Sexology of the Vaginal Orgasm (5 page)

1. Such a specific indifference towards members of one’s own sex and a positive stance to representatives of the other sex can also be noted in boys.
   

2. Sex Signals
   

The market of sex journals depicting naked women is geared towards heterosexual men. The target group for pictures of naked men are generally homosexual men – not women. Stau- fer and Frost (1976) studied the reactions of fifty male and fif- ty female students in response to images taken from Playboy,

a magazine known for its pictures of naked women, and Play- girl, which focuses on naked men. 88% of the men, and only 50% of the women, said they were interested in the center- fold. On a ten-point scale which they had to use to indicate how strongly eroticised they were by a picture, three quaters of the women answered in the lower half and just as many men in the upper half of the scale. 84% of the men said that they would buy another magazine, whereas a total of 80% of the women said they would not buy another issue of Playgirl.

The depiction of the naked body, showing the female sexual stimuli, basically appeals to men. The reason why they are so genital-fixated, that is to say, have the desire to first and fore- most look at female genitals they have not seen before has biological roots. Everything that serves the preservation of the species is subject to selection in the course of evolution. In keeping with this development it is advantageous if only the best genes prevail. It is thus understandable that the man wishes to disseminate as many of his genes as possible to be competitive. Thus from the outset men have a different posi- tion than women. The man who can procreate until the end of his life could conceive an unlimited number of offspring, while the woman has limits in this regard. On the one hand, the nine months of pregnancy and on the other, the fact that she reaches the end of fertility when menopause sets in.

According to Symons (1979) there is thus no corresponding biological purpose for women to have the desire to look at male genitals. Selection cannot have promoted such a motivation. If women had the same patterns of excitation as men then men would try to excite women with more explicitly sexual body signals. If women would respond by being aroused, this would give priority to random mating, so in biological terms this would not maximize the success of reproduction.

3.

Jealousy and Promiscuity

1. Gender-specific Aspects
   

   Jealousy is triggered off by different events in men and women. In men it is more the suspected or actual
   sexual
   infidelity on the part of the woman, whereas in women it is more the feared or actual
   emotional
   infidelity of the man. Sociobiologists have explained this as follows. In the cour- se of evolution women were mainly able to protect their genetic material by winning over reliable partners with good economic resources. With such a partner it is easier to guarantee the survival of the children until they reach sexu- al maturity. Women react with jealousy when such a favoura- ble state is threatened, that is to say when a man deemed to be suited permanently turns to another woman so that these resources are no longer available.
   

   Men, by contrast, can ensure the survival of their genetic material by taking measures to ensure that their partner does not become sexually unfaithful.
   

   The gender difference, i.e., men find sexual infidelity more disconcerting because they want to ensure their paternity confidence, while women suffer more from emotional infi- delity since they need to provide for their children, has been examined in recent years from a cross-cultural perspective. Studies have been conducted in the USA, Europe and Asia. All draw the conclusion that women by a manifold in per- centages find emotional infidelity, that is, the fact that the partner feels emotionally attracted to another woman, more perturbing than a sexual escapade. This gender difference
   

   can also be proven physiologically by – using the lie detec- tor method – measurements of skin resistance, pulse fre- quency or muscle tension are taken in subjects – and then observing how these parameters change in different situa- tions. This procedure shows the same result: Men react more strongly to scenarios of sexual infidelity and women more to those of emotional unfaithfulness (Buss et al., 1992 and 1999; Buunk et al., 1996; Geary et al., 1995; Harris & Christenfeld, 1996a and 1998; Krehmeier & Oubaid, 1992; Oubaid, 1997; Voracek et al., 2001).
   

   This sociobiological hypothesis explains at least in part why there is hardly anything that can offend, humiliate and ratt- le men more in their sense of worth than cuckoldry. People suffer from jealousy even in those cultures where sexual esca- pades are allowed and are widespread. An Eskimo might offer his wife to a stranger to sleep with as a sign of hospi- tality, but he would become jealous if his wife would express her desire to have sexual contact with the guest as this could give reason to doubt his sexual qualities.
   

