For example, this little nugget concerning the vulva:
'The part of you' as the advertisement says, 'that is most girl', but also as magic as the penis, and to children, primitives and males generally, slightly scary: it looks like a castrating wound and bleeds regularly, it swallows the penis and regurgitates it limp, it can probably bite and so on. Luckily, few of these biologically programmed anxieties survive closer acquaintance, but are the origins of most male hangups including homosexuality.
Okay, one of the first things that I noticed is that the fear that the vulva will bite is described as “biologically programmed.” I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call bullshit on this. While yes, Vagina Dentata pops up in a lot of cultures, especially cultures outside of what folks with internet would call “educated cultures,” there is not a lot of reason at all to assume that this is biological in nature. It strikes me as being learned, usually from an early age.
Although I have no idea how...
There is two things that heterosexual males learn once they become sexually active. The first is that vaginas do indeed in some respects, look like mouths, which would explain why there would be part of the psyche (usually the parts that have a macabre sense of humour) that would expect teeth.
The second thing is that being bitten on the cock hurts!
The reason, to me at least, seems to have sod-all to do with biology and a lot to do with the fact that males have eyes, as well as a healthy fear of losing their wang. When unfamiliar with something, it's natural to be a little distrusting, especially when it looks like something familiar that is known for chewing and swallowing.
Look, I'll be blunt here. If the Vagina Dentata fear was genuinely biological in origin, do you think that fellatio, where a man puts his penis, an organ known for it's vulnerability to teeth, into someone else's mouth, would be so popular?
There is also a lot of conjecture as to whether or not there is also a fear of feminine power as well, which I think is very much tied into the Vagina Dentata issue. Fear of being emasculated, especially by a woman, is one of those things that pops up commonly in cultures worldwide. This is because, I think at least, that the Vagina Dentata is not just a fear of penis loss in a rather horrible, messy manner, but also a loss of gender identity. While it is the testicles that produce the testosterone, it's the penis that stands out (pun TOTALLY intended) as the primary male sex organ.
There are some versions of the Vagina Dentata legend that involve the swallowing of a male entirely by the vagina, which I find to be very telling. When the penis is swallowed, does this mean that the entirety of the manhood is swallowed? The entirety of the personality? The entire person?
Does anyone else find it odd that there's no Robin
around while Batman fights a Shrubbery Vagina?
Insecurities concerning gender and sexuality span the globe as these two things both strike us at our core. Why, I hear you ask? Because they are so tied to our personalities. Being emasculated separates the male from humanity as humanity seems to be separated into male and female, or in some cultures, male and “other.” Vagina Dentata is simply putting a face, or at least a mouth, to that fear of emasculation.
In any group of a males, I doubt that you can find many that would not feel emasculated by the loss of their penis, especially after reading something as phallocentric (do you like that word, phallocentric? I stole it from the feminists) as The Joy of Sex. While yes, there is plenty of relevant information, the fact that I can spot two glaring deficiencies in a single paragraph means that there is something lacking.
In part two of The Joy of ...WTF?!!!, I'll be looking at Alex Comfort's apparent misunderstanding of homosexuality and his apparent phallus worship.
a good read. I'll be following this.
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