Sensuality and Sexuality

Recently I fielded a question from one of my students and I thought the topic would make a good post here ( Yes, Virginia there is latent sexuality in Victorian Literature).

The question asked was "Why are the relationships between men and women and women with women described in so vastly a different light". Loaded question even when you are teaching adults as opposed to teens.

The easiest way to answer the question for my student was to show the differences between the emotional interaction as well as the physical interaction. Most often the writers are male, and what men observe and envy in a female to female relationship is the sensuality.

Women interact with one another with a sensuality that men seem to lack. Be it a gentle caress or the simple act of touching of hair. Women are in essence "sisters". No man knows what a woman feels and thinks when something happens to her, they can assume, or guess, but only another woman knows. There is a kinship that women share as the nurturers and the caregivers.

Because of that women are frequently demonstrative with affection and comforts that men seem to lack. Women frequently hold one another, touch one another, comfort one another, even if it is just for empathy and companionship. There is a gentleness between women that is frequently lacking in men, and because of that fact men find it fascinating. What women think nothing of day to day, men frequently fantasize about and exagerate in literature.

Likewise, men are raised to be competative, to be the alpha male. The most prime of the species is the one who gets the mates. Because they are raised that way in their interaction with one another, it is hard wired into their psyche and carried over into how they interact with women.

Men exude a raw sexuality that is made to attract a mate ad repell any interloper who may be a threat to their conquest. Ane women respond to this chest beating and bravado. The biggest and the best gets the females of choice.

Men are not raised to be nurturing and soft. They frequently scorn that as a woman's role and look for thatin a woman. Their job is to provide and protect. The sexuality between a man and a woman is at times rough and primal, therefore more exciting and once again another conquest.

But just as the sensuality between women is greatly exagerated in literature so frequently is the sexuality between men and women. Both are looked at from a different perspective, but both are equally embraced by all.

Thank you for not stereotyping *all* males, for starters.

On this, I would have to agree, for the most part. Yes, males tend to be hardwired as described, but not all, by any means. I, for one, am into the touching, holding, cuddling, etc. Now, by no means am I the only one, nor are all men like me.

This does not mean that the traditional role of a male is wrong, just different. Women, as natural nurturers, tend to be more affectionate. Men, as protectors, tend to be more along the lines of the strong defenders. Men, traditionally, protect the women and children, never commenting about being hurt, except where there are actual injuries. We are raised to not discuss out feelings or minor pains. We aren't taught to be very affectionate or physical, except where it pertains directly to sex. We are taught to be the strong, silent types, instead.

On the other hand, some of us do overcome the nearsighted manner by which we are raised. It is possible, for us, as men, to be affectionate, as well. Admittedly, we're in the minority, and I know thqat statement will get me blasted by many men, but it is true, nontheless.

MystressAutumn, thank you for posting this, as it does need to be said, and reminded frequently. Thank you, again, for not stereotyping, as many are inclined to do.

~NSXX

MystressAutumn{tornsub} what an excellent, well written explanation. It's something that in once sense I've always sort of known but reading it so perfectly written just makes it all that much clearer and more fascinating to me. Thank you!

One would like to thank you for that well written and thoughtful post MystressAutumn.

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Originally Posted by NightshadeXX

Thank you for not stereotyping *all* males, for starters.

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I, on the other hand, could not help but see the whole text as one big sterotype.

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On this, I would have to agree, for the most part. Yes, males tend to be hardwired as described, but not all, by any means. I, for one, am into the touching, holding, cuddling, etc. Now, by no means am I the only one, nor are all men like me.

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You sound like a very good partner :-)

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We are raised to not discuss out feelings or minor pains. We aren't taught to be very affectionate or physical, except where it pertains directly to sex. We are taught to be the strong, silent types, instead.

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I am glad you have partially gotten out of this potentially destructive pattern. Men die sooner for a reason.

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On the other hand, some of us do overcome the nearsighted manner by which we are raised. It is possible, for us, as men, to be affectionate, as well. Admittedly, we're in the minority, and I know thqat statement will get me blasted by many men, but it is true, nontheless.

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That you for putting a little reality in here.

Sometimes my computer BIOS glitches and thinks the date is 2003, which leads to confusion with things like security certificates.

And sometimes I get the feeling that people think the date is 1940, which leads to confusion with things like gender politics. My parents grew up with attitudes like this, Goddess help them, but it's the 21st Century now, at least it is where I'm living.

Since this question was, I gather, raised in a class on Victorian literature, I'm... intrigued?... that you apparently phrased your reply as if these gender roles were universal and eternal. If you'd begun by saying "When these books were written, gender roles were like this, and people believed this about the natural relationship of men and women," then it would have made a good deal of sense, but as a statement about gender politics in the absolute...! Did you illustrate your comments with quotations from John Norman?

One hopes that your not just going to make yet another not so vieled attack against Goreans in general leo since that would be completely blasie.

Dr Lange's (aka Norman's) philosophy may not have been presented in it's entirity until the 1970's yet it is completely applicable when making comparisons about male/female relationships and thus bdsm in previous eras since what the OP is touching on...that male/female relationships are to some degree catagorically and universally timeless despite attempts to repress them is quite relavent.

