure, women are
sociologically conditioned to desire an actual penis be it directly or
indirectly since women possess only a mere penis equivalent. Women are
conditioned to affirm the invisibility of their vagina because of the claim
that the penis is that which is readily perceived and visible. The above elaborated perspective coupled
with the linguistic currencies at work in a phallic constituted society
perpetuate this made-to-believe myth of “castration complex”
imbued in the psyche of women.
Sigmund
Freud and all those cultural norms that have been constituted and conditioned
by the mimetic order are to be blamed for the immediate submission of women to
their castration and to what Michel Foucault describes as the “hysterization of
the bodies of women.” However, to some
extent Sigmund Freud has also opened a door through which the idea of sexual
difference is to be argued. But it remains that Freud’s notion of the vagina’s
invisibility has been deeply embedded into the consciousness of women who still
remain to be enslaved and imprisoned by the phallocratic paradigm of pleasure.
In
addition, women who are still enslaved by the phallocratic paradigm of pleasure
easily submit themselves to the idea of their castration because their desire
for an actual and real penis is rooted in their imposed notion of what is
sexually valuable. These women who are
deemed to be “envious of the penis” see the penis more valuable than the
vagina. This is because of the phallic conditioned and imposed belief that the
visibility of the phallus signifies power, especially since the phallus may
even play hide and seek, that is, the phallus is hidden when not erect and not
hidden when erect. The phallus has been made as the emblem of sexual pleasure.
Since the one who thrust is the visible-penis and the one to be thrusted is the
invisible-hole-vagina, power as an attribute has been directed and concentrated
on the phallus. The problem now with
this kind of libidinal linguistic economy is the conditioning of women’s mind
by a masculine paradigm of sexual pleasure. As a result, these notions of
visibility and invisibility have created a paradigm where women in a
phallocratic society have been conditioned if not forced to readily accept the
idea of their artificial castration and default. With the acceptance of the
idea of their artificial castration, some cultural norm and traditions have
blindly accepted the fact that women are valuable only as subjects because of
their functional and valuable role in the process of procreation as
“receptacles of the seed” of life.
Indeed, a phallic constituted
culture conditioned by the belief on the mimetic order can be seen as a culture
characterized by exclusion. The origin of this culture of exclusion is in the
“patriarchal social body that constructs itself hierarchically excluding
differences.” On the
other hand, the “female body engenders respect for differences through one of
its distinctive features of tolerating the other’s growth within itself without
incurring illness or death for either one on the living organisms.”
In this regard, bring forth a profound understanding of who women are, people
need to liberate themselves from the orthodox perspectives that women are
useful only as a natural substratum.
OBJECTIFICATION
OF PERSONS
The possible experience of
repression that is grounded on the sexuality of a person does not only take
place through the institutionalization of bio-power, the promotion of the
phallic structured belief on the mimetic order, the presence of exclusive laws and
the dominance of phallic linguistic currencies, including the strict adherence
to the concept of natural substratum. The possible experience of a repressed
sexuality in a disciplinary phallic centered society may also occur through the
objectification of persons.
When a person is treated by another person as an object instead of a subject,
such treatment does not only have a saddening effect upon the sexual aspect of
the person but also upon the “kabuuan” of the person objectified. Since the sexual aspect of the person is
considered to be an indispensable aspect of the “kabuuan” of the human person,
whatever happens to this aspect would definitely affect the person as a whole,
his/her totality. When a person is objectified by being instrumentalized by another
person without regard to the humanity of the former, an undeniable and
lingering fact remains, that is, the self has been devalued. Henceforth, when
in a state of objectification, it necessitates immediate action to make the
devalued self experience a valorized “kabuuan.”
Each person is endowed with a lot
of potentials and capabilities to actualize. It is when these potentials and
capabilities are actualized that a person is enabled to fully understand
her(him)self as a subject. Having a lot of potentials and capabilities to
actualize, specifically that potential to give depth and meaning to human
existence, makes the human person primordially a subject. This is an
ontological fact, meaning, a human person is a being that exists in a community
of beings.
