Search Results for: the vulva

Hey, warning, there is more unnerving news for the righteous:

Guess what I learned yesterday?

The somewhat controversial vulva was the inspiration for the ichthys – the so-called Jesus Fish –  one of the universal and most beloved symbols of the Christian faith.

I’ve been writing about the vulva ever since Maria created some vulva potholders as a symbol of freedom and strength for women. Some people didn’t like it at all. You would have thought I was running naked through Times Square.

Turn the vulva sideways and you can see it for yourself.  i wonder if the good “Christians” who left my blog the other day in protest against Maria’s vulva potholders have any idea how Christianity was conceived, or what it’s symbols mean.

Perhaps not.

By now, I am used to encountering people who arrogantly invoke what it means to be a Christian while knowing absolutely nothing about Jesus or the founding ideology of Christianity.

Janice, a researcher and reader of the blog  got my attention when she sent me this message yesterday:

“Jon, I believe you will find this bit of historical perspective interesting that I came across when researching the early church. The symbol of the fish displayed extensively by many Christians today was actually the symbol of the woman’s vulva. Turn it horizontally and you can see it. I do it mentally every time I see it on a bumper sticker. And chuckle to myself. If they only knew what they are promoting.”

Janice, thank you so much for alerting me to this, I put my reporter’s hat on and spent the next couple of hours poring over a number of Christian and academic websites focused on the early Christian faith, and I found a half-dozen studies and reports confirming what Janice said.

The much defamed vulva helped give birth to the  Christian faith, it turns out the humble volva is actually the same symbol the pagans used for the vulva.

Go see for yourself.

Images of the vulva, one of the earliest known examples of cave carving, are also one of the oldest known examples of any kind of art work.

The vulva-shaped ichthys or “Jesus fish,”  perhaps the most prominent symbol of Christianity apart from the cross,  was originally a pagan symbol representing almost every pre-Christian fertility goddess from Atargatis, Aphrodite to Artemis.

When the founders of the faith gathered to spread the word about Christianity, they embraced many pagan symbols in order to attract pagan new comers to the church. Since the prophets and Popes of the new Church were men, they also needed to knock down the Goddesses the pagans worshipped.

Until the rise of Christianity, Pagans had always worshipped goddesses and celebrated fertility as the source of all life (rather than a source of shame and “disgust.”)

The people who drafted the Gospels and early Biblical writings were all mostly older men.

They altered the status and power of women in their new faith. Over time, men have insisted that women be ashamed of their bodies and  hide them, since women are presumed to be evil and dangerous to men.

The goddesses were absorbed into the church and turned into saints, all of them now deferential to the hierarchy and authority of the church.

The early Christians also took existing pagan symbols and gave them new meaning.

Asherah, the ancient goddess of new life, and her symbol the snake, who sheds his skin to demonstrate regeneration, became an associate of the devil, who in Christian dogma, now carried her snake with him everywhere to show that women are innately evil.

No wonder women started to hide their vulvas.

In fact, the vagina (and the vulva) were once considered a profoundly sacred thing, the gateway between heaven and planet Earth. (I like that description, it’s how I feel about vaginas) I recommend The Vagina: A Literary And Cultural History by Emma Rees.

In the Indian Tantric culture 1,500 years ago, people believed that female body parts were life-giving, and if men ever wanted to achieve balance and health, they must learn how to respect and handle that region of a woman’s  body, which was referred to as a “flowery pool” or “mysterious gate.”

Last week, a number of women who read my piece about Maria’s vulva potholders told me they thought it was “disgusting” and “gross” and sacrilegious for me to even show them on my blog. Several people who called them “Christians” left the blog in horror.

As it happens, icthys is the Greek word for fish, which inspired the name of the child of the fish-goddess Atargatis. The worship of Atargatis pre-dates Christianity by hundreds of years,  and used fertility (the vulva) and then the resulting fish. Historians and theologians and researchers all say that was the origin of the fish use as a universal symbol of Christianity.

Maria thought the vulva is special, but I’m not sure even she knew how significant it is as a symbol of spirituality and religion. I wonder what the proper Christians who fled in disgust from the vulva might make of it now.

