In the sexual act the aggressive thrusting of the penis offends too. As passion increases during the act, the strength of the thrust increases, sometimes becomes quite a formidable series of pushes (one of the slang expressions men use for intercourse is “a bang”). This sometimes violent thrusting is a perfectly normal aspect of male sexuality and to the normal woman is of course highly desirable. Frigid women are frightened of it, experience it as an invasion of their integrity, an act of hostility against them. Nothing could be farther from the fact. In his aggressive movements a man is showing his love in his particular way, his passionate need to lose his isolation, to rid himself of it, to join with his beloved. To misunderstand this is to misunderstand all. Doubtlessly we could make a longer list of the characteristic things men do and feel that anger or are misunderstood by women with a frigidity problem. If you have started the form of self-inquiry I have advocated you have made your own list and have felt strong negative emotions about many of the items on it. But the point I wish to emphasize now is that the majority of these negative emotions is caused directly or indirectly by man’s underlying and most distinguishing characteristic--his aggression. It is this trait that most clearly defines him, and it is this trait that is at the root of the frigid woman’s anger, fear of, and feeling of rejection by men. She is antagonistic to this aggression because she does not understand it. Since she cannot understand or accept her own role, her feminine nature, she feels that male aggression is opposed to her and she takes every opportunity to prove to herself that this is so. His strength, his ability to master the outside environment make her feel personally nullified, a drab, a slavey. She endlessly contrasts his essential quality of aggression with woman’s essential traits, to her detriment. Now if men _were_ out to enslave them, women would be very justified in fearing, hating, envying man’s central strength, his aggressiveness. But is he? A re-examination of this single point can put the whole basic attitude of the frigid woman (once she has allowed herself to feel the negative power of her emotions) back into proper perspective, to correct her fundamental distortion of view. We can do this by looking at the single most important thing men do with their aggression in our society. “All men have nightmares.” I heard a fellow psychiatrist say those words during an impromptu discussion of male psychology recently, and the phrase struck me as dramatically true. For the majority of men, when they come of age and marry, take on an enormous burden which they may not lay down with any conscience this side of the grave. Quietly and without histrionics they put aside, in the name of love, most of their vaunted freedom and contract to take upon their shoulders full social and economic responsibility for their wives and children.