Stripping Men Naked (1): The Self-Gratification Complex That Men Carry Throughout Their Lives Originates from the Sexual Awakening That Begins with "Self-Gratification"

All men carry a self-gratification complex throughout their lives, and this complex originates from the sexual awakening that begins with self-gratification. This is the most fundamental secret of male psychology, the one secret that all the philosophical, literary, and scientific edifices built by men are designed to conceal.

The first sexual experience of virtually every man is self-gratification. This primal act imprints upon the male psyche a permanent pattern: the pursuit of solitary pleasure, the fear of genuine intimacy, the substitution of fantasy for reality. Everything men do afterward -- their ambition, their violence, their art -- is ultimately an elaboration of this original pattern.

Men's entire civilization is, at its root, a collective sublimation of self-gratification. Wars are self-gratification on a national scale. Financial markets are self-gratification in numerical form. Philosophy is self-gratification in abstract terms. The pattern is always the same: stimulation, excitement, brief climax, then emptiness -- followed by the compulsive need to repeat.

Understanding this fundamental truth about men is the key to understanding everything about male-dominated civilization. Strip away all the pretensions, and you find a frightened boy doing to the world what he first learned to do to himself.