V. Sources of Collective Inferiority: Sex

Karen Horney

5. Chapter - Sources of Collective Inferiority: Sex

            A ccording to Freud, a thwarted sex drive causes neurosis. Self- image psychology is less bold. Sex creates psychological problems when performance falls short of desire. Celibates who want celibacy know contentment. Profligates who want celibacy, as Saint Augustine testified, despair. Sexual times change, and we are uneasy with the new rules. As one who propitiated God with sacrifice, I sympathize with those who surrender sexuality to avoid tragedy even if fate violates the bargain. We long for innocence and lust in our hearts. We worry about doing it right, and about debauchery. We are damned if we do, and sorry when we do not. Sexual confusions exact a toll because conflicts between individual and collective minds create pathology. Self-image psychology says something about where we are sexually and where we may be going.
            Hopefully my sexual odyssey is not representative, but I suspect my experience is comparatively common. Impotence led to a psychiatrist's couch and I have no idea what would have happened had I not beaten that rap. My problem stemmed from my belief that as a male, I should be ready to do it with any willing female. I blame Judaism for my confusions. Jews choose wisdom over orgasms, and their God is unabashedly sexist. He made Adam in his image which proves, to those who think about these things, that God is masculine. Orthodox Jewish men leave the marital bed one week before their wife's menses and return one week after, thanking God all the while for not having been born a woman. In orthodox synagogues women sit upstairs away from the scriptures, while the less than orthodox debate the role of women in Judaism. Can they be rabbis? Can they ascend the pulpit and read the Torah? Will God be offended if they do?
            My parents were raised among these perceptions and for all I know took them seriously. A photograph in our living room showed my grandfather in unkempt beard and black hat, traditional Hasidic splendor. My mother told me my grandmother washed that beard every Saturday. From my mother's expression as she remembered, I decided she hated the practice. Before my mother met my father, she held a responsible position at Sears Roebuck. After marriage she sometimes worked at my father's store, but her real vocation was canasta which she played endlessly at the local Jewish country club. I know nothing of my parent's sex life, how often they did it, or the intensity, but their sexual advice was limited to warnings about pregnancy and disease. Nothing in my upbringing, except books, extolled the glories of sexuality. I marveled at Studs Lonigan's exploits and shared the male pornographic fantasy of conquest by genitalia.
            My friends were Jewish. I knew gentile adolescents, but we traveled in different circles, which suited my mother who cautioned me about unscrupulous gentile girls who do anything to land Jewish husbands. I was never beset by gentile females, and learned that contrary to my mother's fears, Jews are unwelcome in many gentile homes. As an adolescent I played post office and spin the bottle, games in which winners kissed, and we paired off for necking. In those days of illegal abortions, sex presented girls with an enormous, life-destroying choice. The double standard was in full flower, and girls were convinced, rightly in my opinion, that boys played with one kind of girl but married another.
            I found love at sixteen. Until then I exhibited such disinterest in girls, I believed my father doubted my virility. Initially my parents approved of the relationship, seeing romance as a step in the right direction. When it persisted, they suggested I would be wiser to play the field. The girl, who was Jewish, knew more about sex than me. She taught me to kiss with my mouth open, but we did no more than that. I learned about ejaculation when I wet my pants one night as my curfew expired. I went home, ran upstairs, returning downstairs a few minutes later in dry pants. My parents said nothing, demonstrating unaccustomed restraint for which I remain grateful. Months later I touched her bare breast. It was my first time, and guilt damaged pleasure. I believed I harmed someone I loved. My torment must have shown because my mother asked what was wrong and I foolishly told her. She suggested I reflect on how I would feel if someone did that to my sister. I thought about it and for reasons I no longer remember, I decided I would feel bad.
