Q&A Forum - January 2009 (best of Elise)
Q. I think the whole BDSM experience, whether it's a male or female in control, is all about love on a grander scale. Simply put, to love and to be loved.
If there were no forms of love involved of any nature (kissing, hugging, cuddling, intercourse, any kind of affection) would you or anyone else be able to dominate another?
A. Love and intimacy are not necessarily the same thing. Intimacy is an expression of love but one can love another without being intimate.
It has been said that the nature of Love can be broken into three levels: Eros, Philia, and Agape. The term Eros (Greek erasthai) is used to refer to that part of love constituting a passionate, intense desire for something, it is often referred to as a sexual desire, hence the modern notion of 'erotic'. In contrast to the desiring and passionate yearning of Eros, Philia entails a fondness and appreciation of the other. Philia is about friendship but not necessarily intimacy. Agape refers to the paternal love of God for man and for man for God but is extended to include a brotherly love for all humanity.
Romantic love is deemed to be of a higher metaphysical and ethical status than sexual or physical attractiveness alone. The action of loving encompasses a broad range of behavior including caring, listening, attending to, preferring to others, and so on.
So there are different expressions of love and different levels of love. Eros is love expressed physically. Philia is love expressed intellectually and emotionally (i.e. friendship) and Agape is love expressed spiritually. I believe we are triune beings and we can love and be loved on all three levels. Thus, I agree with your premise that D&S has the potential to provide a couple with the opportunity to bond on all three of these levels, spirit, soul and body. Romance and intimacy can exist on a higher plain for a committed couple that engages in a D&S relationship.
However, it would be wrong to assume that all D&S relationships are based in Eros (i.e. the physical). Complete strangers can be affectionate and engage in physical sex due to infatuation or physical attraction, without connecting in the Philia realm of friendship and compatibility. So it would be erroneous to confuse Eros with romance. True intimacy is about more than physical contact.
Likewise, people can be deeply in love with a limited amount of physical contact. People can connect spiritually, emotionally and intellectually and that bond can be much deeper than a purely Eros based physical relationship. This is the case both inside and outside the D&S world. There are D&S relationships where a man serves a woman sacrificially without any physical contact yet the bond between them is very strong in the mental and spiritual realms. In addition, there can be elements of Eros within the realm of the mind as the submissive man or the dominant woman experiences different sensations of mental eroticism without necessarily engaging in erotic passion with each other. For example, there are relationships where a woman has a husband and a submissive and her interactions with her submissive triggers erotic stimulation but she only engages in sexual contact with her husband.
Ideally, the best scenario is for a submissive man and a dominant woman to build a relationship where they can bond and grow on all three levels of love (i.e. a FemDom marriage). However, there are D&S relationships that are purely about Eros and there are D&S relationships that are purely about Philia. Regardless, I endorse loving female authority where a man reveres and serves a woman and the woman dominates him with love and respect.
Q. Rather than the gender perspective, I wonder if the appeal of femdom has more to do with class or wealth. I visited the Erotic Museum in Paris recently. An exhibit there said the most powerful men of the early 20th Century hired Dominatrixes and submitted to the worst beatings and humiliation. Middle class men, in particular, hired prostitutes to whip them.
It made me think -- those who have too much control want to be the submissive as some sort of purge or relief. The day to day working stiff in comparison is demeaned and humiliated all the time. They want to do it to somebody else, even if they have to act it out in a fantasy.
Have you ever studied femdom along class lines? I would appreciate your thoughts.
A. Yes I have but it is my opinion that neither economics, social class, personality nor temperament is what drives man’s desire for female domination. People are always trying to pin-point some psychological or sociological reason why a man would want to be dominated or, in extreme cases, be abused by a woman. The class analysis is another way of arguing that people engage in D&S in order to find balance for their lives. There are cases where this is true but it is neither the rule nor the exception. One cannot categorize man’s desire for female domination to such a limited scope, no more than one could categorize the motivation of any expression of sexuality. I wrote the following in my book, “Female Domination”:
“Female domination is not just D&S games to balance out ones life, as some believe. A lot of very successful men find out that their lives are still not fulfilling, even after they have succeeded in business or their chosen profession. The more prosperous and powerful a man becomes, the more his weakness is magnified. A lot of men walk around thinking that if they only had more money or success, all would be well. The men that have the money and the success realize that these cannot satisfy them emotionally, socially, and spiritually. Successful men have the resources to explore their submissive desires at a greater length than does the average middle class male. But regardless of a male's financial or social status, the desire is still there to submit to the female gender. This just goes to show further that the desire to submit is present within all men and economical and social factors do not play a major role in the development of these desires. A man's childhood and his interactions with female authority figures when he is a child and an adolescent, play the biggest role in the development of that submissive seed that I believe is present within all men.”
