I Am Woman, You Are Man
(or Sex Advice From My Father)

“Understanding requires honesty. Misunderstanding requires communication. Conflict requires apology and forgiveness. Confrontation requires retreat or the declaration of war.” These are the words my father repeats to me each time we speak on the phone. He attempts to quiz me in the hopes that I’ve committed the mantra to memory after two decades of hearing it over and over, but I’m a forgetful person. He has many phrases and stories he likes to repeat to emphasize his point. He speaks in stories, especially when the truth he expresses is too ugly to be dressed plainly. He must make it beautiful and exciting to make up for its ugliness. I always thought this disease I had for telling stories was my mother’s fault. I learned how to write from my mother, this is true. She taught me the conventions of the English language— how to bend it to my will. But my ability to tell stories— this I learned from my father.

My father has written a book of his own. It is a sort of semi-autobiographical medical journal on an assortment of topics related to plastic surgery, cosmetic surgery, and overall health. There are chapters on everything from CBD, dandruff, sunblock, butt lifts, male breasts, and even cosmetic gynecology. My father sent me a copy of his book to read and review at his request. He did not consider, for some strange reason, that I would flip to the final chapter which was ominously titled, “Sex is for women.” Admittedly, I was too frightened to read it on my own. No daughter wants to hear their father’s opinions on sex, especially when his alleged infidelity was one of the many catalysts for the destruction of his marriage to my mother. But I could not simply ignore it. One day, my childhood friend and roommate agreed to read the chapter aloud to me so we could face the beast together. We smoked a bit of California’s best bud so I would be in a more receptive state to listen.

As she read the opening of the first paragraph, I began to cry. They were the same words he had repeated to me my whole life. “Understanding requires honesty,” and so on... The remainder of the chapter would make me cry for an entirely different reason. Tears streamed down my face out of laughter as I imagined my father naming various sex organs and alluding to sexual acts. I would get up and run around the house to distance myself from the sound of his words coming from her mouth as if she had summoned him and he was transported into the room with us. We couldn’t stop laughing at my own awkwardness. Once the icky feeling upon my skin subsided, I rejoined my dear friend on the couch, as she assured me his words were more enlightening than we had previously suspected.

It was as if we were reading some ancient scripture which had broken the spell we had been living under all our lives. According to my father, the anatomical differences between the male sexual system and the female sexual system served as empirical proof of the roles we should serve in a harmonized heterosexual relationship. Studies show that both men and women have better sex in the context of a committed relationship¹. The problem lies in the power struggle between man and woman, a social and sexual dynamic which we humans have struggled to balance since the beginning of time.

II.

Many people have been trained to believe sex is about the man’s pleasure. This belief is validated by much of the porn and sexualized media we consume today. The climax (pun somewhat intended) of the film is usually when a man is ready to orgasm. Everything stops as the woman must watch and applaud the man on his inevitable and hardly remarkable achievement. If a woman fails to orgasm, or rather if the man fails to make the woman orgasm, we see this as her own personal issue. It’s too much hassle for either party to communicate with the other and solve the riddle together.

            “Many women retreat sexually. They may retreat within themselves for the sake of an otherwise good relationship. They               may retreat to simply pleasuring themselves... They may retreat from that partner for someone less preoccupied with                     their own performance and more open to exploring. Retreat is sensuality she manages on her own.”²

A woman’s intuition runs deep. I can tell from the way I communicate with a man whether we would be sexually compatible or not. If the conversation flows naturally, I become comfortable and feel a sense of safety. For women, this sense of safety is what allows us to release our defenses and allow a man to pass through our force field to explore the hidden wilderness of our bodies. In contrast, I’ve known in negative encounters that I would not enjoy the sex before any clothes had been removed, or even knew my safety was at risk right as I met the man with whom I had preemptively agreed to have sex. Even as outspoken as I am, I figured it was easier to just let the encounter happen and repress the memory that would soon be created rather than speak my frustrations aloud and run off to return home. This is what women do. When we feel unsafe, we retreat into ourselves for comfort. Our bodies shut down so our minds can take control. This is where our power lies— in the mind. And this is why sex is for women after all.

