CONCLUSIONS

I, Isaac Stolzfuts embody several competing diversities. I am a Pennsylvania Dutch Amish man who has left the order, and I am a gay man who is also a senior citizen. Additionally, I functioned for many years as a heterosexual male in the larger culture. As I investigate psychological aspects of sexualities, related gender issues, Women’s Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Queer Studies, Anthropological Issues related to my various sub-cultural groups, I have found that I am integrating a more complete understanding of gay male sexuality specifically and human sexuality generally with my personhood. That, in turn, has allowed me to take a more critical position concerning my personal political and social ideology, to the point of going beyond a standard critical analysis of sexual identity. This has in turn forced me to examine theories about sexuality critically with the idea that it is necessary to frame a new more complete idea about human sexuality. I have developed an image that helps me to frame my theory of human sexuality, "The “Three Dimensional Paradigm of Human Sexuality” discussed earlier in this paper.

Additionally, examining other gay men’s blogs has shown me that my own expectations are not in line with those of most gay male bloggers. As demonstrated below, slightly less than one third of those bloggers in my sample looked at their lives with the intent of taking an intellectual position concerning individual psychological, sexual, religious/spiritual, philosophical, and/or social identity. And none that I have so far discovered take a meta-critical position in order to move beyond the standard cultural understandings about sexuality, specifically the heterosexual versus homosexual dichotomy. However, my statistics show that if a gay man describes the daily events of his own life in some detail, it is more likely that he will also describe events in the larger culture as well (Fourteen of twenty did so.). Additionally, if a gay blogger describes his life and larger events related to it he most likely will take an intellectual position concerning his life, sexuality, and / or politics (Eleven of fourteen men did so).

Perhaps the most successful blogs as measured by numbers of hits (viewer visits), a small minority, less than 10 percent are most interested in reporting about a gay life style that we recognize today as commodified. These blogs are concerned with manipulating those aspects of life (including the human body) toward a concept of perfection that are most easily controlled in a society that is based on the production of material goods.

All of these virtual journals, some actual, and some (probably) fictitious, provide fascinating details about the personal lives of gay men during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Those I examined certainly displayed a sense of anger and betrayal at the hands of the current United States government both Federal and state. Additionally, many demonstrated an overwhelming feeling of victimization, whether by a destructive partner, or at the hands of institutions such as the evangelical Christian, and Catholic churches.

By extension lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and heterosexual blogs will offer examples of individual joys and trials specific to their identities. Additionally, individuals whose variations on sexual identity may not be recognized by the larger culture today may themselves provide examples that further demonstrate the three-dimensional nature of human sexuality. It is certain that the Internet is maturing as an interactive medium of communication. Coincidentally, major world cultures, including the Western are going through key changes as various sexual identities compete for inclusion in the renovation of the Western paradigm of human sexuality. The “blog” will play an increasing role in that renovation through the sheer number of individual testimonies to various sexual identities, and these will continue to grow at an exponential rate.

Please E-mail me at

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with comments. I do so like to have the opportunity to communicate with readers.

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Please E-mail me at

ZacSfuts@aol.com

with comments. I do so like to have the opportunity to communicate with readers.

Visit my homepage at AOL Hometown.

Crunching the Numbers: Chart II

To Be Continued

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Visit my homepage at AOL Hometown.

Crunching the Numbers

Of the thirty-two blogs examined, 4 were of the commodified type. These blogs were largely composed of items advertised for consumption by, or images about a type of metropolitan, handsome well built and dressed gay male (#1 on the BPS). Other blogs may have had a few advertisements, or items related to that particular gay male life style but these were less than 10 percent of the total content. Though many of the blogs were pleasing in appearance I found 2 to be especially pleasing aesthetically, though I realize that such a judgment is based at least in part on my own tendency to like abundant white negative space that accentuates and compliments positive shapes and images. Twenty of the thirty-two blogs were about the writer’s daily lives, and twenty of the writers reported news of various types, though the same writers did not necessarily cover these two categories. Eleven of the writers took a personal intellectual position about the relationship between their lives and the events of the larger culture. However, none of the thirty-two blogers attempted to examine critically and / or go beyond the standard cultural understanding of sexual identity, the heterosexual versus homosexual dichotomy (category #6 on the BPS).

To be continued - Chart #2 to follow

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I continue with the section titled “Emic voices,” in which I examine reader commentary about some of my past journal entries.

Saturday, February 12, 2005
(This particular entry is one of many that serve to illustrate the prejudice present in our culture against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered persons. I have created an art work based on the entry below. It is located atIsaac’s Art.

One sweet old grandma told me “You will roast in Hell for all eternity!”

“Why,” I asked? “God made me. He doesn’t make mistakes. He’s perfect. Why would he put me in Hell?”

“God didn’t make you a homo, she said. You chose to be homosexual.”