And I wrote the following about temperament:
“From my years of counseling and interviewing submissive men, it has been rather obvious that the male desire to be in submission to the female gender has very little to do with temperament. There are submissive men who are introverted, shy and passive and there are submissive men who are aggressive, outgoing and extroverts. The male desire to submit to the female cannot be over analyzed. Some have tried to explain the popularity of the professional Dominant woman (a.k.a. the Dominatrix) as being a way for the aggressive businessman to obtain balance in his life. It has been said by some who have examined the phenomenon of the D&S lifestyle that D&S attracts men of power and of a “Type A” personality because FemDom gives these alpha male types a chance to be on the receiving end of aggression and power instead of being on the giving end. In other words, Female Domination gives the macho male an avenue to find balance.
Then there are those who have claimed that FemDom attracts men who have a low self-image because they harbor a secret desire to be abused. Some in the field of Psychology believe that the Melancholy is most likely to develop masochistic desires. These two theories contradict each other. If FemDom primarily attracts shy and insecure males, then why do so many aggressive and extrovert males also desire to be dominated by a woman?”
At first glance, it would be easy to simplify the male desire for female domination as a psychological exercise in order to obtain balance or as an expression to relieve guilt that comes from social standing or economic advantage. However, the more people you meet in this lifestyle it becomes rather apparent that men from all walks of life, from all economic backgrounds, from all social standings and from every type of personality have the desire to be sexually dominated by women.
The bottom line is that each of us is unique, with a unique genetic code, and with unique childhood and life experiences. People have tried to decode human sexuality for centuries but there is no formula because we are complex souls. What we do know, in my opinion, is that Nature has implanted a seed within males for the desire to be under loving female authority. Some have classified this as the natural result of the Mother/child bond and others have classified this as the natural superiority of women (i.e. Dr. Ashley Montagu). Regardless, it has been my observation that this seed within men can grow and become manifested in a limitless array of sexual desires and expressions. Some are more extreme than others (extreme as defined by society standards) but the common thread is the male desire for loving female authority.
Q. Dear Ms Sutton, I have enjoyed your site and feel you provide a valuable service to both the dominant and submissive side of the relationship. I have a question for you. In thinking about the inner need for some to men to submit to their wives - in some ways it seems simply that the male is looking to replicate his childhood relationship with his mother. He ends up in a very similar place - being totally dependent on his new mother (wife).
The tools and lifestyle are very similar: discipline, lack of financial resources, no need/opportunity to make decisions. The dominant wife has similar traits to a mother in terms of responsibility for a dependent coupled with the freedoms of adulthood. What are your thoughts on this please?
A. There is a great deal of truth in your analysis, however what needs to be understood is the motivating force behind the male desire for loving female authority. The male need for discipline and nurturing from the loving hands of a woman is based in the spiritual, emotional and social necessities of the inner nature of man, and these needs never go away. Just because a male reaches adulthood, that does not diminish his necessity for loving female authority.
Wives have been referred to as “new mothers” long before anyone ever coined the phrase “female domination”. I would venture to guess that ever since there has been the institution of marriage, wives have been compared to mothers, both in a positive sense and in a derogatory sense, such as male peers teasing a husband that he is “hen-pecked” and has lost his freedom to his “new mother”.
This comparison is only natural because both a mother and a wife display the maternal instincts of the female nature. But never forget that in most cases, a woman is a wife (or significant other to a man) before she ever becomes a mother to a child. The matriarchal rule of a woman begins with the marriage (and often during the courtship) long before children come into the picture. It doesn’t take a woman long before she begins to exert her authority and influence over a man. She will change his dress, point out his many flaws and try to train him to become what she expects in a man. I am talking about so-called vanilla relationships here, not just FemDom, but rather most female/male relationships.
