MARS is the most active planet in the sky right now, in the sign Cancer where it's not particularly well supported, and making a long square to the lunar nodes, as well as crossing the degree of a huge eclipse. One of my colleagues described this as some shockingly precipitous astrology -- that is, that things are precipitating from the ethers into reality, and fast. Personality traits, unexpected experiences and hidden emotional material are coming to the surface.

In the closing of her last email, she wrote, "I understand completely why men are afraid of women, and I think it's high time women grokked that too." [For the definition of 'grok' here is the Wiki reference]

We all know why women are afraid of men. Or do we? Remember that fears are not accurate, they are usually personal psychological prejudices. Sometimes they are based on bad experiences that have nothing to do with the next guy. It is impossible to address fear without also addressing prejudices, since fear is so often based on prejudice.

Anyway, here are some of the reasons I've come up with. As I said, they're not necessarily true, or true for everyone. I realize these may sound incredibly cliché, which does not make them any less true or false. But, since I'll inevitably get flamed, please -- send to francis@planetwaves.net and remember that I am free to use all comments that are sent in, but I'll leave your name off if you want. I would appreciate your constructive ideas, that is, how to build a deeply needed dialog between the genders rather than what we endure through marketing, TV and the movies which is only intended to drive the wedge deeper, thus, divide and conquer. I am not here to offer solutions, only to sketch out the problem as I see it, and hear about it from others.

1. Men seem to have all the power. This gives them many advantages. They know how to play as a team, which gives them even more advantages. Often women are excluded from the game and the guys keep all the marbles for themselves. Men seem to make all the money. This gives them more freedom. After all, money can solve nearly everything.    

2. Men have the cock. The only place to get a cock is from a man. This seems extremely unfair since women can provide so many of their own needs if they want to -- but not the cock. The cock can be a love object, a weapon or a power object of some other kind. It can turn into anything. And it does not always give you what you want. You can do all that work to get and keep the cock, and then you get nothing.

3. Most men prefer to be free rather than tied down, which tends to pull the emotional rug out from under those women who just want emotional stability and some form of security as the top item on the agenda. Men are reputed to have no problem having sex with more than one woman, or with as many as possible -- after all, it seems to be in their biology. Still, this is a terrifying prospect -- that another women will come along and simply be more attractive, and that is that.

4. Men and women love differently. Men tend to love women as part of their life, as an aspect of their life. Women are taught to love men as the totality of their life. So a woman can become totally subsumed by the love of a man, whereas a man can keep a woman, or women, as part of his story rather than the main event. This is an imbalance that can lead to deeply unsatisfying experiences for women because men never seem to love as much. All women seem to be endlessly fascinating to many men, whereas once a woman chooses to love a man, he is the one and other guys are not interesting at all, or so it seems.

5. Men can rape women, and easily overpower them physically. Depending on a woman's experience, it's possible to view every situation with a man as a potential rape.

6. Men cannot get pregnant and thus cannot understand the extent to which women are subject to this completely life-changing experience. Men just want to fuck and that's it. They don't care about the consequences.

7. Men are cut off from their emotions and so it's impossible to talk to them about how you really feel. They think feeling and crying are for women. Men have no interest in spirituality. They are not introspective, and have no idea of an interior life. This makes them impossible to have a real conversation with about anything other than golf.

8. Since women tend to communicate in signals, they presume that men will also do the same thing. But this is not usually the case. If a man wants a woman he has the prerogative of approaching her, and generally he will. Men for the most part do not signal or lay bait; they come right out with their intentions. This is boring, and often a turnoff, but it's also experienced by many women as treacherous because they feel they never know what a man is thinking.

9. Men don't understand the phenomenon of the biological clock -- that time always seems to be running out.

Now for a few reasons men are afraid of women. Once again, flame away, francis@planetwaves.net .

1. Women have extraordinary sexual power over men. Unless a woman has felt the same thing for another women, it's nearly impossible to explain the power of the pussy to take over male consciousness. When a woman knows this, however, it can be an extremely potent manipulation device, particularly before sex occurs but often after sex occurs.

