>
> On Thursday, March 6, 2003, at 11:49 AM, memetics-digest wrote:
>
> > What seems strange to me thought, is the fact that women always seem
> > to be offended by the representation of the phallus, never heard
> > that men were offended by watching a woman 's vagina made out of
> > snow or of whatever. Is there somewhere a memetic difference in how
> > we see things here or what !?
>
>  From They Whisper, by Robert Olen Butler
>
> This was her true voice. I came to know that her father was always
> there in her true voice. This was her voice except for the naming of
> the sweetest part of her body. Maybe that was her voice also, for her
> self-loathing was very strong, and the word I hear, cunt, carries
> that. But maybe not. If the words for a place so softly, so complexly
> portaled and swirled, a place so prone to weep in joy, seem
> ridiculously inadequate to me, then what must they seem to a woman?
> For a woman to have a place at the center of her that she cannot
> really see -- not like my part, which yields its whole shape to the
> slightest glance -- for her to have a place that is like the mystery
> of personality, difficult even for itself to apprehend, for a woman to
> have such a place in her body that gathers a man into it from his
> deepest yearning, a place that also cries forth a new child into the
> world, for her to have such a place full of the mystery of love and
> desire and the creation of life, I am sure she has no name for it in
> her truest voice. Just as there are no names for the feelings in
> myself that I am trying in all of this to understand. I speak now,
> speak in the ways I do, because I am ravished with love for this
> center of a woman's body that has no name, that can't be turned into a
> thought, that will not yield in any way but through my senses.
>      And so, because I give words to whispers, to sounds like the
> faint hiss from the edge of the universe, there are these little bits
> of broken translation when there are no names.
>
>
> ===============================================================
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> Wow, Joe, that was beautiful - and beautifully written!  So, as it
> follows a question about memetic difference in how we see the sexual
> organs of the opposite sex, would you say that most men feel this kind
> of reverence for the vagina?
>
I certainly do.  Men are figuratively expelled from one Eden at birth, and
spend the rest of their lives attempting to gain the blessed joyous
ecstatic oblivion of admittance to others, over and over and over
again...

Here's a short poem of mine on the subject:

Of all the wonders of a woman's wiles
The fairest by far is the Vertical Smile.
A smile of warmth that one may win
To open up and take you in.
Here I sit in sultry pout
Cheeks clenched tight and tongue stuck out
Wishing for only one blessed thing
To quench my thirst in Venus' spring.
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> Joe,
>
> Re: vagina reverence
>
> So, perhaps the difference lies in the way that it's
> told/related/perceived. Mr. Butler expressed his reverence in a way
> that touches a reader's senses, that has real respect inherent in
> every letter.  If that's the sentiment, then why is it continually
> dumbed down into crassness in everyday life?  Do men instinctively
> know each other's deep level of feeling and speak the way they
> sometimes do to bypass the deep aching longing?  That somehow seems a
> bit farfetched.  Where does the passing flippant pussy remark fit in?
> (none specific, I mean the general type of conversation women overhear
> men having with each other that makes us want to buy iron chastity
> belts and lose the keys for spite) (we almost always reconsider)
>
Protection from the intensity of one's emotions, I guess, kinda like
nervously laughing while watching a really scary movie - it serves to
break the tension.  If the penis is the fount of life, then the vagina is the
wellspring.  There is something sacred and reverent and sublime and
awe-inspiring and not a little scary and intimidating about it, probably
due to the mystery.  Women get to see what is going in them, but men
do not get to see where it goes - only the portals of the gates of
pleasure.
>
> -Michelle
>
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