I encountered a study in University today which looked at the social construction of genitalia through the amount of synonyms that people could produce for them.
The actual study focused on terms for the penis, of which there many. The set up of the study had 4 white, middle-class, American males, aged 18-21, situated in their living room attempting to generate as many of these as possible. Similarly a group of 8 mostly white, middle-class, American females, also aged 18-21, situated in their own living room attempted the same.
Though I am tempted to be churlish and say that the male participants ‘won’, that’s not how research works, and the four contesta—sorry, subjects received no prize for their commendable 144 terms that they generated in only half an hour (a rate of almost 5 terms-per-minute).
On the other side of the cock-spectrum, the eight female contesta-subjects only managed a pathetic 50 terms. They just weren’t trying.
I won’t provide the list of terms, but a few select extracts are: ‘Carnal King’, ‘The Purple Avenger’ (though I’ve heard it as Crimson), ‘Kimosabe’, ‘The Commisioner’, ‘rectum wrecker’, ‘visions of horses’ and ‘the leaning tower of please-her’.
The overall conclusion of the piece, such as it is, is that male invented terms for the penis are often very violent or war-related (meat spear, pink torpedo, heat-seeking moisture-missile) or personify the penis in such a way as to allow the actual man from being responsible for its actions (the persuader, the initiator, the Chief). This was seen as being indicative of an unhealthy male attitude to women, with which I can only partly concur, as I would certainly be tempted to sideline that argument on the grounds of the general silliness of the majority of the terms, in my mind the synonyms are creations of humour overall.
However a disparity seemed to surface as the seminar progressed, and we were invited to consider whether it would be possible to generate 144 terms for the female genitalia (don’t panic, I won’t attempt it here).
This peaked my interest as I am fully confident that I could produce humorous synonyms for the penis ad infinitum, and would feel creatively bereft if I could not manage a vast amount for the vagina as well. As the seminar progressed however, it became apparent that I wasn’t being invited to douse my fellow students in my pubic-based linguistic flexings, and so I saved it until I was by myself in my room (stop looking for innuendo).
The main problem with the terms I had heard or had concocted were that they were all fairly negatively charged, which, in was in stark comparison with terms for the penis. ‘Muff’ really doesn’t stand up to ‘Hammer of the Gods’, even if it does have delicious aural connotations through sounding like the word ‘muffin’ (muff-in, get it?)(Grow up if that’s what you thought).
So in order to restore a sort of balance to the, quite unequal, mismatch of terms, I strove to create positively-charged terms for the vagina. See, my reasoning and justification for this pastime is completely justified, I am not childish or churlish or any other kind of –ish. Though I am slightly peckish (Peckish – pecker – peckerish, like a cock)(Grow up again).
I thought that the best way to concoct these terms would be to generate a fictitious dialogue between Man X and Woman X. In order for these characters to fully come to life, I will need to fill you in on some background.
Man X and Woman X are two heterosexual human beings who have been dating for a number of years, around five or six. They are aged 18-21 (like the original subjects) and are in a relationship that is serious, though not sanctified by any of the world’s major doctrinal faiths or governments. Neither Man X nor Woman X believe in marriage. I know you are thinking, surely they must be married they have the same surname. X is not their real surname, they have been anonymised in order to protect their identities, even though they are hypothetical and fictitious. They are in no way related to Malcolm X.
In this conversation, Man X is fulfilling my role of attempting to generate non-offensive or positively charged terms for the female genitalia. I don’t know why he is doing it, I hope he has the flawless justification that I have.
Here is a basic blow-by-blow (grow up) account of their, fictitious, conversation:
Man: How is ‘muff’ not a positively charged term? It has connections with the term ‘muffin’, which is a delicious thing to be connected to. Everyone loves a muffin (grow up).
Woman: It isn’t a positive term as it reduces the vagina to a foodstuff, a snack to be consumed on the move or after a meal, as a dessert. The positive terms for the penis are often categorised by weaponry or war metaphors…
Man: ‘Love trench’ then, that’s got a war reference in there.
Woman: Are you suggesting that the term ‘trench’ has positive connotations? This is the very same term which described the arid, dank, fetid landscape of World War I battlefields. The trenches were plague ridden wastelands, that were also the site of the death of almost half of the world’s population.
Man: Point taken.
Woman: Stay away from war terminology anyway, that only promotes ‘sex as war’ which isn’t a healthy attitude to be promoting, try creating a term in the field of mythical creatures, as many penis terms are based on myth and legend.
Man: Okay, erm, ‘Gorgon hole’, no… sorry. ‘Pink
Woman: I think you should deconstruct that in order for you to find out yourself whether the term ‘Fleshy Cthulhu’ is a good terms with which to refer to a vagina.
Man: Well, Cthulhu is an alien from the Sci-Fi series of novels by H. P. Lovecraft. Bear with me. Cthulhu as a creature is ascetically aquatic, which conforms with other manifestations of vagina-terminology which sees the vagina as a sea-related beast. It is positively charged as Cthulhu is a popular, underground cult figure, immortalised in literature and game.
Woman: Of course, Cthulhu is also however, an immense Octopus-monster of horror-fiction, it is essentially the harbinger of death and destruction, effectively the bringer of the apocalypse.
Man: It is also sometimes called ‘The Lurker in the Shadows’.
Woman: That sounds more like a cock.
In the end, the only term I have thus far concocted whose positive affiliation overrides the negative is ‘Garden of Eden’. However, this also raises problems, as that is the location that humanity was denied because of the greed of a woman, and so it is a term filled with poignancy and irony.
My tentative conclusion then is thus:
If Eve hadn’t taken the fruit that she’d been told not to eat, she had been told, then maybe God wouldn’t have cursed womankind with a sexual organ that resisted any form of positive terminology.
Of course, my conclusion does have some shortcomings, namely 1) there is no God and as such 2) nothing in the Bible ever happened and as such 3) it is my inability that informs a lack of positive terminology, rather than any “evidence” taken from Judeo-Christian scripture.
This was supposed to be about willies and foofies and it ended up about religion. Thus I falsely syllogise that everyone who is religious is either a cock or a cunt.
I am grown up, I am.
References
Cameron, D. (1992) Naming of Parts: Gender, culture and terms for the penis among American college students American Speech 67 (3): 364-79.
No comments:
Post a Comment
How did this make you feel? What did it emphasize?