In our country, there is real concern about whether truth or facts matter any more. I think they do.

So thanks Janice, I am loving the tour of vaginal history you provoked. Actually anyone can take this trip, I recommend it. I hope the women who seemed to find this part of them disgusting will read more about it and learn about the history of their bodies.

There is nothing there that I find disgusting, gross or hateful. I do celebrate the vagina, and not just for women. For me as well.

My artist wife had pulled into the minor but bubbling flap over her new Vulva Flying Potholders (Why Flying? Because it represents freedom), they have already sold out twice on Etsy, and there is a waiting list for some more.

I believe she is making some more, they will go on sale next week. She does not have a long attention span but loves to stir the pot. I guess we have that in common.

I’m catching some collateral fire for the vulvas, even I had nothing whatsoever to do with their creation. I did put a photo of that up on my blog and this seems to have annoyed some of the endless legions of grumps and prudes who prowl the Internet for moral turpitude and live to tell other people what to do and think.

I supposed I’m flattered at my age to be immoral, even in the most collateral of ways. I am proud to be an avowed and public supporter of Vulvas, to my knowledge the sight of them has killed or grieviously injured no one.

A dozen women have labeled the vulvas on my blog  “disgusting,” or “revolting” or  “gross,:  I fear they do not care for their own bodies or the bodies of other women.

“Do I have to look at this garbage on your blog?,” asked June from Mississippi?

Absolutely not, I replied. My blog is not, alas, mandatory reading. All you have to do is go away.

Bob L send me a longer comment, he must be retired or unemployed, he said he was concerned about the morality of the people around me. He was unhappy with the explicitness of depictions of sexual activity on my blog:

“At least Etsy has not lost common sense as far as artistic license: “If you are selling mature content, we ask that you understand that there are differing sensibilities around the world and that you try to be respectful… When deciding whether mature content crosses over the threshold into pornography, we take into consideration how realistically mature image or images are portrayed, and the explicitness of depictions of sexual activity or content.”

Q: Do you think the parents of the refugees you are assisting would want their sons “exposed” to this topic about female genitals since you have mentioned in your blog posts the soccer players read your posts?”

Answer: I had the pleasure of answering him, as it happened, I was with some parents and children of the refugees I am assisting the day the photo of the Vulva potholders came out on my blog, and they all got a good laugh out of it.  They all said they wanted to meet Maria, she seemed much more interesting to them than me.

They were much impressed at the idea that people would pay $25 plus shipping for a fiber representation of a women’s vagina, and I sold two right on the spot. I think they wanted to know how she pulled that off.

Perhaps I need my own public policy statement about my blog: “Warning. We think here at times, and in between, we take cute photos of animals. We write pretty much anything we like, and take photos in the same way. We are not responsible for the corruption and moral pollution of any photos of dogs, donkeys, barn cats or vulvas. Come here at your own risk and watch your children. You never know what might happen when a child sees a vulva potholder. They might turn into instant sex maniacs or worse, immoral artists. They might grow weeds out of their ears! Note: We do not photograph the vulvas of donkeys.“

Poor Bob, I hope he never comes across an image of actual sexual activity itself, he might lose it altogether, he seems to think I am a conspirator of Stormy Daniels(no such luck.)

As to the soccer players themselves, they seemed utterly disinterested in the vulva photo or discussion and played games on their smartphones. Two Iraqi mothers clapped in approval when I showed them the potholders on my Iphone.

I wonder who Bob thinks these people are? They have all seen a lot worse, including people who really do get hurt. Is it proper, I wonder, to patronize people?

I think Bob must not get out much if he thinks the Bedlam Farm blog has content so explicitly sexual that  women and teenagers from the Middle East and Asia cannot handle the sight of a Vulva Potholder. He best not go and see the penises and vulvas hanging all over the Vatican Museum, or any good museum, for that matter.

I told Zekra, one of the Iraqi women (she is Muslim) about Maria’s idea that Vulvas were a symbol of femininity and nurture, (I am rather a big fan of them myself) and she was quite puzzled by the idea that any image of them was immoral.

