Episode 101 - FROM DOMINATION TO EROTIC RESPECT with Rianne Eisler
FROM DOMINATION TO EROTIC RESPECT with Rianne Eisler internationally famous author of "The Chalice & The Blade," "The Partnership Way," and "Sacred Pleasure." Born in Vienna, she fled from the Nazis with her parents to Cuba, and later emigrated to the United States. 33 years partnered, she has degrees in sociology & law from the University of California, taught pioneering classes on women and the law at UCLA, and now teaches in the Transformative Leadership Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies
In this episode, Riane Eisler insightfully reveals over 30,000 years of our paleolithic history of partnership, and the sacred roots of romance. Deepen your understanding of the suffering interwoven into 5,000 years of our Dominator culture, as well as the mixed hope of the Sexual Revolution. Move into a future of mutually compassionate respect, and learn The Ethics of Intimate Relationships.
Transcript
Transcript
Francesca Gentille: I’d like to welcome you to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex. I’m your host, Francesca Gentille, and with me today is Riane Eisler. Riane, internationally known for her bestseller “The Chalice and the Blade: Our History and Our Future,” has been one of my inspirations in the world. She is an amazing woman. She has written so many books, she’s traveled the world, comes from an incredible background – born in Vienna, fled from the Nazis with her parents to Cuba, late emigrating to the United States. She’s a teacher, teaching at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She, along with Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders, is part of the commission on global consciousness and spirituality. There’s so much that I could say about Riane, but I want to have you, our listeners, have an opportunity to hear her wisdom, and I’m honored to welcome her here today, Riane Eisler.
Riane Eisler: It’s a pleasure to be with you Francesca.
Francesca Gentille: You know, it’s a pleasure to have you and your depth and your wisdom. And if you would perhaps give us a little bit of a background of how you became inspired to enter in to this work and perhaps a little window into some of the research that you originally discovered for “The Chalice and the Blade.”
Riane Eisler: Well I’ll start with myself then. As you said, I was born in Vienna and my parents and I had to flee from the Nazis, and really that experience in growing up, because my parents, of course the Nazis took everything my parents had, and I grew up in the industrial slums of Havana. So really all those were very traumatic experiences, but I also out of those experiences learned some very important things, and one of them was growing up in two different cultures was that things aren’t just the same everywhere, and this whole notion that people just accept whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be that way, but I also started to ask questions about, well does there have to be so much insensitivity, cruelty, violence. And, you know, we’re sometimes told, “Well, that’s just human nature”, but I couldn’t believe that. And I set out to really find out what are the alternatives, and that led me to my research, and as you know, as you just said, many books came out of it; one of them is The Chalice and the Blade, which is now in 23 foreign editions. Another…
Francesca Gentille: Woo hoo!
Riane Eisler: What?
Francesca Gentille: I said woo hoo, congratulations.
Riane Eisler: Thank you. “Sacred Pleasure” is another book which I think may be of much interest to our listeners today because it isn’t a book that I thought I would write next. After “The Chalice and the Blade” I was going to write something else. And the chapter on sex just, well it started to fill two or three file folders and then it filled a box and then two boxes, and I finally got it, this is the next book. So I wrote it. And in that book I really looked at sexuality and spirituality, and I started the book by noting something, which I think many of us may have wondered about, which is if you really think about it – you know candles, music, flowers, wine – they are, of course, something we associate with our most sacred rites. But they are also the stuff of romance, of sexual romance, aren’t they?
Francesca Gentille: They are.
Riane Eisler: And so I started by asking, “Well why is there this commonality, and could the search of so many women and men today for a more meaningful, more truly ecstatic, more loving sexual relationship that isn’t built with spirituality be a suit for really bringing the two together again, and my research then in that book in particular shows how sexuality and spirituality were rent asunder. Historically with the shift somewhat my work identifies as an earlier cultural direction in a partnership, towards a partnership way in structuring relations and institutions – you know, families, religion, education, politics, economics – to a domination system and how I believe that the contemporary movement to, again, imbue sexuality with a spiritual dimension really is part of a much larger movement, the movement to reverse that shift – you know, the one from partnership domination, to move more towards a partnership system again.
Francesca Gentille: And may I ask Riane, how many hundreds or thousands of years in your research did you find that human beings existed in a partnership model versus, you know, “Me against you” or “Me over you”, when we were actually in a model that said “How do we do this together?” How many thousands of years through that did we live like that?