            Shortly thereafter I ended the relationship. I persuaded myself it was best she date others, but I know now that heeding my mother's advice concealed my profound fear of sex. I knew things would not stop above the waist and I was not ready to go further. Sex posed a terrible problem. In those days men were responsible for female sexual pleasure. Good men made wives happy. Incompetent men guaranteed lifetimes of frustration. Since no girl I knew gave lessons, I was forced to look elsewhere. With three friends in the same predicament, I set off for Montreal, whose Saint Catherine Street reportedly housed the largest collection of brothels in the western hemisphere, but four virgins in search of manhood are impatient. In Niagara Falls a cab driver directed us to the local bordello. Since any woman would do, there was no reason to wait.
            Images of that night burn in memory. The brothel was a storefront in a rundown part of town with curtains covering the large window facing the street. The store was a waiting room through which one passed on the way to small rooms upstairs. We sat with several older men watching the women, dressed in shorts and halter tops, ascend and descend the stairs. I chose a plump, dark haired woman named Jo Ann. When we were alone, she asked if I wanted it 'French, straight, or half and half'. When I hesitated, she asked if I was a virgin. It being my night for confession, I admitted that I was.
            Like most men, I idealized prostitutes as having hearts of gold. They let you do what you want for a fee, but their real kindness is keeping a straight face. True to her calling, Jo Ann treated me gently. She explained that 'French' was oral sex, 'straight' was the missionary position, and 'half and half' a bit of each. She tried everything in an extensive repertoire, but could not get a rise out of me. After what seemed an eternity, the madam knocked on the door and said our time was up. Jo Ann made me promise to return the next afternoon when business was slower. She warned me that impotence would haunt me if I accepted the failure of that evening. I did not return, something I now view as a lesser betrayal.
            She would be insulted to know I smeared prophylactic jelly on my penis, covering it with the cloth bag that came in the package. I did not know the bag's purpose was to protect my clothing from the ointment. I thought it had curative powers and wore it a week. The memory of that traumatized boy with his bag saddens me to this day. I had similar experiences with prostitutes in Frankfurt and Paris. I think Jo Ann was wrong about her ability to solve my problem. I was too confused for kind ministrations. Of the four virgins, one claimed success, another was impotent, and one ejaculated before entry, but all of us, including the no longer virgin, had our fill. When we reached the prostitution capital of the western world, we did nothing but look.
            A few years later I lost my virginity, but it was not sex. Over in an instant, it left me feeling I failed again. I feared disappointing women, and fear is not a rock on which sex prospers. That I was forced to such unloving and intimidating extremes is a terrible indictment of my upbringing and that we lead our young into hostile sexual relationships says something about us. Sexual relations today are especially troubled. Homosexuals emerge from closets, and a rising divorce rate belies promises of living happily ever after. Collectively we are prudish but individual behavior disobeys that collective ideal.
            I grew up in a time when girls expected boys to make the sexual moves. Female worth was proved by our clumsy passes. Boys asked for dates and married you, the female equivalent of economic success. Girls never telephoned boys or went Dutch treat. They kissed good-night, but not on the first date, and the kiss, when it came, lacked passion. Boys thought girls wanted dinners and movies without giving anything in return. Girls thought boys wanted sex without love. Girls who granted sexual favors developed a reputation for speed. My mother constantly admonished my sister about being 'fast'. "Men", she warned, "do not buy milk when the cow gives it away for nothing". The perception of women as virtuous or decadent controls sexual behavior to this day. Virtuous women read romantic novels and wonder about sex, but reject sexuality as beneath them. The word mistress has two meanings, one, a woman in authority, as over a household, the other a woman engaged in an illicit sexual relationship. Our language reflects our confusion.
            Women measure themselves by their attractiveness to men, and men like it that way. Men dream of sexually responsive, defenseless women who worship them. In return for protection, women devote themselves to their protector, an ancient understanding stemming from the man's inability to bear children. Men want their lineage, that is themselves, to endure. They want sons to continue the family name and they want to believe those sons are theirs. The transaction is businesslike, with man and woman giving something and receiving something in return. For having their bread won, women keep home fires burning, tend children, and cook, but times change. Now women run marathons, and discomfit their mothers with attempts to beat men at games. My mother competed with no man and remained unemployed because my father demanded it. His sense of self could not accommodate anything other than a dependent woman.
