Why is there so much strife in our sexual, romantic, relational lives? Is there a way to get to the bottom of it in one sitting? Today, I’ll try to achieve that!
My last post (on sex, power, & feminine sovereignty) demands a more focused discussion of how the romantic storyline smothers the embers of the genuine feminine erotic nature. This is one of the most pivotal, yet completely overlooked, points that stand in the way of full-on sexual liberation, enlightenment, feminine sovereignty, and human happiness.
Whew! So let me try to line up all the points so we can finally connect all the dots and begin to lay this thing to rest. It’s really not that complex, it’s just that the roots are very deep and there’s been a lot of blind investment in it all along the way.
Sisters. We’ve been sold a bill of goods.
Brothers. You’re frustrated.
And, oh, how we’ve all (sisters, brothers, others) been taken to the cleaners…. Enough is enough. Today we explore the basis of our predicament from the bottom up. We can’t overestimate the value of hammering out a solid grasp on the basic point of departure. A clear view paves the way to smart solutions and better relations and well-being for us all.
- Subjugation. Patriarchy needs to dominate and squelch female sexuality in order to make this power structure work.
- Subordination & Submission. Agricultural and industrial development makes the world more male-dependent, women less relevant, and the fair sex capitulates. Women (their bodies and sexuality) become property. Western religion (especially Pauline Christianity) “divinely” empowers this infantile attitude. The female body is colonized, occupied, and controlled.
- Submergence & Subterfuge. Female sexuality becomes frustrated, receding deeper and deeper beneath the surface, to become a mystifying enigma fraught with perplexity and pitfalls. Feminine power becomes emaciated and distorted, manifesting as manipulation, hysteria, and adding fuel to the fires of misogyny, and thus androgyny, putting the genders at perpetual odds.
- Sublimation. Modernization and marketing renders sex less taboo, more tantalizing…but the damage is done. Women no longer inhabit their sexual bodies, but now channel the buried sexual impulse through the emotional (socially and religiously sanctioned) center as love and romance. Pent up sexual energy fuels the misguided translation, and inflames the antipathy between genders, as romantic demands and expectations get foisted onto the simple act of sex. Now both genders own (and jealously guard) the sexual real estate of one another’s bodies.
- Subsequently, things like Evolutionary Psychology enter the fray, offering up pseudoscientific theories to explain away our frustrating experiences and driving us deeper into the confusion and delusion about human (masculine and feminine) sexual nature, ultimately driving us further apart.
So, basically, in the quest for power, men have created damaged women who damage them in return and now everyone is utterly confused, hurt, frustrated, and isolated. The pro-social healing, harmonizing, and unifying powers of sex and human sexuality will remain lost in the sauce until we commit ourselves to salvaging it.
Sexual enlightenment, feminine sovereignty, and human relations all depend on a full deconstruction of the delusional romantic ideation of human sexuality.
Sex is sex, with no other inherent meaning, and none needed. We have only invented and added so many other “meaningful” things to pad the cell made to imprison us all (by the religiously-inspired patriarchy). Because of the idea of sex as sin, and the vilification of pleasure, we’ve all had to seek refuge in farcical and unhealthy constructs in order to try to enjoy sex. The more vulnerable and disempowered we are, the more padding required to compensate for the damages. Hence, the more lopsided grasping at the goods offered by romantic fantasy by those of feminine and religious (male and female) persuasions.
Sex confused with romantic love is the basis of the problem. This romantic “disease” is the taproot of modern sexual ignorance because it can only thrive as it does now when there is a deep disconnect with the sexual body. (That’s what happens when we deny real urges and replace them with rationalizations and mental fabrications.) We cannot begin to remove the ignorance until this disconnect is repaired. “Love” is certainly not the problem. Love happens…in fact it happens far more frequently and authentically once we let go of the attitude of ownership imbedded in the romantic-fantasy model comprised of silly notions like prince charming, picket fences, and promises of eternal devotion and happiness.
Furthermore, feminine power is an earthy, solid, grounded thing. So it’s profoundly telling that modern perceptions of stereotypical femininity are just the opposite (think wishy-washy, whimsical, dreamy, flighty, temperamental). This is not normal, people! It’s wreckage. This is femininity in ruins. When there is a disconnect with the physical/sexual body, the heart, soul, and substance of womanly power is destroyed. Therefore, feminine sovereignty cannot be achieved until this confusion between girlish emotionality and natural sexuality is no longer at hand. We cannot stand for ourselves until we reconnect with the physical sexual truth of ourselves. Anything else is a dead end.
As long as we buy, en masse, into the romantic model of human sexual relations, we are bound to suffer, en masse, beneath a suffocating cloak of ignorance and frustration. Sexual Humanism asserts that we cannot separate the social aspect of culture and society from the sexual realm. We’ve tried and failed miserably (just look at history, or simply take a good look around in this very moment). Time to move onto more intelligent, promising, reality-based ways of thinking, being, and relating.