by Wendy Jones
I got into the Red Tent from mapping my cycle. This is the work of a woman called Alexandra Pope who has literally dedicated her life to investigating the menstrual cycle and what it means. Alexandra refers to the month as four weeks broken down into seasons. Day one is the first day of your bleed and that’s winter – isn’t it brilliant? Winter we go in really deeply. Not interested. This is not a time when I actually enjoy being with clients; it’s better for me to be sat quietly doing some admin. And it’s also a time of visioning and dreaming. Our dreams are a lot more lucid and woman’s intuition is really heightened during her bleed. The time of the bleed is the time of the crone, of the shaman. The energy is very inward. We’re not particularly giving. We’re very, very wise but we have no output to get it out there. So if someone comes to us, we give them our advice – we don’t care if they take it well or not.
Then we come round to spring. That’s the maiden in the first period of the menarche and then she becomes the warrior so it’s the time of protests, of burning bras. It’s the age of fifteen, sixteen into the early twenties – yeah! She’s beautiful and her energy’s out there and, actually, after we’ve had our bleed, our energy should be ‘Yes!’ Spring is the quickening. We start to put in place the ideas we’ve had in the winter, the dreams and visions. We will be twice as creative and productive if we do our work in spring rather than in the winter. A masculine, linear, nine-to-five job and having the same output every day doesn’t work for a woman. In fact, if we lived in a matriarchal society there would be three or four days a month when she’s bleeding when a woman didn’t turn up to work because she’s going to do double what her male counterparts do on the days when she’s got that spring energy. But of course we don’t support and celebrate that sort of lifestyle in our society.
We then come into summer, which in terms of archetypes is the mother, so this is the time of deep sexuality, deep lushness. It’s the time that we’re ovulating so our energy is very outward and if we’re not actually doing the fertility thing it’s when we’re at our most nurturing of our family and our children. We can tolerate a lot of their stuff. Because we’ve got the energy. I know if I work too hard during my bleed I’m exhausted come summer, I’m not lush, I’m not fertile, I’m not sexually excited.
Autumn is the time of the high priestess, of the woman who is deeply in her power, takes absolutely no shit, and that’s got a very sexy feel to it. We have no tolerance in autumn, in the week before our bleed or in that age of our lives. We say it exactly how it is: all that we could put up with from our children and our men in spring and summer, we’re not tolerating that stuff now. It’s when a woman is at the absolute peak of her intuition and intolerance that she needs a man who is man enough to be with her in that place – to be with her sexually, to be with her as a life partner – there’s the evolved man. Most men will be like, ‘Time of the month again. Oh, she’s going through a phase. Oh, I can’t bear it.’ He will try and stop it and squash it, whereas if he can just be with it it’s very illuminating.
The moment women start coming round into the autumn or the winter, patriarchal society can’t cope with that. As a woman in her mid thirties, society is starting to tell me I need to be really skinny and I need to have Botox and I need to be mahogany-coloured with my fake tan. I’m getting to the point where I’m not valid in society any more. But from understanding this map of my cycle I am all for moving into the high priestess phase, and, equally, old age – why would I fear that? I’m going to be in the crone and the shaman, and it’s the most revered, it’s when the woman is the most wise, it’s like ‘How exciting!’ What we are doing is relating the menstrual cycle to the life cycle of the woman. So we have a microcosm in a month, which actually reflects the macrocosm of a woman’s life. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? It’s secret knowledge.
Before I became more feminine, my sexual leaning would have been much more what I suppose men might like, much more aggressive, more pain-based, might be more anal, getting into S&M stuff. It was quite aggressive. Whereas from doing the work of dropping into the feminine – I’m not saying it’s all scented candles and plinky-plonky music, how dull would that be! – but I definitely drop into a more receptive place because I can trust that my husband is going to hold the structure. The divine feminine’s natural instinct is to receive. But for a modern-day woman like me who’s been in the masculine it’s really scary and hard to receive, because if I don’t co-ordinate every second then I’m not going to be fulfilled.