Most of the time, the male will yield to the woman, especially during the courtship because he is under the spell of the woman’s female sexual power. And once they enter into the legally binding arrangement of marriage, the woman will often exert more control and more power over the relationship, all the while acting as if the man is in charge in order to massage his ego and to conform to the patriarchal society model of marriage. But in most marriages, be they traditional, modern, vanilla or FemDom, the woman does run the show, either openly or through clever and influential ways. And the male gender knows this, and has always known this, and the pride of man tries to make fun of it by calling the wife “the old ball and chain” (translated the one who keeps you in bondage to her will) or “the new mother” (translated the one who has final say in the matter).
Men like to deny the obvious by talking about it in a negative light but this is a defense mechanism in order to protect the fragile male ego. The truth is that men want and need the maternal and feminine authority of women in their lives. It is how nature designed it to be. A male child is birthed into this world by a woman, he is nurtured and raised by a woman, he is disciplined for his own good by a woman and when he becomes an adult, he still longs for and seeks out to be under the control of a woman. It is in his nature and he needs female authority to bring peace and purpose to his life. The male who lacks loving female authority in his childhood or who lacks it in his adulthood, is often a male who is restless, untamed and conflicted.
Where society fails is when women do not embrace and celebrate their authority. For too long, women have bought into a lie and have suppressed their desire to be in charge by submitting to a flawed patriarchal system. We are beginning to see that change and women are beginning to become comfortable being open about their dominance in the marriage relationship. Women have always yielded influence behind the closed doors of the marriage relationship but now we are seeing women expecting submission from their husbands in an ever-growing wide array of areas.
When society refers to a wife as a “new mother” it is often meant as a negative comment, usually as an attack on a male’s manhood. Even within the FemDom lifestyle, the term “new mother” is used to accuse a man of shrinking from his life obligations and to seek to return to the safety and care-free world of his childhood. However, the truth of the matter is the opposite. The man who will yield to his wife’s authority and who will submit to her will usually be a very productive male who fulfills his life responsibilities. It is the man who fights female authority in the home who ends up shirking responsibility. The man who hangs out with the guys and who leaves the household duties and parenting to the wife might think he is showing society who wears the pants but the truth is he is running from his marital obligations.
In contrast, the husband who views his wife as his authority figure and who will obey his wife, he will be the husband that is more likely to be seen doing household chores and spending time with his children. He is more likely to be faithful to his job and to others because he must give an account to his wife for his behavior.
So whenever I hear someone refer to a wife as a husband’s “new mother”, I look at that term in the positive, as a compliment. For it signifies a man who will revere his wife and honor his wife just as he hopefully reveres and honors the woman who gave him life. A wife is not a mother but a woman is a woman, and the nurturing and disciplinarian traits of the maternal nature of the female is present in all women, and the nature of man desires and needs the maternal nature of the female, whether he is four or forty-four. Thank you for the question.
Q. Dear Ms Sutton, I really enjoyed your comments in a recent Q&A about female wrestling. That is also my biggest fantasy/fetish but I have not actually experienced it. I was wondering if you have ever met or spoken to men who have actually been being beaten up by female wrestlers? What kicks do you think they get out of it?
A. The male fantasy of being physically dominated by a woman is very common. Men have always fantasized about Amazon women who enslave them. Movies and television programs that feature strong women who can physically beat up men have always been popular with the male population. Shows such as "Xena: Warrior Princess", "Dark Angel" and “Alias” have been well-liked by males. Men are yielding to the intellectual, social and sexual power in women and this is causing them to desire to be defeated in the physical by the female as well. That is where a lot of the female wrestling fantasies within men are originating. That is also why Hollywood and television are celebrating the strong female.
When a woman kicks a man around on television or in the movies, chances are the male viewers are sexually turned on. This is because this act represents the power of the female and men want to submit to it. It is becoming popular for Hollywood to produce movies where strong, leather wearing female characters have scenes where they physically beat up men. I mentioned in my book that in the summer of 2003 there were a number of these kinds of films, like “Charlie’s Angels”, Terminator 3”, “The Matrix Reloaded”, “Daredevil” and “Lara Croft, Tomb Raider”.
I remember as far back as the early 1980’s men telling me about how they were aroused by the movie “All the Marbles” which was a movie about female wrestling. Peter Faulk managed the California Dolls and the male audience loved seeing these beautiful women wrestling.
There is a sexual element to this common male fantasy as more men than society realizes wants to be sexually submissive to females. Fantasies about strong women are the result of man’s desire to be sexually submissive.
I have talked to a number of men who have actually experienced being dominated by a female through wrestling. Some paid for this experience as they visited a professional Dominatrix who offered wresting as a service. And others have actually had real life experiences, such as being beat up by a female bully in school.
