Male Sexuality and Global Economics

A group of men decided to build a house with both hands tied behind their backs. It took a long time but they eventually got the house built. It wasn’t much fun—they got on each others’ nerves—and it was a botched job at every stage, from the shaky foundation to the roof which leaked at the first sign of rain.

Men have tried for 10,000 years to build a civilization with both hands behind their backs. After one-hundred centuries we’re headed for a showdown with global warming. Plus our planet is ravaged by war, rape and poverty. We have made great progress in our ability to hurt and destroy each other.

Women, Patriarchy and War
Men cut women out of the decision-making process at the beginning of history—that’s one hand lost. It was probably at an early war-council meeting (women still included), when the women present objected going to war with a nearby tribe. That was it. They were banished from affairs of state. They became property. And to make it seem logical, they were declared inferior, irrational and hysterical to boot. When they lost their sons in battle and became hysterical, men knew they’d made the right decision. They never looked back.

Thus was born patriarchy, the rule of men over women. Men wear the pants, make the decisions, and are the ultimate authority.

Patriarchy and war go fist-in-fist. War divides men and women like no other issue. When men decided to go the way of their chimp cousins—living by violence, aggression and war—they most likely had to slaughter many women who stood in their way.

Men could have chosen the path of the bonobos, their other ape cousins, who prefer peace. The bonobos have a system for dealing with violence through sexual play. There’s no war among the bonobos and very little violence.

It is war that defines the civilization that men have created. History is riddled with tales of war and the needless deaths that accompany it. Today war is our main preoccupation and our most cherished and fundamental delusion.

Of course there have been some “pre-civilized cultures” that resisted patriarchal values, just as there’ve always been men who align themselves with the life-giving force of women. Need it be said that not all women see male civilization as a disaster?

Men Disown Themselves
Once they demoted women, men had to junk aspects of themselves that they deemed inferior. Things that seemed “sissy-like.” This is the “second hand” that men tie behind their backs. Men weaken their human nature by “writing-off” those “softer” aspects. It makes them unbalanced. You hear about men becoming “unglued,” going off their rocker and shooting up the whole family.

Extremely insecure about their own manhood, they attack anyone who doesn’t measure up to their arbitrary, mythical standards. Thus was born the ten-inch penis and cojones the size of watermelons.

Sexual identity is a life-long problem for men. Little boys have to pretend toughness. They are initiated and indoctrinated into the male-pretend-club. They have to maintain the lie, the lie that’s been promulgated for 10,000 years—that we’re superior to women, we don’t need them to be complete, but they need us. It’s our favorite plot line.

Men Trash Sex
Sex is a difficult issue for men. Their “superiority” rests on their being the male sex. And the male sex is bound up with their sexuality. Male sexuality has everything to do with women, (not to leave out those who choose men) who are “inferior.” So we have unbalanced men, their hands tied, coming up against healthy sexual women. What’s going to happen?

Jailing of women for prostitution, women’s productive (sexual) rights taken from them, child prostitution, sexual slavery, rape and violence against women ad nauseam—just what you’d expect.

Shooting themselves in the foot or somewhere, men have managed to make sex—the most beautiful, pleasurable and meaningful activity between humans—ugly, suspect and crime-ridden. That’s not an easy thing to do.

The horrible treatment of women down through the ages has been well documented. DOWN through the Ages Girls still grow up learning they’re not enough, not pretty enough, not virgin enough, so they better defer to boys. Freud made it official: the basic problem with girls is they lack a penis.

Capitalism
Patriarchy functions to keep property and wealth. It’s a noble enterprise, for nobles and the wealthy. Capitalism is its offshoot. The rich can have their cake, the masses their mush.

Just as the Vatican, the role model of patriarchy, is as terrified of women priests as Muslims are of bhurka-less women, capitalism itself is wary of women (actual women not fake men) finding a place at the top table.

Women have always been considered dangerous and powerful. It’s no different today. There’s a reason that men are deathly afraid of women. After all, where is the man that cannot be spun around—in both directions—by a woman’s little finger?

Democratic socialism, the arch enemy of free capitalism, has always been treated in the USA as a virulent, poisonous strain of the worst toxin. Democratic socialism puts women and children first. That’s the ultimate slap-in-the-face for patriarchal man.

Conclusion
Our built-with-no-hands civilization is crumbling, its basic flaws visible in violence-torn countries around the globe. It’s a thoroughly masculine product, stamped up-and-down with “incompetent,” “substandard” and “incomprehensible.” Global warming will finish it off.

The current fight to save the economy is already going backwards, towards the failed male framework of the past. It’s the wrong fight.

If we don’t change our mindset around women, we’ll always end up back where we started. How can it be otherwise with men at the helm? Men have to conquer their fear, take a chance that they won’t be obliterated by women. It’s a worthy risk.

With their hands freed, men (and now women) might have a fighting chance at a peaceful, constructive world, one ruled by the life-giving pleasure principle, not by suffering, deprivation and death.

My name is Jerry Schaefer. I'm in a second marriage of twenty-six years.
I attended Marquette University and the University of Iowa, and I've taught at both the college and secondary level.

In most of my 68 years on this planet I've been curious and perplexed at what it means to be male. Why is it so difficult for males and females to relate?

A little over a year ago I published a book, Women: DOWN through the Ages, How Lies have Shaped our Lives, it's about how women have been treated through history. (http://www.womendown.blogspot.com)It's a topic I write and speak about.

Women have always gotten the short end of the stick. That's why we find ourselves in dire straits today, our civilization at risk.

Men are too entrenched to admit they're wrong. We're scared to death of women. That's why we have to keep them down.

cutbanks@gmail.com
562.429.6979