Thomas Sullivan: EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX AND TOLD ME
You guys are really good. What a smokin’ hot month you dropped on me through e-mails and posted comments. Seems there is no one on the planet who has not already thought through the gender issues I raised in April’s column, like it was their right of passage. So I guess a summary is in order here.
The questions were meant to stimulate fictional character relationships in a novel-in-progress on contemporary marriage, after I ‘fessed up to having zero perspective about normal relationships on account of I’ve only met one woman whose instincts/thinking on “luv” were the same as mine. Fact is, when it comes to communication I am gender reversed, very much given to talk about mental and emotional things in a supportive way. You’d think that would lead to a marriage made in heaven, but, of course, the only long-term relationship I’ve had was with someone gender reversed the opposite way and all but autistic (God has a sense of humor). So I lack a frame of reference for what’s normal.
But guess what! I’m left wondering if anyone else has one either, because the variety of views was flat out astonishing and yet almost everyone felt they have sorted out definitive truths about gender relationships. That was the most revealing thing: that everyone has a definite and detailed take on sexual dynamics. No uncertainties. The communication biz, for instance…I dunno, it seems to me most women seek emotionally meaningful communication in order to feel safe, respected and cherished. And it would follow that a marriage could be no more successful than its ongoing meaningful communication, and that it only takes one unwilling or unable party to kill that – which is what I see in most marriages. So I posed statement #3, expecting to have it accepted or challenged directly. But of the 40 or so responses that came in, the divide wasn’t over communication skills, rather it was over what is meaningful communication. Most respondents either lamented the lack of emotional focus in male-female communication or discredited the need for it. And that’s how responders generally got around one side or the other of an issue.
The infidelity question (#1) brought another sweeping array of interpretations. Most (but not all) saw women as more concerned about emotional fidelity and men more concerned about physical fidelity. But some saw those as indistinguishable, and I have to confess, that’s where I was coming from in posing the question. I was looking to see if I was alone in that view, i.e. male response to physical infidelity is itself a hardwired reflex to emotional infidelity as well. Why? Because a man recognizes that emotional connections and security are what drive a woman to give sexual access in a relationship, and therefore her emotional fidelity is his best assurance that his sperm and DNA will win and be proliferated. In other words, his anger and jealousy over her emotional infidelity is a hard-wired response to the whole emotional aura of sexuality that leads to sexual access. If that wasn’t true — if what drove him was simply an intellectual and factual guarantee that his sperm would win — then he wouldn’t care about physical fidelity after the woman’s tubes were tied or if she practiced effective birth control or was willing to have an abortion or if her other male lovers were sterile. Of course, you have to believe in the premise that the mandate of evolution for a male is that his sperm must win exclusively. All his emotions are then conditioned by that. It isn’t conscious logic that drives men at the reflex level; it’s feelings – hard-wired emotions. (Hey, guys, please inform me if at the moment of passion any of you actually think, “Hot diggety, for the sake of my biological imperative, here’s a chance to make sure this woman doesn’t get pregnant with any man’s sperm but mine!”)
But the premise for a woman’s mandate in evolutionary history seemed to be taken for granted, and that surprised me. I thought some would regard the “emotion” tag as a sexist Victorian attitude that somehow denied the reality of a woman’s physical appetites. For the sake of clarity, I’m talking about an evolutionary premise something like: women are more concerned about emotional fidelity because securing safety and support for themselves and their children was their strategy for survival over millions of years before the rule of law and standing armies lessened the practical (but not necessarily the emotional) need for a specific provider/protector. Hmmm. No bullet holes in me yet. Well, we’ve come a long way baby, haven’t we? So I’ve learned something about those “normal” attitudes I was seeking in order to shape my fictional characters. I think a few years ago I would’ve been swarmed by Women’s Studies Ninjas for even alluding to evolution’s basic training…and now I’m going to put on my running shoes and tiptoe out of Dodge.