To elucidate the idea of human
person as primordially a subject, of all beings in this world, it is only the
human person who is capable of generating and initiating meanings in this
life. When for example someone kicks
one of the pillars of a wooden table or chair, slaps the face or punches any
part of the body of a human size stuffed toy, the table, the chair and the
stuffed toy certainly do not mind what happened. The items would definitely not
show any manifestations of hurt feelings or emotions. However, if the same act would be done to a
person, then the person as a giving-meaning existent subject will certainly
show manifestations of hurt feelings or emotions. Probably, if the person is still experiencing
a reasoned emotion immediately after the incident, then the person would be
asking some questions why such act has been made to her/him; otherwise, the
person would have already retaliated in the same manner. Another example is
when one kicks a sleeping dog or cat on the mat. If the dog or cat is fully trained in a
culture of “blind obedience,” then the dog or cat would immediately run away
out of fright; otherwise, the dog or cat would immediately bite the person in
the leg or any part of his/her body. While brute animals are capable of
experiencing pain, unlike the table, chair and stuffed toy, brute animals are
not capable of giving meaning to their experience of pain, unlike the human
being as a giving meaning-existent subject.
Following the anthropological-existential view that the human person is
fundamentally the center, the source of depth and initiative in the cosmos, the
human person therefore is primordially a subject.
As the source of depth, meaning
and initiative in the cosmos, persons are differentiated from other beings in
the world such as from brute animals, things, objects and stuffs. As an unfinished project, a project still in
progress, the human person is constantly in the process of becoming as a
subject-being. Thus, persons have to continuously give and generate assertive
meanings in their day to day existence in their encounter with the others
around them. Nevertheless, as giving-meaning existent subjects, it does not
mean that persons cannot be anymore objectified by other subjects. Others as
linguistic agencies can always generate meanings that can either disable or
enable the understanding of who persons are and what they are as subjects who
desire and who are desired, that is, as subjects with sexuality. Objectification is made clearer by Martha
Nussbaum explanation, that one objectifies another when “one is treating as an
object what is really not an object, what is, in fact a human being.” In this connection, when a person treats
another as a thing which is not actually a person but already a thing, there is
no such act properly called as an objectifying act. As Martha Nussbaum elaborates:
Treating things as objects is not
objectification, because as I have suggested, objectification entails making
into a thing, treating as a thing, something that is really not a thing.
For instance, when a sandbag or a
heavy bag or even the trunk of a banana tree is utilized for kickboxing
training, such use or the instrumentalization of these things is not properly
called objectification. While delivering certain styles of punches or kicks to
the sandbag, heavy bag or trunk, any of these things are already devoid of
autonomy and subjectivity which are proper determining characteristics of a
person but not things. Thus, the term objectification is only proper to be used
within the context where what is to be objectified as Nussbaum claims is a
person not a thing.
It can be observed that in many
societies, some individuals because of their chosen, “pagkatao” or “kinatao” or
because of their having a particular form of sexuality are at greater risk of
experiencing sexual repression or marginalization, specifically by being
objectified through their instrumentalization as persons without regard to
their humanity. In Pakistan, despite the
declaration of the practice of “vani” as illegal, there are still some
supportive adherents who are continuously perpetuating such objectifying
practice. As a result of this practice,
some Pakistani women have been instrumentalized without regard to their
humanity as persons by being forced to enter into a marriage against their
will. “Vani” is “the traditional
Pakistani practice whereby girls or young women are used as compensation for a
crime committed and as a means of settling feuds between two families or
clans.” One victim of this practice is the
granddaughter of Fareedullah Khan and Sakina Bibi who both support a new campaign
against the practice. As reported by IRIN:
Nearly 20 years ago, their
granddaughter became a “vani” to pay for a murder committed by her paternal
uncle. She has since lived a life of
misery, as a virtual slave within the home of a husband 30 years her senior.
