Dear List
"We should seriously ask whether desire is only a visual
thing. This is a pertinent question for a disability list.
Unfortunately I do not know any blind people, but our whole
discourse that we have been reproducing during this thread
has 100% posited desire as visual. This discourse excludes
blind people from equal sexual participation and so
colludes in their desexualistion! The internet is also one
location in which desire takes on non-visual forms, ie
chat-rooms etc.." - Richard Twine
Firstly, like Oscar Wilde I'd like to state "I wish I said
that!". I come from a more philosophical as opposed to
sociological perspective. Philosophy does to some extent
agree with the socilogy of the body. The Mind/Body Dualism
is usually divided, consciously or not so that the Mind is
attributed to able bodied men and the Body to women and
the disabled. There is a lot of philosophical work on the
Body as a entity we experience the world through and in and
the body as a social entity. All studies are asexual. The
"Phemonenology of Perception" by Merleau-Ponty for example
is an extensive study of the Body as a causal thing and the
thing we experience life through but takes no account of
sexuality. Here I differ with past philosophers.
Any study of the body must take sexuality into account
(Foucault did this but only looking at the body social) and
it must look at Desire more. As Richard Twine said sexual
desire can take non-visual forms such as the internet.
Perhaps we rely too much on our eyes. I know a blind
person and he treats sounds (music and voices mainly). The
way he decides whether to ask a lady out or not is by the
sound of her voice, and what she says of course.
Thank you for you patience.
Michael
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M.G.Peckitt
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