Wish I could include examples of your wonderful responses to the questions, but privacy/anonymity is a must. Suffice it to say that what came in was feisty, funny, emotional or reasoned. Much of it was profound. And I very much appreciate the rending honesties that some people shared. I’m creating a half dozen marriages in the new novel, and your responses will deepen the nuances. The original questions and the answers that were posted rather than e-mailed are here: http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2010/04/16/thomas-sullivan-would-you-write-a-book-for-me-or-what-do-you-really-know-about-sex-love-and-terror/
Doc Foto’s latest picture satire struck me as a kind of relationship inkblot test, so I used it to head up this gender article. The evil doctor’s true identity is folk-singer Mark Manrique, a life-long friend who is much-loved by readers of Sullygrams (newsletters) for his outrageous photo caricatures. You can link to his original music here: http://www.youtube.com/user/manriq47#p/a/u/0/iYXd2GAOwkA Another link to one of his original haunting songs is in this month’s Sullygram. You can get that and future Sullygrams sent to you once a month for free by emailing me at mn333mn@earthlink.net .
May I also invite you to follow me on Twitter? It’s just something fun you can peep at anonymously. The only thing that changes after you create an account by making up a username and password is that when you click on your account page you’ll see the tweets of anyone you wish to follow, though they won’t see you. Or simply click this link anytime: http://twitter.com/thomassullivan . Sample of recent Tweets: “Stubbornness is how you prove things to others; honesty is how you prove things to yourself.” …and “I am now a full-blooded Indian. Turtles no longer slide off logs when I canoe past.” Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
I totally understand the privacy-first approach you took, but still, I would LOVE to see a comparison and contrast in views from all of us who are at least started from one point of commonality: we love ya enough to pitch in.
Guess I’ll just have to read the novel, then reverse-engineer.
It really was a fascinating exercise to take part in. For days afterward, I kept thinking of amendments and additions: Wait, I should’ve mentioned this; should’ve addressed that. One Master’s thesis later…
So thanks for the jumper cables to the head.
You’ve pretty much covered what my reactions were to your May piece in the piece itself, but I have some blitherings about your newsletter.
Your comments about trees standing straighter in spring as if launching in slow motion, trying to reach escape velocity and people being like that and sometimes doing it was a great example of your artistic skills, not in tying persons to nature but in presenting both as a seamless continuum. (There you go being smoooth again.)
Your collection of words reminded me of Robert Goddard, whose experiments led him to build the first liquid-propelled rocket. He dreamed of someday soaring into outer space; and, as a youth, spent a considerable amount of time climbing trees to get away from the Earth to more closely scan the beyond. He died just before the first rocket achieved escape velocity, but his ideas provided much of the thrust needed to do so. He lies buried in dirt, but his grave in Hope Cemetery is on a hilltop … at least a bit closer to being out there.
I shall place your “useless rusting chain” phrase into my active, ready-to-fire archive of favorites.
Based on your Superman picture, if they ever bring another Superman series back to TV, you would be a shoe-in for the lead role.
Thank you yet again for the uplifting stimulus.
Thank you also for the link to Marks song. It was very nice indeed.
Amalgam
Much appreciated, Amalgam. The newsletter has really taken off, and I get quite a bit of email globally out of it. It’s a bit more for free-wheeling then the column here, I guess — more poetic and inspirational — which may explain the responses. Then, of course, there are the multiple pictures…
If anyone reading this wants to receive free Sullygrams, email me at mn333mn@earthlink.net and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
While you and I share many great anecdotes about Feynman et al, I did not know about Goddard’s hilltop grave. I suspect his spirit chose the realm of bottle rockets over his molderi earthbound dust to establish permanent residency.
– Sully
You’ve nailed the essence of involvement in those issues, Brian. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that so many intense and well-thought through reactions came in — after all, human relationships are cardinal for everyone — but it was amazing to see the variety. And I’m still getting comments and amendments to comments, so the aftereffect you describe is the same for others as well. Not waxing you here, but I can tell you that yours anticipated just about the whole range of what I saw. Very comprehensive. Also, am most touched that so many people took the time. Very affirming for me personally. I’m used to being shot at and fleeing from torchlight mobs. The novel BTW is going to present some pretty eccentric relationships, but fundamental to that is knowing where normal is. Satire means nothing if you can’t center it on what it spoofs.
