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Sex Futurism, Erotic Mysticism, and Transhuman Separatism

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Preparing to launch our redesigned website in the next few weeks, we have been testing alternate tag lines for our banner head, looking for the most accurate way to define our work in less than a half dozen words.

This evening (8/3), VenusPlusX hosted a book party in our home for sexologist Gloria Brame PhD, with Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance. Dr. Brame is the keynote speaker at the Alternative Sexualities Conference  in DC (sponsored by the Community-Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities). A few days ago, when Gloria announced the event on Bilerico, she happened to characterize VenusPlusX as “sex futurists,” which  strikes us as a very succinct and accurate description of much of our program, captured amazingly in just two words. Gloria is good with words. Read her new book and see just how good.

Another phrase I’ve grown fond of is “erotic mysticism” to describe the exploration of sex and gender cooperatively with the higher levels of the mind, also a key column of our work. Another is “transhuman separatism” implying a person who has become transhuman through conscious and deliberate modification of body, mind, or spirit to the point they no longer fully identify with non-transhumans because of radical differences in life experience that are difficult to communicate in words.

VenusPlusX is about a lot of things—social justice, faith in an ecology of gradually perfecting perfection, and making life better and more meaningful for everyone. We posit that erotic repression (repression of the free expression of sex and gender spanning the entirety of known or assumed human history) is the foundational cause of the evils that have been designed and embedded into society to enslave us. This is why we are passionate and committed to educate all who will listen to the true nature of reality, and the immediately available and powerful tools for beginning the necessary social transformation in the collective human understanding of reality, starting with sex futurism, erotic mysticism, and transhuman separatism. That’s a lot of -isms for a movement that wants to get rid of useless -isms. But these -isms (OUR -isms) are SPECIAL because ours are new and revolutionary breaks with the assumed legacies of the past in all the areas of sex, religion, and social relationships. Let’s examine each one.

Sex Futurism

Sex Futurism: We are activists focused on changing the future course of human social development by anticipating and leading the adoption of the most advanced, most liberating explorations of sex and gender. We use the term Transgender Transhumans to more specifically characterize where things are currently headed.

Erotic Mysticism: We are mystics in that we have had personal experiences with the higher levels of mind that combine all aspects of body and intellectual/philosophical mind on behalf of a more universally accessible and shared reality, often indescribable in words. By its nature it leads to a total personal integration in the erotic. Mystics are people who are engaged in experiencing the personal presence of a concept greater than themselves. Erotic mystics worship by having sex and enhancing erotic pleasure through dedication to this acknowledged higher power. We are determined advocates for the sanctification of all expressions of sex and gender towards increasing manifestations of universal love, truth, goodness, and beauty.

Transhuman Separatism: We were introduced to this concept by our friend, the irrepressible Rachel Haywire. We have freely appropriated the term, using it to designate the meme of emerging Transhumans, as distinguished from the remainder of pre-transhuman-humankind.

VenusPlusX wants to extinguish the entire worldwide subtext of hostility towards and oppression of all forms of erotic expression. We affirm the essential goodness and inspirational power of the erotic senses, while showing how such power may be used to better oneself and one’s world.

VenusPlusX offers a heady brew of these adventurous ideas. We invite all to drink deep, feel the rush, and join us in eventuating the world as it should be, a real future that is everyone’s for the taking.

—Dan Massey

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom  by 03 Aug 2011 0 comments

Transgender Transhumans! Are you headed to Venus Plus X?

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También en español Depending on how you space it, VenusPlusX or Venus Plus X, it’s no accident that you may have stumbled over a novel by Theodore Sturgeon of the same name. Since first reading Venus Plus X in 1960, it has invoked a strong resonance with my own inner truth even though it was Sturgeon’s creative imagination, a perhaps fantasy. It is our namesake because it stands as the earliest and still clearest exposition of the world’s essential ideas and ideals in the world of sex and gender, and guides the our work as advocates, educators, and activists.

In the novel, a 1950’s human male, Charlie, is transported through time to a distant future where the surviving population of earth is a people called the Ledom (that’s model spelled backwards). The Ledom are fully functional androgynes, being capable of mutual impregnation and of resulting individual pregnancy. Most of the novel is focused on exploring the emotional and dramatic situational differences between normative human bi-gender society (envisioned through time flashbacks) and the behaviors of the Ledom, who are free of all sex and gender inequalities and limitations.

