"I think it’s worth opening up those questions for snakes."
Said Jenna Crowe-Riddell, a postdoc in neuroecology at La Trobe University, quoted in "Snakes have a clitoris: scientists overcome ‘a massive taboo around female genitalia’/Researchers say previous studies mistook the organs on female snakes as scent glands or under-developed versions of penises" (The Guardian).
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33 comments:
“Clams got legs!”
As a conservative, you cannot imagine my chagrin at the thought that female snakes could derive pleasure from sex. We discussed this in our annual Meeting of the Patriarchy, 1943, and ever since it’s been specifically mentioned in our catechism, and therefore been holy writ, that only the male snake derives pleasure from the act of procreation.
You know what? I'm starting to think that Science has a little too much time on its hands and needs to get back to work.
Evolution favors those with incentive to procreate. Who knew?
It's alsmost as if something the same is there first and then develops differently, as a more efficient way to form two sexes. Women are not particulary open to the idea.
Evolution needs to catch up with modern feminism. Chop chop..
Inhumans the clitoris is a smacker version of a penis
This is well established in the ancient symbology of the orobouros, the snake that licks her own genetailia.
Cuz there’s a fat man in the bathtub
With the blues
“he’d fuck a snake!”
but would he give a reacharound?
"Inhumans the clitoris is a smacker version of a penis." I will presume you meant "In humans the clitoris is a smaller version of a penis."
That corresponds to this statement in the linked article: "The scientists say previous research had mistaken the organs as scent glands or underdeveloped versions of penises."
I think the question should be: What is the meaning of "mistake"?
What does it mean to characterize the structure one way or another — in a human being or a snake? Is that science or culture?
Googling, I found "5 Facts About the Clitoris That'll Blow Your Mind" (Glamour).
#1, by the way, is "It's way bigger than it looks," so be careful with that "smaller" business. You might be surprised!
But to get to the point... #2 is "It starts off the same as the penis."
"Since the clitoris and penis develop from the same structure in the womb and work similarly, some scientists have called the clitoris the "female penis"](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ca.22471/abstract). But we could just as easily (perhaps even more accurately) say that the penis is a big clitoris. The organ that both males and females start off with is somewhere between a clitoris and a penis, and the addition and suppression of hormones makes it grow into one or the other."
So did those scientists make a "mistake"? I think we know the answer: If you want them to, they did.
Nothing confirms the notion of penis envy by females than the attempt to turn the clitoris into a penis, or sometimes, a superior penis.
Men don't find a reason to say that their penis is really a type of clitoris.
I wonder why women never appear "open" to rhhardin?
The limits of scientific knowledge amazes me. But I’m more surprised there’s no transmania angle to this apparently straightforward news story. What a glorious thing!
I think we know the answer: If you want them to, they did.
There's an evollutionary advantage to the clitoris retaining sexual sensitivity - it makes making out more likely to result in the woman giving in. The penis wears the pants though.
Lewis some penises might as well not be there at all.
Maybe when these boutique surgeons perfect phalloplasty they'll be able to help y'all out.
rhhardin said...
It's alsmost as if something the same is there first and then develops differently, as a more efficient way to form two sexes. Women are not particulary open to the idea.
Would testicles and ovaries be similarly linked?
That's the ticket! The Guardian should stick to this kind of important stuff that no doubt titillates its readers.
Would testicles and ovaries be similarly linked?
If a clitoris is an undeveloped penis, would that make ovaries undescended testicles?
"It's way bigger than it looks," so be careful with that "smaller" business. You might be surprised!
In other words, a small penis the size of a large penis.
Knowing that Moby Clit is out there makes sex even more frightening.
Conan the barbarian had snake issues, too:
Black Lotus Street Peddler: The only snakes I know of are those of Set and his cursed towers. Their evil has spread to every city. Two or three years ago it was just another snake cult, now... they're everywhere. It is said that they are deceivers... they murder people in the night... I know nothing.
I think girl snakes would be just as happy if humans never figured out that there's a spot where you can sexually stimulate them.
Wow, Hillary has a clitoris.
"Men don't find a reason to say that their penis is really a type of clitoris."
Lewis, let me introduce you to Howard.
"Is that science or culture?"
Science is culture. So regardless of how you want the question to be answered, the answer is "culture".
[The 'whoops' is strong today. ]
I understand questioning the “mistake”. I also want to know what was the “taboo”? Do these people think those interested in animal husbandry never discussed the sexual organs and functions of animals because, why? Or was the “taboo” recognizing the sexual organs were different between male and female snakes because that works against progressive notions regarding binary sexuality? The latter seems to go back to the mistake.
rhhardin,
It's almost as if something the same is there first and then develops differently, as a more efficient way to form two sexes. Women are not particularly open to the idea.
Well, sure (to the first sentence, at least). This is presumably the "mistaken" view that the article pretends to reject. But it's so obviously true.
Why do men have nipples? (Excepting trans-men, who have had them, and all other breast tissue, surgically removed, I mean.) They're there because they are homologous to female nipples, which (unlike male ones) have a very direct relationship with human reproduction. I know it's fun to play with a man's tits, but it's my tits that were selected for. Men's tits are there b/c human development starts "unisex" and then diverges, in the overwhelming majority of cases, along two different paths.
Stephen Jay Gould had a terrific essay on this exact question somewhere. He wanted to call it, literally, "Tits and Clits," but it appeared as "Male Nipples and Clitoral Ripples," b/c the first title didn't make it clear that it was male tits he was talking about.
Gould's reasoning, to put it bluntly, is that there is no evolutionary "need" for female orgasm at all, but that the clitoris and the penis are homologous structures, just like male and female nipples, and so share some properties. Seems plausible enough to me.
'Snakes have a clitoris...'
And the male scientists still can't find it : )
A science of correlations... yet snake culture does not feature friends with "benefits", casting couches, transgenderism, planned parenthood, etc.
Given what amazing tongues snakes have, it's the height of irony that they're not used for cunnilingus.
Lurker21 said...
Would testicles and ovaries be similarly linked?
If a clitoris is an undeveloped penis, would that make ovaries undescended testicles?
It would seem that the ovaries are much more complicated and "developed" than testicles and are also much larger.
Ovaries also have more functions.
If he Penis and the Clitoris are the same thing just with different development is the clitoris part of the urinary tract for women?
I am in a meeting so this is dangerous research to do...
It’s getting to year end and Ann and all y’all are still on your game. Well done…
And I suppose that if the snake reproductive sex isn't working, the prescription could be sssialisss for the ereptile dysfunction. But there are other possibilities. Gay snakes apparently like it in the asp. And when God said “Go forth and multiply” some snakes couldn’t, they were adders.
- Krumhorn
Someone once tried to tell me that a snake's favorite opera is Wriggletto
- Krumhorn
cassandra lite,
Two images sprung to my mind:
(1) Susan McClary, in her book Feminine Endings, on Laurie Anderson's "Langue d'amour":
Eventually the decisiveness of verbal speech is abandoned for a prolonged moment of musical jouissance [Ed.: Jeez, I'd almost forgotten that word, though it was everywhere when I was in grad school] in which the murmured text -- "Voici, voila la langage d'amour" and "La, la, la, la"-- puns continually on "tongue": the tongue of love, the tongue that flickers in and out of the snake's mouth, the tongue inciting feminine ecstasy.
Hey, I can't help it; she just writes like that. Sorry.
(2) Shorter, and better, from a book review of a lesbian novel by Florence King: "Through it all flies that grand old flag, the 'flicking tongue.'"
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