2. Women tend to keep their secrets extremely guarded, and to give the impression that you never really know them. This makes them difficult to trust. Because women feel overpowered by men, this can create a mental or emotional atmosphere of "all is fair in love and war" and then men must be prepared for them acting like anything they do or say is perfectly fair.

3. Women tend to deny their sexual desire, at least outwardly. They also think this is a ridiculous notion since they know how horny they are, and everyone else is presumed to know, but most men are left wondering. Women tend to experience their sexual desire as a weakness or vulnerability rather than as power. Most women are excellent at covering up their sexual desire in several layers of inaccessibility, propriety and prudishness that makes it difficult to discern what they are feeling. In covering up their desire/vulnerability, they live constantly with the feeling that they are covering a weakness that could lead them somewhere they don't want to be. This sets up an enormous inner struggle, which often gets projected into relationships as a power struggle.

4. Yes does not necessarily mean yes, and no does not necessarily mean no. And maybe can mean maybe, yes or no. So maybe does not necessarily mean maybe, but maybe it does. Despite all the best efforts of Antioch College and their rules of sexual engagement, we have made very little progress on the meaning of yes and no, the two most important words in the language. (According to these rules, adopted by many colleges and universities in the United States, the man must ask consent at each moment of what the rules term 'sexual escalation'. This automatically presumes women to be victims of sex rather than willing participants.) But this does not reflect reality, even vaguely. Nearly every man has experienced a woman who says no to test her suitor, to make sure he really wants her or because she loves the feeling of having her resistance broken down. Unless you are a man who is bold and who fears no consequences, or have enormous self control and can wait a woman out, until she fesses up to wanting you, this can be an extremely treacherous game, particularly because women can always say they were violated, but men never can.

In actual fact, many of the men women love the most, they start out thinking are arrogant bastards, wimps (or whatever). Some men have figured out that how a woman feels initially has nothing to do with how she will feel ultimately, and thus it's okay to basically ignore the weird messages and make your desires known. But, alas, for any man who just does not have the guts, the heart or the strength to do this, life can be extremely difficult.

5. Women can get pregnant, but when they're really horny (and most likely to want sex), this can matter not at all. Women can also lie about birth control, whereas it's difficult for a guy to lie about whether he has a condom on. Either it's there or its not.

6. While pregnancy changes a woman's life irrevocably, it also changes a man's life irrevocably, which few women give men credit for acknowledging; we are presumed to not give a shit. Women have many forms of recourse, and they begin with all the choices, for example, to prevent pregnancy or not; have the child or not; to involve the man or not. Men, on the other hand, get to go along for the ride, and in the current era, it's very difficult for a man to walk away. It's possible for a man to have a child he does not know about, but impossible for a women.

7. There reaches a point in most women when rationality just runs out. There is no reasoning left. Everything is pure emotion, and it can be dark, and all the rage of the eons can come up all at once. I would dare to say that most men have no idea how to handle female rage, nor do they understand it, and it is terrifying. But short of rage, the overpowering nature of female emotion, and the ability (or weakness) of women to change their feelings every day, makes any intimate experience potentially treacherous, because it's difficult to figure out where she stands (which is a source of power for women) and then, if there is a transgression, the results can be overwhelming.

8. Men are accused of being sexist, but women often hold themselves on an elevated level: as the more moral gender, the more sexually responsible and fidelitous, the one with their priorities clear and who know exactly what they want. The more this is presumed true by anyone but is actually false, the more terrifying it is.

If you would like to respond to this blog, please type neatly, using capital letters at the beginning of sentences. Please send your email as HTML mail, that is, not text only. All responses may be printed anonymously, but I would prefer to have your gender, approximate age, marital status and sexual orientation to post with your response. PS, in that spirit, I am male, 42 (Dragon, Pisces) bisexual but mostly into women, out of the closet solosexual, never married, no kids and single in the sense that I don't have a 'girlfriend' (or boyfriend) in any conventional sense of the word.