MetaFilter posts tagged with intimacy

Do Not Disturb: Grandma’s Having Sex

Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 22:43:56 -0800

Adults over 50 are the fastest growing demographic for online dating sites, according to a recently [sic] study from UCLA’s department of psychology. Yet while older adults often value companionship over passion and marriage, experts say frisky behavior by seniors should never be underestimated. “I hesitate to generalize that they’re only having gentle, intimate moments,” says Melanie Davis, co-president of the national Sexuality and Aging Consortium. “Older adults can have really hot sex.” But not, typically, in long-term care facilities.

Niza Yanay - the ideology of hatred: the psychic power of discourse

flex — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 16:08:00 -0800

"The Ideology of Hatred": An interview with Niza Yanay - "Once we understand how hatred operates as an apparatus of power relations, and particularly how the discourse of hatred is motivated and mobilised in national conflicts, serious questions about misrecognition, veiled desires and symptomatic expressions arise. These questions have, to a large extent, been left unaddressed in studies of hatred between groups in conflict." Niza Yanay teaches in the Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. She has written on the ideology of hatred, national conflicts, and prejudice and stereotypes; her new book is The Ideology of Hatred: The Psychic Power of Discourse (an extensive sample of this book is available on Google Books). More from Gordon's interview with Yanay:

YANAY: ...After 9/11, the word hate began colonising new spheres, operating as a social and political force that can both manipulate and mobilise an entire public in very specific ways. People began using the word hatred in the context of terrorism, particularly referring to Islamic groups who had expressed anger and criticism towards the West and the ravages of capitalism. The word hatred was thus transformed, becoming a signifier for danger, mostly the danger of Islam. In President Bush's rhetoric, the world was schematically divided between Muslims who hate on the one hand, and the West which had become the target of irrational hate on the other hand. I found it interesting that the West does not hate. This distinction between hatred as an experience and hatred as ideology underscored the need to ask new questions about the relation between politics and hatred. And these new questions, I believe, need to focus on power relations between different groups, such as coloniser and colonised, ruler and subject... GORDON: Can you give me a concrete example of this ideology at work? YANAY: Most people consider "suicide bombings" as motivated by hate, while very few people consider air strikes on populated areas to be hate crimes. The media often describes the suicide attack as a hate crime, but I have never come across a report describing the US drone attacks in Pakistan - that have killed over 3,500 people - as hate crimes. This suggests that hatred as ideology is at work. And this ideology helps determine who is blamed for being the initiators of hate, who becomes the target of hatred, and, in fact, when hatred counts as hatred at all... YANAY: The point I want to make is that we need to start thinking about the ideology of hatred as a symptom of desire. This might sound contradictory to many people, but actually hatred is always constructed within an already inevitable bond between two unequal groups or sides of rival power. Intense hatred assumes a prior and intense relationship. Consider the famous speeches of President Habyarimana of Rwanda between 1973 and 1994. He continuously attacked the Tutsi for being counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie traitors; but at the same time, he constantly referred to them as brothers. This, I argue, is typical and symptomatic. The use of intimate familial language to characterise the so-called traitor is a common practice in many ideologies of hatred. So, when we hear, speak of, or examine hatred, we must pay particular attention to issues of proximity, attachment, intimacy, desire and even love. Of course, these forces are not obvious when we think of hatred. But, if we want to understand how people become our hated enemy we must study the conditions of closeness and proximity. GORDON: Someone might say that this is counter-intuitive. Don't we commonly understand hatred in terms of distance, difference and enmity? YANAY: You are right to say that the ideology of hatred produces and means to produce separation and estrangement. But this is exactly my point. The paradox of hatred is that hatred aims to produce distance precisely because the two rivals are considered to be too close, too intertwined. Think about the Hutu and the Tutsi, the Serbs and the Croats, the Turks and the Armenians, the Israelis and the Palestinians, and so on. I am not simply saying that love can turn into hatred or vice versa, but that hatred is always an ambivalent experience and a hyperbolic concept. One cannot hate an individual or a group without attachment and closeness, without love. Lack of attachment tends to produce indifference, not hatred.

*Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian - New research shows the terrorizing impact of drones in Pakistan, false statements from US officials, and how it increases the terror threat *Mark LeVine in Al Jazeera - Why 'they' still don't hate 'us': the myopic nature of the 'us' versus 'them' worldview *John Miller in e-flux - Politics of Hate in the USA, Part I: Repressive Tolerance (followed by part II and part III) *Llezlie L. Green - Sexual violence against Tutsi women in Rwanda in 1994 - specifically, point #2 "Gender propaganda" (trigger warning) *Michalinos Zembylas - The affective politics of hatred: implications for education (PDF file) *Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic - What High School Taught Millennials About the War on Terrorism

Can Sex Ever Be Casual?

reenum — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:43:16 -0800

Psychology Today delves into the societal and psychological issues raised by casual sex.

Objectophilia

gman — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 09:10:46 -0800

Married To The Eiffel Tower is a documentary that tells the stories of three females who are sexually and emotionally attracted to inanimate objects. (Previously)

True Love

netbros — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:14:00 -0800

The True Love Project — People are exhorted to "say cheese" for the camera so their faces will approximate a happy look. Other emotional states, such as love, are far more complex and not easily photographed. Love is intimate and deeply personal, and its expression may be hard to share in a staged setting. Hypnosis opens a pathway into the unconscious, the neurological realm of emotional memory. In TRUE LOVE a group of volunteers worked with a professional hypnotist to reach, in trance, a point where they were able to visualize the camera as a beloved person. The resulting images captured people who were actually in love with the camera.

Memory remembered.

semmi — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:27:11 -0800

Memory remembered. Does writing seek out words the better to stir and un-numb us to life—or does writing provide surrogate pleasures the better to numb us to experience? The author revisits the gritty Roman neighborhood of his youth.

Love on Campus: Why We Should Encourage an Eroticism (of the Mind) Between Professor and Student

shivohum — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:20:45 -0800

Love on Campus: Why We Should Encourage an Eroticism (of the Mind) Between Professor and Student. Yale English professor William Deresiewicz argues that the newly-emerged stereotype of professors as "pompous, lecherous, alcoholic failures" is in the main due to our culture's fear of and inability to understand the true intimacy between professor and student: that of the mind. Cf. controversial Hindu teacher-student relationships, the same in Christianity, or merely observe Oscar Wilde: "I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself."

Seeing Males Together: When It Was OK to Show Affection

y2karl — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 15:43:28 -0800

1909 > 1920
One of the Guys
When It Was OK to Show Affection
Seeing Males Together: Brokeback Mountain and Picturing Men

an extended family unrelated by blood

bl1nk — Thu, 09 Oct 2003 10:13:53 -0800

what do you call your circle of friends? Two years ago, Ethan Watters wrote an article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, covering the current phenomenon amongst adults who are marrying late, waiting for the 'right one', and using an extended social circle to fill the need for intimacy and emotional support that has been traditionally provided by a marriage. He has expanded the topic into a book covering groups of friends that have the characteristics of 'an urban tribe' bound by a shared culture of inside jokes, origin myths and communal rituals. Does this apply to your social set? Do you have a Yahoogroup or a Friendster bulletin board that is used to plan movie nights, pubcrawls or group vacations? Does introducing a new romantic partner to your friends feel more stressful than introducing them to your family? Conversely, do you need a chart to track who has dated whom, who has slept with whom, and who has had more than their fair share of drunken hookups? Or is this all one man's conflated introspection of his extended bachelorship?