I came across this article from Elephant Journal which is so relevant to our cohort. I hope to spark your reactions...

 
What Women won't let Men See, The Most Magnetizing Thing about Us

I'm talking about our desire.

We women aren't taught very nice things about our desire. Actually, we are taught not to trust it, that it's dangerous, and that following it will not serve us well.

We are taught to suppress our desire for love and deep emotional connection so that we don't fall into the stereotype of the woman who wants more from a man than he wants to give her.

We are taught to suppress our desire for food since a voracious appetite often isn't seen as a feminine quality. And we are taught to suppress our desire for sex because, according to our popular culture, a woman who succumbs to her desire for sex hands over her chips and gives up her power.

It's no wonder we don't let men see the full extent of our desire.

In the early stages of developing my practice as a relationship and sexuality coach, my focus was on dismantling my own conditioning and untangling my own knots around relationships and sexuality so that I could guide others in doing the same.

As such, when I see clients stuck in a spot I was once stuck, I often share relevant parts of my story so that they may refer to it as a road map. Since I speak with a lot of women who tell me they don't have much of a relationship with their desire, I'll share my experience in that location with the hope that it will be helpful as a guide.

For most of my life, sexual desire was something that "happened to me." I had picked up the belief that freely admitting my desire for sex meant giving up my power and, like many women, I responded to that belief by 1.) Suppressing my desire, and 2.) Disassociating from feeling it at all.

When enough women suppress or disassociate from our desire, a sense of scarcity is created and our sex becomes a commodity. Men seem to want sex more than women do but women are the ones holding the key to the gate, a gate which we are taught to guard and protect. As such, we learn to live as the "desired" and rarely ever as the "desiring."

It becomes absolutely normal to have no strong sense of whether we want to enter his gate when our attention is constantly wrapped up in whether or not to let him through our own gate. And even when we do have our own desire, there's no urgency to express it because we can almost certainly count on him to express his first since that's the unspoken agreement we operate by as a culture.

I played right into this agreement. As long as I knew a man was interested in me, I rarely ever experienced the desire for sex originating from my body strongly enough to compel me to act on it. Don't get me wrong, I felt desire. Feeling a man's desire for me could inspire my desire for him, but without his desire leading, I was usually disconnected from feeling my own.

I learned to get by accepting and enjoying what came to me, like a flame attracting moths. But by allowing others' desire to lead me, I experienced my desire only faintly and didn't place much importance in it. As a result, the nuance, the intricacy of my desire never mattered all that much.

That is, until I got to feel what it was like on the other end of the equation. I had begun dating a man whose sex was more of a commodity than mine was. He got more attention from women than I got from men. He didn't come easily. He didn't chase me. And I still wanted him... badly. For the first time in my life, I was not a flame attracting and settling for whichever moths flew my way. This time I was a moth and I began to learn what it felt like to be compelled toward a flame.

I began to feel what it was like to have my own desire.

In order for anything to happen with this man, I had to be the one who initiated most often. At first I interpreted this as a lack of interest on his part and I was hurt and frustrated. I whined and complained and became angry. "How could he treat me this way?" But my thrashing wouldn't move him. Instead, he taught me how to get what I wanted with him. He said, "Let me feel your desire. I'll come if I'm truly called...not by your sense of entitlement, but by your true desire."

It wasn't easy but I began to let him feel it. And once I did, I began to notice that every time I expressed any sort of desire, he would meet my desire. If I told him I wanted to go to dinner, he was game for it. If I told him I wanted to take our relationship deeper, he would make more room in his heart for me. I began to notice that when I really wanted something, my desire had a lot of power to move him.

He would actually stop what he was doing and magnetize to me if I let him feel how much I wanted him. And if I wasn't feeling very much desire, he couldn't be moved. What we did or didn't do depended pretty much exclusively on what I wanted and how willing I was to ask for it. It was dreadful but it was also amazing because I was becoming, for the first time in my life, a woman whose desire actually mattered.

What I learned is that while it's terrifying to take that much responsibility for the desire in a relationship, there's nothing more empowering. I think a lot of women go through life operating under conditioning telling us that having the desire in a relationship originate from us means somehow we are not a good woman, not a prize, not valuable enough. We are taught to believe that our worth is dependent on how persistently a man pursues us, how intently he desires our sex. We are even taught that we ought to withhold our desire, hide it, make him jump through a few hoops before we ever let on that we have it.

It's sad, really. Many of us never get the chance to see the power we have to move him with our desire...to see just how influential it is. To see our desire inspire his desire. And we never get to experience what men experience: that in the possibility of rejection, of getting it wrong, and in doing it anyway despite those risks, there is immense freedom and power. Freedom to express our full selves through our desire, and power to magnetize him to us simply because our desire is magnetizing.

Relephant:

Author: Summer Engman

Editor: Travis May

Photos: Wikipedia

Incorrect source, offensive, or found a typo? Email us (please put title in subject bar of email so we'll be able to fix). Or do you want to write for Elephant?