Riane Eisler: Well, you know, we are, of course, taught that it’s always been this way. If you look, for example, at the cavemen cartoon, the famous one of the cavemen, you know, dragging a woman around by her hair – you know, he’s got a club in one hand and with the other he’s dragging her by the hair. And what is that message to, we think nothing of showing that cartoon to children, that from time in memorial violence, and yes sexual violence domination, that that’s just human nature, that’s always how it’s been. Well if you go back about 30,000 years to the old stone age, the (unintelligible), there isn’t a single – excuse me – there isn’t a single image in that art to even remotely suggest that this was the way of life. On the contrary, the art very much celebrates the giving of life, not the taking of life. And there are a lot of sexual images… I’m always very amused when I – ‘cause, you know, I’ve done a lot of research in this area. Of course the so-called Venus figurines, I mean the goddess of the early goddess figures… But, and there are penises in the cave art. And then there are what some of the earlier archaeologists called indeterminate markings, and they’re very clearly vulvas. I mean it’s so funny.
Francesca Gentille: So the archaeologists, the male, perhaps the male archeologists felt that they were indeterminate markings. When did we discover that they were actually – or recovered perhaps is a better word – that they were vulvas?
Riane Eisler: Well I think, you know, after a while a different generation of archaeologists came into the fore, and especially as some more women got into the fore, and it was very clear. In fact I found times, I show a little slideshow that I do and people are just amazed when I, you know, when I show these images, I mean they’re so clearly, it’s a vulva. But, you know, first of all, the old idea is that our prehistory – you know, the long period of time before deciphered written record – but that’s really the story of man the hunter and man the warrior, right?
Francesca Gentille: Mm hmm.
Riane Eisler: And so the vulva’s just didn’t fit that picture, did they?
Francesca Gentille: No. And it’s interesting, when something doesn’t fit the picture that somehow it just disappears or drops out.
Riane Eisler: Well that’s it, and I work in so many realms. It’s really about making what has been rendered invisible visible. And, you know, my latest book, which is The Real Wealth of Nations, is about making certain economic contributions more visible, and again, I have to almost laugh about it because if you look at for example what is measured as economically productive by GDP – gross domestic product, Gross national product – it doesn’t take into account the contributions of the life sustaining sectors. The household economy, the natural economy, they’re not included as economically productive even though we wouldn’t have a workforce without the household economy, right. We wouldn’t be alive, as a matter of fact, without it and the natural economy. And of course it’s not coincidental that that work of caring for people starting in early childhood, keeping a clean and healthy home environment, right, which sort of translates into really paying attention to caring for our Mother Earth, that that’s been stereotypically associated with women’s work; it’s considered soft, right. Well it’s essential, and in The Real Wealth of Nations I of course show that actually not investing in supporting that work is not only inhuman, is not only environmentally unsustainable, but it’s economically unsustainable as we move into the post industry of knowledge information era where the most important investment is inhuman capacity development, right. So we’re…
Francesca Gentille: And, you know, we’re about to go to a break in a minute, and before we do I want to just give us a bit of a context. When you said the palenat – ahh, I can’t speak – the paleoethic era showed this more partnership way, did not show this sense of violence, what time period are we talking, because…?
Riane Eisler: We’re talking about over 30,000 years ago. In the same era as those beautiful caves of renditions, the cave paintings in the caves of France in (unintelligible). And, you know, by the way, those are not hunting themes; they’re animals in pairs, male and female. I mean these people were very interested in how does life come forward, whether it’s… and they understood that it was through sex of course, in both the human world and in the world of nature around us. So, and we’re talking about a type of art, an art focusing on the capacity to give life, to nurture life, that really lasted into the so-called neolithic, which is the first agricultural societies, and in some areas has lasted until today, but the last known European civilization – and I write extensively about it – was the Minoan civilization in Crete. And it is, again, a fascinating civilization and very sensual. I mean you look at these bare breasted women, at the men, they are muscular, but they are not these armed tanks, you know, like that domination ideal of masculinity. And again, the (unintelligible) are emphasized… I mean this was obviously a very sensual society and the art is beautiful and the art is primarily really about, the majority of the images in that art are female. I mean there was a, obviously women were priestesses, there were also men who were priests. Very different from what we have been taught.
Francesca Gentille: And so we’re saying that was about 10,000, 20,000 years of this more partnership way, this elevation of sexuality as something that’s sacred and generative. Mm, this is beautiful. I want to talk more about this and also where we go from knowing that this existed through a time period that’s been painful for many of us, and envision a new future and step into that, when we come back from a break and a word from our fabulous sponsors.
Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex, speaking with Riane Eisler, internationally known for many books – “The Chalice and the Blade,” “The Partnership Way,” “Sacred Pleasure”… I recommend all of them. And we were in the bask of a beautiful past of partnership, and we know we came into a violent past for at least two to five thousand years of a dominator model. And then we have the present, and some people think that we’ve come forward and some people think that we’ve gone backward. Riane in your opinion and perspective and research what do you feel about where we are today and maybe the last, you know, 20 to 30 years?
Riane Eisler: For people who are using this new way of looking at our past, present and the possibilities for the future, these new categories of a partnership system or a dominations system, rather than right/left, religious or secular, eastern/western, northern/southern and so on, we can look at history really, that there’s an underlying tension between these two possibilities. Partnership system were basically you have a much more equal partnership, starting with a more equal partnership between the female and male half of humanity, where you don’t have to have war, the war of the sexes. These very artifacts of domination systems where people grow up with the notion that there are only two alternatives; you either dominate or you are dominated, so you’ll get war. You get the war of the sexes, and yes, where anything stereotypically associated with women, whether in a woman or a man, ‘cause, you know, men who are more caring and are more sensitive – you know, they consider them wimps, sissies, right. I mean a feminine is an insult. That’s how devalued half of humanity and anything stereotypically associated with women has been. So if you look at it that way – and I did in “Sacred Pleasure” where I looked at both sexuality and spirituality through the analytical lens of this partnership domination continuum, but this is always a matter of degree. These earlier societies weren’t ideal. They weren’t perfect, but they were more peaceful, they were more harmonious, and by all signs they were much more in their sacred art interested in celebrating life and pleasure than celebrating… yet, so much of the later art, the sacred art does, is the suffering or inflicting of pain. If you look at that, for example, the sexual revolution, from that perspective you see that some of that was indeed movement towards partnership of this aspect. There was some movement away from the double standard between women and men that people no longer thought that, you know, you can’t talk about sex, that sex is dirty, that there’s something wrong with our bodies, that, you know, all of that. Also the fact that there was, it was possible for people who are lesbian or homosexual for people to basically come out of the closet. It was all movement with partnership where diversity can be valued beginning with the fundamental diversity between female and male, and really valued. But there were elements in that so-called sexual revolution that really not only perpetuated the domination system, but reinforced it. I mean this whole notion that sexual freedom meant that it’s okay for men to be more predatory. The whole coming out of the darkness of pornography, of really violent… because there’s a big difference between erotica and pornography. I mean pornography, again, it’s humiliating another, it’s hurting another, even killing another in the name of sexual pleasure. Those are all regressions to the domination system. And of course the rise of so-called religious fundamentalism had nothing to do with religion really. It had everything to do with going back to the domination system of top down, theocratic rule and very authoritarian rule in both the family and the state or tribe with a rigid subornation of women to men. I mean, you know, that male head of household became, again, you know, get women back into their quote, “traditional” place. And also the focus on violence and so-called holy war is “I’m stoning women to death for any perceived indication of any sexual independence.” Indeed in some places even when a woman is raped she is blamed and she is killed. I mean these are all parts of the really regression to the domination system. So once you have these two ways of looking at our present, you can really sort things, and that’s why I get so much mail from both women and men saying how empowering it is for them to really understand our past and our present and the possibilities for a future from this perspective.
Francesca Gentille: You know, it’s so, it’s so powerful what you’re saying. And I just want to point out – and I have a sense that you’ll agree – that when we’re talking about the naked body, that viewing the naked body and being aroused by the naked body is absolutely normal, what we’re talking, what I hear you pointing to is when it’s a violence, when it’s a domination. And I have a sense that you’re not denigrating or saying that the primal is bad, yet our sense of passion, our sense of, you know, where you bite someone on the neck or you want to in a sense surrender to someone or be the guide, the erotic guide. I hear you pointing too that it’s that when there’s a sense of cruelty, when there’s a sense of inequity of choice, when choice itself is taken away from men or from women, and the only way that we feel that we can succeed is to somehow put someone else down, that that domination is what we’re saying is wounding to both men and women.
