A Cigar is only a Cigar?

by Sophia Siedlberg

Once Sigmund Freud was asked when smoking, "Isn't a cigar a phallic symbol?" Freud replied, "Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar". But there is a curious "Freudian slip" in this discourse that few will have spotted. The enquirer we are led to believe did not approve of smoking so in effect decided to "normalise" Freud’s actions by using Freud's own methods. To sexualise his actions.

However there is a sort of opportunistic psychology going on here, "If it can be associated with sexuality, then associate it". It seems even Freud had his limits on this idea. It is a pity many of his backhanded advocates do not take counsel from this anecdote. Take a child born with either ambiguous genitalia, or some medical condition that makes their "biological sex" not so easy to define and what do we hear. "Intersexual" and "Sexuality" and "Sexual Minority" and "Sexual Orientation". Well sometimes (Invariably as it happens) a child is a child. And while in adulthood having such a condition may have some bearing on sexuality.  The condition does not actually define sexuality.

This is a process known as normalisation, if you are uneasy about something demean it, the best way to demean it is to sexualise it, sexualisation is (Radical thinking caps on folks) normalisation. If that sounds like some quantum leap in logic, well calling a new born child "A sexual being" is far more bizarre. So let us look at it again, what defines a child with an intersex condition? That they are a lesbian? Or they are gay? Or they are Meterospammerpatho-sexual (Let us not forget the hy-phen). Well no they are a child with a condition that makes "biological sex" uncertain. (As if there are reliable absolutes for defining "biological sex" in the first place). I mean does this extend further into the surreal and strange? Do people claim a child with a missing leg is suffering from apotemnophilia? A desire to not have said leg in the first place? Errm no! Is being born with a missing leg bourn of some motivation to be born sans leg? Or even some sexual desire as some would claim to be born minus the missing limb? I think not somehow.

But believe it or not some people do normalise those with disabilities by claiming the person minus the leg is somehow responsible for it. Look at how absurd it really is. It gets even more absurd when people start sexualising missing limbs.

So what chance has someone who has an intersex condition got? To be able to avoid people who would call a man smoking a cigar a penilecigar-sexual (or whatever) or to avoid people who would claim that having a disability is somehow their fault? Well a child with a condition that involved sex differentiation obviously stands very little chance of avoiding this silliness.

You see this process of "normalisation" is a sort of sanitisation of an individual into some state of "otherness". And as can be clearly demonstrated this is not only irrational, but in many ways at the root of prejudice. So why then do we find children born with intersex conditions somehow singled out by society as "A sociomedical emergency" in the first place, and while facing the prospect of "Alteration" (Vivisection) or "Psychosexual adjustment" (Secrecy and shame usually) they are made to feel as if they have no right to exist, unless of course it is in some "Gender dustbin" which usually takes the form of a ghetto like existence.

There was a time when many textbooks described intersex children as "Imbeciles with severe mental retardation". Well that was another process of "normalisation" which "Blamed the individual for existing" Well when that nasty little libel was got rid of it was replaced by sexuality.  

Often these little slurs and pathologisations say more about those saying these stupid things rather than those with any given condition. I mean most medical professionals realised that it took a somewhat limited intellect to say that all children with intersex conditions grew up to be "Imbeciles with mental retardation".

I mean when an intersexed child says something like "Well when you define Einstein’s theory of relativity in pure math by employing Hausdorrf space, you see some interesting sides to Einstein’s model" Or "Oh Doctor Fiscal, Did you know that because of the pliatropic and polygenic way DNA works, your notion of chromosomes defining sex is dumb!, how about a simple lesson in synthesising multiple peptides from the information on a single coding region of DNA?". Do you honestly think the Doctor is going to get away with "Imbecile with mental retardation" when referring to such a child? I am not claiming that all intesex children are piano playing, nuclear reactor building, chess experts who would give Kasparov a run for his money, while translating Einstein’s theory of relativity into pure math and explaining the human genome to a PhD in genetics. But I am saying that the shape of someone's reproductive tract does not actually define their intelligence. The slur about intersex children being "Retarded" is well and truly disproven, they often have the same intelligence as anyone else.

It is funny how today’s army of normalisers would claim to agree with me when saying that reproductive organs do not define intelligence. While, paradoxically,  they constantly seem to be making intersex people feel like they are the lowest of the low because their reproductive tract somehow defines them, only in some other way. We have moved on it would seem. These days normalisers hide behind the new pathology of sex. It gets so absurd that even the "Surgery" (vivisection) you may have endured as a child defines who you are to these people and it is "all your fault".

