Mini Encyclopedia of EcoSexuality – The Gaia Hypothesis (2 of 3)

Entry: The Gaia Hypothesis
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

2. The Name:  Origins, Implications, Connotations

 
The Gaia Hypothesis takes its name from Gaia, also known as Gea, a Greek deity symbolizing the ancient notion of the Earth.  From Gea we get the word geography: the art and science of mapping out the ecosystemic elements, designs, and forces that make up the surface of the Earth and affect its dynamic balance.   Gaia was the Hellenic version of an embodied feminine deity whose representations are observed in archeological findings of the Neolithic Age around the Mediterranean.  Gea represented the sovereign power of the feminine among the forager groups of the Neolithic.  She was also present among those who transitioned to agriculture while still maintaining matrifocal values and egalitarian, symbiotic organizations, including Crete, Lydia, Lesbos, Catal Huyuk, and Asia Minor in general.  This deity was imagined as connected with the Chthonic powers of terrestrial energies: sources of ecstasy, magic, fertility, and love.  
 

In classical Greek mythology Gaia was considered part of the first generation of Greek deities.  The Titans included Aeolus for the winds, Uranus for the sky, Cronus for time, Eros for the force of love, and others.  They represented the sovereign powers of nature and were not as personified as the subsequent generation of deities known as the Olympian Gods.  A later version of Gaia is Demeter, who is more personified as was typical of Olympian deities.  According to classical Greek legend, Demeter was the goddess of harvest and Earth.  When losing her daughter Persephone, Demeter became sterile for six months of the year.  This ended the golden age of eternal spring and marked the beginning of the age of seasons.  The Roman versions for Demeter and Persephone are Ceres and Proserpina respectively.  From Ceres we get the word cereals: as in staple foods like wheat and other grains that wean us from mother’s milk and get our bodies to grow into adulthood.

 
In a gender and sexuality perspective, the Gaia Hypothesis corresponds to a semantic reconfiguration of what is commonly known as “nature” as an entity capable of what is known in French as jouissance, or erotic enjoyment beyond genders.  The idea of using Gaia as a name for this paradigmatic scientific hypothesis came to James Lovelock from the novelist William Golding, a Nobel Laureate in Literature familiar with the Classical world.  Golding most probably knew the  connotations of the name better than Lovelock.   In Latin, Gaia is a female personal name correlative to the male Gaius (as in Gaius Julius Caesar).  In both grammatical genders, the name means s/he who is cheerful, happy, joyful, and capable of enjoyment.  The name is related to the Latin noun gaudio which refers to the act of enjoying, including sexual enjoyment and orgasm.  In Italian the connectedness between these ancient meanings has been conserved, with Gaia used as a female name meaning gay (in the original sense): joyful, cheerful; and with godere as the verb most commonly used to refer to the act of sexual climax, or jouissance, as it is called in French.  In English the continuity between Gaia and enjoyment is represented by the overlap between the current and conventional meanings of the word gay.  As the scientific hypothesis was named, these sexualized connotations were probably part of the discursive awareness of those involved in the process.  While they were not intended as primary connotations, they still bring an entirely new twist to the interpretation of nature the Gaia Hypothesis involves.  
To be continued . . . . come back next week, same time.
Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy end of winter, spring, and summer.  Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

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Mini Encyclopedia of EcoSexuality – The Gaia Hypothesis (1 of 3)

Entry: The Gaia Hypothesis

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

1. Introduction: The Epistemic Axiom

The Gaia Hypothesis is a term currently used in scientific discourse to denote a major axiom in post-modern epistemologies.  The biota, or sum of atmosphere and biosphere, marks the difference between third planet Earth and its neighbors Mars and Venus.  This web of interconnected ecosystem constitutes a sovereign entity that is over four billion years old and has the power to perpetuate itself at the expense of any species that might constitute a threat to its balance and homeostasis.  To the woeful surprise of many humans, this sovereign power also applies to our species. 

The Gaia Hypothesis is a scientific theory of the pardigmatic order: it shifts the foundation of knowledge that characterizes an age.  In this, it can be compared to the cosmological theory that came to be known as the Copernican revolution: a theory that marked the modern era with the interpretation of the Earth as a revolving sphere also in motion around a center outside of itself, rather than a immobile sphere around which everything else revolves.  Just like Copernicus’s paradigm accentuates dynamism over stability, so the Gaia Hypothesis accentuates interconnectedness over individuality.  Just like modernity is marked by a focus on humankind as a species with a special potential and destiny, so post-modernity is marked by a focus on global ecology and planetary consciousness: sovereign entities with whom human consciousness is free to align or not, at its own risk. 

As a scientific theory, the Gaia Hypothesis is associated with two main scientists of the second half of the 20th Century: the independent scientist, ecologist, and futurologist James Lovelock, based in Devon, England; and the late geoscientist, biologist, and university professor at U Mass, Amherst, Lynn Margulis. 

Lovelock is responsible for the macrocosmic aspects of the theory:  the observation that planetary homeostasis has been maintained overtime at the expense of species or varieties within a species that constituted a threat to the overarching balance of life as a whole; and the diagnosis of Earth as an ailing patient in need of immediate medical attention, due to persistent human abuse.  In Lovelock’s perspective, this attention could come in the form of replacing fossil-fuel energy with nuclear energy, which would be exclusively devoted to civil use. 

Margulis focuses on the microcosmic aspects of the theory and extrapolates significant global conclusions.  Margulis articulates a Gaian perspective on evolution that involves a critique of Darwinian emphasis on selection and competition.  The main force that sustains life across time and space is symbiosis and collaboration.  Further, Margulis interprets symbiosis as a form of sexual expression that helps to sustain the life of a species that engages in it, much beyond the reproductive intent of any of its individuals.  From this perspective, life, consciousness, sex, love started with bacteria about four billion years ago.  These prokaryotic unicellular organisms are our first ancestors and our symbionts: namely the smaller organisms that aggregate to form larger and more complex ones like ours.  So, based on this axiom, our ancestors bacteria are symbiotic and accustomed to sharing resources of love.  They have recreational sex with their neighbors to stay in good health.  Since they’ve been around for so long, one might infer that we would probably do well to learn something from them. 

To be continuded . . . . come back next week, same time. 
Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy end of winter, spring, and summer.  Thank you!


Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

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Mini Encyclopedia of EcoSexuality – Eros (3 of 3)

Entry:  Eros

by Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

3. Eros Across Time and Space, cont’d

When modernity became a prevalent mentality in the scenes of Western Culture, Eros came back as a significant cultural trope via the discourse of psychoanalysis.  Cultural constructs of the divine were still prevalently male, monotheistic, and abstract.  The mind/body split that had resulted in the divorce of the sacred from the erotic was still in function.  Humans still believed they had been made “in God’s Image.”  They were encouraged to do so by evolutionary science that positioned our species at the pinnacle of evolution: the form of life for whom other forms had been designed.  These constructs aligned with official scientific practices that desacralized nature and turned it into a resource for human life. 

Predictably, Eros’s come back was partial: from a deity in a polytheistic pantheon, the trope became a sexual instinct or drive.  Freud, a founder of the new human science, had a predilection for Greek tropes to conceptualize psychoanalysis.  He envisioned Eros as the life instinct and associated this instinct with its opposite: Thanatos, the drive to death and self-destruction.  This binary helped Freud explain intra-psychic conflicts while positioning the erotic on the side of life.  In this way, psychoanalytic discourse rescued the erotic from its association with “sin” and “vice,” and made it an element in the discourse of late 19th century vitalism, of which Freud’s views were part. 

In the late 20th century, the discourse of postmodern science produced a gradual but effective decoupling of the practice of love from reproduction.  While the Gaia Hypothesis postulated that love begins with unicellular life, the biosciences began to study the effects of love across biological realms.  It became apparent that within the discourse of psychoanalysis the redemption of Eros could only be partial.  As an instinct, Eros was considered “natural,” but only to the extent that its pursuit was contained within the cultural values of the time.  The modern notion of the “natural” was very narrow.  “Sexuality” was the new cultural construct based on which all arts and practices of love were to be analyzed.  Yet all non-reproductive expressions of love were pre-classified as “perversions” that caused illness because they were “unnatural.”  Psychotherapy used discourse to talk patients out of them.  But Eros proved too powerful and the “talking cure” did not always work out.  The practice of same-gender love and a woman’s choice to experience pleasure and pursue her desire contrasted with the cultural values of the time.  Civilization was associated with the stability of these values.  This explains why Freud did not carry his own premises fully out. 

When psychoanalysis, sex-positive feminism, and political theory started to converse with one another things became more contextualized.  In the 1960s, Marcuse identified the connection between sexual repression and social oppression.  In Eros and Civilization he connected the dots between Freud and Marx.  Reich proposed to liberate the erotic energy in the body and thereby cure the mind.  In the 1970-80s, sex-positive feminists, including Gayle Rubin, Ruby Rich, and many others, unpacked women’s sexuality and reclaimed female erotic power.  The new genre of Erotica was invented as a style in the visual and performing arts that celebrates nudity, sexual play, erotic seduction, styles of pleasure, orgasmic variety, and body art.  Conventional pornography was turned upside down.  The emphasis was on pleasure, playfulness, and art rather than arousal.  The intention was to encourage all viewers to become more knowledgeable in the arts of love, rather than feed male viewers with ejaculatory fantasies.  With Annie Sprinkle, Carol Queen, Susie Bright, Betty Dodson, and others, women became erotic protagonists and sovereign sexual subjects.  Female viewers felt especially empowered: their anatomy of arousal and erotic potential were finally recognized.  A new scene for the arts of love had come about. 

In this new scene, Eros made a full come back when humans realized they were vulnerable to the forces of a degraded environment and a seriously damaged climate.  The way the sacred value of the force of love was re-established was roundabout.  In the context of global ecology and a new impulse to respect non-human life, Neo-paganism appeared as a cultural movement that pluralized the sacred and vowed to revere life in all its manifestations.  At about the same time, modern Tantra appeared in the West as a reverberation of a countercultural tradition within Hinduism, another polytheistic culture.  Tantra emphasizes the union of the erotic and the sacred in the arts of love.  Behind these cultural elements was a vernacular notion of Gaia as the web of life, a sense of cyberspace as a manifestation of planetary consciousness, and a circular sense of planetary life as recycling.  The new cultural tropes restored to Eros his sacred powers.
In the practice of sacred sexuality the sovereignty of female pleasure is recognized.  A new marriage of the sacred and the erotic became possible when the interdependence of Eros and Gaia, feminine and masculine, matter and energy, lover and beloved, was recognized.  When the experience of pleasure becomes a way to expand consciousness, one’s ability to channel the cosmic force of love is magnified.   The arts of love serve to channel the flow of energy so that one element can transform into another in the continuous recycling of life.

See Also: Gaia Hypothesis, Ecosexuality, Tantra, Herbert Marcuse, Plato, Sappho, Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, Thanatos, Cupid, The Symposium, Giacomo Casanova, Marquis De Sade, Humanism, Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Franco, Erotica, sex-positive feminism, Ovid, sexual, sacred, arts of love.

List of Sources

Bright, Susie.  Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression.  New York: Harper Collins, 2009.
Casanova, Giacomo.  The Story of My Life.  Gilberto Pizzamiglio ed.  Stephen Sartarelli tr.  New York: Penguin, 2001.
De Sade, Marquis.  The Marquis de Sade: The Complete Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings.  Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse trs.  Introduction by Jean Paulhan and Maurice Blanchot.  New York: Grove Press, 1965.
Franco, Veronica.  Poems and Selected Letters.  University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Freud, Sigmund.  Beyond the Pleasure Principle.  New York: Penguin, 2003.
Halperin, David.  One Hundred Years of Homosexuality.   New York: Routledge, 2012.
Holland, Nancy.  “Looking Backwards: A Feminist Revisits Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization.” Hypatia: 26: 1 (Winter 2011): 65-78.
Marcuse, Herbert.  Eros and Civilization.  Boston: Beacon Press, 1974.
Ovid.  The Art of Love.  James Michie tr.  New York: Random House 2013.
Plato.  Symposium.  Robin Waterfield tr.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Queen, Carol.  Real Live Nude Girls: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture.  New York: Cleis Press, 2003. 
Reich, Wilhelm.  Character Analysis.  Vincent Carfagno tr.  New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013.
Rich, Ruby.  Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement.  Duke University Press, 1998. 
Rubin, Gayle.  “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.”  In Literary Theory: An Anthology(770-794).  Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan eds.  New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 
Sappho.  The Complete Poems of Sappho.   Willis Barnstone tr.  New York: Shambhala Publications, 2011. 
Sprinkle, Annie.  Dr Annie Sprinkle’s How to Be a Sex Goddesses in 101 Easy Steps.  NP: Joseph Kramer/Erospirit, 2008.
______  .  Dr. Annie Sprinkle’s Amazing World of Orgasm.  Joseph Kramer dir.  NP: Erospirit, 2007. 
Stampa, Gaspara.  Selected Poems.  SUNY: Italica Press, 2008.

