Monsterous Femininity
- Masculine anxiety – lack of control leaves them feeling dis-empowered (“[My greatest sexual fear?]… The vagina dentata. A story where you were making love to a woman and it just slammed shut and cut your penis off” – Stephen King cited in Creed, 1993:105)
- Snakes is a symbol of the castrated female genitals
- Medusa is regarded by historians of myth as a version of vagina dentata – poised and ready to strike
- She was raped by Poseidon because she was attractive and Athena cursed her out if jealousy – a very wronged woman – punished by another woman for being a victim of a man in a patriarchal order
- She was so threatening to man, she had to be destroyed, as she threatened the established order
- She becomes ‘hideous’ because of her hair, but her face is always open to interpretation
- She was initially frightening because she could seduce a man, thus castrate him
Fetishism and the Phallic Woman
- The male might desire to create a fetish, to want to continue to believe that woman is like himself, that she has a phallus rather than a vagina
- Repeated in all patriarchal cultures – James Bond has a threatening woman character who causes him to lose his masculine power, so he seduces her and removes the threat, and she becomes a castrated woman rather than a castrator
Patriarchal anxieties underlying Misogyny
- The menstruation taboo – sight of woman’s blood confirmed man’s fear of being eaten and castrated by the female genitals
- The duplicitous nature of woman, who promises paradise in order to ensnare her victims
- “man-eater, man-trap”
- Man has erected a series of taboos against woman, all of which relate to her sexual functions: menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth and most importantly, sexual intercourse
How can I relate this to my practice?
I could look into vagina dentata again, as I did last year, but by also incorporating fetishism. I recently waled around with last year’s final piece to see what reaction I got from it, and it was mostly shock rather than interest, proving the anxiety our society still holds. 
saratrouble 