I want to make some suggestions as to what Integral gender studies might cover.
First, there’s nothing really new. Wilber’s map is often a way to categorise stuff we already know. It might not have anything new to add.
Second, I think Wilber often fails to realise the potential of his system. I am surprised at the conservative interpretation he places on politics. He does it with gender studies by falling back onto conservative stereotypes and a crude polarity of gender types. Yet the current state of gender studies leads to more radical directions.
Third is the problem of pre- versus post-knowledge scenarios. Wilber’s reading of the developmental spectrum sometimes assumes ignorance of recent discoveries. Thus the early stages become newly ignorant of postmodernism and modernism. But once a discovery has been made all levels must reassess their narratives to take account of the new information. A good example is the gay rights movement. Whilst moral conservatives may reject homosexuality, they can’t ignore it. The gay lobby exists. Similarly the feminist movement has happened. Women have the vote. The integral movement therefore has to take account of current knowledge; it can’t pretend a pre-knowledge ignorance exists for the lower levels.
Okay, now to the IT, or UL quadrant. The biological determinants in gender are complex. It is no longer simply a question of XX and XY chromosomes. The genetic picture is complex and allows considerable variation. There are women with high testosterone levels and men with high oestrogen levels (there are even men who can lactate). There are a number of conditions that cause hermaphroditism, or ambiguous genitalia. Until the age of three months the embryo has no distinct gender. The release of hormones will determine if the cells that form the clitoris/penis will create a normal or large clitoris, or a normal or small penis. The cells that form the labia majora become the scrotum in the male. In ambiguous genitalia the examining doctor cannot determine if the child has a large clitoris or small penis, an enlarged, bulbous vulva or a small scrotum. Sometimes the child will have a penis and a vaginal opening, sometimes testicles and ovaries, or one of each.
Outside of ambiguous genitalia the child may grow up with abnormal hormones that may incline a girl to develop masculine traits and a boy feminine traits. Some genes will determine the amount of body hair, giving some girls facial hair and a masculine body some boys a lack of hair and a feminine body.
There is also some evidence to suggest that genes play a part in psychological disposition. Gender Identity Disorder (or gender dysphoria) is now a recognised condition. It causes boys to identify psychologically with being a girl, and a girl with being a boy. It can cause psychological trauma from a very young age. In some extreme cases boys have attempted to castrate themselves. The recognised solution is to allow the child to grow up as the sex they think they are and to have gender reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy when they enter puberty.
More research is being done, but we can now say with certainty that nature doesn’t deal with simple polarities.
Okay, now to the WE and ITS quadrants. I deal with these together because they are interlinked. At the level of culture there is also considerable variation. Yes, there are average similarities, but it is the exceptions that are the most interesting. The men of the Wodabe tribe of Niger wear make-up and elaborate costumes that make them look feminine. In Sparta girls were taught to wrestle and box with the boys until the age of seven (when the boys went to a separate academy, the girls however continued in martial arts and gymnastics). Several cultures recognise more than two sexes. In some culture transvestitism and androgyny are tolerated and even accorded a special role.
If Integral theory is to be truly integral, then it must understand that the traditional Judeo-Christian gender polarity is just one of many cultural configurations. It is not normative. It is a mistake to think that the lower developmental levels only accept a crude polarity. Some Native American tribes recognised several sexes, including masculine women and feminine men.
Gender polarisation is not a developmental issue. It is cultural.
In addition tribal societies accepted a wide variety of sexual practices and ways of organising their society. Anthropology recognises patriarchal, matriarchal, patrilineal, matrilineal, patrilocal and matrilocal configurations. Some cultures accepted homosexuality, with the Greeks tolerating pederasty and its lesbian equivalent of Sapphism (particularly on Lesbos and in Sparta). The variations are too numerous to mention, save to say that the Judeo-Christian version is not normative. One example however, might suffice. Aristotle called Spartan society a gynarchy, a place where women ruled. Unlike their Athenian counterparts Spartan women could inherit, own and manage property. They were allowed to speak their minds in meetings and they were given an education, with some achieving note as poets and Pythagorean philosophers. They were allowed to have lovers as there were no adultery laws, they also were free to pursue lesbian affairs and to take young girls as mentors. They were taught to be physically strong and the Athenian men admired them for their beauty. The only woman to win an Olympic medal was a Spartan – she was a noted horsetrainer.
