When a woman is fucked, her body changes shape to accommodate a man’s phallus. Her body changes shape whether she would have it or no, hence the possibility of rape. Her arousal only enhances this effect, lubricating, making invasion and her body’s shapeshifting easier, more enjoyable. This is inescapable fact, and it is profound. Mythically, shapeshifting was seen as a female attribute, an attribute reflected fundamentally in her vagina’s accommodation of the phallus but seen as symbolic of either fickleness, or malleability in a despicable sense, or an ability to adapt and play parts, a powerful ability.

The phallus is designed for invasion. A woman may spread her legs, but the phallus spreads her body, activates its receptivity to invasion. It is this fact that has the idea that all heterosexual sex is rape reflects: all penetration is invasion, whether consented or not. The erect phallus remains, and will always remain, the symbol of sexual arousal -- and not only because it is external, because it is more difficult to depict a lubricated vulva. The vagina is designed for male gratification, it can be raped, it responds to penetration by changing shape to accommodate invasion, to make that invasion satisfying to the male. And we all know, or should, that women comparatively have far less sexual gratification, achieving orgasms extremely rarely, with the majority of women thought to be biologically incapable of orgasm. No, sex is not for female sexual gratification, at least except indirectly through the joy of male sexual gratification.

A woman’s virginity is something that is sacrificed. Her hymen, the symbol of virginity whether physically present or not, is broken. Deflowering is a blood sacrifice. It is not the same for men. A knife may be wiped clean, its first use powerfully significant but hardly the same as a vagina, designed to receive invasion, being opened for the first time.

The primary outcome of sex is male enjoyment. Evolution and our bodies care little for female enjoyment or consent. Rape produces children. A woman’s pleasure, from an evolutionary standpoint, is only relevant in as much as it causes her to lubricate and for male pleasure to be increased. The goal, evolutionarily and thus for both male and female bodies, is the male orgasm, the firing from the testicles and the delivery deep into the woman’s body. The testicles hang outside the vagina, bullets readied for delivery in a moment of ecstasy. Not only is the woman’s interior used as a dumping ground, but semen loosed in the vagina, and impregnation, turns a woman’s own body against her. This is the truth reflected in the mother’s scream at the father while she gives birth: “you did this to me!” Ejaculation has been, for almost all of human history, and continues to be a potential death sentence: women die in birth. Their bodies swell, make them sick, make them emotional, and generally alter radically. Ejaculation is not only the prime concern of our bodies, male and female, during sex; it is, in fact, a despoiling. This is why women get sexually transmitted diseases at much higher rates than men: women are invaded, then despoiled. Impregnated, their bodies conspire against them just as they do during sex, bloating and distorting, a dangerous process that drastically alters women emotionally, physically, and spiritually. The outcome is the mystery of birth, source of female power, but the involuntary journey to this outcome is indeed deadly and is purchased at abasement to male pleasure.

A woman’s uterus is designed to produce children, but a woman’s vagina is designed to produce male orgasm and male pleasure. The sexual act itself is one in which the male penetrates and the female is penetrated; more than this, the female body spreads and lubricates, accommodating this power dynamic. No amount of female gyrations, of female-superior positions, will ever change this basic biological fact. Even when the female appears dominant, achieving orgasm, grinding in sensual pleasure, she is only dominant in her submission, only achieving orgasm through her body’s penetration and accommodation of male invasion, only grinding the knife into its receptacle. The medium runs against the message.

Every penetration, of any orifice, of a woman is a violation, a conquest even if semen was not excreted, even if she was not used as a receptacle for ejaculate. The same is not true for men, with their exterior sexuality, their use of female bodies designed in so many basic biological ways for their pleasure. While a man may simply activate a woman’s vagina and its inherent phallus-pleasing function; a female, when fucked, is bodily subjected to another man and his pleasure even if emotionally or psychically detached. To ejaculate from one’s exterior is quite different from being a natural receptacle for that ejaculate; it is the handkerchief that is sullied, not the bottle that spills into that handkerchief. Another female pleasuring a man is quite different from another man penetrating a woman, using her as a receptacle for ejaculate, and her body’s accommodation, even subjection, to his pleasure. Male and female infidelity is not the same; there is no double standard in treating them differently, for they are different. In fact, there is ignorance, even wanton ignorance, in pretending that male and female promiscuity are remotely equitable.

