[HPFGU-OTChatter] Sexuality (WAS Asexual?)

[Jennifer Boggess Ramon]

At 1:56 AM +0000 8/11/03, Kirstini wrote:
>
>Something that has bothered me in my reading over of this thread has
>been the confusion of the terms "gender" and "sex" (biological). One
>is not gendered from birth, one is born with a biological sex
>(usually, not always, as Jennifer pointed out). Gender is much more
>of a mental process, one of becoming, and more closely linked to
>perceptions, social mores, and sexuality as Jennifer wrote it in the
>post above.

Heh.  I didn't even scratch the surface, either.  We also have:

  - intersexed people (who are not clearly of one biological sex or 
the other; they may be intermediate, or both, or neither)

  - intergendered people (who are not clearly of one cultural gender 
or the other, regardless of the state of their genitals)

  - transgendered people

  - eunuchs

  - people who express more than one sexuality over the course of their lives

  - people whose sexuality depends upon the person or people they're 
with at the time

  - people whose sexuality has nothing to do with anyone's biological 
sex (I touched a bit on this, but it's near and dear to me, as I 
largely fall in this category myself)


Bringing this back to the original claim that "God is a spirit, thus 
asexual,"  while not having a physical body (and this is complicated 
in the case of the monotheistic God of the book by the several cases 
in which he does seem to have a body, at least temporarily, 
especially and most famously in the case of the Incarnation in 
Christianity) may mean that one has no biological sex, I see no 
reason why it should imply that one has no gender.  And I'm not sure 
either gender or biological sex is necessary for sexuality, but it 
seems to me to be more closely linked with the first than the second.

After all (ObPotter reference), Nearly Headless Nick and Moaning 
Myrtle are in the grand tradition of ghosts, and certainly are 
bodiless, but they are obviously both gendered - Nick is a he, and 
Myrtle is a she.  Moreover, Myrtle certainly appears to have a 
sexuality, or at least something quite like it - she seems to have 
developed a bit of a crush on Harry, and it's enough to make Harry 
uncomfortable in the prefects' bathroom sequence.  This does not 
strike me as out of character for a spirit at all, and I'm willing to 
bet it didn't for most readers.

If ghosts can have gender and sexuality, why not gods?  (Granted, 
this is a futile academic exercise for the atheists among us.)


>Jennifer, have you read
>Jeanette Winterston's "Written on the Body"?

Nope, I'm afraid I haven't.  Should I take that as a recommendation?

-- 

  - Boggles, aka J. C. B. Ramon			boggles(at)earthlink.net
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the 
act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. "
	- Gauss, in a Letter to Bolyai, 1808.