Sexual Submissiveness

A talk at the Easter gathering of the Erotic Academy in March 1989

by Sabine Lichtenfels
Our theme today is sexual submissiveness. We're dealing with questions
concerning the archetypal images of sexual relations among men and
women. We're also looking at historical views of what sexuality has been,
and what it could be. That means we're also looking at the development of a
vision for a future sexuality, and the question particularly related to this,
namely : What is sexual submissiveness [ sexual dependency ?] How can
we come up with a new view of sexuality which resolves this problem,
without losing what we genuinely love and desire in sex ?
I'll begin with a few quotations from "Stern" [a glossy German magazine],
which recently ran a series of articles on the theme of sexual
submissiveness. Let me give you an example : "The passion of the young
secretary for the middle-aged author was so boundless, and her desire to
submit to him so great, that she tolerated even his violent outbursts, his
obscene letters and his perversions." That's simply a quote, a slice of reality.
"For him there were only two kinds of women goddesses and doormats."
I chose this quotation because it's a classical statement, which describes
precisely what has formed our history up to now. The male human being
worships the holy and the unreachable. Doormats are all those who, from his
point of view, are available for the taking because they need it. Doormats :
those are women who show their sexual desires, and follow them. The man
has contempt for them because he's unable to integrate his adoration of
woman with his views of sexuality.
Professor William Schmidt-Bode says this on the theme of submissiveness :
"Submissiveness has the characteristics of an addiction. In the end,
satisfaction is unobtainable. On the contrary, the desire of getting the
partner completely is never achieved; it merely leads to a repetition of the
behaviour and to an increase in the dosage."
Stern magazine deals with the whole issue as a type of sickness.
Submissiveness is a type of sexual disease which is contrasted with so-called
"normality". Most people today probably agree with this view. However, I
suggest that at this time particularly we women, although this is actually the
case for men as well, need to consider carefully what this "submission" really
is, and whether it isn't perhaps an unresolved life-issue that affects all of us.
I'm not now looking at submissiveness as an illness, but rather from a very

special point of view, insofar as it concerns everyone who has at one time or
another been involved with the issue of sexuality, regardless whether that
person is a woman or a man. I am here speaking very specifically from the
woman's point of view, since I want to let the men know some essential
facts about women. I also want to encourage the women here to think and
speak about their desires in the sexual area, since the question whether we'll
manage to create a more attractive future depends on our willingness to
communicate openly about all this.
The image of sexual submission : There is a sexual reality in which the
woman loves to be conquered, that is to say possessed by the man. It is a
fantasy-image of sex. An archetypal image. There is a moment in sex when
the woman's desire is : take me totally. And this is an essential and decisive
moment in her sexual opening. And it is also an essential and decisive
moment in her sexual shame. It may well be here that we find the deepest
level of woman's "shame", her feeling of being sinful and her feelings of
desire. This is the point where, up to now, she has always thought : if I do
this, then the man will despise me, then he and all others will think that I'm
not worth anything anymore. The curse of being seen as a whore has dug
itself so deeply into our feminine memory and our feminine being, that at
the point of our greatest joy we become crippled.
The fact that woman's self consciousness has until now been so deeply
conditioned by shame is one of the causes of what we now term
"submissiveness", and also of extreme jealousy. The results of that can then
be read about in the papers : "The woman wanted him all to herself. She
bashed him to death with a hammer."
At the point where she has actually opened herself completely on the sexual
level, for once, her rage begins; at that moment her fear sets in that he'll
now turn around and leave her; and here, too, the madness starts which will
not allow her to let him go because she believes that she's now given herself
away and will no longer be respected by any other man.
In the sexual world there is this archetypal image of man wanting to take
woman completely, with the woman desiring to be taken totally by him as
well. That's undoubtedly not the only image in sex, but it is a very powerful
central aspect of sexual longing. Once a woman moves into the realm of
sexuality with an inner opening to satisfy this longing, then she actually
thinks of nothing else except this one thing, the thing that she wants
infinitely more than anything else. And that's exactly the point at which her
shame sets in, and the fear that if she gives in to this desire the man will no
longer find her attractive and she'll be branded as a fool. As women, we
have had this shame and this fear historically embedded into the very