To go still deeper, the human being is the only animal with breasts. Breasts are not necessary to feeding children, an obvious fact most ignore; obviously, dogs and other animals do fine with just nipples. In fact, breasts make a child’s nursing more difficult. Why are they there? The answer is to be found in the fact that humans are also the only animals to make love facing each other; other animals perform sex in non-facing positions -- “doggie style,” in other words. But the male mind is designed to become aroused by two semispherical, flesh globes -- an ass, bent over. The deeply ingrained, biological nature of this cognitive response, deeply rooted in previous states of evolution, can be seen in so many still life paintings, the two plump, translucently fuzzy peaches, side by side, summon sexual thoughts to the brain (which may want to see a carrot, or some such shape, jutting up from between them, its origin buried). And so evolution, rather than changing this basic, ingrained portion of the male brain, grew the same shape on female chests. As girls developed breasts, evolution promoted this; a portion of the male brain that responded with arousal to the shape led men to screw that girl, to penetrate and impregnate her body, and the trait of breasts gradually advanced. Women have breasts for male arousal; beyond the vagina, the female body was naturally deformed by evolution in order to arouse and gratify men. The breast stands as a symbol, in any responsible interpretation, of the subtle -- and so seemingly intrinsic as to seem unquestionable -- ways in which female bodies are designed for male gratification.

Human females also have high rates of breast cancer precisely because they have breasts, evolved for male pleasure. Obviously, evolution promotes breasts because they arouse and please males even when the price is female lives -- or, more specifically, painful female deaths. Women, by their basic biology, are literally dying to please men.

We can only guess at the deep ways in which the male and female brains have similarly responded, evolutionarily, in order to heighten male arousal and stimulate male pleasure, male orgasm, the firing of sperm within the woman, and impregnation with its deadly, body-and-mind-altering effects. If a woman is a cocktease, arousing men, and that woman is raped and becomes pregnant, whatever genetic psychological predispositions towards arousing men may be promoted, engendered in another generation -- which in turn would be more likely to arouse male sexual desire while not wishing to fulfill it, hopefully, in evolutionary terms, leading to sex, willing or not, and the further promotion of those genes. We may, in moral terms, reasonably find rape reprehensible, claiming that however much a woman dresses provocatively and seems to lead men on, her rape cannot be justified; but we must admit that our biology acts against such a position. We must acknowledge that the female brain has evolutionarily changed to include the desire to sexually please men -- because such females are more likely to be ejaculated within, leading to potential impregnation and genetic promotion. Female brains are evolutionarily predisposed to feeling pleasure at sexually pleasing men, making that pleasure -- and the resulting ejaculation -- more likely. Male brains are also predisposed to concern for female sexual pleasure, in as much as this encourages females to make themselves sexually available to that male, but we must never forget that this is secondary, indirect, that the primary evolutionary focus has by necessity always been on male arousal and gratification.

We must watch against our own desire to delude ourselves and conveniently argue otherwise. We, to the extent that we presume to be conscious, that we as animals strangely have become cognizant of evolution and its effects on us, cannot afford -- cannot psychologically evolve -- without admitting these difficult, and sometimes painful, facts. It is not easy, but the alternative is to be, like animals, unaware of these evolutionary forces. We may latch onto aberrant cases in animals, such as bees or praying mantises, and seek to find evidence against what the difficult examination of our own species would reveal. But we are not bees; we are not praying mantises; and neither species represents in its gender relations the vast majority of animals. Let us not conveniently, and in the interests of self-delusion and avoidance of truths so difficult to get into our brains that our immediate response is to avoid the pain of contemplation, focus on exceptions while ignoring obvious facts.

