When a body is the object of knowledge will very often evoke shame because the body being objectified may resist and create an awkward experience for both. This is why our focus is very often on shame, which is why we need to review a few ideas about shame.
According to Dr. Donald Nathanson, an expert on shame, the hardware part of the experience of shame is the physiology of shame, which is present in every human being around the world. The physiologic mechanism of shame is triggered when a fun experience is interrupted. In an interview he explains:
Any acute interruption in the affect we call interest, in a situation when it is logical for that interest to continue, triggers another physiologic mechanism that we call the physiology of shame or shame affect. Now this is not trivial because just as soon as shame affect is triggered, it brings about, in the mind of the child, what we call a cognitive shock.
Later in the interview, he says:
So shame is a response to an impediment to whatever we were doing that we were interested in. What happens when the moment of shame occurs? It causes what we call a cognitive shock. “No one can think clearly in the moment of shame,” Darwin said that over 100-125 years ago. Sartre said, “Shame always comes upon me like an internal hemorrhage for which I am completely unprepared.”
You can read the complete interview of September 8, 2003 where Dr. Nathanson explains the mechanism of shame in Washington D.C. (https://childrenofthecode.org/interviews/nathanson.htm).
Because shame plays an important role in the dynamics of interaction with a body-object shame is central to CE (Corporeal Epistemology). Such as the Law of Universal Gravitation is essential in Newtonian mechanics, shame is essential in Corporeal Epistemology. The same gravity cannot be ignored in physics, shame should never be ignored in behavioral sciences.
For more information you can follow this link: About Shame.
Adults perceive human bodies as private and accept the lack of freedom to look at or touch other bodies the way they do with regular, non-responsive objects. Touching an object without permission, unless damage is inflicted, is not a criminal offense, yet touching parts of a person can be a very serious offense. This alone makes the human body an object of knowledge that requires special attention with shame always in mind.
Bodies of children are an exception. Children don’t have complete ownership of their bodies because adults need to manipulate their bodies in order to care for them. Additionally, adults feel they have the right to touch a child without their permission. It’s common to see adults who while praising a child they establish some kind of body contact as part of the praising, something they would seldom do to an adult. Babies elicit warm feelings from most people. Holding a baby or a very young child is a unique experience because it’s one of those rare opportunities to hold and contain an entire human body.
Trying to understand the interaction that people establish with body-objects is not easy. The first body-related associations remain hidden in the unconscious and access to these associations made later in life is complicated by the effects of shame. All this has to be taken into account to understand this complex interaction.
The cognitive aspect of the knowledge acquisition process is inseparable from emotions. Cognition and Emotions go hand in hand. The emotions are even stronger when the object of knowledge is a body-object because bodies are of great emotional significance. Different senses are used to gather information about the body-related object in question. This experience is unique because it can become reflexive and the subject can become the object and vice-versa. In this case the object is responsive which helps create s complex social interaction difficult to predict.
Most Philosophies of the Body are convoluted pieces of work difficult to understand for regular people. An example is the work of Merleau-Ponty in the 1960’s, who is very popular among philosophy students and academics who without a clear understanding of his work boast about his philosophy to appear intellectual. We favor simplicity and practicality, especially when the object of study, the Body, is at the core of the human experience.
From the point of view of CE, everyone’s body is their most important object. Their body is at the center of their human experience. In spite of the need for a strong emotional connection with the body the paradox is that there are parts of the body that are better experienced through someone else’s body. For example, walking behind a person offers others a rich view of that person’s backside, a view that is never available to a person’s own body. Other bodies and gestures become for the subject, strong emotional representations of their own “partially inaccessible” body.
Unlike regular objects body-objects present some form of impediment as objects of knowledge As Nathanson suggests then the interaction with body-objects will generate shame from all involved. Someone can freely contemplate an afternoon sunset and enjoy the beauty of that scene, but cannot freely enjoy the view of someone walking by on a path in New York City, as described below:
"In between meetings I had some time so I went to take a look at Central Park. I was fascinated observing the people. Everyone looked so different to my town folks. There was this man in very tight strange clothes I could not help looking at him. He started walking right towards me. Then it hit me. He was gay and he was cruising me. I stood up and literally run away. I really panicked." Audio-cassette The Reality of Men, 1988
To resolve the conflict that results from perceiving a body as an object of knowledge, societies have come up with rituals where bodies are objectified without the impediments that usually accompany perceiving a body as an object of knowledge.
The best examples are ballet and other dance forms where the public can freely watch bodies move and physically interact with each other. Visual Arts also provides people with the freedom to observe and analyze bodies in paintings, photos or videos as if the bodies were regular objects. The many sports are other ways of focusing on bodies without constraints, in this case with a traditional emphasis on masculinity.
The common belief is that erotic attraction is controlled by an independent and mysterious physiological system called Sexual Orientation. The unproven assumption is that either from birth or during emotional development the erotic impulses are triggered by the sight of another body. The claim is that if the body that has triggered the erotic arousal is of the same gender or of the other gender, or both, the person is catalogued in a particular Sexual Orientation, as homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual, respectively.