One gentleman told me about the time when he was in college and he attended an event where a female wrestler offered to wrestle men from the audience. His girlfriend dared him and he accepted in order to prove his manhood in front of his girlfriend. The result is that he lost and he was humiliated and emasculated not only by the female wrestler but also by his girlfriend as she never let him live it down. Years later, he still finds the experience to be erotic, although he would never admit that to others.
You might find the December 2005 issue of Predominant to be especially of interest as we interviewed Kellie Everts. Among the many fascinating experiences in her life, Kellie is a former bodybuilder who produced FemDom videos in the 80’s and 90’s, many with FemDom themes based on women physically dominating men, including wrestling. I think you will find her life story to be most fascinating.
Q. Dear Ms Sutton, I enjoyed the Q&A about female wrestling. Do you think that wrestling is a less sophisticated form of domination than 'traditional' BDSM? Or just different?
Also, in your experience, how large is the world of wrestling domination in relation to the world of BDSM domination?
A. The submissive nature of man can be expressed in many forms based on a man’s nature, upbringing and life experiences. The man who has a fetish for women in leather or women in boots or the desire to be tied up and spanked is no different than the man who wants to be physically dominated via wrestling. The outward expression may vary but it's all part of the common male desire to be sexually dominated by a woman.
In the overall realm of female domination, I would say that the wrestling fantasy is not that large but I would say it is growing. Men are visually oriented and the more there are sports, movies and television programs that celebrate the physically strong female, more and more men will have fantasies about being dominated via wrestling. The submissive nature of man runs deep and you never know what will stimulate those psychological triggers.
In addition, more and more women desire to compete in what were once male sports. We see women being physical on the soccer fields, basketball courts, softball fields and there are even female semi-pro football leagues. Roller derby is making a comeback so women are continuing to tear down old stereotypes and they are choosing to conqueror what were once strictly male dominions. So there are more women who are willing to engage men in endeavors like wrestling, as these women gain great satisfaction and pleasure in defeating men in physical feats of strength. The submissive male will always find such women to be appealing.
Q. Ms Sutton, I am a huge fan of yours. Ms. Milicious is the lady I serve. She also loves your book and web site. We hosted a CFNM party this past weekend. Fun was had by all.
I thought you would find the premise of the next Vince Vaughn movie interesting. It is called “Used Guys” and the premise is in the future, women are now the dominant sex and sterile men are kept as slaves. According to the director Jay Roach, it is set in the future, where women run the Earth. Men killed themselves off by ingesting some kind of enhancement drink. Women now get cloned companions, and the two leads are rendered obsolete by a new clone line that promises to be sexier, better listeners and superior lovers. The dumped duo goes on the run, hoping to regain manhood by searching for a male Nirvana known as Mantopia.
Reminds me of the great female dominant themed sci-fi movies I loved so much as a kid. Thank you for all that you do.
A. I tried to look up this movie and one site said that it was going to star Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller but another site said it was going to star Jim Carrey and Ben Stiller. Another site said the movie has been placed on hold. It looks as if the movie has already been in for some rewrites (that is never a good sign).
I bet they got this idea from the 1953 Abbott and Costello movie, “Abbott and Costello Go to Mars”. In that comedy, Bud and Lou crash land on Venus and encounter a planet populated entirely by beautiful women and no men. There was a slight FemDom theme to that comedy but it sounds like “Used Men” will bring a modern sociological twist by making it a futuristic movie about women dominating Earth.
According to the one site, “Stiller and Roach have been plotting this picture for several years.” Perhaps the motivation for this movie was the onslaught of articles in newspapers and magazines about the societal trend toward female dominance. One cannot escape reading about women gaining in power and out-performing men. There have even been some serious articles dedicated to a possible future where men will become obsolete. I can see how a creative mind would wonder what such a future would be like. Unfortunately it looks like a creative comedic mind is going to focus on the humor of such a possibility. It would be much more interesting if someone did a serious movie about a future where women are in charge of all facets of society. But the sad truth is that the male ego cannot fathom the concept of women in charge outside the realm of a science fiction story or a comedy. And of course the demise of men would have to be self-induced. It could not be because of the natural superiority of women (although there has been research about how the by-products of certain plastics have been shown to make men sterile and these by-products are making their way into our water supplies).
