how is the narrative of
s.x patriarchal?

Let's get into it. Basically, in our culture the narrative of s.x is dominated by the male pleasure anatomy of arousal. Everything we see around us, from mass media to porn, portrays s.x from how a man’s body ‘can’ do it - straight from the s.x centre, the harder the faster the better, and job’s done, time for sleep. This is pretty much the complete opposite to how a woman’s pleasure anatomy of arousal works - start everywhere but the sex centre, go as slow and soft as possible, and orgasm doesn’t equate to going straight to bed.  

Let me explain it another way, for the sake of clarity I’m going to over simplify things. Let's call s.x a situation, a situation involving two parties, a man and a woman (i'm being very general here, of course intimacy happens between people no matter how they identify). For this situation to be in harmony, there needs to be equality in how both parties like to engage in the situation. Sadly, in most cases this doesn’t exist because the male way of engaging in the situation is given more importance and dominants over the female way of engaging in the situation, and this is why it's patriarchal. Fck Patriachy is a programme to reverse that inequality and help bring harmony into the situation, aka your love life. This is what chapter 4 is all about, ‘The Anatomy of Pleasure’.

how is patriarchal
s.x oppressing men?

This is a huge topic and we go much deeper in the course. But here, I will focus on some of the main aspects for you to consider. Firstly, patriarchal sex is oppressive to men because of its limiting nature. All of the patriarchal influences that dictate the narrative of s.x is based on one way of doing it. The whole act of s.x revolves around male ejaculation, and therefore, it's very one dimensional. This one dimensional sex limits the possibilities of pleasure for a man to experience. So imagine removing the goal driven focus of ejaculation, and replacing it with having no goal, apart from pleasure itself. We go from something that is one dimensional to something that is multidimensional, or perhaps even multi-orgasmic. But before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to open up our energy channels to feel more, both good and bad, and learn how to harvest this energy for positive change. We dive deep on this subject in chapter 2 - “Releasing Energy to Feel More’.

Secondly, patriarchal s.x promotes a type of masculinity that is warped and distorted. It takes a few aspects of masculinity and hyper fixates on them until they become toxic. Now these aspects of masculinity in essence are not bad, we don’t want to bring shame into the equation, but they have been absorbed and corrupted by the insidious nature of patriarchal society to ensure the structures of oppression and inequality are perpetuated. This is what Fck Patriarchy addresses in chapter 1. We want to break free from the grips of patriarchy, to recalibrate our masculinity by integrating our shadows and walk a path from a place of love and integrity.

how is patriarchal s.x oppressing women?

At first I thought it wouldn't be necessary to write this section, I thought it would go without saying, but then I realised I'm done with saying nothing about how fucked up patriachal s.x is. We could discuss this topic at great length but for now I am going to focus on how it relates to the course. 

Before we start, my wife, Laura, is a sex coach helping women go from pain to pleasure and we have spoken countless times about this topic over the last 5 years. I thought I should highlight this before I make sweeping statements. 

Ok, here we go, pretty much every woman has endured painful s.x. And I'm talking about every situation, ranging from married couples deeply in love, to friends with benefits, to casual one night stands. This is manly because of the differences between male and female anatomy of pleasure arousal I stated above and because the 'accepted' patriarchal narrative of s.x is dominated by how a man's s.x centre works. There are of course other factors but this is a big one, and it's the one we can address as men pretty much straight away in love making. 

Remember I was using ‘situation’ to talk about sex, I'm going to go back to it to explain the next point. Now imagine, there is a situation, and the way of engaging in the situation is dominated by how men like to engage in the situation. And for women to participate it often means enduring pain, numbness or simply a lack of pleasure. After a while, if a woman endures this in the act of making love, they begin to feel like they are broken, like their body is not fit to participate in the situation. This feeling of being broken is another way patriarchy subordinates women and their body in its oppressive weight. But it doesn’t have to be this way, and as men it is our responsibility to be agents of change. The same penis that caused pain in the past has the potential to be an instrument of healing and growth. This is what we discuss in chapter 3 -  ‘Holding Space for Growth’.