Riane Eisler: I certainly, I mean to say that there’s something wrong with the human body is pathological really. We all get one. So of course, I mean the human body and erotica, the giving and receiving of mutual pleasure are wonderful. This said, I think that we have so long lived in a domination system that the erotication of domination and violence has become arousing for people, and that we really have to look at that carefully. We may say, “Well it’s a matter of choice”, you know. If that’s what turns you on, that’s great. But if that’s what turns you on you’ve been really conditioned to accept the domination system in your most intimate relations, haven’t you? And that will carry over in the case of many people into also thinking that that’s the only possibility for all relations. So it’s not coincidental that people like Hitler for example were into sadomachocism.
Francesca Gentille: You’re saying some things that are very radical in the sex positive world, and yet our life’s are formed by the questions we ask. I say that ethics are meant to be an inquiry. Not a rule book, but an inquiry; “Let me look at this again. Let me look at this again.” And there are times I love being an erotic guide. We create a sacred circle that’s so safe that my beloved can surrender into a beautiful journey of pleasure or that it’s so safe and beautiful that I can surrender and open to a beautiful journey of pleasure in which I’m being led. But you remind me of a dear friend. You said that she realized that she was almost addicted to that BDSM model, that kind of sadomasochist… it’s not there’s a lot distinction in that world, but she felt for herself when she looked at it that it wasn’t giving her the freedom of choice and the kind of depth of heart intimacy that she really longed for. And she literally trained herself out of her violent fantasies, and made a choice.
Riane Eisler: I think many women have been doing this because unfortunately those fantasies really also maintain a certain dependency in women, even in the women who are the ones who become the dominatrix, if you will, because again, the only possibility is somebody dominates, somebody is dominated, and since women’s, you know, quote, “traditional” rule is to be dominated in life, not only in sex, it’s a thorny issue, and I would again say what you just said, is there really choice or is it something that we’ve been conditioned into?
Francesca Gentille: Absolutely. I think that partnership model, what I hear you pointing to in the sexual revolution, is the beauty of it was an expansive natured choice and that the wounds in it were when it slipped back into something that was violent or predatory versus celebrating our life force and our erotic by nature nature. I want to talk more about this and that fabulous ethics for the intimate relationships that you have in the book Sacred Pleasure, when we come back from a break and a word from our sponsors. And we invite you, our listening audience, to support our sponsors because they help great people like Riane be here with you. And we’ll be right back.
Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex with the fabulous Riane Eisler in a very stirring conversation about our sexual and relational past, our recent past and now I’d love for us to start to envision a possible future. Where can we go from here? How can we bring more feeling, more choice, more partnership into our world and into our life and our love life? And I have a sense that some of that could be inspired by the ethics for intimate relationships, but what do you think Riane?
Riane Eisler: Going back to the conversation we just had, I really want to add something, which is that to reexamine our sexual paradigm, if you will, to not in any way be a source of guilt that “Oh this is, you know, I’m not doing it right” or, you know, like this woman who trained herself out of it. She made a choice to do that, not out of guilt but because she felt that for her own joyful personal powerful development, she needed to leave those kinds of fantasies behind, and she was successful. So that’s the first thing. And I did, to go back to what you just brought up, in sacred pleasure I propose that we really need an ethic for intimate relations. And I chose the term ‘ethic’ – today I might even call it a new morality. The term ‘morality’ has been so really hijacked by people who use sexual morality as a way of control – you know, controlling women, denying that there is any such thing as, you know, lesbian or gay people and punishing people for sex, particularly punishing women for sex of course, and so on – that in that book I sort of hesitated to say ‘morality’, but I think we need a new morality, and we can call it a new ethic if we’re more comfortable with that. And the issue isn’t what kind of sexual relations – whether it’s homosexual or heterosexual. The issue is the quality of that relationship; is there mutual respect, is there respect for ones own body? So many women are brought up not to respect their own bodies, their own needs. I mean, and the stories that we hear these days about what’s happening in junior high schools where little girls are basically servicing boys sexually by… I mean it is really frightening to see that even after the so-called sexual revolution – this is not a sexual revolution. This is a going, a sexual regression, isn’t it? So if we had this notion of an ethic for sexual relations, our respect for our own bodies, respect for the bodies of others and yes, caring. And it doesn’t have to be a lifetime relationship necessarily for there to be caring. I happen to have a wonderful, it’s my second marriage, and it’s a wonderful permanent relationship. But people, not everybody has that. But all relations really should have the element of caring for the other person to the extent of respecting that they’re human beings and we need, and they need caring.
