A Sad Symmetry

When I was growing up
male sexuality was a thing of 'smash and grab'.

A random loss of consent where the male,
who in being lost in the sexual moment himself,
further confounded the temporal self awareness
of his highly unprepared would-be mate.

That this smash and grab happened mostly within marriage
was meant to make male violence seem safe

and make a virtue out of the woman 

becoming invisible to herself
for her being the lesser half 

of the man she had married.

Yes, sex did exist outside of marriage,
including sex between people of the same gender
but for it to survive intact it had to be kept invisible.

There Believers in suspicious churches
would act out their strange orthodoxies
and declare 'gay' relationships to be 'of the devil'
or in modern words 'psychologically disordered'.

They would stage public would-be exorcisms,
which were more like public trails with a jury,
where the church would re-enact the random anger
of the possessive aroused male, this time Jehovah,
to restore the old 'smash and grab' world order.