Sex, Masculinity, God (Revisited)
Part of Summer at The Portal 2025
This Summer at The Portal we will be hosting The Resonant Man, led by
and in July, as well as philosopher Dylan Shaul in August, for a month dedicated to the philosophy of theology. We will also be starting a new sharing circle titled “Sex and Society”, led by . To get involved with everything this summer, you can join “Summer in The Portal 2025” below:To get involved with the Sex and Society circle as a stand-alone project, you can get involved through Prentice’s Substack or Patreon. All information can be found here:
In 2018/2019, I engaged a trialogue series with tantric entrepreneur Kevin Orosz,1 and buddhist spiritual practitioner Daniel Dick,2 titled Sex, Masculinity, God.3 This trialogue series grew out of the perceived crisis of masculinity that I have previously linked to the rise of Jordan B. Peterson and also the election (and re-election) of Donald Trump in the North American context.4 While Orosz, Dick and I did not hold identical views about spirituality, religion, politics, or science; we were open to exploring around the unknown and the forbidden, and open to interacting with different existential styles, beliefs and desires. What unified us for this project was the struggle to understand libidinal energy (sex), the difficulties of masculine identity (masculinity), and the connection to an other beyond the self (God).
The book — resulting from the trialogues — orbited ten different topics, organised into ten different chapters, unfolding along the following dimensions:
The Reality of Sexual Difference (recognising a real sex difference which was under-theorised in contemporary gender studies)5
Historical Emergence of Traditional Archetypes (reflecting the historicity of normative gender roles)6
Evolutionary Worldview versus Religious Worldview (contemplating the contradiction between evolution and God)7
History of Gender Theory (thinking with alternative geometries for categorising gender identities)8
Contemporary Masculinity and Masculine Movements (critiquing and reconciling with various men’s communities and works)9
Nature of Pain and Suffering in Sexuality (learning to work with the more disturbing aspects of sexed subjectivity)10
Absolutes and Relations (wrestling with the contradictions of the way feelings of absoluteness appear internal to intimate relations)11
Ethics and Morality in the Sexual Space (reconciling with the seeming paradox of the ethics of desire for symmetrical morality)12
The Future of Sex (speculating about the future of technology and its potential impacts on our sexual expressions)13
Love and Death (concluding with meditations on the unity of love and death, and the importance of this unity for today)14
As an exercise to start our month in The Portal with The Resonant Man; Green, Kishere and I worked through all of these topics in only a few hours. For me, this not only functioned as a helpful revisitation of the concerns and motivations that originally led to the publication of the book, but also gave me ideas about how the processes that went into the construction of this book, can function for men’s and (in principle), women’s work, too.
The idea is that from the opening chapter, “The Reality of Sexual Difference”, to the last chapter, “Love and Death”, you get prompts that can basically guide reflective contemplation on the work of sublimation. Here, while men’s and women’s work often gets associated with Jungian psychoanalysis, I claim that what is laid down as the foundations in Sex, Masculinity, God trialogue, is a step towards “Freudo-Lacanian” men’s and women’s work insofar as it is built towards the work of sublimation in bringing philosophical reflection and speech to the sex drive itself. We might even say that this work can proceed in the following Lacanian spirit:15
“Freud tells us repeatedly that sublimation is […] satisfaction of the drive, without repression.
In other words — for the moment, I am not fucking, I am talking to you. Well! I can have exactly the same satisfaction as if I were fucking.”
In other words, the point of engaging a type of men’s/women’s circling around these concepts is to work towards the satisfaction of the drive without repression, and in the process raise one’s philosophical reflection and speech to the highest level of enjoyment in language. What is novel here is not only the lifting of the talking cure out of its clinical setting and into a more collective social setting, but also bringing the universal abstractions of philosophy into a specific dialogue and contact with the most intimate singular concreteness of our libidinal processes. Lacanian philosopher Alenka Zupančič seemed to agree, given her recommendation of the text:16
“Sex, Masculinity, God: The Trialogue is an extraordinary and unique attempt to address, in contemporary context, what is doubtlessly one of the most important and persistent questions of human existence: sexuality. Three different voices, perspectives, approaches, continuously moving between experience and speculation, take as their starting point the eternal contemporaneity of sex and its irreducible real. The book is an ingenious, original attempt to square — or shall we say to triangle — the circle of this real.”
