#yonic representation

[taylor14firefly]

Barbara Creed (1993)

“Classical mythology, too, was populated with gendered monsters, many of which were female. [...] The Medusa and her two sisters also presented a terrifying sight. They had huge heads, their hair consisted of writhing serpents, their teeth were as long as boars’ tusks and they flew through the air on golden wings. Men unfortunate enough to look upon the Medusa with her evil eye were immediately turned to stone. In classical times, pendants and other jewellery depicting the Medusa’s frightening appearance were frequently worn to ward off evil spirits, and warriors painted the female genitals on their shields in order to terrify the enemy. Freud takes up this point in his short essay, ‘Medusa’s head’:

If Medusa’s head takes the place of a representation of the female genitals, or rather if it isolates their horrifying effects from their pleasure-giving ones, it may be recalled that displaying the genitals is familiar in other connections as an apotropaic act. What arouses horror in oneself will produce the same effect upon the enemy against whom one is seeking to defend oneself. We read in Rabelais of how the Devil took flight when the woman showed him her vulva. (p. 274)

It is not by accident that Freud linked the sight of the Medusa to the equally horrifying sight of the mother’s genitals, for the concept of the monstrous-feminine, as constructed within/by a patriarchal and phallocentric ideology, is related intimately to the problem of sexual difference and castration. If we accept Freud’s interpretation that the ‘Medusa’s head takes the place of a representation of the female genitals’, we can see that the Medusan myth is mediated by a narrative about the difference of female sexuality as a difference which is grounded in monstrousness and which invokes castration anxiety in the male spectator.”

[taylor14firefly]

Phallic objects are everywhere; look at the Washington Monument, the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, Andover’s bell tower, your pen, a water bottle, the Bicentennial Statue; essentially anywhere you turn your head, anywhere on the globe, you could point to a multitude of structures and objects pertaining to this particular piece of male anatomy. Anyone above a certain age knows the word and many students, along with professional reviewers, use it often to critique classic literature. I have discussed...

Emma Wood

May 6, 2007

“Last Sunday, while I was writing a paper about David Copperfield for Ada Fan, I had to pause to think of the antonym of “phallic.” I soon realized that I had no such word in my vocabulary (which, being an Andover Senior, is not narrow). Rather surprised at this discovery, I conducted a quick Google search, believing that I would recognize the word as I soon as I found it, but I found myself to be mistaken. I had never even heard of the word I uncovered: yonic. The word itself was taken from the Sanskrit word for vagina, “yoni” (pronounced like Yoni Gruskin ’07). Although the word holds other spiritual meanings, for westerners it is interpreted only as the counterpart (or antonym) to phallic. I immediately pounced upon this discovery as a microcosm of our society. The simple fact that “phallic” is so widely used and commonly known, while I, a female, had to Google to find “yonic,” seems representative of the greater value placed upon men in all societies today. Furthermore, we are so accustomed to this disparity that no one even notices or cares to speak out against this imbalanced usage. Some may argue that the world simply contains more phallic objects as a function of its patriarchal history. If so, why would the idea of “yonic” symbols not be (or have been) introduced by now, in a society that has allegedly shaken off these same patriarchal roots?”