The case of Fareedullah Khan and
Sakina Bibi’s granddaughter is just a few among the many cases of “vani”
documented and undocumented. The problem
posed by the practice of “vani” is the fact that women who are objectified and
instrumentalized in this practice are treated as enemies. They are treated as
domestic slaves, recepients of domestic violence or as mere sex slaves since
these women were simply married by their male partners out of anger, hatred,
revenge, vengeance, and retribution. If vengeance and retribution are the mere
moving factors behind the practice of “vani”, then it is expected that the life
of the woman subjected to a forced marriage will be wretched. As Fareedullah told IRIN that “the girls
handed over to rival families are innocent of the crime committed by a
relative, and they are always treated like enemies within the homes of their
spouses.” In the practice of “vani,” young women are
reduced to mere tradable and consumable goods.
As such, these women are unquestionably and absolutely denied not only
of autonomy but also of subjectivity as persons. In this scenario, women subjected to “vani”
are practically persons whose “pagkatao” and “kabuuan” are devalued. Since
sexuality is an indispensable aspect of the totality of the person, its
devaluation means the devaluation of the persons as a whole.
Besides the practice of “vani”
that places young women at greater risk of objectification, another vehicle of
objectification is pornography. Pornography refers to films, magazines,
writings, photographs or other materials portraying sexually explicit
subordination of either men or women, maybe both in a humiliating, violent,
degrading, depersonalizing and dehumanizing way, and intended simply to
stimulate sexual elation or delight in their audience.
In contrast, erotica refers to
sexually candid materials that depict and represent men and women in a stance
or a posture showing and conveying mutual regard and respect. Distinction
between the two materials is facilitated by what Martha Nussbaum presents in
Sex and Social Justice, that “the over all context of the material and the
sense in the work as a whole”
must be considered. To illustrate this point are the following instances: (1) a
woman either through force or violence or with consent while constantly being
whipped in the butt is at the same time being penetrated by three men, one in
her anus, one in her mouth and one in her vagina, (2) a man either through
force or violence or with consent while constantly being whipped in the butt is
at the same time being lined up by ten men to be penetrated in his anus and in
his mouth by two men at the same time, (3) a pregnant woman either through
force or violence or with consent displaying herself naked while inserting a
foreign object on her vagina, (4) a minor, be it a boy or girl being ravished
sexually in an animalistic and barbaric way by a person of age while the arms
and the legs of the minor are tied on the four columns supporting the bed.
Given these examples and similar analogous examples appearing in any document
or material, the over-all context where these representations appear and the
sense of these representations as a whole must be considered. Specifically, it
must be studied whether the primary purpose is to simply objectify a person
without regard for the humanity of the person, whether the person is taken as
an object be it temporarily or permanently, or to inform persons of certain
sexual behaviors that are conventionally considered to be abhorrent in order
that persons will be given an opportunity to think and reflect for themselves
to achieve a kind of autonomy as moral agents.
Given the importance of being
informed as an audience or reader about the overall context of the material and
the sense in the work as a whole, the truth is, not all audience or readers are
reasonably capable of acknowledging the indispensable need of determining the
overall context of the material and the sense in the work as a whole. Some audience or readers are not mature
enough to know the importance of the over all context of the material and the
sense in the work as a whole. This could be the reason why most states in the
world and other institutions are so concerned with the spread of pornography in
order to safeguard and to protect the sexuality of the young with the aim of
making these young persons reasonable sexual beings later. Furthermore, some
audience or readers are mentally capable of knowing the indispensable need of
determining the overall context of the material and the sense in the work as a
whole, but they simply take certain erotic or sexual materials literally or
simply appreciate these materials on their face value. In this case, the
problem of objectification through the perpetuation of pornographic images
without regard to the humanity of persons could not be completely eradicated
even with the presence of state or institutional regulations.
Living in a society where people
have been culturally eroticized to see women as passive and men as active,
women have been accorded the role as objects while men as objectifiers. Martha Nussbaum shares the same view in a
commentary she made on Andrea Dworkin on pornography:
Pornography standardly portrays
the will of women in a fictive male viewpoint, expressing the thought that they
want to be used as things for male pleasure.