Receiving is about absolutely trusting this man and that whatever he brings is coming from the right intention – whatever he does sexually is right. This is very different from being submissive because it’s about knowing where my boundaries are and how to keep myself safe. It’s okay to say ‘no’, and it doesn’t mean I don’t ever want it, and it’s okay for the man to be able to hear that because that is tough and men tend to take that as a big sexual rejection. I can suggest stuff, it’s not that I’m completely passive, it’s allowing him the opportunity to step into a really masculine place and knowing whatever he brings is coming with love. Before, it would have been me constantly suggesting, or having to masturbate during sex, in case he doesn’t fulfil me. It would be coming with a fearful and dominating edge. Now I can drop into ‘I’m having a really great time and that might not lead to an orgasm, or it might,’ which is about the feminine flow, because the feminine has no goal. It’s actually not about the orgasm; it’s about the connection.
It’s about both of us being in our authentic energy, with my husband being fully in his masculine, and because we know, we know – our intuition is so sharp as women, particularly in our autumn and winter – when a man is coming to us to fulfil a lack in himself. Very often men come to us as little boys wanting their mummies to make it better but they’ve translated that as sex. Instead of coming to us with this authentic ‘I feel really shit right now, I just need to be held.’ Men don’t often say that – they go, ‘I feel bad. Sex will make me feel better. Therefore my partner can give me sex and that will make it right.’ But we know that they are coming to us for something that’s not authentic and it feels a bit ick. Then being able to trust that and to go, ‘Actually, no. Not now.’ When the man comes to you as a man, then it’s beautiful; it doesn’t matter if it’s ten-hour Tantric sex with candles, the right music, beautiful lighting and drapes, or if it’s a quickie over the kitchen table: it’s not about the sex, it’s about the connection. It’s not about technique; it’s being really centred in your energy as a woman. Scented candles, aromatherapy oil: it’s all such bollocks.
The other thing that I’ve learned is that there is a difference between the masculine and feminine orgasm. Men have one orgasm; they have their ejaculation. But a woman has different types of orgasm, so she has her clitoral orgasms from stimulating her clitoris, and that’s well documented. Actually that’s the first stage of orgasm. According to the Tantric model, if we don’t go for that quick release, which is very masculine, then the second gateway can open which is the G-spot. Very often the G-spot only opens when you’re at a certain level of arousal – that’s why you can’t find the G-spot: because you’re not aroused enough. But even the G-spot is a gateway, and when it has had a certain level of arousal then the cervix opens and this can almost be painful. This is when a woman is fully ready for sex: ‘Yes. I’m ready for sex now.’ That’s the ‘Yes.’ It’s the opening of the cervix. So the cervical opening is a form of orgasm. If we think about it logically it makes it easier for the sperm to enter the cervix and make the woman pregnant. In the fourth stage the womb will actually start contracting.
It’s not about the goal of going, ‘I must have a womb orgasm.’ In my experience, you can’t really plan it. It sometimes happens, sometimes doesn’t. Most women can find a way to have a clitoral orgasm but the other orgasms; they’re pretty elusive. It takes a lot of trust and being very clear when you’re in a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ before you have sex – and that’s about having a
real deep connection with our bodies and with our vaginas. Ultimately it’s not us saying ‘yes’ to sex, it’s our vagina and our cervix saying ‘yes’. And really having that connection to go, ‘Now, yeah, this is now, I’m ready.’ And having a man who’s hearing when you’re not ready: ‘Nope! Nope!’ Even if they’re on the brink. This is really radical: is it okay in a relationship – even if he’s started to penetrate you – to say ‘no’? Is that okay? Of course it’s okay. But if you ask most women they go, ‘Oh no, no, no, I couldn’t do that; he’d get upset.’