The question, once we have honestly agreed to examine these ideas in all their challenging implications, is what to do about them. We are imprisoned within bodies designed for purposes other than what we at times would have for them. As men, we must deal with our phalluses, with the fact of our erections, with the fact that our biology is designed for penetration, for violation, for self-gratification. One legitimate response has been to promote celibacy, the self-control and self-mastery that resists invading, that resists the male sexual gratification for which both genders are programmed. Men grow tired from orgasm; they get testicular cancer because of an organ that was designed to inseminate. When men were castrated in certain mental institutions with the United States, they lived many, many years longer. Castrated men also bulk up, their muscles growing as did eunuchs. A lot of energy in the male body goes into constantly generating sperm in such massive numbers. One sane male response to the prison of male biology is elective castration, a freedom from constantly thinking about sex, and a desire to take advantage of the sexual joy that male and female bodies are designed to promote for men without the impregnation that this joy was designed to cause -- to, in essence, get the carrot, the intensely pleasurable carrot for which both genders’ bodies are designed, without the unwanted results of getting that carrot. For a man, the opportunities for pleasure are unimaginable -- the opposite gender is designed in fundamental ways for his sexual gratification. Castration -- and certainly denial of any responsibility for procreated children -- may well provide a way to cheat evolution.

As women, we must deal with our vaginas, with the fact that they are designed for male gratification, with the fact that they can be raped. Women must reconcile themselves, in some way, with the fact of their breasts, of their biology, as male-centered, as deeply organized for male arousal and sexual satisfaction. Women must reconcile themselves with the fact that their sexual liaisons are not penetrative, that their bodies are more easily infected, that semen remains a potentially deadly substance -- and, moreover, that their bodies have their shape for male arousal, change shape during the sexual encounter for male arousal, and change shape during pregnancy as a result of male gratification. A woman proud of her sexual “conquests” ignores that she is penetrated, that men are programmed to fuck indiscriminately and that most men are more than willing to do so, that she has never achieved as much gratification as her body has, potentially against her intended focus, given. A man can never compete against a woman in terms of sexual partners precisely because of the power imbalance inherent in sex; virtually any woman can walk into a bar and go home with someone willing to have sex. But a woman can never compete against a man in terms of sexual gratification, in terms of conquering. A woman proud of her sexual “conquests” can only be, ultimately, proud of her own willingness to be used, to be violated for another’s pleasure -- and there is no getting around this, short of delusion. A woman who wants to be a “feminist,” who refuses to make herself an object for sexual gratification, is at odds with her biology; to put her wishes into practice, she would be well advised to get a proactive mastectomy, severing those potentially deadly breasts created for male gratification, then practicing lesbianism, since any sex with men inherently involves her body’s penetration and use of her biological, phallus-gratifying design. The best of professional women are able to be competent in a male world of exterior, phallic accomplishment (and conquest) -- and either asexual or male-gratifying females when it comes to their sexual lives; but the creation and maintenance of this schizophrenic, divided self can be difficult.

These are acceptable solutions. A woman in a classroom or a boardroom deserves respect for her intelligence and position, not for her gender; she is not, at least in that moment, a woman; she is a man, more so than most men, her biology against her but no more ironic than if she were a man, disfigured, in a wheelchair. A feminized man, nurturing rather than challenging, is a woman, more so than many, similarly fulfilling a role at odds with his biology. Biology defines us, but we should not confuse sexual realms with the whole of the world -- or of gender relations. Excellence, even capability, deserves respect no matter the area, whether female or male, and no matter the one achiever’s body. But there are certain realities of the sexual act, certain realities implicit within the very forms of our gendered bodies, that can only be ignored at our own peril. As much as we may wish to transform society, believing that we will in turn redefine gender relations and even the sexual act itself, we can only futilely fight, however pathetically or nobly, though we can never escape save through death, our biologies and their implications.

