Forbidden Fruit by Maurice Godelier

Author:Maurice Godelier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

For you, then, there is nothing negative about the notion of ‘gender’, which has been the object of much political and ideological debate in the past few years.

As I have defined it, ‘gender’ is not an ideological notion. It is indispensable in showing the possibilities and impossibilities societies attribute to persons according to their sex. This is a recent and fundamental finding in the social sciences.

This socialization, this domestication, occurs during infancy and adolescence. These are the two decisive life stages when a child learns to behave correctly. They are the times when, as soon as sexual desire appears, it is channelled by adult family members and their social group towards the ‘appropriate’ persons, those authorized by the society. In most cases, this bending of desire to conform to the social and sexual order supposed to reign in the society occurs silently: it is unspoken and will go on to work in the individual’s subconscious. In this way, individuals are expected, through the way they use their body, to attest both to the order reigning in society and perhaps even to the order that should continue to reign.

Therefore, in any society, sexuality must adopt forms that are self-evident to one and all. Sexual and affective desires are socialized and brought into agreement so that they will not threaten the social order. In the end, society subsists through but also beyond the realization of individual desires. It is not surprising, then, that those who reject the surrounding social and sexual order also manifest this with their bodies – some undergo scarification, some dye their hair, others paint their body, and so on.

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