Mediated Sexualities and Gay Constituency: Queer Standpoint Thinking in a Post-Structuralist Heterocentric Society.

Richard Birch
Monday April 18, 2005
This work Copyright (C) 2005 Richard Birch

Personal Introductory Note:
I have posted this version of the essay before submitting it for evaulation. I truly enjoyed writing this experimental analysis on my research and felt the need to post it anyways, regardless of the academic outcome. This essay was certainly the most challenging one this year, and certainly produced the most anguish as my professor knows. No matter how it turns out, I am happy with the work so far. Special thank you to Alison Walton for the editing.

Queer standpoint permits one to engage in a method of inquiry designed to uncover oppression, subordination, and heterocentric social stratification. To find interest in the structure of male heterocentric stratification in a postmodern society, one must uncover knowledge in its relation to the creation and maintenance of power. Sexuality is constantly political. Sexual politics manifests itself in the very corporate, governmental, and educational systems that have been imposed in society. As women have for generations been the subject of elaborate discourse on gender differentiation and issues of equality, so now are communities that include the gay, lesbian, and other queered groups. Sexuality is a culturally determined human identity. However, when engaged in standpoint subjectivity of the queer citizen, the socio-economic pyramidal construct of oppression is clear.

The construction of sexuality as a culturally produced institution is a mediated one. As French post-structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault points out, power is a system of complex relationships in stratification “rather than as a property inherent in a particular individual or class” (Spargo, 1999, p.16). Then, if power is reliant on relationships, how does knowledge of sexuality circulate in a culture to create power? Is there any basis for considering that in this structured pyramidal system of oppression, the non-heterosexual population can assert its own discourse of knowledge in a heterocentric stratified society? In order for any sexuality to affect systems of sexual-social stratification, it must successfully be constructed by knowledge. Through standpoint subjective discourse the appropriation of sexual identity for the queer community can be achieved.

Heterosexual/Homosexual Cultural Production
Foucault asked that if homosexuality is culturally produced, then what is heterosexuality? Why is Western society governed by heteronormativity? Foucault argues that sexuality is “a cultural product that cannot be regarded as a simple extension of a biological process” (Spargo, 1999). He insisted that homosexuality developed from a late nineteenth-century milieu as a socially constructed classification of knowledge, rather than an innate identity. It is not accurate to say that same-sex socialization did not occur prior to this period, nor did condemnation of sodomy by clerical and legal institutions. However, regulating sexual practices was thought to be necessary prior to and during the late nineteenth-century. This was characterized by the introduction of what Foucault labelled “species,” an anomalous category of human defined by sexual perversity (Spargo, 1999). Thus, in the late nineteenth-century and thereafter, a man engaging in sexual relations with another man would be encouraged to identify as homosexual (Bronski, 1998) (See Appendix 1).

This form of identification relates heavily to Marxist theories of stratification. Alienating homosexuals from heteronormative social realities resulted in class distinction. To Marx, class was determined by one’s “relationship to the means of production” (Brym, Lie, Nelson, Guppy & McCormick, 2003). For the members of the bourgeoisie, the homosexual became a specific type of proletariat to oppress. Oppression of the homosexual as deviant had more to do with suppressing non-procreative and non-productive activity and knowledge. It was during this industrial period that the classification homosexual became a focus for medical, scientific, and bureaucratic institutions in order to implement a regulation of social stratification. A “technology of sex” designed to preserve and cultivate a productive and procreative surplus workforce would meet the needs of a developing capitalist system (Spargo, 1999). The proletariat family, the apex of the procreative future workforce, was thus institutionalized. Control over same-sex desires and activities was suddenly something much more than a problem for the church and state. Controlling cultural knowledge of differentiated sexual orientation was necessary for procreative/productive social order. Further, this division between the two orientations allowed heterosexuals to enjoy their existence as a status group, not just as one of prestige, but also of principle.

According to Max Weber, any group ascribed status as a social majority or cultural superior is the result of the marginalization of lower social minorities by parties that are “organizations that seek to impose their will on others” (Brym, Lie, Nelson, Guppy & McCormick, 2003). Under the capitalist productive order, “classes and parties … become the main basis for stratification” (Brym, Lie, Nelson, Guppy & McCormick, 2003). In order to ensure the existence of a surplus labour force – which can be further economically stratified and exploited as a resource – this form of stratification, based on the notion that all human resources must endeavour to regenerate and continuously repopulate, became social knowledge.