Nothing may be wrong posing oneself in an erogenous
and erotic manner or depicting a person or persons in erogenous and erotic
manner or circumstances provided that and given that one is not objectified in
the process in a humiliating, depersonalizing and dehumanizing way. However,
living in a phallic ordered society that has widely celebrated the treatment of
women as mere objects while men serve as objectifiers, posing oneself or
depicting person or persons in an erogenous and erotic manner shall only
perpetuate the present object-status and the objectifier-status that currently
exists and pervades in societies. Newspapers——Bomba Balita, Night Life,
Iskandal, Baliktaran Toro and Hataw which are all tabloid newspapers of
national circulation in the Philippines——constantly present pictures of
scantily clad women on their front covers. Aside from these newspapers, some
sexually-loaded magazines also proliferate such as For Him Magazine (popularly
known as FHM) and Maxim, both of national and international circulation. Classified as lad magazines, these magazines
basically feature pictures of scantily clad women accompanied by articles about
women (usually models actresses or singers), consumer stories about cars,
tools, and toys, tales of sex and interviews of famous and not so famous women
regarding their daily routines, sexual experiences and fantasies. What is considered “special” in these
magazines is their annual feature of “FHM 100 Sexiest Women in the World” and
“Maxims Hot 100.” Analyzing the process
how women are ranked, they are not essentially ranked according to their
significant social achievements or influences but they are ranked primarily
based on their sexual appeal, their sexual bearing to the audience
(specifically to the objectifying male gaze) or their stimulating beauty
towards the completion of one’s libidinal desires. This mode of ranking simply reinforces the
phallic view of according women the object-status while men the
objectifier-status. More sexually explicit magazines are Playboy, Hustler and
Penthouse just to name a few among the many porn magazines of international
circulation. Classified as porn magazines, unlike Maxim and FHM, these
magazines rely heavily on vulgar and explicit depictions of women usually
subordinated in totally naked postures either on their own or being penetrated
by a single man or being penetrated by a number of men. These kinds of magazines simply glorify the
exchangeability and tradability of sex and sexual partners. Martha Nussbaum shares the same view:
For Playboy depicts a
thoroughgoing fungibility and commodification of sex partners and, in the process,
severs sex from any deep connection with self-expression or emotion.
She
further elaborates the tradability and exchangeability of persons behind the
pursued Playboy utilitarian philosophy of maximizing the experience of phallic
oriented pleasure:
The magazine is all about the
competition of men with other men, and its message is the availability of a
readily renewable supply of more or less fungible women to men who have
achieved a certain level of prestige and money, or rather, that fantasy women
of this sort are available, through the magazine, to those who can fantasize
that they have achieved this status.
Both lad and porn magazines,
including those tabloid newspapers mentioned, promote and perpetuate the
exchangeability and tradability of persons as sexual beings. Portrayals and depictions of persons in an
erogenous, sexy and erotic manner normally have women as characters. This can be traced back to the mimetic order
that shapes and influences the mindsets of persons to think and act in a
phallic constituted society in a cultural-sexual framework that treats and
molds women as subservient, passive and submissive sexual beings. Consequently, when a woman does not display
the expected subservient, passive, and submissive deportments, the phallic
constituted society to where she exists would definitely call her a “bitch,”
“flirtatious,” or “sexually dangerous” woman.
The mimetic order, on the other
hand, treats and molds boys and men to be sexually eroticized to adopt and
exemplify aggressive, active and forceful deportments fitting a man; otherwise,
the society would stereotype the male person as “butch but fem.” Men as can be seen
in phallic constituted societies do not become a person in their “absence,”
“lack,” “default” or in simply having a “hole,” but men achieve their
personhood by having the exceptional phallus as the “master-signifier” in the
domain where a masculine/phallic/heterosexual paradigm of pleasures is
operational and deeply revered.