To be continued: new entry is The Gaia Hypothesis . . .  come back next week, same time.
Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy spring and summer.  Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Join Our Mailing List  
Follow us in the social media

Poly Planet GAIA Blog: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ Website: www.serenagaia.com

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Mini Encyclopedia of EcoSexuality – Eros (2 of 3)

Entry:  Eros

by Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

3. Eros Across Time and Space

In Antiquity, Eros was imagined as a deity, and this deity was envisioned in a number of correlated ways.  Most of these are rehearsed in Plato’s dialog dedicated to Eros, The Banquet, or Symposium.  The background for this dialog is an Athenian practice of love known as pederasty, whereby, in a two-month retreat, an adult man initiates a young man into the arts of loving.  Participants in the banquet, Athenian men of various age groups, are invited to commend Eros.  Their interpretations correspond to a range of perspectives on love still held today.  Phaedrus describes Eros as one of the oldest gods, also known as Titans, because they represented forces of nature whose power was sovereign over human life.  This interpretation assumes that Eros is a cosmic force.  As a natural element, Eros is similar to other Titans: Aeolus for the winds, Uranus for the sky, Cronus for time, and Gea, or Gaia, for the Earth.  

Other participants in the all-male banquet include the legal expert Pausanias, Socrates’s youthful and handsome disciple Agathon, the physician Eryximachus, the playwright Aristophanes, the philosopher Socrates, and young Alcibiades, another disciple of Socrates who arrives drunk.  Pausanias’s interpretation associates Eros with Aphrodite since he was sometimes seen as her son.  He brings up Aphrodite’s spiritual and erotic aspects, claiming that a balance of both is advisable.  Agathon describes Eros as a youthful and handsome god, which tends to associate love with the effervescence of youth and the process of reproduction.  Aristophanes associates Eros with the durability and uniqueness implied in the construct of “the other half.”  Legend has it that ancient humans had two faces, four legs and four arms.  They were of three kinds:  male, female, and male/female.  Zeus cut them in halves because they were too arrogant.  Eros is the force that attracts the two severed halves to one another: to form durable, self-contained couples made of two men, two women, or a woman and a man.  This interpretation appreciates the value of monogamy and same-gender love in a way that could be used by today’s advocates of gay marriage equality.  The more holistic Eryximachus associates Eros with the state of health in one’s life: medicine, music, and astronomy are love’s allies, provided they are well practiced. 

Socrates’s turn eventually comes, and, as is typical of Plato’s dialogs, he recaps the inconsistencies of others and provides a more comprehensive interpretation.  The philosopher invokes the wisdom of another philosopher, Diotima, a woman who answered his questions when asked.   “Eros,” Diotima claimed, “is neither young nor old.”  The lesson reads, as Socrates continues to explain to the others, that he is a mediator between the desirer and the desired, the human and the divine, the young and the old, the beautiful and the ugly.  He is the force that guides humans towards the beautiful, which inspires humans to desire knowledge, and therefore coincides with the good.  This union of good and beautiful is what one wants to keep forever, Socrates reports, as he refers back to Aristophanes’s appreciation for same-gender love.  The question arises: how do same-gender and other-gender unions last in time?  The union of men and women produces descendants.  The union of men and men is of a more elevated character because it produces ideas and philosophical dialogs.  The explanation of why Diotima forgot the union of women and women never comes.  Yet, Alcibiades, who is drunk, undermines the teacher’s argument by claiming that it’s the body of his disciples that Socrates desires, not their mind.  Socrates replies that Alcibiades is jealous of Agathon.  This exchange refers to the construct that under the effect of wine and other Aphrodisiacs, humans can become more honest with themselves about their desires.

The Symposiumanticipates the mind/body split that’s part of Plato’s philosophy and the post-classical era so eagerly picked up.  Notably, the union of women and women is not mentioned in the lesson that concludes the dialog.  This epistemological deficiency is correlative to the absence of women in flesh and bones from such dialogs.  From female philosophers and teachers of the time, including Sappho, we know that the union of women and women was very fertile.  The Thaisoi of ancient Lydia specialized in the education of young women.  There this union produced ideas, poems, music, and art; and, most of all, a philosophy that advocates the freedom to love for people of both genders.  Women educated in the arts of love became aware that one finds beauty in whatever one loves.  As disciples of Sappho, young women learned to admire Helen’s practice of freedom in choosing a partner.  They experienced love as a vibration that encompasses the whole being.  And allowed love to last in one’s heart though memory, poetry, music, and nostalgia.   

Eros became Cupid when the Romans became Hellenized enough to adopt Greek deities, and adapt them to their mentality.  Cupid is often represented as a winged putto whose arrows convey the Roman rhetoric that love is a form of conquest: a rhetoric the poet Ovid ironically adopts in his manual, The Art of Love.  While Eros is envisioned as an energy, a vibration, a force that connects those in love, Cupid is more materially-oriented and practical.  Eventually, he becomes coupled with cupidity, or the desire to acquire unnecessary riches and capital.  In another legend, Eros/Cupid falls in love with Psyche and marries her.  Paganism in the Roman Empire was not conducive of sacred eroticism because cynicism prevailed and pleasure was not experienced as a path to enlightenment.  When Christianity became institutionalized, the divorce of the sacred and the sexual became final.  The new institution was held together by the myth of a sacred conception without deflowering.  The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception de-eroticized the feminine and exiled women who enjoy lovemaking from the realm of the divine.