There’s a very beautiful Tantric exercise where, for an hour, the woman asks for whatever she wants: she asks and asks and asks. When I had to ask, wow! I really struggled with that, like I didn’t know what to ask for. It’s taken a long time to be able to know what to ask for. The female wound is so deep from being subjected, from being controlled, from having sex forced upon the female. Britain was a real hub for witch-hunts, for the wise women, for the feminine wound. Up until 1976 you were technically allowed to rape your wife in marriage – it wasn’t illegal. It wasn’t a crime. We’ve got this buried so deeply in our feminine psyche. It’s about healing the feminine wound and women rebuilding their self-esteem as a collective.
The way I used to get off was the fantasy of my favourite film star, my favourite porn scene. I used to love porn. I would be running the images through in my head – and I know I’m not alone. I can honestly say that never happens now, it never needs to happen because sex has no beginning and no end for me any more. It certainly doesn’t finish or end with my husband’s orgasm, because sometimes if I’m done, I’m done and if he’s not we don’t continue having sex. When I come, it’s finished. And I might not even come because there’s no goal, and I just go, ‘Yeah, that was nice, nice connection, I’m done now, thank you.’ Then he can – you know – finish. Or he might go, ‘Yeah, I’m finished too, I don’t need to orgasm.’ So the fantasy aspect for me changed and what I now picture isn’t the movies running in my head, it’s more about the connection. Does that make sense? So, yeah, it does really change sexually if you start connecting totally to your cycle, connecting totally to your vagina, connecting totally to your womb. It radically changes, because it stops being about the fantasy and more about the reality of what’s going on. I wouldn’t have my own separate fantasy life, not any more. That’s because of the connection.
Our sex life is amazing. It’s ridiculous. I mean, we’ve been together fourteen years and we’re like a pair of teenagers: it’s utterly crazy. Because we can’t keep our hands off each other, we can have sex at all sorts of times of day. Oh God, yesterday we were sat in the lounge watching some telly about eleven o’clock in the morning thinking, ‘We must go out and do some gardening’, and we went, ‘Right, we’re going to do some gardening.’ Then the next thing we know we’re having sex on the lounge floor going, ‘Oh, right, we didn’t do any gardening!’
My relationship with my husband has got better. It’s amazing. Amazing. Oh, we’ve got stronger, definitely, in our ability to communicate our vulnerability and our fears. The reality is we all want our life partner to think we’re the best thing since sliced bread. It’s very hard to show our deep, deep fear, our deep vulnerability, our deep need, but ultimately when we do there’s strength and beauty in that because we’re giving them an opportunity to love us as we really are and not for who they think we are, which adds to the connection, which then further takes away from the fantasy.
In fact, my husband and I have been together fourteen years, been married twelve, and we only took a vow of monogamy three years ago so this was a long journey for us. We had different vows – we couldn’t really promise monogamy, I didn’t know what life was going to throw at us so we’ve only recently said, ‘Yes, we’ve been married ten years, it’s okay. I think we can go monogamous now!’
The whole thing of women with fake tan and fake nails and fake hair and fake breasts – it’s all fake. I wonder how the fake women have sex; they must have fake orgasm. They are faking what they want, faking their experience, and I don’t think they are doing it intentionally. Their whole lives are becoming so fake, how can their connection be real? How can it? There are now beauty salons where you can have a vajazzle. They wax you off completely and instead of your pubic hair you have diamante crystals, these little vajazzles. You stick them where your pubic hair was. It’s just odd. Do you really think Emily Pankhurst chained herself to railings to give women the vote, for women to be doing this to themselves a hundred years later? I mean, really? Is that what the suffragettes went through for us to be asserting our rights? And what about the men that think that’s normal? It’s so frightening from the perspective of fulfilling, nourishing sex – there’s the deep fantasy! Wow! I want connected, mind-blowing sex! Wow! How are we going to do that if we’re being fake? And I don’t mean people have to go the same way as me or some of my friends with full body hair and little make-up, but there has to be a middle ground where it’s not about the fake, where it comes back to what is beautiful because, actually, all men, all women, all women are beautiful.’