Throughout most of the novel the reader is led to think that the Ledom are some natural product of human evolution or genetic reengineering. Near the end, after Charlie has become friends with some Ledom and given them some feedback on their society vs. primitive human society (1950s), they give him a rather detailed explanation of how they view the society from which he came and how that view has come to shape their own. This is Philo’s Manifesto, which is an authoritative debunking of human history, philosophy, religion, and pretty much everything else, while showing the way to a vastly higher and transcendent body of truth. This short statement it is a must read for every person on earth.

Although Philo’s Manifesto is surely one of the most remarkable and complete syntheses of rational human knowledge of a subject normally considered too exotic to be open to intelligent, unbigoted, unbiased discussion, the final reality of the Ledom is even more remarkable. While the directed biological redesign of the human race into the Ledom is surely enough to be called Transhuman, in the final chapters of the story it is revealed that Ledom reproduction is not entirely biological, but involves a complex symbiosis from conception to adulthood with elaborate medical machinery that continually reshapes the “natural” human biology of development into a series of stages that lead to reproductively mature Ledom. That is truly a Transhumanist idea and far ahead of its time!

Without the medical machines, Ledom infants would be ordinary human infants. The creation of the Ledom is a deliberate act of human creativity, expressed in biomedical technology. This is a transformation of a very basic human character as all members of society enter into this reproductive symbiosis with the machine as a way to perfect their society. They have diagnosed the problems of humanity and conclude they all begin with sexual dimorphism and the resulting bi-genderism that rises from ignorance and refusal to examine reality carefully. Their reproductive symbiosis with the machines allows each to mature into androgynes indistinguishable in hermaphroditic sexual function and completely without gender.

Like Sturgeon’s Ledom, we examine many of the problems of humanity. Like Sturgeon, we feel many of the problems would not exist if humans were perfectly androgynous; however, we see many technological alternatives to the “brute force” approach in the novel (remember that DNA had been discovered only a few years before the novel was written, and nothing was known of its detailed structure and function). For example, a simple reduction in the expression of secondary sexual characteristics and the adoption of extracorporeal fertilization and gestation could achieve similar objectives.

Thus, unlike the Ledom, we do not expect to abolish sexual dimorphism. Rather, we seek to encourage health and longevity by discouraging extreme dimorphism that causes the incorrect and unproductive bi-gender model, and encourage either biosex to develop as symmetrically as possible to enjoy the full range of psychosexual and gender experience available to the human nervous system.

Extracorporeal gestation remains a distant technological objective, although planned fertilization is now part of the culture.

Today, as we learn to accommodate the needs of consciously transgender pre-pubescent children, we know that even crude pharmacological intervention at puberty can greatly enhance the experience of androgyny for the matured adult.

The technology foreseen by Venus Plus X is still in the distant future and may never be developed as an option for directed human reproductive evolution. On the other hand, the social changes envisioned in the novel are ready to move ahead today, since they depend only on changing human hearts and minds, and that means education and socialization, not biology. At VenusPlusX.org, we know how quickly such changes can occur in individuals and in groups, once a successful meme has been sufficiently distributed. While we support research into the technology of androgyny, we understand that the time is here today to empower the Transgender Transhuman community to assume leadership in the revolution for full sex and gender freedom and equality.

 

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom / Transunity & Transleadership  by 27 Jul 2011 0 comments

The Philosophy of Burning Books—Calling It Like It Is

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Last week a truly amazing story of academic support for persecution of LGBT youth by “professional mental health researchers” came to light through the diligent work of Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin and Anderson Cooper of CNN. Briefly, both deal with investigations into the academic and professional life of George Rekers, an ordained minister of the Southern Baptist Convention, arguably the most homophobic of all Protestant cults, as well as the largest. Rekers was a graduate student in clinical psychology at UCLA under Richard Green and Ivar Lovaas, who were responsible for the review and acceptance of his research papers, when the story begins of the tragedy they created to satisfy their lust for academic and financial advancement.

Rekers, with the support of Lovaas and Green, published knowingly false research reports on the case of a child, “Kraig,” who was placed in their care by two very gullible parents. Their own neurotic reactions to their effeminate son resonated with a chord of sociopathy present in UCLA clinical psychology at the time, which was following a path of child development through bullying and deprivation of empathy that had been pioneered by the famous poseur B. F. Skinner, of Harvard. For decades the lies these men wrote, swore to, and promulgated dominated major branches of American psychology and psychiatry.

