Everywhere I look, modern cultures and their media are portraying women as sex treats. And, in general, the females learn to emulate the models of success and femininity they are buried in. And the men learn to respond to the signals in the cultural streams.

I see women in their underwear daily. Frankly, though occasionally titillating, this experience is fundamentally demeaning and confusing. I would hate being a woman in such a climate of objectification and scripted passivity.

Of course, I only rarely see actual women. I see photographs. And in the photographs, I see women in clothing, situations and poses that suggest that their purpose — even their -nature- — is to inspire and receive the substitutions for eros that fucking has become.

And this makes me wonder. I wonder what it would be like if I could not see their physical attributes. If they were hidden. What would it be like if the women had to do what I have to do, which is, in short, attract possible mates with -relational excellence- or displays of intimacy, skill, insight, beauty and prowess that arise from practice and attentive action, rather than projection.

I wonder what I would be attracted to. I certainly very clearly understand the language of panties and bra, the curve of a woman’s breasts and backside, the lure of the smooth belly leading down to a soft paradise of warm, moist receptivity. I have been trained since birth to respond to these cues, and I do.

But I wonder what would happen if they were rendered meaningless by being hidden, and in being thus obscured, were replaced with what I actually need and hope for. I wonder what it would be like to be free of the scripting I was so vulnerable to and affected by. Because here’s the thing: once the underwear comes off, the fascination with the perfect curves and smooth skin soon fades, leaving us -both- feeling bereft. What is beauty? Surely it is not the advertisement of sex — it is the promise of intimacy.

And in a world where sex replaces intimacy, women are trained to be products. Beings who might have called us to ecstasies of intimacy that border upon if not invade the divine are instead positioned as treats for those who play at social and financial success.

Display pieces. Objects to be acquired, marked, used, and discarded. And men are trained to comply. This doesn’t mean we have no free will. We can choose. But let’s face facts, who remains dry when being drenched by the torrents emerging from a firehose? Pun intended.

There is no way we can have meaningful liberty if the basic features of human and sexual relation are co-opted at their roots. In fact, we can’t have intelligence either. Or peace. Or even our humanity. When something this central becomes a method of controlling and demeaning us, nothing is excluded from the effects.

So if we want to rescue anything, we must rescue the possibilities of femininity and masculinity from the bizarre forces which have co-opted, stolen, and transformed them from calls to intimacy into slave collars. And we must stop wearing the collars. Together.