Two years ago I wrote an article on women and sexual healing which was published in the Kali issue of the Tantra magazine. Men responded very warmly to the article, echoing women in feeling disenfranchised and sexually unfulfilled. I felt moved to write about men out of a sense of personal responsibility in furthering our common healing while cultivating an awareness of mutuality between genders. My purpose is to explore how men have also been wounded.I am aware of the dimension of the subject matter and that I can only barely scratch the surface yet that's a start.
Although I have worked privately with over a thousand men as an instructor of basic Tantric and Taoist practices and as a sexual healer and that I have loved many men in my life including six younger brothers, I also must admit that it is with a limited confidence that I approach the subject of male sexual woundings because I am not in a man's body. I can't access the same cellular memory that I do when I talk about women. Nevertheless I have seen, felt and heard men's woundings and the unnecessary suffering that results from having a penis.
Attempting to understand how a man experiences himself as a sexual being requires that we take a closer look at how we've all been wounded. We've all been victims of a socialization and discrimination process which defines our sexual identities and roles. We are seen only as either a "man" or a "woman". Eventually I came to understand how gender roles hurt everyone. Before being seen as a human being with very individual characteristics and choices, we are being labeled by our genitals as a male or a female and treated accordingly within our culture.
To be a "man" in most cultures requires the "person with a penis" to be a performer and provider. Men are are trained and conditioned for these roles from an early age. The core of this macho training is a denial of the full range of emotions and body feelings. As Robert Bly says: "Contemporary busineness life allows competitive relationships only, in which the major emotions are anxiety, tension, loneliness, rivalry and fear. Having no soul union with other men can be the most damaging wound of all. Much personal power is given away in the process of denying one's true feelings." 1
Competition, success, ownership and external rewards become the foundation of Superman pseudo power.
B: that there must be something wrong with being a girl
C: to be a man must mean to be strong, to be in control, to not show feelings and to see himself as superior to women- mysogeny becomes identity.
This conditioning insidiously crystallizes the male role of performer,hero, macho,provider, achiever, doer. That's how we transform a human being into a human doing. From that place of isolation from his true self, he becomes an easy prey to a system that only values external rewards such as success and ownership. Competition becomes the rule and the way to relate to other men. The degree of his denial of emotions and bodily feelings may lead him to extreme abuse of power, greed, destruction and violence. Wars and the destruction of our natural environment are just examples of such denial.
An interesting study of Warren Farrel Ph.D. further points out that "men are socialized to want sex as long as one condition is fulfilled-physical attraction. Women are still taught to be sexually cautious until two, three or all four conditions- attraction, respect, emotions,-and intellect- are met. Many women add fifth and a sixth conditions:- singleness, status/success and many add a seventh, eight and ninth: the man must ask her out; he must pay; and he must risk rejection by initiating the first kiss, being the first to hold hands, and so on. Men feel as if their expectations are so much lower than women's-there is only one condition-and they can't even meet that. And so men feel sexually powerless". 2
While men are focusing on physical attraction and external rewards, internal rewards such as communication, intimacy, love and commitment remain unsatisfied. Lack of sexual fulfilment results in powerlessness for both men and women. Rarely do we think of men as sexually powerless mainly because we associate the male phallus as the symbol of sexual power. I see this powerlessness manifested in many ways. In my work I constantly encounter premature ejaculation, difficulties with erections, lack of sexual feelings, and lack of skills and confidence in their sexual expression.
"During sex, a phenomenon that Western psychologists call premature ejaculation happens to 75% of men, preventing them from experiencing a deep union. What this usually means is that the man has not allowed his partner to develop her energy into an orgasm. As a result, in normal sexual relations the percentage of women experiencing frustration and no orgasm may be as high as 80%." 3
Can you imagine when this situation persists ? The results are performance anxiety, lack of self confidence, feelings of embarrassment, frustration and shame, lack of sexual fulfilment and deep suffering. I am a firm believer in ejaculation control as a solution to World Peace starting at home by creating more sexual fulfilment. My personal contribution to this is a beautiful 60 minute audio tape, a step by step Sexercises Training which teaches Total Ejaculation Control and how to prepare the body for Male Multiple Orgasm.
The absence of a rite of initiation into malehood with proper sexual training also contributes to male sexual wounding. Men are not trained to know how to love women. A man's first experience of female love is with his mother. This relationship will determine a man's capability to love and trust a woman. Most men have been severely wounded from deeply unfulfilled mothers who projected their own needs, dreams and expectations onto their sons. The son often became a substitute for an absent father and lover. A man's fear of women's control affects how willing he is to surrender to women's sexual power. His unconscious fear of women's inexhaustible sexual power confronts him with his vulnerability, especially if he fails to meet his own expectations as a sexual performer. His desire for control is challenged by a temperamental male phallus which can let him down at any given moment without notice. We call it "cuming" while it should be called "going". Because, unless a man learns to transmute his energy before he ejaculates, once he "cums" he is gone. His energy, his interest in his partner are gone. The man who repeatedly experiences this lack of control over his sexual energy will often end up feeling powerless.