Over a year ago, thanks to Truth Wins Out and the Florida LGBT press, the fact came out that, in spite of his very public homophobic image, Rekers was actually a closeted homosexual. This was big news in the LGBT press and led to his resignation from the boards of homophobic charities and organizations he had helped lead for so long. This also drew attention to his lifelong history of academic and religious publishing, which has now been proven to be based on deliberate falsification of research results, apparently with the support of his supervisor (Lovaas) and department head (Green) since both were deeply involved themselves in the pseudo-scientific study of effeminate behavior in young boys.

Sorry. Don’t know artist or source.

The work of this blind and bigoted trio has influenced generations of students of childhood development of sexual orientation and gender identity. The published work of these men, and other fraudulent scientists like them, is the foundation of a public relations industry devoted to the marketing for profit of homophobia and transphobia. These institutions are NOT public charities and DO NOT deserve registration as 501(c)3 tax-exempt charities, since they only exist to enrich their organizers and spokespeople by marketing their hateful fantasies as real. I just paid $10 to see the new Spielberg flick. When you leave the theater you know it was all more-or-less meant to be nonsense. At least Hollywood pays taxes on the money it gets from peddling nonsense. The Southern Baptist Convention and its constituent persons and organizations do not. Perhaps Hollywood should claim to be a religion. I know a lot of LGBT folk who would agree.

How can the damage done by Rekers and his like be countered in the intellectual life of humanity? Obviously, the exposure by Burroway and Cooper identifies the problem, but this again will become a one to two week PR event unless the,LBGT community and allies take away a sense of purposive action to stop the further spread of this evil that permeates so much of the generally accepted ignorance of the people. As a minimum, we should identify and disqualify the researchers and the publications that have come about as a result of Rekers’ crimes against academia, science, and humanity.

When one tries to assess the importance of some piece of scientific research, it is useful to know how often and in what capacity the work has been cited by other researchers in their publications. Although the bibliography in a paper tells you where the author used other’s work and ideas, there is nothing to tell you who went on to make use of this particular work of this particular writer. It would, for example, be very convenient to be able to trace out every academic publication that referenced the work of Rekers, Green, or Lovaas, but would require you to examine every bibliography in every later publication that could have possible referenced their work.

Actually the problem was solved definitively 50 years ago by the creation of the Science Citation Index (SCI), which is essentially a reverse bibliography that identifies every subsequent publication that cites the target article. Through SCI one can find not only everything written by Rekers, Green, or Lovaas, and published in a significant peer-reviewed journal, but also everything that cites any of their work. Thus one quickly identifies both publications that should be recalled (since they are contaminated by authorship by Rekers or the others) and other publications that should be recalled (since they are contaminated by citation of Rekers or the others).

This process is then iterated, seeding the new selection cycle with the name of all authors of citation contaminated publications, identifying their other writings and the writers who cited them and their writings. In fact, it is likely one could turn this into a real witch-hunt through the assholes of academia.

Once the offensive material has all been identified, there is an immediate technique for ending further research or credibility for this entire intellectually and morally bankrupt community. Each journal that has published a suspect article simply publishes a formal retraction, even going back 50 years, if necessary. These retractions are indexed by SCI and become a part of the formal record there of the final disposition by rational humanity of a body of published research. Though the discredited documents presenting lies as true will remain in a few archives, every bit of future meaning is gone in the sense that no sane person would waste time by basing further work on it. The injury to academic and science is corrected.

This of course leaves open the place where real injury to real people has been done by these men and their disciples. And this continues through their writing and publication in the very large non-academic press that has no standards of peer review and, in many cases, no concept of truth in reportage. For example, there are 16 titles by Rekers on Amazon. Do any of these books deserve dissemination? Or distribution? Or memorialization in libraries?

Here we face directly the struggle for the hearts and minds of the sane. There is no social purpose in the publication and dissemination of these books. On the other hand, their just and forcible suppression could leave some unconvinced of the evil they represent. Scientists and authors of good will are needed to tell the true stories of human sexual and gender development, uncontaminated by the theological and moral mythology of cult leaders. Such truth will gradually eclipse the lies of the cults, since sane human minds recognize truth and resonate with it when it is heard.

