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Sociology Courses | January 17, 2006

Sex Cultures: 6th Period

After the bell rings, Grissom gives a lecture on Sexuality in Ancient Egypt, cringing just a little at the mention of Hathor.

He then asks his students to file into the hallway, where he has strung up several posters of Bast right before 6th Period.

"Bast, as you can see here in many forms, is the Egyptian Goddess of cats, women, children, love, fertility, birth, music, and dance."

Discussion: What do you think it says about a society, to have their goddess of sensuality associated with an animal? Do you like the symbolism, does it disgust you, can you relate this to your own culture, or does it seem like an outdated and ancient concept?

Homework: Read this handout with global definitions of sex, sexuality, and sexual rights.

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Paige signs in she can't believe her luck that they're studying Bast, she did a presentation about her for Cat last year.

Han signs in

Cally signs in.

Pip signs in.

Anders signs in.

Bel signs in.

Alanna signed in, still humming happily.

Chiana signs in.

Sawyer signs in.

Shep signs in.

Allie signs in

Izzie signs in.

In the hall of the South Humanities Wing.

"I like it," Bel said. "I mean, even today we associate cats with sexuality. Like the word 'sexkitten.'"

Alanna made an odd strangled sound that sounded a lot like "What?" or possibly someone not wanting to process an idea.

"Yeah, sex kitten," Bel said, oblivious to Alanna's sputtering. "A sexy young woman. Sexy women slink and purr, men prowl, there's a whole lot of imagery that is evocative of sex and cats."

Cally distinctively mentions nothing about her secret nickname for Anders.

Neither does Anders, but he does turn kind of bright red and start kicking at the floor.

Suddenly, Alanna was very glad that Faithful didn't come to class with her in Fandom. She shook her head, trying to clear all thoughts out of it. "Insanity runs in the family." She muttered under her breath and shook her head again, almost as if she could shake the images from her head.

Bel finally noticed Alanna's reaction to his statements. "Something wrong?" he asked, his brow furrowed with puzzlement.

Alanna forced her face into a neutral smile and shook her head. "Just fine! The insanity is in my family, not yours." She clarified, randomly letting her hands flap around. "Which is my explanation for being here." She nodded, as if any of this made sense.

"Your family is insane, that's why you're in this class, talking about cats and sex?" Bel asked, amused.

Alanna covered her face with her hands and desperately wished the ground would swallow her whole. "Can we just pretend that I don't exist right now?"

"Was it something I said?" Bel teased, glad for Alanna's sake at least he hadn't pointed out the crude connection between felines and a woman.

Alanna whimpered from behind her hands. "Pretending I don't exist, remember?"

"Where did Alanna go?" Bel asked himself, trying not to laugh. "She was right here, I swear she was. Huh. That's weird."

Alanna could do many interesting things with her Gift, to her great disappointment, magically vanishing was not one of them. She muttered something into the palms that might have sounded like a nice collection of curse words. "Am I dead yet?"

"It doesn't disgust me at all. I think the feline form is more femine than anything else, and besides the fact that the cat was worshipped by all. I think it's pretty appropriate." Sawyer said with a small smile at Paige, it was true.

Paige bit her lip and blushed at Sawyer's reply

Anders shrugs. "I don't see why it'd be disgusting. 'cause, I mean, there's some things you think of that you'd think, 'Wow, that shouldn't be sexy,' but they still are. Just 'cause there's something about them that's the same sort of quality, I guess. Animals, vehicles maybe." He coughs. "Sports, even."

He's definitely blushing now, but doesn't say anything about his nickname.

"Yeah," Cally agrees. "Like, why should the cat be inappropriate? I mean, cats are, like, slinky and stuff, so... I can sorta see that. ~~Ducklings, however, do nothing for me.~~ But, say, they worshipped an engine block as their symbol of fertility. Would that really be so different?"

"It kinda makes sense to me, I mean cats are generally sleek and lithe well sort of sexy in away. The whole eygptian connecting cats to sexuality from what I can tell is do to with how females look after their kittens, it's about love and protection as much as sex. And I agree with what Bel said about the purring thing, it's a sort of sexualy happy sound, so yeah I think connecting cats to sex works really, it's more appropriate than any other animal I could think of." Paige replies

"Well, I guesss I could see how someone would think it disgusting on first glance. Over... what's the word..." Pip snaps a few times. "Er... OVERTONES! Yeah. Overtones of bestiality. But we equate so many other things of human behavior with animals. Lots of martial arts are based on animals. We say that someone is "strong as an ox". Why not sex? It's one of the most basic human drives. Hell, it's a basic natural drive. And animals are how we represent nature, right?"

"I think thinking about it is kind of over-thinking it. Anubis was a jackel and he was god of the dead. Is that some kind of bad-twisted-wrong? They used animals to signify all their gods. And cats are sleek and graceful and confident, things you would consider sexy in a person. It's a logical match. It's not like they were out doing the cats, is it?"

He realizes that the last may have been a tad bit less than tasteful.

"I don't think it's gross that a cat was the symbol of fertility and sexuality. It may not make a lot of sense to our society today, but that doesn't mean it didn't make perfect sense to the Ancient Egyptians."

I agree. And don't you think there is a whole lot about our culture, or cultures as the case may be, that won't make sense to future cultures?

"Yeah, just watch an episode of I Love the 80s."

*DEATH looks at the depictions of Bast with curiousity*

"I don't get why anybody would get disgusted by it. I mean, it's just symbolic or whatever, it's not like they were saying you should go out and have sex with cats, right? Like everybody else said, your cat things have characteristics that relate to sex. As for outdated," she shrugs, "some of the most advanced people I know represent death (er... not DEATH death, though) as a serpent. I'm not sure that that's any different. It's just that animals have obvious characterstics that makes them obvious symbols for things."

So CJ can come punch me in the mouth.

Same as usual, for out of class and out of character interactions.

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Sociology Courses | January 17, 2006

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