To be continued . . .  come back next week, same time.
Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy spring and summer.  Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

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Mini Encyclopedia of EcoSexuality – Eros (1 of 3)

Entry:  Eros

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

1. Summary

The notion of Eros comes from Antiquity.  In Greek mythology Eros was the god of love.  Eros represented the marriage of the sacred and the sexual at the heart of polytheism and classical mythologies.  Knowledge about this deity was considered good since it involved initiation and training in the arts of love.  Eros was often considered a force of nature, similar to other Titans or primordial deities.  Eros is the topic of Plato’s dialog, The Symposium.  The Roman version of Eros was Cupid.  In the Christian Era, monotheism and the dogma of “Immaculate Conception” dissolved the marriage of the sacred and the sexual.  In the Early Modern and Modern Era, Eros made a gradual come back thanks to the Discourse of Love in Renaissance Poetry and to Freudian Psychoanalysis.  In the Post Modern Era, a full come back of Eros as a supreme force of nature is taking place, as more humans are becoming aware of love as the ecology of life on the sovereign third planet known as Gaia or Earth. 


2. Introduction

The notion of Eros comes from Antiquity.  In Greek mythology, Eros was known as the deity that represented the cosmic force of love.  In most polytheistic cultures, lovemaking was considered an art.  The practice of this art had a sacred character.  Initiation rituals marked the processes of educating young people into the practice of these arts.  As an element of nature whose force science could not explain well enough, love had its proper deity among others in a culture’s pantheon.  In Greek culture, Eros represented both the cosmic force of love and the way this force was wielded by those trained in the arts of love, or the erotic.  The very practice of these arts was considered sacred, as the energy of love would manifest among deities, among humans, and between humans and deities. 

The binary that opposes love and sex came about when polytheistic belief systems gave way to various forms of monotheisms, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  With only one deity to love, legitimate practices of love became narrower.  Since the mono deity was typically non-sexualized, the sacred and the erotic became decoupled, and erotic pleasure became constructed as “sin” or “vice.”  In the age of European expansion called the Renaissance, Eros was part of the love for nature–and human nature–that came to the age via Humanism, the cultural movement that encouraged a genuine study of the classics.  Female poets like Veronica Franco and Gaspara Stampa interpreted the art of love as the source of all other arts.  The discourse of love developed across languages and cultural arenas, including Italy, France, and England.  The “flame of love” was a central trope, carrying the idea of love as an energy that circulates and spreads like wildfire.  The erotic was the background for the poetic convention of celebrating one’s love life in a sequence of sonnets, ballads, and madrigals.  For the libertines of the 18th century, the erotic was a subcultural space to explore various styles of pleasure related to one ideal of the revolution that concluded the century: liberté!  Known leaders in this movement include Giacomo Casanova and the Marquis de Sade. 

In the modern era the notion of Eros was revived when the human sciences evolved as legitimate disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis.  In this context, Eros became associated with the cultural construct of sexuality.  This construct was useful in rescuing erotic pleasure from the wastebasket of “sin” and “vice” where it had been placed by institutionalized Christianity.  The notion of “sexuality” placed the arts of love under the aegis of science.  It legitimized the study of love and its practices via the discipline of psychoanalysis, with Freud and others as its founders.  In this essay we will describe Eros as a cultural construct whose effects are significant in the Ancient and the modern world.  We will focus on how the trope travels, transforms, adapts across time and cultural landscapes.  

To be continued . . . . come back next week, same time.
Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy end of winter, spring, and summer.  Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Join Our Mailing List  
Follow us in the social media

Poly Planet GAIA Blog: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ Website: www.serenagaia.com

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Plural Wedding of Ecosexual Love Sets Hearts on Fire – An Amorous Visions Calendar: Feb 22-March 6, 2014 in California

Dear Planet Lovers,

It’s the night before the flight that starts a traveling period of about five months over several countries.  I only have a short time and I don’t want to take off without the promised follow up to my newsletter announcements back in December.


Oh well . . . . where do I start?

The wedding: we did it!  The first plural wedding of ecosexual love in the Caribbean.  It really happened!  iI’s done.  And it was a success. More: it was magic.  With everyone in the group listening to the invocation ministered by Heather Anne Trahan, and taking the vows to be Playa Azul‘s “spice.” Wooow!  We were so amazingly diverse, yet united by this declaration of love for an ecosystem that I sincerely call my nurse, doctor, and lover.  She is very compersive and not at all jealous.  And now that we all share this lover we are all “metamours.”  Lovers of a partner we share.  And since that day the shift in the energetic field all in and around the beach itself, ourselves, and those who come to enjoy nature, is just momentous.  We all share a lover, so we are all collaborative.  We were completely spontaneous and everyone was eager to be on camera. 
For me, and others I hear, emotions were high: to experience a “wedding” as freedom, peace, inclusion. When all feel part of it: more people, more “spice.”  What a turn around!  Marriage? It’s for everyone, ecosexual style.  Puralizing this institution: making it open, fluid, vibrant.  Acknowledging ecosystems as equals: as partners.  Thank you Playa Azul for choosing me 16 years ago and for keeping me safe, healthy, happy, at ease, and vibrant.  As an added bonus, when in the throes of this template production, an amazing team jelled up.  Our director, Shaison Ouseph, was on his first visit to Puerto Rico from Mumbai.  He learned all about us and got really enthralled, as you can see from the trailer he put out.  Many others pitched in, acknowledged with gratitude.  If you like what you see, let us know.  You can also join the conversation on the FB event page.  We are ready for the next episode in the series Hearts on Fire.  And we can bring the Hearts on Fire right where you are.  We we’re taking calls and getting booked up! 
 
If you can’t wait to hear more about Hearts on Fire, we have something coming up.  On Saturday, February 22, Hearts on Fire officially invites to a preview of Te Amo Playa Azul I Love You, at the International Conference on the Future of Monogamy and Non-Monogamy.  we start at 4 PM, at the Clark Kerr Center, Building 14, UCB, 2601 Warring St, Berkeley, CA, 94720.  It’s a unique opportunity to preview and discuss the ecosexual art movie that will document the first plural wedding of ecosexual love in the Caribbean.  We’re happy to present the project, share more trailers and photographs, and take questions.  Including: “how do I bring this healthy, and safe, and happy, and easy practice of ecosexual love to my families, my ecosystems, my communities?”  We look forward to being with you there.  Share with friends and invite.  Thank you!