            “Too many people confuse sexuality for sensuality. Sexuality is between the legs. Sensuality is between the ears. Sexuality             starts  in the brain. Sensuality is in your mind. Sexuality is physical and conscious. Sensuality is perceptual, unconscious,                  and include sight, smell, taste, touch, and sense of balance. By design, women are wired differently and because of this                   wiring, their sensual perceptions during sex have a far greater subconscious potential that both parties can enjoy                               physically.”²

Just about every organ in the female reproductive system is far more sensitive and complex than the analogous organs in the male reproductive system. This translates to the way men and women are as people. Men are simple. Women are complicated. A man can only achieve one type of orgasm. The orgasm may vary in intensity, but there is basically only one type. For women however, it is still unknown how many types of orgasms she can achieve. The number is endless. Women can orgasm multiple times over from the same stimulant. They can reach orgasm from multiple different areas of the body simultaneously. Women can have orgasmic seizures; they can go unconscious and reach a transcendental state of euphoria from an orgasm; they can even go into orgasmic labor when giving birth. Many women go years being sexually active without even reaching orgasm. The female sex structure is so incredibly sensitive that she doesn’t have to cum to enjoy herself. When she does reach her orgasm, she taps into her fundamental power.

         “Conscious thinking melts away. She’s in a zone managed by her autonomic nervous system. This is the part of our
        anatomy that controls all of our subconscious bodily functions. These necessary functions do not require thought. You                 don’t have to think about your  heart beating for it to continue to beat throughout your entire life. At this level, autonomic           is like being on autopilot.”²

Perhaps this autonomous mode is what allows women to reach pleasure. We are able to release control and surrender to our own joy as we slide into a subconscious state. When we can escape from the distractors of the material world and focus on the self, we realize just how connected we are with every real thing in the universe. It is the absence of conscious thought, the connection with the deepest parts of our spirit, that we find complete fulfillment and perfect bliss.

If all of this is true, if women can reach a sort of nirvana on Earth from experiencing sexual pleasure, why does our culture demonize female sexuality so much? For answers, I turned to a book I had feared for many years: The Bible.

III.

The book of Genesis tells the story of Adam and Eve, the first people God tasked with beginning humanity on the Earth. In some older adaptations of the chapter, it vaguely mentions a third and very important character who is often forgotten by most priests, rabbis and imams alike. Her name is Lilith— Adam’s first wife. Lilith and Adam were both made by God from dust and he breathed life into them. Lilith refused the lay underneath Adam during sex and protested against God’s decree. The clash between these characters caused an irreparable schism in their union, and God replaced Lilith with Eve— Adam’s second wife. Eve was a woman made from the flesh of man, making her both masculine and feminine. Eve was her husband’s twin and yet his polar opposite at once. She complimented him and challenged his way of thinking, a balancing act which would test the strength of Adam’s love for her.

The story of Adam and Eve is the first love story. It serves as an allegory for the spark of human consciousness, the critical moment when we began forming civilizations, separating from the natural order of the food chain. This miracle could not have happened without Eve’s betrayal— the biting of the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. In A Course in Miracles, sin is described as “lack of love.” Adam and Eve’s sin was not simply eating the fruit. Their sin was believing they ought to be ashamed for their nudity once they ate from the fruit and realized they were naked. God created them as naked beings. There was nothing to be ashamed of except this feeling of shame itself. Adam and Eve lacked love for themselves by being so self-loathing that they would hide from God out of a false belief that they were unworthy to be seen by him.

When I heard the story of Adam and Eve told in church before, it was usually used as an explanation for woman’s natural wickedness, her cursed existence as a second-class citizen. Needless to say, this is not my interpretation. Yes, it is true that Eve would be punished for her sin by bearing the greatest physical pain known to any human— childbirth. She would have to endure many forms of physical pain which would be passed down to every woman after her. However, God’s gift to her for her bravery in approaching the tree and her truthfulness when being asked what she had done would make up for this immense pain. She would feel the greatest physical pleasure any human could experience through the same sex organs from which she could conceive her children. This ability to experience great pleasure would also be passed down to every woman after her. She who understands pain and pleasure would understand the very meaning of life itself.