Ancient Greece was a society that accepted erotic expressions of the nude male body and same-sex relationships, all of this sitting alongside what we now call heterosexuality. What made that possible was that in Ancient Greece sexual orientation was not a recognized concept.
At first sight Sexual Orientation seems to explain human sexuality in the same way the idea that the Sun orbiting around Earth seemed to explain the existence of day and night. The Geocentric model made sense because it felt right, but only until anomalies were exposed and accepted. Likewise, Sexual Orientation and the notion of attraction feel so real to people that there is a willingness to ignore any anomalies of Sexual Orientation.
Sexual Orientation provides also a protection against shame triggered by homoerotic imagery, especially male homoerotic imagery. It seems irrational that there is a large portion of the male population, the so-called heterosexual men, who define part of their sexual orientation as how much disgust they feel for the male body. It doesn’t make much sense for the male body to be a forbidden fruit to men, especially when compared to the experiences of many women for whom homoeroticism and expressions of intimacy with other women are part of their femininity. For more information on this topic you can read The Reality of Boys.
The third important issue that needs clarification is the Kinsey Scale. Its author, Alfred Kinsey, warned against using the homosexual or heterosexual categories on people because homosexual and heterosexual should only be used on the act itself, not people. He wrote:
"For nearly a century the term homosexual in connection with human behavior has been applied to sexual relationships, either overt or psychic, between individuals of the same sex... It would encourage clearer thinking on these matters if persons were not characterized as heterosexual or homosexual, but as individuals who have had certain amounts of heterosexual experience and certain amounts of homosexual experience. Instead of using these terms as substantives which stand for persons, or even as adjectives to describe persons, they may better be used to describe the nature of overt sexual relations, or of the stimuli to which an individual erotically responds." Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey, et al., 1948, p.656)
According to Kinsey, a person is not homosexual or heterosexual because of whom they choose to share emotional intimacy and/or sex with. If the object of love or sex partner is of the same sex, the relationship is homosexual, but not the people involved.
Gay/Homosexual, Straight/Heterosexual, and Bi/Bisexual are identities and as such they should be self-assigned. There are no biological markers that support any kind of orientation, like there are with male and female gender at birth.
Gender identities, male and female, for what there are many biological markers are now being accepted as fluid and people are encouraged to respect a person’s self-perceived gender and/or changes as a sign of respect. However, sexual orientation, for what there are no biological markers, is considered to be fixed. If someone changes sexual behavior the assumption is that life has been a lie and has been spent hidden in “the closet”.
If Kinsey was wrong and “being” homosexual, heterosexual or bisexual is a real thing, more than just a self-assigned identity, why are societies so intolerant with homosexual and bisexual identities? A more complete analysis of Sexual Orientation is beyond the scope of this article.
Instead of accepting unproven ideas from a confusing concept, Corporeal Epistemology suggests that erotic arousal is the result of the tension that arises from the desire to experience body-objects, independent of gender, and the fear of shame expressed as censorship. The source of the censorship is the potential resistance from one of the participants which may trigger shame.
Erotic Arousal is also caused by the inaccessibility to parts of one’s body which explains why most fetishes are associated with parts of the body that people don’t have easy access to, such as toes. In the case of men, the lack of free access to their penis with their mouth, the most important symbol of their masculinity, is a very significant issue and the source of many male fetishes that pornography tries to satisfy.. The answer to the question “Why do dogs lick their penis?” is “Because they can.”
Social Scientists claim, without explanation, that human beings are social creatures who need to be around other people. The need to be around other people is explained by Corporeal Epistemology as trying to compensate for the lack of free access that people experience with their own bodies creates a need to want to experience other bodies as surrogates of their own.
Nobody can see their own face with the same detail they look at other people’s faces and facial gestures. In a purely speculative frame of mind it could be stated that for many people the ultimate fantasy would be to use their senses and have complete access to their body. In other words, the wish is for their body to be an object of knowledge to themselves.
The cognitive/emotional behavior is more complex when the object of knowledge is a body. The “object” may put some resistance to being an object of knowledge in a way that the subject may want. For instance, it’s common for people to dislike being stared at, which interferes with the knowledge acquisition process taking place in the subject who seems curious about the person’s body and appearance.
When the object of knowledge is a body, the process of knowledge acquisition can become reflexive and the subject can become the object and vice-versa. What is commonly known as “chemistry of relationship” is based on the reflexive aspect of the interaction between two people.
Setting aside emotions and the experience of being human, people and computers can be reduced to Information Systems, an analogy that can help understand aspects of human behavior.
Although it is possible to find similarities between human behavior and computer behavior, there are obvious limitations. The body (human hardware) is biological and constantly changing requiring the emotional-rational system to constantly adapt to those changes. The other difference is the incredible processing power of the brain and other nervous centers, a processing capability that is also used with body-objects, which is enhanced by the emotional system.