24
War
Mary, 94, Norfolk
‘I was an absolute trollop when I was a Land Girl’
‘Well, I’m ninety-four years old. I’ve had an extremely interesting life. My life started as a second daughter of a middle-class family with a very conventional, proper upbringing. No sex education – no one formally taught me. I can remember at nineteen working in the bank, all very proper, and I met a man and he realised I was entirely innocent of any knowledge about sex and I was just an opportunity to him, I think. My mother made my father see the man at the office – it was all very Victorian – and my father said he had no business to see his daughter. It was all because of this book about sex which he’d given me to inform me. I believe I’ve still got it in the attic.
Once I got away from home I became a lot less proper. My opportunity to get away was when the war broke out. As I’d always been a rather outdoor person I chose to enrol in the Land Army and I was a timber measurer. I was in woods near Little Gidding, and with three weeks’ training I was deemed to be knowledgeable enough to be able to say, ‘Oh, that tree will do for a telegraph pole!’ Anyway it was telegraph poles and pit props and railway sleepers which were wooden in those days.
Met, most interestingly, some men in the woods. Fairground people weren’t able to work because it was the blackout so the huge steam engines used to drive the roundabouts were used in the woods to haul timber. I met these very interesting fair-ground people. Bill and Ben were two of them, they couldn’t read or write; only Wogin, the owner of the steam engines, was literate but they were all a lovely bunch. Wogin’s wife had got a pair of blue kid leather jodhpurs, which she wanted to sell, and I was invited into her beautiful little caravan to try these on. The caravan was full of decorative stuff like teapots. Occasionally I used to go out and have a drink with Bill. I can remember going out once – I hadn’t really learned to drink – and getting impossibly drunk and Bill, who by then was making advances towards me, was slightly put off because I was violently sick. He was very good; he rubbed my back when I said suddenly I wasn’t feeling very well. That was an under-statement actually.
We were delegated to the forest in pairs, so a friend came with me. She didn’t actually like her billet so she stayed in a hayloft in a barn in the village. She had a chap – quite well known actually – and she used to go and see him. She was very attractive and much more controlled than I was. She didn’t … No, she wasn’t like me at all. I didn’t even think about getting married.
But as regards sexual experiences on the whole, I was an absolute trollop when I was a Land Girl. No, I wasn’t sleeping the night with them; it was more roadside sex! Can’t remember with whom now. Just one-off, out of the pub. I’d possibly meet them in the pub, then have sex at the side of the road. I didn’t know them. I was up for it. Didn’t bother with contraceptive, didn’t get pregnant. Dead luck
y. I suppose I took appalling risks really.
Well, the big problem was I was in woods near Holkham Hall and it was 1942, the invasion of Dunkirk, and all the assembled troops were encamped overnight nearby, Americans, and Canadians. Say no more. The only one I remember particularly was on the side of the main road actually, and I realised to my horror afterwards that he’d stolen my knickers and they’d got my nametag in them because they were from my boarding school!
I straightforwardly enjoyed it. Didn’t bother me really that I wasn’t married to them. I just had sex. I think back and think, ‘Oh, that was fun!’ Well, it’s a lovely stimulated feeling. Orgasm in my opinion is a rare occurrence. You have sex, you enjoy it, but only occasionally does someone get an orgasm. Not so often as a man does, you see. Possibly I didn’t have orgasms much, really. Possibly I did when I was having roadside sex, I don’t know; I enjoyed it so I probably was. And I thoroughly enjoyed the war. Thoroughly. I was completely ignorant of it. I mean, goddamn ignorant. I remember going home to visit my parents on the train the day after Dunkirk and the soldiers were in the carriage with me, dishevelled, half their uniforms gone; I just wasn’t interested. I wasn’t interested in the war.