by Christina Sarich
It doesn’t take a witch hunt for most people to realize that female sexuality has been feared for as long as we can remember human history. Male-constructed images of women, and men, are so embedded in Western culture that they can appear quite “natural,” but the ways in which the patriarchy has tried to quell women’s sexuality is absurd, if not shocking.
From the beginning chapters of the Bible, in the Adam and Eve story, we, in the West, have been taught how to think about a woman’s sexual personality. The imagery is reinforced in art, prose, and modern medicine. Without tangling the web even further, the deeply rooted fear of women’s sexuality also weighs heavy on the heads of depopulationists, but we shall save this tangent for another time because there is ample and astounding evidence to prove strange cultural programming without opening that Pandora’s box. Pun intended.
I should preface, I am overjoyed that our country went through a sexual revolution, and that women are now at least legally allowed to have sex with whomever – man or woman – they choose. Nonetheless, mankind didn’t even realize that there was a correlation between the womb and sexual intercourse resulting in pregnancy until 9000 BCE, but even now obsesses with preventing a woman’s natural expression of her Divinely given sexual gifts in any way possible. Pregnancy or no pregnancy, Paleolithic societies prohibited women from having sex during their periods, yet in our very recent past, women were encouraged to use Lysol as a contraceptive. Which is more farcical?
These odd views have affected men and women alike. Men were encouraged to be circumcised, lest their wives stray to another man, and his foreskin, now proven to be sensitive just like a woman’s clitoris, was to be surgically, if not barbarically removed, to lessen the pleasure associated with sex – for both parties.
Female genital mutilation still occurs today, with more 130 million women enduring scarring, urinary issues, poor obstetric and neonatal outcomes, but aside from the patently obvious acts of removing the sexual organs themselves, how has our warped cultural training taught us to fear female sexuality, and what inane methods have they attempted to stifle this “scary beast?”
The “Hysterical” Woman
If a woman explores a sexual free-for-all, with one partner, or many, she is called hysterical – the word literally coming from the Greek word hysterikos; meaning “of the womb,” or “suffering of the womb.” Preposterously, the psychologically termed illness, “hysterical neurosis” persisted in medical literature until the 1980’s.
This concept was based on the ridiculous notion that a woman’s womb wandered around her body (like her wandering sexual eye?) causing her to become ill. This idea resulted in doctors prescribing odd “medicines” as far back as 1900 BC, when ancient Egyptians thought the “wandering womb” could cause “excessive vaginal lubrication,” or anxiety and nervousness from erotic fantasies.
Medical “experts” later treated a woman’s excess libido by prescribing suppositories, salves, and Dover’s powder, a special combination of opium and ipecac. If that wasn’t sufficient, your genitals could be sprayed with a high-powered hose, or you would be prescribed rat poison (strychnia) to help calm your nervous system.
Birth Control and Douching
Women were also supposed to separate child-birth and sexual pleasure. One was not to be mixed with the other. In the most extreme versions of the Madonna-Whore complex, our illustrious physicians have prescribed a host of health-harming birth control methods, from the modern-day pill, which can cause cancer, to more antiquated remedies like those suggested by an American physician of the 1800’s named Charles Knowlton who suggested douching as a form of contraception. After sex, women were supposed to inject a syringe full of watered-down salt, vinegar, liquid chloride, zinc sulfite or aluminum potassium sulfite into their vaginas.
In fact, from 1930 until 1960, the most popular contraceptive for women was Lysol disinfectant. Though Lysol as a form of birth control has since been debunked, and douching has been proven to cause numerous health problems, one in four women between the ages of 15 and 44 still douche, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Most women who douche are also being exposed to health-harming chemicals, including phthalates. “Phthalates are chemicals of concern for women’s health because they are suspected endocrine disruptors and can alter the action of important hormones such as estrogen, testosterone and thyroid hormones,” says lead study author Ami Zota, a researcher at the Milken School of Public Health at George Washington University, who found that douches and feminine care products were causing women’s health issues.
Why do you think so many women still see their vaginas as inherently dirty?
Sexual Preference Demonized
In the 19th century, wealthy women were thought to be especially prone to lesbianism due to “sexual hyperesthesia [excessive sensitivity to stimuli].” In order to cure these women of such urges, one physician, Denslow Lewis, prescribed “cocaine solutions, saline cathartics, the surgical ‘liberation’ of adherent clitorises, or even the administration of strychnine by hypodermic.”
Interestingly, there are now studies suggesting that women are usually “looser” sexually when they don’t depend on men for financial support. Or that women who are dependent financially on a man are less likely to use condoms. Or how’s this one – men are more likely to cheat on their spouses when they are dependent upon the woman for money. It couldn’t possibly be that women’s sexuality is its own living, breathing, expression of the Divine Creative Force. All of these studies reassert the “dangers” of letting women have too much power. In bed, or out of it. The gender wars start and end with sex, and they are fomented by misplaced fear.
Sex is the creative spark. It has only been our programming which causes us to fear one another, and continue to act in misogynistic, ignorant ways toward women’s sexuality. Sexual energy is feared because it is incredibly powerful – the same way our own innate power is feared, until we learn to accept it and understand it.
Sexual energy and creative energy are so strongly intertwined, that you’d have a difficult time tearing them apart. They impact each other that profoundly — this is biology, chemistry, divinity, and physics conspiring with one another secretly.
Sexual energy fuels inspiration and passion, and when harnessed and properly channeled is a pleasurable and powerful means to motivate us toward creation beyond even human life, but of our most “elevated” version of Self.
Read more articles by Christina Sarich.
About the Author
Christina Sarich is a staff writer for Waking Times. She is a writer, musician, yogi, and humanitarian with an expansive repertoire. Her thousands of articles can be found all over the Internet, and her insights also appear in magazines as diverse as Weston A. Price, Nexus, Atlantis Rising, and the Cuyamungue Institute, among others. She was recently a featured author in the Journal, “Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and Healing Arts,” and her commentary on healing, ascension, and human potential inform a large body of the alternative news lexicon. She has been invited to appear on numerous radio shows, including Health Conspiracy Radio, Dr. Gregory Smith’s Show, and dozens more. The second edition of her book, Pharma Sutra, will be released soon.
This article (Taming Female Sexuality: Myth, Libido and the Pharmacological Suppression of Women) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Christina Sarich and WakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement. Please contact [email protected] for more info.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Waking Times or its staff.
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