In principle, these prompts function as a non-linear guidance, in the sense that they could be reflected at different stages of life, or different situations of life. For example, when I originally engaged this project, I was struggling with long-term intimate relationships, and feeling through what I interpreted to be an institutional bias against masculinity. However, in re-engaging men’s work today, I still find working through these ideas helpful, but I am now reflecting them in a quite different context (e.g. married and working outside of an institutional context). At the same time, there are things I struggle with now which I was not struggling with before, simply because of my life position, for example, the challenge of becoming a father, or the challenge of navigating market dynamics without losing your central purpose and drive. Every stage or position of life presents your libidinal structure, as a man, or a woman, or anything in-between, with unique and singular challenges that can be helpfully navigated with the combination of psychoanalytic methods and philosophical reflectivity.
In this revisitation, I am going to be reflecting some the central concerns motivating the book, as well as reflecting again on the core chapter topics, which again, can be used as prompts for a similar self-work.
Concerns framing the book:
In the Introduction to Sex, Masculinity, God I open by claiming that while we tend to think about sexuality as biological, animalistic and primitive, we cannot disconnect or separate sexuality from spirituality and even intellectual processes related to our broader cultural development as persons.17 I think we can even go so far as saying that we find in sexuality a misrecognised intelligence that we barely know how to work with in a wider civilisational context. Freud famously referred to sexuality or the libido, especially as expressed in the social field in the vicissitudes of love, as “hard to educate”.18 And at the same time without the hard work involved in educating libido, it would seem we are doomed to an education build around external cognition, insofar as libido (or sex drive) is the very core of our truest motivations. Lacan famously suggested that what the analyst finds at the very zero-level of analytic “healing” is the androgynous creature from ancient Platonic mythology, struggling with the impossibility of its “other half” or “starving” from the lack in “our unfindable complement”:19
“But what is the being that responds to us, operating in the field of speech and language[...]?[:] the beings we have become in love, starving for our unfindable complement.”
Consequently, we can infer that the libido or sex drive is the motor and foundation for what becomes the self-organisation of pair bonds, families, communities and beyond. Moreover, the way in which these social organisations are formed, cannot be reduced to simple biological kinship, but involve complex symbolic, cultural, and metaphysical rules, which themselves are the results of certain social practice and cultivation located in the very void/gap/lack of the core of the unconscious itself. Recall Alenka Zupančič’s reflection on the topic from the Conclusion of What Is Sex?:20
It is not that these “family structures” can explain the Real of sexuality, but rather that something in the latter can explain, or point to, the gap that drives these structures.
It perhaps goes without saying that in the past this practice and cultivation was occupied by the domain of religious life, and in the rise of productivity-centric industrial life (and the death of God), these signifying practices necessary for the cultivation and education of libido, have been neglected. Why? Because neglecting them conveniently allows us to avoid the core lack at the core of the unconscious itself, and thus avoid the difficult work or arduous labour in real creativity. For some reason we would prefer to either cover it over with religious metaphysics or cover it over with industrial productivity (or in the case of contemporary masculine movements in Silicon Valley, both). On the other hand, what operates in the pure lack (void/vacuum) of certain traditional norms and regulations, either religious or industrial, for the education of libido is a kind of liberal hedonism which can be associated with the ideology of sex positivity.
Thus, another concern framing the book is the introduction of the idea that libido is not just positive (free play), but rather brings us to intractable social deadlocks informing how we construct our identity and see the world. In this sense, if we treat sex as solely positive, and its activity as just another social thing we do, we not only fall into a kind of unreflective hedonism that can lead us into structures of perversion (instrumentalising the other) or psychosis (hallucinating the other), but we also fail to cultivate the capacity to work with the concrete deadlocks and impossibilities that are presented to us in its field. Liberal hedonism is certainly easier than learning to work with the social lack on the level of real libidinal dynamics. Indeed, these deadlocks and impossibilities are often painful, difficult to process, and oftentimes the most uncomfortable things to think and speak about.