“Well, my dear. Knowing that I’m doomed to spend all eternity on a rotisserie like a suckling pig, my fat splashing into flame as it melts out of my body and drips down on the hot coals beneath, why would I choose to be a “homo,” as you so eloquently put it?”

“Because you are a sinner, “she said.

“So, you and your church hate sinners.”

“Of course not. We hate the sin, not the sinner.”

(There were many reader responses to that entry. Among them were the following)

“…I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when you had your conversation with that lady. I do feel sorry for God, so many people deciding how he/she should think. Is the Bible like a newspaper, the readers are only drawn to the horrible news?”

Posted by Anji: February 12, 2005, 3:00 AM EST.


“Good Lord…that woman is pathetic in her response. And strange—I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone use the phrase “you spill your seed on the ground.” LOL Quite evocative, wouldn’t you say…”

Posted by SpikeMark: February 12, 2005, 4:13 PM EST

“As for being gay, I know just exactly how much energy I have expended defending myself against mindless and deep-seated hatred, how much heartbreak and pain and anxiety I have endured, and how little tangible success I have garnered, during my almost 40 years as a self-acknowledged homosexual. I can barely fathom what another 40 years like that would cost me.”

* Marshall Kerr (opus95.com). “Good Morning, Mr. Stolzfuts,” E-mail note sent on Thursday, February 24, 2005, 6:55 AM EST.

To Be Continued


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I Compare My Blog to Other Gay Male Blogs

Emic Voices
I suppose that if I were to do a cultural “materialist study” of gays from the various Pennsylvania Dutch cultures, I would be personally creating both the etic and emic voices of the study, in and of itself an oxymoronic approach (Harris, 1968). So, how do I defend my position as serious? First, by looking at the voices of other bloggers as demonstrated above, I am looking at the individual voices from within the sub-culture, “gay men.” Secondly, I, Isaac, the Pennsylvania Dutch man, am the sub-cultural body performed that has allowed me to construct an epistemology of sexuality that places the heterosexual versus homosexual dichotomy within a reconceptualized field of sexual identities and that integrates the illusion of polarity between social construction and biological determinism within possible Modern and Postmodern understandings of sexual identity. As I write journal entries and answer e-mails written by viewer/readers of the blog, I have come to see that these two oppositions can be dismantled when considered in relation to a field of other considerations including: the poststructuralist theories that have proliferated around Michel Foucault’s reversal of the standard thesis about sex and sexuality (Sexuality is repressed in Western culture.). These include specific anthropological texts, feminist and queer theorists, brain research and genetic studies, and psychological research into sexuality (Foucault, 1978,1984,1985; Butler, 1990, 1993, Burr, 1996; Domer, 1975; Garnets, 1993; Gonsioreck, 1991; Hamer, 1993; Hooker, 1957; Johnson, 2004; Kinsey, 1948,). Thus, it is this seemingly schizophrenic approach that has enabled the destabilization of the heterosexual versus homosexual dichotomy, and the visualization of the diverse sexualities as a three-dimensional paradigm.
The following are example excerpts of Journal entries that address the issues listed above. Where possible I have coupled them with e-mails from readers that also address the same issues.

Isaac, April 22, 2004 –

“As I look back, I am pleased with what I have done with my life. So, I will continue to talk about that past life from time to time, dear journal. The past is terribly important to me because I don’t yet know what my future holds… … It would kill Ruth if I were discovered walking around WallMart as the silver man. Do you think I could get headlines in the Intelligencer Journal (local daily newspaper)? I may even release my own line of cosmetics and fragrances. ‘Eau d’ Reflection, the cologne for the man or woman who really isn’t there’…”

Commentary

The reflective, foil clad man symbolizes resistance to a cultural inscription of sexuality. He looks like a 1950’s B movie space alien or like a NASA astronaut whose suit deflects heat from itself and its cargo as he or she rotates in the vacuum of space. The foil creature is present at the daily routines of life. However, he is not capable of participating in life because metallic layers cover his appendages and sensory organs, and he is incapable of assuming a sexual or gendered identity. In Bodies that Matter and Gender Trouble, Judith Butler discusses the “performance” of sexuality and its limitations, and she claims that sexuality and gender are personal traits acquired from the culture in which one lives, the result of a process over which neither the individual nor society has much control. Additionally, I, performing the foil man project my frustration in this entry with the larger culture’s ageism as reflected in my daughter Ruth’s actions (she felt that my artwork showed me to be senile and mentally unbalanced, and she schemed with an art professor at a Pennsylvania university to have my studio (Sanctuary) and its contents moved to the university museum basement for safe keeping.)

“Anjiknut” (her on-line identity) was responding to Isaac’s entry in its entirety and to his anger. She stated the following.

“I expect you know this poem already. When you wrote, "walking around WallMart as the silver man,” I remembered it.”*

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit…

* Anjiknut (). A voir: When I am old I shall wear purple. E-mail note sent on May 1, 2004 at 9:02 AM. EST.

To be continued…