Still, comedy or not, if there are some strong FemDom overtones in the movie, the potential will be there to stir the submissive nature of the male audience. Comedies such as “My Tutor”, “Real Men” and “One Night at McCools” triggered submissive desires within males when they were not expecting it. All it takes is one good FemDom scene to stimulate those psychological triggers of visually oriented males which in turn will bring a man’s submissive nature to the forefront of his consciousness.
Never forget that men make movies and write stories like “Used Guys” because female dominance is a common male fantasy and a fantasy is usually motivated by a real desire. But of course there is no need for a man to go to another planet or live in the future in order to serve dominant women. Women exist in reality, right here in this present day, and a man can serve a woman right here and right now.
Q. Dear Ms Sutton, My partner (of 15 months) and I have read your book. I thank you for the information into this subject because we have had many questions and you managed to answer most, but we still have one that is puzzling us.
My guy was raised in an extremely strict religious home. He has had many feelings of guilt as to why he has wanted this type of sexual relationship. Although the book answered many questions and helped us to enjoy this type of closeness, there is still one question that remains.
He not only wants me to dominate him (which I find is a real turn-on) but he wants me to inflect pain on him. Obviously nothing that will damage or permanently hurt him, but what I feel is extreme pain all the same. My question to you is where does this type of thinking come from? I need to understand why he needs this and where this need comes from before I can be free with this part of our relationship.
Thank you again, for getting us this far.
A. Unless your husband is a true masochist (which I seriously doubt) what he really desires is punishment and/or discipline at the hands of a woman whom he trusts. Most so-called masochists are in fact mental masochists and not physical masochists. A lot of men have a fantasy of being the receiver of severe pain from a sadistic female but very few would actually find the reality of such an activity to be enjoyable. Any Pro Dom will tell you that it is common for a client to ask for a “severe session” because that is his fantasy. Yet, it takes no time at all for him to use his safe word as he discovers the reality is much different from the fantasy, for while our minds are limitless in where they can go in thought and desire, the limitations of the body will quickly bring one down to reality.
Pain is the body’s way of telling the mind that something is wrong and it is usually at that point that the mind will snap out of the spiritual realm of thought and focus on the problem, i.e. the pain, thus the power of the session is broken. In order for the mental and the physical to achieve that balance where the experience is fulfilling and powerful, the session must find that threshold and stay at that threshold without going too far beyond that threshold. For most men, mild to moderate discomfort or pain will take them to that threshold where the mental and the physical can enter into that balance where the mental triggers are stimulated from the physical sensations. To go beyond the threshold will take the focus off the mental triggers and instead focus on the discomfort, which will make it a negative experience instead of a positive experience. Therefore, most men who say they want “extreme” pain are speaking from their fantasies and not from reality. So always keep that in mind. It is Ok to talk about “extreme sessions” as the words of the discussion will stimulate those triggers, for words are mental stimulus and will communicate from your mind to his mind. But once you step over from the mental to the physical, you are limited by the body’s limitations.
Now for the sake of this discussion I am not going to talk about how pain can release endorphins, which can cause a euphoric sensation. That factors into the desires of a masochist, but I want to focus on the mental reasons why a man says he wants to be punished, as that is the more common reason men want to experience pain at the hand of a woman.
I would venture to guess that what your husband desires is punishment and he equates pain with punishment. Maybe it is due to his guilt or perhaps it is just a manifestation of his desire for loving female authority. But he craves to be disciplined and/or punished by a woman. Such an activity should yield contentment if you also balance it out with nurturing.
Your challenge is to find his threshold where he can feel the discomfort from the punishment but it will not be too severe as to affect his mind, as he yields to the discipline and surrenders his will over to your will. Start out mild and build up to more moderate over time. Always allow him a safe word and communicate with him afterwards (not immediately but shortly after the session is over) to see if he could have taken more. And never forget to hug him and nurture him after a session to bring balance.
Over time, you will come to understand why he needs this. He may not be able to communicate it to you at this time, but I can say that it is more than likely rooted in his need for loving female authority. Don’t think of it in terms of administering pain but rather discipline, and discipline is a good thing. It is a healthy experience for a man as it can be a cleansing experience and a spiritual experience. During these discipline sessions challenge him to let go, challenge him to surrender control over to you. For when he lets go of himself and surrenders to you, that is when he will enter subspace. And subspace is a place where he will find contentment and such experiences will assist him as he allows you to run the relationship. Take care.