            Sexual roles, like all behavior, are either learned or innate. That gender roles change proves them cultural, although it is generally true men are physically stronger than women. In more primitive times, superior strength made men hunters while women reared the children they bore, but we have invented so many strength amplifying devices, the distinction is no longer reasonable. Women drive trucks and manipulate computer keyboards as easily as men, but expanding female horizons create new problems. Marketplaces expose women to different possibilities, which makes insecure husbands uncomfortable. My parents might have divorced had my mother insisted on gainful employment, but she was content to be a successful man's wife. For them, money made everything right. In other marriages, lack of money makes everything wrong. Women see men as the enemy, but they are wrong. Freud's query, "What do women want?" is the question of an anguished suitor, not the wondering of a tyrant. Women and men want love and understanding, but we take so dim a view of sex, it contaminates love. Bad sex undermines everything. Good sex eludes us.
            When women refuse sexual relations, men see it as rejection. Wives reject husbands so often, conjugal headaches are a staple of stand-up comics, but men offended by female reluctance overlook on enormous difference in the respective situations. Women get pregnant, an uncomfortable, sometimes fatal condition, and maternity, unlike paternity, cannot be denied. When bloodlines mattered, penalties for illegitimacy dampened female ardor. Birth control pills altered this reality, but they have side effects of their own.
            Women suspect masculine motives because when sex is exploitive, men do anything to prevail. They call it 'scoring' and the scored upon lose a nasty game. Physical differences create psychological differences, but with birth control, technology again blurs distinctions. Women, freed from fear of pregnancy, are less concerned with virginity and illegitimacy is no longer a life destroying event. This promotes promiscuity, but many of today's young remain with one partner at least temporarily, rather than play the field as I was encouraged to do. Today's young maintain platonic relationships with the opposite sex, something my generation could not manage. These small advances have not eliminated the adversarial nature of sexual relationships. Words for sexual intercourse are obscenities that mean to cheat or be cheated. We say someone has been 'screwed' and mean they were deceived. When someone is 'fucked', they are damaged. We have yet to invent a word for sexual intercourse meaning a warm, pleasant, mutually rewarding experience. Sex, for all our modernity, remains a game. Like all our games, it has winners and losers.
            When I was nine and in summer camp, a boy from New Jersey whose parents were divorced told me that sex puts the man at the woman's mercy. If she crosses her legs while he is inside, I was informed, he is trapped. If she crosses her legs hard enough, she can amputate his penis. In those days divorce was rare and children of divorced parents seemed worldly enough to know what they were talking about. I do not attribute my sexual difficulties to that early misinformation, but so many cautions were abroad it is remarkable that when the time came, we did anything. As adolescents we traded information, sucking up observations like sponges. We watched parents and developed ideas about how the genders interact. My mother said she wanted to be treated the way my father would treat his second wife, so certain was she a replacement waited in the wings.
            My mother was angry because without my father she lacked identity. Dependence of that magnitude must terrify. My father never accused my mother of philandering, but she watched him carefully. Interested women were called to his attention, and he was scolded when she suspected their interest was returned. My mother made no effort to conceal her distaste for sex. She told me sex was something men imposed on women and since my father was not especially passionate, they suited each other. Female sexual antipathy lessens pressure, but more important, it means women have no reason to stray. Sex elsewhere would be no less distasteful than it is at home.
            Men have themselves to blame for this unhappy state. They decide sexual women are unreliable and distinguish 'proper' from 'loose' women, marrying the former, while dallying with the latter. Girls of my day accepted the distinction and their contempt for girls who accommodated masculine urges exceeded that of boys. The dichotomy puts women in a double bind, contributing to female mental disorder. The first Kinsey report disclosed that the majority of married women in the United States never experience orgasm during sexual intercourse. Nice girls are not supposed to enjoy sex.