The above perspective explains the
greater objectification of women as compared to men because men are more
recognized socially as more than just bodies to be instrumentalized. Relative to this, Linda Brannon in Gender asserts:
Societies that restrict childhood
sexuality tend to do so not only through restricting intercourse, but also by
limiting information about sex, prohibiting masturbation, and enforcing
different standards of sexual behavior for men and women, that is, sexually
restrictive societies tend to have a double standard and put more restrictions
on the sexuality of girls and women than on that of boys and men.
Restrictive societies, which bear
the dominance of phallic attributes, have placed so much restriction on the
sexuality of girls and women. Women in phallic
constituted societies are seen like priced objects. The primary reason is the phallic structured
belief that girls and women are persons who possess “exceptional holes.”
Luce Irigaray shares the same view with Linda Brannon on how women are sexually
repressed in the cultural-sexual domain in order to become a woman, Irigaray
posits:
“Woman’s own constitution”
demanded she repress all signs of aggressivity, a repression encouraged by
“social custom” and certainly also by the “sexual function” that we recognize
in or attribute to her.
She further discusses on how a
woman labors to become a woman within a masculine paradigm of pleasure:
Her precociousness in the
controlled production of feces, of language, of social relationships whose
relation to the production and circulation of currency you will be familiar
with would thus be envisaged as merely the effect of her desire to function, herself,
as “merchandise.” Her childish superiority would be motivated simply by the
desire to appear the most attractive of all negotiable assets.
The fact is, persons displaying
themselves in an erogenous, sexy and erotic manner most especially on the part
of women will always pose a potential problem in their lives as sexual beings
and eventually to their “kabuuan” provided that the existing cultural values of
the societies are still deeply rooted in the cultural-sexual framework
advocated by the mimetic order.
In addition to pornography and the
practice of “vani,” prostitution has over the years dehumanized and depersonalized
a person by being objectified through instrumental treatment. An illustration
is the experience of Hassan Feiraz, who at the age of 16 years old, has
commenced a desolate and miserable life after being compelled to enter a sex
trade in Baghdad under the threat of street gangs. In an interview made by IRIN
with Hassan Feiraz, Feiraz shares in public his grim experience of
prostitution:
Every day I cry at night. I’m a
homosexual and was forced to work as a prostitute because one of the people I
had sex with took pictures of me in bed and said that, if I didn’t work for
him, he was going to send the pictures to my family. My life is a disaster today. I could be killed
by my family to restore their honor since homosexuality was totally unacceptable
in Iraq due to religious beliefs. Many
of us are working under threat, but others are there because they don’t know
how to survive and found it as an easy way of getting money. Someone should help free us from these
criminals.
Hassan’s experience of prostitution
shows the usually neglected fact that not all homosexuals are persons who
readily portray themselves as sex starved persons willing to be penetrated, to
penetrate someone or to pleasure someone in any erogenous manner in order to
experience sexual pleasure in return.
Furthermore, the experience of Hassan was included in this project to
give emphasis also on the fact that homosexual men are also targets of
prostitution either through force or with consent. Besides Hassan, Um Zacarias’
two teenage sons were also lured in the commercial sex trade in Baghdad not
because of force or fraud this time unlike what happened with Hassan but
through the compelling need to survive. Um Zacarias shares how her two teenage
sons who were then 13 years old and 14 years old entered the commercial sex
trade in Baghdad:
We are poor family and my husband
cannot work because he has serious epilepsy. Abu Weled (a ring leader that
operates prostitution dens in Baghdad) came to our house offering us money if
we let our teenage boys work with them. Thanks to him, today we have a good
income. People may find it surprising, but at least we can eat now and I’m
proud of them.
The experience of Hassan Feiraz
and Um Zacarias’ two boys are just few among the many individuals lured in the
commercial sex trade either through a vitiated consent or perfectly informed
consent. For a wider understanding of
prostitution, the most spoken reasons are enumerated as follows: (1) some are
prostituted because of fraud, threat, violence or force, just like in the
case of Hassan Feiraz; (2) some freely
and voluntarily engage themselves in the commercial sex trade to finance their
vices or their luxurious material needs; (3) some freely and voluntarily engage themselves in
the commercial sex trade because of poverty, just like in the case of Um
Zacarias two boys; (4) some freely and voluntarily engage themselves in the
commercial sex trade to satisfy their own personal libidinal desires; and (5)
some freely and voluntarily engage themselves in the commercial sex trade
either to satisfy their own personal libidinal desires or to use prostitution
as a form of rebellion to a very exclusionist phallic constituted family or
society, just like some gay persons thrown out in the family because of their
sexuality.