 

This big wave of ecosexual love also helped congeal the energy of “Amorous Visions,” the cinema studies project that brought me to Connecticut last year.  With her warm sunshine, caressing waves, clear waters, and blue horizon, it was easy for Playa Azul to attract, in one
day, some 15 “spice” (plural for the word “spouse,” poly style).  No wonder she’s an ecosystem conducive of such abundance.  We make movies about ecosexual love.  What if we interpret cinema as a study of ecosexual love?  Turns out the motion camera can really find out what happens to the energy of love in ecosystems toxic with fear.  The health and vitality of ecosystems does affect the quality of human relationships.  And yet, even when fear is rampant, love finds a way to survive.  Love for love: the code for this energy encapsulated in a virus, surviving for a better time.  This became the focus for UC Irvine and UC RiversideAmorous Visions: Sex, Genders, and Ecosystems of Love in Bertolucci and Cavani.  Talks are asfo.  Monday, March 3, at 2-3:15 PM at UCR.  Room HMNSS 2212 (English Department Conference Room), hosted by John Ganim for the auspices of the English Department and Queer Lab.  Wednesday, March 5, at 2:30-5:00 PM at UCI.  Room HG 101, hosted by Jonathan Alexander, with auspices from the Writign Center and the Gender and Sexuality Program.  These are al free univrsity event, and they are fun.  I promise.  All details and directions on the FB events page.  Join us.  We want to take your questions and practice inclusive democracy, ecosexuality style.

 

Speaking of which, UCSD choose a talk on Ecosexuality, and that’s happening on Thursday, March 6, at 4:3-6:00 PMEcosexuality: Notes for an Orgasmic Earth, is the title for the in-the-works collection about ecosexuality I’m co-editing with Lindsay Hagamen.  We will be announcing this amazing collection of writings, and introducing the
Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle’s Ecosexual Wedding
online platform for the book launch.  Teamwork here too. Go to www.orgasmicearth.org to find out who all is in the line up.  We will also introduce ecosexuality as the practice, theory, art, and activist that reveres the Earth as a lover and acknowledges her ecosystems as partners with significant and enduring rights.  We will focus on the practice of ecosexual weddings to ecosystems and forces of nature, as initiated by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens in the seven-year project LoveArtLab.  We will explain the relatednes of ecosexuality and modern Tantra.  A don’t miss.  Room: LGBT Center at UC San Diego.  Hosted by Pasquale Verdicchio, with auspices by the Literature Department and the LGBT Center.  All details and directions on the FB event page.  From wherever you are, this is worth a trip to La Jolla, San Diego.  Join us!

 

Finally, after March 6th, time for a break comes.  Here it’s time for acknowledgements to all those who contribute to this calendar.  My hostess in Oakland, Spring Friedlander, with her

healthy, amorous, and inclusive community house.  My host in San Diego, Adam Paulman, whose inclusive amorous gifts are well recognized.  All the auspices and organizers, 

including my Deans, Manuel Valdez Pizzini and Felix Fernandez.  the administrative assistants at UPR Mayaguez who spent endless hours “comprobando” (=corroborating the evidence for) expenses and funds.  The teams of Te Amo Playa Azul, including film director Shaison Ouspeh, production coordinator Lloyd Sparks, emcee slash translator Maria Virginia Sanchez, liaisons with campus and organic farms Paola Pagan and Ricardo.  High priestess Heather Anne Trahan, who invoked the natural forces on the speaking of the vows.  All the “guests” and participants in the three workshops who were eager to be filmed as spontaneously as they came long.  And who embraced together the shared spouse.  All the inspiring minds in the 2012-13 Fellows group at UCHI, and its Director, Sharon Harris.  The students in Ecosexuality, including Adam Kocurek and Alexandra Mayer, and the WGSS Chair, Nancy Naples.  Please please please help spread word of upcoming events and invite your friends.  Thank you! 
If you want to catch up with me or invite me in and around the West Coast and the Bay Area, April is your chance.  My calendar is open.  Travel plans proceed with visits and rest in May, plus getting to team up more deeply in view of future plans.  Alessio, my oldest grandchild, turns 10 on May 15th.  He’s an amazing student.  Thanks Paola Coda for bringing him up.  And we plan to spend it together with family and friends in Rome.  Visits to Cap d’Agde, France, in late June, and guests from Portland, Oregon, at PostaHouse in early July.  For all these programs, there is a place set at our table, if you choose to join us.  We have extra rooms in the chalets and camping room in the garden.  space is limited so let us know in advance.


More announcements coming as projects evolve.  They have a life of their own, and I, the “inspiring force,” am only the conduit ever rushing to catch up with them.  So I hope you will forgive if this letter reads a bit rushed.  Oh well, I have a flight to catch.


Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy end of winter, spring, and summer.  Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

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Playa Azul Sets Hearts on Fire – Jan 25th, 2014: Save the Date for an Inclusive Wedding of Ecosexual Love

Dear Planet Lovers,


I’ve missed you! It’s the gift season and I come with good news from Gaia.  A warm welcome to all new contacts.  It’s been a momentous year and there’s a lot to announce: Campaigns, films, beach events, weddings, watsu, health info, books-in-progress, referrals, courses, and tips on community expansion.  I don’t want you to miss a word, so pray bear with me now.  

What’s the news?  Gaia is gay and happy about it: it’s been scientifically proven now!  Yes: gay as in happy, cheerful, cheered-up.  Why?  Because Gaia means gay!  And the ecosexual fashion of marrying Earth’s hottest spots is getting the whole planet fired up.  We at Playa Azul are doing our part.  Playa has been a loving doctor, a nurse, a spouse.  We are marrying her and invite you to kiss the bride. The gift season is a perfect time.  Can’t you feel that the desire to give?  Only 10 days left.  Give to Hearts on Fire now! 

Gaia, the symbiotic planet, is also our most compersive lover.  Here at Poly Planet Gaia we have designed a film series about ecosystems joyful enough to sustain open practices of love.  We are a team now, and Hearts on Fire: Together in Ecosexual Love is blessed with the talent of Shaison Ouseph: a director who turns common footage into art.  Our funding campaign is running.  Plural weddings of ecosexual love are videographed projects of socially engaged art hosted wherever inclusive, fluid practices of love are found.      

