In celebration of Valentine's Day weekend, we will be publishing articles like this one on love, sex and desire all weekend long at Planet Waves.
by ERIC FRANCIS
Earlier this winter, The New York Times Magazine published an article looking at the work of a new generation of female sex researchers who are studying the mysteries of female desire, or trying to. Now that Venus is about to be retrograde in Aries, we have the perfect opportunity to study the nexus of self, of identity and of sexuality.
The lead study covered by the Times was conducted by Dr. Meredith Chivers, a Canadian psychologist and professor at Queen's University in Ontario. She studied the sexual responses of men and women to a diversity of visual and auditory stimuli: men and women having sex, men together, women together, men and women masturbating (separately), bonobos having sex, a man walking on a beach and a woman exercising.
The data were collected by one objective method (a probe in or on the genitals to sense minute changes in physical arousal from second to second), and reporting by keypad to describe whether the subject thought he or she was aroused by a particular scene. Then the two sets of data -- the body's responses, and the mind's responses -- were compared.
Chivers demonstrated that men tend to have a narrow focus of what they think turns them on, and those are the things that their bodies respond to in the form of their penis growing more erect. If you're a straight man, you get aroused by heterosexual sex or women together or a woman masturbating, and you know it. If you're a gay man, you get aroused by images of men having sex or masturbating, and you know it. The copulating bonobos (despite being our closest primate cousins, who are known to have sex for pleasure and not just reproduction) did nothing for the men, consistent with what men reported. For men, Chivers determined that conscious arousal corresponded with physical response.
Women also have a narrow focus of what they think turns them on. Straight women said they were turned on by images of a heterosexual couple making love; lesbian women by images of a lesbian couple. But when the responses of their bodies were measured by blood flow and vaginal lubrication, they responded sexually to nearly everything, including the bonobos and the woman exercising. The scene that got the least response was a buff man walking on the beach. Everything else, including the exercising woman, increased their blood flow and vaginal secretions significantly.
What does this data tell us? Well, Chivers and the Times expressed the findings as indicating that women are out of contact with what turns them on. They think very little does; in reality, nearly everything does. Men were described as having equally narrow interests, but as being more connected and aligned with their desires. I think that most men, including myself, would take this as vindicating.
Men who want to coexist with women sexually have encountered the maze of yes meaning no, no meaning yes, maybe meaning yes, yes meaning maybe, no meaning maybe and maybe meaning anything or nothing at all. (My female friends who are into women often tell me the same thing.) The subtext: don't believe anything women say. The implicit message to men is to keep assuming; you're more aware than women are. Women aren't going to say what they want or what they feel because they don't know, or they're confused by the diversity of things they feel, they are scared to or they don't want to commit in words to something they might regret having said later. Now we have a scientific study, apparently one of many, that seems to establish this feminine property.
Chivers says she teaches her students that "arousal does not equal consent," which is noble enough. Yet in a world where we are trained to not speak honestly about sex, in particular about desire, we might well ask what does. Usually, a woman signals with her body and not her words, and often this signaling is "unconscious," such as open body language meaning she is open to approach. In applied practical reality, arousal does equal consent -- until you start talking. Then the cognitive mind gets in the way, unless the goal is awareness (which it usually is not). Most of us learn the unfortunate lesson: if you want sex, don't talk about sex. Avoid the subject. That works better. This is frustrating if you're an honest person who shuns playing games; or if you like sex and talking about sex.
One thing we can surmise from this study is that women are turned on by life itself. Let's give this a name: biophilia. Anyone who has been erotically close to a woman might have noticed that her entire body and emotional field can become a sex organ under the right conditions; a puff of breeze blowing or the sound of a voice can be experienced as erotic. If you're a man and you have this kind of response, you're probably a poet.
If one lets go into that kind of general state of being turned on by the world, that's a lot like total vulnerability. Mental censorship would be one possible adaptation to that amount of sensory input. That women might deny their response, or not be aware of it, may be a product of conditioning, such as the feeling that their opinions or desires do not matter, or that they will be punished for them.
What I think is more interesting is that the focus of men's desires and responses were identified as being so narrow. I don't hold it as a virtue that so many men succeed at knowing what turns them on, but only within a narrow range. It is likely that their minds and bodies are shut down to the rest of reality that they don't think interests them, but which might, were they more open.
Men tend to be socialized into roles that require meeting a goal. Women tend to be socialized into roles that require them to be generally responsive to their environment; multitasking is an example of this responsiveness. At least the physical bodies of women are still connected to the full spectrum of experience, even if their minds have a different opinion; that is, even if their minds are becoming more like the bioenergetic systems of men: attempting to focus on one goal or one acceptable stimulus.
If you know something about astrology, you know we're talking about Venus and Mars here. Both men and women have Venus and Mars in their charts (they never leave the solar system). It is socializing that drives the sexes to express one gender energy at the expense of another, or to fail to integrate the other energy.