If the replies keep coming in, I may have more to say in another column. It’s a helluva broad spectrum to cover in a single essay, and so I thought I’d best keep to generalities that exemplified the process of character research. Thanks again…
– Sully
Sully,
Actually, Goddard was a cut above designing bottle rockets. He eventually designed multistage rockets intended to reach the Moon. It’s not unusual that you hadn’t heard of him. Not many persons, except for the local fire marshal who invited him to take his rockets elsewhere, took much notice of him. Unfortunately, some Germans did and used his ideas to build V-2 rockets that terrorized Londoners during WWII. Since not many Americans had heard of Goddard, they in turn copied the V-2s to build rockets after WWII. When I worked in the Redstone missile project, we had several V-2 rockets sitting about to play with.
Charles Lindberg was one American who noticed Goddard and helped him get Guggenheim funding for his experiments.
Amalgam
Goddard is very familiar to me — didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Think I said I hadn’t heard about his hilltop grave. I have a book about him around here somewhere, and at least one photo of him shooting off a rocket in a flat field in Texas or some place. As the father of modern rocketry one can hardly miss his influence, though as you say, it’s ironic that the Germans grasped his importance. “A prophet is without honor in his own country…” One could make an A-Z encyclopedia about the greatness that gets ignored in plain view. I hope never to miss recognizing things that are worthwhile in my life, be it greatness, or beauty, or wisdom, or a soulmate. Matter of fact, it’s just those transcendent things that I chase down every day.
– Sully
I was certain you must have heard of Goddard but thought you might not have much about his background stored in your gazillion-byte memory banks.
From what I read some time ago, Germans had offered to buy Goddard’s rocket information; but he had refused to sell it. He tried to get the U.S. government interested in his rockets but was unsuccessful. He ended up patenting them. The Germans then simply sent 50 cents or so to the Patent Office and obtained copies of his patents. Following WWII, when U.S. scientists were grilling the Germans about the V-2 rockets, the Germans asked them why they didn’t simply get the information from Goddard. The response was “Who?”
While working on the Redstone rocket project, I ended up working with a number of imported Germans who had worked on the V-2 and other rockets. I met von Braun also but never got to discuss anything about what went on during the war.
By the way, coming from the opposite direction, the U.S. Patent Office had the patent for the infamous German Enigma code machines in their files all through WWII but nobody there realized its importance.
Amalgam
I was just wondering.
Lindberg was close to Goddard and, prior to WWII, also close to Hermann Goerring, commander of the Luftwaffe and designated successor to Hitler. They even gave Lindberg a medal. Makes one wonder if he might have mentioned Goddard’s rockets during one of his visits.
Amalgam
Fascinating stuff. Especially where it crosses paths with my research for CASE WHITE. E.g. several hundred German scientists at Peenemunde hiding in a cave and surrendering to a single American soldier ahead of the Russian advance from the other front. Didn’t you meet Willi Ley also?
Much slave labor was pushed until they died in that cave, which was reportedly under the command of WvB.
I don’t recall ever meeting Willi Ley, but I did read at least one of his books. The following might be related a bit to your CASE WHITE research.
“Hitler was also a member of another esoteric secret society, the Luminous Lodge or Vril Society. Vril was the name given by the English writer, Lord Bulwer Lytton, to the force which, he claimed, awakens people to their true power and potential to become supermen. In 1933, the rocket expert, Willi Ley, fled from Germany and revealed the existence of the Vril Society and the Nazis’ belief that they would become the equals of the supermen in the bowels of the Earth by use of esoteric teachings and mind expansion. They believed this would reawaken the vril force sleeping in the blood. The initiates of the Vril Society included two men who would become infamous Nazis, Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goering.”
Amalgam
The Vril was just one of many. I write about this extensively in CASE WHITE, including Hitler’s indoctrination in Landsberg prison after the Beerhall Pusch, via Dietrich Eckhardt, one of the operative figures of such lodges. The Thule Gesselschaft had, I think, 2 million members at one time and still exists today.
– Sully
Hate to stiff a legitimate comment, but before I dump this as spam — or post it with its accompanying URL — will someone please confirm what it says? Appears to be Polish: “O widze masz podobne zainteresowania do moich, fajna strona, zajrze tu jeszcze”
Something about a cool site that then links to his?
Thanks,
Sully