Finally, we wanted to explore the topics in Sex, Masculinity, God from the point of view that science often treats our sex life as irrelevant to the questions about the true nature of reality (which is one of the major rifts that appears historically between science and psychoanalysis); and from the point of view that religion often functions as a moral shield against sexuality as a base material activity against the higher idealist pursuits of religious life (which is another of the major rifts that appears historically between religion and psychoanalysis).21 In this sense, I think what this book forwards is the idea that we should treat our sexual lives as relevant to the deepest scientific inquires into the nature of reality itself; and we should see our sexual lives as helping us cultivate a life that is striving for the highest possible ethical life.
What follows below is basically a scaffolding of the major topics in Sex, Masculinity, God and some core points that can be used to deepen self-reflection. Please consider these also as helpful prompts, for either critical self-reflection (e.g. journalling activities), or collective self-reflection (e.g. circling activities).
(1) The Reality of Sexual Difference:22
The sexes are unified, not in their self-similarity, but in their necessary difference
Sex difference informs cultivation of tension and polarity, can be difficult and demanding, a source of joy and growth, or both
Sex difference is an invitation to see the world from an “other” point of view (not in a reductive frame, but as expression of energy-forms)
(2) Historical Emergence of Traditional Archetypes23
We need to think the opposite of “historical emergence”, associated with notions of temporality, evolution, and the new; with “traditional archetypes”, associated with notions of eternity, static-fixed identity, and the old
In this reflection, can we think about how what appears eternal, pre-given, unchanging, can become historically conditioned, subject to evolutionary pressures, and structured by logics of materiality
At this intersection, future speculations are required to think about the meaning of future change, novelty, and dynamic interaction between masculine/feminine archetypes as conditioned differently as evolutionary pressures change
(3) Evolutionary Worldview and Religious Worldview24
Evolutionary and religious worldviews are often seen as antagonistic opposites, with evolutionary thinking associated with secularity, humanism, scientific empiricism; and religious thinking associated with spirituality, supernaturalism, and the theological or transcendental
To be specific, one of the deepest antinomies involves the evolutionary worldview giving a sense of connection and continuity with the animal kingdom, and the religious worldview giving a sense of transcendental discontinuity or rupture with the animal kingdom
(4) History of Gender Theory25
For most Western or civilisational history, gender has been considered as a binary, but there are examples of other representations, whether gender can be understood as a triad (e.g. masculine, feminine, androgynous), a quadrant (man, women, transman, transwoman), or even more complex geometries
Here discussion brings attention to feelings of rigidity of identity in Western culture and society, as well as challenges of Feminist and LGBTQ+ movements, which seeks definitions beyond the heteronormative sexual forms
(5) Contemporary Masculinity and Masculine Movements26
The nature and struggles of modern masculinity are often expressed in what is referred to as the “Red Pill” movement emphasising the reality of our evolutionary history and the way this conditions our sexual expressions
The Red Pill movement appears as a reactivity against what it perceives to be a culture dominated by feminine energy and ideals, and which lacks a positive and motivating image for what it means to become the ideal masculine energy form
Here we need to think through the opportunities and dangers inherent to masculine movements (e.g. new positive relationships/motivational structure or self-destructive and anti-social)
(6) Nature of Pain and Suffering in Sexuality27
As mentioned above, sex can be often framed too “positively” (sex positive movement), to the neglect of the reality of negative affects in sexuality (which often becomes central for more religiously oriented views on sexuality)
There is a need here for thinking through the ways in which our sexual identity can become reactive defences to pain and suffering, as well as a potential catalyst for challenging and transforming our sexual identity, with an emphasis on the necessity for bravery and courage to explore the real of sexuality
(7) Absolutes and Relations28
The notion of the Absolute is something necessary and eternal; the notion of Relation is something contingent and temporal; the former is more associated with the Religious, and the latter is more associated with the Evolutionary
Here reflections must be brought to understand our experience of sexuality as at this potential intersection between the two: where we can encounter someone in a purely contingent and temporal relation, where at the same time, this person can come to feel like someone necessary and eternal, or absolute for us
(8) Ethics and Morality in Sexual Space29
We could define the dimension of ethics as fidelity to the truth of one’s desire, and the dimension of morality as fidelity to the symmetry of action with others; in the libidinal context: how can we think the way these two determinations come into conflict?