For this reason, feminism, at least construed as entailing the belief that women and men are sexually equal, identical in all but irrelevancies, that a sheath’s role can be assertive in the same way as a sword’s, will not survive. It is, as any brutally honest examiner of history knows, not only a historical aberration but a naive extension of the industrial revolution, which allowed the myth of the androgynous drone, whose gender could be obliterated from all concern along with his or her (or “hir,” to use the ridiculous “gender-neutral” -- as if such a quality were either possible or desirable -- possessive pronoun American feminists have dogmatically advocated, an invented word that embodies the industrial imperative) ethnicity, appearance, and even personality. The industrial revolution, and the attempt at gender equality it engendered, has made significant points in terms of deflating a dogmatic, simplistic construction of gender identity. But it, in the utopian enthusiasm of a changing century, went too far. Mark my words, there shall be a resurgence of celebration of gender identity, an identity of which we are all the more conscious because of the traumas feminism has inflicted upon multiple generations of both men and women -- men taught to hate themselves, to hate their bodies and their desires, and women taught to be proud of their promiscuity, to hate themselves or define themselves as a perpetual victim for not succeeding at their careers, for not being praiseworthy by the values of the other sex. Both are taught to deny their bodies. And both are taught to hide their tears and discard relationships due to relatively minor flaws, relationships their parents would have maintained and grew within.

But there is another solution for men and women, a solution also grounded in evolution. Men and women uniquely face each other during sex, and to acknowledge this is to acknowledge the possibilities of intimacy that human sex can allow. In addition, the elements of blood sacrifice of the female devirginizing experience suggests increased intimacy with a woman’s first lover, a fact confirmed in female psychologies. We cannot deny the sexual differences, however uncomfortable, between men and women, but we can recognize the existence of indirect pleasure and even indirect power. A response that embraces our gendered biologies would be one that acknowledges the deep female desire to sexually please and embraces female sexual pleasure at pleasing, in turn embracing male sexual pleasure at this indirect female sexual pleasure, repeating over and over, to the heightened enjoyment of both parties, through the intimacy and closeness inherent in the face-to-face sexual encounter. Sex has this remarkable potential, a potential that takes advantage of both gender’s inherent natures. One might reasonably say a man is never more a man than when penetrating, freely enjoying himself sexually through the love of his partner who wishes his pleasure, in control of even the shape of her body, designed for him, but tempering his enjoyment and conquest through the affection and understanding implicit in the face-to-face sexual encounter and that can be so heightening of sexual enjoyment. One might also reasonably say that a woman is never more a woman than when penetrated, letting herself go with her body’s gratification of the male, loving that male and enjoying both his pleasure and his pleasure that she lubricates, and feels joy, at his pleasure. The most female of women, one might reasonably say, would be pleased at her man’s sexual pleasure even when generated by another woman, perhaps with the caveat that he simply activate her body’s ability to please him and neither love her nor remotely contemplate abandoning his woman and their true intimacy for another. The most male of men, one could also say, would be with his woman as directly honest, straight to the heart of the matter as his phallus. Both, in love, must control their instincts, allowing themselves to enjoy the intimacy that human sexuality uniquely provides. If we respect evolution, much less think it a divine product, we females must let ourselves be female to a man, pleasured by his pleasure, lovingly helping him to realize our female pleasure in him -- and we males must let ourselves be male to our woman, appreciative of and pleased at her pleasure at our pleasure, lovingly helping her to realize this.

This is not a solution for everyone. But it is the only solution for most, for those unwilling to spend their lives battling their biologies, their bodies and their brains, the implications of how sexual evolution has made them.