While some likened prostitution
with other jobs that involve the use of mental and physical capabilities to
earn a money, it is still again another mode through which the
“master-signifier” gains access to the “exceptional hole”
or to a mere “hole”
in a mere transient and in an immediately ready consumable way without any commitment.
Prostitution guarantees the utilitarian transformation of human bodies
into a mere utility. Prostitution can never guarantee regard for human dignity.
What is problematic and objectionable is the treatment of persons as mere
utilities, that is, in a Kantian perspective, the treatment of persons as
simply means not as ends. Prostitution simply breeds and encourages the
continuous and unceasing tradability and commodification of sex partners,
consequently, severing sex from any deep and intimate connection as the
profound expression of a person’s individuality as a sexual being.
In addition, prostitution also
breeds and encourages potential violence on the ground of sex and
sexuality. Some sexual workers have been
killed violently or have suffered from slight, serious or grave physical
injuries for their refusal to perform the customer’s desired way of being pleasured
or their failure as sex workers to provide the expected form of sexual pleasure
that the customer is expecting. Some unsuspecting erotic workers who are in
themselves persons enough to give their trust to customers are left teary eyed,
demeaned, and belittled. After being used as mere bodies or as mere “holes,”
they can be victims of fraud from malicious and fraudulent users, that is, they
are not paid for their services. There
is nothing that is more sexually repressive and marginalizing than using a
person sexually and then run away from the obligation that one as a user has
agreed upon with the person used. After
one is sexually used, and then left with an empty hand is something that
creates a negative image in the psyche of the person as having no value or
having a depreciated value. It can
potentially lead to self-alienation or its symptoms such as the loss of respect
for oneself as a person. Prostitution, therefore, from whatever perspective or
angle boils down to the objectification of human bodies as mere utilities,
things or means because of what a person can do or give through sex by way of
the person’s sexuality.
CONCLUDING
REMARKS
The
discussion made above has presented three pedagogical mechanisms at play in a
disciplinary society namely, sexuality made as a domain of panoticized
experience by the science of sexuality, the institutionalization of bio-power,
and the phallic structured belief on the mimetic order. As pedagogical
mechanisms, they are power discourses and paradigms which are kept in place by
institutional power brokers and agents like schools, churches, families,
states, and other similar institutions. Through the intermediary or
prescription of these power brokers and agents, these pedagogical mechanisms
are strategized and utilized to wield power, control and dominion over the
persons of individuals, to include their bodies, souls, desires, dreams, and
aspirations.
The science of sexuality has
depicted sex as a worldly experience or a carnal vice of the flesh portrayed to
the extreme with a tendency to produce a dirty, shameful and sinful experience
not only to the body of the person but penetrating also the soul. This
depiction of sex can be observed through the obsession of certain societies of
the confessional, specifically those societies that were cultivated starting
from medieval Western societies. With
such portrayal of sex by the science of sexuality, the sexual aspect perceived
to be an indispensable aspect of the totality of an individual has to be
constantly monitored for a possible transgression of the flesh.
The institutionalization of
bio-power, on the other hand, aimed to regulate life and to exercise some
power over life. In order to attain this objective, individual bodies of
persons and populations have to be subjected to the mechanistic strategies of a
disciplinary society for their standardization and normalization. The process
of individualization is achieved into what is called the sexualization of persons.
This sexualization of persons can only take place through the standardizations
or normalizations of behaviors and desires anchored on the supposed “pagkatao”
of the person. This kind of individualization process in a disciplinary society
is a means of social partitioning keeping in place the dominant and prevailing
libidinal-sexual culture. The resulting consequence of this process is the
creation of socially constructed behaviors and desires that are not in
conformity with the standard, with the normal or with the moral leading to the
oppression, discrimination and marginalization of some sectors of the society
on account of sex or their sexuality.