Okay, now for a quick glance at the I or UL quadrant. Here I want to make a special note of the theory of reincarnation and Jungian archetypes. The East accepts that men can reincarnate as women and vice versa. One Buddhist contemplation asks the practitioner to understand that every person was once their mother. The aim of some Tantric practices is to integrate and transcend male and female. The god Shiva is sometimes portrayed as the hermaphrodite Ardhanarishvara. The goddess Kali-Durga has fearsome male warrior attributes (similarly the Greco-Roman pantheon allows for greater gender variety than the Judeo-Christian tradition).
Carl Jung developed the theory of archetypes and proposed a quadrant model of the psyche: self, shadow, anima and animus. Anima and animus are the female and male psychological types. However, Jung was quite clear that anima and animus were independent of biological sex. A woman could have a strong animus and a man a strong anima. Jung also wrote extensively on what he called the ‘mysterious conjunction’ and used alchemical symbology to talk about transcending gender stereotypes as part of the individuation process.
I have only skimmed the surface of this vast topic, but what is clear is that Integral gender studies must recognise gender complexity.
This is why it is so disappointing to read Wilber deal in crude polar stereotypes. He should know a lot better.
I wonder how welcome the GLBT community is made to feel in the Integral movement? Or would a raging queen or butch dyke scare the beejusus out of them? If that is the case how integral are they really? How big is Wilber in the gay community in SF (no snickering darlings)? I mean, I always thought he looked gay 
Ray, excellent post, and one of my own favorite areas of research.
In general I think the whole Wilber/Cohen crowd does not realize the fluidities of gender and sexuality, and addresses a very small Western audience that has been socialized to believe in polarized gender roles right from the start. What about the Two-Spirit tradition of Native Americans? What about the Tritiya-Prakriti, the third sex, in India? There are many other examples, as you’ve mentioned as well. As far as science goes, there are studies that show differences between men and women, and many other studies that show that there are far more similarities than differences (see for instance the meta-analysis done by Janet Shibley Hyde). I feel this sort of thing can go on and on forever, and that what’s missing from this entire nature/nurture debate is *the will*.
I think the queer community is least represented in the Integral movement precisely because it challenges a lot of these assumptions about gender. So for instance David Deida’s sexology is infuriatingly heteronormative and employs some of the worst gender stereotypes I’ve ever seen. His latest book, “The Way of the Superior Man”, has a blurb from Ken Wilber saying something to the effect of how finally there’s a book for the non-castrated male. This is the kind of nonsense that is sure to attract the little-girl types in need of a father figure (cue: I gag), but I just don’t see what any of this has to do with the spiritual path, which requires incredible courage.
I really am surprised at times at how immature people can be, resorting to schoolyard insults like “castrated man” or “phallic woman”.
I think the roots of homophobia actually boil down to gender stereotyping as well. In Hinduism and Buddhism, the discourse is largely about sexuality vs. celibacy, so all lust is really the same and homosexuality is, ultimately, not any more of a problem than heterosexuality is. For this reason, I’m really not surprised that people like Edward Carpenter, E. M. Forster and Christopher Isherwood, came to terms with their homosexual attractions through engagement with Hinduism. I don’t say that India has always accepted homosexuality, but it has been largely tolerant of it.
As Adrienne Rich, Kate Millett and others have pointed out in their deconstruction of compulsory heterosexuality, the West’s dichotomy of homosexuality versus heterosexuality boils down to gender politics at the end of the day. Kate Millett brilliantly puts it: “Homosexuality was invented by a straight world dealing with its own bisexuality. But finding this difficult, and preferring not to admit it, it invented a pariah state, a leper colony for the incorrigible whose very existence, when tolerated openly, was admonition to all. We queers keep everyone straight as whores keep matrons virtuous.”
I forget where I read this now, but in one of the Tantric texts it was explicitly acknowledged that kundalini can increase the propensity for bisexuality — which is the first stage, after which sexuality sublimates away entirely and one feels the same bliss with total equality towards all beings. This was, by the way, my own experience with kundalini as well — while I had originally come out as a lesbian, the kundalini experiences seem to have made my sexuality more fluid, and I was also attracted to men (and even intersexed people) afterwards.