Granted, 99% of men aren’t worth female sexuality; 99% of men are, however good their souls, willing to lie to get pussy and unable to handle the control that sexuality and a woman’s love provides. Similarly, 99% of women aren’t able to deal with male sexuality, and for good reason -- giving one’s self to one of the 99% of the male population is not a wise move. Most men are looking for sex, essentially for free whores, and only want a relationship to affirm themselves, without any sense of mutuality, and to have a reliable sexual partner without contracting STDs. Most women are looking for emotional affirmation, to feel attractive, and for the release of sexual closeness while unable to accept, and in many cases even contemplate, their body’s submission or the differences inherent between male and female sexuality.

I can only suggest that both men and women wait until willing to commit to a sexual relationship, the fuller to enjoy the sex it provides. We must acknowledge that sex is ever less precious, ever less unique, as we add lovers, as it becomes ever more mundane. This is more true for women, who are spread, made receptacles for pleasure if not for another man’s semen, but it is true to some extent for both genders. To devalue one’s sex as an intimate experience through a multitude of partners, particularly unloved and merely used partners, is not only to render a good man or woman, when one finds one, as number such-and-such -- it is also to devalue one’s own ability to achieve heightened states of sexual arousal and intimacy, which is capable of being a full-bodied and soulful experience. If we all but knew what we were missing, we would tell the world exactly this. There is legitimate happiness, true joy in sexual love discovered late, a soothing and a healing for past wounds and past stupidity, embarrassing to all but those whose weakness does not allow them to admit mistakes.

When we have sex without commitment, without love or only with the pretense of love, we cheat on our future real loves as surely as if we had already met and engaged them. Moreover, we cheat ourselves out of what we might have had.

I once was sitting at a table with a young girl who talked honestly about her multiple boyfriends, opening up to a male friend of hers who was also at the table. She talked of how they made her feel attractive and powerful, not seeing that this attention was not difficult for any woman to achieve, given male sexuality, and that her power was a power derived from laying down, from surrendering her body to male gratification -- the power of a good dinner people want but with which they hardly relate as a subject. I found her trite and distasteful, immature and perhaps even stupid. But, in her tales of her difficulty in balancing these men and her slight admissions that she too sought love and a lasting relationship in the future (so at odds with her lack of pursuit of it), I came to pity her, to see her as more lost than dumb. And I ventured to enter the conversation long enough to tell her what she needed to hear, as concisely as I could: that her lack of love now was not the real difficulty; the real, painful difficulty was when she found a good man and she knew, even if she was not brave enough to let him know, that he was hardly unique in the sex that meant so much to him and which might otherwise be a more special gift -- and that she was going to have to deal with this.

To give one’s best friend a gift that one gives, or has given, everyone, or so many, or even others before makes that gift all the less powerful. To share a powerful experience, like finding a new continent, with too many lessen the sharing of it with another. This may be radical, but it’s also just common sense.

I am a bohemian in almost all respects, but I am a puritan when it comes to sex. And, as challenging as these ideas may be, there is too much logic behind them. There must be something sacred in the world for it to have meaning. There must be some taboo for freedom, even transgression, to have meaning. There must be something unique and powerful to attach to intimacy, to love. The alternative is a world in which “love” has no outlet but devalued words and an act so beautiful that its debasement, that the rendering of it as a commonplace, is a nothing short of tragedy. Better 10,000 intimate fucks with a man or woman worthwhile, lays that get better and better as you come to know each other, in body and soul, than 5 cheap fucks with 2,000 different people -- or 20 with 20 different people.

Let us no longer flee the implications of our forms. Let us embrace the rewarding possibilities inherent within them. And let us fight, resist our weaker selves, to maintain a world in which love has living. Because the alternative, at least for most of us, is a world in which we do not, in our higher minds and better natures, really want to live.

NOTES

This essay was first published as Apollonian Bacchanalia #6 on persiancaesar.com on 28 April 2002, where it was described as being "a long (in fact, it was the longest for quite some time), challenging, and controversial essay on sex, gender, and relationships. This essay should be classified as a necessary read for most people."