Freud was looking for its source somewhere near the Oedipus complex and the subconscious castration anxiety. Wrong, because the myth of a vagina just waiting to bite off this and that is as old as the world. In addition, unlike the tales of witches and ghosts, it cannot be completely put into fairy tales ...
Our famous court poet, Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, in one of his least parliamentary poems, "Tombstone Tempts", lamented the tragic death of a male organ. The lyrical hero in the "person" of nature greatly confused him, he alone brought all people to life, and representatives of every nation bitterly cry for him. What happened to the poor penis? As the poet explains:
And for a tombstone you will get a little rhyme;
Toothpick was finished weakly by Kukie.
Dangerous Vaginas in the South American Jungle
Diane Ducret in her latest book "Forbidden Body. A story of male obsession ” shows that this dangerous and biting vagina, hidden deep in a woman's body, is not such an outdated myth again.
The poem by Jan Andrzej Morsztyn proves that tooth scabbards have been heard on the Vistula as well.
The French cultural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who traveled to South America in the mid-twentieth century, found this out. In the north of Brazil, he studied the Indians. He established that in the mythology of one of the tribes, the vulva of a woman is dangerous, voracious, in a word:cruel.
According to the legends of this tribe, once the twin brothers began sexually harassing an otter who, outraged, ordered them to fish for women, identified with fish. Meanwhile, it was very unfortunate for men, because, as the myth continues:
, however, toothed sheaths stand in the way of pleasure. To get in, you have to get rid of the teeth so that the previously unbreakable vagina opens.
A toothed scabbard will swallow anything
The North American Apaches also had their story of the dread lurking between women's thighs. According to their legend, the brave Coyote took his chosen one to the forest for a walk with "dessert". When he was carried by lust, he began to reach out to her, he discovered with horror the teeth in her vagina, ready to bite off his vagina in a second.
Waking up from shock and fear, he began to act immediately. He grabbed the stick and put it in a known place. It was to no avail - the stick was immediately… swallowed. But Coyote wasn't going to give up. He quickly grabbed the stone, pushed it straight into the toothed maw, and saved the day. Thanks to his bravery and ingenuity, all teeth broke and ... this is how ordinary, harmless vaginas of modern women were created.
Also, the dangerous North American Apaches had their own myth about a biting vagina (photo:public domain).
Interestingly, according to anthropologist David D. Gilmore, only the indigenous peoples of North America repeated at least twenty-two versions of the myth about vaginas with teeth. Such a "cannibalistic mother" is, in his opinion, a typical element of male folklore in illiterate communities.
A toothy vagina around the world
British historian Gemma Angel states in one of her articles that vagina dentata (Latin:toothed vagina) is a myth that is present in many parts of the globe, from the Americas mentioned above, through Russia, Japan, India, Samoa and New Zealand.
Our native poet also hints that Poland was also among the countries that were aware of this "threat". Angel even has an intriguing idea as to where the myth actually came from ...
In the mid-nineteenth century, the University College of London began collecting preserved medical peculiarities. Among them were, for example, altered fragments of the bodies of people suffering from diseases that were almost exterminated in the Western world and pieces of human skin covered with tattoos. Among other things, such exhibits can be seen in the university museum of pathology. When Gemma Angel decided to visit them, something else caught her attention, namely teratomas.
A fragment of ovarian teratoma where hair and teeth grew. (Photo released under CCA-SA 3.0 license, author:Billie Owens).
These are very specific tumors that are a bizarre mixture of different tissues. For example, they may have glands that interfere with the normal functioning of the endocrine system, and even hair (such as on the head).
Although teratomas can appear in various places in the human body, the historian was most surprised when saw preserved tumors grown in a woman's reproductive organs . She immediately associated them with the cultural archetype of the toothed vagina.
Medicine had shown her that, according to the fears of men around the globe, the real jaws could be hidden between the legs of the ladies. However, they are not positioned to wait for God to have a guilty penis spirit.
The truest teeth
One of the most common types of teratoma is the ovarian skin cyst, a benign tumor of this organ, but inside the tumor hides hair or… teeth! Anyone who has had the opportunity to see anatomical tables depicting the female reproductive system knows that with this placement, the male organ is safe even if it is in the vagina.
The red arrow in the photo shows the ovarian teratoma and the tooth in it. (photo published under license CC BY-SA 3.0, author:Hellerhoff).
This does not in any way change the fact that the myth of vagina dentata until recently he was doing quite well. Diane Ducret describes in "Forbidden Body" a strange situation that happened to a French physician in the mid-twentieth century. This doctor asked the patient to remove the contraceptive ring herself. He was very surprised when she was reluctant to do so. As Ducret states, the toothed vagina myth was very much alive at the time:
The first time a woman slips her hand into her vagina, she almost faints with fear because she feels "something has bitten her finger".