Adam believed he was spared by God and received a lesser sentence, but he received the worst curse of all. No, Adam would not have to endure the physical pains of womanhood, but he would never feel the ecstasy that came with womanhood, either. Without feeling the depths of pain or the heights of pleasure, man’s understanding of the human experience would always be limited by his physical form. He would be damned to a life of incessant searching for the meaning of his existence, never able to find the answer to his universal questions without the guidance of his wife. He who blames another for his own misfortunes will turn everyone away until he has no one left to blame but himself.

The conflict between Adam and Eve foreshadows the battle of the sexes. The challenge which comes with every romance (whether it be heterosexual or not) is learning how to satisfy each other’s needs and desires while speaking in a language which is foreign to the opposing energy— the languages of the mind and the heart. In Adam Phillips’ essay “On Frustration,” he speaks about the key function this emotion plays in the context of love. He argues that every story of love is a story of frustration.

            “[If] someone can satisfy you they can frustrate you. Only someone who gives you satisfaction can give you frustration.                 This, one can say, is something we have all experienced, and go on experiencing. You know someone matters to you if                   they can frustrate you (pg. 15).”

The book of Genesis is not only a love story between Adam and Eve, but the love story between humans and the divine. Just as Adam and Eve’s love frustrates and challenges them to adapt to each other, God’s love for us must frustrate him as well. God desired stewards who would tend to his planet, and so he created humans. Adam desired a partner with whom he could share the Earth, and so God manifested Eve from Adam’s dreams while he laid unconscious in a great slumber. Frustration arises as we confront the being which we imagined, realize they are not exactly what we dreamed of, but accept that the reality of our manifestations satisfies more than the intangible fantasy ever could. It is the imperfection which causes frustration, and therefore brings us satisfaction.

Our culture’s addiction to pornography (and by porn, I mean all sexualized media— not strictly internet porn) ultimately stems from our obsession with achieving perfection. Rather than compromise on our desires through sexual exploration with a loving partner, we reject reality in the pursuit of the exact fantasy we imagined in our wet dreams. For men, this is an especially fruitless endeavor. No sexual scenario, no matter how salacious or fantastical, will ever lead them to a greater orgasm than the one they experienced while jerking off to the thought of the very scene they enacted. If they continue on this reckless journey in search of their greatest thrill, they’ll exhaust themselves by the time they’ve reached their mature age. They’ll find themselves wandering through the world aimlessly without any direction in life besides a false sense of vertical movement towards some higher pleasure or enlightenment which he could never have achieved alone.

We allow our fear of failure to keep us from doing the hard work of self- discovery, the discovery of love. To be perfect suggests one cannot evolve past the point one has reached. Humans are constantly evolving as we learn to adapt to our ever-changing world. If we were made perfect, God would have no reason to guide us, to teach us, to correct our mistakes. Eve’s bite into the forbidden fruit was the inevitable act which would teach her and all of humanity of God’s grace for us. It was this act which allowed God to show her that she would always be worthy of his forgiveness and that his trust in her to mother the world was not broken. Even when his wrath is felt, his love still satisfies, for God is love itself.

Many loving relationships fail not because they were bound to fail, but because one or both parties were so insecure in themselves that they did not feel worthy of the love they found; or they were so afraid of hypothetically hurting their partner because they had not yet done the emotional labor of healing this irrational fear. We sabotage genuinely loving relationships to avoid the pain we assume will come when the one we love discovers we are not good enough for them. “One day she will see I am not perfect, and so I must make her see all the ways in which I’m terrible to save her from myself...” is a silly thought which might go through one’s head. We don’t consider that the one we love already sees us as we truly are. We function as their mirror; a stunning reflection of their own soul staring back at them. If one cannot trust themselves, they will be too paralyzed by self-doubt to take the leap and fall in love. It’s too risky to bet on love, to trust this inner knowing which cannot be confirmed through external means of measurement. What scares us more than heartbreak is love’s fulfillment. When we are accustomed to being neglected, abused, manipulated, we become comfortable with this maltreatment. It is the joy, the peace, the affection which makes us uncomfortable. We are so afraid of being changed by the power of love, of losing control. But what if we never had control to begin with?

IV.