Our goal is offering models as diverse as they come.  Our perks are fantastic: from a stay at Playa Azul (Puerto Rico) with its balmy Tropical climate, to bodywork sessions with Goddess Judicci (“poet of the body”), to a plural wedding invite, plus our first art docu-film and a page-turner novel by Louisa Leontiades.  This feast of poly diversity has all the juices, details, emotions, and flair of ecosexual love.  It’s the Season of Gifts.  And here’s your opportunity to fund a project that’s truly visionary.  Don’t miss it!
  
Check the video and become a sponsor now.  Gaia winks “thank you, beloved!”
Wedding to Playa Azul, Jan 25, 2014, 11am-8pm

How have we transformed this neglected beach into a cherished bride?  It’s easy to find out.  As a Season’s Gift from my truest heart, I invite you to Te Amo Playa Azul I Love You.  The first project of Hearts on Fire documents this transformation.  Playa Azul is the beach under my terrace who’s blessed me with inclusive ecosexual love.  For the past 16 years, she has turned rivals into metamours, jealousy into compersion, fear into love. I’ve loved her like a permaculture garden, with uva playera trees to shade visitors naturally as more planet lovers gather at sunset time.  The universe blessed me with this place from where to tell the world about ecosexual love.  

Actually, I was away from Playa Azul last year, and, as I got sick, I realized, literally, I could not live without her.  The music of her waves caresses ashore and her gentle sounds charm many others.  We are Playa Azul lovers, and, together, we will marry her.  We are not jealous.  Join and you’ll get to kiss the bride.  The all-day program is exciting: Workshops to connect with one’s inner landscape, with one another, with the ecosystem’s liminal quality: a treat for aquaphiles and terraphiles.  A ritual to wed the shared bride at dusk, followed by watsu, dance, song, free leisure time.  Massage, Reiki, refreshments, and more on the sidelines.  Space is limited.  Save the date: January 25th, 2014, 11:00AM-8:00PM.  There is no charge as long as you sign up early enough.  Let us know of your participation now.  How?  Mark yourself as Going on the Facebook Event.  Go to the campaign page and donate at least $ 1:00.  Claim your perk as Azure BrideGroom.  You will be registered automatically.  Claim your free book when you arrive. Click here for more travel and lodging info.
For those already in Puerto Rico at this time, we’ve opened a Watsu Circle in the Area Oeste.  Watsu: Massage by Water meets every Friday 5:30-8:30PM. Mark yourself as Going on the Facebook Event and check for updates. Watsu is the art of loving and healing by water.  The word comes from water and shiatsu, the Japanese style of massage that heals by touching the body’s meridians.  

The practice consists in giving and receiving massage by water.  A giver will hold and gently lull a receiver while he or she floats in warm water.  Watsu involves surrender and trust.  It can alleviate many conditions and lower stress.  Some report experiencing a sense of bliss from pre-natal life.  It’s important to clear one’s aura before practice.  Please bring your swim suits, towels, drinking water, and comfort nibble foods.  Three loving friends are already part of this.  Mirta, Maria, and myself love Watsu.  Can you see the afterglow after our latest practice?  Join us for a free workshop at the Punta Arenas pool next Friday.

All workshops and rituals are facilitated in a cross-cultural manner.  Do you love the Earth?  Marry an ecosystem with us!  When it comes to choosing a beach as one’s bride, there are no restrictions of genders, numbers, orientations, ages, colors, origins, species, or biological realms.  Your pets, relatives, partners, best friends, spouses are welcome.  Join us!
Shaison Ouseph

Documenting transformation requires art.  Playa Azul is the ecosystem that sustains the inner marriage of Serena and Gaia.  This perfect union sustains my creative life.  Why is this symbiosis so vibrant?  How does it radiate to others?   What synergy of public and private, personal space and shared grounds brings it about?  We are blessed with film director Shaison Ouseph.  Over the social media we’ve developed appreciation and a collaborative style.  He joins us from Mumbay, India, with Veritas Poductions, and will be in residence January 18-30: an extended period to empower his camera to study the movement and time that brought about this perfect match.  What is the SerenaGaia effect?  We plan to explore in depth and widely toward a template that is both visionary and accurate. We intend to document a microcosm that models a symbiotic planet. Colleagues, friends, neighbors, community members, partners who resonate are invited to speak up.  We look forward to working with you.  Thanks Shaison!

One more fun thing about Hearts on Fire is that it’s so exciting I’ve been invited to talk about it even before it starts.  Wow!  The International Conference on the Future of Monogamy and Nonmonogamy has scheduled me for a presentation on Saturday, February 22nd, in Berkeley, CA.  I plan to be there.  Thanks Dave Doleshal. 

More joys are fabric to this writing.  I have been blessed with friends, students, relatives, partners who have teamed up to actualize projects we launched, and keep me healthy and vital during last summer’s crisis at the end of the UCHI appointment.  Thanks Teri, Bruce, Karen, David, Noel, Maurice, Bob, Pat, Helen, Valerie, Luca, and Paola for keeping
Paola Coda

me alive when my health was failing as the transition back to Puerto Rico and summer travel overlapped.  A huge stone had taken up residence in my kidney.  It all was rather picaresque: one outpatient surgery in Hartford, CT, two in Rome, Italy, and the residual stent taken out here in Mayaguez, PR.  Thanks to Carlo Molinari, urologist, writer, musician, for pulverizing that 16mm monster obstructing the urethral tract.   It was a great lesson in being humble and allowing others to take charge, while appreciating knowledge of the medical system I typically lack.  I felt so blessed with the love of my daughter Paola who interrupted her life to take care of me.  She and Luca, my brother lined up the best doctors in my hometown to quickly act on my behalf.  Paola’s children Alessio and Leonardo were so amorous.  David, my travel companion, was patient beyond words.  I owe you all my life: thanks so much!


Leda, Leonardo, 1530
Students at UPR Mayaguez have been responsive and excited, with me being present and vibrant after the year of intellectual nirvana at UCHI.  The Western Civilization course in the Humanities is a study of how love was practiced across time and space.  In our Facebook Group I see lots of self-expression in action.  Love, the supreme emotion, is a cosmic energy and and art.  It can be properly generated and channeled when talents are trained in its practice.  The Italian cinema course focuses on how art film studies the quality of ecosystems that host human life, and their effect on the quality of human love.  We made a lot of progress in both classes.  Te Amo Playa Azul I Love You is a natural segue: all are invited and many have signed up.  We look forward to this cross fertilization of academic and community education cum socially engaged art. 

