- Introduction
- Atmosphere
- Population
- Politics
- Safety and Welfare
Many lenses have been used to address sexuality, considering economics, race, and gender to meta-topics such as privilege and power. The purpose of this essay is to propose a framework for dissecting the relationship between sexuality and place. The essay is intended to be a flexible, evolving document open to reevaluation and revision. As a short, introductory essay, this will serve to propose the main topics for discussions of place and how they are also important headings for evaluating sexuality. As an introduction, this essay assumes that a link between sexuality and place can and will be explored more critically in the adjoining string of essays as well as by other writers interested in this project.
Atmosphere
Place cannot exist without atmosphere, which includes the basic ideas of geography and environment. Certainly in looking towards a future with impending environmental disasters, difficulties providing clean water and overpopulation make geography and environment among the most important problems facing the global community. The intersection of sexuality and atmosphere as an aspect of space holds the potential to confront these problems head-on.
Geography here refers to where a population is located. In it I include borders (natural and otherwise), access to bodies of water, geographic isolation or accessibility for movement/travel/migration, population density, micro geography (city planning, communality, accessibility, infrastructure), rurality and urbanity, forms of transportation and their availability, period of consecutive habitation, and perhaps many I have overlooked. The construction of a sexuality is directly shaped by the movement of people. The ability to move populations of people, move amongst populations and restrictions upon movement all impact potential for sexual diversity. Geography also directly impacts issues of reproduction where population density and access to resources are concerned. Without including the impact of geography, there is no place for understanding sexuality in this framework.
As briefly mentioned before, the environment a crucial factor in imagining the sustainability of our future. So too, I believe that the environment is important for considering the formation of and future of sexuality. By environment I am referring to the natural endowments of place. These include weather, soil quality, water quality (and again I include access to bodies of water), habitats, ecosystems, altitude, environmental impact from human populations, environmental impact from natural disasters, native and invasive species, air quality, temperateness, the impact of global climate change and population-level responses to environmental challenges. No list of environmental concerns can be complete. When issues of sexuality are intersected with environment, an interesting interplay of sexual ethics with regards to environmental ethics opens a dialogue I am excited to flush out in depth. It might also be interesting to look at environmental quality and sexual health or look at aligning a sexual politics with an environmental politics. As an actively evolving discourse, environmental issues may well be the principle concern for the future discourse on sexuality.
Population
Population is a very complicated framework mostly because it is very difficult to capture an accurate picture of any population, past or present. A census records numerical information and allows for the identification of trends, however it is difficult if not impossible to spot trends in cultural attitudes, hopes, aspirations and desires of a population. Further difficulties arise when addressing sexuality, as many populations discourage by cultural self-policing open conversations on sexuality. As it is often reflects the most privately held aspects of a populations, when sexuality is discussed it is subject to exaggeration, the dissemination of erroneous information, omission for modesty, caricature, stereotype, aggressive prohibition or utter denial. In short, it is difficult to learn anything about sexuality on a population level. This being said, I think it is somewhat possible to discuss sexuality in a population in the following frameworks: density, culture and diversity.
One of the easiest ways to measure a population is by density, simply how close or far people are aways from each other in a given place. There are some basic speculations which can be made about a population based on its density, however chiefly amongst them is simply how much interaction takes place within that population. Density also encompasses the degree to which a population must share physical spaces as well as resources. As a titillating response to the idea of sexuality and population density, one might discuss the recent proliferation of location-based "social" networking applications such as Grindr, whose utility may vary given population densities.
Discussing culture is difficult for all the same reasons it is difficult to discuss sexuality within a population, for given the variance, flexibility and constantly changing nature of culture even within a discrete population. I want to be very specific about what I mean by culture in place: culture as a series of widely distributed and discussed artifacts within a population. Therein, I mean that not only culture can be evaluated as a set of practices and beliefs, but also by the products by and for culture, the tangible aspects of culture within a population. By accessing culture through its artifacts, something can be said in general about the widely circulated information, opinions and mores about sexuality given these touchstones. An interesting current touchstone within the wildly diverse population of "American women" is the book Fifty Shades of Gray by E.L. James, whose circulation has attracted a wide readership and an even wider cultural conversation about sexuality. In the framework I am describing, one might be able to investigate the artifact itself for the idea of sexuality contained within to dissect the sexual idea/l being widely circulated within a population at a particular cultural moment.
