Page:The Power of Sexual Surrender.pdf/209

 *fends 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