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Authors: Karl F. Stifter
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some species the male apes sit guard with their back to the rest of the group; when other primates from outside the group come closer, they present their genitals to them. The coloring of the genital region is often quite conspicuous and the penis is erect to increase this signaling effect. This beha- vior is so deeply engrained that very young squirrel mon- keys even get an erection when a pocket mirror is held in front of them (Ploog, 1966).
Phallic genital presentation is common in various traditio- nal human cultures, too, e.g. for the Eipo in New Guinea, where the men use a long tube to emphasize their genitals in a ritualized way with a penis gourd. Ethnographic art also reflects the human side of this phenomenon. Such arti- facts are made by the Mambila, for example, a tribe that lives at the eastern slopes of the Kumbo highlands in Cameroon. Cannibals until not very long ago, they are also renowned for their elaborate and fascinating animal-anthro- pomorphic terracotta figures. These human/animal figu- rines are depicted with an oversized phallus. Some of them are exhibited in my living-room now and often provoke visitors. The Mambila used them as guards in wall niches to protect the village and to ward off evil.
The penis that is ready for coitus is the symbol of potency in society. The qualities attributed to it range from dyna-
mic strength to possessive aggression. A boy shows off his penis which often becomes his “best friend”. Under no cir- cumstances would he want to be seen as a “limp wimp”. Girls, on the other hand, don’t form any real notion of this organ that is to encompass, or even to grasp, suck and work on, the phallus. The vagina, in blatant contrast to the penis, has no image! Or: no imago, in the truest sense of the word.
It is obviously only the phallus to which meaning is ascribed, while there seems to be no comparable symbolization of the sexual organ on the female part. “ The female sex is character- ized by an absence, a void, a hole, which means that it happens to be less desirable than is the male sex for what he has is provocati- ve, and that an essential dissymmetry appears .” (Lacan, 1993; p. 176)
It is this specific lack on the symbolic level that needs to be overcome if the vagina is to act as an organ of pleasure! In this context we cannot ignore Freudian psychoanalysis, the theoretical core of which centers on the question: What does the realization of the anatomic difference between the sexes mean for the psychological development of small chil- dren? We need to take a new look at central concepts like penis envy or the female castration complex and interpret them in a modern way. This requires, most of all, that we abandon the idea of the female sexual organ being “castra- ted male genitals” and that we drop the equation “female- ness = incompleteness”. First attempts at a feminist revi- sion of psychoanalysis date back to the 1960s. However, these efforts to positivize the female sex also brought about some rather bizarre results. One example was Valerie Solanas, the woman who became famous mainly for attempting to murder Andy Warhol. She drew up the so-called SCUM Manifesto (SCUM = Society for Cutting Up Men and de-
manded that all men undergo a surgical sex change (Kaplan, 1993).
Negative Image and Lack of Symbolic Content
If we look for depictions of female genitals in Greek and Roman antiquity we find that they are extremely rare in comparison to the phallus. Out of almost 1,200 registered red-figure vases with predominantly erotic scenes, only a mere seven show a frontal depiction of the female genital region, and just three of those show a more or less explicit depiction of the vulva. This lack of realism in antiquity can- not be ascribed simply to a lack of interest or technical pro- blems. Can this be sufficiently explained by the popular- psychological theory that male fear of the female genitals is, basically, always fear of the maternal vulva and
Phallic genital presentation is common in various traditio- nal human cultures, too, e.g. for the Eipo in New Guinea, where the men use a long tube to emphasize their genitals in a ritualized way with a penis gourd. Ethnographic art also reflects the human side of this phenomenon. Such arti- facts are made by the Mambila, for example, a tribe that lives at the eastern slopes of the Kumbo highlands in Cameroon. Cannibals until not very long ago, they are also renowned for their elaborate and fascinating animal-anthro- pomorphic terracotta figures. These human/animal figu- rines are depicted with an oversized phallus. Some of them are exhibited in my living-room now and often provoke visitors. The Mambila used them as guards in wall niches to protect the village and to ward off evil.
The penis that is ready for coitus is the symbol of potency in society. The qualities attributed to it range from dyna-
mic strength to possessive aggression. A boy shows off his penis which often becomes his “best friend”. Under no cir- cumstances would he want to be seen as a “limp wimp”. Girls, on the other hand, don’t form any real notion of this organ that is to encompass, or even to grasp, suck and work on, the phallus. The vagina, in blatant contrast to the penis, has no image! Or: no imago, in the truest sense of the word.
It is obviously only the phallus to which meaning is ascribed, while there seems to be no comparable symbolization of the sexual organ on the female part. “ The female sex is character- ized by an absence, a void, a hole, which means that it happens to be less desirable than is the male sex for what he has is provocati- ve, and that an essential dissymmetry appears .” (Lacan, 1993; p. 176)
It is this specific lack on the symbolic level that needs to be overcome if the vagina is to act as an organ of pleasure! In this context we cannot ignore Freudian psychoanalysis, the theoretical core of which centers on the question: What does the realization of the anatomic difference between the sexes mean for the psychological development of small chil- dren? We need to take a new look at central concepts like penis envy or the female castration complex and interpret them in a modern way. This requires, most of all, that we abandon the idea of the female sexual organ being “castra- ted male genitals” and that we drop the equation “female- ness = incompleteness”. First attempts at a feminist revi- sion of psychoanalysis date back to the 1960s. However, these efforts to positivize the female sex also brought about some rather bizarre results. One example was Valerie Solanas, the woman who became famous mainly for attempting to murder Andy Warhol. She drew up the so-called SCUM Manifesto (SCUM = Society for Cutting Up Men and de-
manded that all men undergo a surgical sex change (Kaplan, 1993).
Negative Image and Lack of Symbolic Content
If we look for depictions of female genitals in Greek and Roman antiquity we find that they are extremely rare in comparison to the phallus. Out of almost 1,200 registered red-figure vases with predominantly erotic scenes, only a mere seven show a frontal depiction of the female genital region, and just three of those show a more or less explicit depiction of the vulva. This lack of realism in antiquity can- not be ascribed simply to a lack of interest or technical pro- blems. Can this be sufficiently explained by the popular- psychological theory that male fear of the female genitals is, basically, always fear of the maternal vulva and
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