   In a study in which 67 characteristics were assessed as to whether they are desired or not desired in a long-term rela- tionship, faithfulness and sexual fidelity ranked first among American men and infidelity was seen as the least desirable characteristic. In studies on the role played by extra-mari- tal sex in divorces, some 51% of the men cited this as one of the main causes. By contrast, only 27% of the women saw the extra-marital activities of their husbands as consti- tuting a plausible motive for divorce.
   

   The chastity belt that was widespread throughout Europe in the 15th and 16th century symbolized in a telling way the efforts men were willing to invest to ensure that their
   

   wives were kept under control while they were gone. This chastity belt was invented in 1395 and was used until after 1600. In Germany, a patent was issued for a chastity belt in 1903.
   

   A significant number of homicides can be attributed to from a cross-cultural perspective, sexual jealousy. Some of this is still legally tolerated even today. Up until 1974 it was, for instance, still legal for a man to kill his wife and her lover if he caught them making love.
   

2. A Desire for Variety
   

Women have considerably more reservations than men about having casual, non-committal relationships irrespec- tive of whether they have a permanent relationship or not or whether they are happy in this relationship. This has already been borne out by the phenomenon of prostitution. An American study has demonstrated that only 33% of unfaithful women saw their relationship as happy, while a good 56% of unfaithful men had this view.

Accordingly, the sexual fantasies of men revolve around sexual diversity and variety – more than those of women. There were different answers even to the question of how long one wants to know a partner before having sexual inter- course. Men cited by far the shortest time spans. The results of both interviews were of course very culture-specific. The answers also vary depending on sexual morals. Yet as cul- turally variable the concrete values were in individual instances, the really interesting result was that the diffe- rence in answers of men and women in all of the cultures studied revealed the same tendency. Men are clearly more

oriented to a given moment, whereas women are consider- ably more selective in their sexual behavior!

This fact is also reflected in the difference between male and female homosexuality. This is thus so telling because here the gender-typical proclivities appear in pure form as it were without the compromises that have to be accepted when living together with a member of the opposite sex. The find- ings prove that male homosexuals are more readily willing to engage in occasional sex than female homosexuals. An American study has shown that 94% of all male homose- xuals had intimate contact with more than 15 partners, whereas this was only true for 15% of the female homose- xuals. A different study showed that almost half of all inter- viewed male homosexuals claimed to have had more than 500 sexual partners.

In an Australian study (1997) on promiscuity 2,583 older homosexual men were interviewed. The average number of their sexual partners was 251. Only 2.7% of those inter- viewed had only had one sexual partner in their life. (Van de Ven, 1997) The Kinsey Institute (Bell and Weinberg, 1978) obtained similar results. (Bell and Weinberg, 1978) An Austrian study revealed that the interviewees had had an average of three sexual partners in the past month before the interview and an average of 14 sexual partners in the year before the interview. (Dür et al., 1992)

In Germany, female homosexuals generally live in a com- mitted partnership with one woman. More than half of the 350 lesbians studied by Akkermann (et al., 1990) were in a committed relationship based on love. Of the 151 fema- le homosexuals between the age of 18 and 35 interviewed by Schafer (1977) even 72% lived in a “committed rela-

tionship” at the time of the interview. This relationship had also, on average, lasted longer than the relationships of male homosexuals. Most of these women shared a household with their partner. In 75 to 85% of all cases these relationships were monogamous and were characterized by a high degree of emotional intimacy and solidarity. As a result of their gender-specific social socialization women tended more than men to limit sex to intimate relationships. The strong couple orientation of female homosexuals can also be noted in making new friendships. The sexual relationship usual- ly grows out of a friendship, whereas most male homose- xuals initiate their relationship with a ‘fling’.

4.

Different Notions of the Vagina

1. Image
   

   Primates use the erect penis not only to copulate, but also to threaten or impress other members of their species. In 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).
   

2. 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 ultima- tely must be traced back to the incest taboo? There must be other reasons, too. The Argentine psychoanalyst Ariel Arango considers the word “cunt” to be the dirtiest of all dirty words (Arango, 1989). It is probably also the most insulting of all degrading expressions for women in general.
   

