I have literally thought about the battle of the sexes for decades, studied it in our active society. I once thought of writing a paper refuting Freud’s penis envy theory, but realized that I was 1) too angry about it to be heard, and 2) too young to write anything serious. I needed to do more research, but not by books—by life.
Being that I am an American female, this article may fall on deaf ears regardless of any sense, logic, or accuracy here displayed since I also hold no Western degree of any kind. As this question developed around a personal odyssey, the subjective cannot be forsaken, yet I will endeavor to keep to context; laundry lists are unwelcome. Now that we have gone through all the detracting distractions with which I could be dismissed, let’s move on. To read or not to read, that is your question for I am compelled to write. I am interested in resolution, not further mucking up the works as there are enough people doing that already.

Some of the well-trod ground on the topic should be reviewed. Women are seen as objects, property of men, not equal to them. This is still international law as far as I know. Men and women cannot be friends; sex is part of the equation sooner or later. Boys will be boys. The excessive deference to males is not just from adult male insistence. Women act as gatekeepers here, too. Women in the West, however, can be viewed as hedonistic hell-spawn (Girls Gone Wild) as our society has coaxed adult females out of the home and into boardrooms and/or broom closets (all connotations intended). In the West we have seen the disintegration of family and, by extension, community. Women here seem to be pushed more and more to be multifaceted, to do and be everything. This is done through work, social expectation, and advertising. As American influence is strong in other societies (movies, music, computers, sitcoms) other nations are also experiencing women moving away from tradition. This produces fear in some, and I’ve wondered about this, pondered the psychology of that reaction.

Growing up, all I wanted to be was a mother, even through my athletic stage. I didn’t like to play dolls because a doll is most certainly not a baby. I knew that finding a husband was more than just chemistry, or a meeting of the minds. He had to be as dedicated as I was toward a stable household to raise children. However, I saw girl after girl, woman after woman, having to raise a grown man right alongside the infant. The adult male often took up so much time, demanding so much attention in so many different ways, that the actual infant got minimal attention at best. The developing infant played second fiddle to the adult male who seemed frozen in time instead of being the audience. For decades I watched this play out, only occasionally coming across an adult male who found it unnecessary to hound or corral his female partner for attention; each one was highly attractive regardless of visage, and almost always in a stable relationship. In my first adult relationship which lasted about three years, I had a singular moment with his mother after a couple of years’ association. She was coaching me on how to juggle responsibility and further development of her son, my paramour. I said to her, “I’m not here to raise him. That was your job.” She looked at me with concern and hurt in her eyes; she was a single mother after all. She paused then saying, “If that’s your attitude, you’re going to be a lonely woman.” She was right. I have been because this is precisely the dilemma that has peaked with violence against women which seems pervasive throughout written history, but the reporting of such heinous incidents have been a flurry of late. Equally distressing alongside the facts of each case is the almost complete absence of anyone adding up the equation. I only saw one article from the Guardian a few days ago after months of watching the incidents collect like metal filings on a magnet. That seemed to occur right after I pointed out the absence on an Internet public forum.

I often wonder about elements of society—social interactions, developments, unspoken structures. I’ve pondered sisterhood or the lack thereof, brotherhood (in places excessive, in others non-existent), platonic love, romantic love, spiritual love, con jobs, backdoor deals, swindles, poverty, excessive wealth, jealousy, etc., etc. The few people with whom I have spent enough time to move passed surfaces discover this ongoing investigation and are occasionally asked the questions I ask of myself. I’ve heard it said before that men are afraid of women. I’m not sure when I heard it or from whom, but it was from a woman. I thought that was balderdash initially, but I watched—everyone. I watched for indication that it was through some other origin. I waited, and waited. I saw the thing I could not name operating subtly between friends, family, “strangers”, couples, lovers, singles, parents, elders . . . almost everyone. It was untouched by religious affiliation, age, cultural background, or any other demographic. One day, maybe 2003-2004, as I was in the company of a male friend, this topic was broached. He confirmed for himself and for all the other men he knew in general that, yes, men are afraid of women. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around that. Aside from physique, men have had the whole power structure buttoned up for centuries. How could they be insecure when they’ve had the run the whole place? Virtually every woman in power has had to make specific concessions for the male counterparts to allow her as a figurehead. Currently, some women are reinventing themselves into something of a psychological hermaphrodite, macho-with-a-yoni (or would that be pig-in-a-blanket). Like the movie Boomerang, nurturing feelings are set aside and the war between the sexes goes into overdrive. I expressed my dilemma to my friend. He replied that, speaking for himself, women seemed to be so thoroughly capable that men were unnecessary. I accepted and appreciated his sharing with me, then as now, but something about that continued to bother me. I felt like I was staring at an open wound while everyone else ignored, shrugged, or took it as a given. I just couldn’t bring myself to do that.

