basic human state. Animals could be
said to be objects-in-themselves; how-
ever, this would require an impossible
knowledge claim.

Sartre says that when we caress our
lover, we are trying to capture their
consciousness as an object-in-itself.
This capturing is the extension of
desire, which in Sartrian terms is the

‘manifestation of our need to incarnate
our sexual partners, meaning that we *
are trying to achieve a knowing of our
partners’ being similar to our own self-
awareness. Hence we caress their bodies
in order to fulfill this need for »
knowing: “Desire is expressed
by the caress as thought is by
language” —Sartre. We are
attempting to reduce the free-
dom that an object-for-itself
embodies and to render that
person as a non-reflective
thing, for our reflection. This
has ramifications that extend
beyond the boudoir. The way’
in which the male of the.
species (Homo sapiens sapiens)
apprehends the female is pri-
marily visually, and what
sparks the initial attraction
remains primarily visual. In
plain English this means that if
men do not see a woman as
attractive-looking, then they will not
find her attractive. This sounds idioti-
cally basic, but have patience, there is
more. :

The female of the species appre-
hends the male in a less blunt manner.
This is not to say that appearances are
unimportant to women, but that they
have a different application. For
instance, men are the primary con-
sumers and purveyors of pornographic
images and texts. On this point,
women are nearly a total contradiction
of the male. This defines the central
distinction between the male and

female of the species. The reasons for
this contrast in approaches to sexuality
can be reduced to the respective repro-
ductive roles of each gender.

Women are more reticent, broadly

speaking, to hop into the sack with any

“old fellow because they can only have

one child at a time, and due to the
length of the gestation period they are
biologically predisposed to being rather
selective in choosing the male with
whom they will mate (for whatever
duration). Men have no such need for
caution, excepting the need for protec-

“ when we caress our lover,
we are trying to capture their can be more readily conceived of

awareness. ”

. tion from disease. Men look at the sit-

uation as being a case of probability:
given that they can copulate with
impunity, the issue of disease notwith-
standing, the more women with whom
they have sex, the better the chances of
their impregnating one and ensuring
their genetic survival. Thus it is clear
why men base so much of their initial

"attraction on appearances: they.do not

need to be as discerning as their female
counterparts, biologically speaking.
During the act of sex the couple
involved spend a good deal of time
touching each other, or more explicitly,

caressing each other. This caressing, as
stated earlier, seeks to apprehend the
consciousness of others. Why do we
do this? The answer is caught up in the
strangeness of being human. It may be
because we need to encapsulate our
sexual partner's consciousness in a con-
ceptual framework (e.g. as our beloved
and the object of our desire), which
allows us to trim away the ambiguities
and uncertainties of our relationship
by reducing their consciousness to a
fixed point in space and time (their
body). In plainer language, this reduces
our partner's Being to a thing,

which does not change and which

mentally and thus an easier thing

CONSCIOUSNESS AS AN OHJECT-IN- wich which we can cope.
itself. This capturing is the
extension of desire, which in
Sartrian terms is the manifesta- we concede to the pull of our
tion of our need to incarnate
our sexual partners, meaning
that we are trying to achieve
a knowing of our partners’
being similar to our own self-

To live as a human being is to
live outside of clarity, just out of
the grasp of knowing. Too often

bodies and end up parodying the
behaviour of the cognitively more
basic mammals in our desire to
be less complex, or more ‘natural.
But gross carnality does not lead
to the temple of wisdom,
although it can provide some
wonderful temporary distraction.
To return to the idea of our con-
sciousness as the Che Guevara of
the mind, we should then regard unfet-
tered sexuality as the doorway to bour-
geois decadence which must be guarded
through the cultivation of a careful
awareness of ourselves (or for Sartre, a
better understanding of our conscious-
ness ). We have an obligation to our-
selves to develop our minds and our
mindfulness of our behaviour in order
to appreciate and. to better understand
what we are and how we are, in o
that we may live our lives more aut
tically, Anything less would not be

human.

Mas 10Q8 Daw