our sunshine: February 2012

Saturday, February 18, 2012

"Darwin says your mother is a whore."

Today's Science Show lecture by Christopher Ryan and the following discussion is interesting in its retelling of the biological story of female sexuality:

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2012/02/ssw_20120218_1205.mp3

(If the link doesn't work, go to the Science Show on Radio National website and podcast Is monogamy unnatural? broadcast Saturday 18th Feb 2012.)

It's an interesting discussion not just for the biological rethink of human sexuality but also for the commentary on social control, in particular of female sexual desire. "One of the best ways of controlling female sexuality is to deny it even exists..."

What my emotional response to this talk (relief) reminded me yet again is that any resistance that creates a negative emotion to a belief or story, no matter how repressed that resistance is, indicates something wrong with the belief. If you feel tired with life, then there is something wrong with your belief about what life is. Simple? I've experienced this sense of relief over and again in talking therapy, talking to friends, and in so many important readings of fiction and theory. It feels like a physical reordering of thoughts, a shaking down dropping sense, where what isn't needed falls away, and what remains is brought into better order, as if "the penny dropped" through the slot machine. It's difficult to explain such a how I hear and feel my thoughts falling, but perhaps you've felt it to, and know what I mean. This simaltaneously proves to me that thoughts are of the mind and of the body. The body is thought, thought is physical. Etc! It is hearing new information that removes the pain of falsity that existed in the received or coveted history.

The book this lecture is framed around is called "Sex At Dawn" Does anyone have a copy I can borrow?