{Waylon H. Lewis C Enterprises 2014: Use Rights in perpetuity. Ownership remains with author.

I believe they like attention and flattery from men and that they can love individual men because of the kind of person the man is... but in my gut I don't believe that they feel desire for men or maleness...  

Funny (not funny) but I do not feel that way about non-US women...  

But hell, I was raised in the age of Dworkin and spent too many years in the academic cesspool to feel otherwise.

You don't think US women desire men and masculinity?  Our society would cease to exist if that were the case.  I agree with the article that women are conditioned to suppress their desires for many reasons- One, sex opens us to becoming vulnerable and could lead to us getting hurt (emotionally).  Which is why, I think, women in this community find it empowering because there is the freedom to express our sexuality without the risk of heartbreak or judgement or worrying if the guy will call us in the morning.

I was voicing my gut level response or feelings... I agree with the article. I agree with you. I just think men are also effected by the cultural conditioning the article speaks about and the general cultural atmosphere... That is what I attribute my screwed up gut level response to: a counter-response to what is going on in US women...  

And in my case, it was exaggerated by being raised by graduate level educated white women and then going to that level myself in the early 00's and even working in academia...

I honestly believe that women & men really don't like each other much. There are of course exceptions, but overall the two genders seem to merely tolerate each other more than anything else. Just my musings as an objective and disintetested party watching the hetero interactions of my friends, family & coworkers

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I don't just mean I like having sex with women... which I do. I like them. Not all of them, of course. But I don't like a lot of guys either.  

But as you said, there's exceptions.

Sorry ladies.  
That's not Reality

Yes I've travelled quite a bit for business, sometimes spending weeks or months in faraway places. My interaction with the local women told me a lot about their attitudes about sexuality, culture, and views of the world in general. Working with almost 100% men gave me insight into their views as well. And no matter where I went, the general consensus from  both sides basically said that they go thru the motions to maintain the status quo. It really surprised me to find that attitude so globally thought. This is the kind of stuff that makes great thesis.

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In my gut, I believe that is complete and utter nonsense. And, to be clear, “maleness” is not equal to being an asshole.  

It’s not Andrea Dworkin you need to take issue with (and I have never agreed with AD, for the record). The messages that young girls absorb and take to heart about what is acceptable and not acceptable, when it comes to their sexuality is, largely, delivered to them by women closest to them which, in turn, has been delegated to those women, by men.  

Women may be the ones directly delivering the primary message about what constitutes being a “good girl” vs being a slut/whore. But, women do this because this is what men communicate that they want.

The entire Madonna/Whore dichotomy is male driven. Young men learn very early on to buy into, and propagate, the “lady in the street whore in the sheets” mythology.  Most carry this with them throughout their lives. There are girls you fuck and girls you take home to mamma. Boys will be boys and girls will be sluts.  

Girls hear this, and respond accordingly. There is tremendous pressure to conform. Not all do, thankfully. Or at least not all, forever. As the author of this article is saying: it can take a lot of time and reflection to untangle this jumble of socially programmed BS

Sharp and Hound  both? You have your hands quite full lol.

I am enjoying exploring the author's other writings too.

for every man and woman in the US.  

I have to believe that desire and passion are the keys to success in everything in life. Part of what makes us attractive and desirable - no matter our gender or outward appearances. Sexual desire is just one aspect of it, but an essential one. How many relationships end because the desire and passion (thus the attraction) is gone? Or is it simply pent-up and unexpressed?

I doubt I have much time to spend on anyone in any capacity, if they have no desire - sexual or otherwise.

Thanks for sharing the article

to agree with the author that women are socialized so dreadfully counter to what would make for honest interactions. And hotplants is sooo right- it's a bizarre feedback loop between the genders. And all of us are responsible for it on some level.

I remember as a young woman discovering the power of my own desire and never looking back. It was like a veil had been lifted that allowed me to enjoy my own and other people's bodies so much more! I remember in particular a moment when I realized how unusual this was: I had grown up with my father always telling me that all a boy wants was what's between my legs. Then one day I was telling him about this new guy I had the hots for, and of course, my dad repeated his mantra. And then I turned to him and said, "But Dad- what if that's all I want from him?!" I've never before or since seen my father speechless! Lol!

And Skarphedin is so right- sexuality is played out so differently in other countries. I loved fucking my way around the world!! And I was always a little disappointed to come back home to the US, because the sex was so politically laden. I blame it on how we raise kids in this culture. Girls are taught to not be sexual with a guy unless there's love or an emotional connection. But when we are in puberty, our hormones are all a rush, and our bodies have desires. Our social conditioning requires us to lie to ourselves (and others) about what we feel about the boy who sends our pulse racing. We make up a story about him to give ourselves permission to desire him physically- we tell ourselves that he really is good/worthy when we really have no clue. We confuse our physical desire with the socially-imposed need to require some (most likely nonexistent) emotional connection. Then we involve ourselves in relationships that would have been better off as quickies, but because we are not taught that there are differences between our physical desires and an emotional connection, or that they can exist together or completely separate, we have these toxic relationships, get heartbroken, experience slut shaming, etc. All bad news- and all because we weren't taught and hence weren't allowed to feel or experience or act on pure physical desire for it's own sake.  