Mediated Reverse Discourse
The classification homosexual, now a pathologized apposite for arrest and treatment, was a distinct as an aberration from heteronormativity. Thus was created the model for subordination and oppression of homosexual identification, subject to negative sanctions and social marginalization. An integral component to Foucault’s post-structuralist Queer Theory (an historical comparative discourse on the mediation of knowledge of differentiated sexual orientation) is his argument on reverse discourse. Foucault charged, “there is no question that the appearance in nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature…made possible a strong advance of social controls into this area of perversity; but it also made possible the formation of a reverse discourse” (Foucault, 1978).

Through mediated sexual reverse discourse, could non-hetero appropriation possibly find further ability to negate this oppressive order in the sexual montage of society? Foucault suggests that optimizing the effects of reverse discursive measures leads to power. Through the duplication of pleasures, power is created through the creation of such knowledge of pleasure in opposition to the knowledge of restrictions (Foucault, 1978). As Tamsin Spargo points out, to view power as anything other than a negative force that does not typically act on society is extremely unusual and unconventionally difficult. Foucault asks the social scientist to contemplate power as something other than its relation with dominance and oppression. This is where one can critically question Foucault’s ideas of power. Can power relations as they exist within social order simply be inverted? If one succeeds in flipping over the power relations that stitch the social productive order’s cohesive bonds, how can the social scientist measure the resistance to the reversal by other social institutions? All power relations require a network of institutions to harbour and link ideologies to one another in order for there to be complete control over populations and behaviours. To influence such a network, one must grasp the concept of subjectivity.

Reverse Discourse of Subjective Knowledge
Dorothy Smith’s (1990) conceptual grasp of subjectivity clearly defines its use as a method. “The only way of knowing a socially constructed world is knowing it from within. We can never stand outside it” (p. 22). The queer observer can only know its existence in a heterocentric society through a subjective gaze. C. Wright Mills further accentuates Smith’s theory of standpoint subjectivity: “The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals” (Mills, 2000). For the queer social scientist to comprehend the level of oppression he or she experiences in today’s global environment, each must see where personal history as an oppressed social species converges with the milieu of post-structuralist economic social stratification. Where does the queer social scientist fit into the productive order? Does he or she have a placement in such a structure? From what knowledge is the basis for power and pyramidal oppression constructed in a heterocentric society? How can homocentricism, if it can be termed in heterocentric spheres, be socially cultivated where knowledge liberation and power converge?

Reverse discourse is not new. For Queer Theory, it is about inverting stratified hetero-homo binary classism into a model of resistance. When Foucault wrote his comparative theories of sexual discourse, a new outset of gay and lesbian politics took shape, and has been refined into an equal but different classification of sexual minority. Political notions of pleasure and identification become more complex in lieu of sexual classism. Through reverse discourse, “the gay rights movement [has become] professionalized” (Bronski, 1998). Such resistance to traditional subordination has “…shifted from community-based groups to legal battles fought by lawyers – a radical shift from gay liberation’s grassroots, consciousness-raising strategies” of the Stonewall riots of the mid twentieth-century (Bronski, 1998). But is the utilization of gay professionalism in the courts adequate to implement reverse discourse of homosexual knowledge macro-socially? It is questionable that the true struggle for knowledge reversal and its effect on traditional formats of economic social stratification by non-hetero groups can be achieved solely by affecting one specific institution of the state. For where in an economic productive order, and thus procreative symbolic order, can true discursive effectiveness of gay culture successfully find appropriation in such a crucial environment for social change?

Gay Consumerism/Constituency
Homocentric knowledge, a reversal and manipulation of power binaries in heterocentric stratification, legitimized when the exploitation of consumer pleasure produces appropriation. The “rise of the gay consumer [is] the emergence of a less-closeted gay sensibility in mainstream culture” (Bronski, 1998). This convergence of gay and mainstream ideologies has been, in the Weberian sense, the result of queered commercialism acquiring social status. Arguably, though slowly achievable, the promotion of non-hetero economic power leads to fuller political power and citizenship. From Queer Theory, the notion of reverse discourse allows an evolution of the ‘mainstream gay lifestyle’ since the liberation movement of the early 1970s first contemplated it. It allows a socialization to occur between the homosexual and the heterosexual, a socialization implemented through gay consumerist exploitation. This evolution fuels power through the knowledge of the gay consumer, and forces a directive to assess its potential in lieu of the historical context of heterocentric binary stratification. Both the promotion and utilization of the gay affluent consumer mediates homosexuality in the heterocentric public. Through such a mediated process, the most influential revolution from gay consumer to gay constituent may be possible. What better method for homocentric appropriation than through a consumerist revolution, one that can be easily adopted by a heterocentric capitalist productive, and procreative order?