During the first stage of Piaget’s theory of Development up to age 2, the Sensorimotor Stage, the focus of the children is on their bodies. The purpose is to get ready to interact with the environment by first gathering information about their bodies to prepare for the many activities that will require good control of the body, such as walking or talking. The equivalent to the Sensorimotor stage on a PC is the Boot Process, when the system is gathering information about its Hardware (Body) before it can interact with the user.
Just as a personal computer presents itself to users through Operating Systems, such as macOS or Windows, individuals do too. As children grow they build their own “software layer” which represents the way they perceive themselves and are perceived by others. This human software layer is a Self, which is rooted in the body and determined by life experiences and greatly affected by experiences of shame. The same way the hardware of the PC can present itself to the users in different ways, such as Linux instead of Windows 10, individuals can interact with their environment with a different Self.
As children grow into adults the emphasis on the body is slowly replaced by focusing on projections of the Body, the Self, but without the body ever losing its fundamental emotional value. Children enjoy competition which involves the body, such as sports and other body challenges. As people age the focus moves away from the body towards their different versions of the Self.
Nowadays children and young adults are presenting themselves and interacting with others through their Virtual Self. This type Self appears disembodied but in reality the Body is present through the exchange of selfies and suggestive pictures.
Social Media and the Internet in general have made possible a type of social interaction that is very attractive to people because of the feeling of anonymity which helps with the management of shame. Shy young people, who would normally feel embarrassed of presenting themselves to others, find comfort in relying on their Virtual Self to shield themselves against shame.
The perceived anonymity provided by social media is also very attractive to adults. Many become addicted to positive feedback in the form of “likes”. No matter what kind the object-Self, Body-object, Social Self or Virtual Self, the experience of feeling wanted seems to be one of those universal experiences that everyone can relate to but strangely, it hasn’t received the attention it deserves.
When the object of knowledge is a living creature, who responds to people’s presence, the experience becomes an emotional interaction which will develop according to many factors. The fondness for pets such as cats and dogs is motivated by the attention they pay to the master. When that living creature is another person the interaction although intensifies, it is complicated by the potential shame which is one of the reasons many people feel more comfortable around their pets than with other people.
The experience of “feeling wanted” is not exclusively for the Body as an object, but for any Self a person chooses at the moment. “Feeling wanted” is a subjective experience because the “person-subject wanting the person-object” does not have to be real and in fact, most times is only real in the mind of the person-object. The focus is on the “feeling wanted”.
Getting “likes” in some comment made by a Virtual Self makes the person who wrote the comment feel wanted. When someone comes home and gets greeted by the dog, the master will “feel wanted” by the dog, a sense of someone else depending on their presence, instead of being ignored by the world.
Why is money perceived as sexy by so many people? Obviously money is important for everyone to survive in this world. But the obsessive desire to have money could be motivated by a need to “feel wanted”, which money very efficiently provides. Often people with money, especially men, enjoy the attention they get in the form of offers for businesses or for financial advice, or invitations to parties with important people. Money facilitates feeling wanted and needed.
Age is a good determinant of what kind of Self is chosen to “feel wanted”. Adolescents and young people, because of their well-functioning bodies, need a lot of attention placed of their bodies. The style of clothing that many young people choose to wear, holes in the pants and clothes that reveal a young body, and selfies, is a testament to how important the body is for young people. As people age, the Self becomes more removed from the Body and the emphasis is on money and social status. Although older people cannot count on their Body-Self, memories of the one important Body are still present, especially when interacting with young people.
The experience of “feeling wanted” can also be experienced vicariously. It is possible for a subject to “feel wanted” through a body-object or Self perceived by the subject as “worth” of attention.
Before reading this section we recommend you read The Reality of Boys.
Female expressions of “feeling wanted” are socially accepted and are considered part of femininity, even into adulthood. Men who display similar behavior are considered narcissist and maybe gay.
Within the context of heterosexual relationships it is mainly women who play the role of “being wanted” by men who desire them. Up to a few decades ago men were expected to teach women about sex and were responsible for women’s orgasms.
The experiences of “feeling wanted” when the Social or Virtual Self are involved, the experiences are similar. Both men and women can feel pride about their careers in similar ways, or enjoy some online flirting. But when interactions directly involve the Body, men’s behavior, due to the effects of the erection, is very unpredictable. For more information on this you can read The Reality of Boys.
Body and Desire
A body-object elicits Desire like no other object. Although this is reflected from poetry to pornography, Erotic Desire still remains a mystery. It is time to throw out there some logical explanations to such emotionally-charged topic and we welcome any constructive criticism.
Although the source of Desire seems to be another body or body representation, a person’s perception of their body is at the root of their Desire. This implies that Desire does not depend on the gender of the object-body of Desire. It also explains that Desire changes as people age.
-The intensity of Desire
-Importance Same-sex compliments
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