Q. Ms Sutton, I have just visited Your web-site to further my journey into the philosophy of "Female Supremacy". while I was reading though the pages there, I came to the "Questions and Answers Forum". There I encountered a letter addressed to you by a Christian man who feels (and has been counseled) that "Female Domination" is a sinful addiction. He stated that he would no longer be visiting your web-site.
I believe that his thoughts along this line are the product of a "cultural misdirection". So much of our 'social mores and sense of morality" has been rooted in or heavily influenced by "religion". In itself, that would not be a bad thing to have take place. The problem is, "religion" has been invaded by and corrupted by the "power grabbing male hands" throughout the centuries. And views of "sex" and of "sexual morality" and of "sexual roles in society" are not in fact "religious teachings" at all, but rather are teachings of men using them in a religious garb as "levers of control and domination".
So this man is in a sad situation if he abandons "Female Supremacy" only to return to "male corruption". He returns to an order which has brought the world: greed, malice, hatred, violence and war. Only "Female Domination" will return us to a benevolent social atmosphere and end violence and wars.
Thank You for allowing me to send You these thoughts.
A. One of the most difficult mind-sets to overcome is a thought process that is rooted in a religious belief that has been programmed within since childhood. It is one thing to come to the mental conclusion that women should be in charge based on reason and observation. But how does one go against the religious belief that he or she will be punished by God if they do not conform to what they have been taught is the will of God?
The above entry touched on the subject of guilt brought on by a strict religious upbringing. Guilt is the byproduct of fear. I believe God has called us to live a life of faith, not fear. Yet religion uses fear to keep the flock in line. When a mind-set is developed by having it repeatedly beat into you that God will punish you if you don’t live a certain way, then fear creeps in and one develops an attitude that negative things will happen to you if you don’t conform. This is hard to overcome because negative things can happen to any of us and if you are of the mindset that the reason a negative event occurred is because God is mad at you, it cripples you and you go around living your life in fear.
Faith is the opposite of fear. Faith is a positive expectation that good will come. Faith is a belief that God is not angry. Faith believes that God is love and God wants to bless us. Faith makes a person run to God. Fear makes a person run from God, because they are afraid of God.
If one wants to think of it in natural terms, it would be like a parent who always gets angry compared to a parent that is always loving and understanding. Which parent would you go to in a time of trouble? The one that will lecture you and become angry, or the one that will display love and understanding? That is the difference between faith and fear. Guilt comes when a person lives in fear.
I tell Christians who struggle with guilt and fear to write down some of the many scriptures in the Bible that talks about the love, mercy and forgiveness of God. Then read those out loud everyday, say them over and over until they get into your heart and into your soul. What this will do is this will build faith and cause a feeling of love to fill one’s heart, and “perfect love casts out fear”. A person should always run to God like a child would a parent they trust. A person should not hide and cower from God. That is unhealthy and it will stifle spiritual growth.
You are totally correct in that men have perverted religion and have used it to rule over women. A woman will not obey a man on her own because she knows he is not superior to her, yet a woman will submit to a man if she believes that by doing so, she will be pleasing God. Thus the woman is not submitting to a man, but she is submitting to God. The patriarchal system has used women’s spirituality against them by instilling into them that the will of God is for men to rule. This thought process begins when a woman is a little girl and innocent. She looks up to her natural father and she believes that all men will love her like her father. She is told that God is her heavenly father and she should obey men, especially her husband, because that will please her heavenly father. It is not easy for a woman to overcome that kind of religious and societal programming that is passed down from generation to generation.
Likewise, a man who has the desire to submit to women has difficulty reconciling his desires with his religious upbringing because he believes that to submit to a woman is to sin against God. This makes no sense when one reasons this out and when one studies the scriptures as they were originally written. But tradition is such a powerful force. The religious man with the desire to submit to women struggles because his inner man wants to submit to women but he must wrestle with that need to be accepted by God and society.
Spirituality is good but religion is not, for religion is of man and man does use religion to rule over others. Most translations of the Bible were influenced by a patriarchal society but there are plenty of translations available today that have gone back to the original Greek and Hebrew. It is up to each of us to live after our own conscience and it is up to each of us to search these things out to see if they be so. To blindly follow a religion just because it was taught to you as a child is foolish. Maybe, just maybe, the patriarchy has it wrong. And maybe God is not exclusively male, but is also female. And perhaps God intended woman to be in authority over man. Perhaps God is full of love, mercy, kindness and forgiveness because God is also full of the feminine. Perhaps the God that made animals, and rainbows, and beautiful flowers, is not masculine like we were taught. Maybe there was a reason woman was the last recorded creation in the book of Genesis.