Yet, this is not occurring without resistance. Marxist theory on classist stratification states that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production …generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it” (Marx, 1970,2001). Those who control the means of commercial and intellectual production also maintain the ability to exploit changes to ideologies regarding of power relations and knowledge. In a reverse discursive method of solving heterocentric social problems, those who exist in the non-hetero strata of society may also benefit from this binary of control. Challenging heterocentric stratification may be achieved through the concept of a mediated sexuality. Mediated sexuality aids in challenging the historical, and “one of the unique aspects of oppression towards homosexuality [which] is its lack of visibility. Unless one states that he or she is gay or lesbian or bisexual, there is usually nothing to indicate that this is so” (Mullaly, 2002). If the invisibility of a sub-class is maintained, justification for the discouragement of homosexual knowledge is socially cultivated. “Because of cultural tradition and strategic advantage in fund raising and media, traditionalists have succeeded in advancing reasons for discouraging homosexuality to which gay/lesbian advocacy is largely a response” (Smith & Windes, 2000). Reverse discourse sets up a basis for inverting this paradigm of heteronormative knowledge.

Through standpoint subjective discourse the appropriation of sexual identity for the queer community can be achieved. Classist stratification requires hierarchal pyramidal models on which to operate. Upper stratas exist in relation to lower stratas because of socially constructed ideologies of power. Ideologies are formed through the knowledge asserted by social institutions. A heterocentric pyramid of oppression is based on knowledge of binaries of sexuality and the interests of ruling echelons. Queer Theory provides the insight for upward mobility of lower stratas. Reverse discourse as pertaining to Foucault allows the subjective social scientist to view the phenomenon of heterocentric social stratification as a system for elevating homosexual sub-classes. Non-heterosexual appropriation is possible in this method. Mediated sexuality is essential in a method of asserting knowledge through media, and thus asserting its interconnectivity to social institutions inherent to mainstream popular knowledge and ideologies.

Appendix:
1. The term ‘homosexual’ was first used as a way of labeling non-heterosexuality in 1868 by Károly Mária Kertbeny an Austro-Hungarian journalist. On May 6, 1868, in a letter to German sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Kertbeny used the word Homosexualisten ("homosexuals"), formulated from the Greek word ‘homos’ ("the same") and the Latin root ‘sexualis’ (glbtq.com). In 1869 he again used the word in an open letter that protested the recriminalization of homosexuality into the new German penal code in a post-unified North German Confederation (Bronski, 1998).

References:
Bronski, M. (1998). The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
Brym, R. J., Lie, J., Nelson, A., Guppy, N., & McCormick, C. (2003). Sociology: Your Compass For A New World. Scarborough, ON: Nelson.
Endres, N. (March 1, 2004). Kertbeny, Károly Mária (1824-1882). Chicago, IL: glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. Retrieved January 27, 2005 from www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/kertbeny_km.html
Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality: An Introduction: Volume One. (R. Hurley, Trans.) Toronto, ON: Random House.
Marx, K. (trans. Originally published 1970). Ideology and Class. In D. B. Grusky (Ed.), Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective, 2nd edition. (pp.101-102). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Mills, C. W. (2000). The Sociological Imagination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press (Original work published 1959)
Mullaly, B. (2002). Challenging Oppression: A Critical Social Work Approach. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
Smith, D.E. (1990). The conceptual practices of power: a feminist sociology of knowledge. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.
Smith, R.R. & Windes, R.R. (2000). Progay/Antigay: The Rhetorical War Over Sexuality. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Spargo, T. (1999). Foucault and Queer Theory. Cambridge, UK: Icon Books Ltd.

