David Deida got it wrong.
Not the remedy, but the premise upon which he based this remedy.

Similar to Freud, whose theories of sexuality were developed by observing Victorian clients with [culturally conditioned] sexual dysfunction, Deida is observing the psychological reality of heterosexual people interacting in the [culturally conditioned] dysfunction of post-Victorian patriarchy.

With a century’s hindsight, we see Freud’s theories as founded on the oppressed Victorian psyche. Deida, in the same way, is making accurate observations of real women and men who are the products of millenia oppressing femininity.

Those facilitating “conscious sexuality” have taken this as psychospiritual reality and applied it to everyone, indiscriminately.

I go deep, easily.
I’m often told how easy it is to go deep with me. In a recent deep session with an American visitor met recently (the new boyfriend, I assumed, of my friend) I found myself describing the labels of conscious sexuality:

“So there’s feminine and masculine – these are transpersonal archetypes we use to label behaviours on a scale of polarity. There’s female and male – these are biological conditions, and there’s woman and man, and everything in between – these are genders we can identify as.”

My visitor lit up, expressing pleasure and surprise. Everyone so far, he said, whom he had met and stayed with in this country, had cast him in the role of “husband” – and he felt so uncomfortable with that. Further, he confided, he was accustomed to the fluid identities of the queer community. No one here had yet given him the freedom to choose a role that was not masculine.

We don’t need to be queer to feel uncomfortable with arbitrary gender expectations.

I have been told, by several prominent conscious sexuality facilitating males, that I am too much “in my masculine.” Ought I believe them, and fix my personality, or could I conclude that they are simply avid believers in the polarisation which stems from David Deida’s philosophy?

I enjoy being able to confidently navigate my needs and manifest my plans in this whirled. I enjoy not being prey to my emotions, as I see many of my “feminine” friends are. I value feeling balanced. Indeed I am attracted to males who “have a strong feminine.” What this actually means (in non-heteronormative language) is: I am attracted to people with more integrated personas.

The males telling me I am too much “in my masculine” are those with polarised personas who are attracted to females “in their feminine” ie: also polarised. Opposites attract indeed, but this is no reason to imply those who are integrated ought to adopt more polarity.

The intellectualisation of polarised masculine/feminine archetypes stems from European political oppression and separation of man and woman into very gender specific roles. Such polarised archetypes are not embodied in cultures outside of colonised countries. Ladyboys in Thailand, Fa’afafine of Polynesia, seven genders in some Native American tribes, Celtic women fighting alongside Celtic men, jump to mind as easy examples of differently conditioned cultures.

When we decide that women ought to be feminine and men ought to be masculine, we are taking on an intellectual framework based on colonial suppression to describe ourselves. As we have been indoctrinated to describe ourselves in post-Victorian terms, we are missing out on other possibilities… as beautifully elucidated in this vid:

Truthfully, an integrated persona freely moving through polarities is more comfortable and effective at negotiating reality, than any that is told to be one thing or the other. Perhaps this idea that we ought to embody polarised archetypes is causing more alienation than it is creating integration?