Bill Weintraub

Re: Reflexive Thinking

4-3-2005

Thank you Greg.

Dominant cultures are characterized by reflexive thinking, or, what historians of ideas call "received ideas."

Received ideas are cultural messages which virtually everyone in a dominant culture or subculture accepts reflexively, without examination, at face value.

For example, in the US, if we look at economic life, we can see that we have a "dominant culture of free market capitalism."

Which means that when most people think about economic issues, they think in free market capitalist terms.

When we debate economic issues in the US, we debate them in free market capitalist terms.

Politically, both major parties and even the minor parties like the Greens (on the whole) and Libertarians, support free market capitalism; and the only significant disagreement is about the degree of regulation and taxation.

But virtually everyone agrees that free market capitalism is the best economic system that our country or any country can have.

That almost unanimous agreement is one hallmark of a dominant culture.

In a dominant culture, the members of that culture take its assumptions -- its norms, which are reinforced through cultural messages and peer pressure -- for granted.

They rarely think about them other than in the most surface or superficial way.

Rather, they assume, with very little reflection, that those norms are correct.

Furthermore, in a dominant culture, there's widespread agreement at virtually all societal levels that the norms of the culture are correct.

Thus, in America, most working people, most middle class people, most professional people, as well as most stock brokers and traders and CEOs, CAOs, and CFOs agree that free market capitalism is the best form of economy.

Now, there are minority cultures in American economic life.

For example, there are socialists.

But in America, socialism is a minority view, and:

It's almost NEVER heard from.

Because every majority culture censors and silences opposing points of view.

We can see that most clearly in the history of science.

Indeed it was an historian of science, Tom Kuhn, who in 1962 wrote a groundbreaking book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he coined the term "dominant paradigm."

A paradigm is a model, but as a practical matter we can use it to describe a culture as well.

Kuhn argued that at any moment in the history of science, one paradigm or model was dominant, and that the dominant paradigm or model or culture sought to censor and silence opposing points of view.

Over time, said Kuhn, however, new data was gathered which challenged the dominant paradigm, and eventually, there occurred a "paradigm shift," in which the old dominant paradigm gave way to a new dominant paradigm -- which then started censoring in turn.

An easy example is the geo-centric or Ptolemaic view of the universe.

From about 130 AD on, scientists believed, following the calculations of a Greek astronomer named Ptolemy, that not only the moon, but the sun and stars and other "heavenly bodies" circled the earth.

This was the geo-centric paradigm or model of the universe -- the earth was in the center of the universe, and everything circled it.

Ptolemy had worked out a complex series of calculations to justify his view, and that's why it took hold.

In the 16th century, thanks in large part to a new Dutch invention, the telescope, astronomers began gathering new data, and that data challenged Ptolemy's calculations, and strongly suggested that the earth circled the sun.

But! -- the geocentric theory would not give way.

It had become part of the dogma of the Catholic Church, and the Church prosecuted and persecuted those who claimed that the earth circled the sun, including Galileo, who was placed under house arrest in 1600 and left there for 30 years.

That is a typical example of a dominant paradigm censoring and silencing an opposing point of view.

Nevertheless, scientists kept gathering data, doing calculations, and publishing them, and eventually there was a "paradigm shift":

The geo-centric theory gave way to a helio-centric theory.

Now, please note that during the many centuries that the geocentric theory held sway -- from roughly 130 AD to 1630 AD -- virtually EVERYBODY believed it was correct.

Peasants believed it, kings believed it, tradesmen believed it, artisans believed it, popes believed it, clerics believed it, knights believed it, academics and scholars believed it.

And it was what historians of ideas call a "received idea."

That is, all those people believed it without much thinking about it.

They just took it for granted, because everybody believed it, and besides, you could see it for yourself.

Every day, the sun rose and set.

The earth stood still.

So: the norms of a dominant paradigm or culture are taken at face value and rarely examined by virtually everyone in the culture.

That's why it's "dominant."

And it uses censorship to silence views which dissent from its own.

The agents of that censorship usually act without realizing what they are doing.

In other words, you don't need a conspiracy within the culture to silence dissent.

Members of the culture will, on their own, without any encouragement, seek to belittle and silence opposing views on their own.

Eventually the helio-centric view gave way to the Newtonian view which was succeeded by the Einsteinian view of the universe.

So paradigms and cultures do, over time, change.

Just as we have an economic culture in the US, so we have a number of sexual cultures, and among gay men, the sexual culture is a dominant culture of anal penetration.

Anal penetration is the norm, reinforced through many different types of cultural messages and peer pressure.

Most gay men not only do anal, but assume that

1. all gay men have always done anal; and

2. that anal is the truest and best form of intimacy between men.

And they don't much think about it.

Those ideas are received ideas -- people don't much reflect on them.

To most gay men, straight people do vaginal and gay men do anal -- that's the order of the universe, that's the nature of things.

Why do so many gay men find this order so congenial?

Because most minority cultures want to mimic the majority culture.

Anal penetration provides a paradigm or model which closely resembles heterosexual vaginal intercourse:

there's penetration; and there's an insertive partner and receptive partner -- a top and a bottom, a man and a pseudo-woman, a butch and a femme, a butch and a bitch;

and the latter of those roles also supports a widespread majority prejudice about men who have sex with men -- that they're not really men, but a sort of pseudo-woman -- which the gay male minority has *internalized* and come to believe is true.

