The Moral Panics of Sexuality

B. Fahs, M. Dudy, S. Stage, B. Fahs, M. Dudy, S. Stage

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781137353160
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137353177
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

A provocative feminist analysis of the moral panics of sexuality, this interdisciplinary edited collection showcases the range of historical and contemporary crises we too often suppress, including vagina dentata, vampires, cannibalism, age appropriateness, breast cancer, menstrual panics, and sex education.

Part I
Female Desire

1

Do I Have Something in My Teeth? Vagina Dentata and its Manifestations within Popular Culture

Michelle Ashley Gohr

Introduction

Although it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the seemingly endless tirade of moral and political outrage, corporate greed, sex scandals, gun violence, and more, these societal crises have not simply spontaneously arisen in response to a mere few contemporary problems. Rather, today’s moral panics represent an aggregate of borrowed histories layered on for centuries upon centuries. While these current moral panics may seem like a very contemporary problem, they draw from a long history of collective panicking. Often these anxieties are disguised as myth or folklore, retold as stories that catapult these anxieties across cultures, languages, and popular media. Indeed, the so-called “normal,” defined by those in power, has marginalized anything deemed threatening to societal values and interests (for example, homosexuality, women’s sexuality) and has transmitted those anxieties onto the available “deviant” bodies.

While some historical anxieties, such as those about menstruation and sexual purity, are still overtly present in many forms and across many contemporary cultures, other anxieties remain more hidden or displaced. These latter anxieties are often displaced or appropriated through (sometimes subtle) retellings of myths, and, as such, infuse themselves into the cultural lexicon. One well known anxiety, the fear of female sexuality, signifies one such displaced anxiety that has taken a displaced form through the little known yet subtly prevalent myth of vagina dentata. While this myth or its basic retellings may not have an obvious place in everyday language or discourse (and few are aware of the myth’s manifestations in current U.S. culture), it nevertheless functions as a powerful force in contemporary conversations about women’s sexuality and the villainization of female desire.

Teeth

In 2007 writer/director Michael Lichtenstein released his first full-length feature film Teeth, which was met with instant global popularity, winning awards at the Sundance Film Festival, the Catalonian International Film Festival, and more (IMDB 2012). The horror/black comedy film follows the story of a celibate teenage girl who has teeth—in her vagina. After being the victim of male violence and multiple attempted rapes, the meek protagonist, who has made a promise to God to save herself until marriage, accidentally and uncontrollably devours and kills her aggressors. However, as the story progresses, she takes control of her body and begins to own her dentata as a powerful, liberatory tool. Given our obsession with the amalgamation of gore, violence, and humor, it comes as no surprise that such a film was met with an overwhelmingly “positive,” if superficial, response (Rotten Tomatoes 2012). The religious, social, cultural, and gender critiques that the film presents are themselves ripe for serious analysis. However, instead of reading the movie as a satirical critique on the absurdity of an age-old myth, audiences have tended to view it solely as a gory horror flick meant to scare and disturb viewers.

Myth of the toothed vagina: An overview

While Teeth certainly presents an original plotline, the idea of a toothed, castrating vagina has a long history in the myth of “vagina dentata.” In fact, this story and its variations can be found in perhaps thousands of cultures throughout history (Elwin 1943, 1949; Lederer 1968; Thompson 1956; Ussher 2006; Walker 1983). Though it is commonplace that tales of heroes inspire us, while tales of monsters warn us of danger, it bears repeating that myths have the potential to obtain the status of the real and serve to reverse the roles of villains and victims. Mircea Eliade (1963) has stated that the retelling of the folktale not only amuses and provides temporary escape, but also invokes a truth about human life and the initiatory processes (puberty, menstruation, loss of virginity, etc.) that we encounter throughout. From the gorgon Medusa to the seductive vampire, the secret fears and fantasies of cultures can be traced through history via stories and legends.

Menstruation, a normal biological process, has over time taken upon layers of mystery resulting in taboos associated with female cycles and genitals, particularly in cultures influenced by Judeo-Christian values (Eller 2001). For instance, menstruation is in totality viewed negatively (“the curse of Eve”), and by extension, the menstruating woman is viewed as unclean (although this occurs too in many other cultures, such as Rastafarianism). As a consequence, these cultural myths purport that contact with the vagina brings the male into contact with the unclean, mysterious female (which can require “purification” in some religious traditions). The myth of the vagina dentata fits squarely into this group of legends that have ingrained within them a cultural phobia of sexuality. The myth gains its power by calling upon the hysteria-inducing power of monstrous fables that subvert and distort the image of women.