While girls are taught, "don't open your legs!!" and "Make sure he loves you!", boys are not really taught much of anything except that some girls are sluts and others you marry. If they have more progressive parents, they might be taught to use a condom. So they go out into the world bewildered as to why girls aren't as excited to get naked together as they are. Then they learn to lie to get their desires met, and once they do, they chuck her in the "slut" category and move on.  

There's never a focus on pleasure. It's so sad, really. While traveling, I had so much amazing sex with men from cultures that are all about the pleasure two can experience together. But American men seemed mostly out to get a notch in their bedpost, and wouldn't enjoy the sex purely for the pleasure. That sex was so empty. :

-- Modified on 3/6/2015 6:44:09 AM

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saying you don't believe that women in the US feel desire for men or maleness... ‘cause you were raised in the age of AD and spent too many years in the cesspool of academia to feel otherwise.  

positively inspiring……

-- Modified on 3/6/2015 2:42:47 AM

What does "maleness" mean, anyway? It takes on different meanings in different cultures, always filtered by the observer's personal world view.  

And it also changes within cultures along socioeconomic, regional, and age strata. I'm not a fan of "American maleness" in the pop-culture sense. I'm a big fan of American maleness when it comes to mature gentlemen, but even then their ideas of what it means to be men is formed by a society that has huge hang-ups about sex and gender.

But I adore men. Some you have to take with a grain of salt, bless 'em, but I do adore them. They're delicious.

Your inspiring point is a great example of your typical willful misunderstanding and misrepresentation.  

It is obvious I wasn't trying to be inspiring.  

My post was not critical of women in general or even any specific women. I also made it clear that my feelings were simply that, feelings, and not reality.  

If you had read it with anything other than your resentful and jaundiced eyes you would have seen that I agreed with the article posted in the OP.  

The fact is, the social atmosphere on elite college campuses in the mid-90's to when I left in early 00's was poisonous. It simply was. And it was because of women like AD and McKinnon and the Women's Studies Depts. I have no idea what it is like today and made no representations to that effect.  

The fact that you don't agree with her is irrelevant. It is typical of your facile posting style. It gives the false impression that AD and KM were not mainstream Women's Studies scholars at that point in time and that their writing was not influential.  

Bah, in case you haven't figured it out, I very much dislike your posts.

Males and females are not the same same.  

What makes them different are maleness and femininity.

The OP posted a very insightful article—-to which you responded: “Wow. Fascinating. I have never "really" believed US women are attracted to men... etc…which is not what this author is saying, at all. I did not read your post with “resentful and jaundiced eyes”. I read exactly what you wrote, and commented.  

YOU associated the OP with AD—-somehow. Not sure how you got there. But you were the one who made that connection. And, you certainly ‘appear’ to be sourcing your belief that american woman are not attracted to “men or maleness” to an old-school AD style radical feminism. Otherwise—-why even mention her? Or why go on to point out how poisonous you think women studies depth were in the mid 90’s. That has nothing to do with the OP.  

I said:  “It’s not Andrea Dworkin you need to take issue with (and I have never agreed with AD, for the record).” That is not negative---nor were my following comments. This is a discussion board. This is what discussion looks like.  

But, if you choose to view as negative—-or, hell, if you choose to view this post, and any post I’ve ever made or ever will make as “ a stumbling misery of tedium devoid of humor and spirit” ? Knock yourself the fuck out. Because I couldn’t give a squid-fart what you think about my posts

But…yeah…intimate interactions between men and women are set-up for a certain level of failure from the start. “will he think I’m a slut if I sleep with him on the 1st date”?  

If she does he’s happy he got laid. But she’s not the kinda girl he wants to take home to meet the Ps….so he puts her in the slut-bucket.  

If she doesn’t fuck him on the first date, he feels like she’s playing games with him (and she is), because she’s afraid he’ll think she’s a slut….  

And on the other side——gay men are the biggest sluts EVER…..and lesbians bring a U-Haul to the 2nd date….lol…..

And, so it goes

femaleness? And regardless which you mean- define them.  

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Awesome sentence, sounds like it could be line from the Grinch song!

Desire is the beginning of all creation...

It's not just about being physically attractive, moreso I would offer
desire is connected to being openly transparent and honest. Communicating
our longing, asking for what we want and need in all sincerity creates an environment
of comPASSIONate connection. I agree whole heartedly with Master Zen that sexuality
is only one aspect or component of the bigger picture-

Great article!
Vanessa Lady V