It sort of goes like this. If you were "normalised" as "male" by society or in any way defined as "male" by society (Having "Male chormosomes" etc, while a obviously not being male) then you are sexually deranged in some way, for not being the "Perfect male" who incidentally is also defined as an "Axe wielding psychopathic rapist who eats babies for breakfast while talking genocide with Satan" by the normalisers. If you were normalised by society as "female" then you are either some "stupid female who has no brain" (Hence the female assignation I assume) Or are a victim who has to be placed on a martyrdom pedestal, or a very dangerous woman.

Considering that these normalisers call themselves politically correct, I wonder how on this planet they managed to get away with such revolting and rampant sexism? Well they re-interpret it. Look at the endless volumes of "Male brain, female brain" studies that get published these days "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" theories are all over the place and guaranteed to get funding, well I am from planet Earth deal with it!

Scratch beneath the surface and you do not tend to find any real science, You will tend to find pompous "experts" extolling the idea that women are good at housework and baby making (Multitasking) and men are good at reading maps  (navigating battlefields and Indulging in a few wars). And these "experts" are often presented as "Liberalists" with "A politically correct outlook on life" who "Agree with equality".

Oh and notice how strange things happen when the idea of "Brain sex" does not play the game according to the rules. Let's look at another group of people for a moment, transsexual folk, now when someone publishes any paper that states their brain may be one sex, their genitals another, Oh the Venus and Mars brigade are so offended. There are flurries of papers published denouncing the idea, and armies of hectors and harpies in the press going on endlessly about "the nat-ural or-dah" (Don't forget the hyphen). and how the idea of "Brain sex" is inherently sexist? (Yes they say that, honest) But when the Venus and mars brigade peddle their sexist claptrap it's "Oh well we knew this all along, it is official now". Oh right, "brain sex" is no longer sexist then, I see. Men are men and women are women and they have defined roles, to make babies or die in a war. That is not sexism we are told. It's official.

It is confusing, isn't it?

Normalisation is basically the process of propping up a delusion, to the point where contradiction is not an issue anymore. See how conveniently mutually opposite ideas both magically agree, Brain sex is sexism when it says that brain sex can contradict the body, but not sexism when it does not contradict the body and puts people into clearly defined, and sometimes demeaning "Gender roles".

Funny how conducting surgery on a non consenting child is considered "OK" by society and at the same time a consenting adult seeking surgery for themselves is considered "Sexist". And it is a real hoot when you read that being feminised as a child is sexist, while being masculinised is not, because it confers "male privilege". wherever you look these glaring contradictions appear. As I have explained in another article, the LG-GL-BT alphabet soup works on very tight definition of what male and female is, with regards the anatomy of the person and the anatomy of who they fancy or what is considered suitable in terms of clothing and anatomy (As in "T"). And yet they say "We are deconstructing gender binaries" So when a someone says "GG means Genetic Girl"  that is deconstructing a gender binary, is it?

Well it is all a bit confusing I must say. Or is it? Well no, because the one thing that is very, very consistent is that despite the spin, the sexism is very much the core delusion, usually summed up in the deliberately self contradicting statement. "Men and women are equal but different".

So given this you would think a child born with an intersex condition, or "Disorder of Sexual Differentiation" has no chance whatsoever in this world of spin and corporate style pseudo-psycho-babble. (forgive the hyphens). Well you would be right.

Well if you have some intersex condition, you will by now have noticed how society almost blames you because you were born somehow to "Biologically give out mixed messages in terms of sex and gender". Well I put it that this is in truth the other way round. All you would have done is be born outside some collective delusion, the collective delusion that nature, as in biology, obeys certain rules when they evidently do not. But the collective delusion itself is so challenged by all this that the delusion goes into flat out contradiction, to the point that those who claim they are not deluded prove to be the most deluded of them all.

Which brings us back to one Sigmund Freud smoking a cigar and saying "A cigar is just a cigar". How Ironic that the man who gave the world the more recent language by which the collective delusion is propped up protested when his language was used to tick him off for smoking. How Ironic that it was him who said "Anatomy is destiny" and all those who objecting to that with their Venus and Mars science are in fact propping up the very idea that "Anatomy is destiny".

Sex not only sells, it is now a tool of normalisation. But is it the sex that is now the commodity or the normalisation? Notice how big the grants seem to get for the Venus and Mars graduates looking to get funding, and how small the grants for those that ask other questions seem to get these days. Sexism sells. And those who shout about it the loudest, like the sexology-sociology academics, political radicals, media hectors and harpies are protesting too much. Sigmund said that too.