Thread: he needs to show me love

Good points. My understanding is that materiarchal societies didn't just have females taking the dominate role we currently (over the past several thousand years) see males in. Rather it seems that they were fairly egalitarian and evidence little or no weaponry or signs of reoccurant warfare. This isn't a case then of one gender hegemony replacing another but of a different way of looking at and dealing with life. Such thinking is quite alien to what has become the norm worldwide.

I refered to the Bonobo as an animal social structure of the only other primates(or perhaps only other animals period) which have continuously available sex. My understanding is that this is not the case with baboons. So from one perspective humans have voluntarily moved from what may be the more natural 'Bonobo' type interaction to a more 'Baboon' type? (As Moby asks, who in their right mind would choose the 'baboon' model? LOL) The physical limitation of sexual availabiltiy precludes any possiblity of baboons being socialized into a Bobono type behavior. But humans do have the physical ability to do so. The behavior modification idea does require the physical ability to engage in sexual behavior at will.

I did have to laugh at the example of attempts to raise males in a 'genderless' environment. I gave that a try with my son and abandonded it. He had no vocabulary for violence, had no exposure to it (outside of his father's verbally abusive behavior) but he played with his lego people, "I is going to poke you", "no, no, don't poke me", "poke, poke, poke", "ow, ow". I recognized that it actually caused problems, as he had feelings that he had no means to express.

Recent brain research is really exciting. There is so much going on and while a better understanding is being gained, I suspect we are just beginning. A report I saw quite recently found that contrary to old beliefs about men being more visually stimulated sexually than women, that genders brains respond about the same way. Most women simply fail to connect that to a physical response. Sex therapist Susan Craine Bakos has postulated that males, having a very immediately visible physical response, create a sexual response loop at a young age. I understand this to mean that it effects the number connections made in the brain (neuro synapses). Females, with everything less upfront, don't generally make such a strong arousal loop. They simply fail to recognise their own arousal. That combined with social conditioning, "don't put your hands there", results in women who can't orgasm or when monitored, their brains show orgasm but their bodies don't recognize it.

Woman may be more flexible thinkers because of their monthly cycle. Here there is evidence that men also cycle but because it is less visable, they don't recognise it. So to all appearances once men reach physical maturity, their bodies are fairly constant. Women upon reaching sexual maturity are in a constant state of change. Their hormone levels change throughout their cycle and hormones changes our responses in a variety of ways. The current socialization that deprives many women of sexual release or satisfaction may contribute to more extreme behaviors which have been labled as PMS. The book, One Hour Orgasm, does a nice job of explaining this.

I find your statement that men are programmed in the direction of exclusivity and ownership, interesting. So often the opposite is claimed, that men are naturally programmed to spread their genes around as much as possible and are therefore not exclusive. In truth all research, all interpretation, is driven by our socialization and expectations. We may be opening to more possiblities but are still limited in our thinking. We may never know what we are 'naturally', because we have the abiltity to reason and to even act against our instincts and have been training ourselves to do so for so very long.

We know that love and infatuation can be traced chemically in the body, as can all emotion. Research has found that people are not uniform in this, not everyone produces the same chemical response to the same stimulus. The day may come when people can be 'mapped' and we will be able to identify people who are not chemically capable of monogamy. Perhaps one day we will have a choice of a variety of lifestyles based on our chemical responses? This would require a different socialization and the radical alteration of much religious thought.

The so called 'Christian" behavior is found in many belief systems, although it is routinely ignored most of the time. Ideally, emotionally mature people would treat each other with consideration, compassion and tollerance. The so called golden rule or the crede of Do no harm, ... would make a wonderful basis for all of us. Unfortunately there is too much, my way or the highway (or death) thinking. There have been numerous attempts at communal living but they have been largely failures because of the contaminated thinking brought by members raised in beliefs that are counter to it. However hard we try, breaking out of that conditioning is hard - it is so engrained that we do not see it.

I do believe that the majority of women and men share a common desire to join in a relationship that is higher than a simple sexual relationship, however nice that can be. But I believe that life is energy and energy cannot be created or destroyed, therefore life doesn't end, it transforms into another state. I also believe in entanglement, that all things are related and connected. I was raised with this belief. Therefore we are not 'meant' to live alone, we seek connection. A woman and a man who are able to connect on a higher level have something very special, something that the construct of marriage is meant to mirror but in fact often is only a farsical, torturous imitation of.