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Disengendered Future of Books

books as a third sex

The restraints of traditional gendered roles of book production inhibit the future of the book. To a large extent these confining roles are already extinct, but book studies, in vogue with gender studies in general, continue to focus on these duplicities. In the FotB perspective the future requires a new trope to project the book skills of both sexes. This can be accomplished by interpreting books as a third sex.

Such a new demography of three sexes will accommodate the compulsions of book loving scholars and collectors. It will also reserve a special relationship for avid and devotional readers. Best of all, the third sex of books will invite the particular interactions of both bionic sexes while these lovers of books will then transcend their gendered roles.

FotB does think that a tertiary or third sex is a good thing and possibly one of the few last cards that we have to play in the game of evolution. At the moment we are pitted against the wily simpletons of bacteria, viruses and fungi on the one hand and the wily neural networks of synthetic consciousness on the other. We need to use every innovation and surprise.

The next evolutionary step can work on a physiological basis. This has to do with the tertiary mind and the inter neural development across the two hemispheres, entangling the masculinity of rigid, linear text with the suppressed, earlier feminine oral/visual web which as we know is now re emerging to dominance in cyberspace. The very tumbling and churn of these interactions will be transcended and humanity will develop inter operative gender drives and balanced governance.

bad, meaning good, tertiary behavior

The compulsion of books already exhibits masculine and feminine character so simultaneously that it induces a third behavior of sexuality. The alluring aspect is a transcendence of duplicity; not a teetering relation of couples, not a contest of good and evil, or either-or, but an alien abduction of a third kind. Books abduct humans of either sort and subject them to a tertiary experience.

The individual suddenly appears center stage standing as if bolted in place. There is a pompous, preemptive masculine narrative of the male bureaucrat and then out comes a lusty lady lurking in the same person. Then there is the cool stare and smile of the third gender. The person is re-sexed.

So how do these tertiaries er... relate? The relationship can be solitary between the persona and its own affections. It can be between a pair without regard for similarities or dissimilarities. Or the individual could have a relation with some kind of pair or two solitarians could collide. Or the tertians can find happiness. The configuration of a tertiary relationship is always a surprise; no templates prompt behavior and no arbitrary gender roles restrict the prospects. The focus is on a novel affection engaging the rapture.

the tertiary future

A third sex is only an iota of a larger picture. Have you noticed recent observations that all distinctions are "blurring"? We have blurring distinctions between TV and the Web, telephones and personal computers, push and pull communication modes not to mention blurring between authors and readers, original and copy or reality and its simulation. I would offer that what this is telling us is that we are outgrowing duplicities of all sorts as failed explanations of how we should act.

Maybe the really substantial stuff is the product of the interaction of parent phenomena and not the genealogies. Black and white, right and wrong, the book before and after the digital revolution, we like to honor the pairings but the surprise and the limits of control begin with off-springs and the hybrids engendered between traditional modes.

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