Sometimes
the market's attention leads to unexpected changes in what is
marketed, and how previous acceptable codes of sexual behavior
are revised and new codes publicly sanctioned. The many forms of
advertisement catering to homosexuals, sexploitation, gendered
sexuality, group experiences, while never using one qualifier or
another, are quite explicit in identifying their public and the
patterns of behavior characteristic for this public. Means used
for this purpose correspond to those of the civilization of
illiteracy. There is, probably, no other medium of more precise
narrow casting of sexual wares, from legitimate to scandalously
base, than that of the networked world.
In the framework of literacy, the erotic (as all other creative
contributions) was idealized in many respects. Language
projected the erotic experience as one that transcended
sexuality, leading to stable and selective male-female
relationships within the boundaries of the family
characteristic of industrial society. In time, various value
representations, symptomatic of a peculiar understanding of the
differences between man and woman, and stored in the language of
customs and rituals, took over the substance of the erotic and
made form predominant. Literacy and the ceremonies celebrating
the erotic-especially marriage and wedding anniversaries-are
connected far beyond what most would accept on first reflection.
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