I personally think thats spot on to a larger extent than many may wish to see. I think that alltough the time period from which the OP was drawing the focus of her discussion with her students speaks for itself in literature and history. That it is not in and of itself a stand alone complex.

Humm odd that relationships between males and females have stayed much the same underneath it all throughout all of history despite the attempts of first the victorians to admonish sexual interactions publically and later militant feminists attempts to emasculate it.

Could it be that perhaps we are hardwired to a certian degree. That as with all other things in the physical world and biology ... structure really does equal function after all?

Strange how people remained basically the same despite the attempts of other people to change them from their inhierent natures.

From the reforms of Augustus being generally rejected by the public in his day to those of the Victorian era being not so discretly sidesteped right up until the present rejections of feminist attempts to manipulate it...humanity has continued right along despite all the repressions by those various groups and others.

We continue doing what nature has always intended for us to do, just the way we are designed to do it.

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Originally Posted by denuseri

One hopes that your not just going to make yet another not so vieled attack against Goreans in general leo since that would be completely blasie.

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I hope so too. I'm sorry now I mentioned it, because the last thing I want to do is start that fight up again. It wasn't really fair, because Dr Lange is only relevant insofar as most other authors espousing such attitudes date to the '50s or earlier.

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Dr Lange's (aka Norman's) philosophy may not have been presented in it's entirity until the 1970's yet it is completely applicable when making comparisons about male/female relationships and thus bdsm in previous eras since what the OP is touching on...that male/female relationships are to some degree catagorically and universally timeless despite attempts to repress them is quite relavent.

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Let me try to explain why I have a problem with that.

When you read some puritan-feminist writer declaring that no woman could ever really want to let a man hurt and dominate her, that the claim that women have such feelings has been foisted on the world by male pornographers, and any woman who actually has such urges is either emotionally damaged or a victim of male chauvinist oppressive false consciousness... it's not just that it's wrong, it feels like a personal attack, because it denies not merely your experience but your own deepest feelings. Am I right?

Does that help you to understand how I (and thir and other women like her) feel when we are told that the only real and natural way for people to be is emotionally repressed aggressive competitive men and gentle nurturing empathic women, and the idea that men and women can be any other way is a lie put about by feminists, and any man who really feels what are supposed to be "feminine" qualities is either a freak or trying to bend himself out of shape in obedience to feminist ideology?

I went through my schooldays being called a queer because I just didn't want to compete and aggress like boys were meant to. The hippie movement was a liberation for me, not just for the political and sexual freedom, but because for the first time there were role models in popular culture of (hetereosexual!) men who were gentle and nurturing with flowers in their hair. (It took another ten years to learn that I could be all that and dominant and sadistic, but that's another topic for another day.)

When I see another flat statement that this is how men are, this is how women are, it's nature's way, you can't fight it... then I feel someone is once again trying to shove me (and my lovers and playmates, not to mention my children) back into boxes that never fitted us, that crushed us out of shape till we were able to break free. It denies not only my experience but my deepest feelings, and I can't help taking it personally.

I never, ever deny that you or anyone else feel the way you feel, are the way you are, have the nature you have. All I ever ask is that you return the courtesy, and allow that maybe the way I am is as "natural" and as real as the way you are, and that I (and the people I've known and loved) are not some weird unhealthy deviation from your natural wholesome norm. I get enough of that from mainstream puritans: I don't need it here.

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Originally Posted by leo9

When I see another flat statement that this is how men are, this is how women are, it's nature's way, you can't fight it... then I feel someone is once again trying to shove me (and my lovers and playmates, not to mention my children) back into boxes that never fitted us, that crushed us out of shape till we were able to break free. It denies not only my experience but my deepest feelings, and I can't help taking it personally.

I never, ever deny that you or anyone else feel the way you feel, are the way you are, have the nature you have. All I ever ask is that you return the courtesy, and allow that maybe the way I am is as "natural" and as real as the way you are, and that I (and the people I've known and loved) are not some weird unhealthy deviation from your natural wholesome norm. I get enough of that from mainstream puritans: I don't need it here.

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You said it for me too, MyLord, much better than I could. Thank you.

Dear Denuseri, I am not going to start this old discussion up again. You have your ideas, others have theirs, and that is how it should be.

Only two comments re the thread start mail:

1) It is, IMO, better manners to give your views as your views, as you have done, rather than go this my-way-is-the-only-way that so many use on bad-mannered lists. Especially on a site like this, where many people are trying to find their own way to fulfilment. In main stream society they'd rather we were unhappy living their way, than happy living our own. We do not want to copy that attitude, I am sure! Nor can it be the object of a site like to this to say - as some do in the vanilla world - that you do not know what is good for you, and if you think you are happy living as you do you must be sick! I have always found that attitude arrogant beyond belief, and you find it in so many places, not least among the professions. Please let's not have that here! We are functional adults, we know damn well what we like, and what we do not like, what works for us, and what doesn't. Accept that.


2) MystressA, with due politeness I have to say that if, in any of the literature classes I have attended, a teacher had answered a question on literature with a lecture of that teacher's personal view of gender politics, I would have been baffled to say the least.