Such experiences of powerlessness may tap into a man's earliest experience of having his genitals mutilated by circumcision:"No one is aware of the deep implications and life-long effect of circumcision. All that takes place in the first days of life on the emotional level shapes the pattern of all future reactions. How could a being aggressed in this way, while totally helpless, develop into a relaxed, trusting person?" 4
"Could the trauma from this event have anything to do with our later feelings of shame about our bodies, our concern about the size of our penises, our anguish over sexual performance, our frozen feelings, or the male ability (liability?) to ignore pain? In order to begin healing our wounds we need to remember what happened to us and name it correctly. Cutting the genitals of newborn male babies is child sexual abuse. I encourage all men to join in ending this practice." 5
The more I read on the subject the more upset I become.
A more recent factor which unfortunately has also contributed to men's woundings is feminism with its often times vehement objectification of men. In the spirit of retaliation there isn't much room for discernment. The more sensitive men took on the hard blow, right under the belt, in their power center. While the male power structure was actually the object of attack, many receptive men's personal power got blasted. On top of not having adequate male role models, now simply being a man was a cause of shame, blame and discrimination!
Finally I am suggesting a last yet certainly not the least important factor of sexual woundings. It is the fear around sexuality which men have also inherited at a cellular level from patriarchal religions. Indeed patriachal religions throughout the ages had people killed off for being sexually alive. The human body and its erotic power became a source of evil. What if instead, it would have been considered a source of divine embodiment?
Perhaps the phenomena of the New Age man is a natural response to these woundings. I think it's a rather creative one. These men have opened themselves to their intuitive and receptive side. They know how to be gentle and sensitive. Which is exactly what women had asked from men. The problem is that through this process they have often lost the more bold, active and penetrating qualities required for personal power. In that way they've compromised their maleness! And of course it's bound to affect their sexual power.
Whether or not modern man is in touch with his emotional pain, his body can't lie. The most striking way that sexual woundings is affecting him is through the disease of his prostate. In this country, over 50% of men experience prostate difficulties beyond the age 50 while prostate cancer is the second leading cause of male death. The medical establishment seems to ignore the cause of it. Aside from the immediate physical causes shouldn't we pay closer attention to the more obvious which is the surrounding environment: the quality of the air, water and food? The chemical substances present in the environment get most particularly concentrated in the sexual organs.
At another level, the significance of the disease of the male sexual organ reflects the difficulty to convert this tremendous testosterone power used for wars and destruction of the planet into a creative, peaceful and sacred source of energy. It is time to collectively give birth to the peaceful warrior, to the wise man who can meet the wise woman in true power and equality, mutually supporting our freedom of Being divinely human.
So here is the same question I asked women in my previous article. How can men begin to reclaim their sexual power?
First of all by getting out of denial to recognize that they've been wounded. Then by moving through the pain of these wounds one can find the key to the true erotic self. This connection to the erotic self is our connection to the life force. It is sacred in itself. This connection should not be exclusively limited to the pleasure of the senses. The highest tantric exploration is where sex is not used as an escape no matter how blissful it is but as a means to know who We are. As long as we identify with the realm of the phenomenal we're bound to be dissillusioned. Once this key is found, the whole body becomes the human receptacle, the holy grail, for the erotic energy to move more freely and to get transformed into love, healing and creative expressions.
Secondly, men need to develop a whole new relationship with their penis. Most men are dissociated from their phallus. That's why for a lot of them, their relationship to their car is so significant. It is the modern stereotype of their sexual power and identity. They masturbate in a very mechanical way like a sex machine with high speed, force and intensity. This creates rigidity which over time becomes armoring in the body. The natural sensitivity for the more subtle sensations and feelings is lost. They've also lost the intimate connection with themselves and the richness of the whole erotic body. Their experience is a very limited one strictly localized in the genital area. For most men, orgasm equals ejaculation and love making becomes a performance and a race to orgasm. Sex easily becomes a routine to release stress. The compulsive need for outside sources of stimulation such as pornography and the use of fantasies as necessary conditions to get turned on indicate the level of dissociation from the sexual organs.
And finally vulnerability is the essential condition to reclaim sexual power. I have found that this is problably the most difficult quality to find in men, particularly in intimate relationships. Although they might be great adepts of sexual and spiritual disciplines they may precisely have used these practices as a way of reinforcing their more refined egoistic sense of power and the denial of their emotional body.
In my work as a sacred initiatress I create a safe an intimate space to allow for healing to happen. We listen to each other, eyegaze and breathe together, I touch them sensually and hold them lovingly. This is usually enough to begin to relax into a heart space and make that sacred connection with themselves and with the feminine. I share information on holistic ways of preventing prostate problems, for instance, as researchers have showned, the wonderful effects of flax seed oil (1 to 2 tbsps a day) and pumkin seeds (a handful a day). These foods contain high natural sources of fatty acids and zinc which are most particularly important to the proper function of the prostate.
In addition, I give my client the Sexercise Training on tape as a companion and the self pleasuring meditation as homework. I suggest being intimate with their genitals and touching themselves softly with love. I recommend alternating stimulation with stillness so they can bring themselves to higher levels of arousal while learning to relax their body. Hey Voila! then they can practice being sacred intimates with a partner.
I'd like to complete this article by honoring the divine male in all of us with my poem
Let the eternal feminine hold you tenderly
Come and penetrate softly
The fountains of silence
And rest in the depth
Of her golden cavern.
The return to innocence,
To the eternal womb of creation.
Let her hold you tenderly
While you be still and receive
The nectar of her inexhaustible passion
Relax
There is nothing to do
And nowhere to go
You've come here
To taste the ecstasy
That is your birthright.
Copyright 1995 Maryse Côté