Individual ethics and social morality often collide in the problem of how to stay true to one’s desires and act in relation to the field of others in a moral form?; the tensions between the two, as well as reflection on their impossibility, forces us into the dilemma of how we can bring the ethics of our desire into alignment with our moral duty to the social body
(9) The Future of Sex30
Today we need to think sexuality from the perspective of transhumanism and general futurist theory, with interest in how future technology like artificial intelligence, robotics, or virtual reality may augment or qualitatively change the way in which we engage with (or are engaging) sexual energy
Here we confront speculative mediation on the radical expansion of limits and transformation of obstacles; reflecting on how polymorphous perversity and multifaceted sexual energy can or will become, how unaware our desires and motivations are in the context of being conditioned by historical constraints
(10) Love and Death31
Finally, the topic of “love and death” brings us to the most sobering and heaviest realities for sexuality, as both love and death seem to bring about certainty about where we are and what really matters
In reflection on love and death, we are invited to think about how both can become ignored in our culture in general, and how it is this reality that can often define how we relate to other human beings as well as the universe as a whole
With these themes in mind, what I offer below is an excerpt from the actual conclusion of the book, to give a deeper sense of both the space in which we engaged the project, as well as the place we found ourselves afterwards.
Conclusion of the book:32
We have spent the entirety of this book reflecting on the nature and meaning of sexuality. This journey has taken us from the difference in sexual expression, the emergence of sexual form, worldviews that influence conceptions of sexuality, theories about alternative identity construction in sexuality, the contemporary struggles for masculine sexual identity, nature of emotional suffering in sexuality, coincidence between relations and absolutes in sexuality, paradox in ethics and morality of sexual action, potential future expression of sexuality, and ultimately, the relation between sexuality and love and death.
Is there anything that holds these sexual dimensions all-together? Here I would suggest that there is not “one positive thing” which holds all of these dimensions together, there is not “one answer” which holds all of these dimensions together, but rather its opposite: there is “one enigma”, “mystery”, or “impossibility” of sexuality that holds all of these discussions together. In discussing sexuality at the highest philosophical level one finds the self in a strange discursive or epistemological space where it feels like one can keep circling this topic forever and ever and ever, while staying in essentially the same place. In these discussions there is a feeling as if one answer or solution simply opens up a new series of questions and problems that mirror or reduplicate the same old questions and problems that one started with at the beginning.
[...]
Where does that leave us? Well it may leave us in the most interesting possible territory that we can imagine. Take, for example, that we “moderns” [...] sit in an unfortunate time between two great missed adventures: the adventure of travelling and discovering the world as in our pre-modern ancestors who mapped out the entire Earth as one sphere; and the adventure of travelling and discovering the whole galaxy as in our hypothetical future (transhuman?) offspring who may colonise the rest of the Milky Way. If one takes such a notion to have a high truth value, one may take away the unsettling idea that we just missed out on real adventure and mystery. We [...] sit in the unspectacular time when the whole of our world is known and mapped, and at the same time exist just before the time when we, presumably, will start to produce the technologies we need to expand out into a new unknown of the cosmos at large.
This is where the presupposition that marks much of our discourse, the notion of “unconscious sexuality”, throws a short-circuit into our conventional way of looking at the world. Far from being stuck in-between two missed adventures, we find ourselves sitting at perhaps one of the most interesting possible horizons in need of collective mapping: the relation between libidinal energy and the heart (love). Consider for a moment that from the perspective of historical spirit, the world has been fully sublated (idealised), but so too has the entire observable universe. In terms of our technological extensions we have already mapped the observable universe, and find it to be totally simple, repetitive, and homogenous, at the largest possible scales of analysis.
