快猫短视频

Global Sex by Dennis Altman, Chicago, 拢15.50, ISBN 0226016064

SCIENCE has always claimed to be global, transcending national divisions. It
and its technological products have been major forces in that 鈥済lobalisation鈥�
whose most obvious symbols are burgers, soft drinks, sneakers and Hollywood.
Dennis Altman argues that sex, too, is being globalised.

The spread of HIV provides Global Sex with its historical core, and the
spread of notions of sexuality its substance. Earlier varieties of colonialism
may have spread disease and theology, too鈥攂ut the 747 does the job so much
more efficiently than the sailing ship.

Altman argues that the debate engendered by the virus encourages the spread
of a homosexual identity forged in New York鈥檚 Greenwich Village. And in its
wake, he claims, come not only a very particular fundamentalist Christian
repression鈥攖hat hinders both disease and population control鈥攂ut also
a free-market fundamentalism that makes sex a commodity.

So Altman does not pretend to be 鈥渙bjective鈥�. He sets out his political
position as an attempt to reconcile Marx and Freud. This may be rather quaint,
these days, but it leads to much clearer writing than the postmodernism he
deplores. For a brief introduction to the arguments about sex, gender and
sexuality, you could do much worse.