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rfmcdonaldPerhaps I shouldn't make this a public posting, but whatever: My life's public as is.
The Cartesian model of self-analysis--cogito, ergo sum and all that--really doesn't work. Or, at least, it doesn't work beyond a very basic level, that of recognizing that, yes, you are a sentient being in your own right in some sense. It works only in those circumstances where facts are plentiful enough to allow quick decision-making, or where there are at least enough facts so that you can puzzle something out. Where the facts are lacking, though, it's useless--it's an elevator on a skyscraper eighty stories high that only goes up fifty or sixty stories. In the end, you have to go out walking, searching for the facts and the route that you need to reach some kind of conclusion.
Take my sexual orientation, for instance. I've been fairly consistent in my opinion of my orientation since last February: Somewhere around 4.5 on the Kinsey scale, gay-leaning bi, in other words, someone who could be quite legitimately be included under the rubric of "gay" if not for those unfortunate and perhaps inconvenient signs of interest in and fantasies involving women, someone who could qualify as bi under the expansive definition of the soc.bi FAQ.
There's problems, though. Of late, I haven't been sexually attracted to specific individuals I encounter in day-to-day real life, or at least as anything but a passing whimsy: perhaps it's seasonal, perhaps it's inherent to to an inherently asexual nature--I don't know. I tend to be attracted more to people that I see in the mass media--movie actors, particularly. It's funny, then, that most of the people I've been interested in are women--Rene Russo rather than Hugh Jackman in the X-Men, Bond's girls in the Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery films rather than the fine gentlemen themselves, Natalie Portman rather than Hayden Christiansen in Star Wars II, and so on. It's particularly disconcerting when it's up against a predominantly male fantasy life. Very odd, and more than a bit confusing. Ah well.
The Cartesian model of self-analysis--cogito, ergo sum and all that--really doesn't work. Or, at least, it doesn't work beyond a very basic level, that of recognizing that, yes, you are a sentient being in your own right in some sense. It works only in those circumstances where facts are plentiful enough to allow quick decision-making, or where there are at least enough facts so that you can puzzle something out. Where the facts are lacking, though, it's useless--it's an elevator on a skyscraper eighty stories high that only goes up fifty or sixty stories. In the end, you have to go out walking, searching for the facts and the route that you need to reach some kind of conclusion.
Take my sexual orientation, for instance. I've been fairly consistent in my opinion of my orientation since last February: Somewhere around 4.5 on the Kinsey scale, gay-leaning bi, in other words, someone who could be quite legitimately be included under the rubric of "gay" if not for those unfortunate and perhaps inconvenient signs of interest in and fantasies involving women, someone who could qualify as bi under the expansive definition of the soc.bi FAQ.
There's problems, though. Of late, I haven't been sexually attracted to specific individuals I encounter in day-to-day real life, or at least as anything but a passing whimsy: perhaps it's seasonal, perhaps it's inherent to to an inherently asexual nature--I don't know. I tend to be attracted more to people that I see in the mass media--movie actors, particularly. It's funny, then, that most of the people I've been interested in are women--Rene Russo rather than Hugh Jackman in the X-Men, Bond's girls in the Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery films rather than the fine gentlemen themselves, Natalie Portman rather than Hayden Christiansen in Star Wars II, and so on. It's particularly disconcerting when it's up against a predominantly male fantasy life. Very odd, and more than a bit confusing. Ah well.