Researches lead me all over the place—scientific studies, Reality by Peter Kingsley, The Biology of Transcendence by Joseph Chilton Pearce, the documentaries Thrive, Happy, The Century of the Self, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, Dark Legacy. The real breakthrough, however, was the breaking of my own heart about my father. If we were to consider the storyline of Dangerous Liaisons, applying an incestuous twist to the four (Valmont as my father, the Marquise eventually taken up by my sister while my mother and I were the plush toys), it would be close to my experience. As awful as that sounds, I’ve derived an overarching lesson which is very pertinent to the initial topic here. It is compelling enough for me to admit the state of my childhood without going into further detail. The effect of “Valmont” upon a child’s mind desirous of a father’s platonic love, was to in later years develop a sense of unloved, fringe existence—to be uncomfortable constantly, to always be different somehow, and a complete lack of ease with humanity. The world of nature is still a refuge for me despite the aging of the body, the world of people remaining inscrutable, unpredictable, painful, unrelenting, and aloof. If desire was ever met, the consequential psychological price was astronomical. This is a direct result, implicit and explicit, of this familial history. Many may think I have just laid a huge blame game on my father. The point of the revelation is just how important men really are in the family unit, how relevant a man is to the psychological health of the family as a whole, for generations. If I knew the words, if I could explain clearly just how important he was and still is to me, would he keep playing these head games, pulling these ultimately wasteful power trips? However, the opportunity to work toward resolution has passed. It is no longer for me to do. I have said all that I can say, and it has fallen on deaf ears. Relevance of woman is a no-brainer, but its’ gravitas is intentionally obscured and dismissed by the male population who are afraid of woman-as-person, preferring woman-as-object because it is a path of least resistance.

As a young adult, I was willing to do whatever needed to be done for the family, except being perpetually on welfare (a high stress, deep depression life) or having a physically abusive partner. I sought a man accepting of being the mature role model 24/7. Most men I saw either barely interacted with children or competed with children for attention. Boot camp in the military is specifically designed to mature men. All those life lessons deemed unnecessary with a doting mother around are forced upon the unprepared son with such force as to break the immature ego to consider the very real possibility of disability, dismemberment, and/or death. A soldier is trained to literally put himself in harm’s way. The childish ego has to be broken so as to foster the seed of responsibility for someone else (fellow soldiers) and to do exactly as he is told (by another man). Drill sergeants have to face and smack down any paternal garbage in recruits which impedes the progress of the fledgling soldier toward his sworn duty. This makes the young male soldier emotionally process childhood hang-ups while forcing him to take care of himself, or pushes the recruit toward early breakdown. Acceptance or rejection has to be chosen and resolved before actual field experience. To do otherwise can cost lives and objectives. Once the trained soldier comes home, Mama doesn’t know her little boy anymore. However, the challenge of the feminine archetype (which I once despised as it is too often the excuse of choice to avoid or dismiss the finite individual) is unmet in many respects. Soldiers discover a masculine way to be responsible to and for another, but may still misconstrue the feminine expression of the same. Grandmother, mother, and small female child may be understood, but sister/lover/wife/adult daughter/fellow soldier is simply not. At this point in history that may be understandable because we are confused by and large. (Yes, I can hear the chorus of ladies’ voices high and low in protest.) Be patient. Hear me out.
The military is a perfect incubator for this subject since women seem to be provoked in so many different directions to, “be all that you can be”. However, it is the competence, attention to detail, that can make men feel fear towards women as a whole. If she’s pretty that’s even worse. The Invisible War details the social climate with which women in the military contend. Anne-Marie Slaughter recently published an article in The Atlantic about her experience being a well-educated woman employed at government policy level, leaving her career to attend to her family, all euphemisms aside. She explained at some length the process of how she initially told young women aspiring to executive suites that the balance between family and career can be struck—“we can have it all”—to her current perspective. As can happen in life, experience trumped theory. It was entirely necessary in Mrs. Slaughter’s case that family had to come first. Having a smidgeon of Cherokee in my family, I have always thought that one’s talent should dictate what one does, how one interacts and benefits society as a whole instead of gender. Having been raised in the Deep South for some seventeen years, I was acutely aware that others did not share this sentiment. I thought I was pretty well versed on motherhood, but I learned much more from the scientific studies highlighted in The Biology of Transcendence. The evidence from these studies compels me to view the mother’s presence in the home to be more vital than any money-making career. This does not mean that I condone men insisting that women be chained to the house, literally or metaphorically, nor girls disallowed to explore the world while children; females must not be limited to motherhood during a time when over-population threatens the planet. A child’s curiosity and freedom of experience must be given large amounts of space for the restrictions of adulthood come fast enough, yet it does take a village to raise a child. This has nothing whatsoever to do with an inept woman, but everything to do with identifying abhorrent behavior early. Abhorrent behavior drives the cycle of violence by harboring, protecting delusion through neglect or willful ignorance—idiot compassion.