Simone de Beauvoir taught me to fear love. In her seminal text The Second Sex, she speaks of love as if it were her greatest enemy. “As long as the temptations of facility remain [a woman] needs to expend a greater moral effort than the male to choose the path of independence.”³ By moral effort she means a rejection of our femininity. Work like a man, fuck like a man, and soon you could become independent like one too. If women could free themselves of their attraction to and adoration for the male species, we could finally surpass them and rise to the top!⁴ De Beauvoir’s work is brilliant, but she is chained to her White female perspective. She is concerned with those women, within the same White educated class she once belonged to, who seek independence by assuming the wealth and power her husband has achieved. Unable to follow her own path, this woman lives vicariously through her husband and adopts his personality as her own.⁵ This infatuation with the male suitor in question is not really love as much as it is an obsession fueled by envy. To conflate love with this toxic emotion is to reduce God to a devil.

De Beauvoir intellectualizes love in such a masculine way, as if it is something that can be solved with logic or reason. Of course, she was a staunch Atheist. If she could not believe in God, then love would absolutely be out of the question. Though I am a believer in love and in God, I find myself rationalizing romance in my own life. Choosing sexual partners out of convenience, pushing potential partners away because my busy schedule does not allow it, etc. My true love was my work, and anyone who stood in the way of my productivity was viewed as a potential threat to my success— or so I once thought...

In order from left to right: Claude Lanzmann, Simone de
Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre in Egypt (1967)

As Simone de Beauvoir argues against the pursuits of romance, she neglects mentioning her own love affair with her intellectual equal Sartre. With all their faults, the couple managed to maintain a lifelong romantic partnership free of the sort of monogamous heteronormative attachment she sought to escape. How could she possibly believe love with any man would result in enslavement when she herself experienced the liberation of true love with him? She could take this love for granted because she knew, either consciously or unconsciously, that any person would love her, if for no other reason but that she was white. If all else failed, the White woman could always find a husband if she did not wish to work. Meanwhile, most Black women are the breadwinners of their households whether they are married or single.⁶ Ironically, we are also the ones White women hire to complete the domestic work for their households: the cooking, the cleaning, the childrearing. Black women are expected to work full time, be a perfect parent, a hyper-sexual lover, and a modest God-fearing woman all at once. Where is the time to be free? Romantic love is an expectation for White women. It is nothing more than a fairy tale for Black women. Unlike our White sisters, we are still longing for our knights in armor— not to save us from any danger— but to release us from the burden of being everyone else’s savior. For once, someone would be there to comfort us the way we have been expected to comfort everyone else. To desire, to be desired, to be deemed desirable as a Black woman is still a radical thing.

White women have always been afforded the option to deny romance if they did not seek to participate in the petty games of chivalry. This vendetta against men was born out of a competitive edge to overcome their sex, since it is the only thing which separates them from achieving the same status as their White male counterparts. Black women have always been expected to be independent since they were separated from their native land and family. Historically, their male partners have been ripped away from them, killed in front of their eyes, or were so terrorized that they could no longer look in the eyes of their soulmate again out of fear that this gaze would summon the repressed memories which haunted them so. As stated by Solange in Jean Genet’s The Maids, “I want to help you. I want to comfort you, but I know I disgust you... When slaves love one another, it’s not love (pg. 61).” The love we, Black women, are seeking is greater than just our own personal fulfillment. While White women reject motherhood and marriage in protest of the feminine ideals expected of them, Black women are fighting to build a new family dynamic bonded by a love so strong that it cannot be destroyed by the evils of the colonial empire. Finally, our children will be ours to nurture and not be sold away, our life partners will be alive and free to embrace us tightly, and the togetherness which was so violently broken will be restored.

Still, as a woman, I fear falling prey to cycles of co-dependency which could potentially rob me of the freedom I’ve achieved by being happily single. I desire a partner and a family, but I do not want to sacrifice my individual joy in order to build these connections. How do we learn to love each other, keep each other close, without trapping each other into a prison of our affection?

V.

My father texts me and my sister at three o’clock in the morning to tell us he is worried we are too opinionated and stubborn to be in union with any men. “You can’t learn about men from listening to single women. You need to learn how men think.” He is right that I’ve been fed misinformation about men by many of the women who raised me. I was taught to hate men, most specifically to hate my father. He deserved to be hated because he committed sins only an evil man would think to do. He was incapable of redemption, and therefore loving him was a useless endeavor— or at least my mother thought so. I listened as my mother and her friends complained about how intolerable most men were. They were stubborn, hard-headed, and controlling. Ironically, these were the traits I saw in the women I loved.