But if we close our minds to this possibility without ever entertaining or researching the possibility, then how would we ever know for sure? To ask God for truth is the heart of a truth seeker. Only the fearful and the closed-minded would preach doctrines that forbid spiritual exploration and inquiry. Truth need not fear openness. Only error need fear openness. Revelation comes to the sincere, not to the religious. Thank you for sharing your insights.
Q. Dear Elise, I read your book and I was having a debate with a friend about the origins of Christmas and I remembered what you mentioned in your book how December 25th was really a Goddess worship holiday, and not the birthdate of Christ. She didn’t believe me and I gave my copy of your book to a different friend. I was wondering if you could go over that again, seeing we are entering into the Christmas Holiday.
I also found your analogy about the three wisemen and male traditions to be interesting as well.
A. Many of our western Christian Holidays were in fact founded as Goddess holidays. The Christmas holiday is an adaptation of the pagan winter solstice rites. Called Yule, it was one of the traditional Celtic fire festivals and marked the return of the light after the longest night of the year. Pagans (peasants, rustic people) in northwestern Europe conducted a yearly celebration, which is remarkably similar to the Christmas we know today. The Christmas Tree is left over from the pagan winter solstice rites. As Europe was evangelized by Christians, the pagan holiday was replaced with a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Christ. Many Biblical scholars believe that Christ was probably born in September, but since there was already a celebration in December, Christmas was substituted for Yule.
Easter is another Christian holiday that was originally based on Goddess worship. Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Easter falls in the Spring, right around the Vernal Equinox. Spring has been, and is, the season for much merrymaking and fun, much of the time with an emphasis on sexual fertility. Easter falls on the first Sunday subsequent to the first full moon after the vernal equinox (March 21). Thus, it can occur as early as March 22nd and as late as April 25th.
Christians celebrate Easter as the Resurrection of Christ. Obviously, since this was an actual date in history, it should be the same date each year. Originally, Easter was celebrated on the same day as the Jewish Passover. Since the Jewish calendar is lunar, Passover can fall on any day of the week, and some Church fathers were distressed that the Lenten fast should end on any day other than a Sunday. They argued about it until the 8th century, when the church officially adopted the pagan date of Easter for the celebration of the resurrection of Christ.
And as far as the Wisemen are concerned, we all see the nativity scenes where the three Wisemen are in the stable presenting the baby Jesus with gifts. Those of the Christian faith were taught this story since childhood and most Christian adults believe it is factual. Yet, the very Bible that is the foundation for the Christian Faith does not substantiate this tradition. When one reads the Bible, one discovers that it never mentions how many Wisemen (or Magi) there actually were and in fact, by the time these Wisemen reached the child, he was approximately two years old and living in a house with his parents. They gave the child three gifts, thus people assume there must have been three Magi, but of course two men could give three gifts, as could ten men give a total of three gifts.
Some would argue that this is a minor detail in the big picture of religion. Perhaps, but this is but one of many examples of how people believe stories from their childhood and accepts them by faith throughout their adult lives, even when they read the passages every year in the Bible, which never claims how many Magi there were or that they were present at the time of birth.
Another interesting part of this story is that Magi were Astrologers. They traced the child by reading the stars. Most Christian denominations frown upon astrology yet it is obvious that God must speak to us at times through the stars, and the men who read the stars were called “wise”. It has been said that the stars tell the entire Christmas story, as well as the life of Christ. If one reads the Zodiac from the Virgin (Virgo) to the Lion (Leo), it is amazing how the Zodiac lines up with events in the Bible. By the way, the Sidereal Zodiac has Virgo from September 17 to October 17, so the Magi must have determined that the birth of Christ fell within those dates.
I am not a studier of Astrology and I don’t read horoscopes. But I do not dismiss the spirituality of a God that created a Universe of order out of disorder and knew that humans would seek to know God by studying the stars. I think the stars remind us all of how vast the Universe is and if you believe in God, how vast God is. We reduce spirituality into boxes, to greeting card sayings, but no matter if we choose to celebrate Yule or Christmas or Hanukah, what matters is that we open our hearts to the Spirit of God (or the Goddess) and receive love so we can give love.