Taken literally, vagina dentata means “vagina tooth” or “vagina-with-teeth” (Raitt 1980). However, as it has been adopted throughout time by different cultures around the world, the toothed vagina has grown to take on additional horrifying aspects. In essence, vagina dentata embodies a deeply rooted fear of the feminine in both a psychological and physical sense. Tales of vagina dentata have occurred in thousands of cultures (Native American, Indian, Polynesian, Hawaiian, Middle Eastern, South American, etc.), across all continents, and throughout all known human history (Elwin 1949; Lederer 1968; O’Flaherty 1980; Raitt 1980; Walker 1983). It has subsisted in Biblical stories (and indeed all major religious doctrine) (Raitt 1980), folk tales (Guzlow and Mitchell 1980; Herrera-Sobek 1980), poems (Hidalgo 2001; Paglia 1990), high and low art (Markus 2000), modern popular culture (Claydon 2007; Rudd 2008), modern and archaic science (Drenth 2004), bedtime stories (Girardot 1977), rituals (Eliade 1963), and much more (Rudd 2008; Walker 1983).

Vagina dentata is currently viewed by many feminist scholars (Paglia 1990; Raitt 1980; Walker 1983) through the lens of psychoanalytic theory, particularly Freudian castration anxiety and birth trauma. “The fear of female genitals, explained in psychoanalysis by the castration complex based on infantile fantasies about the vagina as a dangerous organ (vagina dentata) seems to be on a deeper level related to the biological fact that the female genital is a potentially murderous instrument that was once actually a source of agony and vital threat. It cannot, therefore, become a source of sexual pleasure if the unconscious memory of birth is too vivid” (Grof, n.d.). Similarly, some beliefs hold that the myth of vagina dentata represents merely a manifestation of Freud’s theory regarding castration anxiety, in which the male has an unconscious fear of penile loss after he becomes aware of the differences between the sexes (Freud 1924, 1962).

As stated earlier, the retelling of the myth varies depending on the culture or society; however, the basic myth of vagina dentata almost always has at least three key elements: first, there must be a highly sought after, yet sexually independent (and oftentimes strong willed/defiant) woman; second, and most obvious, she possesses a secret vagina dentata that she often uses to devour men’s genitalia; and third, there must be a heroic male that comes to “rescue” and tame said woman, thereby stopping her violent, sex-crazed rampage. The following serves as a good representation of the myth:

There was a Baiga girl who looked so fierce and angry, as if there was magic in her, that for all her beauty, no one dared to marry her. But she was full of passion and longed for men. She had many lovers, but—though she did not know it—she had three teeth in her vagina, and whenever she went to a man she cut his penis into three pieces. After a time she grew so beautiful that the landlord of the village determined to marry her on condition that she allowed four of his servants to have intercourse with her first. To this she agreed, and the landlord first sent in a Brahmin to her—and he lost his penis. Then he sent a Gond, but the Gond said, “I am only a poor man and I am too shy to do this while you are looking at me.” He covered the girl’s face with a cloth. The two other servants, a Baiga and an Agaria, crept quietly into the room. The Gond held the girl down, and the Baiga thrust his flint into her vagina and knocked out one of the teeth. The Agaria inserted his tongs and pulled out the other two. The girl wept with the pain, but she was consoled when the landlord came in and said that he would now marry her immediately. (Elwin 1949, 439)

Though the vagina dentata myth can become significantly more violent, or even sometimes more mild and ambiguous, the desired effect generally is the same: we must fear a woman’s sexuality and power, and to solve this problem, we must kill her and remake her based on our own ideas surrounding gender roles, for she must be nothing more than a “non-threatening, procreative partner” (Raitt 1980, 418).

By inciting timeless, global moral panic through the spreading of such ideas as conveyed through vagina dentata myths, the roles of villains and victims are again inverted, placing women as “deviant” and “villainous” and accusing them of threatening the hegemonic patriarchal establishment. For example, in The Fear of Women (1968), Wolfgang Lederer details the myths of the vagina dentata and illustrates stories of how the myth fueled the mistreatment of women both historically and today. Lederer reinforces the idea that the “hero must break out the teeth to make women safe for intercourse” (Raitt 1980, 415) by calling upon repeated instances through history in which men have sought to control and subdue women’s sexuality through various means (Lederer 1968). In fact, in many societies virgins were often deflowered by someone other than their husbands, a practice remnant of the vagina dentata myth and carried on across cultures and time. “The toothbreaker hero may be a relative, a priest, or a man specially appointed to the task, or all the male wedding guests may lie with the bride the first night to disseminate [sic] her awful, concentrated power” (Raitt 1980, 420). Conversely, similar myths pervade our consciousness in less tangible ways, but can still have devastating effects. As a conglomeration of the practices and myths from various other preceding religions, Christianity and other similar patriarchal religions also display a great number of analogous stories and symbolism that play off the ancient myth of vagina dentata and serve to morally inform current practitioners.