   In addition to the meaning “dirty” there is another, deep- rooted depreciation: namely the symbolization of weakness and cowardice. Herodotus, for example, reports,
   ‘When those that Sesostris met were valiant men…, he set up pillars in their land, the inscription on which showed … how he had overcome them with his own power … But when the cities had made no resistance and been easily taken, then he also drew on [the pillars] the sha- meful parts of a woman … to show clearly that the people were cowardly.’
   (Buffi, 1974). And in some parts of Sicily the term
   

   “fesso” (=vulva) is still used to express weak, dishonorable behavior.
   

   The term “shameful parts” is derived from the Latin word pudere (=to be ashamed). Similarly, the word “Scham” (=shame) in German used to be a very widespread and com- mon expression for the female genitals. By being ashamed of something a person also reveals that s/he has got some- thing to hide. “Scham” and “shame” are derived from the Germanic root
   skam
   and can be traced back to the Indo- European word
   kam
   : “to cover, veil, hide” (Kluge, 1975). The prefixed “s” (skam) adds the reflexive meaning “to cover oneself”.
   

   The art historian Neumer-Pfau concludes, ‘What woman has to hide, what she has to be ashamed of is, all in all, her “natural” weakness of character. This means that female sha- me is fundamentally and inextricably linked with behavior that is shameless and weak of character’ (Neumer-Pfau, 1982).
   

   Consequently, the non-visibility of the female “shame” in art history is nothing but a culturally coded sign of female submission. To do the opposite, i.e., to show the vulva, would thus mean a violation of the role of submission that is ascribed to women as well as an attack on the patriarchal order of things. This is why the Swiss psychoanalyst Moni- ka Gsell thinks it is so important that the vulva, similarly to the penis, should be given symbolic weight (Gsell, 2001). She refers to the literary scholar Amy Richlin who has poin- ted out that there is not a single positive depiction of the female genitals in the entire body of classical Latin litera- ture (Richlin, 1983)! The female sexual organ, without exception, is described as something repulsive and nausea-
   

   ting. Being shameful parts, they are flaccid and worn out, dirty and stinking, salty and rancid, dry and white-haired. They are compared to exotic animals and evoke associations with sickness, death and the grave.
   

   Studies have shown that many people find it extremely dif- ficult to say the word vulva, if they know it at all. They find it to be just as indecent as the vulgar expressions cunt or pussy (Ash, 1980). Therefore, they more or less knowingly use a wrong terminology when they refer to a woman’s outer genital parts as
   vagina
   or
   cleft
   . This shyness is obviously due to the fact that vulva brings to mind the very image of the outer female genitals which evidently inhibits most people and is felt to be obscene.
   Vulva
   is linked to female pleasure and sexuality.
   Vagina
   , on the other hand, is considered almost neutral, biological, even somehow birth-related and maternal.
   

   The physical consequences of the cultural taboo regarding women’s outer genital region must not be underestimated: not only does it make it much more difficult for young girls to find an approach to, and develop an adequate image of, their own body; these problems often affect the most fun- damental, sensual and intellectual powers of perception in a way that goes far beyond the sexual and physical sphere (Gsell, 2001).
   

   This reminds me of the case of a nun who consulted me at the age of about 40 years, with the consent of her bishop, because – in her own words – she had “
   the devil inside
   ”. This woman was by no means schizophrenic or possessed, but actually highly educated, well-read and very eloquent. Yet she was unable to call something “sexual” that was clear- ly a sexual thing. Not for fear of saying it – she simply
   

   did not perceive it as something sexual because she was not allowed to even feel it and, therefore, did not feel it. And since “it” was not present as a feeling, she only knew on an intellectual level that she needed to see a sex thera- pist. A single admonition of her mother serves to explain things just as well as any long case history could: “
   A girl who whistles makes the Mother of God cry!
   ” And, to round the story off, suffice it to say that the patient comes from a region of Austria where old people still refer to the fema- le genitals as “
   Schande
   ” (another word for “shame”) even today.
   

