July 23, 2003
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
The Struggle Over Sex, Consciousness, and Our Future
from Sacred Pleasure
by Riane Eisler
During the second half of the twentieth century, people began to talk of a revolution of consciousness: of radical changes in how we view our world. According to some, the triggering event was the explosion in 1945 of the first atom bomb, alterting us to the possibility of nuclear extinction. According to others, it was the first photos from outer space of our beautiful, ever more threatened planet. According to still others, it was the breakneck speed of the technological, social, and economic changes pushing us toward a "post industrial" world.
This same period brought important changes in sexual attitudes and behaviors -- what the media hailed as a sexual revolution... [But] Some of what has until now been lumped under the catch-all phrase "the sexual revolution" is in fact part of the dominator sexual counter-revolution.
I cannot emphasize this enough. It is easy under the guise of sexual (or any other) freedom for those who hold power to more effectively dominate those who have been socially disempowered. We see this in nonsexual relations, where all too often "free enterprise" has served as a smokescreen for the domination and exploitation of economically disempowered groups such as minorities and women. And we certainly see it in sexual relations, where "sexual freedom" has all too often led to even more exploitive sexual predation, as women are pressured to be sexually available to men simply because they have been taken out to dinner or a show -- and (as in the "date rapes" we hear so much about these days) sometimes forced to have intercourse if they refuse. In other words, what we see here is … the dominator mechanism of co-option -- the appropriation and distortion of partnership social trends to maintain or reimpose dominator-dominated relations.
This problem of co-option has been a constant all through the first phase of not only the modern sexual revolution but the modern revolution in consciousness. For example, many of the important intellectual breakthroughs of the Enlightenment were co-opted into the construction of a science that all too often served merely to make oppression and destruction more efficient -- a subject we will return to. Important modern economic and political theories, such as those of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, were co-opted into the service of dominator political and economic regressions. And even the all-important deconstruction of dominator beliefs, myths, and stereotypes has itself now begun to be co-opted into a nihilistic attack on all standards and values -- which ironically opens the door even wider for those who would reimpose on us the dominator standards and values from a time before the decisive break from our authoritarian past that began to take shape during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.
The regressive pull is today most visible from the fundamentalist right, often from people who seem to be literally hypnotized by religious leaders who alternately threaten them with the most hideous divine punishments or promise that -- in exchange for total obedience -- God will choose only them to be saved, while all others are destroyed when Armageddon brings on the end of the world. But their fierce opposition to any change in "traditional" dominator-dominated family and sexual relations is only one aspect of the struggle between dominator regression and partnership resurgence that will determine our future.
Certainly if the fundamentalist right succeeds in seizing power, we will see extreme social and sexual controls. For what they would impose on us is a religious form of fascism in which the ultimate strong-man is a wrathful divine father who countenances neither freedom nor equality, whose power -- like that of the men who rule in his name -- is imposed and maintained through threats (and intermittent acts) of the most painful violence. And what they would also reimpose on us is strict and, if "necessary," violent control over women and women's sexuality, since this control is both a symbol and a linchpin for all other forms of domination and control. But as we will see, this struggle in our time over such fundamental matters as how we view sex, gender, and our bodies is taking place in far more subtle and ubiquitous ways that transcend such conventional classifications as right versus left and secular versus religious. And while there is a tremendous regressive pull, there is also a very strong and -- despite periodic setbacks -- cumulatively mounting forward movement.
Whether this movement succeeds or fails today still hangs in the balance. As more and more of us break free of our millennia-long dominator trance, we are becoming aware that much that was once viewed as just reality was socially constructed -- and hence, that it can be deconstructed and reconstructed. So a decisive factor in whether we move backward or forward will be whether we not only go much deeper in our deconstruction but also shift the emphasis much more to reconstruction -- particularly to the reconstruction of our most foundational beliefs about gender, sex, and our bodies as a central component of what Anthony Giddens has aptly called the democratization of daily life. For only then will we have the solid foundations for sustainable change in both the private and public spheres.
It is too early to project in detail what form this reconstruction will take. But if we succeed in completing the cultural shift from a dominator to a partnership social and ideological organization, we will see a real sexual revolution -- one in which sex will no longer be associated with domination and submission but with the full expression of our powerful human yearning for connection and for erotic pleasure. It will be a sexuality that will make it possible for us to more fully express and experience sexual passion as an altered state of consciousness. It will also bring the recognition that erotic pleasure can be imbued with a spirituality that is both immanent and transcendent. And it will combine greater sexual freedom with a greater empathy, respect, responsibility, and caring.
II should clarify that by sexual empathy, caring, responsibility, and respect I do not mean inflexible lifelong sexual bonds. While it may embody these qualities, sex in lifelong marriages has all too often marked by lack of respect, empathy, responsibility, and caring. And what we today call serial monogamy (that is, a series of committed relations rather than a single exclusive relationship till death), along with a healthy amount of spontaneity and sexual experimentation, are not inconsistent with caring, empathic, and mutually responsible and respectful sexual relations.
Neither, by recognizing the possibility that sex can be spiritual, do I mean that if we succeed in shifting to a partnership society, all sexual relationships would have this dimension. But in a society animated by a partnership rather than a dominator ethos, all sexual relations -- from the most playful to the most fiercely passionate -- would no longer be associated with impersonal, mechanical, and/or coercive touch. Nor would the human body, be it female or male, in such a society be imaged as merely an instrument for use, much less abuse, by another.
Is it really possible for us to construct a society in which our yearning for caring connection, for the unfolding of our higher selves through physical and spiritual union with another being -- in short, for love -- can be socially supported rather than distorted and repressed? I believe it is. But I am also convinced that if we are to construct a society were sex will be inked not with vilence and domination but with the truly erotic -- with the life-and-pleasure-giving powers within us and around us in the world -- we need to fully extricate ourselves from all that has for so long unconsciously bound us to painful and unhealthy myths and realities. We need an understanding of what I have here called the politics of the body, and of how this relates to what has conventionally been defined as political.
Sacred Pleasure (1995), pages
198-200
Riane Eisler is best known for her groundbreaking work of
cultural history, The Chalice and the Blade. Her most
recent book is The Power of Partnership. Visit her
website at partnershipway.org/