No, I don’t advocate book burning, but I see no reason the false intellectual legacy of men like Rekers, where it can be so clearly identified in the stream of formally reviewed publication, should not be erased permanently from academic history, taking with it the life work of many bigots and homophobes who have hidden (and continue to hide) their neuroses and psychoses behind the false privilege conferred by an academic degree and often tenure.

—Dan Massey

 

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom  by 11 Jun 2011 0 comments

Still a Virgin? Bi and Trans Can Help YOU!

Bisexual Erotica 8th Century Japan

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También en español Once you admit to yourself that you and everybody else in the world is “queer,” you have to confront the question of how the human race will continue if everyone is either L, G, B, or T. And this raises the question of how “straight people” can or should contribute to a modern, sex-rad society.

Of course, some people will immediately think, “If there are no straights, there will be no kids.” Well,  that thought is a symptom of the famous disorder of thinking called “bisexual erasure.” Oh, yes, bisexuals reproduce all the time, like rabbits. It is their nature. Try and stop them. And their kids are going to be kinky, too.

But this isn’t about reproduction. The LGBT community can easily repopulate the world with nice people if the assholes suddenly go missing. But this isn’t about the assholes, either. So who’s left? Isn’t the world divided into two great camps, the LGBT and the assholes?

I have heard rumors that there are a lot of non-LGBT people who aren’t assholes. While I know that if these nice non-LGBT people thought about it much, they would realize they are really LGBT too, I accept them in fellowship as our “allies,” our “fellow travelers.” But they seem to be capable of so much more if they would learn our ways and join our joy.

If you think about it, an absolutely straight M/F couple is composed of two homosexual virgins, just as an absolutely gay M/M or F/F couple is composed of two heterosexual virgins. Our society has its virgins of many types, depending on market conditions.

Bisexuals, by comparison, are not generally virgins of any obvious type. Their basic virginities have all been properly addressed and remediated. They no longer limit their affections to but one half of humanity. All are fair game. All who will come may come, come who may. Right away it seems the bi’s must be the salvation of humanity, showing the way to cure sex and gender exclusivity in the vast community of virgins.

So, although the “straight assholes” are useless to humanity, our virginal friends of each sex and each orientation, including all those “straight allies” can help us reinvent the world as we help them reinvent their erotic range and sensibility.

But we also all really “know better.” It isn’t really a matter of either/or, even though almost everything in our cultural legacy works that way. We are all really trans on a whole range of dimensions—that is, our erotic and personal selves may be defined by fixed or changing, focused or inclusive characteristics—and nothing requires that we limit our expression or experience to any particular range of sex, sexual orientation, social affinity, gender identity, gender expression, or gender orientation, etc. The better we understand these dimensions in ourselves, the better we are able to understand and love our fellows.

The Transgender community breaks free from the assumed cisnormative roles of Bisexuality. The very concept of transgender refutes the idea that the bisexual experience can ever be erotically complete. Sad to say, cisnormative bisexuals are just another kind of virgin, needing to be healed. They are virgins to the amazing world of the transnormative experience.

I can imagine a future society in which the marked dichotomy in the pubertal development of secondary sexual characteristics (characteristics not essential to the reproductive function, now obsolete in an era able to technologically control such biological signaling) is viewed as a hereditary developmental disorder that penetrates almost the entire human species.

While social and natural selection may drive our species towards a dichotomous androgyny, there is no reason interim technological adaptations cannot also be used. For example, if adolescents of either sex were to receive supplementary hormones appropriate to their gender deficiency, many of the problems of natural breast development (in xy persons) or natural penis development (in xx persons) seen later in life would be greatly relieved.

Physicians already regularly administer GnRH blockers and trans-hormones to adolescents who plan to fully transition. Why should such therapy be denied the rest who will surely desire the androgynous results of trans-hormone therapy as their experiences of love grow and they come to embrace the full spectrum of joy available to them?

In the library you will find my paper Why We Are All Transgender, which explores the reasons we understand that the general transgender identity is actually the destined endpoint of human sociosexual evolution.

—Dan Massey

 

 

in Cosmic Citizenship / Library / Transhuman Erotic Freedom  by 31 May 2011 0 comments