   This restricted approach to the body is also evidenced by studies which have shown that children who do not have a differentiated vocabulary to designate their genitals are much less able to seek help from other people in case of sexu- al molestation (e.g. Rendtorff, 1996).
   

   However, the “incomplete” images of the female genitals that have formed in occidental culture tend to nourish and support the “figment of female incompleteness”. Although we identify with these descriptions, it is not a positive iden- tification, but one that gives us the feeling that something is wrong with us: ‘If the message “
   you don’t have genitals
   ” cuts off a girl from her erotic experience, she will perceive the spreading of stimuli inside her body as something threa- tening, disintegrating and dangerous which has no corres- ponding symbolic image. She will not develop a body image, but is left “without a sex”.’ (Rendtorff, 1996; p.76). Alienation takes place instead of subjectivization. The femi- nist theoretician Barbara Vinken believes that, therefore, a woman is never entirely “with herself”, but is also strange- ly inhabited by an “other”, namely her sex (Vinken, 1995; p.69).
   

3. The Old Roots of Power
   

   The vulva, the entrance to the uterus, was – and, in some places, still is – a powerful and invocative symbol in almost all original cultures. This is also evidenced in the notorious gesture called
   anasyrma
   described in Greek mythology.
   

   Demeter, the goddess of harvest and fertility, had a daugh- ter called Persephone whom she loved dearly. But Hades, the god of the underworld, fell in love with Persephone and abducted her to his realm. (Would anybody ever go to the underworld voluntarily?) Demeter was desperate and angry, and everything on earth ceased to grow. All the plants dried up, and no children were born. The inconsolable goddess tried to get into contact with her daughter in the under- world at a well. Eventually the goddess Baubo rode by on a sow and wanted to cheer Demeter up. So, without much ado, she lifted her clothes and presented her vulva. This shook Demeter out of her misery and made her laugh out loud. Hades heard of the story and probably laughed, too, because eventually they reached an agreement, and ever since then Persephone spent half a year with her beloved mother on earth and half a year in her husband’s under- ground realm. This is how the change of seasons between summer and winter came about.
   

   Thus, it is thanks to Baubo’s vulva that we don’t have to live in eternal coldness. What is remarkable in this context is that
   Freya
   , the beautiful goddess of love, rides through Germanic mythology on a boar called
   Hildeswin
   . The name Friday originally meant “Freya’s day”, and the old German word
   freien
   (=to marry) is also derived from it. But, even more importantly: “From her name also the name of honor for noblewomen is derived:
   Fru
   ” says the famous Prose Edda,
   

   which was written around 1220 by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson. The German word “Frau” (originally: “lady”, today: “woman”) has the same roots. This close link bet- ween
   Fru/Frau
   and
   Freya
   implies that: By her name alone, woman is already a goddess! And her genitals are a fascina- ting mystery in themselves. What a positive difference to the origin of the Latin word
   femina
   and the adjective
   femi- nine
   that stems from it. It was derived from
   fe
   =
   fides
   and
   minus
   =
   less
   , so that:
   femina
   = “those of lesser faith”: those who are rotten inside, witches who commit sin with Satan.
   

   1. Sheela-na-Gig
      

      

      Some of the most mysterious objects of art history, the so- called
      Sheela-na-gig
      figures, were made in the Celtic region and also date back to the time of the Edda. They are strikingly reminiscent of the Baubo story, but are found in places where one never would expect them: on the walls of Romanesque churches. Their name may be derived from the Irish Gaelic
      sile-ina-
      

      Fig. 12
      

      Giab
      which means “
      Sheela on her big genitals
      ” (cf. MacLennan, 1991). The name Sheela may have ori- ginated from
      Sìla
      (=god- dess). Figure 12 shows a typical example that adorns the southern wall of a 12th-century English church
      in Kilpeck
      . Legs spread wide and smiling broadly she holds her vul-
      

      va open with both hands,
      

      Sheela-na-Gig
      

      creating a huge stylized opening. Her big round head with its gaping eyes seems out of proportion above her rudimentary body. There can be no doubt that the ges- ture is deliberate, that this is a symbolic language with a deeper meaning. And she definitely isn’t ample enough to be a fertility symbol.
      

