By: Matthew Cuffaro
This post introduces semiotics, the study of signs, in a philosophical formulation of sex. This claim is not principally bioethical, if we understand that bioethics is the extension of ethics to fields with a technicality that often demands both a masterful technical understanding and philosophical prowess. However, this method of conceptualizing sex utilizes understandings from a previously distant intellectual tract to forge a novel method of contemporary ethical thought. Current bioethics has failed on this point, much to its detriment.
This post introduces semiotics, the study of signs, in a philosophical formulation of sex. This claim is not principally bioethical, if we understand that bioethics is the extension of ethics to fields with a technicality that often demands both a masterful technical understanding and philosophical prowess. However, this method of conceptualizing sex utilizes understandings from a previously distant intellectual tract to forge a novel method of contemporary ethical thought. Current bioethics has failed on this point, much to its detriment.
Firstly, two disclaimers:
While the themes of sexual semiotics papers may stress the boundaries of bioethics, it is helpful to know that the roots of philosophy are in that body— the distinction between ethics and bioethics blurs at the flesh.
Further, because “sex” is such a vague term in academic discussion, I leave it undefined. Sex could be from foreplay, penetration, or even a particularly witty discussion-courtship. A couple will be used as the example, but the specifics, such as sex and gender, style, orientation, setting, etc. are variable.
Not all sexual encounters appear out of the void; they are usually
prefaced by something to arouse the mood. Whatever arouses the mood is usually
based off a list of characteristics that the interpreter can vividly imagine
but probably murkily articulate. These characteristics, such as swaying hips,
musculature, skin tone, are articulations themselves, because they speak for
the otherwise silent figure flying across the ballroom, which only leaves impressions
(like footprints in the sand).
These characteristics
are then positively buzzing with the
possibility of influencing the impression of the person of interest; this potential
influence is a recharacterization of
them, so that the next impression will be accompanied by recognizably sexual features.
We can, with an almost offensive ease, recharacterize the space enclosing this
encounter. If the person of interest perhaps stole your mortal soul when they
picked up that punch, the very room and its objects will be irradiated with meaning, each like a phylactery.
I understand this happens frequently to couples with particular songs, movies,
classes, workplaces, pen pads, etc.
Room, song, or person,
each item then becomes its own place,
because they are spaces infused with interpreter’s wild and private meanings.[1]
A lover can use this to the couple’s advantage by uncovering old songs,
re-enacting older charms of the relationship, or transforming a space into a
loving place with the insertion of these
meaningful signs. Yet, there can
always be novelty, and either way the lover guides the mood through
articulations—the most arousing actions from a lover can move a couple to a
sexual encounter the same way a rogue percussive sound can invoke horrors in a
PTSD-afflicted veteran; both open a world unto themselves.
Whether or not the
arousal was arranged or accidental, it appears that it automates the couple
into the sexual mode as if they were guided there. In a sexual encounter, each
phase seems to proceed fluidly as if the lovers were guided as well. The idea
that each sign is not just an
indicator but a motivator is the theme here, because it seems to relieve the
lovers’ self-consciousness. Neuroticisms,
ninny-picking, wandering trains of thought are eroded as the sexual encounter assumes small tiers of consciousness
in its participants. This is more prominent in sex; actions seem to be
reflexive and talking seems absurd.
In the more passionate throes of sex, lovers may be consumed with each other. The
lovers become responsible for a spectrum of emotions in the other: they become
their pain, struggle, angst, suspension, hope, and pleasure. It is almost if
the lovers, only for a moment, wish to –in a very physiological way—forget that
there is a psychic difference between them, and while they may object to
physical fusion, the emotional will have to do.
If such potent experience
is accurately described here, then it summarizes how many fields of
contemporary philosophical thought can discuss sexuality in a cogent way. Though
sexuality is still intellectually murky, it is suspended between what we might
say are medical and philosophical realms desperate for each other’s enrichment.
Cooperation may be difficult because the canonical, arcane concepts from philosophy can quickly annex and impede comprehension from other professions.
To ameliorate this
problem, bioethics is the representative of ethical study in the very least; it
mediates between two academically distant fields providing insight into
political issues such as fetal and patient rights while formulating theory and
architecture. The semiotic argument above,
is another form of this philosophical application—preparing a consistent framework
into our understanding of sexual practice to illuminate its influence in our
social and individual practice.
Matthew Cuffaro is a philosophy student at the University of
South Florida with a concentration in the philosophies of mathematics and
religious studies.
[1] People are not necessarily spaces insofar as they take some up, and
songs are on an entirely different physical order, but they are both
invitations to a completely different world themselves.
