Reading Gayle Rubin s Thinking Sex Notes For A Radical...

Reading Gayle Rubin’s â€Å"Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality†, I was fascinated by the concept of sex as a complex social system worth discussing so I made a collage to represent my interpretation of America’s understanding of sex. The collage focuses on the tension created by sex appeal, the aesthetics of sex, being presented as a version of natural taste and sexuality, the act of sex, being presented as a natural fact. The two aspects of sex’s definition of nature becomes a double standard. Sex appeal’s nature is flexible and situational. In comparison, sexuality’s nature is stationary and predefined. These definitions create two categories, internal and ambiguous, with definitions of nature that are filled with tension and inconstancy. As these two sets of understandings bleed together, the definition of natural becomes more and more obscured until blatant inconstancies start to appear in people’ s rationales. In the end, it leaves four categories of sex, sex appeal, sexuality, internal, and ambiguous, each with its own definition of natural. The first category, sex appeal uses the same definition for nature as David Hume uses for taste; its nature is focused on trends and instincts. Sex appeal is people’s concept of what is beautiful or sexy seen in help blogs, advertisement, and gossip. Yet, the language they use is the language of taste with phrases such as â€Å"trending right now† which infers that sexiness is a changing opinion-driven