Games of Power
A philosophical overview of the male-female interaction and mating behavior
Slap!
“Harder!” She cried, insatiably. Slaps on the cheek only made her want more. I coiled my hand around her neck, squeezing tightly. Heavy with desire, her body answered positively to the abuse I was applying. Pulling her hair, grabbing her ass, pounding away from behind; I had complete control. We were fused, fastened as one by our biological puzzle pieces, in the doggystyle position.
A stunning figure, an impeccable face; she was a brunette beauty who loved to be punished. I placed my hands on her shoulders and reflexively she pushed back into me. I slid a hand down to grab one of her D-cup breasts, spanking her round asscheek with the other. Jerks and twists in her posture signaled her big finale was near; the heat radiating off her exposed flower. She howled and her gripping internals slowly constricted, coaxing me as she prepared to climax. Clinging to all she could, she convulsed with rhythm, exalted at last.
No matter how vehemently she bucked her hips, no matter how loud she moaned, I kept my composure. I could feel it rising deep in my loins, as if my very soul were looking to escape my genitals. Volcanoes of testosterone were bubbling inside me and she could smell it. Once her moment came to its conclusion she buckled to the floor and positioned herself; commanding, with begging eyes, to finish on her. Without protest I turned and towered over her.
Perspiring hands gripped an unsheathed erection, a sword mighty enough to bring down armies with a single wink. The raw energy of a collapsing sun could not compete with a man on the brink of orgasm. Her craving eyes glanced into mine, waiting for my arrival. Before I knew it my pelvic floor was contracting, my anus clenched, and heavy testicles were draining. With widened eyes and a stiff jaw, the hormonal discharge spread throughout my body and for a fleeting moment I was liberated. One by one, cascading ropes painted the eager canvas of my partner’s face.
In an instant my body turned from swollen brute to a piece of Laffy Taffy. She removed herself to find the bathroom while I came to grips with my suddenly returned sobriety. The energy dump was so severe that sleep was inevitable. Drained and sensitive, panting and sweating, I fell back onto the bed and cast one last blank stare at the ceiling before nodding off. What had caused this kind of behavior from both of us? Why would a person want that kind of thing done to them and why was I so fast to reciprocate? These lustful acts were neither the products of love nor the banal woes of some deep seated psychological issues. We had awoken something primal in each other.
Existential Priority
All life forms exist with a utility; something they are driven to perform, gather, produce. Life is in constant motion, turning the metaphysical gears moment by moment. Its sole priority: to be. Life’s only goal, only purpose, is to live– framing its instinctual push for procreation and the most urgent appetite to survive. No matter a species’ unique activities, the universal ambition of all forms of life is to reproduce. Reproduction connects us to parents, ancestors, the very first organisms. Individual life forms are finite entities, but by reproducing they can institute a sense of immortality on the collective scale. Mating, more correctly the passage of genes, is the existential utility of all living organisms. Life forms must remain vitally programmed to establish the possibility of future generations. The inability to acquire a reproductive partner means your genes will die with you and failing to pass on genes is the antithesis of life’s imperative. The necessity to continue passing the existential baton determines almost any characteristic about a creature. Almost all behaviors, drives, and appearances of an organism can in some way be concluded as an effort of mating.
There was a time when sex did not exist and all organisms could replicate their DNA without a partner. Every organism was a singular gender and could make exact copies of itself, meaning offspring would have 100% of the DNA of the parent. The problem with this form of reproduction is that the offspring share the same genetic weaknesses as the parent. Any threat that is able to destroy a single offspring can destroy them all; potentially entire species could be wiped out. Responsively, life developed two separate genders: male and female. Two genders meant that two sets of genes could pair and produce offspring with expressions distinct from that of the parents’. Shape, size, strength, immunity, intelligence; all characteristics could be continuously mutated by having two different genetic sets combine. The resulting activity that united the genetic material of two participating members was sexual reproduction, which required not only a mother but also a father cell.
Genders and Their Functions
Sexual reproduction has not only prompted the formation of two genders, but has molded how these genders cooperate. Male and female are the avatars of two universal forces. They are the manifest embodiment that allows the masculine and feminine aspects of creation to play out. This disposes each gender towards a respective role to play in the game of mating. The interaction between males and females is thus a complex enterprise, governed by elements derived not only by biological and evolutionary, but psychological and existential sources.