            I do not know if my mother and father loved each other. They remained married and were, I think, sexually faithful. My mother told my brother she would have divorced my father had she not become pregnant with my sister, but that was hindsight talking after he died and she was alone. She worried about what others thought, which made divorce inconceivable, but she was disappointed marriage fell short of the passions described in the romance novels she never tired of reading. She believed in love, but knew distrust is a reasonable sexual watchword. If modern practice is relevant, she had reason to suspect her sexual world. Today's husbands and wives change partners quickly in an unending quest for fulfillment, a broken family being a small price to pay for prospects of ecstasy. Those damaged in the process are advised to try again.
            Love means risking everything from disappointment to embarrassment, but the underlying problem is more sinister. Years ago The Story of O detailed sado-masochistic sexual perversity. Characterized as pornography, and, if recollection serves, banned in Boston, its popularity indicates it struck a collective chord. The plot was simple. A lover takes O, a lovely young woman, to a chateau where, trained to obey, she learns one submission leads to another. He lover brands her with his initials and when he leaves her for another, she requests his permission to die. The moral is that love kills, a pessimism reflecting the collective wisdom of our day. We believe in burning desire and consuming passion. We know that when the lovely flame dies, smoke gets in your eyes.
            Men in Love, Nancy Friday's collection of male sexual fantasies, contains the allegedly true story of 'Warren' who watched his wife have intercourse with other men. She acceded to his requests in the mistaken notion he would be satisfied. When his demands became increasingly outrageous, they divorced. Warren regretted the divorce because sex with his former wife was the best he knew, but mingled with sorrow is his pleasure that she went so far to prove her love. Like the lover in The Story of O, Warren degraded his wife to enhance his self esteem. Insecure lovers fear the loss of control they equate with loss of self. They think small accommodations lead to unconditional surrender. They do not see sex as joint, something each does with, not to, the other. Trapped in individuality, sex becomes a battle. Like all battles conclusive results remain a battle away.
            Judging from the number of books on the subject, sex is a matter of general interest. Everything from philandering to celibacy is suggested, but Judith Coburn believes solutions are beyond us. ("...Even in some utopian, guilt free state of nature, it is doubtful sex would ever become just some healthy bodily function. By its physical nature alone, sex is fraught with issues of control and surrender...") Sex is a war women win with denial because we share a perception of sensual women as dupes. We assume men find sexual release where they can, but genetics does not explain men who remain faithful through long separations, nor does it explain celibates. Nymphomaniac, a word with pathological implications, describes women who behave like men.
            Religion encourages present gender roles. The Koran says. "Men are superior to women on account of the qualities in which God has given them pre-eminence", and the Judaic-Christian bible concurs. The Book of Timothy tells us to, "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence..." With sex, as in so many areas of life, God motivates human behavior. Self-image psychology ignores supernatural forces and sees a different reality. Were men emotionally secure, they would not create a hierarchy of two, nor would they allow sexual fear to take them to strange places. In China infant female feet were bound well into this century, men persuading women that misshapen feet are desirable. Hobbling is an ancient technique, and one sees in the high heeled fashions of our day, an effort to slow women down. Men admire well turned calves. High heeled females accommodate the interest.
            Perceptions change, but modern women continue to accommodate ancient ideas. They curl straight hair or straighten curly hair. Lipstick, an invention that allows lips to match fingernails, contaminates the taste of food, but women readily trade comfort for allure. I know how they feel. As a Jew I belong to a precariously positioned minority. I sense a distance from gentile friends caused by my rejection of their collective understandings. Unlike other Jews who delight in being 'special', I dislike being Jewish. For one crazy year I wanted so much to look gentile, I traveled twenty miles to have my Semitic curls straightened. My hairline has receded, a fact I attribute partly to genetics because baldness is epidemic on my mother's side. I also blame the harsh chemicals used in that vain pursuit of foolish fancy.
            Individuality contaminates sexuality, leaving us more concerned for ourselves than our partners, and hierarchical societies are no help. Men who support nuclear families by running risks of the marketplace, see Sunday in front of the television set as their due. Wives, who amuse the children while dad relaxes, are angered that Sunday brings no relief from daily routine. Women might forgive male insensitivity, but not when men who demand respect make no effort to conceal their admiration for attractive female strangers. Wives do not scold husbands for behaving like men, but they must wonder about men who promise fidelity while appraising the sexual attributes of other women.
