Dear Kevin, Christena, and others
Kevin, you conclude your post saying:
" in terms of design, being a need led process, I believe as part of
Responsible Design Practice it must respect and respond to diversity not
neutralisation, and certainly not adhere to stereotypical genderization,
especially since the social construct is questionably filtering individual
needs."
You are right, Kevin, ultimately the issue is precisely that of "individual needs". Those "needs" very little known despite the marketers' claims and pretensions. Needs that can only be assessed by guessing, for nobody else can a put a value to them except by the individual her/himself.
As regarding the fulfillment of needs, basically each individual could draw on personal assets, both physical (DNA, RNA, etc.), psychological (as provided by respective societies we each live in), and also on common stock of the universe we all share in. It happens however, as many partially implied in previous posts, that societies arrange that most of individual needs, both physical and psychological, be met in certain specific ways, ("filtering") those that fulfill own "society" needs (needs of a second order, one may say).
This theme on relationships between (human)"nature" and "culture" has been recently revisited extensively by Philippe DESCOLA, in his foundational work: "Par-delà nature et culture", Editions Gallimard, 2005.
Professor DESCOLA has identified four (4) modes of societies, each with distinct kinds of needs: (free translation)
1. animism
2. naturalism ( modern and post-modern societies function under this mode)
3. totemism
4. analogism
Each of these ways of collectivities is "formatted" along one dominant mode, and there are six (6) dominant formats of relationships: exchange, transmission, production, protection, predation, and gift. Additionally, each of those relationships is supplemented with several other minor modes, making in all 24 types of lived human relationships.
All the above just to say that beyond all sorts of ideologies and particular political agendas, human relationships are run not only under the gendered form or format, nor exclusively under that of a power trip type of one group or category over another. Rather, human relations do occur over a wider spectrum of interactions, INCLUDING relations with and by the means of all those things we produce: human artifacts. I believe that is where our task lies as designers, to research and provide our respective societies with artifacts that fulfill to optimal satisfaction both individual and our collectivity's needs. It still remains however for us to know what those "needs" practically are, in order to design for appropriate social modes and artefactual means of fulfillment.
François
Montréal
