From: Prof. Jose Gomes Filho (gomes@dpx.cnen.gov.br)
Date: Wed Jul 30 1997 - 08:48:05 MDT
> From: Damien Broderick <damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au>
> Prof Gomes wrote:
>
> >. In the future, it will be possible to change the colour of the
> >hair, eyes or even skin... [snip] It will be good for us, whites, and for
> the blacks as
> >well... It will decrease any psychological difference, where possibly
> >still exists (in both minds...).
>
> One would expect so. On the other hand, an interesting probe into that
> contention is Samuel R. Delany's 1976 science fiction novel TRITON (now
> republished in the USA as TROUBLE ON TRITON in order to convey a certain
> `pulp sf' flavour, a regrettable move). The protagonist is a misogynistic
> and self-destructive son of a bitch in a heterotopic or `ambiguous' future
> utopia, who tries to solve his problem by changing sex. He ends up as a...
> what? a miserable female son of a bitch. Dem memes, dem memes, dem dry memes.
***** Yes. We cannot forget the necessary "cultural treatment". But
consider the following personal example: When I was a catholic (now
I'm a positive atheist and still try to keep a charitous behaviour) I
pertained to a group of helping to poor people called "vincentians",
(in homage to a very charitous "saint" called Vincent). So, as an
engineer, I assessored the construction of small brick houses to the
poors. An interesting case was of a black woman, poorly and dirtly
dressed, with an insane daughter. Her wood house was even difficult
to get into... bad smell of mould and dirty...After her new house got
ready, I once passed in front it and, who have I seen at the
window, happy, bath taken and with still poor but new and clean
cloths? That poor black woman. If that "environmental" (really...)
change made possible such transformation, imagine one that happened
on the nearest enviroment of a person, which it sees at the mirror
when wakes up in the morning... It will help a lot... I suppose that
the physical self-admiration factor is very important, and acts
something recursively (although apparently horizotally asymptotic) in
the psychological evolution of an individual, principally the
women... It is well know that some (white) women even suicide if
their external beauty get seriously damaged...
> Chip Delany, BTW, is a black, gay, upper-middle class writer who lives with
> a white former street person. (You can read about him and his fiction and
> theories of textuality in my book READING BY STARLIGHT: POSTMODERN SCIENCE
> FICTION.) His skin is not that dark, and his features would perhaps allow
> him to `pass' if he wished to do so. These days he's pretty hefty and
> heroically bearded and wears fearsome tats, and would probably find EvMICK
> in all his leather-&-chains-glory *just* the kind of white meat he'd
> fancy... Boo! (Gotta watch that give-away unconscious, old son, thrum
> thrum the gears, screech the brakes.)
>
> Damien Broderick
>
About gayness, I'm really heterossexual (politypic, hehehe). But I
suppose there is an interesting psycho-socio-phylosophical
question associated with what you've exposed: What would be the
normal (gaussian) behaviour of the male human if having a
functional-chromo-geometric variable body? I really believe that
a great quantity of them would be easily found "in short skirts and
toplessed" (or worse...hahaha).
Gomes.
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Prof. Gomes
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http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/1065
emails: gomes@cnen.gov.br
profgomes@geocities.com
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