cellular structure of our bodies. It is written in the Old Testament : "In pain
shall you bear children, because you have followed your lust." The sexual
temptation was Eve's evil deed, and Adam's sin was that he followed that
lust. That is the reason why both were thrown out of paradise.
Right up to current times, women still cannot combine their actual sexual
fantasies and desires with their joy and personal sovereignty, especially not
in those fantasies in which the woman is the "victim" and the man is the
"perpetrator". She thinks that once she has given herself completely to him,
he now has her and no longer needs to be further concerned for her. That's
the reason why women prefer to entice men with their seductive wiles, and
remain with their seductive "No". As long as a woman stays with that, she
retains her sexual power over men. She stays beyond reach until a man
comes along that conquers her. After that, she wants to belong to him
completely. The theme of sexual violation has a place in women's souls as
well, as they have been fashioned up to now. It no longer makes any sense
to react to these things emotionally with disdain or hate. We need to
understand what's going on. I have attempted to shed a bit more light on
the connections involved here, in the book "Rettet den Sex" [Save Sex]
authored by several of us women.
Sexual reality does not ask permission whether it may or may not be what it
is. It is a fact, a fundamental fact of our civilization and our history, and it
depends solely on our will regarding sexual matters, and on our spiritual
clarity, whether or not we choose to change this reality in a positive
direction. Neither vociferous demands for male castration, nor offers of
therapeutic intervention to secure compliance, are of any use here. The
sexual attraction between man and woman in fact exists. In it, there exists
also this desire for a total surrender, for conquest, for an animal-like mating.
The only question that remains is what we decide to do with this existential
fact, in the future. Will it remain tied up with fear, hate, unclarity and lies ?
Will it continue to lead to sexual subservience and jealousy ? Or will we
succeed in integrating it into new forms of living together ? Will we succeed
in creating a new form of sexual understanding which is no longer tied up
with the old barriers of possessiveness and rage ? Will the woman of the
future participate with sexual desire and interest when her lover is attracted
by other women, because she enjoys being attractive to others as well ? Will
she be able to understand that other women have the same desires that she
does, and that her male partner, whom she loves and wants, is naturally also
loved and desired by other women ?
You cannot divide up sexuality like a piece of cake, but you also cannot
promise it to one single person. Sexuality is a power and a quantity that is
limitless. It is a fact that one can never be totally satiated with sex; rather, it

awakens in us a hunger and a joy that looks forward to a satisfaction of the

senses through human contacts which we, today, want to support and bring
into being with the power available to us through our conscious awareness.
A lot of women dream and fantasize about being violently taken. Then, when
they wake up, they are shocked by the agitation and the sexual desire which
they have felt. In their fantasies, the men involved are often strangers, and
often several, one after another. What women experience with fear and
dread in their waking state, appears lustful and desirable in their fantasies.
So what is actually true ? It no longer makes sense merely to say that
fantasies just aren't reality. Because these fantasies show a reality of desire,
a reality of sexual longing. And as long as this reality of sexual desires is not
seen, not accepted, not positively integrated into the actual sensual contacts
of men and women, our world will remain split between the world of fantasy
and the world of the much more boring daily reality. And as long as this split
remains, the dissatisfactions and tendencies to violence in human society are
dammed up, because the human male evidently has similar fantasies. And
thus what happens is that these fantasies are acted out, every day,
somewhere in the world, in the most brutal and destructive ways. People are
tortured, raped, and crippled, wherever the dams of morality break, and
when societies creates opportunities for that to happen, as for instance in
wars. Or when someone totally loses it and the sexuality which has been
dammed up for so long in that person explodes like dynamite. The papers
are full of such reports.
These sexual fantasies of women have exact parallels in the sexual fantasies
of men. They point to sexual desires whose reality has never officially
become part of the ethical, social and political questions anywhere. Up to
now, no society has shown serious interest in finding humane ways of
dealing with this issue, beyond legal prohibitions and the continuation of
traditional morals. Can we find ways to have that which we desire, in a way
that no longer produces pain ? Is there a way in which a man and a woman
can share specific fantasies with each other fantasies which essentially
have much in common, and which could therefore themselves be means of
bringing them together and by so doing make genuine, sensually and
sexually exciting contact with one another ? In full sexual contact between
man and woman, which is consciously experienced and affirmed, and which
includes such fantasies without any suppression or cruelty, lies a central
"transformation-point" of violence generally. That last sentence seems to me
so important for the construction of a humane society, that it ought to be
repeated three times over.
Up to now, suppressed and unintegrated sexuality has always led to cruelty
and destruction. The witch burnings in the Middle Ages is one example of

