Parents who are conscious and critical of rigid gender norms face a problem. If they raise their children without regard for traditional gender norms, then their children run the risk of being ostracized for not conforming to these gender norms. Yet if a parent enforces gender norms on their child, then they are closing off potential spaces for self-fulfillment. This kind of problem is most easily recognizable with regards to homosexuality - many parents say they have nothing against homosexuality, but wish their own children would be heterosexual, because of the social difficulties and ostracism faced by homosexuals. As a parent, where must one stand? Must one teach one's children to conform to rigid gender norms that one disapproves of, because it will make life easier for the children? Or should one liberate one's child from these norms, and run the risk of them suffering greatly for their disregard of these norms?

Seems to me your question poses what is known as a false alternative. I see no reason why a parent cannot help to inform a child about gender norms, so the child can understand these norms, while still making clear that such norms are really not necessary, not appropriate, and stifling. Don't we try (well, those of us who are decent folks, anyway!) to do the same with racism and other forms of prejudice?

Are the psycho-sexual aspects of ourselves fixated from a relatively early age, so that "turn ons" are conditioned if not unalterably then in some way that fixes in ourselves certain ideas about what it is for something to be sexual in nature? Should considerations about this act as impetus to revise any aspects of the media and popular culture, including of course, pornography, which is one of the largest domains of media-culture despite being confined to less blatant forms of presentation (than, say, advertisments for "Big Macs")? Finally, I have the idea that cyber-porn (and to a lesser extent all cyber-sex) is covertly homo-erotic when men use it to get off on "straight" screen sex. This isn't entirely true, sex is sex and breasts are breasts, but the fact that a machine which could be (not unfairly) called a "boys toy" is being used as the platform for a mathematically constructed system of media exchange (viz. the world wide web) that was developed primarily by men. Crucially, the sex scenes...

I won't endeavor to reply to all of the questions you have asked here. But I am inclined to be quite skeptical about your hypothesis that all cyber-porn is "covertly homo-erotic." I doubt that what most (or even many) of the men who find such material titillating really find interesting is the fact that the medium through which it is conveyed "was developed primarily by men" (as if the images of women conveyed via that medium were somehow incidental to the titillation). Really! I am also just a bit concerned by the vast generality of expressions such as "a male conception of sexuality." My own experiences and inquiries strongly suggest that such generalities ignore the indefinitely great varieties of sexuality and sexual experience between people of the same gender (as well as ignore the commonalities some have found with one another, despite differences in gender).

Do you think there are two distinct kinds, 'male' and 'female', in terms of gender, biological differences, or social and cultural constraints? I know this seems like a broad question but it is asked with the idea/intention of feminism behind it. If any of you have a brief (or extensive!) philosophical opinion on any issues within this query I would be very interested to know. Thank you for your time.

Questions like these prove to be either especially difficult...or so easy that one suspects one hasn't understood the question. On the "easy" side, plainly most of us can tell the difference most of the time, and there do seem to be fairly reliable morphological and biological indicators or sex. Similarly "easy" to notice are the differences between the sexes that are recognized within social and cultural contexts--though these plainly differ widely from culture to culture. Given the "easy" aspects of the question, one might be seduced into thinking that such obvious observations are adequate to answer the question...but I suspect they are not, and may even be misleading. I have several problems in mind here: (1) Just how much can we infer about the appropriateness or justice of social recognitions and restrictions that are based upon differences between the sexes, from observable biological differences? As a general rule, I think people have thought there was much more we could infer...