By the way, for a really fascinating scientific discussion of gender, I highly recommend “Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality” by Prof. Anne Fausto-Sterling of Brown University. She does a great job of showing how the science related to gender and sexuality is usually influenced by the politics of the person doing it, and the the strict dichotomies of gender and sexuality are not at all universal.
One last thing, Ray, I really appreciate your use of the phrase “integral gender studies” instead of “integral feminism”. How can the word “feminism” be considered integral? It is inherently divisive. In many ways it is even self-contradictory, because feminism often seeks to celebrate the masculinity in women! So why use the term at all?
I wrote on my blog some time back:
‘Frankly, even the term “feminism†seems divisive to me, and I’m in favour of replacing it with a more inclusive and more spiritual term (how about “spiritual pangenderismâ€Â, signifying a diverse gender ecology?). Feminism implies that there is some reality that is necessarily separate from masculinism. It doesn’t point out integrations, it points out an alternative to masculinism that is merely an opposite. Half the time it’s just a disguise for women acknowledging their masculine side and then glorifying it, even while complaining about it in men. It’s terribly disjointed and full of victim consciousness. Gender issues are peppered with that kind of dualism, because people feel overly concerned about identifying with a particular gender, or overly concerned with not identifying with a particular gender, etc. Either way, people look at gender as a limiting, oppressive force rather than something they will naturally identify with one moment and not the next. People give it power by emphasizing either its presence or absence, it’s power or lack of power. Either way, they’re still talking about it like a stark reality.’
The closer one gets to the psychic being (using Sri Aurobindo’s terminology) and frees the mind from its rigidities to allow it to become more intuitive and spontaneous, the more gender becomes a much more fluid experience.
Again, the Wilber/Cohen crowd always uses terms like “integral feminine” with respect to women’s issues, which I just find bizarre, because integral by definition means integrating and reconciling the dualities and contradictions of existence. That is basically the point of the sort of jnana yoga that integral theory is attempting to do. So “integral feminine” or “integral feminism” is just an oxymoron.
By the way I actually don’t think we should jump the gun and think that gender and related issues are about to disappear from the universe any time soon. I think that feminism shot itself in the foot by acting like there are *zero* differences between men and women. Gender *is* actually an intrinsic part of the present universe … but it’s just not a binary dichotomy the way traditionalists present it. We’re not trying to erase differences between individuals here — because I think diversity should be celebrated and not seen as threatening — but trying to transcend rigid roles and stereotypes. This doesn’t lead to an erasure of differences — on the contrary it leads to even *more* diversity, because each person is allowed to develop on their own unique line or path, their own permutation of masculine and feminine energies, whatever it may be.
“Gender *is* actually an intrinsic part of the present universe … but it’s just not a binary dichotomy the way traditionalists present it.”
I think it’s very perceptive of you to include the modifier “present”. As I read through this thread, I began to wonder: if we open the door to more than two genders, maybe many more, what’s to stop the move away from a distinction or division in terms of gender altogether? Of course gender is transcended in the enlightened state, but what about in non-realized “integral” humans? What follows is some unformed and not highly informed speculation. I don’t have time right now to think through very carefully these thoughts, but maybe they will provoke some further development.
There may be a crude parallel in race or ethnicity. Traditionally, cultures have viewed the world as us vs. them, and even in modern, sophisticated societies, we recognize divisions such as Africans, Asians, Caucasians, etc. But there is so much intermarriage now that these lines will probably eventually be blurred beyond any usefulness. I can imagine a day when we won’t put people in ethnic groups, because there won’t be any well-defined groups. This might be considered homogenization of groups, but not of individuals. It’s not that there won’t still be people who once would have been instantly recognized as Caucasian or African, but that there will be so many different types of people between these that the formerly “pure” types will be no more worth noting than any other type. At that point, ethnicity becomes a non-issue to everyone.
In its completed phase, it might be something like hair color. We still have blonds and brunettes and redheads, but in most modern highly heterogeneous societies there are so many other kinds of hair color (even without artificial help) that no one would dream of attaching any significance to any particular color. Hair color is still useful as a means of identification, and some people may find one color more desirable than another, but everyone recognizes that it’s completely distinct from other, more significant qualities. When we see someone of a particular hair color, we do not assume that that tells us anything else about that person.
Could this happen wrt gender? Could there be, for example, ten different types of people who all fall within the male-female spectrum, with no. 1 closest to males, and the higher numbers progressively closer to females? If there were, and if there were large numbers of these people, then the concept of gender might become completely outmoded. We could still recognize relatively pure males and females, but they would not be considered any more different from other types than the latter are from each other.