Where is the complexity, novelty, and heterogenous activity that would provide us with adventure and mystery? Where is the space that calls for sublation (idealisation)? Well it may just be in the conscious territory governed by the law of the heart an unconscious energetics of libido. Indeed, on a meta-level that is how one may view this entire Sexual Trialogues topic. In a very open-ended form, mediated with lots of authentic feedback, as well as shared control in the hierarchical distribution of labour and attention, [...] [we] attempted to use our self-consciousness to bring to light the unconscious energetics of libido, whether that was in relation to its difference in expression, its emergence of form, its ethics of action, or its potential future pathways, and so forth.
Of course, this project is just one of many potential other projects on sexuality that could engage in the same essential philosophical enterprise. How are we to conceive this space and possible collective mapping project on larger scales?
[...]
To confront this dimension, to walk the spiritual path, is very difficult. The only way to really do it may be to accept and embrace a more active relationship to death. Death, far from being an external force that inevitably awaits our being, may in fact best be conceptualised as an internal force that overrides and overdetermines life itself. In the image of Death, Life itself can mobilise new repetitions of libido that gain their creative capacity from allowing one’s current concrete identity to die, to push it to its extreme limits, to traverse territory which has never been traversed before. In short, to die differently than anyone who has ever lived before.
[...]
The Sexual Trialogues should be re-read from the point of view of an internalised death drive. How do you want to die differently than any human who has lived before? What would the law of your own heart determines if it knew itself well enough? If it had been brave enough to live? It is at this moment when the death drive, far from being a desire for the immediate dissolution of one’s being back into Das Nichts, is in fact the very principle of immortal love internal to the structuring of libido, the death drive is a drive for real love.
[...]
In traversing sexuality (“unconscious energetics of libido”) we learn our self so well that we start to know the limits, constraints and obstacles that we need to work with in order to become our best self. We learn the limits, constraints and obstacles that we need to work with in order to constantly transcend what we thought were our limits, constraints and obstacles. Far from a philosophy that articulates that “anything is possible”, and there are “no limitations” or “no obstacles” on our way, such a philosophy empowers us to better understand the truthful relation between, and becoming of, possibility and impossibility.
Pick up a copy of the original book, here:
If you are looking for a men’s circle specifically, I would recommend getting involved directly in
and ’s group The Resonant Man. You can find information about their project below:Or if you are looking for something similar but different to both men’s and women’s circling, consider getting involved in
’s “Sex and Society” circle at The Portal. You can find everything you need to know about this work, here:See: Kevin Orosz
See: Daniel Dick
Last, C., Orosz, K., Dick, D. 2020. Sex, Masculinity, God: The Trialogues. Ouroboros Publishing. (link)
Last, C. Orosz, K., Dick, D. 2020. Sex, Masculinity, God. Ouroborus Publishing. p. 15.
Ibid. p. 35.
Ibid. p. 57.
Ibid. p. 83.
Ibid. p. 109.
Ibid. p. 133.
Ibid. p. 155.
Ibid. p. 177.
Ibid. p. 199.
Ibid. p. 223.
Lacan, J. 1998. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Book XI). New York: W.W. Norton & Company. p. 165-6.
Last, C., Orosz, K., Dick, D. 2020. Sex, Masculinity, God: The Trialogues. Ouroboros Publishing. (link)
Ibid. p. 1-2.
Freud, S. 1912. On The Universal Tendency To Debasement in the Sphere of Love. In: Freud — Complete Works. p. 2346.
Lacan, J. 2005. Position of the Unconscious, In: Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English. p. 716-717.
Zupančič, A. 2017. What Is Sex? MIT Press. p. 142.
Last, C., Orosz, K., Dick, D. 2020. Sex, Masculinity, God: The Trialogues. Ouroboros Publishing. p. 2-3.
Ibid. p. 15.
Ibid. p. 35.
Ibid. p. 57.
Ibid. p. 83.
Ibid. p. 109.
Ibid. p. 133.
Ibid. p. 155.
Ibid. p. 177.
Ibid. p. 199.
Ibid. p. 223.
Ibid. p. 245-250. (Originally written October 14 2019)