Sexuality in the Symposium and Herculine Barbin

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The concepts in The Symposium, speech of Aristophance showed the birth of desire, and dialogue between Diotima and Socrates showed that what is love and same-sex love, and Michel Foucault idea, showed that what true sex is. Love desire is the force to fulfilling lack but we can’t just remain in this level. We need to seek for good such as wisdom to become immortal. We should not get trapped in our stereotype, male and female. This kind of stereotyping just created by our society, by our culture. It is not the thing representing our “self”, it is guideline for us to act what other expected. When we are seeking for love, goodness, we must not affect by such stereotyping. There is no clear cut of what is male or female to “self”. Love is not something only between male and female but all of the people, no matter he or she, young and old. First, it is about the birth of desire showed in speech of Aristophance. Next, it will be focus on dialogue between Diotima and Socrates about what is Love and sane-sex love. Third, it is about Michel Foucault idea of true sex using Alexina as a case. The birth of desire according to Aristophanes is due to the lack. In the speech of Aristophanes, he showed that, originally, human have three genders which are male the children of the sun, female the children of the earth and the combined one the children of the moon (Plato, 1999). The appearance of human was not the “model” that usually bears in our mind. According to Plato, Aristophanes said that “the shape of each human being was a rounded whole, with back and sides forming a circle. Each one had four hands and the same number of legs, and two identical faces on a circular neck. They had one head for both the faces, which were turned in opposite directions, four ears, two sets of genitals” (p.22). This “original form” of human reached the stage of completeness and with great

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