So, as in any dominant culture, anal is viewed as simply being in the order of things.

And, like any other dominant culture, the dominant culture of anal penetration seeks to retain its hegemony -- its control -- by silencing and censoring opposing points of view.

Because that's what dominant cultures do.

That's why the Church opposed Galileo.

That opposition was, in many respects, arbitrary -- God still exists, no matter what's circling what.

And Galileo himself was very devout -- he was a Christian and a good Catholic.

But to the members of a dominant culture, any deviation from their view is very threatening, and must be silenced.

Once we understand that, we can understand why the reflexive thinkers of the gay male world behave as they do.

For example, why do gay men, in the face of hundreds of thousands of deaths, still eroticize anal?

Because they believe that anal is erotic -- that's their core belief.

They believe that gay men have manginas and boypussys.

They believe that an anus is a vagina, even though their own gay doctors say an anus is not a vagina.

Why do they so viciously reject our logical and effective solutions?

Because our views threaten theirs.

We're saying that not only are there other ways for "men who have sex with men" (MSM) to have sex, but there are BETTER ways, ways which are more pleasurable, more masculine, more truly gay in the sense of being uniquely male-male, and far safer.

That's very threatening to their worldview, which teaches that anal is the best and truest gay (male-male) sex.

In addition, not only is there a dominant culture or paradigm of anal penetration, but there are now lots of people who have an economic stake in it.

That includes "AIDS Inc" which is vast -- big pharmaceutical companies ("big pharma"), AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs) and other "Non-governmental organizations" (NGOs), condom and lube manufacturers, various agencies of the federal, state, and local governments, and of course safer sex educators.

And a huge number of researchers who are both privately and publically funded.

Then there's the porn industry, and the gay tourism industry, which is largely sex tourism and which depends on gay male promiscuity for its money, and the websites and magazines and other media which make their money off of anal and promiscuity.

However, that doesn't mean there's a conspiracy out there to silence us.

While there may be some folks somewhere who actively say, we can't let Frot men get ahead, most of the time that's not necessary.

Individuals acting completely on their own will silence us because they believe that we're wrong and they're right.

So: a dominant culture will defend itself through the actions of the members of that culture with very little prompting.

For example, in the huge and ongoing debate we have on gay dot com, the barebacker wasn't being paid to debate us -- he, we may assume, really believes in anal and barebacking.

He was functioning as an agent of the dominant culture, just as the Churchmen who arrested and imprisoned Galileo were -- they did it because they believed it was right.

That barebacker has bought into the pro-anal cultural messages, as have the vast majority of gay men, who are told now as soon as they can get on the net, that anal is the truest form of gay sex.

Indeed, they haven't so much bought into it as they have been acculturated into it -- as they become gay-identified and go on the web or seek out information elsewhere, such as in books or magazines, they're taught that all gay men do anal, and that anal is the best form of gay sex, and the truest form of gay male intimacy.

Once they come out, those cultural messages are mightily reinforced by peer pressure, by demands that the individual self-define as a top or bottom, and by the expectation that every sexual encounter will culminate in anal penetration, and that if it doesn't, it hasn't been very exciting or meaningful.

So virtually ALL gay men are acculturated into -- taught the cultural messages of and had those messages greatly reinforced through peer pressure -- the dominant culture of anal penetration.

However, when we look at a dominant culture, we can differentiate between those who passively accept the teachings of the culture, and those who work actively to promote the culture.

Example: segregation.

I grew up in a segregated society -- a dominant culture of segregation.

In that culture, most white people simply accepted segregation and lived by its rules.

But there were some white people who worked very hard to preserve segregation.

These people were called "White Supremacists," and worked through organizations like the White Citizens' Councils and the KKK.

Most white people where I grew up agreed with the White Supremacists.

But most didn't join the KKK.

Similarly, in the dominant culture of anal sex or analism, most gay men believe in the culture and live by its rules.

But there are a relatively few gay men who go farther, and work to support it and even spread analist culture.

We can call these men "analists" -- and they correspond to the White Supremacists.

Dan Savage and Dr. Stephen Goldstone of gayhealth dot com are to me good examples of analists.

That doesn't mean they're evil.

It means they're true believers in analism and work to advance and reinforce analist ideas among MSM.

So the DCAP = the dominant culture of anal penetration -- arose in the mid-70s in a period of growing cultural conservatism throughout American society and worldwide in reaction to the counterculture of the 1960s.

After a period of revolutionary change, there's always consolidation and some movement backwards.

The rise of the dominant culture of anal penetration (DCAP) preserved certain of the benefits of gay liberation while at the same time incorporating the majority practice of penetration and the majority model of male-female, and the majority view that MSM were in a fundamental way really women.

In that sense, the culture, compared to the gay counterculture which preceded it, was reactionary.

But that's normal.

The DCAP has held on for a very long time because of AIDS -- AIDS really cemented the identification of gay with anal.

And made it very difficult to criticize anal.

But guys, nothing lasts forever.

The dominant culture of anal penetration has had its day and it's time for a new culture to arise.

And that's what we're working towards:

An m2m culture in which sex is phallic, fidelity is honored, and masculinity prized.