One originary myth that bears mention is the Greek myth of the laminae, female demon children of the Libyan snake goddess Lamia. According to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, Lamia was born a beautiful daughter of King Belus of Egypt, and became the queen of Libya following her father’s death (Siculus 1935). However, because of her affair with Zeus and the children she had with him, Hera punished Lamia by destroying her children, a trope found across numerous religions and myths. From her intense grief Lamia began devouring children and grew distorted and snake-like; in some iterations of the myth she has a vagina dentata. However, Lamia extended outside of Greek cultures and was similarly embodied as the divine female serpent called Kundalini in India, Uraeus or Per-Uatchet in Egypt, and Lamashtu in Babylon (Walker 1983).

Again we can return to the Judeo-Christian idea of original sin, the snake as a temptress, and the notion of Lilith, Lamia’s mythological counterpart, as the cause for all women’s suffering and degradation, portrayed through the successful reversal of woman as victim to woman as villain through moral hysteria. Again and again similar stories are manifested within the most patriarchal cultures across the world, all relating the same story of woman as dirty, sinful, demonic, devouring, vampiric, a temptress, a succubus, voracious, insatiable, and cold (Grosz 1995). Although the story varies from early and aboriginal myths, the entrance of sin and snake imagery pervades nearly every major patriarchal contemporary religion and has proven to be a powerful moral informant on matters regarding female sexuality and purity. The prolific early Christian author Tertullian likened a woman’s vagina to the gate of hell by invoking ancient beliefs of woman as “devourers” (Raitt 1980). Female goddesses became hell’s keepers, from Izanagi of Japan to Kore/Persephone, and stigmatized as a demonic succubi similar to Lamia and Lilith (Raitt 1980).

While our current society goes about the retelling of stories and myths differently than other cultures, both ancient and contemporary, the underlying message that vagina dentata presents to its audience is just as toxic, regardless of its delivery.

Vagina dentata in popular culture

While vagina dentata does not typically appear as glaringly as the portrayal in Teeth, modern culture adds a unique and interesting twist to the vagina dentata story; instead of traditional storytelling we rely on conveying messages about societal norms more subtly through media, social networking, and subliminal advertising. As a result of the ease of travel and communication, cultures and peoples from around the world are becoming more informed about each other and more integrated. The conglomeration of ideas across geographically distant and diverse cultures plays an especially powerful and important role in our discussion of women’s sexuality, particularly if those ideals come from a culture that promotes patriarchal values or predominantly subscribes to Abrahamic religions. Vagina dentata takes on a more significant role in popular culture in light of new modes of communication (that is, social networking, online gaming, etc.) because it globally reinforces important stereotypes that guarantee male dominance and the sexual subjugation of women in patriarchal societies.

Figure 1.1 “Vagina dentata”: The age-old myth of the toothy vagina still appears today

Science fiction and fantasy

In contemporary American society the myth not only pervades American culture, but has also become almost rampant in its level of subliminal occurrences. Through science fiction especially we are constantly beset with images of the destructive vagina and the feminine threat to male ideology. In the late 1970s and early 1980s a new genre of science fiction known as “body horror” launched the standard for gory horror films that focused on anxiety and fear of the human body (Johnson 2010). Barbara Creed addressed such images within science fiction (scifi) in her book The Monstrous-Feminine (1993), in which she cited the movie Independence Day as one that epitomizes these innate societal bodily fears. The vagina dentata is embodied through the alien ships which, although they float passively and conspicuously over the point of the capitol building (or rather the symbolic phallus), eventually open on the underbelly to reveal jagged metal teeth directly followed by destructive death rays that serve to destroy and incinerate skyscrapers on impact (Hobby 2000; Thill 1997). According to Creed, not only is Earth under attack, but also and more powerfully the male prerogative is being questioned and the idea that the alien war had begun long before their arrival (Thill 1997).

Perhaps one of the most recognizable and acknowledged contemporary images of vagina dentata appears in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). As a horror/scifi film of the late 1970’s Alien embodies the popularity of “body horror” films of the time (Johnson 2010). Regardless of the knowledge that one may have of the myth of vagina dentata, it is impossible not to notice that Alien specifically invokes bodily/genital images meant to terrify and intrigue. When choosing an alien design for the film, Scott consulted the Swiss surrealist sculptor/painter H.R. Giger about his previous painting Necr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Villains and Victims: Excavating the Moral Panics of Sexuality
• Part I Female Desire
• Part II Creating Norms
• Part III Colonial Erotics
• Part IV Tactical Panics
• Part V Critical Panics
• Afterword: Insisting on “both/and”: Artifacts of Excavating the Moral Panics of Sexuality
• Index