It is a theory that fear of woman-as-person develops into an over-compensation in effort for the male to convince himself he is more than good enough for her. However, the dichotomy of his internal split shows him actively demanding to be equal, wanted, revered, and definitely not ordered around even as he gives orders, is condescending, and plays come-here-go-away as well as any feline. William Pollack, Ph.D., has said, “Men are shame-phobic, frightened to death to show shame and feel shame. They’ll go out of their way to deny anything that will bring them shame.” “It’s tied into the codes of masculinity. Men feel like if they are shamed by others, then they’re less of a man.” Problematic issues are compartmentalized. “It’s not really repressed or forgotten; it’s pushed aside because it needs to be.” This instability in a good-hearted man is a beacon for the misogynist who will hurt every woman he can (especially the ones who love him), psychologically more than not, but physically when the opportunity arises. He has no sincerity toward processing or progression regardless of his words. Misogynists are glad to provide proof to justify fears via entrapment. For example, Edward Bernays orchestrated a group of debutantes into breaking the taboo of women smoking cigarettes in public at an outdoor political function while enticing media members to the same function under the auspices of a major news story. The girls lit up after a signal from Bernays and the taboo around women smoking was broken by means of mass media manipulation. This has nothing to do with helping women break oppression for at the very same time this one moment was contorted into proof that women wanted penises. For me, nothing could be farther from the truth. Women to this day just want to be equal and to please. Another recent study discovered that women lie more often to protect someone else whereas men lie more to protect themselves. We all want validation, male or female. No one wants to be shamed (unless there’s something neurotic there), yet women get shamed by men a lot. For me, we got into this mess because decade after decade, century after century idiot compassion (aka enabling) has rotted society to the core. Bill Cosby hit the head of the nail in this quote: “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” Switch out the last word with “men”, and I think we’d be closer to the functional problem. This does not mean that women should disregard man-as-person. Each situation must be assessed and handled evenly based on its’ own merits.

This entrapment is what makes me state that we women are confused about our own role. Bernays really did believe that people were stupid, and with cunning disgust he began to roll back the social strata, reshaping it for selective gratification via manipulation of females. Females, being the hub of the family unit, in turn would influence males and each other. Women were less educated then. What wisdom women had about their place in the world was being handed to men by men through scientific discovery which always gave credit to science but no mention of the age-old wisdom which science merely proved correct. Yes, there were many superstitions, but many were not. The result of this separated family by generation. Bernays revealed the way to separate the individual from the village, effectively destroying the village. Many were farmers and uneducated folk in the early 20th century so that Bernays was like the Walrus from Alice in Wonderland. We still feel Bernays’ influence in every possible form of media to this day. For me, he is the father of malignant business and government plus founder of every conspiracy of the modern world. This has had nothing whatsoever to do with his ancestry, and everything to do with who he chose to be in the world and how his specter still haunts us today. What he taught other men to do destabilized the human community to such a degree that we now face a threatened planet. Discovering how to find value in each other without monetary issue, to embrace noble responsibility instead of hate-filled selfish gratification, is tantamount to correcting our kamikaze course. Mothers supported by society for their contribution to humanity can raise balanced children, physically, emotionally, and mentally healthy generations to come. Without support from the children’s father, a partner, direct family, or extended family (which constitutes community), the kids will be maladjusted, emotionally remote, displaced people who drive themselves and us to greater heights of neuroses, estrangement, and lack of empathy. One person, male or female, is incapable of doing everything solo. With all the people we have on the planet right now, it is ridiculous that we try. The well-being of children is jeopardized by inadequate social nurturing.