Diversity is a topically critical aspect of sexuality, and so I mean it here in a specific way in regards to population. Diversity within population encompasses both variety as well as homogeneity within a population, measured perhaps as a continuum. Of course diversity acknowledges religion, gender, economics, ability, race, culture, etc., but in terms of population it also refers to how much these aspects of difference come into contact, co-exist, intermingle or create divides. The density of a population could then perhaps suggest less about sexuality when that population is a homogeneous one. The intersection of diversity/population/place and sexuality must be considered to be accurate. Some aspects of diversity are easier to measure, such as levels of educational achievement or taxed income while others, such as diversity of political or moral opinion are unstable and therefore quite difficult to address. In any case, diversity in a population is a necessary consideration for sexuality and place.
Politics
Sexual politics and the politics of space are hot topics for academic writing. In combining politics with concepts of sexuality in place, I am interested in focusing on a reciprocal question: how do politics shape place, and how does place shape politics? I would investigate the ways in which laws create or diminish sexual space, how the establishment of sexual space is reflected by laws, and moreover the extent to which political discourse inscribes sexuality in place.
In June of 1969, sexual minorities in Greenwich Village, New York fought the prevailing political system which threatened to literally dismantle their sense of place at the Stonewall Inn. That same political system caused similar places to be secret, discreet, hidden places. This is a well-documented and pivotal example of the was in which a politics shapes a sexual landscape. Other examples include the various prohibitions against various forms of sexuality (which continue to be slowly dismantled in the United States through the US Supreme Court) that create discreet space, and how the distribution of information about and access to birth control has resulted in politically divided and stigmatized spaces. This top-down, politics then space concept is however not the only functional concept.
The top-down creation of discreet spaces had also been fundamental for grassroots political organization. The existence of the 1960s sexual minority hang-out place organized, radicalized, and galvanized the demands those who would eventually fight back before, through and after 1969 to defend their place, first, then their right to openly claim space elsewhere. I am not suggesting that these grassroots activists were creating demands out of territorialism, rather they were making a far-reaching claim to place as a human right, for which they asserted that sexuality is a part of a whole humanity. There are many great examples of place, self-created or imposed, impacting the landscape of sexual politics as a whole.
There is a third aspect of place and sexual politics which is more overarching; it is the general political climate. Political climate is another difficult set of changing attitudes and beliefs that are hard to measure or evaluate. A basic example would be the issues of sexuality currently up for discussion in an election and how the political discourse makes space more or less sexually open or regressive. In the 2004 federal election, the political climate focussed on the question of gay marriage. The incumbent president supported a Constitutional ban on "gay marriage." The political climate had an indefinable, invisible yet prevalent presence in place, where the election had dominance over national discourse. In shared spaces, it became necessary to engage in the political debate, to be involved in a political climate. I would argue that political climate depends on particularly divisive issues, strong or highly visible politicians or the presence of an election to have an invasive effect in place.
Safety and Welfare
Safety and welfare are crucial to any conversation about place in general, and in great particularity to sexuality and space. I have chosen to combine them to emphasize that they are two sides of the same coin: an increase in safety (security, peace of mind) is also an increase in welfare, when welfare (well-being, access to resources) is diminished so too is safety. There are many issues related intimately to politics, such as the establishment of armed forces, the enforcement of safety regulations, and a provision of basic welfare such as healthcare, shelter, nourishment or education. The ability to express, explore, discover and organize around sexuality is greatly impacted by individual security and welfare. For instance, the national debate around (the strictly narrow) sexual minorities and their right to marry has overshadowed some much more basic concerns such as housing security. It continues to be legal in some places to deny housing on the basis of sexual orientation. In this example, the pursuit of safety, or security of private space, may well be more important than achieving political recognition in more abstract terms such like marriage.
I also address safety and welfare to highlight how social climate can greatly impact place. A prevailing transphobic social climate can disrupt a stable place or sense of place for transgendered individuals. I bring up this example because the threat of transphobic violence is very real today, it diminishes one's sense of safety in many places. Furthermore, transgendered individuals are routinely denied the correct basic healthcare. In another example, many homeless teens have been put out on the street because of their sexual orientation, robbed of the space of occupying childhood, school, shelter among many other concerns. It is this unique relationship between a homophobic/transphoic culture which directly results in the end of safety, welfare, and place. I look forward to a future where safety and welfare are considered human rights rather than humanitarian problems.
END
In my attempt to "ground" the issue of sexuality in place, I do so as a reflective exercise to understand my own relationship to sexuality and place. Given the opportunity to expand the introductory portion of this essay, I might address economics in two parts, global economics (global sexuality and power) and personal economics (who participates in a sexual economy, how place is created or destroyed by sexual economics). I may also choose to add a strictly philosophical essay which deconstructs the idea of place, given that it itself is an unstable category, entitled something to the effect or, "Place without Space." I welcome your comments and look forward to advancing a dialogue.
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