      Jorgen Andersen (1977) found far more than one hundred of such figures alone in the Celtic area in Ireland and on the British Isles, as well as in northern France. In the mean- time a considerable number of examples have also been discovered on the Iberian peninsula.
      

      We do not have a single contemporary commentary that might give us an idea about the historical meaning of these figures. This is quite astounding given the fact that the depiction of sexual organs, particularly female ones, is by no means common in Christian cultural traditions. So why are these figures on the walls of some Christian chur- ches?
      

      The traveler Johann Georg Koch (1843) might provide an answer. According to him, women who warded off the “evil eye” from men by exposing their genitals before them were called
      Sheela-na-gig
      in the Irish vernacular. One actual case is reported from the 19
      ^th
      -century county Cork, where the common term
      Sheela-na-gig
      referred to a local wise woman who practiced the art of healing and magic for the village people. It transpired that one of her methods to ward off “bad luck” or the “evil eye” from someone was to expose herself before them.
      

      It is said that
      Sheela-na-gig
      figures are supposed to bring good luck to those who touch them. Many of them are
      

      indeed quite worn from having been touched by countless pilgrims. The belief that the exposed vulva had magic powers went so far that on some Romanesque churches even nuns (!) can be seen in ex- plicit poses. Fig. 13 shows such a depiction from the 13th century on an abbey in Poitiers (France).
      

      Fig. 13
      

      

      Magical nun vulva
      

   2. Vaginal “Genital Display” as a Sign of Derision and Defense
      

      Considered extremely shameless, this gesture has an enor- mous impact. Since the female genitals are loaded with so many contradictions, their presentation can be used for dif- ferent effects. Not only as a defensive magic against evil but also, from a position of strength, as an expression of deri- sion and scorn. When the Austrian behavioral biologist Eibl-Eibesfeldt filmed the !Ko bushmen in Botswana in 1970, the girls ridiculed him and showed their contempt by lifting their skirts in front of him (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1971). This so-called “genital display” is a very ambivalent act – usually the girls only do this with a very different intention and for a different purpose, namely as part of a ritual court- ship dance during flirting. If they want to express extreme derision the girls also pull apart their labia, simultaneous- ly pushing out their exposed pelvis.
      

      This gesture of utmost provocation can be found in various
      

      cultures and through all times. Old records show that this form of aggression was used in a rather bizarre way against enemy attacks. Japanese women, for example, used to form a row against attacking enemies and pushed out their vul- vas towards them with the labia pulled open. Similar inci- dents are reported from World War I from Poland and Rus- sia, and from the war between Montenegro and Albania: women would accompany the soldiers to the front, jump into the trenches and show their vulvas to the enemy in a sort of magical rite. This starkly illustrates not only the threatening character of this behavior, but also its defensive aspect.
      

      The
      vagina dentata
      , a common myth among native North Americans, is a direct symbol of female potency that provo- kes male fear. Metaphorically speaking every vagina has hid- den teeth. In the sexual act the toothed power that once gave birth to man castrates or grabs him and will never relinquish him again.
      

      Fig. 14
      

      

      Defense and derision
      

      In Ecuador men were afraid of sleeping with women and would only do it under certain precautions because they firmly believed that the vagina would eat up the penis. People on the Marshall Islands, for exam- ple, were convinced that the vagina would seize the male member in the case of incestuous intercourse. This myth of the
      penis cap- tivus
      (captured penis) is still lurking in people’s
      

      minds in Western societies, too. While there is no actual evidence of the notorious case that a penis is inserted into the vagina but cannot be withdrawn anymore because of a sudden spasm of the muscles, I still hear such rumors again and again. The stories usually go like this:
      

      The baker and the innkeeper’s wife went to the cinema to share more than just popcorn in the dark. While they were in the middle of their extramarital act of love in a discreet box, the film broke and the lights in the room suddenly went on. The women was so terrified that the two of them were unable to part. The ambulance had to be called, and the unfortunate couple were carried across the small town’s main square to the car on a stretcher. In front of everybody, including their cheated spouses… All my efforts to corrob- orate such stories by research have remained fruitless. Legends and myths are hard to root out because they are deeply engrained in the subconscious.
      