I once came to a funny realization. Women are about food, and men are about fun. Females nurture the body (at the very least of involvement) and males know how to enjoy themselves. This may be overly simplistic, but I think in large percentage true. A child needs guidance on both. To highlight one over the other is to produce a lop-sided person. Yes, I’m telling on myself. I’m lop-sided and I know it, so I’m actively working to correct the heavy lean in one direction. It has been found that even with mental disabilities encoded in the DNA, with a nurture-rich environment the disabilities can be overcome and surpassed (See Zeitgeist: Moving Forward). My progenitor being who he chose to be presented me with the implicit belief that life isn’t fun, but serious business—business it was unhappy about, for, or with me. Friends have noted this behavior, this view. I’ve been under its’ control for years, but my husband is helping me change that. Women have to put themselves in check, not because we’re asking for anything, but because we are not asking for anything. What we have asked for is treated like impossibility, castle-in-the-sky over-reach. We want to be equal because we are adults. We want to be valid within society because we are responsible. We want to be persons—with aspirations, dreams, brilliant ideas, and sound realities. We are done with being a bargaining chip, a bet on a roulette table, prey, a bed-warmer, a pestilence, a trophy and a baby machine. One Billion Rising is about a lot more than sexual violence against women. Sexual violence is the symptom, not the cause. The cause is man insisting on being head-of-household while being the biggest baby in the room.
To the parish priest in Italy and to Bruno Volpe, women are just trying to please. Demands are made upon women, making us choose between untenable choices without additional options; lab rodents have very little variety, so your ideals have little validity. Delusion is derived from an internal myth of “should be” ideals. Your criticisms ring of sour grapes and dried prunes, hiding behind age-old threadbare veils of logic to cover your own lack of control and deep-seeded insecurity. The Old Boys’ Network has worked hard and effectively for centuries to ensure women would always need you, always be subjected to a male authority. Whether by business, fashion, or some other social convention, other men aside from you are telling women that this is the way it has to be—be all that you can be—or your kids will go hungry. We are done with the squeeze-play, the entrapment of women for which women are blamed. Ladies, we seemed to have spent more time placating grown men rather than raising children. We destroy sisterhood for men. We pamper men so much that the Newtown shooter started with his mother before going to the school killing several female teachers and small children of both genders, also largely female. The misogynistic fervor going through numerous cultures right now shows up in news articles such as Kenyan mothers in Nairobi being held hostage for payment of medical bills after having a child—even beating the new mothers for trying to leave the building. These mothers can be held for days, weeks, even months at a time.

What I am certain of is that we need to have conversations with each other, amongst ourselves as genders and amongst the collective that must be reformed as community. Mature behavior deals with what is. Immature behavior deals with self-centered motivations backed by impractical ideals. Women undermine the networks they create by harsh speech (gossip, rumor, and slander) while men ignore how actions affect the event horizon. As Chogyam Trungpa once said, “Women are crazy and men are stupid.” To put it another way, Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan said, “Women must be contained and men must be lead.” Women must remain calm and clear while explaining what is obvious to them, and men must be willing to follow the women that can do this. Women out there who are mothers must really be supported by every faction of society at large in every possible way. Women who are not pregnant and not indigenous must really consider abstaining from having children in effort to help take care of the ones already here on the planet. Men must talk to men, mature themselves and develop empathy for the whole of humanity, not just those who walk like you.

But wait! What would I say about penis envy? I think it’s less penis envy and more orgasmic jealousy. A woman’s capacity for sexual pleasure far exceeds a man’s and yet his understanding of what such pleasure does for her state of mind (much less how this transfers to the children) is so minimal that he becomes insecure when faced with her variety instead of more secure. An article by Naomi Wolf, A New Sexual Revolution, reveals just some of the specifics of new scientific discoveries about a woman’s experience of sexual pleasure as well as the real damage of rape in her new book, Vagina: A New Biography. If men could by and large come to understand what a healthy, satisfying sexual relationship does for a woman, he may be more relaxed about his meaning. If men could understand how important it is for them to mature to benefit the entire human race, they might worry less about their stature. In regard to the female insecurity Freud labeled with the male sex organ, every human being wants to be a valid person. None wish to be dismissed, but this is what misogynists do if given the opportunity for they have no empathy for the female of humanity. In the same way boys sending pictures or videos of girls in compromising positions sneers at girls as objects of derision because the girls are experiencing as sexuality-as-persons so Bernays taught advertising and industry to prey upon woman. What do I say? Penis envy my foot! It is a con job through and through and no one gets out alive much less sane.