In the first millennium B.C.E., human cultures clearly experienced an Axial Period in a striking transformation of human consciousness. The transformation occurred independently in three geographic regions: in China, in India and Persia, and in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Israel and Greece. In this cultural transformation, a prevailing mythic, cosmic, ritualistic, collective consciousness embedded in a tribal matrix with the female in the foreground slowly gave birth to a male-dominated, rational, analytical, individualistic consciousness. This transition in cultural values began very slowly, after the last Ice Age retreated, with the discovery and spread of agriculture, the domestication of animals, and primitive forms of writing, metallurgy, and the wheel (Francoeur, 1996; Gupta, 1987; Jasper, 1953; Lawrence, 1989).In both the East and West, the earlier primacy of female sexual archetypes and values gradually weakened over millennia, until they were finally supplanted by patriarchal societies and religions. In the East, Confucius and LaoTzu, the Upanishadic sages, Mahavira, and the Buddha in India continued to speak of the importance of women as sexual teachers and their active role in ritual sexual union. This ancient recognition of women's superior capacity for sexual pleasure (bhogo) is evident in Tantric Yoga (Francoeur, 1992ab; Stubbs, 1999) and in the Kamasastra and Anaga Ranga (Hindu erotics). The persistent Eastern affirmation of female sexuality is beautifully illustrated in the 85 "Love Temples" built a thousand years ago in Eastern, South, and Central India. A favorite of many who have visited and studied these temples is an exquisite sculpture on the south wall of the Mahadeva Temple in Kajuraho showing two women supporting a man symbologically standing on his head. The man is caressing their vulvas as a third women sits atop him enjoying vaginal intercourse (Deva, 1986-1987, 176; Francoeur, 1992ab).
In the more sexually dichotomous-thinking West, female sexual archetypes were more quickly and completely replaced by male-defined and dominated archetypes. Still, during this Axial Period, a Jewish tractate in the Babylonian Talmud, echoed later in an Islamic creation myth, tells us that "Almighty God divided sexual beauty/pleasure into ten parts. Nine parts he gave to women. One part he gave to men" (Brooks, 1995; Kiddushin daf 49B). In Greek mythology, when Zeus and Hera argued whether males or females had a greater capacity for sexual pleasure, Tiresias, who had experienced half of his life as a man and the other half as a woman, maintained that when it came to the capacity for sexual pleasure, women were by far the winners.
However, in the West, a major factor in the radical shift in gender power from females to males was the emergence of male-biased monotheistic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the gradual dominance of male-controlled monogamy. For at least 3,500 years, from the First Axial Period in the millennium before the Common Era, sexual values in both the East and West have favored the male, restricted sexual communications between the sexes, and repressed the sexual rights and expression of women (Francoeur, 1992ab; Francoeur & Noonan, 2004; Lawrence, 1989; Prescott, 1975).
In the view of theologian Ewert Cousins (1981), we are now passing through a Second Axial Period. For centuries, forces have been building up, which Cousins and others believe are now reaching a watershed turning point. For a second time in human culture, the balance of gender power is being challenged on a global scale. New sexual codes are evolving. Worldwide, we are shifting from a heterosexual-marital-coital-procreative value system to friendship-and-pleasure-based values. But to create more gender-egalitarian cultures, we need to deal with the repression of female sexuality, the subject of this paper (Bockle & Pohier, 1976; Ehrenreich, et al., 1987; Fisher, 1999; Francoeur, 1996; Francoeur & Noonan, 2004, 1373; Ogden, 1994).
Our evidence of a Second Axial Period comes from 12 years of research and analysis of sexual attitudes and behaviors in 60 countries, working with 280 colleagues (Francoeur & Noonan, 2004, 1373-1376). In almost every country we reported on, we found a variety of new developments where women are challenging the patriarchal view of sexuality at the same time they are expressing and asserting their own self-defined sexual rights and needs. Why should we focus on enhancing the sexual rights and health of women when achieving gender equality in economics, the law, and politics appears more compelling? Enhancing sexual intimacy is "political only because it is so profoundly and fundamentally personal."* Our hypothesis is that expanding and enhancing women's knowledge of their own sexual nature and sexual response potential will contribute to an enriched, more egalitarian intimacy with their sexuoerotic partners, in keeping with the expanding human self-awareness and consciousness.
There are numerous, widely acknowledged examples of the ongoing repression of female sexuality in East and West cultures. Our focus here is on examples of secular and religious repression of female sexuality outside Western Euro-American cultures. While our examples deal with women's sexuality, it is obvious that customs and taboos that inhibit and repress female sexuality also negatively affect male sexual pleasure.
