#metoo, healing the sexes together

by Marion Ellyard

I work as a trauma specialist and an intimacy coach in the Byron Bay area and I also accompany people who have experienced sexual abuse, men and women, on their healing journey. I look at the world as an ongoing evolutionary process of awakening of consciousness, from ignorance to more love, understanding and knowing.

For me the #metoo movement is an important part of this awakening process but not the end part — just the beginning of a new meeting between the masculine and feminine principles.

Historically speaking the world’s sexuality has been distorted for millennia and it has undergoing major changes currently through media and technology. Until recently most people lived in a pair bonded relationship. Whilst this is still the most common form of intimate relating, what people expect from a relationship and their sexuality has changed radically. Women want to work and be part of the workforce, while sexual and emotional needs have assumed far greater importance.

The downside is that traditional family values are out the door with couples losing skills and being able to connect a community that would support them to work through the issues naturally arising in a long-term bonded partnership.

We know littles of ancient times where possibly sexuality was lived in a completely different context, supported in rites and rituals of tribal and spiritual knowing, free from the notion of romantic love, ties of money and land ownership or bloodlines.

Instead we as a society are without a solid ground beneath our feet to instruct us how to manage our sex lives, desires, relationships and families. This community disconnect, in my opinion, directly abets the hostility and abuse that we inflict on each other, masculine to the feminine and feminine to the masculine. Basically for me what we are being made aware of through the #metoo movement, has its roots in a society that has lost its natural way and its knowing of sexual energy, how to express it consciously and how to live it authentically.

There is a gender war going on, a dissatisfaction with the polar opposite other, which may have started as early as when societies shifted from matriarchy to patriarchy around 3,000 years ago. It is hard to say when exactly sexual exploitation began though certainly it was present before the Christian era. Today we are all aware of this global issue due to the media that we live in a world where rape, child abuse, human trafficking and a suppression of the masculine and feminine sexuality are very present. Sexuality has lost its sacred pathway and hence is expressed in all sorts of distorted forms of deviant behaviours, assaults and rape of the non-consenting individual.

For me the #metoo movement is a welcome cry out from the silence that we all knew was there but nobody wanted to really look at. Finally we are screaming out at the world: Something is wrong, we need help, we need solutions, we do not want to live under these circumstances any more! It’s a recognition of a global crisis, a historical issue that I believe we now need to face and heal on our soul journey back to love. Love cannot happen unless the inner and outer genders are back at peace, united and in unison.

I like to start every journey in my work with a question: How would we like the sexual and relationship world to look like if we could design it in a way we wanted it?

When one voice rises powerfully what often gets overlooked is the deeper layers of the situation. It is easy to appoint an abuser and an abused but it will never result in a resolution, just in more separation.

The question to ask is:, What are our men missing that they are acting out in such ways towards the female? Is it just education about sex? Is it about having an outlet for their true original sexual energy? What trauma are these people carrying to cause such harm, hurt and further separation? And how can we address that at its root cause?

The question to ask is:What are our men missing that they are acting out in such ways towards females?

Ultimately in trauma research a person who harms another acts from a place of unresolved pain within themselves. Certainly the behaviour needs to stop, but the energy of sexual assault, humiliation, power dynamics, hatred and disrespect of the female gender will find new outlets to express itself unless we address the cause.

There is a wounding in our society between the masculine and feminine: this is where I see the solution to address our social structures, the function and natural expression of sexual energy, relationship styles and systems all afresh. The reason for these uninvited sexual assaults are complex and while there is an absolute need for it to stop, we live in a sexually traumatised culture that is not healed that easily.

One of the main pieces we know today from cutting-edge therapists working with sexual abuse is that no matter how much women feel angry and abused, terrified and humiliated, if the feminine wants to heal she needs to forgive. The trauma needs to be released from the body and she needs to regain dignity, true power and safety.

Ultimately she needs to recognise that the healing journey is her own and if she doesn’t forgive she will continue to suffer. If she cannot reach a place of deep compassion towards the suffering in the world, which is the ultimate quality of the feminine, she will remain disembodied and a victim and suffer her whole life from insecurity and distrust.

There are certain steps that need to be taken for the healing of an abused woman, and she can come out of such healing a deeply awakened person that can then use her own healing process to help others, help hear and understand the distraught misled masculine and create a better world for other women around her.

