query: a cock and cock story

[Charles C Rice]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Lighter [mailto:wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 10:11 AM
> Subject: Re: query: a cock and cock story
>
> Wouldn't "organ-neutrality" be kind of a postmodern concept for the Vox
> Populi (Vox Dei) to have come up with a hundred and fifty or more years
> ago?
> I can't think of any English exx., unless you think the recent
application
> in umliterature of phallic words to the clitoris counts.  Actually, it
> obviously does, but it's in the postmodern age where there's nothing but
> words anyway.  I bet most of that umliterature stuff never even
happened!
>
> But maybe I'm just being a spoilsport.  Who knows what thoughts flicked
> through Philip Freneau's unconscious?
>
It's a standard of gender theory that Renaissance theories of gender saw
women as failed men. The uterus and ovaries were the same organ(s) as the
penis and testicles, but had failed to fall out due to a lack of heat
during development. A woman had to stay away from strenuous exercise or
her uterus would erupt as a penis.  See Greenblatt, Shakespearean
Negotiations, Chap 3.

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