            Women say men treat them like objects. In New Bedford, Massachusetts a woman was raped by several men to the cheers of other men. Widespread revulsion left the rapists wondering what happened to an honorable male pastime. No less a poet than Byron rhapsodized the female propensity for flirtation, coupled with a desire to be overcome. "A little still she strove, and much repented, And whispering 'I will ne'er consent-consented". The Rape of the Sabines, a legend of maidens who learn to love their kidnappers, became Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, first a movie, then a television series. Overpowering women, imposing sexual intercourse, and making them like it remains a popular pornographic theme.
            Women consider rape the violation it is, but men have raped throughout history. Part of the impulse to rape stems from a conception of women as property. Raping a wife is the ultimate larceny. Until recently, husbands who raped wives committed no crime, it being generally perceived wives must accommodate husbands. Rape has the additional benefit of perpetuating female dependence. Rapists teach women it is unsafe to leave home.
            I grew up in an environment where sex was discouraged, but not only Jews denigrate sexuality. Christians promulgate inhibiting edicts, and though I know little about mid-eastern and oriental custom, I suspect veiled women and arranged marriages are not precursors to passion. We are, however, more liberated than our parents, and can reasonably attribute sexual changes to improving individual and collective imagery. To see sex, a basic, insistent drive, as evil, makes us evil. To see it as a pleasant aspect of the human condition is a large step in the right direction.
            Male and female sexual fears contribute to mental disorder. We train women for dependence, and dependence invariably damages self esteem. Anyone trapped in the role of 'little woman' pays a price, be it depression, physical ailment or ennui. When one's gender makes one less, denial of sexual intercourse is a primary avenue of self assertion. Anything interfering with the woman's ability to deny sex, such as developing a taste for it, threatens. When 'respectable' women perform sexual acts associated with 'loose' women, they worry their husbands will reject them the way men reject mistresses to marry virgins. Men say they want sexually responsive wives, but when wives respond, they see female sexuality as inconsistent with fidelity.
            It is presumptuous for me to discuss female problems, but some are obvious. Women menstruate as punishment for Eve's skullduggery, but menstrual cycles are irregular. Every month they must decide whether the flow is benign or symptom of deeper disorder. Venereal disease inflicts greater agonies on women, yet another burden. I represented a young, childless husband who gave his wife gonorrhea. The settlement was favorable because she wanted to be rid of him, and though it is disloyal, I did not blame her. I have no statistics, but I suspect more women contract venereal disease from husbands than husbands from wives, a sad commentary and good reason for women to view men with suspicion. We do not attack venereal disease, a wage of sin, with the enthusiasm with which we attack polio or tuberculosis. We face an epidemic of AIDS and have yet to mobilize against it.
            AIDS changed sexual habits, but rather than God's wrath, it may be recombinant D.N.A., fashioned in a government laboratory and brought to Africa where an experiment got out of hand. Or it may be mutation caused by atomic radiation. I am paranoid about the C.I.A., especially after its capacity for evil was exposed. Minds capable of experimenting on unwary populations are capable of anything.
            It is difficult to predict where equality will take sexual practices. Hippie communes with shifting sexual relationships may be portent, not aberration, but we need not be concerned about unwanted sexual postures because self-image psychology makes no demands. Someday, after a concerted international effort eliminates venereal disease, sexual restraint will vanish as negative perceptions turn positive. Present attitudes put sex behind closed doors because ignorance and secrecy reinforce the status quo. Having sworn fidelity, we do not want to discover we struck a bad bargain.             Our sexual future will differ from the present the way present mores differ from past, but the notion that we, collectively, are equal and decent, portends the greatest change of all. Those who want promiscuity can have it, while those preferring romantic love remain true. Sexual permissiveness represents another change from present practice, but there is no choice. We cannot change the collective image without changing our minds about sex.