Not Just Iron Man, Iron Slut

song du jour:Get Down Tonight, KC & the Sunshine Band

mood: iron(ic)

I finally finished Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution a couple of months ago, and have moved on to the audio version for a refresher. Shlain's writing is dense with information and intense thought as well as being extremely elegant and humorous. He's the best writer of non fiction I've read in years, and I feel I will be forever reeling from his far reaching implications and conclusions. If you have any interest (or any stake) at all in the challenges of the relationship between women and men on this planet, it's a MUST read. While many other authors explain the exterior by way of the interior, Shlain is a master of dissecting our nature as humans, who walk, breathe, hunt, mate, and give birth, and the social, cultural, behavioral, and intentional implications of these miracles.

Among the deep understandings I gained from his jam packed and eloquent writing, one vital detail I gleaned is that I will never again feel weird or guilty when the check comes on a date. Yes, in this weird post-post-whatever world of women making almost as much money as men and the equality in the boardroom we've fought tooth and nail to acquire, there's an unspoken expectation floating among the 'new age wimps,' as David Deida calls some men, that everything should be split down the middle. Not that I haven't been known to snatch the check every once in a while, but dividing it up or keeping careful track of whose turn it is smacks of knit picky housewives doing lunch You pay your half of the check, and I'll pay mine. You got your big O, now give me mine all equals romantic kryptonite. If such even steven interactions weren't mood killers, I wouldn't be perpetually borderline anemic. (Huh?!?)

I wouldn't want to give away the whole basis of a brilliant book in one flippant blog post, but to whet your appetite, there is a massive connection in pre-menopausal women's continual loss of iron and the men, who were able to bring her a gift in the much appreciated, for thousands of years biologically necessary form of raw meat. We are biologically bound to each other in need in a wild (sometimes) divine game that keeps us reproducing. In today's world if women opt to accept such gifts in the form of soy burgers, that's fine too, although to me, even more than chocolate, nothing says "Baby, you're gorgeous!" like filet mignon. (Could you make it grass fed, preferably organic?) Just call me Iron Slut.

There is, however, much more to the story than evolutionary Eve's giving it up for a hunk of fresh gazell, and more than the answer to the question, that is what makes the book so worth the read. Shlain makes the connection between early man, who felt at the whim of nature, and modern man, who seeks to gain power over it, and women, with our life giving capacity, our Kali tempers, our mysterious bodily workings, and our seemingly unfathomable emotional nuances get thrown in the mix. So too, would I add, our libidos.

Naive me, I've always assumed that a woman with a healthy one is every man's fantasy, and I was discussing this idea with a girlfriend a while back, but, as she pointed out, it is often only a fantasy. The reality is such a healthy appetite in a woman is about as easy for most men to handle as a hurricane or a tsunami (new honey aside!). They will try to hang in there but ultimately run for higher ground. Hence, how I finally ended up seeing The Matrix. A guy I was seeing almost 2 years ago, parked me on his sofa with the instructions, "Watch this. (And give me a freakin' break!)"

Perhaps some men worry they will wear themselves out chasing after so many gazzells, or as said girlfriend put it, they are more likely to worry their supply won't meet the demand. What I've noticed, in my own experience, is that there is a disconnect in the realization that all is contextual. In English: some don't get that it isn't a woman's hard wiring or hormones as much as the fact that said wiring is sparked or not by the possibility of a connection with and attention from a specific man, and it is not, as many goal oriented dudes mistakenly assume, about achieving a score of O's.

Perhaps another reason is that men fear and/or want to determine women's sexuality is that, if a woman doesn't claim a headache most of the time, she might just be looking around soon, or worse, (gasp!) have a history that is not too boring. As Shlain points out, that is yet another motivation for patriarchy. Just as denial over global warming gives some people the illusion of knowing the future weather, women have been shut away, covered up, or kept to convention in an effort to define us as either good girl or whore, thus giving patriarchs the illusion that they can know what to expect from us.

My own ponderings aside, if you would like to know if there really exists a g-spot and why it is there, if you've ever wondered what might be the evolutionary advantage of the female orgasm when such resulting languishing after mating might leave one vulnerable to being the lunch of another species, if you've ever wondered why humans developed speech, or the evolutionary necessity of women's developing an animus or men's developing an anima, then read this book. Never again will you think of our species the same or take for granted its unique gifts.