Demonstrated by their size and strength, males are the physically dominant gender. Greater muscle definition, lower body fat content, more body hair, a deeper voice, and more sculpted facial features are indicative of sexual value to females. Their physiology is established by the need to defend against attackers, compete with other males, and harness resources. Humans, both modern and ancestral, have utilized males for orchestrating and leading communities. Males are intended to provide to children, mates, and the tribe as a whole. A male’s ability to effectively collect resources, such as money, food, and necessities, fulfills his role as the provider. When shown in artistic depictions males are the protectors, the saviors, and the constructors. With common cultural nicknames like “stud” and “hunk”, and with pointed bodies and rigid demeanors, we might call males phallic by nature to serve their bio-evolutionary assignment.
Intelligent, warm, and affectionate, females are the nurturers, the care takers, and the maidens. They are mentally and emotionally dominant but highly regarded for physical beauty. A bodily frame inverse to males, females are smaller in size, have a higher body fat content with less musculature, more rounded features, wider hips, and narrow shoulders. Female physiology centers on ensuring she can birth and take care of a healthy offspring. Her body is the conduit by which life is brought into the physical world. Contrary to the beliefs proposed by numerous creation myths, man came from woman. The most ancient of organisms, which would have reproduced without a partner, would have been female as the ability to eject new beings is more aligned with life’s imperative. All physiological characteristics of a male, in a general sense, are constituted by his reproductive objective of spreading his genetic material to as many partners as possible. But by choosing which males to mate with females hold the power for a male to spread his genetics. It is through exercising the power of female choice that females shape the course of evolution.
Mate Choice
The members of each gender do not only carry a drive for sex, but the drive to find partners whose genes might birth offspring best suited for survival. Because life seeks to exist in the most superior form possible, the sex drive guides organisms through built-in response mechanisms that influence behavior. This entails repulsion to those members of a species that could fail to produce virile offspring: same-sex members, the sexually immature, the elderly, the handicapped, the diseased. Simultaneously these mechanisms create attraction to beauty, intelligence, friendliness, cleanliness, and vitality. Life plays crude judgment on all its participants. Through pursuing genetic diversity and selecting partners with dominant genes, mate choice ultimately determines how organisms evolve. The physical and psychological traits of modern humans are due to ancestral humans choosing to mate with partners who had those characteristics. This distinguishes the real objective of the mating process: to spread or inhibit a profile of genetics. Those members with traits that demonstrate a strong hope for survival will openly acquire more suitors, receiving greater amounts of sexual attention.
Attracting a mate relies upon principles of sexual selection, a function of the evolutionary process by which members of a species compete for reproductive access to suitable partners. Access is earned, not given, and while seemingly arbitrary on the surface, there are laws and rules that govern these bizarre happenings. Organisms have evolved ways to broadcast their genetic value to members of the opposite gender for indicating reproductive potential. The most obvious method to transmit these signals is the physical portrait. The body is an honest showcase of immune function, nutritional intake, and level of physical fitness. It reveals how one is able to handle tests of survival and deal with environmental stressors. The body also acts as a billboard for physical ornaments: sexual symbols that have evolved specifically to be exhibitions of genetic quality. Height, musculature, exotic designs, and coloration are but a few examples. In Humans and other ape species, sexual swellings like the buttocks are primary advertisements of reproductive potential and sexual maturity.
Most ornaments are found on males to compete with rival suitors and signal that their genes are so good they can afford to host an otherwise wasteful display. Male lions possess a mane and male peacocks boast elaborate tails. The more decorated the ornament the more attractive to females, implying that if a male is able to produce such an impressive adornment he should be able to produce strong, viable offspring. Ornaments in human competition are even more complex; material possessions, psychological characteristics, body modification, and even artistic expressions can serve in mating displays. While these traits are attractive to females, they are costly. They take time and energy to cultivate and maintain. They also make male members who have the ornaments more noticeable to predators or competing males.
Males and females utilize different approaches and courtship strategies when entering the playing field. Each gender looks for different things in potential mates, which drives the interactions between both same sex and opposite sex members. Both genders choose partners within the context of a given hierarchy, so social status and pedigree are important attributes in mating selection and earning access to higher quality mates. Females need to be choosy about who they mate with because females bear the majority of responsibility in raising offspring. Therefore, females are driven to mate with the male who can offer the highest set of advantages for their young: the highest quality genetics, the best resources, territory, and opportunities. They seek security in raising their offspring and look for partners that will be caring. Since males are choosy in terms of who they commit to, rather than who they mate with, females compete for male attention by emphasizing the physical and psychological qualities they possess. Female competition is social warfare, as opposed to physical.
