Sexologist Catherine Blanc reflects on the prejudices that complicate our intimate life.
“Can a man have a full sexual relationship with a woman who occupies a higher social position than himself? If we ask such a question, then we assume that women should not have power at all. And if one of them has it, then they took it away from men! .. Perhaps we learned the habit of imagining power as something that supposedly should belong only to a man, we learned in early childhood: in the eyes of a child, a mother has power ( because she is able to satisfy all his desires), but at the same time she herself needs a man, a father. She is waiting for him, she is attracted to him, he protects her and brings home money … So, in the eyes of the child, the mother definitely lacks something that the father has.
At the age of two or three, each child discovers his gender and begins to associate himself with his mother or father. For example, a girl understands that she will never become “like daddy” – she is not given this opportunity. Each of us relies on the strength that our gender gives us to compensate for this “lost” opportunity to belong to another. Thus, by its very existence, the opposite sex on an unconscious level reminds us of what we lack, and in this sense, of our impotence.
The masculine principle lacks the feminine just as much as the feminine lacks the masculine. However, many women are dominated by the “weaker sex” stereotype; weakness is considered a sign of femininity. Therefore, having taken a high position at work, they often try to imitate the dominant male behavior. Is it any wonder then that a man can perceive this as an attack on his masculinity – that is, a kind of castration? I must add that in reality we have a lot of evidence of real female power. Take, for example, the ability to have multiple orgasms, because of which women appear in male fantasies as insatiable, greedy, dangerous. Or motherhood, the ability for which men are naturally deprived. Because of this “inferiority”, many of them, when a partner is carrying a child, unconsciously, but acutely feel the need to assert their masculinity: they devote themselves to work with a vengeance … or begin to cheat.
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Today, a woman who realizes herself in the profession and occupies a leading position really needs to feel the calm male power of her partner next to her. And if this is not there, she may be seized by anxiety, fear of scaring away a man, losing his love. It turns out, striving for equality, we sometimes lose the special features inherent in one particular sex. And it feeds both male and female fears in us.”
Catherine Blanc, author of Women’s Sexuality (La sexualité des femmes n’est pas celle des magazines, Évolution, 2009).