This piece is really important to understand that my hope is as we move from a world that has told women for thousands of years that they are worth less than men, that they are weak, dependant and stupid, that they should earn less than men and that they are sexual objects subjected to an uncontrollable male sex drive all the while not having one of their own, that we move into a world where women understand their true power and beauty.

Thus the healing I can see for our evolution is through women who are embodying compassion, true power, true radiance and sexuality, vulnerability and strength, who love being mothers, love holding and being held. It will ultimately come from the women’s path of empowerment that this situation will shift on the planet.

I believe if us women can find the path back to our true essence much in the world could be healed and men would feel met and start to respect us as they can see we love them, want them and appreciate them in their qualities and in their desires and we are ready to meet them powerfully.

Consider a father mother and child triangle. Due to often cultural or religious beliefs or previous abuse the mother has experienced, or simply ignorance on her and her partner’s behalf, her sexuality towards the father can shut down. But sexuality is not a force we can ongoingly control by our mind. So at some stage the man’s sexual energy could be, for example, projected onto the child as parental disconnection, or someone else’s sexually or ‘normally’ lost in pornography.

75% of sex offenders have been sexually abused themselves as a child so the problem is much more deeply rooted, often passed down generation to generation, than simply hoping it could be solved by simply telling man to stop, accusing them and shaming them further.

Many times when I work with women who have experienced sexual abuse, a significant part of why the abuse happened because their mother was absent from the home. The feminine wasn’t present to teach the little girl her power, to protect her, to role model to her how a radiant woman lives, breathes and loves and how her man respects her. So the little girl doesn’t develop a holistic sexual identity, she doesn’t feel safe in the world and she attracts abuse from her own insecurity.

None of it being anybody’s fault, the missing male and female role models have left us with a society of lost genders. However, I believe that evolution is guiding us to see through all the suffering, divorces and court cases and children that suffer through all this, and that it is time to start to truly look and understand more about the true meaning of relationship, its original spiritual context, its path of healing and it potential for changing the world.

Both men and women need to wake up to this fact together and many men out there are equally devastated at the sexual assaults that are happening against women and children worldwide.

May the #metoo movement become a movement that starts the ball rolling for the world to wake up. Over 50% of marriages break down (although the causes of this are myriad) over 75% of both men and women have secret affairs, every fourth woman is sexually abused on average in most countries. There is something wrong people, and we need to take a look at it.

The more suppressed the feminine is the less met a man will feel truly appreciated in his whole being, the less he can trust himself to be worthy. In his own pointless self destructiveness, suppressing the most beautiful mirror he could possibly have to his own radiance and beauty, he loses himself in despair. He is hardly able to control his strong sexual urges in his teenage years, knowing no other way out than to look at porn and abnormal sexuality that degrades women due to overstimulation.

Due to a lack of education of the principles of tantric sexuality and divine feminine and masculine polarities, the vaster part of our society has become unhappy. A woman who isn’t taught and allowed to radiate her true beauty and sexual potency cannot initiate the man to worship her, protect her and look after her, to treat her with respect. And hence we are all looking for each other, only seeing the disempowered parts of one another.

In ancient times work with archetypes helped people to find the true essence of themselves again and this work is also deeply needed today.

… if the feminine wants to heal she needs to forgive. The trauma needs to be released from the body and she needs to regain dignity, true power and safety.

Deep healing and re-education is needed to replace the ancient initiations tribal people practised to initiate men and women into their roles, their sexuality, supported by a group of people they could trust and lead a life where they do not sit on top of each other as a nuclear family, contrary to the needs of both the feminine and masculine principles.

The general unhappiness of people, with its roots in the oppression of healthy sexuality, the lack of support of a real community and the old cultural paradigms, has led us to a decline in sexual wisdom of incredible dimensions and suffering. So when I look at #metoo I see a huge invitation for the world to have a closer look at humanity and the values and morals and behaviours we live by.

I see an evolutionary path where at last men and women can meet again as respectful partners, lover, families and friends, recognising the unique gifts we bring to each other. Both men and women need to realise that deep listening is needed, big changes, complex research, support of each other and appreciation to heal in these radical times we live in. …

Share #metoo, healing the sexes together by Marion Ellyard with your friends on Facebook

See Marion’s page on this site