Males have less investment in offspring, stimulating them to mate with as many partners as possible as quickly as possible. Since males do not get pregnant, their sexual priority is to fertilize the eggs of a female who can birth a healthy progeny. Meaning, her physical frame must appear beneficial for housing a developing embryo: a healthy body, wide hips, the appearance of breasts, a big ass. Male to male competition brings to mind rams batting heads but same sex competition can be more intricate than sheer physical brutality. Chances of reproductive success are limited, so males have evolved other means to compete and to ensure they impregnate a female. Some species leave a plug inside the female after ejaculation to temporarily eliminate other males’ chances. In humans, a tribal species, the competition isn’t solely designated to which male can physically dominate another. Competition is additionally set by who can deposit the most genetic carriers inside the female and consequently males have developed larger genitals to generate more sperm per ejaculation.
Finally, psychological imprints also influence mate selection in humans and other animals. The relationship a given person has with both their primary childhood care-takers establishes the image they interpret as romance. This relationship is a central motivator in what to look for in romantic partners, how to interact within the confines of a relationship, and how to establish boundaries for romantic success. The collected interpretation of the parental figure becomes established as an object in the psyche and is found again externally in relationship partners. This can be witnessed when people choose partners that share characteristics of their original caretakers. A person can also find self-objects in their romantic partners. When people claim to have found their “other half”, they are referring to the idea that they have found something which is inside them in the outside world. A piece of the self is found embodied within another human. We often see relationships in which the two partners seem to resemble and act like one another, often seeing life in a similar light. Choosing a mate is predicated upon the ability to satisfy these needs for deep connection and intimacy.
The Divine Dance
There is legitimacy in the colloquial phrase “spitting game”. There is always a push and a pull, a kind of banter or flirtation, between males and females. The chance for mating is the unspoken, underlying truth between them; the magnetic force bringing them together. Mating is a dance, or a game, with order to follow as well as winners and losers. It is a game of power because of its restrictive nature for reproductive access and inherent process of approval. Only the chosen are allowed entry. Life wants the strong and the capable to reproduce, not the weak and incompetent.
The embedded power dynamic is exemplified in many ways without always being seen at face value. Of course, we have all heard about he or she who “wears the pants” in relationships. In the copulation of some species the male will bite down harshly onto the female to trigger her ovulation; I can only say the same for humans. Sex has an archetypal connection to violence because at its core there is an act of submission and domination. This kind of relationship innately functions from an element of power; of one member giving agency, giving themselves, to another. Reward and punishment, discipline and control, these are apparent in the actions of intercourse for receiving erotic gratification from willfully subduing or being subdued by another.
The exhibition of this power play may be seen no more obviously than in the realm of sexual fantasy, of both genders. The sexual impetus breeds passions for conquest, fetishes, and kinks. Observable displays of control and power can easily be witnessed in pornographic trends: gangbangs, cuckolding, MILF or teen categories. Power dynamics can be found in common fantasies: rape fantasies, dominatrix fantasies, or fantasies concerning figures such as bosses, teachers, and others of authority. Sexual acts of all kinds can involve erotic cruelty and rough play: choking and slapping, hair pulling, name calling and humiliation, cum-shots, BDSM. Incorporating different toys can be an extension of these acts: handcuffs, blind-folds, strap-ons, buttplugs.
It is plain to see these performances go beyond the immediate reproductive act and satisfy qualities of psychological pleasure. The dynamics of dominance and submission are repeating themes of sexual interplay because they are two forms of worship for the partner. Two mirrored displays of affection: one through establishing control or inflicting pain, the other through being controlled or receiving pain. One revels in their desire to surrender to a dominating partner, the other indulges in satisfying the partner’s yearning to surrender. Dominance cannot come without submission; one part fundamentally invokes its counterpart. Philosophically, these exchanges encapsulate the male and female essence in mating. Males are existentially disposed to libidinal desires for seeking, taking, and consuming; females for being sought after, taken, and consumed. He to devour and she to be devoured.
Light and dark, proton and electron, masculine and feminine; life is animated by the collision of opposing forces. Mating is the concluding ritual of male and female energies coming together, a demonstration of these dances for connection to summon that which is without form. But male and female are not so fixed. The feminine and masculine energies are extant within all people and all things. The one true divide between them is their biological sex, the physical form they incarnate. As male and female bodies are one in the same, but inverted in configuration, the bodily structures serve procreation; making the genitals symbolic of that regenerative force. The affinity male and female have for each other, this everlasting union, conceives the fabric of being.
ToddDeVault.com