Fractionals

To continue in the slightly highbrow vein of the last post, we have Butterflies and Wheels. As much as I find many aspects of academic postmodernism (as contrasted with aesthetic postmodernism) deeply silly, I can't say I'm solidly behind B&W either. Surely when you're tackling a topic as rich and complex as, say, sexuality, there's a middle ground between Judith Butler and people who say things like "such a sexual partnership [between two transsexuals] is arguably so far from the experience of the vast majority that it offers no plausible challenge to mainstream cultural presentations and expressions of sexuality, and none at all to questions of the natural, because through its patently 'unnatural' status (the union of two individuals whose bodies have been artificially constructed through surgery and hormone injections) it only serves to reinforce the natural status of the dominant form of sexual behaviour, heterosexuality."

Which is too bad, as both Butler and her ilk and Standing (the author of the article) and his ilk have valuable things to say on the subject.