a post about sex...and "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things"

I have been accused of being obsexxed with posts about sexuality.

A quick look number of posts by category ( "labels' )...see graph at top right under "Topical Diving" suggests otherwise.  Looks like I may be obsessed with the "role of the pastor" or "ecclesiology." (or U2!)
But that's all  about sexuality,too...right? (:

To those who worry about this obsexxion:.

First of all, it shouldn't be surprising to catch posts on sexuality here; as the header at the top of the page explains that such is one of six overall categories that this blog will specialize in.

Secondly, if  Bell is right, then I can't not talk about sex:

For many, sexuality is simply what happens between two people involving physical pleasure. But that's only a small percentage of what sexuality is. Our sexuality is all the ways we strive to reconnect with our world, with each other, and with God." (Rob Bell, "Sex God," p. 42)...

Part of my passion is to play with the intersection of topics that don't seem related.  Tim N.  calls it my

 "pushing toward the unobvious",   

So, with any topic that I study, I will eventually and inevitably ask:
"What does that haveto do with the price of tea in.."
                      uh, I mean
"What does that have to do with sex(uality)?"

If you folllow freakonomic theory, the answer will likely be "quite a bit."

You'll see that many of my pet topics just happen to start with "S" (hey, maybe that's the sole reason that "sexuality" shows up here(:..):

• Synesthesia
• String theory
• Sound Theory
• Set Theory
• Sapir-Whorf Hypotehsis
• Semantic domain

• Sexuality

These may of course seem unrelated, but they can't be.

Asking how any of them intersect is fruitful.
Asking how any of the  first six intersext with the seventh may be fruity...and/or cutting-edge research.
After all, this post, and every post, is

a post about sex.

 (see Maybe it's ALWAYS about sex and politics).

Of course, anyone in this blogneigborhood realizes that the whole idea of a list  of "unrelated" topics
 is an invitation  to test Aristotle's thesis:

 “The greatest thing by far is to be master of analogy....it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.”(Poetics, 1459 a 5-8, "The Basic Works of Aristotle") See: "St Mike Nesmith on genius and madness"

Now, onto the topic of the day...which may seem unrelated, but of course will be:

Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things

What was your first thought upon reading that phrase?

Didn't you smile and say something like "Yeah, women are dangerous things!"

 BUT..

The phrase did NOT read:

Women, Fire, and Other Dangerous Things

Why did you make that assumption?

The phrase--which is a book title--is of course as set up for us to think about our thinking (and then rethink it).  How/why  does our mind categorize? The book, by  George Lakoff deals with ...well,cognitive linguistics (zzzz?), with a classic example being the categories of the title: s.

The Importance of Categorization

Many readers, I suspect, will take the title of this book as suggesting that women, fire, and dangerous things have something in common--say, that women are fiery and dangerous. Most feminists I've mentioned it to have loved the title for that reason, though some have hated it for the same reason. But the chain of inference--from conjunction to categorization to commonality--is the norm. The inference is based on the common idea of what it means to be in the same category: things are categorized together on the basis of what they have in common. The idea that categories are defined by common properties is not only our everyday folk theory of what a category is, it is also the principal technical theory--one that has been with us for more than two thousand years.The classical view that categories are based on shared properties is not entirely wrong. We often do categorize things on that basis. But that is only a small part of the story. In recent years it has become clear that categorization is far more complex than that. ... One of our goals is to survey the complexities of the way people really categorize. For example, the title of this book was inspired by the Australian aboriginal language Dyirbal, which has a category, balan, that actually includes women, fire, and dangerous things. It also includes birds that are not dangerous, as well as exceptional animals, such as the platypus, bandicoot, and echidna. This is not simply a matter of categorization by common properties, as we shall see when we discuss Dyirbal classification in detail.  lakoff, Chapter One, pages 5-8 here, see also first  two chapters complete   on PDF here

...An excellent example is the classification of things in the world that occurs in traditional Dyirbal, an aboriginal language of Australia. The classification is built into the language, as is common in the world's languages. Whenever a Dyirbal speaker uses a noun in a sentence, the noun must be preceded by a variant of one of four words: bayi, balan, balam, bala. These words classify all objects in the Dyirbal universe, and to speak Dyirbal correctly one must use the right classifier before each noun. Here is a brief version of the Dyirbal classifcation of objects in the universe, as described by R.M.W. Dixon (1982):

• Bayi: men, kangaroos, possums, bats, most snakes, most fishes, some birds, most insects, the moon, storms, rainbows, boomerangs, some spears, etc.

• Balan: women, anything connected with water or fire, bandicoots, dogs, platypus, echidna, some snakes, some fishes, most birds, fireflies, scorpions, crickets, the stars, shields, some spears, some trees, etc.

• Balam: all edible fruit and the plants that bear them, tubers, ferns, honey, cigarettes, wine, cake.

• Bala: parts of the body, meat, bees, wind, yamsticks, some spears, most trees, grass, mud, stones, noises, language, etc.

It is a list that any Borges fan would take delight in.

---

The fact is that people around the world categorize things in ways that both boggle the Western mind and stump Western linguists and antropologists. An excellent example is the classification of things in the world that occurs in traditional Dyirbal, an aboriginal language of Australia.

The classification is built into the language, as is common in the world's languages. Whenever a Dyirbal speaker uses a noun in a sentence, the noun must be preceded by a variant of one of four words: bayi, balan, balam, bala.These words classify all objects in the Dyirbal universe, and to speak Dyirbal correctly one must use the right classifier before each noun  Lakoff, page  52ff,  link

It won't take long to make connections now between two of my hot topics:

• Sapir-Whorf
• Semantic Domain
• Set Theory   (see Lakoff's index under "sets")

How do we define, categorize, compartmentalize?

These are great questions for my hot "labels":

• Role of the pastor
• ecclesiology

But what does this all have to do with sex?




Pursue that, will you?

But for starters, let Lakoff lead.
Read pp. 409-415 of his book  here/
Or below:
Lakoff-women Fire and Dangerous Things








--

More on Lakoff:

GeorgeLakoff.com


-- George Lakoff on how he started his work on conceptual metaphor Idea Framing, Metaphors, and Your Brain - George Lakoff: Prof. George Lakoff - Reason is 98% Subconscious Metaphor in Frames & CULTural NarrativesL