This is not transcending gender in the sense that I understand it’s being transcended in a higher state of being. There would still be individual human beings who have some kind of sexual orientation, and of course this has implications for sexual reproduction (if, in the far future, that is still the major way that humanity procreates, and I would not be at all certain of that).
Here a useful analogy might be some personalilty trait such as extrovert-introvert. We can recognize people that we consider at the far ends of this spectrum, but there are so many people falling between these ends that there is nothing particularly remarkable about being at one position as opposed to another. Individual people may have different tastes and preferences, but socially, we don’t make value judgments about the position along this spectrum, unless it’s really extreme at one of the ends.
Right after my last post, I saw this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21271545/wid/11915829?GT1=10450
Sex and Marriage with Robots
That could make the possible male-female gender combinations look like the tip of the iceberg.
Ray,
Overall I think some of your criticisms Wilber’s positions on gender studies miss their mark because you haven’t cited specific texts that would ground your criticisms in Wilber’s actual words.
For example, your point on pre- versus post-knowledge scenarios is a very good one, but I think you would be hard pressed to find any actual Wilber quote saying that “early stages become newly ignorant of postmodernism and modernism”.
To consider a second example, you go on with “Okay, now to the IT, or UL quadrant. The biological determinants in gender are complex. It is no longer simply a question of XX and XY chromosomes. The genetic picture is complex and allows considerable variation.” (did you mean UR quadrant?) Can you point to any source indicating that Wilber holds that the genetic picture of gender is not complex, allows no variation, or is simply determined by chromosomes? Such views are nowhere to be found in Wilber’s work so far as I know, unless you are aware of sources that I’ve missed.
Perhaps you are attributing to Wilber the views of David Deida, for whom Wilber wrote an enthusiastic cover blurb (which actually recognizes that Deida’s work isn’t for everyone)? If so, then it appears that you may be mistaking Deida’s view of “sexual essences” with the point-of-view of gender essentialism, and contrasting it to views of gender as socially constructed. In fact, if you read the Introduction to the Deida book “The Way of the Superior Man” or Deida’s narrative in “Intimate Communion,” it becomes clear that Deida does not collapse his “sexual essences” to crude identity with male or female genders, does not deny the socially constructed components of gender, and does not intend his work as a defense of traditional gender roles. I
by the way, I don’t think you’re doing this, but I would caution anyone against making the simple equation Wilber = Deida. Deida’s works have a very specific audience, and language specifically crafted for a particular purpose, and the aspects of gender that he emphasizes are included within Wilber’s model of agency, communion, Agape, and Eros, but do not exhaust the potential of Wilber’s model.
Wilber’s reception in the gay community is a great topic (for another occasion), but I’d be happy to converse with you on that subject at some point if you like. In the meantime, I would point you to the publication by Integral Books of my own book Soulfully Gay in May 2007. It is significant that the second in the series of Integral Books published by Integral Institute/Shambhala, immediately following Wilber’s own Integral Spirituality, is a meditation on homosexuality. If you’re familiar with my book, I would welcome your thoughts and feedback on it.
All the best,
Joe
If you want to learn more about my book Soulfully Gay, here’s where to look.
Here’s the link to my book at Shambhala:
http://www.shambhala.com/html/catalog/items/isbn/978-1-59030-418-1.cfm
and at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Soulfully-Gay-Harvard-Integral-Philosophy/dp/1590304187
Ned said: “Again, the Wilber/Cohen crowd always uses terms like “integral feminine†with respect to women’s issues, which I just find bizarre, because integral by definition means integrating and reconciling the dualities and contradictions of existence.”
Hi Ned. True, that’s one definition. But as I show in my new essay on Integral World (and also in my book in progress) there are a number of definitions. The definition the Wilber/Cohen group use is either the religious/sectarian one (Integral = Wilber/AQAL) or else a limited subset of the Mainstream Integral movement (Wilber is no longer representative of even Integral stricto sensu, even if he remains an important theorist there). So within that highly sectarian perspective, they can just use “Integral” as a buzz word that means the same as “Ken Wilber’s interpretation of” and tack it in front of any noun.
Dear Joe,
Since I was the one who mentioned Deida, I figure I should do a quick follow-up to your reply to Ray.