Cage of Flesh

By Marie Miller and Richard Birch
Media and Culture 2 SOCI 3077
Wednesday, April 6, 2005
This work Copyright (C) 2005 Marie Miller and Richard Birch

Marie Miller is a first year Psychology and English student in the Laurentian Bachelor of Arts Program at Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario. She is a graduate of the Early Childhood Education Program and believes in setting children up for success so they may become the best they can be. Email: jalonfarms@sympatico.ca

Richard Birch is a second year Sociology student in the Laurentian Bachelor of Arts Program at Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario. His professional background is in commercial finance and in the entertainment industry. His current academic interests lie in gender politics, queer theory, and sexuality studies. Email: energetika@msn.com

Abstract
The embodied self as represented in mass mediated images of gender, sexuality, and ideal body types constitutes a performative, socially constructed identification. As the body, whether perceived in the constructivist mindset as either female, male, or of any transgendered or androgynous identifications in this gender spectrum, can be measured in sociological terms as a commodity useful for the production of wealth in techno- capitalism. Concepts and perspectives in the area of study known as the sociology of the body allow the social researcher to discover, deconstruct, and elaborate on the relationships between the embodied individual and master processes of capitalism, productive symbolic order, and the synergies between these two constructs in accordance to the agency of the embodied individual in a socially constructed world. The reification of these relationships by the utilization of the mass media, specifically in the area of fashion, advertising, and children’s toy products constitute a new asylum for the oppressed and sexually controlled. This paper examines these relationships under the premise that all agencies of the oppressed are also, thus, constructed.

Cage of Flesh
Talking about people’s bodies is speaking about textual realities of the body as social constructions. Sociology of the body requires the social scientist to examine the outside within. Subjectivity is key to understanding the relationships between textual realities and master processes in society. Agency is also in question in this analysis. To know the social reality of gender exploitation in the media and advertising, subjective accounts are essential to uncover social fact in its constructivist ethnographical framework. This paper is an institutional ethnographic deconstruction of the productive master processes as they relate to gender exploitation in the media. Sex, gender, and gender choice are typically subordinate to ideologies that control what the mass media present to us. It seems that when people think of the media, or question the role of the media as an agent of socialization in postmodernity, there is a misconception that it is the media which dictates and instils that which is influential, economically functional, and label-specific to gender and sexuality. The mass media as an agent is looked upon as that which creates constructs, identities, and showcases the agendas of groups and or populations. However, is it truly mass media, which is being served in the process of oppression? The media is not the origin of such oppression. It is not the purveyor of any such mode of social control. Socialization does not equal control. Socialization is not congruent with the mechanization and systemization of global ideologies about the body, gendered identity, sexual identity, agency, and the embodied-self. Systems and mechanisms do not produce the platform from which oppressive activity is built and cultivated on. Processes however do disclose origins of forms of oppression. Capitalism is not a system. It is a process, a master process of the production of wealth and furthering the capital potential of industry. The embodied-self, the human form, the un-individual is such a component of capital that is the unit of analysis in this research project. By examining the meaning of the body in the media, in fashion industries, and in the advertising industry we can gaze upon the body, whether male or female or in any transgendered or androgynous form, to be the commodity is has been constructed as. The body is a cage of flesh, the controlled un-individual without agency locked away in postmodern ideologies of sexual control and productive order, and the advertising industry is the new postmodern asylum.

Advertising and Fashion Industries as The New Asylum
In this paper we will examine how mediated images of body ideals and beauty iconography have become ways for master narratives of productive order to capture the body, the embodied self, and the un-individual, through the use of modern institutional control systems. As Michel Foucault elaborates, “both the real capture of the body and its perpetual observation” was essential for modern Western capitalist processes to assert control over female and male sexuality through an evolved format of prison-like “mechanisms and strategies of power” (Foucault, 1977). We must recognize that sex is “historically subordinate to sexuality”; that sexual activities and also gender imagery are mediated by ideas that themselves relate to underlying structures of power (Foucault, 1988). The embodied self is viewed by, those who wear it and by those who impose ideology on the wearer is entirely a social construction. Furthermore, how we as wearers experience our bodies in postmodernity is thus, also a social construction designed along the parameters of power and ruling relations. The particular ways in which the body is viewed and experienced discloses structures of knowledge of how power is exercised in postmodern society. The advertising industry has taken over the insane asylum and the prisons of early industrialization, which both had the purpose of controlling the body and the embodied self. Because of the poststructuralist world as a result of an emerging “scientifico-legal complex,” which is the phenomenon where science and legal law has replaced the church and biblical law as mechanisms for bodily and sexual control, the body has come to be characterized as a cage of flesh in which we all inhabit in a bureaucratically charged continuum of capitalist restrictions and constructed freedoms (Wallace & Wolf, 1999). Look at the largest buildings in a city. Historically the churches were the largest constructs in a centre, the temples signified what ideologies were in control. The temples are now the banks, finance companies, and multinationals that control lines of credit and capital resources that are socially constructed as essential for furthering the development of wealth and economic power. To tie this into sociological thought of the body, our bodies are capital to be exploited for the further development of wealth. This gives a new perspective to the term human resource. As Jean Kilbourne states, “advertising helps to create a climate in which certain attitudes and values flourish and others are not reflected at all” (Kilbourne, 1999). This shows the structure and direction of how ideologies on human and cultural capital are maintained in society. She also states, “it is impossible to measure the influence of advertising on a culture, we can learn something by looking at cultures only recently exposed to [advertising]” (Kilbourne, 1999). She provides an historical comparative ethnographic analysis about the Gwich’in tribe of Alaska. In 1980 this tribe was introduced to mass media, initially in the form of American television. Within a span of ten-years the tribe’s culture diminished as a result of the monocultural invasion from multi-national corporate culture. “Beaded moccasins gave way to Nike sneakers” (Kilbourne, 1999). This exemplifies the evasive and clearly manipulative abilities advertising can have on a single cultural identity. This form of manipulation creates consumers. More importantly it creates a consumerist culture, where one did not exist before, and with such longevity directly proportional to the age of it’s target marketing. In other words, the younger the respondent to advertised mediated imagery, the harder and stronger the impact it will have on the bottom line.

