"Like women all over the world, I had mastered the art of transforming myself into what I thought each man would fall in love with...[I was] very much in control of the mask I put on for each man, I tried on a dozen personas, played out a dozen roles...." - Rebecca Walker, Lusting for Freedom

Men, because of their unwillingness to deal with their inner feminine, project onto women their own anima-attempt to mold women in their own, inner image. Men have difficulty dealing with the whole woman - flesh woman, heart woman, soul woman. A woman whose face becomes puffy and blotchy from crying, a woman who screams primal when stress gets to her, a woman who gets excited and laughs hysterically or satirically while on the phone with her best friend. Men want to compartmentalize women as they do computers - that woman is the beautiful lusty whore for my sexual and sensual pleasure. This woman I will put on a pedestal because she is my wife and mother to my children....

While my boyfriend is sincerely respectful towards women and myself, I struggle with a similar dilemma. I am the first girlfriend he's had who is his best friend and confidant. He has difficulty being sexually intimate with me. Often I feel I am too much for him, a giant looming before him. It is as if he would prefer to cut out parts of me because I am too large for his scope. But I do not feel myself large. I am merely real, and slowly, becoming whole.

© 1990 - 2003 Katharina Woodworth