Re: Uleria

From: Sandy Petersen <sandyp_at_idgecko.idsoftware.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 95 12:04:51 -0500


>Why presume that Uleria requires women to merely be sex toys for >men?

        She doesn't, of course. Bryan's perfectly correct here.

>Why presume that Uleria does not permit women to use her temples
for >their own sexual pleasure.

        Because women tend to not go out to purchase sexual pleasure. The whole sexual attitude is quite different between women and men, and it's not just cultural. There was once an attempt in San Francisco to set up a brothel that catered to women. Its only customers were prostitutes who enjoyed paying men to do what they normally had to do.

        I'm not a sexist, and I'm perfectly aware that women enjoy sex. But that's not the same as being obsessed with it, as are men. A friend of mine (Dani Bunten) underwent a sex change operation. Afterwards, she was asked, "So, is the male fixation on sex cultural or hormonal." She replied authoritatively, "Hormonal." She has basically no interest in sex at all now. Another friend of mine has a mother who was required to take testosterone for a while for a medical condition. While she was taking the testosterone, she had some interesting psychological effects. One was that she was far more interested in initiating sex (my friend's dad liked this part a lot). The other was that her temper worsened. She remarked that when she was in the shopping mart one day, a person butted ahead of her in line and it was all she could to to keep from slugging the gal. She asked my friend plaintively, "Is this what it's like all the time for men?" Pretty much. Of course it was worse for her, because she hadn't had a lifetime of learning to Deal With It.

>Just because she's a goddess doesn't mean that only women can be
her >initiates.

        I believe that only women can be priestesses, though.

>Why presume that there aren't also men dedicated to giving erotic
>pleasure in Uleria's temples?

        For the reasons listed above. I can offhand think of no culture in which there were institutions dedicated to giving women sexual pleasure outside the home. Sometimes there are women who go to have sex elsewhere for religious requirements or whatever, but it doesn't seem to have had pleasure as the primary motive at all.

        There have been a few reported cases of this (like the girls-only brothel in San Francisco), and these are generally enormously blown out of proportion by male journalists, who of course find the whole idea fascinating. I originally encountered the "girls-only brothel" in a book, where it marveled at what a great idea it was, and what a huge success it was till the authorities closed it down, the villains. But when I actually looked up the facts, it turned out that the brothel was closed because it ran out of money. Other historical cases of the same have generally also proven distorted by prurient writers.

        That's not to say that an individual woman might not be crazed for sex, but it's the exception, just as it is exceptional to find a woman (or a man) who is totally crazed for power.

Sandy Petersen


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