Confessions of a libra

She is not a test. She is a temple. Can you hold her?

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18.05.25

The Madonna-Whore Complex is the idea that women can be sacred or sexy but never both. That some men, due to early childhood trauma with a maternal figure – cannot hold love and desire within the same woman. That to quell their inner anxieties – and as a subconscious punishment to mum – they choose to marry the ‘good’ girl while sleeping around with the ‘bad’ girl. This reduces women into a polarity instead of seeing a woman as a whole.

As a psychoanalyst, Freud theorised that this complex was the result of an inner split in the male psyche that separated affection and sexuality. This ‘inner anxiety’ the men were battling is that they associated the ‘good girls’ that they wanted to settle down with, with motherliness. So in a bid to run away from ‘incestuous’ feelings, they then cheat with their woman they actually desire.

Underlying this complex to put it simply is an underlying hatred toward women. When you are judging every woman by your mother’s sins or misdeeds, you are liable to make some pretty insane fuckups. One of those being, failing to enjoy the full spectrum of womanhood because you are lacking complexity. You are missing the empathy of soul and the intellectual capacity to see that women are as human as men. I’ve never understood where we got the idea that men are more sexual than women. You must have never met enough women, or ever spoken to them. Maybe you haven’t pleased one enough to access their inner vixen. So much of our understanding of women is rooted in the same systems I always harp on about; patriarchy, colonialism and religion.

Let me posit this to you, dear reader. In the last numerous centuries patriarchy has been the primary model in the West. In a world where patriarchy exists, one of its primary functions is to subjugate women. It poses that men and women do not have the same worth. Women are the background/side characters who birth, cook and fuck on command. Men are the big, strong leaders who make rational decisions (let’s not discuss the wars), design society, build it from their own hands. The primary bones of the society if you will.

In a world such as this, men are largely at the top making the important decisions. Men influence women’s decisions from their clothing (by enforcing modesty whether at home or through the church), to women’s wages, to women’s ability to choose when to give birth. Historically noble and aristocratic men have played into the Madonna-Whore complex by marrying women that were palatable. All the while whoring and having bastard children everywhere. Kings were especially reckless and ruthless in their pursuit of pleasure over anything. True greed and gluttony.

As religion is another corner stone of misogyny, it is worth exploring how the bible has contributed to the modern man’s affliction. The bible speaks of women with Eve having one day been ‘good’ when she was submissive and without an original thought for herself. But the day she makes an autonomous decision to learn that which she does not already know, to expand her mind past this manufactured utopia – she is crowned a sinful woman. Mary was supposedly holy because of her immaculate conception. Mary Magdalene was characterised as sinful because she loved through the body. Yet both their bodies were temples. One birthed the lord while the other buried him. They were both worthy and I truly believe the distinction between the two women is man-made, not God-made.

The Madonna-Whore complex contributes to victim blaming for victims of rape. We see this now, in the modern world. Instead of care or empathy, women are asked what they did to entice the perpetrator. Women are either dressing to be respectable or dressing to be assaulted in a society like this. As though everything women do must be orbiting men and done through the male gaze. It must be really hard for a man to understand that a woman may have hopes, dreams and wishes that do not encompass him. Studies done especially by feminist psychotherapist have found direct links between misogyny and worse health outcomes. More depression, anxiety, eating disorders, less education and less employment. The reason feminist psychotherapists would have led the charge is because as women, they are keenly aware of the effects of misogyny. Where men might not be rushing for accountability.

In a world where women are killed for refusing to give their number, it is clear that the real issue here is the misogyny rooted in patriarchy. It is so pervasive it may blind the common man from how deep he is in the trenches. The reason you are upset at women’s autonomy is because you are not seeing them as human and therefore worthy of making their own decisions. It might be really hard to hear but true love looks like being able to accept a no, even from the person you love. You likely have underlying beliefs, programmed by society, that makes you think that your thoughts and feelings are more important than a woman’s free will. Even if you otherwise vote for women’s rights.

Women are being assaulted at extraordinary rates, because men are too in love with the idea of controlling a woman. Oh, she said no? I’ll show her with my physicality. Men being obsessed with lording their physicality is why when women speak of equality you get responses about “equal rights, equal fights”. Men can suppress just about any other feeling (empathy) in favour of control. This is harmful to the health and wellbeing of men first and foremost.

The healed woman is no longer confused. She understands that she is both the altar and the appetite. The starter to the dessert. She doesn’t need your approval or permission to be whole. Your liberation as a man depends on whether you can hold her as both. Your ability to be with the sexy woman of your dreams, is being able to hold her in complexity and honour her there. If ever there was a split in the male psyche, it is not for women to correct. I truly believe that there is no split, it is merely conditioning and a lack of self awareness. True self awareness that leads to self actualisation. Women are not your mother to obey nor your whore to devour. When you desecrate the woman, you desecrate your only chance at meeting the Divine in the flesh.

It’s never too late to start again

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Healing

Women are not something you can easily categorise in two neat piles. Women are easy to understand, once you respect their complexity. Women are all things soft and powerful, sacred and erotic, nurturing and wild, pure and primal. Women can be as emotionally distant as men, they can work as hard as men, they can fuck as much as men and none of that changes her worth. Your ideas of femininity derived from limited ideas about chastity or modesty are stopping you from having deep connections with the women around you.

Women shouldn’t have to choose between being wanted and worshipped. When you commit to a woman purely for the aesthetics, for the approval of someone other than yourself, you are hurting yourself and everyone around you by-proxy. You will have missed out on being with the woman who can give you everything. And that exists, I promise you. We need to start learning to build a strong internal compass, that bypasses societal programming. If the woman who supports your dreams – the woman you crave and dream of – isn’t the packaging dictated by someone else, it’s a non-issue. People might make fun of you but they’ll either get over it or you take a stand and leave their lives.

We need to start approaching each other with a renewed vigour to understand one another across any barrier. It is not healthy as a society to try and categorise people for the purposes of keeping them down. Let women have as many abortions and divorces as they need. Women’s liberation does not equal men’s subjugation. Women’s success does not equal men’s failures. That kind of thinking is derived from male-centred thinking, the type that fuels patriarchy.

Even if women were complex, why does it hurt to try and understand them? We put so much research into trying to understand the complexity of space, the mysteries of the ocean. Yet, this is where we want to put our hands up? We are leaving young women to stress about wearing spaghetti straps because a man out there won’t have self control to leave well enough alone.

Not enough people know about this complex and I hoped that through my exploration it can spark some thoughts about where you might be playing into misogyny. We cannot change what we do not discuss. We cannot change by burying our heads in the sand because something sounds too hard to understand. We must stand together and dismantle systems that affect us all. For what is a society if not as strong as its weakest link. May the next generation of women experience freedom our ancestors only dreamt of.