Francesca Gentille: Absolutely. That sense of consideration, that sense of kindness. And they say that the golden rule is treating someone the way that you want to be treated, but the platinum rule is treating someone the way that they want to be treated, so really, really finding out. And my son is a teenager right now, and I hear stories from him about his friends, that in a desire to be liked they give up their self respect, they give up their choice, and male or female, they give into “I want to be liked, so I’m going to do this for you and actually feel bad about myself later”, and it’s a no-win situation, and we don’t just do it as teenagers. We do it at, you know, 20’s and 30’s and 40’s and 50’s and 60’s and beyond, this sense of giving up or giving in, in order to get love and we never feel loved. And I have a sense that’s what you’re pointing to
Riane Eisler: Absolutely. And I think that in sacred pleasure I do propose that we really reexamine morality and spirituality for that matter, from this new perspective where relationships are informed by respect, caring and mutual benefit, and in the case of sex, mutual pleasure. That’s the key, isn’t it? Because if all a person is interested in is either pleasing themselves or pleasing another, that is not really what it can be for that wonderful joy of sex.
Francesca Gentille: And it can get a little confusing at times because we can think “Oh, that person must be feeling pleasure, that this person who’s doing this for me or doing this to me must be feeling pleasure because I’m feeling pleasure”, so that’s that sense of “If it’s good for me, it must be good for you”, and male and female, I hear people slipping into this sometimes where they’re not really checking in, they’re not really checking in to find out or slowing down, “Is this really bringing pleasure to you? Is this really a loving act for you? Not a loving act you’re doing for me, but a loving act for you?”, and asking myself that question. You know, some of us are, think we’re good givers because we’re over-givers.
Riane Eisler: Well it’s very hard because really it, especially – and I think that you’re quite right that it can be a boy or a man as well. The classic traditional pattern however has been for women to quote, “submit” or I keep thinking of, what was that movie, Harry Meets Sally, you know, with the faked orgasm, which was… I mean women have been conditioned to really pretend. And yeah, it’s a way of gaining some security, but we come back to economics don’t we? I mean sex doesn’t happen in isolation in situations where women aren’t as dependent for survival really on men, they can assert their own sexual needs, and I’ve been quite aware of the studies that actually the equality of the sexual relationship is really so much better for both partners when women can freely have multiple orgasms, when women can really freely express our innate capacity for sexual pleasure.
Francesca Gentille: That sense of joyful mutual exploration, that sense of honesty, when honesty can be present. And I really, I do feel that there’s a way that women have been dominated and repressed in this model and a way that men have as well. And there’s, there’s a new freedom that we’re looking for, a new choice, a new consciousness and consideration. And I really want to recommend to our listening audience that you find Riane’s books in their many languages, you can find one in your language in your area. And how would people contact you Riane or how would they find out more about your work or get connected to you in some way? How would they do that?
Riane Eisler: Well first of all, we have websites. I have my own website, rianeeisler.com, with two e’s in the middle, r-i-a-n-e-e-i-s-l-e-r, dot com. And also our not for profit organization, which is partnershipway.org. That’s the Center For Partnership Studies. I am teaching online through the California Institute of Integral Studies in their transformative leadership program. In fact, if people are still interested and there’s still room, I will be co-teaching a class starting in January on the power of partnership, because look, the whole thing is this; you cannot really understand, much less improve, the quality of sexual life without really looking at the larger society, without changing, shifting from domination to partnership in all the institutions – family, education, religion, politics, economics. And for those people who really want to be part of this adventure – and it’s a fabulous adventure – of being changed agents, not only in their own lives, but in their own lives and creating the kind of conditions that will facilitate our search for joy, for pleasure, for caring, for love, I really invite you to become involve with the Center For Partnership Studies, take my class, become a partnership of real wealth… because as I said, economics has a lot to do with sexual behavior. I mean look at the sexual, the horrible sexual slave trade, the, you know… I mean it is all part of one system. So…
Francesca Gentille: It is. I could talk to you so much more and I would love to have you back again because we can go deeper in so many directions. And I want to thank you so much Riane for joining us today.
Riane Eisler: It’s been my pleasure. And I wish everybody a wonderful New Year. And then make it a wonderful year together. Work for it together.
Francesca Gentille: Lets make it a wonderful year together. And we want to thank you, our listening audience, for being the people who are the change we wish to see in the world, for having that heart and that courage. Thank you for joining us. And you can find out more about Riane, see her picture, connect to her website, her services, find out more about me, see my picture, connect to my website and my services through www.personallifemedia.com. That’s www.personallifemedia.com, Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Brining You The Soul of Sex.