I actually agree with you that Ken Wilber does not equal David Deida. I found his views on the evolution of gender in “Sex, Ecology and Spirituality” to be pretty progressive. I know that one part of his Kosmos Trilogy is going to be largely on sex and gender, so I am waiting for that volume to come out because I’m sure he will have dug out some excellent sources.
However, my objection is just to some of the statements made by Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen, and David Deida where they basically make these sweeping generalizations. I’m sure they are all well-intentioned but I have always gotten the impression — as a woman — that rather than wanting to inspire women, they want to patronize them. If you read the dialogue between Wilber and Cohen in the WIE issue on women, I’m sure you’ll be able to spot these sorts of patronizing generalizations pretty easily. Some of them were just downright silly and pretty easy to deconstruct. Wilber to his credit only says he’s a theorist, but Andrew Cohen calls himself a *guru* — you certainly wouldn’t expect such patronizing stuff from an enlightened being. I just quoted on my blog a dialogue Sri Aurobindo had with a student where he basically lambasts the student for suggesting that women are inherently less intelligent or less capable of dispassionate intellectual analysis than men.
Joe, I haven’t read your book yet, but since I am also queer, I have really been wanting to get hold of it and read it. My own journey has simply led me to the conclusion that the deeper lesson to be learned is that eros is universal. I found, as a lesbian who had spiritual experiences, that not only could sex-desire be sublimated, but also sexual preferences. It is only when eros is reduced to sex-desire or fertility that heterosexually-inclined people find it difficult to fathom homosexual relationships.
I admit I have found David Deida’s choice of words to be really obnoxious and at times downright sexist. Perhaps, as you suggest, I’m misreading him, or perhaps what he writes was never meant to apply to people like myself in the first place. I understand he is addressing a particular audience, and fine, his ideas uplift them, and that’s great — but I just fail to see what his ideas have to do with the larger issue of transcending sexuality and gender altogether (which is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother would point us to). Actually for me the bigger problem with David Deida’s work is that he seems to think that intimacy is borne of creating polarities and playing them off one another. Not only is this just plain contrary to my own experiences — I find that creating extreme polarities in any relationship only leads to attachment — but also completely disregards the path of celibacy. You do not *need* to be in a psychosexual relationship with someone to experience profound intimacy with the universe or to experience states of extreme bliss. In fact I have almost always had spiritual experiences at precisely those times when someone who I was sexually attracted to was leaving me. Love and wholeness lie within. It sounds really unhealthy to me to try to maintain these polarities in a relationship — the whole point of the spiritual path is transcendence and transformation. Even if one is absolutely certain that celibacy is never going to be the path for them, periods of mutually agreed upon celibacy can only benefit the relationship. As far as sex goes, I would prefer less heat, and more light!
I have just finished reading Dr. Stuart Sovatsky’s book “Eros, Consciousness, and Kundalini: Deepening Sensuality Through Tantric Celibacy and Spiritual Intimacy” which contains a pretty good and balanced discussion of all these issues — gender, sexuality and celibacy. Sovatsky affirms that basically the highest state is celibacy — and is in fact the real hedonist imperative, because how can a mere sexual orgasm compare to the pure uncaused Ananda of the Supreme? — but how we all get there is another matter. Again, there are unique paths for every individual.
I guess we are all human and we all say things now and then that we don’t mean to be taken literally or too seriously, but then not every one of us wants to be seen as an authority figure.
I would love to know more about Wilber’s reception in the gay community.
Andy, sex with machines?
OK, but how does that go beyond being purely masturbatory? 
At least with another sentient human being, there is an actual exchange going on.
About your previous point, I agree with what you are saying. Again, I realize most people on this forum aren’t really into Sri Aurobindo and the Mother but this is what they say clearly in their writings — that basically in the course of the evolution there is intermixing and so there is no pure race or pure sex, and eventually creation will become so diversified that all these labels will become obsolete. Actually that is the whole point of Supramentalisation: total unity and harmony in infinite diversity. Every being will be utterly unique if what they envision ever manifests. Now I don’t know if their vision will come true or not — don’t have any authentic realizations or experiences to talk about that — but it’s a damn inspiring vision, one that I’m willing to invest myself in.