I was taught to believe that any smart or successful woman had to assume masculine traits in order to be respected, especially if she was Black. We weren’t stubborn, we were strong-willed. A woman couldn’t be hard-headed, she was simply the master of her own mind. That woman wasn’t controlling, she was in control. She was powerful! If she was not likable, this did not matter. Men did not need to be liked to be respected, so why should it be any different for a woman? If a woman wanted to take up space in the world, she couldn’t make space for a man in her life. He would only try to reduce her power to servitude. They would rather die alone than be any man’s servant. I accepted this lonely fate as my own if my ambitions were to remain the center of my life.

Portrait of Aunty Rose by Joey Olisaemeka Wilson

What my mother and aunts did not realize is they were teaching me to hate myself. I hated all the parts of me that reminded me of my father. I hated my face and my beautiful complexion because people would constantly remind me of how much I resembled my father. I hated mathematics and science because they were the subjects my father excelled in. I didn’t want to be known as the honor roll child, the overachieving prodigy that my father wanted me to be. Ironically, my rejection of all my masculine traits turned me into a wounded woman— the demonic Lilith of the underworld. Men were my greatest enemy, even the man who lived inside of me. I remained this way until a miracle happened.

A storm came in the form of the financial crisis and changed my life forever. As my pubescent body morphed into some unrecognizable form and my childhood collapsed before my freshly teenaged eyes, my mind was filled with obsessive thoughts of this illusory control which I felt was stolen from me. If I could not be in control, then I did not want to live at all. That was the moment when my best friend, Eve, walked into my life. Eve was the first woman I had ever met who taught me the power that comes with being unapologetically feminine. Her confidence shone through her like a bright light that could not be turned off. She was so sure of herself and who she was, even at the young age of 13. Before I met her, I had learned to weaponize my gifts against other people to protect my own ego. I used my intellect as a shield and my humor as a sword. Eve used her gifts to make people smile, to share them with those who needed to be lifted up. The positive energy she put out into the universe always came back to bless her. She did not need to be in control of all things because she knew this was impossible. All she had to do was follow her intuition and she would receive everything she ever needed and much more. Once a young woman learned to surrender to her own nature and master the feminine gifts hidden within, she could finally step into her divine power.

It was this self-discovery which sparked my attraction to the opposite sex. Perhaps I was attracted to men because I had been taught to hate them my whole life. Oftentimes, our desires are built upon the sensations we weren’t allowed to explore. The forbidden snake we were warned never to touch. Most men I had befriended weren’t snakes at all. The men I knew were sweet, honest, and straightforward. I felt safe in the presence of masculine energy. With men, I never had to analyze the past or hypothesize on the future. I could just be in the present, free of any doubt or fear. When I did feel fear wash over me at times, the men in my life would put my mind at ease. They would assure me that everything would be okay as long as I focused my mind on peaceful thoughts. Men were not the source of my anguish. To the contrary, it was other women who filled my head with nightmares, fueling my suspicions by pouring gasoline on my intuition and handing me a match to light myself with. They projected their traumas and heartbreaks onto me. I could not possibly feel safe around men because they could not feel safe with them. It was impossible for me to feel pleasure from any man because they could not feel it with them. To admit that not all men were evil and that some were actually quite lovable would mean their failed relationships could no longer serve as evidence to prosecute men for their emotional defectiveness. Perhaps these examples of bad romance were simply the result of incompatibility, or worse— they (the women) had played a role in the demise.

We direct this scene of hopelessness and anger towards men as an act of accountability. We view all men as cheaters, liars, and abusers who haven’t yet been caught in the act. We all wait with baited breath for men to fuck up just so us women get to say we knew they were bad all along. We chalk up this bad behavior to the inevitable nature of manhood instead of addressing the real problem, which is that these individual men dishonored the boundaries set within their specific relationships and acted in unloving ways towards their significant others for reasons which may vary depending on the situation.