Venus is a full-spectrum planet associated with females, femaleness, and desire on the level of receptivity. Castaneda proposed that the universe itself is female. To me it is the principle of emotional intelligence. It's also considered an indicator of what we value; that is, what is truly important to us in a deep and abiding way.
Most people would associate Venus more with love than with sex, though this depends on your definition of sex. It rules Taurus, which has extremely strong preserver energy; and Libra, which is inherently relational, and seeks beauty and balance. The glyph of Venus is a circle with a cross below it; grounding is suggested, and a connection between the "celestial" and the "mundane." The image is reminiscent of women's genitals beneath a pregnant belly.
Mars is a circle with an arrow reminiscent of the Sagittarius glyph. That arrow is about attaining a one-pointed goal. Mars is designed to penetrate. Penetration requires identifying, seeking and hitting the mark. There is an element of precision required, and danger suggested. That arrow, the working end of Mars, is grounded in the circle; perhaps the world. It's focused upwardly, on an idea or goal (incidentally, at the angle of an erect penis meeting a pair of balls). Mars rules Aries, which is about self and initiative; and Scorpio, the sign associated with the genitals.
Most women's physical sexual responses are more closely aligned with what we think of as Venus, which is a biophilic kind of energy. Mars may be about conquering and impregnating, but obviously it can be accessed on a holistic level -- and that's one direction we need to go.
What astrology does not generally admit is how profoundly corrupted Venus and Mars are right now. A few examples will suffice. If Venus is about emotional intelligence, beauty and what we value, think of how these are stamped on (or out) by advertising, which manipulates and dictates to us what we're supposed to think and feel. There are thousands of drugs on the market designed to override our feelings. The entire environment is awash in chemicals that mimic female hormones (called xenoestrogenic compounds), disrupting both male and female hormonal processes, psychology and I believe our sexual signaling.
Women, more closely associated with Venus, are in a double bind. On the one hand, they are told that to have any value, they must go out and work and be like men. Raising children has been devalued (including by economics) to the point where few people do it full time, which is a recipe for society falling apart. Their biology is still in tune with the physical necessities of children and partnerships, while their minds are being trained to deny these things and participate in the world, if only out of economic necessity. Even the role of Venus as caregiver is being pathologized out of existence; "caregiving" is a psychological buzzword for a woman denying her own needs, and is considered something to remedy.
Many men are gradually growing out of their conquering warrior roles, and becoming more attuned to the full spectrum of experience, which includes intuitive responsiveness to relationship partners, to the needs of children and life in a holistic way. Yet they too are in a double bind; this is extremely difficult in a world that does not value this psychic posture. We still live in a world of women who often don't know how to handle male sensitivity or emotional availability; who assume, perhaps out of ignorance, conditioning or convenience, that men are impervious to pain -- and this itself is a profound double bind, and one that has not been identified in any gender studies discussion that I've ever encountered.
As relates to men, I have another question: how do we handle women opening up to the full spectrum of their sexuality? By its inherent many-valent nature, there are episodes from the lives of sexually awake women that would explicitly exclude men. Others might involve other men. Ultimately the freedom to express the prerogative of what amounts to infinite erotic potential must be hers exclusively, if it is to mean anything at all, and I believe that men embracing the erotic freedom of women will be a key tipping point in female equality to men.
We can see that the world is in chaos right now. James Hillman, one of the preeminent Jungians of the 20th century, talks about how in Greek mythology, Venus would call to Chaos every night and they would made love. She would seduce him into not completely destroying the world. The role of Venus is to stop this beautiful world from being swallowed up by insanity.
Yet right now there is an overwhelming amount of chaos for Venus to embrace, including hormonal chaos that scrambles the body's signals; the chaos of a world at war; and a world in economic transition/transformation based on a previous collapse of values. For another, there is the constant influence that she be more like Mars: one-pointed. She is pressured constantly to close her mind to the profound beauty of life, and cease to be biophilic. We know that she's being conditioned or pressured to shut down to the pain of war, and that it's working -- otherwise we would be hearing more from her.
Shutting down will not work, is not working. We need more sensitivity, not less. We need to focus on goals, but not at the expense of reality. And we need to consciously embrace the chaos that is gradually enveloping us. How do we call to the chaos with love, and not try to delete it, filter it out or stick it in a folder? How do we engage the chaos -- perhaps as a creative source?
Venus wants to say: I can take on chaos. I can make you feel wonderful, and take the edge off of your desire to destroy. I can embrace anything (and this does need to include emotionally sensitive men). For us who are alive today, this is a political task, an environmental necessity, a relational task and a sexual one as well: it has a name, Kaleo. This is the most divine gesture of loving the universe, the core cosmic dharma of Venus.