Ned, Joe,
Ned, great stuff. I’m with you on just about everything – pity I’m here and you’re there…I’d suggest a coffee. I have the same concerns about Deida. He seems to encourage role playing. It reminds me of the men’s movement and playing at warrior stuff. It’s just not me. I’d describe myself as a lesbian in a male’s body (a bear at that), if that makes sense. I prefer the company of women and don’t identify at all with standard male interests or conversation. As I think I mentioned, my friends tend to be women, gay, bi or straight.
Joe, my piece was as a result of the WIE issue Ned mentioned. I am aware that Wilber knows things are more complex, and yet he so often fails to talk as if he really gets it. In the end I find his views conservative.
Just wanted to add that I saw a video of Deida’s introduction to one of his workshops, and he takes a great deal of time and effort to explain that his work is not about “healing” or “balancing” or “spiritual awakening” but of exploring the extremes of sexuality much in the same way that an artist might be hell bent on exhausting herself through her work. He has no pretense as to whether its healthy or the right path for anyone else. In fact, he warns that its just this or that side of lunacy! He just says that, for better or for worse, its the path he gots to walk.
Bonnie
Hi Bonnie,
he takes a great deal of time and effort to explain that his work is not about “healing†or “balancing†or “spiritual awakening†but of exploring the extremes of sexuality much in the same way that an artist might be hell bent on exhausting herself through her work.
Well, I don’t know what he says on his tapes, but he is packaged as a “spiritual” teacher. He has sessions at the Omega Institute, which is a holistic healing/spiritual organization. His followers definitely take his ideas to be “spiritual”. I mean if he was just presenting himself as a hedonistic sex-pert, I wouldn’t care at all what he was teaching.
I’m no moralist or prude — not at all — but let me quickly explain why I don’t think this sort of thing is particularly spiritual.
To start off with, I never use loaded words like “perversion” or “disorder”. I think they are judgmental and totally laced with hypocrisy. If Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are to be believed, then basically the material world in its entirety is kind of a distortion or perversion of the Supreme Reality. By the end of her life, Mother was saying that she had realized that she herself was physically a false appearance. Basically this just means that really, we’re all a little crazy — every one of us has our own respective sets of neuroses and character disorders to work through. The difference is really just one of degree.
So when people label different sexual practices as “perversions” or whatever, I always raise an eyebrow and think, um, speak for yourself!
All paths lead to the same destination ultimately. If Milarepa, a murderer, could attain enlightenment, then surely nobody is ever totally lost. Even the worst of acts contains something of the original Divine intent in it, only watered down, distorted, and so on. Mother once said that even sadism and cruelty are kind of a manifestation of an aspect of Ananda — intensity. I never could believe in a God who judged his creation from above. But a God who bears our evil and suffering, and can use all our experiences — even the most ignorant ones — to bring us closer to him, this is a God I’m willing to surrender to and be unashamed and totally naked and vulnerable with.
Having said this, there is, equally, no doubt in my mind that some paths are more direct than others. Some paths do in fact seem to meander, deviate, go round and round in circles, for longer than other paths, which take us to the Divine more directly and save time and protect us from needless suffering. I’m not going to flatten everything out and just act like there is no value hierarchy at all, even though in the final analysis the entire universe is to be redeemed. (It’s very difficult to talk about these things without using the language of paradox.) I do think that there are more refined desires, more noble emotions, more mature values, more developed aesthetics, etc. etc. Sri Aurobindo therefore urges us to “follow the straight sunlit path” of the psychic being, and avoid unnecessary meandering and suffering as much as that’s possible (it’s difficult, I know!).
The whole notion of playing out polarized roles, whether sexual or nonsexual, seems to me to pertain to the realm of the vital being. It’s not at all surprising to me that Deida’s work has been picked up in BDSM circles or by groups practicing male-led heterosexual relationships. These groups thrive on roles and impulses, and the vast majority of the role-playing is male-dominant and female-submissive. Until people reach a generally self-actualized level of consciousness, you will find plenty of intelligent people who play these power games and act out these roles.
