Erotic Truth
Introduction
When someone talks of love, people always have different perspectives on this topic. Here we are to explore the case of Bechdel’s story and what she thinks love means. We are also going to explore two more situations where we are going to look at Plato’s view and Socrates’ view on love. Love to most people is what is known as romantic love; people do not know of the existence of other kinds of love. There are eight kinds of love that we are going to mention briefly.
Philia – this is the first kind of love we are going to mention, and this is the kind of love that exists between family members and friends. This kind of love lack romance.
Pragma – this is the kind of love that endures. This kind of love matures over time.
Storge – this is the kind of love that exists between parents and children.
Eros – this is the kind of love that many of us know about. This is romantic love that is intertwined with feelings. This kind of love is mostly related to pleasure.
Ludus – this is the playful kind of love where partners are playful, and they play child-like games. This always happens at the beginning of relationships.
Mania – this is the obsessive kind of love. This kind of love is felt for a partner, and the person experiencing this gets obsessed with the partner in question.
Philautia – this is self-love, where we focus on our needs and take care of those needs.
Agape – this is the kind of love that is given without expectation. This kind of love is always seen with supernatural beings, Gods to man.
Now that we understand what love is let us dive into our story. Below we are going to look at Bechdel’s novel, what happened to her and her father.
Bechdel Story.
In this story, Bechdel seems to be convinced otherwise when she looks back to the death of her father. Her father was claimed to have died due to an accident on the road. This was what everyone else believed, but for Bechdel, the case was different. Bruce, her father was struggling with sexuality issues; he was more attracted to the same gender than the opposite sex. This issue had been bothering him for a long time. From the story, when Bechdel went to college, it was there when she decided to tell her father who she was attracted to and to his father’s disappointment, her daughter was a lesbian. From the story, we can tell that the father wanted no family member to follow his footsteps, and when this came up, he was disappointed. Bechdel believes that this was the cause of her father’s demise (Bowring, 2019). She believes that it was not coincident that after she shared the news is when the accident happened. This is convincing since the father might have seen himself as a failure because he was not able to make sure that her child was not going through the same problem as he did. In the story, Bechdel thinks of erotic truth as a sweeping concept meaning that it involves all, a generalization. This the English definition of the term.
What she meant by this.
When we explore what Bechdel might have meant by this, we are going to consider her situation. Since she was gay, we tend to think that erotic truth generalized both those who were gay and those who were not. This truth, however, to her case, caused more harm than good. In her case, the truth caused the death of her father, and this was a great loss to her. This will haunt her for a very long time. From the story, we find regret when she said that she made a mistake referring to her father as gay rather than heterosexual (Scott, 2008). She also says that she shouldn’t have pretended to know what her father was but instead let him decide. This will always be haunting her for a very long time. To curb this, she had to expose her family’s dark side, that they were gay, and she feels better afterward. She had to uncover their erotic truth.
Possible meaning of this.
From my point of view, erotic truth is something like coming out clean on what we love. In this case, there is no limitation on whether one is gay or heterosexual or regular; people should come out and express what they like. If a man loves women and would like those to be their partners for good, then they should have no fear expressing this. This also goes for the gay ones, they should not fear to express their love, and in this way, people will have achieved their true freedom. Hiding will never help, and in most cases, it hurts more. People should accept who they are. In the case of Bechdel, if her father had accepted their fate, maybe he would not have died. This is, however, true only if the story offered by Bechdel is true. Many people always fear to express their love in sexuality, and this is because many people do not believe in gay love. This, however, should not be the case; people should be erotically truthful. This way, they will feel better and able to express their love better to those they love and want to spend their lives with.
Other texts.
In the ancient Greek empire, there was a different form of sexuality where the male would have sex with other males as well as females (Dwyer, 2016). This was especially done to the young male in society. The Greeks believed that this was a way of teaching the young how they are supposed to behave when dealing with women sexually. This continued until a man was old enough to get married. A man was considered ready to marry when they developed beards. After a man developed beards, they were allowed to marry a woman, and it was then that the man was allowed to change from gay. Afterward, the man was allowed to have one wife but could have sexual intercourse with other women, especially the slaves in the empire. This showed a significant transformation for the gay man. We are now going to look at Plato’s view on this.
Spiritual love is the kind of love that is said to have been developed by Plato. This kind of love is the kind of love that is godly. This kind of love connects the souls of people, and in this way, people can be said to be in love. This term was, however, not coined by Plato himself but instead was developed by other people. Plato defined erotic love in two ways, and the first one was the above, which was called divine Eros or divine love (Osborne, 1994). The other kind of love was vulgar Eros or vulgar love, which referred to the attraction for pleasure and procreation. After looking at Plato’s point of view, we now look at Socrates.
From Socrates’ point of view, love does not seem to be a good or godly thing. Socrates believes that the gods love a beautiful thing, and love is nothing close to this. Socrates believes that love is ugly.
Conclusion.
Everyone has their point of view on everything; this does not mean anyone is wrong. In my opinion, erotic truth is vital in true freedom. Love is beautiful and useful; it is only those who misuse it that feels that love is wrong. With love, people can overlook the flaws of others and focus on the good part. Love can change people, and the wrong person changes because of love. We, therefore, should embrace love and ensure that we love it when we have the chance to. We should not be ashamed of who we love, and we should always express our love to them.
References.
Bowring, F. (2019). Erotic Love in Sociology, Philosophy, and Literature: From Romanticism to Rationality. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Dwyer, D. (2016). 200-07 Philosophical Perspectives: Erotic Philosophy.
Osborne, C. (1994). Eros unveiled: Plato and the God of love.
Sadler, B. J. (2019). Love and Marriage. In The Routledge Handbook of Love in Philosophy (pp. 141-156). Routledge.
Scott, G. A., & Welton, W. A. (2008). Erotic wisdom: philosophy and intermediacy in Plato’s Symposium. SUNY Press.