The Power of Sexual SurrenderRobinson, Marie Nyswander
Science
The Power of Sexual Surrender
Robinson, Marie Nyswander
Frigidity (Psychology); Sex (Psychology); Women -- Sexual behavior
It is not hard to see then that Toni’s young world had little in it
that supported feminine values. It was clear to her that only male
activities, achievement in terms of male goals, could bring security.
Even her mother seemed to subscribe to this, for hadn’t she gone back
into the world of male activity as soon as she could manage it? Indeed,
judging the matter by her father’s relationship to her brother, she
very early reached the literal conclusion that in order to achieve love
a woman really had to be a man.
If we were to examine the purely sexual side of Toni’s unconscious
identification with the male sex, we would only have to examine
the dreams she brought to our sessions. At the beginning she would
frequently have dreams in which she was dressed as a man or in which
she was excelling in male sports. I have recorded one incredible dream,
really quite a funny one in a sense were it not so basically pathetic,
in which she played quarterback for Harvard in the annual Yale-Harvard
football game. In my notes taken at the time I wrote that she made four
touchdowns!
In her conscious mind Toni could not recall whether in her childhood
she actually believed she might turn into a boy. More disturbed women
than she often do remember such conscious fantasies in girlhood.
However, on a deeper level there is little doubt that Toni treasured
the possibility of such a metamorphosis. As time wore on, of course,
reality and her own good intelligence modified and disguised her wish.
She repressed the desire to be a boy in a physically external way,
by growing a literal penis. And she substituted for this concrete
idea fantasies of achievement in, to her, the male sense. In high
school and college she threw herself into a world of intellectual and
extracurricular activity and made an astonishing, almost legendary,
record for herself. In the college she attended she became not only
the president of her class but the editor of the school newspaper and
president of the college’s century-old literary society.
Sexually Toni did not abandon clitoral masturbation in adolescence as,
under normal circumstances, a girl would, or at least would attempt
to. She clung to this early form of sexual release with almost grim
determination, masturbating daily at least once. This continuation of
clitoral masturbation long after the time when it is normally given up
was, of course, the sexual sequel to her early rejection of all that
was feminine.
At this point one might be willing to grant that Toni had sufficient
reason to embrace masculine values but wonder just why she should
develop such a strong rejection of her feminine side, such a fear of
it. The question becomes more urgent when we learn that Toni’s sex
instruction was handled in an apparently intelligent manner by her
mother. Sex, menstruation, pregnancy, and other related matters were
explained to her calmly and clearly and at just the right times to
satisfy her normal curiosity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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