      The medical “history” of the
      penis captivus
      dates back to a bizarre case made up in 1884 by the journalist William Osler from the
      Philadelphia Medical News
      to ridicule a colleague who had earlier published a serious article on vaginismus. (This symptom is a spasm of the vaginal muscles that makes a coitus impossible because the penis cannot even be insert- ed into the vagina.) Osler wrote a letter to the editor under a pseudonym. This “report from the practice of a physician” was written so convincingly that it still circulates in medical literature as an actual event and is sometimes “con- fused” with vaginismus even today, long after it was revealed to be a fake. In any case, there are obviously no documented cases for this so called
      penis captivus
      . I did, however, find one letter to the editor in which a doctor on duty claimed to have seen how, in 1947, a couple who were taken to hospital on a stretcher could only be separated with the help
      

      of an injection. What strikes me as strange, though, is why the incident was reported only in a letter – and a mere 33 years after the event (
      British Medical Journal
      , January 5, 1980, p.51). The archetypal image of the female genitals as a devou- ring organ is doubtlessly still alive even today. From a depth psychological point of view men probably still have a great unconscious fear that it might devour them back inside just as it had once brought them forth.
      

      The uterus (Greek:
      hystéra
      ), too, was described as a wild ani- mal even in ancient medical writings. It could break loose and escape from the body, occasionally causing mental con- fusion and great pain. In order to be healed it had to be lured back by powerful magic spells. The term
      hysteria
      to denote inexplicable pain and symptoms of paralysis as well as the- atrically exaggerated behavior has survived until today.
      

   3. The Monstrous Potency of the Vagina
      

      This image of a frightening creature is certainly due also to
      

      

      Fig. 15
      

      the look of the genitals which, evidently, does not correspond to the idealized laws of aesthe- tics: an amorphous, asymme- trical, shapeless opening in- to the dark, like a volcano bringing forth from its inside fluids, juices, mucus and blood, surrounded by a mandorla of hair, and moist like a grotto. The vulva, thus, lives on its role of giving birth and bringing
      

      The toad as a symbol of the vulva
      

      death at the same time, and it
      

      is is correspondingly ambivalent – as are its rare symbols. They protect cathedrals and are linked with the belief in resurrec- tion themselves, but they also represent lust, avarice, evil and sin itself, they are eaten by snakes and crushed in front of the Cross. Interestingly enough, the toad, as a metaphor for the uterus and the vulva is found as an expression of this demo- nizing tendency from the Neolithic period (35,000 –10,000 B.C.) until today (fig. 15). The deadly animal of the dark and moist, metamorphosis of witches and archetype of the ugly and repulsive. But also endowed with magic powers and as- cribed to the realm of devils and demons.
      

      From a psychoanalytical point of view it is quite obvious how the female genitals’ potency, which is loaded with fear, is ignored and grotesquely distorted in order to cope with it. In connection with her studies on vituperations of the female genitalia in Roman epigrams Amy Richlin writes, “
      Fear produces mockery, which disguises the fear as contempt ... adds the further disguise of humor ... and establishes an other- wise unattainable control over the feared object
      ” (Richlin, 1984, p.75f.).
      

      

      This shift from something that is threatening and frightening to something that is ridiculous large-
      

      ly explains the psychosomatics of how the female genitals were sym- bolized and still are presented today.
      

      Fig. 16
      

      The “toad lady” of Maissau has been preserved from the Celtic area: a ter- racotta toad dating back to the Lower Austrian Urnfield culture of the Bronze Age, with a human face,
      

      breasts and a vulva that is wide open.
      The vulva as a votive offering
      

      Votive toads, usually made from wax, with a vulva scratched into them, can still be found today in the veneration of the Virgin Mary in Bavaria and Austria (fig. 16) (Duerr, 1990). (Votive offerings are gifts of thanks rendered after an act of grace. In reality, they are often given in advance when a person asks for help in a certain matter.)