Attention Aries men who responded to my request for contact — I’ve devoted most of next week to writing chapter one of Mars Calling…so I plan to be back to you with an email by Monday.
Thank you for responding, and for your patience. I’ll be asking you about what, in your mind, are the ideas about Aries that you most relate to as a man; and what are the ones that you are working to transcend or integrate. Please check the email you sent me. If it does not have “Aries” in the subject header, it’s unlikely that I’ll find it, so please resend it with that one little word in the subject line. Thank you again, my brothers! — efc
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Dear Friend and Reader,
Sometimes I am stunned by my horoscopes. I am a customer of the service mainly through the Oracle.
The columns that are current or recent never seem like much. It’s impossible for me to judge their relevance beyond the very obvious because I’m so close to all the contexts that the horoscopes exists within: history, relationships, growth, constant change, and the current aspects.
Then I click that Oracle button and something just leaps out of the past. This is what I got in response to an inquiry specifically for this page today, from nearly nine years ago:
Sep 10, 1999 – ARIES – Weekly
Among the many fine lines in this world is the one separating power and the abuse of power. This is slippery, because for the most part we are taught by parents and schools how to be victims and not assert ourselves, so when we have that first taste of authority or impact, the tendency is to see how far we can take things. I don’t recommend such a course of action right now. At the moment, there are far too many matters of deep inner concern, issues that could truly be called spiritual in nature because they involve the meaning of existence and facing some of the allegedly darker, but really just deeper, sides of your nature. Focusing your attention inwardly as much as possible, and on noticing what you don’t normally notice, will result in your taking concrete, measurable steps toward your freedom.
I mean, what can I really say except that while I was rearranging the computers in my space an hour ago, I realized that I had come to my real critique of feminism through the process of writing Friday’s Astrology News article, “Eris Notebook: Dancing with Discord.” What would that be? Well, it’s related to the Aries theme that is coming from behind every picture frame: starting things and not finishing them.
It is that feminism, the Movement, as I’ll call it, rarely addressed solutions. I am speaking of 70s feminism, the history I address in “Dancing with Discord.” Certain individuals at the time did offer some solutions, and I am here to acknowledge a few of them. For the most part, feminism pointed out problems; but without solutions, problems are useless.
Now, the critique was pretty smart, even at its most fopish or reactionary. Casting relationships as political or politicized institutions was right on; and for my part, I see the marriage contract as being the ultimate tool of the body politic in love.
Feminism was onto this for a while, recognizing that the marriage grants a property right that basically makes equality impossible. On another level, the integrity of individuals in a marriage can go a long way toward making the state second in priority to common sense and loyalty. But it rarely trumps the state’s power; too many of these contracts end in litigation, which really needs to be calling our attention to a problem. We do not need a state license to love or have sex. We “know” this, but look around and it’s obvious that we don’t know it.
The sex of marriage is intercourse. That is what marriage sanctions; that is the license you get, that makes fucking neither adultery nor rape nor libertinism. Perhaps the politics of state-sponsored relationship have encrypted themselves in this most private experience of relating.
The reason the state has an interest in penetrative conjugal coupling involves (as anyone who has made it two weeks into Anthro 101 knows) the movement of property; wills and trusts; dowries and inheritances and various other shared resources that gather around reproduction. Masturbation, to give an example of something that can’t get you pregnant, is irrelevant because it’s hard to see how cash can be transacted in the process.
(Actually I have some fun stories about this, playing with sex workers in Amsterdam.)
Most people, however, get the stuff for free.
Masturbation would be the most democratic form of sex, but most people don’t consider it sex; they consider it sexual, but somehow not relational. And what is the point of sex, if not to relate? Well, consider this — it’s a form of relating to yourself. That’s the gift — clearly spiritual in nature. Masturbation’s most subtle value is emotional. It is release, but you can take it deeper. You can set yourself free in there.
Most relational situations involve another person. The politics of love sneak in, and we all know where they sneaks in from, or through, or with — that would be sex. Sex can be used to work a lot of things out; such as the comingling of egos, a complex task. But usually we get in deeper than we’re ready, or go straight to familiar territory. There seems to be no middle of the tree — we are either all the way in, or all the way out. EveryoneВ knowsВ relationshipsВ areВ subtlerВ thanВ this.
YetВ sexВ hasВ aВ polarizingВ effect.В It’sВ pleasureВ isВ enoughВ to makeВ itВ theВ ultimateВ drug.
Common sense tells you that there are numerous inequities between any number of people of any number of genders; and we’re not a bunch of little driods all of whom have the same wattage.
Erica Jong tried to depoliticize sex by making it zipless: anonymous and unattached. In that z concept, which we claim to so deeply abhor but so dearly want, there is autonomy; there is self-direction; there is mutual choice by two individuals free of any other agenda. Zipless means it matters not how much money someone has, unless that fact turns you on. You’re not going to marry into that money, so whatever. He could be a bastard, but hot. She could be a shameless bitch and hot and you can deal with it, for a night. You might be married to someone else; there is no actual conflict because you don’t go shopping for curtains on Saturday morning.
By many, this kind of sex is considered suicidal conduct in today’s world, thanks not only to Aids but also to the community’s response to its existence: a response mixed with prejudice, ignorance, fear, stupidity and missing a great opportunity to earn or rather learn something new about ourselves. For most people, zipless is rendered impossible by Aids, such that the editor of one the Net’s most radical erotic sites once wrote about how it would be unthinkable to have sex with someone the first day you met them. Which is the whole point.
The thing zipless is free from is politics. It is free from jealousy, this most coveted emotion, which would need to be abandoned entirely in a world where equals relate sexually. This is what we mean when we say that sex messes up friendships: it creates an opportunity for the people to not give one another a fair shake, with as much efficacy as money does the same thing if things get a little weird.