To equate this to issues of gender exploitation, look at how women and men have been targeted by the advertising industry. Clearly women have been victimized more heavily than men historically in how their bodies have been exploited as cultural capital. However, in recent years it has also become very apparent that this is not merely a feminist issue. Historically control mechanisms, which were designed to keep gender and sexuality in check, were constructed through the use of prisons and asylums. Female and male sexuality, as problematic, was to be controlled in order to enforce conformist behaviour. Any sexual or gendered behaviour, which was deviant, was to be caged. In essence caging the flesh was congruent with caging the mind of the sexual being through the simple act of turning names into things. Again we turn to the idea of bodily constructivism for explanation on how the body reflects the reality and knowledge on gender and sexuality. As Eric Wolf states, “by turning names into things we create false models of reality” (Wolf, 1997). The embodied self is ultimately and constantly controlled by a system of naming and labelling. Through semiotic uses of terms like fat, thin, beautiful, ugly, exotic, plain, masculine, and feminine, the corporate productive order has been able to set definitions for ideal body formats. Images of thinness, beauty, and exoticism relate to knowledge of desire and control.

Zygmunt Bauman in his work, which explores the social constructivist notions of survival and embodiment, suggests that beauty and the pleasure derived from the constructed embodiment of beauty, is tied to agency. Beauty, in a sociological perspective is equal to the control over our physical selves both as animals and oppressed social individuals. His argument is positioned on the idea that obsessive conformist attitudes towards health and beauty, specifically felt by women and oppressed individuals, are “an attempt to belie the ultimate limits of the body” (Wolf and Wallace, 1999). As a result, the oppressed in a consumerist culture buy into fad diets, purchase gym memberships, and invest exuberant amounts of personal wealth into the cosmetic products and cosmetic surgery industries in order to construct youth on an aging embodied self. “Yet in the end those limits hold: we cannot all look like supermodels or champion bodybuilders, and in the end we all die” (Wolf and Wallace, 1999).

Dr. Harrison Pope, co-author of The Adonis Complex says:
Barbie is to blame for women’s distorted body image. We are now educating our girls to be aware of impossible body goddesses. Studies show that boys increasingly suffer from eating disorders, root cause G.I. Joe. G.I. Joe [is a] ripped, mega muscular warrior who would have 27-inch biceps and other proportions achievable only through years of bench presses, protein diets and the liberal use of steroids. (Cloud, 2000).

The obsession with obtaining the extreme-masculine look is a phenomenon with men, increasingly as strong as the obsession for the ideal female embodiment in women. What fuels this obsession and desire says Pope, “are the ridiculously outsized bodies purveyed by Hollywood, magazine covers, and even action-toy manufacturers…One of the biggest lies being handed to American men today is that you can somehow attain by natural means the huge shoulders and pectorals of the biggest men in the magazines” (McDougall and Schuler, 2003). What is the message being sent to young men in techno-capitalist culture? They are learning about their bodies in a completely skewed fashion. “They don't realize that the 'hypermale' look that's so prevalent these days is essentially unattainable without steroids" (McDougall and Schuler, 2003).

