Redefining a Sexual Reference

I did not always honor my mother's effort to keep these things private because I was taught to be open and honest in a recovery community. Accountability was emphasised, and I had to admit that I acted out of fear and disgust to be rid of (or to gain control over), what I perceived to be a threat trespassing my family. Because I endeavored to apprehend it where it lived, and anticipate what it would do, I also tried to keep it where I wanted it to be.

Bitterness and remorse remain to this day. Perhaps because my methods of evaluation led to temptations others couldn’t control, I was asked to address a prior offense (which was accidentally hitting my best friend, and next door neighbor, with a baseball bat. Perhaps because I had been offended by the presence of the threat - and therefore too distracted to be aware of my surroundings). There was evidence of effort to work on bridge building in our home at that time. A model of a bridge made with an erector set in Grandpa’s basement (presumably built by my dead uncle) was lovingly placed at the bottom of the stairs.

And, because I wasn’t particularly concerned about any particular sexual response while conducting my investigation shortly later, I found that I’d be better off relying on the strengths afforded to others more capable of doing so. Fortunately, I met a Governess who was capable of just such a feat in another country, who accomplished my liberation - in English - by redefining what I believed to be an evaluation, as an examination.

Having been offended by the new authority in our home (who may have been responding to my inquiry as well by proximity), and while drunk, I thought it would be a good idea to recreate the offending scene. There were indications that I was not alone with my plans. After all, the act is probably capable of establishing a mighty reign in a new household if left unchecked, and we were already irretrievably hopeless after being exposed to a standard set way too high. Please see also: Repressed Memories

I didn’t know what the real threat was: that girls liked it. So I revisited the offense by mechanical means, and recently renewed my effort to apprehend it by recalling the reports of my friends when we were that age. There was no other way for me to truly apprehend it on my own and my friend was offended by a stranger taking pictures of her in the Gas Station bathroom. It is precisely for that reason that they left town, and I with them, though many years later.

I left to attend Optometry school, but my plan b was to learn how to use media to apprehend the threat that blacked me out, and I needed media for good reason. It simply wasn’t possible for me to apprehend the threat by any kind of contact at all without losing the power to recall, or report my findings with accuracy. I had to use a device to capture reliable, and impartial information that I could rely upon. Something that may have offended a modest girl would be ideal to capture the cocky person that became of me. Little did I realize that these simple strategies to rule out the threat truly did become an authority in our lives capable of just that. A just rule: fair and reliable.

Admittedly, there have been other efforts to control the male sexual response; one of the most egregious - circumcision, but because the scar tissue I discovered was alarming to me, I followed through by realizing that media might actually solve the problem because those who are involved with the administration of the procedure are so protective of it that even the Secret Service was interested in how their practice remained a mystery. A colonic (required by a physician presumably, but also passed on to me by my mother), and the application of petroleum jelly to a stop-cock for insertion was bound to cover up the incident - not only me and my enquiry, but also the doctor and following interrogatories as to how scars resulting had formed. Please see also: Historical Treatments

However, like offending behavior, unpleasant tasks such as the administration of a colonic were also quickly forgotten. And my reporting, which consequently presented in an incomplete manner, couldn’t remain confidential for these reasons. Assumptions may have been made about behavior that would result from being offended, such as offending someone else just to be understood, but I was no longer in the community where these offenses took place, and completely unable to defend myself there.

At that time, I didn’t realize these suspicions existed, and my failure to be completely open about reports we made as youths had nothing to do with my intentions. I really didn’t recall the information the healthcare system needed to act with force. The restraints used were applied for reasons that were unclear, but the suspicions may have been well founded because my reporting was incomplete. I simply had no opportunity to deny the claims without knowledge of the accusations, and was banished from the community for making efforts to find out what they were.

I didn’t realize how violent things would become for others because I wasn’t aware of the injustice we lived with. I blacked it out. The fact that we were prevented from open disclosure resulted in double talk, or ambiguity, and in some cases even equivocation, which obscured the information professionals were working with, making targets unclear, and blame unreliable.

References to sexuality, or orientation, fragments like language under machine management. The power to create is no longer male, female, or determined by the maturity required for fertility. Our terms are more likely to be defined by absolute position or complementary roles and hybrides of biological diversity than the fundamental male and female components of human sexuality.

(reference 1)

Positions are identified by coordinates rather than chirality, or relative positions, like left and right, or up and down. But thought has no position in space, and conceptions are as numerous as the stars in the sky, so why be limited by the fundamentals at all?

IMID

If we can overcome shame based limitations with hypertext to be more specific about what we mean, then we can also use hypertext to recreate language, and develop more accurate terms.

Because terms used today alluding to practices that defined us as ‘human’, are actually being used to refer to extensions of our capacity as digital forms, or as: ‘circuits or circuitry’, we still need to use them - even if they do seem antiquated and inaccurate. Hypertext, and the use of attributes and modifiers within it will help us to be more specific about the meaning of ambiguous terms, and also help us to define new ones as necessary.

References

Refernce 1: Razor Girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk fiction. Note: Writing was funded by a 1996-1997 American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women, Washington D.C. I am grateful to Alex Hicks, `Becca Cragin, Marni Hancock, Judi Bernstein Miller, and Anita Taylor and for their comments on earlier drafts. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lauraine Leblanc, Institute for Women's Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322.

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