I read Belknap's essay. Sort of. Skimmed it, at least, reading passages that stood out to me more carefully. For all its insights, he seems to have a case of notgettingit, perhaps in part because he's an able-bodied man. For example,
"If you know that another intends to arouse you when they touch you, you find this arousing, and your body will follow suit." No. Sometimes knowing another's intent to arouse is not arousing at all. Sometimes it's annoying or scary. Granted, physical contact can be unwanted, even a crime, *and* physically arousing all at once: that physical signs of arousal are "proof" that sexual contact is desired, rather than being, say, assault or abuse, is erroneous. (I've heard male victims of rape attest their erections were used against them, for example, as "proof" that it somehow wasn't really rape.)
But the bigger point: Belknap claims, "But sex is even more remarkable... sex adds another layer... Whichever way the investigation turns, then, sex shows itself to be, thoroughly and simultaneously, both a phenomenon of the body and a phenomenon of the soul. (¶) There is a way to describe what happens in sex that helps explain this...: In sex, I take my soul and spread it out onto my body for the other," as if sex were somehow unique for doing this.
But all human communication spreads our souls onto our bodies for others, because it's impossible for us to express anything to another creature without our bodies — even online (using fingers or voice dictation); even if we're quadriplegics communicating by blinking or using a machine that tracks eye movement. I think we're more aware of this if we're involved in performing arts, or dealing with an unusual bodily limitation (or, especially, both): it is true that most people can go through many activities being blithely *unaware* of how they're spreading their souls out over their bodies for others, while sexual arousal is excruciatingly aware of this embodiment. But that we can be blithely unaware doesn't mean it isn't happening. Or that it isn't intimate.
Even with something as supposedly dry and "non-intimate" (perhaps, for most people, anti-arousing) as a passel of mathematicians puzzling something out at a blackboard, souls spread all over bodies. Speaking and using chalk are bodily, math is soulful; this is true even when no participants have the hots for each other (or are successfully ignoring that they do). Musical performance is bodily, agitating that "insubstantial" substance air, utterly dependent on air being very physical stuff that touches the hearer intimately — in the ear, but also, as lower pitches may emphasize, all over, anywhere the air can reach. Thinking about this too hard might seem creepy, which might explain why we often don't. But that we're not thinking about it doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Heck, there are moments you can be more aware that it's happening during another activity than you are during some sex. Even completely agreed-to and religiously-blessed sex is sometimes "maintenance sex", mashing bodies together for the sake of family harmony, without acute awareness of the other's soul. "Maintenance sex" can be very good, but it's not the uniquely rarefied experience Belknap describes.
so, at its most basic, any attempt to police sexual behavior between consenting adults and much other behavior that offends people because they find such behavior to be 'offensive in the eyes of the lord' or some such drivel, i have only one thing to say. their god must be pretty small. my god is large enough to take care of him/her/itself and doesn't need me to intervene in such subjective matters. because they ARE subjective - to humans. i'm not talking about murder. sodomy. definitely subjective. maybe i do or maybe i don't want to participate. no one else's business. if it's against god's rules, god will sort that out. as for abortion, that's also between god and me. legal arguments should definitely hinge on privacy. the state should have no interest in what goes on in my bedroom or in my physician's office.
I read Belknap's essay. Sort of. Skimmed it, at least, reading passages that stood out to me more carefully. For all its insights, he seems to have a case of notgettingit, perhaps in part because he's an able-bodied man. For example,
"If you know that another intends to arouse you when they touch you, you find this arousing, and your body will follow suit." No. Sometimes knowing another's intent to arouse is not arousing at all. Sometimes it's annoying or scary. Granted, physical contact can be unwanted, even a crime, *and* physically arousing all at once: that physical signs of arousal are "proof" that sexual contact is desired, rather than being, say, assault or abuse, is erroneous. (I've heard male victims of rape attest their erections were used against them, for example, as "proof" that it somehow wasn't really rape.)
But the bigger point: Belknap claims, "But sex is even more remarkable... sex adds another layer... Whichever way the investigation turns, then, sex shows itself to be, thoroughly and simultaneously, both a phenomenon of the body and a phenomenon of the soul. (¶) There is a way to describe what happens in sex that helps explain this...: In sex, I take my soul and spread it out onto my body for the other," as if sex were somehow unique for doing this.
But all human communication spreads our souls onto our bodies for others, because it's impossible for us to express anything to another creature without our bodies — even online (using fingers or voice dictation); even if we're quadriplegics communicating by blinking or using a machine that tracks eye movement. I think we're more aware of this if we're involved in performing arts, or dealing with an unusual bodily limitation (or, especially, both): it is true that most people can go through many activities being blithely *unaware* of how they're spreading their souls out over their bodies for others, while sexual arousal is excruciatingly aware of this embodiment. But that we can be blithely unaware doesn't mean it isn't happening. Or that it isn't intimate.
Even with something as supposedly dry and "non-intimate" (perhaps, for most people, anti-arousing) as a passel of mathematicians puzzling something out at a blackboard, souls spread all over bodies. Speaking and using chalk are bodily, math is soulful; this is true even when no participants have the hots for each other (or are successfully ignoring that they do). Musical performance is bodily, agitating that "insubstantial" substance air, utterly dependent on air being very physical stuff that touches the hearer intimately — in the ear, but also, as lower pitches may emphasize, all over, anywhere the air can reach. Thinking about this too hard might seem creepy, which might explain why we often don't. But that we're not thinking about it doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Heck, there are moments you can be more aware that it's happening during another activity than you are during some sex. Even completely agreed-to and religiously-blessed sex is sometimes "maintenance sex", mashing bodies together for the sake of family harmony, without acute awareness of the other's soul. "Maintenance sex" can be very good, but it's not the uniquely rarefied experience Belknap describes.
so, at its most basic, any attempt to police sexual behavior between consenting adults and much other behavior that offends people because they find such behavior to be 'offensive in the eyes of the lord' or some such drivel, i have only one thing to say. their god must be pretty small. my god is large enough to take care of him/her/itself and doesn't need me to intervene in such subjective matters. because they ARE subjective - to humans. i'm not talking about murder. sodomy. definitely subjective. maybe i do or maybe i don't want to participate. no one else's business. if it's against god's rules, god will sort that out. as for abortion, that's also between god and me. legal arguments should definitely hinge on privacy. the state should have no interest in what goes on in my bedroom or in my physician's office.