Furthermore, the phallic structured
belief on the mimetic order has contributed on the way persons of unorthodox
sexualities are viewed. This belief on
the mimetic order has provided the very foundation through which the notion of
unintelligible genders is articulated on the basis of “intelligible genders.” Likewise,
“intelligible genders” are accorded their cultural legitimacy status not only
because of the belief on the mimetic order, but also because of the principle
that came out as a result of the phallic structured belief on this order. This
principle refers to the “principle of coherence and continuity.” Because of not
having subservient identities or simply because of having non-conformist
genders in accordance to the “principle of coherence and continuity,” some
persons would have to bear the experience of being stereotyped, scorned, hated,
insulted, ostracized, dehumanized, and objectified because of their sex or
their sexuality.
Under the discussion on exclusive
laws and phallic linguistic currencies, sexual repression, marginalization, and
discrimination arise not only from skewed and distorted manner of eroticism
through the conditioning made by cultures and values that are anchored and
fixated with the teachings of the mimetic order, but also from laws. Laws, though they serve as islets of
empowerment, may also serve as atolls or islets of exclusion that do not
promote the necessary respect and recognition of differences among
individuals. Laws can become vessels of
marginalization and disempowerment.
With the discussion made on the
concept of natural substratum, restricting the personhood of a woman to her
indispensable role in the procreative process could only lead to a limited and
phallic constrained view on who a woman is.
Women instead should be considered as beings that embody toleration and
respect for difference as concretely expressed through nurturing another human
life in the maternal womb for nine months or less. As stated earlier, in order to
bring forth a profound understanding of who women are, people need to move
beyond the orthodox perspectives that women are useful only as a natural
substratum.
On the discussion on the
objectification of persons, it is worth noting that when a person is
objectified and treated as mere sexual instrument or tool, there is a great
risk and possibility of depriving and repressing the extensive utilization and
enhancement of a person’s real sexual energies and prowess. To the person simply treated as a mere body,
tool or instrument (usually in this case the person being referred to is the
woman), alienation of personhood is the most probable consequence.
Self-alienation may take the form of the loss of self-respect, self-esteem, and
self-worth.
With all the discussion made
above, involving the pedagogical mechanisms at play in a disciplinary society,
the challenge now is this, can we possibly think differently from those
socially constructed universals, paradigms, norms and standards? Is there a way
for us to challenge these pedagogical mechanisms to loosen their grip upon us
so we could rise above having submissive docile bodies devoid of emancipatory
and liberative consciousness as autonomous rational subjects? As “power
produces reality, domains of objects, and rituals of truth”
in a disciplinary society like ours, Michel Foucault leaves us something to
ponder upon about the need to think differently. Nonetheless, this inquisitiveness
is not the inquisitiveness to embrace and to conform to what is deemed
appropriate and fitting for a person to be knowledgeable, but that which
empowers a person to be emancipated or to be liberated from (he)rself. Michel Foucault puts in:
After all, what would be the value
of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of
knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible,
the knower’s straying afield of himself? There are times in life when the question of
knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently
that one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and
reflecting at all.
The term
panopticized (of Benthamian origin) experience refers to that experience of
one’s sexuality as a domain that must be closely watched and monitored because
of its perceived influence on the totality of the person.
Foucault, The History of
Sexuality, Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge, 58.
Foucault, The History of
Sexuality, Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge, 65-66.
See Pakistan: Focus on
“Vani” – The Practice of Giving Away Young Women to Settle Feuds.
Mimetic Order has
conditioned, influenced and shaped our mindsets in a phallic constituted
society that a man has the culturally eroticized status of “objectifier” as the
“active” persona whereby the phallus is found (the phallus in this case is
treated as the “master signifier” in terms of power in the cultural-sexual
domain) while a woman is but fitting only to have the status of “object” as the
“passive” persona whereby the vagina is found.