that. If we do not include that fact in our considerations and in our readiness
for a thorough change in our sexual behaviour, freedom from violence will
never be possible; it will remain an empty appeal.
More people die as a result of unlived, that is to say unintegrated, sexuality
than from automobile accidents. When it breaks through its barriers at one
time or another without ever having come into consciousness and integrated
into the life of the person, the force of repressed sexuality leads to rape,
murder and torture every day.
This is the point at which the genuine emancipation of woman begins; the
point where, as a result of understanding the connections between these
facts, women take on and shape their own role as sexual beings. That is
their essential contribution to a new form of humanity. When woman does
that, the mythology of the Old Testament can be altered. Sexuality, which in
old Hebrew is the same word as knowledge, is then no longer the expulsion
from paradise but rather the entrance and the way in. Woman now lets the
man know very simply how she wants to be taken; he no longer needs to be
so concerned to play the big conqueror. And she just as simply lets him know
what she doesn't like, since that's part of sexual communication as well.
However she stops mothering him and treating him like a little child.
The fact itself of woman breaking free from her shame, is sufficient to make
it impossible for her to be despised by any man. That sounds paradoxical,
but that's the way it is. Once woman has overcome her old shame in a
positive and genuine way, she can face man in her full sexual power. I
experienced that over and over again myself in my visits at the harbours of
Marseilles and Nizza [in France]. On hearing a clear "Yes" from a woman, it
may well be that the man at first just can't get it up.
That's simply part of the process of transformation, since the man needs to
detach himself from his own ideas as well, for instance from his notion that
he first of all needs to break a woman's actual resistance before he can have
her. The old way of seeing man as the conqueror, to whom woman is
counterposed as a member of the "weaker sex", doesn't work any more
either. The woman conscious of her sexual power suddenly appears to him
as something like a goddess. But this goddess is one who suddenly says,
"You may !" So the man needs to change his thinking in these respects, just
like the woman. After that, of course, the various games of conquering and
being conquered, and all the erotic bits and pieces that go on between man
and woman, can be taken up again, consciously and joyfully. After all,
there's a lot of enjoyment in this seductive game. But now erotic play is no
longer subject to this unbending rule which makes everything depend on
that first yes or no. Because it is now played consciously and freely on both

parts, it no longer leads to violence and brutality and to a situation where

the woman continually seeks the role of victim, while the man becomes the
perpetrator, or some other comical figure, such as her saviour.
There comes a moment in the relationship between the genders when the
decision is made whether there will be war or peace on earth. I've tried to
describe that moment. It involves a fully lived and integrated sexuality, and
a corresponding sexual and humane understanding. We are founding the
Erotic Academy for the purpose of creating a larger space for sexual
experiences and sexual understanding, in which the linkages involved
become more transparent. Here, at the first gathering of the Erotic Academy,
we first of all need to construct the spiritual field for this project. A field in
which it will be possible to begin changing the course of human life. To
whatever extent we become consciously aware beings, to that extent we
have the possibility of taking action to effect change, instead of allowing
ourselves to remain defenceless objects of the so-called "laws" of nature.
Once women reach a consensus on this point, there is the possibility for a
genuine friendship among women, instead of competition and struggle. Then
they know that they love the same things in men. And then they realize that
they cannot lose a man because of his involvement with another woman;
quite the opposite. Solidarity and partnership between a man and a woman
can only last and retain its sexual fire when both follow sexual reality; and
that tells us clearly that we desire others as well. The old views of what
constitutes "faithfulness" and a "couple relationship" will of course need to
be replaced by new ones. The redemption of sexuality requires altogether
new social forms for human beings living together, specifically in the areas of
love and sex. We clearly pointed to such new social structures in our book
"Rettet den Sex" [Save Sex not available in English translation]. In such
new social structures, in which the power of sexuality no longer needs to be
squeezed into "marriage" or "couple relationship" forms cages which are
far too small for it in those structures sexual abuse and sexual
submissiveness would no longer exist.
I thank you for your attention.
( translated from the German text in Die Heilige und Die Hure, Verlag
Meiga, 1989, by F.P. Ayran v. Dreger )