My own interest in all these things has come because I’m a sexual abuse survivor myself. I grew up having polarized sexual fantasies for as long as I can remember. Basically I think these desires are just a part of the collective karma of patriarchal society and are socially and subconsciously fed to us. I used to know girls in college who had totally eroticized male dominance. Some of them even wanted to be hit by men because they had eroticized male violence. It’s for this reason that the radical feminists have always opposed sadomasochistic sex, because they see it as a re-enactment of the roles sanctioned by patriarchal society. Radical feminists see BDSM as intrinsically abusive. Meanwhile, people in BDSM culture argue that actually sadomasochistic sexuality *prevents* fascism and abuse because it allows a relatively safe, sane and consensual outlet for people’s urges and impulses to dominate or submit. You can see that from a higher spiritual point of view both points of view complement each other because actually both things are happening. BDSM is really a parody of the vitalistic sadomasochism of everyday life.
Anyway all I can talk about are my own experiences. After my spiritual awakenings, one of the first things that happened was that these fantasies completely dropped out of my consciousness. They no longer held even the slightest appeal for me. It was not that I felt some sort of moral disgust or something toward them … they quite simply started to bore the heck out of me. I knew that what I really sought was something deeper and more whole. Sex itself became much less important for me. I’ve interpreted this as meaning that my vital being was transmuted by these experiences to some extent and became a bit more detached.
It just seems to me that these kinds of roles are basically a starting point where people start to own up to the dualities within them. So, like anything else, this role-playing is kind of a start to a spiritual journey, potentially, but you have to go beyond the roles at some point. The closer you get to Reality, the less you will eroticize polarized roles or see the world in such a polarized way.
I wrote a post on this whole notion of polarized roles:
http://naqsh.org/ned/?p=239
(Warning: that post included a slight rant against David Deida, which if Joe and Bonnie are correct, was probably a bit reactionary. However I stand by my main point, which is that the more you grow spiritually, the less you need to play out polarized roles.)
– quote –
BDSM culture bores the pants off of me, so to speak. It’s so heavily laced with an air of “playing a role†or “being the center of attention†and things like that, and I think that the more integrated and healthy a mind you have, the more these things become minor fascinations (at most) rather than anything to build a lifestyle around. In the end, when fetishes are about getting away from being yourself or shying away from one aspect of your natural being, they appeal more and more to people with certain sets of issues. As I’ve grown spiritually, I’ve become very comfortable with both the masculine and feminine sides of my nature, dominant and submissive, aggressive and passive, grasping and ungrasping, strong and weak, and so on. So playing one over the other with such fervor and consistency that it becomes a lifestyle or something, just seems like monotony, and it totally kills real spontaneity. It may satisfy impulses and roles, but real spontaneity and intimacy (the intuitive, non-reactive kind, when you act out of the radiant stillness of the soul) is about resonance and compatibility, and just has nothing to do with such planned out forms like traditional gender roles or BDSM.
– end quote –
So basically, while I totally understand why people like playing out roles and running away from certain parts of themselves, and how such role-playing can even provide them with a relatively healthy outlet for their impulses which is perhaps better than mental judgment and repression, a *spiritual* teacher would be showing us how to transcend these roles and impulses and arrive at a more intuitive, spontaneous, non-reactive and integrated state of consciousness. And they would be manifesting the presence that would help us transmute these impulses.
I’m reminded of a phrase the Mother uses that Alan quoted once on his blog: “To choose without preference, and execute without desire . . . ” Oh, if only!
I hope this comment wasn’t too much of an overshare. Sexuality is a pretty complex area, and because I’ve had to deal with so much trauma related to gender and sexuality, I’ve thought deeply about some of these questions. So I figured I should share the insights I’ve gained from my experiences, because it might just help someone. Besides, we should be able to talk about these things openly and frankly.
Ray, I’m actually living in Brooklyn, New York right now. If you’re ever in America, I would love to meet up and have a chat!
Ned,
I agree with you that Deida is (has) packaged himself that way in the program ads, and the way he is (self)- promoted. That is why it stood out to me, the pains he took to make himself more transparent (perhaps). Maybe his liability innsurance required him to do this
all light,
Bonnie
Ned, but NY has bad coffee. I’ve been there and couldn’t find a decent drop anywhere – but then I’m spoilt. Melbourne is recognized as one of the great cafe cities, might even out do Seattle.
Anyway, I’d like to continue this off-line
rharris6@bigpond.net.au
Ah, but NY has the best cheesecakes!
Maybe I’ll be in Australia at some point, though — been wanting to meet up with Alan as well.
I’ve got mid-terms coming up in a couple of weeks, so I might not be able to write to you for a while, but yeah, we should definitely get in touch offline!
Ah, but you haven’t visited Acland st in St Kilda…when you’re ready.