Redefining a Sexual Reference

I was taught to be open and honest in recovery communities, but my family didn't always appreciate it, but I kept the focus on myself by admitting that sometimes I acted out of fear to be rid of what I perceived to be a threat and trespass on me and my family. And, because I endeavored to apprehend it where it lived I needed to better know how to do so by keeping it where I wanted it to be.

Bitterness and remorse remain to this day; perhaps because my method of evaluation led to unpredictable responses, I was asked to address a prior offense which was accidental. An oversight on the occasion of my best friends injury led to overcompensation that the medical community must have taken offense with, or because I wasn't competent at dealing with the injury of my next door neighbor, being more careful by enquiring into the injuries I encountered at home - including those caused by doctors wasn't welcome by anyone.

And, because I wasn't interested in a sexual response while conducting my evaluation and largely unaware of the results I realized that I’d have to employ some new kind of technology to record my results or abandon the effort entirely. Fortunately, I met a Governess who was capable of just such a feat in another country, who accomplished my liberation - in English - by redefining what I believed to be an evaluation, as an examination.

Offended by the new authority in our home, who's displays may have resulted from my inquiry as well, compounded my frustration as consent for the injury I discovered may have been provided by him. So many years later, while drunk, I thought it necessary to recreate his display. I couldn't remember exactly what happened next and was expected to know the exact nature of my mistakes, not his, so recreating the scene seemed the most direct way to accomplish my goal. Please see also: Repressed Memories

What I didn't realize, is that some girls like male attention and that my next door neighbor who denied me, may have also picked up on the prize because his display was much more suitable than mine. So I revisited the offense by mechanical means and renewed my effort to call it out by referring to my friends' reports as well. There was no other way for me to truly apprehend it on my own, and the offense she referred to was even more disturbing than mine because it affected my real fathers industry too (the oil industry) when she claimed that someone was caught taking pictures of her in a Gas Station bathroom. If for that reason they left town, it wouldn't surprise me because we left shortly later.

I left to attend Optometry school, but that intention was based upon our need to be better able to see. The first problem caused by our inability to adequately control, or apprehend a physical threat needed to be addressed first, so when I arrived, I looked into Web Development and web site design instead. To learn how to use media to apprehend a threat that I blacked out was suggested by a videographer who was selling tape decks to edit with.

And working on the inside of institutions that forbade discussions about issues like circumcision became a problem on the outside too, but we had to find a better way to govern ourselves, and the Swiss Physiologist Dr. Hess seemed to be on the right track. With picofarads and micro circuits rather than the kind of current we find at an outlet, I realized that a combination of these elements; media and current might actually solve the problem. What complicated matters was yet another oversight on my part, the administration of a colonic (presumably required by a physician, but assigned as a task for me by my mother), which was perhaps cleverly prescribed as a way to cover up not only the circumcision, but also my evaluation of the scar tissue that they considered to be overcompensation for my failure to adequately help my injured friend. Please see also: Historical Treatments

It was just forgotten, but my reporting must have been assumed to be incomplete for this suspicious reason. It's certain that I was set up. My offender showed up to catch me off guard after administering the procedure while stripping in the mudroom after work on the sod farm - and again, I didn't know why! None of this couldn’t remain confidential for these reasons, but in our community the lack of acknowledgement required us to make our reports elsewhere. Assumptions may have been made about likely behavior that would result from being offended, such as offending someone else just to be understood, but I considered myself lucky enough to be able to get away from the problem that started us out and was far from home by then.

So I didn’t realize that it was suspicions about what the colonic might’ve really been that ruined my life, not the expectation that I remain silent about self examinations. I really didn’t know why the healthcare system acted with force in my case, but my first guess was that they couldn’t own their own behavior. Even the Secret Service got involved in 1984 when my roommate was found with a counterfeit 50 dollar bill, but restraints were used on me recklessly for years and I had no opportunity to deny suspicions or claims that were either made or implied without knowledge of what they were. And my banishment served to prove that the crimes that resulted couldn’t be justified by what I knew to be true

The violence we live with was the result of injustice we could not comprehend. Had I fully recalled what we lived through, my own disgust might have gotten the better of me too, but because I blacked much of it out, I was simply written off as ‘out of it’. The fact that we were prevented from open disclosure in the first place resulted in ambiguity, or equivocation, such as my mother's use of the term ‘missing checks’, which ruined my financial opportunities for most of my life, also obscured the information professionals were trying to use to become clear. Blame was extremely unreliable and life was very dangerous for us all.

References to sexuality, or orientation, fragments like language under machine management. The power to create is no longer male, female, or determined by the maturity required for fertility. Our terms are more likely to be defined by absolute position or complementary roles and hybrids of biological diversity than the fundamental male and female components of human sexuality.

Positions are identified by coordinates rather than chirality, or relative positions, like left and right, or up and down. But thought has no position in space, and conceptions are as numerous as the stars in the sky, so why be limited by the fundamentals at all?

IMID

If we can overcome shame based limitations with hypertext to be more specific about what we mean, then we can also use hypertext to recreate language, and develop more accurate terms.

Because terms used today alluding to practices that defined us as ‘human’, are actually being used to refer to extensions of our capacity as digital forms, or as: ‘circuits or circuitry’, we still need to use them - even if they do seem antiquated and inaccurate. Hypertext, and the use of attributes and modifiers within it will help us to be more specific about the meaning of ambiguous terms, and also help us to define new ones as necessary.

References

Refernce 1: Razor Girls: Genre and Gender in Cyberpunk fiction. Note: Writing was funded by a 1996-1997 American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women, Washington D.C. I am grateful to Alex Hicks, `Becca Cragin, Marni Hancock, Judi Bernstein Miller, and Anita Taylor and for their comments on earlier drafts. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lauraine Leblanc, Institute for Women's Studies, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322.