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| | DESIGNING MEN: READING THE MALE BODY AS TEXT (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21) |
 | | What we are able to see, value, and respond to in a text is socially constructed, and the meaning we draw from whatever we encounter is a priori resident within--generated by--ourselves, and shaped by the complex interaction of culture, life experience, and individual need. |
 | | The human body, in this view, can be understood only in the context of the social construction of reality; indeed, the body itself is seen as a social construct, a means of social expression or performance by which our identity and value--for ourselves and others--are created, tested, and validated. |
 | | Heterosexuality is read onto men's bodies, which is why, in the present debate on the genesis of sexual orientation, gay men can usually chart the development of their sexual self-awareness, while straight men believe they have "always been that way." Heterosexuality is a government-designed and -controlled process of breeding, of animal husbandry. |
| etext.lib.virginia.edu /journals/tr/archive/volume7/Culbertson1.html (4474 words) |
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