Lindsay, 4th from left, and others at Windward
Other projects are making strides.  For the ecosex collection, from Windward, WA comes co-editor Lindsay Hagamen.  Our collaboration is thriving.  It’s wonderful to have younger minds in one’s creative life, where age barriers are overcome and emotional intelligence circulates with elegance and panache.  Many exciting contributions on the table.  We have a title: Ecosexuality: Notes for an Orgasmic Earth, or perhaps Planet?  Not sure yet.  Let us know how they sound.  Thank you!
Amorous Visions, from The Conformist

Amorous Visions: Fluid Sexual Moments in Italian Cinema was a success at UCHI, repeated at UPR Rio Piedras plus Mayaguez.  Thanks Karin Weyland for the invite.  It will be the occasion for a trip to my Alma Mater, UC Riverside, and its neighbor, UC Irvine, where a talk is in the plans for early March.  Thanks John Ganim and Jonathan Alexander.  Any other takers? I’ll be in California for an extended period and am open to more such invites.  The talk is about how film studies movement and time to find out how ecosystems host human love and life, with special attention to amorous inclusiveness and sexual fluidity in a truly Deleuzian manner.  My technology is state of the art, thanks to UCHI.  Write me soon and we can negotiate an presentation.  I’ll stay tuned.  Thank you!


A period of much learning, wisdom, and joy has opened up.  Going deeper into Beyond Monogamy practices with Kamala Devi is a great way to become a more inclusive, more fluid planet lover. Reid Mihalko plans to teach all the geekery necessary to get the message out.  I signed up for his Summer Camp and look forward to going back to Easton Mountain.  Reid claims it’s depth, in relationships, that counts.  Depth results in longevity when the synergy is right.  Playa Azul was in my heart as the dreary winter of New England

Punta Arenas at Playa Azul

devitalized me.  She has nursed me back to health and I’m honored to finally recognize her.  Getting back into the swing of things from the blessed laboratory slash temple slash sanctuary of my Punta Arenas apartment, I appreciate this playful hostess and faithful companion.  Can you see the elongated, pristine body of our bride, sun-kissed at dusk?  The tip (punta), of Punta Arenas, is excited.  She reverberates with the emotions, memories, trances that compose the ecologies of love.  Relationships have a lot to do with the quality of the ecosystems that host our lives.  Good for those made to share these blessed moments with us.

Condominio Punta Arenas

Et vous?” as they say in France.  What ecosystems are nurturing your practices of love?  Where are your vital energies sourced from?  Puerto Rico is the island where Cristobal Colon, in his error, first arrived.  A US affiliate now.   I often wondered why the universe decided I was meant to be on this sand-made tip.  Now I have the answer: Punta Arenas has been a great investment in my life. And I’m supposed to energize an ecosexual community of like-minded friends and amorous companions who share love beyond conventional boundaries and embrace all of life as a partner with equal rights.  We, the residents of Playa Azul, have taken care of this garden for almost two decades now.  There are many more apartments.  We’re expanding and like-minded people are invited.  Playa Azul is a wisdom-years paradise: an investment in safety, happiness, health, ease, love.  What could be more charming?  Sounds exciting?  Ask to connect with the right contacts.  We’ll be happy to help you out.  


Stay tuned for updates: More details coming about all mentioned projects and more in forthcoming months.   I will be on leave next semester, and have arranged for poly/ecosex friendly housing in Berkeley for late February to end of April, with visit to San Diego in early March.  Appreciation for the hosts is abundant.  What about my bride?  Playa Azul is in perfect shape now.  She’ll miss me, and our circle is in charge: I’m sure she’ll feel well loved.  Thank you dear aquaphiles! 
Dear Planet Lovers:
Thank you for listening this far.  Your patience is admirable.  Can’t you feel how gay Gaia is now?  Gay, as in Nietzsche “gay science,” namely loved, vital, joyful, merry, connected, teeming with life.  Why?  Because ecosexuals are marrying her.  We’re acknowledging the compersion, the hospitality, the enchantment she brings to our love lives.  
Let “nature” be our teacher in the arts of love.  Education is the heart of democracy.  Education to love: a supreme emotion, a cosmic energy, an art that inspires knowledge and more art. 
Suggestions?  Questions?  Comments?  Donations?  Replies?  I look forward to hearing from you on all counts. Write to serena.anderlini@gmail.com.  With all good wishes and namaste.  In devotion,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love 
Professor of Humanities, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

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Follow us in the social media

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4 of 4: EcoSex @ U Conn – Ryan and Jetha’s Sex at Dawn – Student Responses: Rhiann’s Take

Dear Earthlings:


The EcoSex course at U Conn is complete.  It was a great experience.  We spent time reading amazing books.  And here we resume posts to be shared with you.  Thinking out of the box and across disciplines.  Students had been sending their responses in, with discussion questions.  In class, we did connected the dots: a holograph of what we’ve read together, the “required readings.”  Multiple perspectives and good synergy.  Here, we offer a glimpse.  Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha’s Sex at Dawn was one of two cultural-theory theory books.  We got five responses: from Adam, Michael, Alexandra, and Rhiann. 


Here is Rhiann’s take:

Response to Sex at Dawn

The topic I felt most compelled to respond to in the text, Sex at Dawn, was the section titled, “The Famously Flaccid Female Libido.” The section starts with a quote by Charles Darwin. 
It states, “the female… with the rarest exception, is less eager than the male…” The authors go on to say that, “hundreds, if not thousands, of studies have claimed to confirm the flaccidity of the female libido” (Ryan 52). A 1989 study done in Florida State University was explained to illustrate where the assumption that women are sexually flaccid derives from. In the study, an attractive college student would walk up to members of the opposite sex and offer a compliment and ask them to go to bed with them that evening. About 75{a9d64f7890d157e71e6efcce19e215a5f853c7f4151cde0b7bf7aada464173f6} of males said yes and many who said no suggested a different night. On the other hand, not one female said yes to the same proposal. This study supposedly concludes that women are not interested in casual sex and do not have a sex drive. The text also suggests that these results are conducive to theories that woman “instinctively barter sex to get things from men” and in order to maintain said value of intercourse they abstain from casual sex (Ryan 52).