These dangerous stereotypes of men are more misogynistic than feminist. We hold men to a much lower standard than women when it comes to all relationships– not just romantic ones. We allow men to be absent fathers, disengaged friends and ruthless coworkers because this is what is required of them if they are to convincingly play the alpha male role they’ve been assigned at birth. The truth is men have not opened up to us about the pressures they are under as a collective because our society has never given them the space to voice their feelings aloud.⁷ If they were to break character and reveal their true selves, they fear we will not know how to love the emotional man who stands behind the mask.⁸

If we are to believe men and women are truly equal, then we should expect our male partners to honor our boundaries just as we are expected to honor theirs. If a woman truly believes in feminism, then she cannot actively demonize men without acknowledging her own hypocrisy. The aim of feminism is to reckon with the hyper-masculinization of our society by re-introducing the feminine ideals and achieving a balance between the two schools of thought. All of us, no matter our gender, harbor both masculine and feminine energies within us. To deny these parts of ourselves in an effort to conform to these unrealistic standards of femininity and masculinity is to mutilate our soul and kill ourselves slowly by denying our true nature as human beings. If one seeks to find the yang to their yin, one must first balance the two energies within themself. One must learn to love themself as a whole and not in parts. Once I completed this step in my own life, I no longer lived in fear. Each new stranger I met was a potential friend, collaborator, lover— not a potential enemy.

As I forgave myself for how wrong I had been about men, I learned the truth about all human beings. There was no one on Earth who was too broken to deserve forgiveness. It was not until I was able to forgive my father that I was able to love myself completely. He was not the villain I had cast him as in the story of my life. To my surprise, he had become one of my greatest mentors. He was not perfect by any means, and yet my love for him still remained. Perhaps if I did not need him to be perfect in order to love him, I could finally let go of my quest to become perfect and prove to some invisible person that I deserved to be loved. I could stop overthinking the obvious truth. Love is not something that can be solved using rational thought. It is not something that can be manipulated by our mortal will. Love is the absence of control and logic. In that regard, love is a feminine phenomenon. You know you have fallen in love when you cannot control the feeling. The person you have fallen for could drive you mad, and yet that yearning still remains in your heart. I could not stop loving my father even if I tried with all my logical might. When you finally surrender to the truth, you will discover the peace and freedom you were seeking all along.

VI.

My father knows I am not a religious person. He calls me on the phone yet again to tell me about the Bible and all the lessons I might find within it if I gave it the good ol’ college try. I was reluctant to call upon the Bible for answers on sex and sexuality. My rejection of the church and organized religion as a whole stemmed from my adolescent realization that sex is not some evil act, but rather the purest and most humane bond one could make. There is nothing more innocent than two (or more) people physically connecting their bodies and giving pleasure to one another as an expression of their fondness and desire to see the other in a state of bliss, even if just for a moment in time. Sex itself is not what is sinful. It is when we make sex about ourselves— boosting our own egos, refusing to consider the other person’s desires in an attempt to gain power and control, or manipulating our sex as a tool to get something from the other person—that it becomes demoralizing. Men and women are both guilty of this sin.

When sex is done with compassion, generosity, tenderness and attentiveness, it is divine. It is the act from which all life is born. When it is done between strangers, it reaffirms one’s faith that not all of humanity is doomed. It gives us hope that beautiful people do exist beyond our social orbit. When it is done between friends, it can be cathartic and enlightening. It helps us grow closer to each other and to ourselves. When it is done between passionate lovers, it can be a spiritual experience so Earth shattering, it changes you for good. It forces you to consider a life you had never dreamt of before you met the person. A life where you are no longer at the center. A life that is more beautiful and meaningful when it is shared with the one you love.

Understanding requires honesty. Misunderstanding requires communication. Conflict requires apology and forgiveness. Confrontation requires retreat or the declaration of war.⁹ As long as you follow the first three steps of engagement, you’ll never need to turn to the final rule. If you are a woman who loves a man, do not be afraid to make space for him in your life. You should not have to be everything to everyone all of the time. Allow him to be the person in your life whom you wish to be for others. If you are a man who loves a woman, remember to keep her safe and show her you are worthy of her trust. If you do this, you will be awarded the key which unlocks all the answers you’ve been searching for. She’ll make a home for you in her heart, her mind, and her body all at once. You will allow her to blossom into the tree of knowledge which will keep producing fruit until the end of time. And if you remain faithfully by her side, you will always get your nut.