She said they were represented all over the sculpture and vases and paintings displayed in Iraq’s famous museum in Baghdad.

Maria, I said, was doing her bit to show them as art, as something beautiful, as  artists have done for centuries until men like Bob got into it and decided they know better than women what is moral and what isn’t.

Bob did not reply to my comments of course. The righteous rarely stick around to take it.

He seemed  just seemed like another pompous man to me, but the women who felt their vulvas are “disgusting” or “gross” and should be hidden forever from public view seem sadder and more mysterious to me.

Is it a good thing to hate a critical part of one’s body like that? I don’t wave my penis around, but I would never call it disgusting, (just brave and determined and smaller than it once was.)

I love women and every vulva I have had the pleasure of meeting, I don’t mean to glorify or romanticize them, there are plenty of female jerks, but I think the days are fading when people like me can tell them what they can and can’t create or say or write or do with their own bodies.

That it in itself something that crosses into the threshold of hypocrisy and domination, something we might all take into consideration before we speak or send messages online.

And good riddance.

In the meantime, those disturbing Vulva potholders are flying out of here.

if you want to see more disgusting and gross and explicit content, I’d get right over to Maria’s Etsy page or  blog. She is probably cooking up some more mature content at the moment (beware, her fiber goddesses have breasts!).

Fresh from the fertile and fiercely independent mind of Maria, the new Vulva Pillow, sketched on an old hanky and hand-stitched. It is on sale now for $85 on Etsy. The Vulva series began with the Vulva potholders and is evolving into notecards and stickers.

A small but vocal number of people – women, mostly, to my surprise, were offended by Maria’s artistic representation of the vulva, which is not the same thing as the vagina. Some thought it was “repulsive”, some used the word “disgusting,” and some thought it was just plain old “offensive.”

It is true that outrage and criticism are louder than praise, and Maria found there is a large and admiring audience for her Vulva work, and also that a number of women wrote her to say they would love Vulva art but were somewhat afraid to buy some. She has sold a lot of Vulva art.

I would buy this pillow in a second for our living room, but I am banned from buying her art. She thinks it isn’t fair, that it should go out into the world.

If the Fuddy Duddies, as I call them,  thought their grumbling would stop my wife, they must live in those states that sell marijuana legally.

Maria loves the idea of the vulva, and sees it – accurately, from my reading – as a powerful symbol of feminism and of the need for women to stop hating their bodies, or permit men to make them hate their bodies.

As a man, I was quite shocked by some of the vitriolic, even hateful messages I got about putting the Vulva potholders up on my blog, although many people were thoughtful and civil in their objections or discomfort, I should say in fairness.

People said it would be deeply offensive to them if Maria made Penis Potholders (sorry, she has and sold them all) or if any artist used the male penis in their art. I guess they have not ever been to Florence to see Michelangelo’s David, penis and all, or visited any great museum in the world, or the Vatican Art Collection, which has penises and vaginas galore.

I think the Fuddie-Duddies might want to check out George O’Keefe’s beloved and much praised vagina and vulva art – I’m not aware of anyone calling it  disgusting or repulsive.

For thousands of years, artists have created representations of the male and female human body, it is only recently that people thought it disgusting or offensive. Personally, I find the vulva quite beautiful and powerful, and I am quite proud of my wife for seeking to capture the Vulva as a symbol of the lost but now growing power of women.

Art like this is not created to offend or titillate, there is nothing pornographic, or even specific about it. If you look at the news, it is clear that something very powerful is happening to women in our world. There is no shame in a vulva.

And there is nothing disgusting to me about this pillow.  I believe the person who buys it will be fortunate to have so interesting and thoughtful and striking a piece of art. Down with Old Fartism in all of its many ingrained forms.

And down with the shaming of women and their bodies, or men either, for that matter.

The Vulva Pillow is going up on Maria’s Etsy Page even as I speak. I doubt it will stay there for long. Good work, wonderful woman, your art lives in your heart and spirit and sails out into the world like our better angels.