Of course, you could get pregnant from sex with someone you don’t know, or a disease, and that would most likely become political: who pays, etc. So depoliticized sex involves a measure of health awareness and also the ability to restrict pregnancy. (This is why Roe vs Wade is so crucial to women’s equity: they get to decide on their own whether pregnancy creates that lifelong bond with a man.)
Feminism never really addressed any of this, at least not with men in the room. Kudos to the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective for making one amazing book — Our Bodies, Ourselves, available to women. There is no equivalent book that I know of for men, and one is distinctly necessary; and I think men need this particular book as much as women do (so they understand something about how women’s bodies work).
One of feminism’s best writers (Erica) had a sexual vision, but the topic never really came up as collective property of the Movement — what would sex, or relationships, be like in a world where men and women are basically equal?
Feminism did provide a partial answer — it would look like lesbianism. Yet all the woman-on-woman 69s in the universe are not going to stop men and women from wanting to fuck. Plus, she reverts to a kind of romanticism and concedes that there may be no such thing as sex between equals. (Somewhere, I have a copy of her article from Penthouse titled, “Is Sex Sexy Without Power?” and the answer she proposes is no, it is not — we crave power inequity.)
Those who are into it know this is an extraordinarily hot form of eroticism. The main reason it’s hot is you get to be sexual and you get to be yourself — entirely and explicitly yourself; and presumably, you do it for this reason. We so often say we want to be seen and recognized for who we are in our relationships; this an opportunity to take that in.
Common sense tells you that there are numerous inequities between any number of people of any number of genders; and we’re not a bunch of little driods all of whom have the same wattage. Powerful women are pleasantly shocking to many men: we all crave a strong mother-figure, and that fits the bill. That is, however, different than fraternity (as Germaine Greer put it) — the trick of cooperation. Part of that cooperation is consciously sharing the gender burden and its many inequities. And that, as anyone who attempts it soon discovers, requires a lot of effort.
So what would it look like, sex in a world of approximate equals? It might look like masturbating together. Not masturbation as maintenance; masturbation as relating.
Those who are into it know this is an extraordinarily hot form of eroticism. The main reason it’s hot is you get to be sexual and you get to be yourself — entirely and explicitly yourself; and presumably, you do it for this reason. We so often say we want to be seen and recognized for who we are in our relationships; this an opportunity to take that in. And being given the privilege of witnessing another person at his or her most inwardly expressive is the ultimate opportunity for empathy. That, by the way, is the emotion I think we need to bring most generously into sex. We say we want to bring “love,” but “love” has all kinds of baggage and expectation. Empathy is about beholding a person for who they are in that moment.
Sometimes I refer to this as compersion. I am not proposing masturbating together as the end-all of sex; not exactly. What I am proposing is that it’s very much its own journey, and that it’s a way to learn compersion and to learn a measure of sexual equanimity.
Politics can enter an environment where people relate erotically and independently, but it has less power over us. If you ask me this involves both the lack of a root chakra hookup and also the absence of a whole set of expectations that come with even one experience of fucking; this includes the hope or expectation that he or she will be available again; or even call again. You would not masturbate with someone and expect them to send flowers the next day. But in that moment, you cannot hide.
What does happen is this: a fundamental equality is forged, or rather, it can be created with awareness. When it works, there is such inherent honesty in this form of relating that all other forms must follow suit, or the relationship will probably dissolve. Honesty creates equality — but not everyone can take it.
Betty Dodson was a pioneer of this relationship mode. You might say this took guts, but she was and is addressing an obvious problem. For the most part, Betty’s masturbation groups involved women only. For some reason — I am not sure she understands why (but I have a theory) — it never took off with men. (My theory is that she simply prefers women for this kind of fun.) Sharing masturbation among women is also a great way to cut through the duplicitous bullshit that women so often lay on one another, particularly about their own erotic nature.
If the concept of feminism is going to have any meaning, it must begin with women being honest with one another. And it must involve women being honest about their own desire, with one another and with men. This is where Betty Dodson and Erica Jong pushed the edge of human awareness, if only a little. Knowing that sex is political, they at least proposed side-doors out of the games and into an honest, real experience of relating and pleasure.
Each proposed a form of sex without a victim. And to most people — it is not that interesting, or it seems impossible. I have my own ideas. You can read about them here.
IВ wouldВ likeВ toВ hearВ yours.
Saturday 29 March 2008 — aspects by Serennu.
Jupiter (19+ Capricorn) sextile Uranus (19+ Pisces)
Venus (19+ Pisces) conjunct Vesta (19+ Pisces)
Venus (20+ Pisces) sextile Sedna (20+ Taurus)
Pandora (22+ Scorpio Rx) septile M87 (1+ Libra)
Atlantis (25+ Libra Rx) semisquare Pholus (10+ Sagittarius Rx)
Sun (8+ Aries) semisquare Admetos (23+ Taurus)
Venus (20+ Pisces) opposite Logos (20+ Virgo Rx)
Ceres enters Gemini (direct)
Ceres (0 Gemini) sextile Aries Point (0 Aries)
Vesta (20+ Pisces) sextile Sedna (20+ Taurus)
Mercury (22+ Pisces) trine Pandora (22+ Scorpio Rx)
Sisyphus (28+ Libra Rx) sextile Orcus (28+ Leo Rx)
Vesta (20+ Pisces) opposite Logos (20+ Virgo Rx)
Amor (18+ Aries) trine Quaoar (18+ Sagittarius Rx)
Eros (27+ Aries) quintile Mars (9+ Cancer)