            My reaction to this passage was negative. I believe the authors would side with me and wrote this passage to shed light upon this assumption. I felt smothered as I read the quotes of these great thinkers. As I read this section, I realized that my personal struggles with my sexuality can be considered a product of these assumptions. The theory that women do not have a strong libido that has been proven by men and weak studies has shaped culture so much that it’s effects are reverberating through my life today. I personally, feel the need to make sure that my “number” of sexual partners is very low because I do not want to be perceived as promiscuous. On the other hand, I struggle with cognitive dissonance. Part of me wants to keep the amount of people I engage in intercourse with low and part of me wants to explore my sexuality. I find myself to a have a sexually open personality but have yet to attempt to explore this because I feel as if there is a societal demand to keep my “number” particularly low. I struggle with these two opposing thoughts all the time. After reading this section, I now realize how deep and old this assumption is that has affected how I perceive myself and monitor my own sexuality. To me, this is unfair to myself and all women. I can only hope that through this class I will start to let go of the societal demands I and other women succumb to on a daily basis.

Rhiann Peterson
Published with permission

WGSS 3998 – Ecosexuality and the Ecology of Love
Prof. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio
U Conn, Storrs, Spring 2013

Dear Earthlings:
Let “nature” be your teacher in the arts of love.  Education is the heart of democracy, education to love.  Come back for more wonders: Students Responses have resumed, to appear now every Tuesday.  More Book Reports to be scheduled soon, every other Thursday.  

Namaste,
 
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD
Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire
Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about loveProfessor of Humanities
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez
Join Our Mailing List
   
Follow us in the social media
Poly Planet GAIA Blog: 
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Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse  Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 
Author’s Page/Lists all books: 
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
 

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3 of 4: EcoSex @ U Conn – Ryan and Jetha’s Sex at Dawn – Student Responses: Alexandra’s Take

Dear Earthlings:


The EcoSex course at U Conn is complete.  It was a great experience.  We spent time reading amazing books.  And here we resume posts to be shared with you.  Thinking out of the box and across disciplines.  Students had been sending their responses in, with discussion questions.  In class, we did connected the dots: a holograph of what we’ve read together, the “required readings.”  Multiple perspectives and good synergy.  Here, we offer a glimpse.  Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha’s Sex at Dawn was one of two cultural-theory theory books.  We got four responses: from Adam, Michael, Alexandra, and Rhiann. 


Here is Alexandra’s take:

Response to Sex at Dawn

          

The following is a response to The Pervert’s Lament. The idea that testosterone increases libido is valid. That being said, estrogen, also increases libido. Thus, claiming
that men have a higher sex drive than women based on their hormones, which is implied by the man’s statement, “The most overwhelming feeling was the incredible increase in libido and change in the way I perceived women… Everything I looked at, everything I touched turned into sex… I felt like a monster… It made me understand men.” I do not deny that the man, recently undergone a sex change, felt this way. I argue that he either was experiencing the placebo effect, or had higher testosterone levels as a man relative to the testosterone levels he had as a woman. Men are not inherently “monsters” due to their biology, nor are men more sexually inclined than females. Thinking this increases a belief in a destructive social more that is often cited as the cause of rape culture. “Boys just can’t control themselves,” people say. This then excuses men from acts of rape and also demonizes them as the monsters who would partake in such acts. This is a self fulfilling prophecy. If we raise men to believe that they are inherently more sexual than women, they will act more sexual than women.
 While I agree that sexual oppression sparks many suicides I would argue that men commit more suicides than women not because they are more sexual than women, but because social standards for masculine gender are much more rigid than social standards for feminine. In a recent poll men and women were asked what they most feared. The majority of men said humiliation, while the majority of women said rape or murder. This reflects the intense pressure placed on men to fulfil a specific role in society. Humiliation stems from failure in business or in bed, and thus reflect failure of showcasing oneself as a man. This makes men more susceptible to small irritants and lower self esteem and happiness levels. Furthermore, men are not “allowed” to fear rapes or murders because it would reflect a certain unmanliness. “If you are strong, as legitimate men are, then you will be able to easily fend off assaults,” states society. I believe that such rigorous social constructs for the male gender create engendered rage. Men, feel trapped in a stagnant identity. If they try and escape said identity they are ridiculed not by females, but by other men. Men hate “feminine” characteristics in other men because they fear the “feminine” characteristics that rest in their own souls. This explains the high rates of homophobia in men. Thus, men both control and are slaves to societal norms. The only way out? Suicide.

Questions: Which do you think are more intense- gender norms for men or females?

Do you believe in inherent personality differences between men and women based on “sex” (biological aspects)?

Alexandra Mayer
Published with permission

WGSS 3998 – Ecosexuality and the Ecology of Love
Prof. Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio
U Conn, Storrs, Spring 2013

Dear Earthlings:
Let “nature” be your teacher in the arts of love.  Education is the heart of democracy, education to love.  Come back for more wonders: Students Responses have resumed, to appear now every Tuesday.  More Book Reports to be scheduled soon, every other Thursday.  

Namaste,
 
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD
Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire
Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about loveProfessor of Humanities
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez
Join Our Mailing List
   
Follow us in the social media
Poly Planet GAIA Blog: 
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ 

Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse  Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 
Author’s Page/Lists all books: 
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
 

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MANIFESTING FUNDS for HEARTS ON FIRE / TE AMO PLAYA AZUL I LOVE YOU

OUR CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN IS OPEN FOR HEARTS ON FIRE
TE AMO PLAYA AZUL I LOVE YOU 
Manifesting funds for Hearts on Fire. Our campaign is open w/ wonderful opportunities: Become an Azure Spouse w/ invite to the Caribbean. “Love the Earth? Marry an ecosystem!” Donate now and win Playa Azul’s unconditional love.  
I hear the beach whispering “thank you!”


YOUR CONTRIBUTION WILL MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE.  
WE ARE NOW FUNDING THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S AIRFARE FROM INDIA


CLAIM YOUR PERK IMMEDIATELY.  
BECOME AN AZURE SPOUSE BLESSED WITH 
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE FROM PLAYA AZUL
THANK YOU!
 Where: Playa Azul
When: January 25, 2014, all day
SerenaGaia, Shaison Ouseph, and many others involved in this imaginative 
project send blessings and waves of ecosexual love to you!
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