Age Compression
Age compression was first theorized in the early 1990s in response to an evaluation of consumer behaviour, specifically that of the children’s toy target market. It later became equally important in the children’s clothing industry, specifically for young girls and young teenage markets. “Factors from media and technology to working mothers have propelled kids toward adulthood” (MacArthur, 2001). Children are literally growing older at a younger age because of influences in techno-capitalism. “Kids have access to information and influences that are mature more than ever” (MacArthur, 2001). Cognitively children are required to absorb information much earlier in life, which would suggest a phenomenon that would link age compression to a notion of information compression. Techno-capitalism requires markets to evolve, products to change, and fashions to change in order to produce more wealth in the industry. It’s exciting for children to have what the teenagers are wearing. Media influences are increasingly making it difficult for parents to have an opinion and even say no to the wants, because the want of the products directly represents the needs of techno-capitalist productive ideology, which they are enslaved by.

This phenomenon can be recognized in two of three child developmental areas of research, which are cognitive, physical, and emotional. An acceleration of cognitive and physical skills have definitely advanced, but emotional development remains a constant and cannot be linked theoretically to age compression (Girl Scouts of Mid-Continent Council, Inc., 2000). Emotionally young children and adolescents lack the skills to deal with this acceleration. Results include tension and stress, which is a new phenomenon never before recorded with this age sector. How has this happened and who let it happen? “Parents are wondering how toys lost [children’s focus] in the first place. Who is responsible for this ever-earlier adolescence?” (Boston College Chronicle, 2004) Parents are trying to keep up to the societal image and in order to do this they must have at least a dual-family income so thus to maintain a required über-consumerist lifestyle. This is evident in households where technology is the babysitter. Factors from media and technology to working mothers have propelled kids toward adulthood. Then, the techno-babysitters have become the market developers and sales reps for the multinational food and toy companies. Half of U.S. families have dual incomes, while another one in four is a single-parent household, so “kids are being forced to be more responsible and live on their own,'' (MacArthur, 2001). Even though marketers say they don’t believe that children are able to make intellectual decisions before the age of twelve, the advertising industry targets children from the early age of one. “There hasn’t been a mechanism or a forum for the marketers to step back and say, ‘Hold on, we’ve crossed some lines here and things have gotten out of hand’” (The Boston College Chronicle, 2004). Unfortunately, they don’t appear to be cleaning up their act…

Another result of age compression as it relates both psychologically and sociologically to children, is the hijacking of children’s innate and essential imaginative play. Play is key to any stage of children’s learning, and for all levels of childhood development. Play is where children learn all sociological skills of interaction, which they will carry with them in all social and intimate relationships throughout their life. Even the Ontario government has recognized this important facet of early childhood development and has subsequently launched the Ontario Early Years Centres, which came out of the provincially funded Early Years study. “There is powerful new evidence from neuroscience that the early years of development from conception to age six, particularly for the first three years, set the base for competence and coping skills that will affect learning, behaviour and health throughout life” (Early Years Study, 1999). When you use technology you have to answer the way the computer wants you to. The technology does the thinking, the planning and is in charge of the creativity. When a child plays with dolls, blocks or Legos, they can be anything, anyone, go anywhere their imagination soars.

Conclusion
The body is a cage of flesh, the controlled un-individual without agency locked away in postmodern ideologies of sexual control and productive order, and the advertising industry is the new postmodern asylum. In deconstructing the mass mediated oppression of groups based on the constructed parameters of gender, it is clearly that this is fundamentally one of the most important problematic social realities recognized since industrialization. The body, as historically thought to be the embodiment of human existence, the framework for physical and even emotional experience as historically observed by scientifico-legal institutions such as the state and scientific realms, even though no less influential in postmodernity for it’s ability to explicate the natural tendencies of human relationships as they are perceived in mass media, is something much more that simple scientific and social definitions. In the ethnographic institutional framework of the advertising industry, as a mechanism for control of gender and sexuality by techno-capitalist productive order, the body is a commodity and a shell for postmodern slavery. The advertising industry as a mechanism for control has been useful for this process to assert knowledge of the body, as it is ordained as a surplus human resource. If we are to seek the structure of knowledge as it pertains to how the embodied self is a product of social constructivism, we must know, as Foucault insists, that we only can experience our embodied selves as social constructions (Foucault, 1977). In techno-capitalist postmodernity, this experience and any accounts of such experience is regulated by how our bodies produce knowledge as textual realities in a market driven, commodity based mass mediated culture. How much farther can society be pushed? Women cannot achieve the level of physical thinness as depicted by fashion models without collapsing, men are intrinsically in a fragile state, and children can’t be forced to grow up any faster than what is already expected of them.

References:
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